This book is the first to tell in detail the story of the passionate and secret love affair between two of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Drawing on their previously unknown correspondence, Elzbieta Ettinger describes a relationship that lasted for more than half a century, a relationship that sheds startling light on both individuals. Read more
Available in eBook download, large Softcover, or large Hardcover. Personal true stories of my life and family in Wisconsin & Florida since the 1930's. The trials and triumphs are poignant and entertaining. Historical references added! Great reading for all ages. Enjoy!!! Read more
Available in eBook download, large Softcover, or large Hardcover. Personal true stories of my life and family in Wisconsin & Florida since the 1930's. The trials and triumphs are poignant and entertaining. Historical references added! Great reading for all ages. Enjoy!!! Read more
Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Yet there is no major biography of Reinhardt.
Now, in Django, Michael Dregni offers a definitive portrait of this great guitarist. Handsome, charismatic, childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking at dizzying speed, Django became Europe's most famous jazz musician, commanding exorbitant fees--and spending the money as fast as he made it. Dregni not only chronicles this remarkably colorful life--including a fascinating account of gypsy culture--but he also sheds much light on Django's musicianship. He examines his long musical partnership with violinist Stéphane Grappelli--the one suave and smooth, the other sharper and more dissonant--and he traces the evolution of their novel string jazz ensemble, Quintette du Hot Club de France. Indeed, the author spotlights Django's amazing musical diversity, describing his swing-styled Nouveau Quintette, his big band Django's Music, and his later bebop ensemble, as well as his many compositions, including symphonic pieces influenced by Ravel and Debussy and his unfinished organ mass inspired by Bach. And along the way, the author offers vivid snapshots of the jazz scene in Paris--colorful portraits of Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and countless others--and of Django's vagabond wanderings around France, Europe, and the United States, where he toured with Duke Ellington.
Capturing the extraordinary life and times of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century, Django is a must-read portrait of a true original. Read more
What goes up must come down, and Craig Rice’s meteoric rise to the top of the mystery writing heap by 1946 was rivaled only by her rapid descent into semi-obscurity. Her face once graced the cover of Time magazine, but today her books are found in second hand stores.
The mystery surrounding Rice was almost as puzzling as her books. Where was she born? What was her given name? What novels and short stories did she publish? Who did she marry and how many times? How many children did she have? Where did the penname of Craig Rice emanate from? How did she die? In the forty years since her death, the answers to these questions were buried under piles of confusion, lies, and exaggeration. In the 20th century how could these basic questions of a person’s life be so vague?
Jeffrey Marks began a quest to learn the answers. His research took the better part of a decade. He traced Rice’s oeuvre back to original manuscripts to determine authorship. He tracked down relative, friends, and other writers to learn answers on Craig’s name, her heritage, and her descent from superstardom into drinking, mental illness, and trouble with the law.
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America in the 1950s was a place of Eisenhower, the Korean Conflict, McCarthy, and Sputnik. Women found themselves trapped into a mold of Donna Reed and June Cleaver, marginalized by the hyper-masculinity of the age. Mystery fiction had become a male bastion as well, promoting hardboiled private eye novels and spy fiction. It would be another three decades before groups to promote equality between the sexes in mystery fiction appeared.
Yet during that post-World War II era, seven women carved out a place in the genre. These women became the bestsellers of their time by innovation and experimentation. Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Leslie Ford, Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy B. Hughes, Mignon Eberhart, and Phoebe Atwood Taylor are in no way similar to each other in style, theme, or subject matter. However, their writings created an Atomic Renaissance that continues to impact the mystery field today.
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John Peel Remembered includes the BBC Radio serialization of Margrave of the Marshes, Peel's part-written autobiography completed by his wife, Sheila Ravenscroft, and Home Truths, a special program to mark the anniversary of John Peel's death, in which Tom Robinson visits Peel Acres to meet John's wife Sheila and their four children. Read more
The obsessive reference for every baseball nut, THE TEAM-BY-TEAM ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL is a comprehensive, original, devour-it-like-salted-peanuts single-volume encyclopedia that marries history and statistics and delivers them team by team. Organizing by teams gives the wide view—how do the Murderer’s Row Yankees compare to the Big Red Machine? The long view—what team has given the Red Sox the most trouble over the last 100 years? And the hidden view—name the team that went through all the 1990s without a Gold Glove winner. It’s how the game is played, and now, finally, it’s presented in the way the game is best understood.
Created by baseball historian Dennis Purdy, a true buff’s buff, THE TEAM-BY-TEAM ENCYCLOPEDIA offers the history of every existing major league baseball franchise told through narrative, bios, anecdotes, photographs, and the most comprehensive team statistics ever assembled in a single book. Every year’s record, standing, attendance, and primary starting lineup for each of baseball’s 30 franchises. Top-10 leader lists for every major category (and some minor ones), plus all-time won-loss records versus all opponents. All the awards—MVP, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, Gold Glove. Manager records. Post-season records. Even retired uniform numbers. But the stats are just the beginning—each chapter contains entertaining thumbnail biographies of every franchise’s key players, recalling, for example, how the game’s greatest shortstop, Honus Wagner, was ecruited when spotted throwing rocks across a river. And sprinkled throughout are spicy team facts, bizarre anecdotes, statistical anomalies, and little-known gems—like what Babe Ruth said to Lou Gehrig after hitting his “called shot” homerun in the 1932 World Series. Read more
Key Words: Downsizing, Disrimination, Court of Law, Bottom Line, Business, Corporate, Corporations, Corporate America, Morality. Not About Money exposes the life of a successful corporate woman whose career becomes threatened through the arrival of competitive young engineers. All too often older, more experienced employees are replaced with young fresh members as corporations search for new ideas and better leaders. As the only female employee among the older group targeted, Ellen feels compelled to file a discrimination lawsuit to protect her rights and take a stand against corporate America. Ellen Marie Blend offers powerful oration and explicit detail as she takes readers inside the court room and behind the scenes of this corporate scandal. Inspired by her own experiences as a professional corporate woman, “Not About Money” expresses her strengths as a woman fighting for what is morally right, and not the money! Presented in such descriptive detail, Blend shares the journey of Ellen through this painstaking battle, demanding justice. This is just one of a thousand stories that could be told of the decline of morality in corporate America. The events are similar to those in Iacocca, an autobiography by Lee Iacocca, in showing the demoralizing injustice done to individuals in large corporations. Read more
With her trademark style, wit, sensitivity, and spontaneity, Maira Kalman guides a whirlwind tour of American democracy.
And the Pursuit of Happiness is beloved artist and author Maira Kalman's yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works. Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court.
As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection.
Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.
A Look Inside And the Pursuit of Happiness
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"Life is all about making choices" (see p. 61). Every day we wake up, we have a choice. We choose to get out of bed on the right side or the wrong side. We choose whether it will be a good day or bad. We choose whether we are going to be happy or not. This book, Road to Barrister: An Urban Monologue by Yusef Poole, can help anyone identify and possibly evaluate the consequences of those choices. Poole is one of very few guys in his neighborhood with whom he grew up who never sold drugs. Imagine the temptation he had to overcome . . . the pressure. So what made him different? In his early years, Poole saw the world for what it is, he was able to discern the difference between good and evil, and he chose sensibly. His priorities included God, family, academics, and finally, law school. Along his journey, he kept his eyes open and realized some essential truths regarding his success, why he chose the way he did, and he came to understand some of the problems plaguing society. Poole puts transparency to the test by describing personal events that led him to make wise choices. Now he wants to provide others with a template, if you will, on how to make the right decisions in life. In Road to Barrister: An Urban Monologue, Poole identifies choices and pitfalls, he provides a guide for others to achieve success, and he gives credit to the Lord. Read more
Anna Halprin pioneered what became known as "postmodern dance," creating work that was key to unlocking the door to experimentation in theater, music, Happenings, and performance art. This first comprehensive biography examines Halprin's fascinating life in the context of American culture--in particular popular culture and the West Coast as a center of artistic experimentation from the Beats through the Hippies. Janice Ross chronicles Halprin's long, remarkable career, beginning with the dancer's grandparents--who escaped Eastern European pogroms and came to the United States at the turn of the last century--and ending with the present day, when Halprin continues to defy boundaries between artistic genres as well as between participants and observers. As she follows Halprin's development from youth into old age, Ross describes in engrossing detail the artist's roles as dancer, choreographer, performance theorist, community leader, cancer survivor, healer, wife, and mother.
Halprin's friends and acquaintances include a number of artists who charted the course of postmodern performance. Among her students were Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and Robert Morris. Ross brings to life the vital sense of experimentation during this period. She also illuminates the work of Anna Halprin's husband, the important landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, in the context of his wife's environmental dance work. Using Halprin's dance practices and works as her focus, Ross explores the effects of danced stories on the bodies who perform them. The result is an innovative consideration of how experience becomes performance as well as a masterful account of an extraordinary life. Read more
The year was 1969. Chicago's inner city was riddled with drugs, violent crime, and despair. Born to drug-addicted parents, Jemal Gibson's options early in life seem to be gangs, prison, and possibly death like so many of those who came before him.
Despite those circumstances, he makes it out of the ghetto by selling billions of dollars of drugs and making millions - legally. But, Jemal's close ties to his family and friends often draw him back in as if he'd never left.
This memoir is full of heart-wrenching twists and turns as readers cry, laugh, and celebrate the impact that both legal and illegal drugs have on Jemal's life. Read more
A recent Forbes listed Larry Ellison as the fifth richest man in the world, and the second richest active player in the technology world. The ultimate self-made man, Ellison began Oracle Corporation, the fastest-growing software database company in the world, with a $1,200 investment. Mike Wilson has created an entertaining and provocative portrait of this enigmatic and visionary businessman. of photos.It seems like all of the biggest names in the computer industry are getting the celebrity bio treatment these days. But no corporate CEO deserves it more than Larry Ellison, the charismatic head of Oracle Corp. This isn't your standard, dry, "learn-from-his-example" type of life. It's not that Ellison's life doesn't offer the same lessons in hard-won business success as some of his colleague's, because it certainly does. It's just vastly more entertaining.
In The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison, author Mike Wilson delivers a fascinating and genuinely interesting portrayal of Silicon Valley's most notorious bad boy, constructed from hundreds of interviews with friends, colleagues, and those unfortunate enough to stand in Ellison's way. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes stories of the growth and worldwide success of Oracle, which Ellison founded in 1977. Plus, there's plenty of the good stuff: tales of Ellison's truly fast-lane lifestyle, filled with big boats, beautiful women, and celebrity friends. While this book probably won't transform you into a fan of Ellison's, you will be grateful for a chance to observe him--from a safe distance.
The punchline is "God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison," of course. Read more
Behind George were enemies; in front, a raging ice-packed river. Poling across had seemed his best chance, but now large blocks of ice slammed into his makeshift raft, twisting it off course. Just as George dug his pole in and pushed with all his might, a block of ice hit the raft--the raft slammed into the pole--and George was overboard.
On a dangerous mission for the British army, young Major Washington had no idea that one day he would lead an army of fellow colonials in a bitter battle for independence agains Great Britain herself, the most powerful empire in the world.
In each new crisis, the yound United States sought out George Washinton. As commander in chief of the Continental army, chairman of the Constitutional Convention, and first president, this indispensable American served the struggling nation when its survival and form hung in the balance. Read more
In the honorable tradition of the eccentric dandyism of Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, and Quentin Crisp comes Sebastian Horsley's disarming memoir of sex, drugs, and Savile Row.
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Jordan Romero was a regular 9 year old boy. He loved BMX biking, listening to music, hanging out with his friends and family, participating in school activities, and studying nature and reptiles. So why would he want to climb the world's tallest mountains? What made him decide to try something so dangerous and difficult?
It all started when Jordan spotted a map of the famous "Seven Summits", the tallest mountains on Earth's seven continents, including massive Mt. Everest–the tallest of all. Jordan could not take his eyes off of that map; his head was filled with thoughts of snow-covered peaks, jagged rocks, billowing white clouds and deep blue skies. Four years later, Jordan stood and gazed down at those peaks and cloudy skies from the 29,035 ft. summit of Mt. Everest. He had reached his goal: To conquer the mightiest of mountains and inspire other kids to dream BIG! How did he do it? This is his story... Read more
