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The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months…
between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People, Time, Los Angeles Times, Men&’s Health, New York Post, Lit Hub, Book Riot, ScreenrantOn November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln&’s election and the Confederacy&’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were &“so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.&”At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter&’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don&’t see a cataclysm coming until it&’s too late.By Patrick J. Kennedy, Stephen Fried. 2024
Profiles in Mental Health Courage portrays the dramatic journeys of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their…
mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions. Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation&’s—in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others—a special group who agreed to talk about their illnesses, treatments, and struggles for the first time. When Kennedy&’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, published his classic book Profiles in Courage, he hoped to inspire &“political courage&” by telling the stories of brave U.S. senators who changed America. In Profiles in Mental Health Courage, former Congressman Kennedy adapts his uncle&’s idea to inspire the &“mental health courage&” it takes for those with these conditions to treat their illnesses, and risk telling their stories to help America face its crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets. The resounding silence surrounding these illnesses remains persistent, and this book takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction that inspires profound connection, empathy, and action. In this book, you&’ll meet people of all ages, backgrounds, and futures, across politics and government, Hollywood and the arts, tech and business, sports and science—some recovering, some relapsing, some just barely holding on, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You&’ll also meet those trying to help them through—parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness. The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential reading for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public—just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves.Interviews with David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Jack Handey, Bob Odenkirk, and other humor-writing pros: &“Sure to captivate anyone who loves…
a good comedy.&” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) If you aspire to write sitcoms, standup, screenplays, or satirical essays—or are just a connoisseur of comedy—you should learn from the professionals. With interviews from twenty-one top humor writers whose credits include everything from Marx Brothers movies to Borat and The Office, readers will score not only professional advice but personal details about their processes, influences, and experiences in the industry—and, of course, more than a few amusing stories. Discover what Paul Feig thinks would have happened to Freaks and Geeks if the show had had another season; what the writers&’ room at SNL is really like; how the Onion editorial staff dealt with the aftermath of 9/11; and much, much more. These humor writers are among the best in the business, ranging from veterans to newcomers, and have collectively been involved with many of the pop culture touchstones of the last half-century.Interviewees include: Stephen Merchant (The Office) · Harold Ramis (Animal House, Groundhog Day) · Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show, Borat) · Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks) · Bob Odenkirk (The Ben Stiller Show) · Todd Hanson (The Onion) · Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) · David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day) · Al Jaffee (Mad) · Allison Silverman (The Colbert Report) · Robert Smigel (Late Night with Conan O&’Brien) · Dave Barry (Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up) · Larry Wilmore (In Living Color, The Bernie Mac Show) · Jack Handey (Saturday Night Live) · Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, Tootsie) · Buck Henry · Merrill Markoe · Irving Brecher · Marshall Brickman · George Meyer · Dick Cavett &“Remarkably frank interviews . . . reads like a secret history of popular culture.&” —Time &“Loaded with information for people interested in comedy, not just those who want to work in the business.&” —PopMattersBy Frank L. Cioffi. 2024
An indispensable guide to essential principles of English grammar and usageStellar English lays out the fundamentals of effective writing, from…
word choice and punctuation to parts of speech and common errors. Frank Cioffi emphasizes how formal written English—though only a subdialect of the language—enables writers to reach a wide and heterogenous audience.Cioffi&’s many example sentences illustrating grammatical principles tilt in an otherworldly direction, making up a science fiction story involving alien invasion. Reading the book through will not only help you with your grammar but also reveal how the story ends!An invaluable brief handbook for native and nonnative speakers alike, Stellar English avoids the jargon and emphasis on outdated rules found in typical grammar guides and shows how good writing uses carefully constructed language that&’s at once appropriate to an audience and communicates—without distractions or confusion—just what the writer wants.The definitive guide to starting and running a freelance editing business. You’ve been thinking about shifting into the world of…
freelance editing, but you don’t know where to start. In a time when editors are seeking greater flexibility in their work arrangements and schedules, freelancing is an increasingly common career option. But deciding to go it alone means balancing the risks with the rewards. From the publisher of The Chicago Manual of Style comes The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors, the definitive guide to running your business and finding greater control and freedom in your work life. In this book, Erin Brenner—an industry leader and expert on the business of editorial freelancing—gathers everything you need to know into a single resource. Brenner has run her own successful editing business for over two decades and has helped hundreds of editors launch or improve their businesses through her teaching, blog writing, and coaching. The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors will walk you through the entire process of conceiving, launching, and working in a freelance editing business, from deciding on services and rates to choosing the best business structure to thinking through branding and marketing strategies and beyond. This book is ideal for beginning freelancers looking to get set up and land their first clients, but it’s equally valuable to those who have already been freelancing, with detailed coverage of such issues as handling difficult clients and continuing professional development. You’ll find a collection of advice from other successful freelance editors in this guide, as well as an extensive list of resources and tools. In the final and perhaps most important chapter, Brenner teaches you how to care for the key component of the business: yourself.By Fred Pyrczak, Randall R. Bruce. 2000
• Designed for students who will be writing research proposals, reports, theses, and dissertations. • The 15 chapters cover 191…
guidelines for effective scientific writing. The guidelines are fully illustrated with easy-to-follow examples. • The guidelines describe the types of information that should be included, how this information should be expressed, and where various types of information should be placed within a research report. • End-of-chapter questions help students master the writing process.By Lester Faigley. 2016
For college courses in Composition and Rhetoric. Backpack Writing, Fourth Edition presents writing, reading, and research processes dynamically, using a…
variety of visuals to illustrate how readers interact with texts and how writers compose. One of the first textbook authors to focus on multimedia composing, Lester Faigley employs his own advice to engage students in every step of the writing process – for both college composition and everyday life – and pulls back the curtain on how writers work. Aligned with the learning goals for a first-year college writing course identified in the 2014 Outcomes Statement from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, Backpack Writing gives students the support they need to succeed in first-year composition, in their other courses, and in their careers. In the Fourth Edition, students can also practice and explore what they’ve learned chapter-by-chapter with interactive MyWritingLab tools, assignments, and projects.By Matthew Algeo. 2024
Truman and Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers of the great events of the twentieth century—the…
man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians. But in most ways, they couldn't have been more different. Picasso was a communist, and probably the only thing Harry Truman hated more than communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer, and a millionaire. Truman was utterly devoted to his family and, despite his fame, far from a rich man. How did they come to be shaking hands in front of Picasso's studio in the south of France? Truman's meeting with Picasso was quietly arranged by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art and an early champion of Picasso. Barr knew that if he could convince these two ideological antipodes, the straight-talking politician from Missouri and the Cubist painter from MÁlaga, to simply shake hands, it would send a powerful message, not just to reactionary Republicans pushing McCarthyism at home, but to the whole world: modern art was not evil. Truman author Matthew Algeo retraced the Trumans' Mediterranean vacation and visited the places they went with Picasso, including Picasso's villa, Picasso's ceramics studio in Vallauris, and ChÂteau Grimaldi, a museum in Antibes.A rigorous history with a heartwarming center, When Harry Met Pablo intertwines the biographies of Truman and Picasso, the history of modern art, and twentieth-century American politics, but at its core it is the touching story of two old men who meet for the first time and realize they have more in common—and are more alike—than they ever imagined.By Gregory Royal Pratt. 2024
"Gregory Pratt had a rare front-row seat to the passions, problems, peculiarities, hopes, disappointments, shenanigans, and pettiness in the drama…
and farce that was Lori Lightfoot's uneasy tenure on the fifth floor at City Hall. What he delivers on these pages takes us backstage to give us a powerful, incisive portrait of the woman, the details of her mayoralty, and the many players who shared the stage." —Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune reporter and author of A Chicago Tavern Chicago is a world-class city, but it is also a city in crisis. Crime is up, schools have repeatedly shut down due to conflict between City Hall and the powerful teachers' union, and COVID-19 only deepened the entrenched poverty, institutional racism, and endless tug of war between the city's haves and have nots. For four years, the person at the center of this storm was Lori Lightfoot. A groundbreaking figure—the first Black, gay woman to be elected mayor of a major city and only the second female mayor of Chicago—she knew the city was at a critical turning point when she took office in 2019. But the once-in-a-lifetime challenges she ended up facing were beyond anything she or anyone else saw coming. Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Royal Pratt offers the first comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at the tumultuous single term of Mayor Lightfoot and the chaos that roiled the city and City Hall as she fought to live up to her promises to change the city's culture of corruption and villainy, reform its long-troubled police department, and make Chicago the safest big city in America. Some of Chicago's problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor: national polarization, long-standing cultural and racial tensions, our plague years. But some are the result of Lightfoot's poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn't been told in full—until now.By Pallavi Rebbapragada. 2024
Obliterated from the pages of history, as women often are, Odisha&’s first woman Chief Minister, Nandini Satpathy, known also as…
the Iron Lady of Orissa, was born to a family of revolutionaries and intellectuals. During her teenage years in the &‘40s, this petite girl in a starchy cotton saree was jailed for pulling down the Union Jack from atop the edifice of Ravenshaw College. Thus began the makings of a force to be reckoned with. Coming up through the ranks to ultimately reach the hallowed halls of the Rajya Sabha at the mere age of 31, this grassroots student politician went on to become the I&B minister in Indira Gandhi&’s first government, where she facilitated the working of the Free Bangla Radio that played a key role in the information war that was &’71. She hobnobbed with the likes of Raj Kapoor, Nargis, and Meena Kumari as India produced films around socialist films and warmed up to Russia. And still, in Delhi circles, she is best remembered as &‘Indira Gandhi&’s friend&’. Nandini&’s political career was as tumultuous as her friendship with Indira Gandhi. They were a close-knit duo, brought together by circumstances and kept together by a strong sense of affection and loyalty. That was until the Emergency. Where once she had enjoyed the proximity to the PMO and all the privileges that it came with, Nandini&’s opposition to the Emergency led to a fall from grace. This loss was not just the loss of a friend; it also meant the loss of her political career. During her chief-ministerial tenure, she implemented radical land reforms and tore down the tobacco trade mafia. These were actions that made her a lot of enemies. Once protected by her friendship with the prime minister, she was now subjected to brutal vendetta. In the twilight years of her life, Nandini succumbed to the deep grief of losing her husband and the ignominy of political obscurity. This is the story of Nandini Satpathy.By Jessica Yood. 2024
The Composition Commons delivers a timely take on invigorating higher education, illustrating how college composition courses can be dynamic sites for…
producing a democratic, just, and generally educated public. Jessica Yood traces the century-long origins of a writing-centered idea of the American university and tracks the resurgence of this idea today. Drawing on archival and classroom evidence from public colleges and universities and written in a lively autoethnographic voice, Yood names “genres of the commons”: intimate, informal writing activities that create peer-to-peer knowledge networks. She shows how these unique genres create collectivity—an academic commons—and calls on scholars to invest in composition as a course cultivating reflective, emergent, shared knowledge. Yood departs from movements that divest from the first-year composition classroom and details how an increasingly diverse student population composes complex, evolving cultural literacies that forge social bonds and forward innovation and intellectual and civic engagement. The Composition Commons reclaims the commons as critical idea and writing classroom activities as essential practices for remaking higher education in the United States.Praised as an “unforgettable love story” by Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, this is the real-life,…
unlikely romance between a resistance fighter and prisoner of war set in World War II Europe.In this true love story that defies all odds, Josefine Lobnik, a Yugoslav partisan heroine, and Bruce Murray, a New Zealand soldier, discover love in the midst of a brutal war.In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. One an underground resistance fighter, a bold young woman determined to vanquish the enemy occupiers; the other a prisoner of war, a man longing to escape the confines of the camp so he can battle again. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers, slipped through the wire of the compound, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.Woven through their tales of great bravery, daring escapes, betrayal, torture, and retaliation is their remarkable love story that survived against all odds. This is an extraordinary account of two ordinary people who found love during the unimaginable hardships of Hitler’s barbaric regime as told by their son-in-law Doug Gold, who decided to tell their story from the moment he heard about their remarkable tale of bravery, resilience, and resistance.By Tony Benn. 1994
YEARS OF HOPE is a kind of 'prequel' to the published series of DIARIES, and will cover fully the peerage…
renunciation, as well as revealing his early career, touching on schooldays, RAF service during the war, early involvement with politics etc. As a young man he had dealings with Atlee, Bevan, Morrison, Gaitskill and all the major politicians of the post-war Labour Government. This book will be more personal than earlier volumes and will draw on letters and other documents as well as the DIARIES themselves. It will reveal the extraordinary consistency of Benn's political views, as well as showing how he came to acquire them.By Dr James Mackay. 1995
Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie is one of history's greatest heroes, but also one of its greatest enigmas - a…
shadowy figure whose edges have been blurred by myth and legend. Even the date and place of his birth have been mis-stated - until now. James Mackay uses all his skills as a historical detective to produce this definitive biography, telling the incredible story of a man who, without wealth or noble birth, rose to become Guardian of Scotland. William Wallace, with superb generalship and tactical genius, led a country with no previous warlike tradition to triumph gloriously over the much larger, better-armed and better-trained English forces. Seven hundred years later, the heroism and betrayal, the valiant deeds and the dark atrocities, and the struggle of a small nation against a brutal and powerful empire, still create a compelling tale.By Michael Quinion. 2009
Long-time word-detective and bestselling author of Port Out, Starboard Home, Michael Quinion brings us the answers to nearly two hundred…
of the most intriguing questions he's been asked about language over the years. Sent to him by enquiring readers from all around the globe, Michael's answers about the meanings and histories behind the quirky phrases, slang and language that we all use are set to delight, amuse and enlighten even the most hardened word-obsessive.Did you know that 'Blighty' comes from an ancient Arabic word? Or that Liberace cried his way to the bank so many times people think he came up with the phrase? That 'cloud nine' started out as 'cloud seven' in the speakeasies of '30s America? And that the first person to have their thunder stolen was a dismal playwright from Drury Lane? Michael Quinion's Why is Q Always Followed By U? is full of surprising discoveries, entertaining quotations and memorable information. There are plenty of colourful stories out there, but Michael Quinion will help you discover the truth that lies behind the cock-and-bull stories and make sure you're always linguistically on the ball.By The Voice. 2022
Launched at the 1982 Notting Hill Carnival, The Voice newspaper captured and addressed a generation figuring out what it meant…
to be Black and British. Written for and by Black people, the newspaper shone a light on systematic injustices as well as celebrating Black Britain's success stories. From hard hitting news reports covering the murder of Stephen Lawrence to championing the likes of Sir Lewis Hamilton and Idris Elba, the newspaper has campaigned, celebrated and educated people for the last forty years.As well as celebrating amazing successes in sport, politics and the arts, The Voice documented everyday life in the community, from the emergence of a Black middle class in the '90s and the achievements of Black entrepreneurs to how different facets of the community were explored in contemporary music and literature. Since its small beginnings in Hackney, The Voice has also become a fantastic training ground for prominent journalists and figures including former politician Trevor Phillips, broadcaster Rageh Omaar and writer Afua Hirsch. Today, The Voice is Britain's longest running and only Black newspaper.Told through news reports, editorials and readers' personal letters, this emotive book documents the social history of Black Britain over the last four decades. Each chapter is illustrated with amazing newspaper pages from The Voice's extensive archives as well as iconic and dramatic front covers from 1982 to the present day.With a foreword from Sir Lenny Henry and written by former and current Voice journalists, this powerful book is a celebration of the ground-breaking paper which gave a voice to the voiceless.By Michael Dillon. 2024
Meet the most powerful leader in the world. Chinese premier Xi Jinping graces our television screens and news headlines on…
a regular basis. But even after a decade in power, he remains shrouded in mystery.From growing up with a father purged in Mao's Cultural Revolution and his mission to eradicate poverty, to his persecution of Uyghur Muslims and paranoia about being likened to Winnie-the-Pooh, Xi Jinping is a man obscured by caricatures. In this short, essential primer, historian and writer Michael Dillon unveils the character of Xi Jinping - arguably the world's most powerful man - to truly understand his grip on China, what he wants and how the West gets him wrong.But this is not just the story of Xi; this is the story of today's largest economic powerhouse, which dives into the crux of the issue - what does Xi's leadership of China mean for the rest of the world, and what will he do next?By Mike Rossiter. 2003
Operation Market Garden: a plan to capture the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem and outflank the German front. In…
all twelve thousand airborne troops were to land, either by parachute or glider, at three drop zones and move towards their objective. As the world now knows the mission was to be 'a bridge too far' for the British forces. Mike Rossiter has interviewed three of the survivors of those fateful days, each involved in a different flank of the British attack, and in vivid detail reconstructs the events that lead up to this most famous of glorious defeats. It is at once a story of hubris and bad planning, but also of valiant sacrifice and inspirational courage.By Mark Andryczyk. 2023
'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers…
of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena SavageA selection of Ukraine's leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasionOn 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.From tearing-downs of Russia's use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.By William J. Mann. 2017
The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America’s greatest and most influential families—the…
Roosevelts—exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair.Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent "illegitimate" branch of the family, William J. Mann paints an elegant, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts’ rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless—in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient. Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott—his brother and bitter rival—for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this "worshipful niece" in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels.Mann also brings into focus Eleanor’s cousins, TR’s children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family’s ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott’s daughter and grandchildren, and never-before-seen photographs from their archives.Deeply psychological and finely rendered, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.