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The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health
By Ellen S. More. 2022
A comprehensive history of the battle over sex education in the United StatesMid-century America had a problem talking about sex.…
Dr. Mary Calderone first diagnosed this condition and, in 1964, led the uphill battle to de-stigmatize sex education. Supporters hailed her as the “grandmother of modern sex education” while her detractors painted her as an “aging libertine,” but both could agree that she was quickly shaping the way sex was discussed in the classroom. Part biography, part social history, The Transformation of American Sex Education for the first time situates Dr. Mary Calderone at the center of decades of political, cultural, and religious conflict in the fight for comprehensive sex education. Ellen S. More examines Americans’ attempts to come to terms with the vexed subject of sex education in schools from the late 1940s to the early twenty-first century. Using Mary Calderone’s life and career as a touchstone, she traces the origins of modern sex education in the United States from the work of a group of reformers who coalesced around Calderone to create the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, to the development and use of the competing approaches known as “abstinence-based” and “comprehensive” sex education from the 1980s into the twenty-first century. A fascinating and timely read, The Transformation of American Sex Education provides a substantial contribution to the history of one of America’s most intense and protracted culture wars, and the first account of the woman who fought those battles.Abigail Adams: A Biography
By Phyllis Lee Levin. 2001
Wife of one president and mother of another, Abigail Adams was an extraordinary woman living at an extraordinary time in…
American history. A tireless letter writer and diarist, her penetrating and often caustic impressions of most of the major persons of her day--including Ben Franklin, George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and King George III, among others--provide one of the best first-hand accounts of the American Revolution. This biography, researched and written over a fourteen-year period, is a fascinating portrait of a brilliant woman at the center of the founding of the American republic.The Death of an Heir is Philip Jett's chilling true account of the Coors family’s gilded American dream that turned…
into a nightmare when a meticulously plotted kidnapping went horribly wrong.In the 1950s and 60s, the Coors dynasty reigned over Golden, Colorado, seemingly invincible. When rumblings about labor unions threatened to destabilize the family's brewery, Adolph Coors, Jr., the septuagenarian president of the company, drew a hard line, refusing to budge. They had worked hard for what they had, and no one had a right to take it from them. What they'd soon realize was that they had more to lose than they could have imagined.On the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 1960, Adolph “Ad” Coors III, the 44-year-old CEO of the multimillion dollar Colorado beer empire, stepped into his car and headed for the brewery twelve miles away. At a bridge he stopped to help a man in a yellow Mercury sedan. On the back seat lay handcuffs and leg irons. The glove box held a ransom note ready to be mailed. His coat pocket shielded a loaded pistol.What happened next set off the largest U.S. manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping. State and local authorities, along with the FBI personally spearheaded by its director J. Edgar Hoover, burst into action attempting to locate Ad and his kidnapper. The dragnet spanned a continent. All the while, Ad’s grief-stricken wife and children waited, tormented by the unrelenting silence. The Death of an Heir reveals the true story behind the tragic murder of Colorado’s favorite son.My 1980s & Other Essays
By Wayne Koestenbaum. 2013
Wayne Koestenbaum returns with a zesty and hyper-literate collection of personal and critical essays on the 1980s, including essays on…
major cultural figures such as Andy Warhol and Brigitte Bardot.Wayne Koestenbaum has been described as "an impossible lovechild from a late-night, drunken three-way between Joan Didion, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag" (Bidoun). In My 1980s and Other Essays, a collection of extravagant range and style, he rises to the challenge of that improbable description.My 1980s and Other Essays opens with a series of manifestos—or, perhaps more appropriately, a series of impassioned disclosures, intellectual and personal. It then proceeds to wrestle with a series of major cultural figures, the author's own lodestars and lodestones: literary (John Ashbery, Roberto Bolaño, James Schuyler), artistic (Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol), and simply iconic (Brigitte Bardot, Cary Grant, Lana Turner). And then there is the personal—the voice, the style, the flair—that is unquestionably Koestenbaum. It amounts to a kind of intellectual autobiography that culminates in a string of passionate calls to creativity; arguments in favor of detail and nuance, and attention; a defense of pleasure, hunger, and desire in culture and experience.Koestenbaum is perched on the cusp of being a true public intellectual—his venues are more mainstream than academic, his style is eye-catching, his prose unfailingly witty and passionate, his interests profoundly wide-ranging and popular. My 1980s should be the book that pushes Koestenbaum off that cusp and truly into the public eye.Americans today have a love/hate relationship with France, but in How the French Saved America Tom Shachtman shows that without…
France, there might not be a United States of America.To the rebelling colonies, French assistance made the difference between looming defeat and eventual triumph. Even before the Declaration of Independence was issued, King Louis XVI and French foreign minister Vergennes were aiding the rebels. After the Declaration, that assistance broadened to include wages for our troops; guns, cannon, and ammunition; engineering expertise that enabled victories and prevented defeats; diplomatic recognition; safe havens for privateers; battlefield leadership by veteran officers; and the army and fleet that made possible the Franco-American victory at Yorktown. Nearly ten percent of those who fought and died for the American cause were French. Those who fought and survived, in addition to the well-known Lafayette and Rochambeau, include François de Fleury, who won a Congressional Medal for valor, Louis Duportail, who founded the Army Corps of Engineers, and Admiral de Grasse, whose sea victory sealed the fate of Yorktown. This illuminating narrative history vividly captures the outsize characters of our European brothers, their battlefield and diplomatic bonds and clashes with Americans, and the monumental role they played in America’s fight for independence and democracy.Grant: A Biography (Great Generals Series)
By John Mosier. 2006
Grant: A Biography tells of the extraordinary life and legacy of one of America's most ingenious military mindsA modest and…
unassuming man, Grant never lost a battle, leading the Union to victory over the Confederacy during the Civil War, ultimately becoming President of the reunited states. Grant revolutionized military warfare by creating new leadership tactics by integrating new technologies in classical military strategy. In this compelling biography, John Mosier reveals the man behind the military legend, showing how Grant's creativity and genius off the battlefield shaped him into one of our nation's greatest military leaders.Metallica: This Monster Lives
By Joe Berlinger, Greg Milner. 2004
Metallica is one of the most successful hard-rock bands of all time, having sold more than ninety million albums worldwide.…
Receiving unique, unfettered access, acclaimed filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky followed Metallica over two and a half years as they faced monumental personal and professional challenges that threatened to destroy the bands just as they returned to the studio to record their first album in four years. While the documentary itself provides an insider's view of Metallica, the two and a half years of production (and more than 1,600 hours of footage) garnered far more than can be expressed in a two-hour film.Berlinger's book about the experience reveals the stories behind the film, capturing the energy, uncertainty, and ultimate triumph of both the filming and Metallica's bid for survival. It weaves the on-screen stories together with what happened off-screen, offering intimate details of the band's struggle amidst personnel changes, addiction, and controversy. In part because Berlinger was one of the only witnesses to the intensive group-therapy sessions and numerous band meetings, his account of his experience filming the band is the most honest and deeply probing book about Metallica - or any rock band - ever written.This is the book both Metallica and film fans have dreamed of - a stark and honest look at one of rock's most important bands through the eyes of the most provocative documentary filmmakers working today.Founding Grammars: How Early America's War Over Words Shaped Today's Language
By Rosemarie Ostler. 2015
Who decided not to split infinitives? With whom should we take issue if in fact, we wish to boldly write…
what no grammarian hath writ before? In Founding Grammars, Rosemarie Ostler delves into the roots of our grammar obsession to answer these questions and many more. Standard grammar and accurate spelling are widely considered hallmarks of a good education, but their exact definitions are much more contentious - capable of inciting a full-blown grammar war at the splice of a comma, battles readily visible in the media and online in the comments of blogs and chat rooms. With an accessible and enthusiastic journalistic approach, Ostler considers these grammatical shibboleths, tracing current debates back to America's earliest days, an era when most families owned only two books - the Bible and a grammar primer. Along the way, she investigates colorful historical characters on both sides of the grammar debate in her efforts to unmask the origins of contemporary speech. Linguistic founding fathers like Noah Webster, Tory expatriate Lindley Murray, and post-Civil War literary critic Richard Grant White,all play a featured role in creating the rules we've come to use, and occasionally discard, throughout the years. Founding Grammars is for curious readers who want to know where grammar rules have come from, where they've been, and where they might go next.Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating
By Moira Weigel. 2016
“Does anyone date anymore?” Today, the authorities tell us that courtship is in crisis. But when Moira Weigel dives into…
the history of sex and romance in modern America, she discovers that authorities have always said this. Ever since young men and women started to go out together, older generations have scolded them: That’s not the way to find true love. The first women who made dates with strangers were often arrested for prostitution; long before “hookup culture,” there were “petting parties”; before parents worried about cell phone apps, they fretted about joyrides and “parking.” Dating is always dying. But this does not mean that love is dead. It simply changes with the economy. Dating is, and always has been, tied to work. Lines like “I’ll pick you up at six” made sense at a time when people had jobs that started and ended at fixed hours. But in an age of contract work and flextime, many of us have become sexual freelancers, more likely to text a partner “u still up?” Weaving together over one hundred years of history with scenes from the contemporary landscape, Labor of Love offers a fresh feminist perspective on how we came to date the ways we do. This isn't a guide to “getting the guy.” There are no ridiculous “rules” to follow. Instead, Weigel helps us understand how looking for love shapes who we are—and hopefully leads us closer to the happy ending that dating promises.Spirit of Adventure: Eagle Scouts and the Making of America's Future
By Alvin Townley. 2009
An extraordinary journey alongside America's new generation of Eagle Scouts, who are discovering their purpose and bringing the values of…
Scouting to the world.Over the past century, Scouts have helped to guide the course of American history. But what does Scouting and the Eagle badge mean to the Scouts of today? How will they shape the future of Scouting and America itself? In Spirit of Adventure, Scouting expert and Eagle Scout Alvin Townley finds the answer.Townley traveled across the country and to the far corners of the globe to meet these young Eagle Scouts. He found them everywhere, continuing the life of adventure and service that they had begun in Scouting. He discovered them in Afghanistan providing medical care to villagers, in Australia saving coral reefs, at the Super Bowl and Olympic venues striving for victory, on desert cliffs and at inner-city schools teaching new lessons, in Africa bringing hope to children, and on the windswept deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz preparing for takeoff.Whether doctors, activists, servicemen, entrepreneurs, or teachers, these young men are changing the world through bold actions that capture the essence of the Scouting tradition. In Spirit of Adventure, Townley answers important questions about the future of Scouting and America, while revealing stories of service, courage, and pure excitement that introduce our nation to an inspiring new generation of leaders.Remembering Woolworth's: A Nostalgic History of the World's Most Famous Five-and-Dime
By Karen Plunkett-Powell. 1999
Remembering Woolworth's brings back to life all the nostalgia and magic of the famous five-and-dime that captured the hearts of…
Americans for over a centuryMillions of Americans have fond memories of shopping at Woolworth's, wandering the aisles in search of a humble spool of Woolco thread, festive Christmas decorations, a goldfish or parakeet, or a blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. And who could forget the special treat of a grilled-cheese sandwich or ice-cream sundae at the famous lunch counter?These and countless other memories are celebrated in Karen Plunkett-Powell's Remembering Woolworth's. Packed with photos, first-hand remembrances, vivid anecdotes, and a lively, well-researched narrative, the book tells the story of how a poor potato farmer named Frank Woolworth created a merchandising empire that touched the lives of Americans in small towns, big cities, and everywhere in between. Chapters cover the store's humble beginnings, surviving the Great Depression, the civil rights sit-ins, Woolworth's around the globe, the popularity of Woolworth's collectibles, and much more.Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest
By Ginger Adams Otis. 2015
In 1919, when Wesley Williams became a New York City firefighter, he stepped into a world that was 100% white…
and predominantly Irish. As far as this city knew, black men in the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) tended horses.Nearly a century later, many things in the FDNY had changed—but not the scarcity of blacks. New York had about 300 black firefighters—roughly 3 percent of the 11,000 New York firefighters in a city of two million African Americans. That made the FDNY a true aberration compared to all the other uniformed departments, like the NYPD. Decades earlier, women and blacks had sued over its hiring practices and won. But the FDNY never took permanent steps to eradicate the inequities, which led to a courtroom show-down between New York City's billionaire Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, and a determined group of black activist firefighters. It was not until 2014 that the city settled the $98 million lawsuit.At the center of this book are stories of courage—about firefighters risking their lives in the line of duty but also risking their livelihood by battling an unjust system. Among them: FDNY Captain Paul Washington, a second generation black firefighter, who spent his multi-decade career fighting to get minorities on the job. He faced an insular culture made up of relatives who never saw their own inclusion as favoritism.Based on author Ginger Adams Otis' years of on the ground reporting, Firefight is an exciting blend of the high-octane energy of firefighting and critical Civil Rights history.Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America
By John J. Fialka. 2003
Sisters is the first major history of the pivotal role played by nuns in the building of American society. Nuns…
were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges. In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in immigrant communities. They provided aid and service in the Chicago fire, cared for orphans and prostitutes in the California Gold Rush and brought professional nursing skills to field hospitals run by both armies in the Civil War. Their work was often done in the face of intimidation from such groups as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan.In the 1900s they built the nation's largest private school and hospital systems and brought the Catholic Church into the civil rights movement. As their numbers began to decline in the 1970s, many sisters were forced to take professional jobs as lawyers, probation workers, managers and hospital executives because their salaries were needed to support older nuns, many of whom lacked a pension system. Currently there are about 75,000 sisters in America, down from 204,000 in 1968. Their median age is sixty-nine. In Sisters, Fialka reveals the strength of the spiritual capital and the unprecedented reach of the caring institutions that religious women created in America.Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11
By David Friend. 2006
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was the most universally observed news event in human history. That the…
event was so visual is owing to the people who, facing disaster, took photographs of it: imperiled office workers, horrified tourists, professional photographers risking their lives. Conceived by Osama bin Laden as the toppling of an image of America right before the world's eyes, the tragedy swiftly came to be defined by photography, as families posted snapshots of their loved ones, police sought terrorists' faces on security-camera videotapes, and officials recorded the devastation and identified the dead.In Watching the World Change, David Friend tells the stories behind fifty of the images that altered our sense of our world forever—from the happenstance shots taken by bystanders as the first tower was struck to the scene of three firemen raising the Stars and Stripes at the site. He tells unforgettable stories of photographers and rescuers, victims and survivors. He shows how advances in television, digital photography, and the Internet produced an effect whereby more than two billion people saw the terrible events as they happened. He explores the controversy about whether images of 9/11 are redemptive or exploitative; and he shows how photographs help us to witness, to grieve, and finally to understand the unimaginable.Frank: A Life In Politics From The Great Society To Same-sex Marriage
By Barney Frank. 2015
How did a disheveled, intellectually combative gay Jew with a thick accent become one of the most effective (and funniest)…
politicians of our time?Growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, the fourteen-year-old Barney Frank made two vital discoveries about himself: he was attracted to government, and to men. He resolved to make a career out of the first attraction and to keep the second a secret. Now, fifty years later, his sexual orientation is widely accepted, while his belief in government is embattled. Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage is one man's account of the country's transformation—and the tale of a truly momentous career. Many Americans recall Frank's lacerating wit, whether it was directed at the Clinton impeachment ("What did the president touch, and when did he touch it?") or the pro-life movement (some people believe "life begins at conception and ends at birth"). But the contours of his private and public lives are less well-known. For more than four decades, he was at the center of the struggle for personal freedom and economic fairness. From the battle over AIDS funding in the 1980s to the debates over "big government" during the Clinton years to the 2008 financial crisis, the congressman from Massachusetts played a key role. In 2010, he coauthored the most far-reaching and controversial Wall Street reform bill since the era of the Great Depression, and helped bring about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In this feisty and often moving memoir, Frank candidly discusses the satisfactions, fears, and grudges that come with elected office. He recalls the emotional toll of living in the closet and how his public crusade against homophobia conflicted with his private accommodation of it. He discusses his painful quarrels with allies; his friendships with public figures, from Tip O'Neill to Sonny Bono; and how he found love with his husband, Jim Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage. He also demonstrates how he used his rhetorical skills to expose his opponents' hypocrisies and delusions. Through it all, he expertly analyzes the gifts a successful politician must bring to the job, and how even Congress can be made to work. Frank is the story of an extraordinary political life, an original argument for how to rebuild trust in government, and a guide to how political change really happens—composed by a master of the art.The untold story of the slaying of a Southern town's ex-slaves and a white lawyer's historic battle to bring the…
perpretators to justiceFollowing the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town, like many, where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex–Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty African Americans who had occupied a courthouse. With skill and tenacity, The Washington Post's Charles Lane transforms this nearly forgotten incident into a riveting historical saga.Seeking justice for the slain, one brave U.S. attorney, James Beckwith, risked his life and career to investigate and punish the perpetrators—but they all went free. What followed was a series of courtroom dramas that culminated at the Supreme Court, where the justices' verdict compromised the victories of the Civil War and left Southern blacks at the mercy of violent whites for generations. The Day Freedom Died is an electrifying piece of historical detective work that captures a gallery of characters from presidents to townspeople, and re-creates the bloody days of Reconstruction, when the often brutal struggle for equality moved from the battlefield into communities across the nation.The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour
By Peter Asher. 2019
A legendary record producer and performer takes readers on an alphabetical journey of insights into the music of the Beatles…
and individual reminiscences of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.Peter Asher met the Beatles in the spring of 1963, the start of a lifelong association with the band and its members. He had a front-row seat as they elevated pop music into an art form, and he was present at the creation of some of the most iconic music of our times.Asher is also a talented musician in his own right, with a great ear for what was new and fresh. Once, when Paul McCartney wrote a song that John Lennon didn’t think was right for the Beatles, Asher asked if he could record it. “A World Without Love” became a global No. 1 hit for his duo, Peter & Gordon. A few years later Asher was asked by Paul McCartney to help start Apple Records; the first artist Asher discovered and signed up was a young American singer-songwriter named James Taylor. Before long he would be not only managing and producing Taylor but also (having left Apple and moved to Los Angeles) working with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Robin Williams, Joni Mitchell, and Cher, among others. The Beatles from A to Zed grows out of his popular radio program “From Me to You” on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel, where he shares memories and insights about the Fab Four and their music. Here he weaves his reflections into a whimsical alphabetical journey that focuses not only on songs whose titles start with each letter, but also on recurrent themes in the Beatles’ music, the instruments they played, the innovations they pioneered, the artists who influenced them, the key people in their lives, and the cultural events of the time.Few can match Peter Asher for his fresh and personal perspective on the Beatles. And no one is a more congenial and entertaining guide to their music.Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
By Peniel E. Joseph. 2006
A gripping narrative that brings to life a legendary moment in American history: the birth, life, and death of the…
Black Power movementWith the rallying cry of "Black Power!" in 1966, a group of black activists, including Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton, turned their backs on Martin Luther King's pacifism and, building on Malcolm X's legacy, pioneered a radical new approach to the fight for equality. Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour is a history of the Black Power movement, that storied group of men and women who would become American icons of the struggle for racial equality.Peniel E. Joseph traces the history of the men and women of the movement—many of them famous or infamous, others forgotten. Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour begins in Harlem in the 1950s, where, despite the Cold War's hostile climate, black writers, artists, and activists built a new urban militancy that was the movement's earliest incarnation. In a series of character-driven chapters, we witness the rise of Black Power groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers, and with them, on both coasts of the country, a fundamental change in the way Americans understood the unfinished business of racial equality and integration.Drawing on original archival research and more than sixty original oral histories, this narrative history vividly invokes the way in which Black Power redefined black identity and culture and in the process redrew the landscape of American race relations.The Jesus and Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses
By Zoë Howe. 2014
Musically, culturally and even in terms of sheer attitude, the Jesus and Mary Chain stand alone. Their seminal debut album…
Psychocandy changed the course of popular music, and their iconic blend of psychotic white noise and darkly surreal lyrics that presaged the shoegaze movement continues to enchant and confound.Zoë Howe's biography is the fierce, frank and funny tale of the Jesus and Mary Chain, told by the band members and their associates for the very first time. The story begins in the faceless town of East Kilbride, near Glasgow, at the dawn of the 1980s with two intense, chronically shy brothers, Jim and William Reid, listening to music in their shared bedroom. What follows charts an unforgettable journey complete with incendiary live performances, their pivotal relationship with Alan McGee's Creation Records and those famous fraternal tensions—with plenty of feedback, fighting, and crafting perfect pop music along the way. It is high time this vastly influential group and sometime public enemy had their say.Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933–1939
By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. 2006
From a world-renowned cultural historian, an original look at the hidden commonalities among Fascism, Nazism, and the New DealToday Franklin…
Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is regarded as the democratic ideal, the positive American response to an economic crisis that propelled Germany and Italy toward Fascism. Yet in the 1930s, shocking as it may seem, these regimes were hardly considered antithetical. Now, Wolfgang Schivelbusch investigates the shared elements of these three "new deals" to offer a striking explanation for the popularity of Europe's totalitarian systems. Returning to the Depression, Schivelbusch traces the emergence of a new type of state: bolstered by mass propaganda, led by a charismatic figure, and projecting stability and power. He uncovers stunning similarities among the three regimes: the symbolic importance of gigantic public works programs like the TVA dams and the German autobahn, which not only put people back to work but embodied the state's authority; the seductive persuasiveness of Roosevelt's fireside chats and Mussolini's radio talks; the vogue for monumental architecture stamped on Washington, as on Berlin; and the omnipresent banners enlisting citizens as loyal followers of the state.Far from equating Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini or minimizing their acute differences, Schivelbusch proposes that the populist and paternalist qualities common to their states hold the key to the puzzling allegiance once granted to Europe's most tyrannical regimes.