Download or read book The Emperor s Shadow written by Anne Whitehead and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, he was sent into exile on St Helena, arriving in October 1815. For the six years until his death, he was an 'eagle in a cage', reduced from the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed and entertained by Betsy Balcombe, the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant. Anne Whitehead brings to life Napoleon's time on St Helena and the web of connections around the globe which framed his last years. Betsy's father, William Balcombe, was well-connected in London, and he smuggled letters and undertook a clandestine mission to Paris for Napoleon. Betsy's friendship with Napoleon cast a shadow over the rest of her colourful life. She married a Regency cad, who soon left her and their daughter, and she travelled to Australia in 1823 with her father, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. After her father was exposed for fraud and the family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a memoir which turned her into a celebrity. With her extraordinary connections to royalty in London and to the Bonaparte family and their courtiers, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance. This new account reveals Napoleon at his most vulnerable, human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most dramatic events of her time.
Download or read book Churchill and Orwell written by Thomas E. Ricks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays!
Download or read book Shadow and Bone written by Leigh Bardugo and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grishaverse will be coming to Netflix soon with Shadow and Bone, an original series Enter the Grishaverse with Book One of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold--a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed. Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country's magical military elite--and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift. As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation. Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems. A New York Times Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller An Indie Next List Book This title has Common Core connections. Praise for the Grishaverse "A master of fantasy." --The Huffington Post "Utterly, extremely bewitching." --The Guardian "The best magic universe since Harry Potter." --Bustle "This is what fantasy is for." --The New York Times Book Review " A] world that feels real enough to have its own passport stamp." --NPR "The darker it gets for the good guys, the better." --Entertainment Weekly "Sultry, sweeping and picturesque. . . . Impossible to put down." --USA Today "There's a level of emotional and historical sophistication within Bardugo's original epic fantasy that sets it apart." --Vanity Fair "Unlike anything I've ever read." --Veronica Roth, bestselling author of Divergent "Bardugo crafts a first-rate adventure, a poignant romance, and an intriguing mystery " --Rick Riordan, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson series "This is a great choice for teenage fans of George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien." --RT Book Reviews Read all the books in the Grishaverse The Shadow and Bone Trilogy (previously published as The Grisha Trilogy) Shadow and Bone Siege and Storm Ruin and Rising The Six of Crows Duology Six of Crows Crooked Kingdom King of Scars The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic
Download or read book Breaking Bread with the Dead written by Alan Jacobs and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Spectator Book of the Year It's fashionable to think of the writers of the past as irredeemably tarnished by prejudice. Aristotle despised women. John Milton, the great champion of free speech, wouldn't have granted it to Catholics. Edith Wharton's imaginative sympathies stopped short of her Jewish characters. But what if it is only through the works of such individuals that we can achieve a necessary perspective on the troubles of the present? Join literary scholar Alan Jacobs for a truly nourishing feast of learning. Discover what Homer can teach us about force, what Machiavelli has to say about reading and what Charlotte Brontë reveals about race. Not all the guests are people you might want to invite into your home, but they all bring something precious to the table. In Breaking Bread with the Dead, an omnivorous reader draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with minds across the ages, from Horace to Donna Haraway.
Download or read book The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries written by Peter A. Coclanis and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is a collection of essays focusing on the expansion, elaboration, and increasing integration of the economy of the Atlantic basin—comprising parts of Europe, West Africa, and the Americas—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In thirteen essays, the contributors examine the complex and variegated processes by which markets were created in the Atlantic basin and how they became integrated. While a number of the contributors focus on the economic history of a specific European imperial system, others, mirroring the realities of the world they are writing about, transcend imperial boundaries and investigate topics shared throughout the region. In the latter case, the contributors focus either on processes occurring along the margins or interstices of empires, or on "breaches" in the colonial systems established by various European powers. Taken together, the essays shed much-needed light on the organization and operation of both the European imperial orders of the early modern era and the increasingly integrated economy of the Atlantic basin challenging these orders over the course of the same period.
Download or read book In the Shadow of the American Dream written by David Wojnarowicz and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From life in the streets and love in the alleys to fame in the spotlight and an untimely death—raw, biting, and brilliant selections from the personal journals of one of the most uniquely creative artists of the late twentieth century When his life ended at age thirty-seven—a casualty of the AIDS epidemic that took so many before their time—David Wojnarowicz had long since established himself as one of America’s most vital artists and activists. In the Shadow of the American Dream is a stunning collection of riveting and revealing chapters from Wojnarowicz’s extensive personal diaries—thirty volumes’ worth of memories and lucid observations, some bitter, some sweet—that the author began writing when he was seventeen and continued until his death two decades later. Here is a brilliant chronicle of an artist’s emergence—a young man’s still achingly fresh memories of his unhappy adolescence and his glorious discovery of self. Wojnarowicz recalls his life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with no shame or regret, and shares his hitchhiking journeys across the country. He talks of art and love and sex—embracing who he is fully and accepting his heartbreaking fate without pathos—while providing fascinating glimpses into the vibrant and colorful New York art scene and poignant views of life and death among the AIDS community. At once frightening and courageous, joyous and disturbing, enlightening and honest, In the Shadow of the American Dream is a treasured addition to the enduring literary legacy of David Wojnarowicz and a true testament to his unique brilliance.
Download or read book Shadow of the Titanic written by Andrew Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the icy waters of the North Atlantic reverberated with the desperate screams of more than 1,500 men, women, and children—passengers of the once majestic liner Titanic. Then, as the ship sank to the ocean floor and the passengers slowly died from hypothermia, an even more awful silence settled over the sea. The sights and sounds of that night would haunt each of the vessel’s 705 survivors for the rest of their days. Although we think we know the story of Titanic—the famously luxurious and supposedly unsinkable ship that struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America—very little has been written about what happened to the survivors after the tragedy. How did they cope in the aftermath of this horrific event? How did they come to remember that night, a disaster that has been likened to the destruction of a small town? Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, and diaries as well as interviews with survivors’ family members, award-winning journalist and author Andrew Wilson reveals how some used their experience to propel themselves on to fame, while others were so racked with guilt they spent the rest of their lives under the Titanic’s shadow. Some reputations were destroyed, and some survivors were so psychologically damaged that they took their own lives in the years that followed. Andrew Wilson brings to life the colorful voices of many of those who lived to tell the tale, from famous survivors like Madeleine Astor (who became a bride, a widow, an heiress, and a mother all within a year), Lady Duff Gordon, and White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, to lesser known second- and third-class passengers such as the Navratil brothers—who were traveling under assumed names because they were being abducted by their father. Today, one hundred years after that fateful voyage, Shadow of the Titanic adds an important new dimension to our understanding of this enduringly fascinating story.
Download or read book There Will Be No Miracles Here written by Casey Gerald and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.
Download or read book The Shadow out of Time written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and published by Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd.. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the feature stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, "The Shadow Out of Time" is the tale of a professor of political economics that is thrown into a mind-shattering journey through time and space, while his body is held hostage by an alien mind. Horrified and panic-stricken by the implications of his experiences, he hopes against all reason and evidence that he has merely lost his mind.
Download or read book Shadows on the Sea written by JOAN HIATT HARLOW and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is at war with Germany. Fourteen-year-old Jill Winter's mother is traveling to Newfoundland to be with Jill's sick uncle and must pass through the treacherous North Atlantic where German submarines -- U-boats -- stalk like wolves. Jill's father, a famous pop singer, is on tour, so Jill is sent to Winter Haven, Maine, to stay with Nana. Quarry, a local boy, says that "gossip ain't never been so good," and Jill soon discovers he's right -- Winter Haven is full of secrets and rumors. First there's Wendy, a teenager who's visiting her aunt Adrie, the owner of a local inn, and who tells so many fanciful stories and secrets, it's hard to know what's true. Then there are the Crystals, a snobbish girls' club, who blackball Wendy because of a dark secret they reveal to Jill. Even Nana seems to be keeping secrets -- with her Germanfriend Ida Wilmar! Who's a friend and who's an enemy? As German subs torpedo American and Canadian ships off the Maine coast, Jill is anxious for her mother's safety. Her fears are heightened when she finds a wounded pigeon with the message Sonnabend ivattached to its leg! When Nana and Ida Wilmar whisper to each other and Jill hears that same word -- Sonnabend -- she determines to uncover the truth behind the mysteries in Winter Haven. But she soon finds herself in grave danger when she uncovers the biggest secret of all -- and must run for her life! Based on startling historical events that took place in the harbors of Maine during World War II, Shadows on the Seais a fast-paced mystery that will keep readers guessing from beginning to end.
Download or read book Night Flight written by Robert Burleigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amelia Earhart is a legend in the field of aviation, and no accomplishment of hers is more acclaimed than her unparalleled 1932 solo flight across the Atlantic. As only the second person—and the first woman—to achieve such a feat, Amelia Earhart earned a place in the history books, and award-winning author Robert Burleigh has captured every nuance of her remarkable journey in this detailed picture book that is full of action and edge. Readers will be thrilled with the adventure and drama in this nonfiction account—and Wendell Minor’s vivid paintings will make them feel as if they’re along for the ride.
Download or read book In the Shadow of Slavery written by Judith Carney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early nineteenth century, African slaves came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans. In the Shadow of Slavery provides a startling new assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment. Many familiar foods—millet, sorghum, coffee, okra, watermelon, and the "Asian" long bean, for example—are native to Africa, while commercial products such as Coca Cola, Worcestershire Sauce, and Palmolive Soap rely on African plants that were brought to the Americas on slave ships as provisions, medicines, cordage, and bedding. In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots—"botanical gardens of the dispossessed"—became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.
Download or read book In the Shadow of Slavery written by Leslie M. Harris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of a classic work revealing the little-known history of African Americans in New York City before Emancipation. The popular understanding of the history of slavery in America almost entirely ignores the institution’s extensive reach in the North. But the cities of the North were built by—and became the home of—tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans, many of whom would continue to live there as free people after Emancipation. In the Shadow of Slavery reveals the history of African Americans in the nation’s largest metropolis, New York City. Leslie M. Harris draws on travel accounts, autobiographies, newspapers, literature, and organizational records to extend prior studies of racial discrimination. She traces the undeniable impact of African Americans on class distinctions, politics, and community formation by offering vivid portraits of the lives and aspirations of countless black New Yorkers. This new edition includes an afterword by the author addressing subsequent research and the ongoing arguments over how slavery and its legacy should be taught, memorialized, and acknowledged by governments.
Download or read book Mother Daughter Me written by Katie Hafner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner’s remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a “year in Provence” with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie’s teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old woman set in her ways. Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories of her parents’ painful divorce, of her mother’s drinking, of dislocating moves back and forth across the country, and of Katie’s own widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding difficult issues at bay. How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny—and always insightful—Katie Hafner’s brave and loving book answers questions about the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many. Praise for Mother Daughter Me “The most raw, honest and engaging memoir I’ve read in a long time.”—KJ Dell’Antonia, The New York Times “A brilliant, funny, poignant, and wrenching story of three generations under one roof, unlike anything I have ever read.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone “Weaving past with present, anecdote with analysis, [Katie] Hafner’s riveting account of multigenerational living and mother-daughter frictions, of love and forgiveness, is devoid of self-pity and unafraid of self-blame. . . . [Hafner is] a bright—and appealing—heroine.”—Cathi Hanauer, Elle “[A] frank and searching account . . . Currents of grief, guilt, longing and forgiveness flow through the compelling narrative.”—Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle “A touching saga that shines . . . We see how years-old unresolved emotions manifest.”—Lindsay Deutsch, USA Today “[Hafner’s] memoir shines a light on nurturing deficits repeated through generations and will lead many readers to relive their own struggles with forgiveness.”—Erica Jong, People “An unusually graceful story, one that balances honesty and tact . . . Hafner narrates the events so adeptly that they feel enlightening.”—Harper’s “Heartbreakingly honest, yet not without hope and flashes of wry humor.”—Kirkus Reviews “[An] emotionally raw memoir examining the delicate, inevitable shift from dependence to independence and back again.”—O: The Oprah Magazine (Ten Titles to Pick Up Now) “Scrap any romantic ideas about what goes on when a 40-something woman invites her mother to live with her and her teenage daughter for a year. As Hafner hilariously and touchingly tells it, being the center of a family sandwich is, well, complicated.”—Parade
Download or read book Fear of Dying written by Erica Jong and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fear of Dying is a hilarious, heart wrenching, and beautifully told story about what happens when one woman steps reluctantly into the afternoon of life. Vanessa Wonderman is a gorgeous former actress in her 60's who finds herself balancing between her dying parents, her aging husband and her beloved, pregnant daughter. Although Vanessa considers herself "a happily married woman," the lack of sex in her life makes her feel as if she's losing something too valuable to ignore. So she places an ad for sex on a site called Zipless.com and the life she knew begins to unravel. With the help and counsel of her best friend, Isadora Wing, Vanessa navigates the phishers and pishers, and starts to question if what she's looking for might be close at hand after all. Fear of Dying is a daring and delightful look at what it really takes to be human and female in the 21st century. Wildly funny and searingly honest, this is a book for everyone who has ever been shaken and changed by love.
Download or read book Shadows at Jamestown written by Steven K. Smith and published by Myboys3 Press. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam, Derek, and Caitlin travel to historic Jamestown as part of Field School. When a priceless artifact is labeled a fraud, they must work to uncover the mystery.
Download or read book Fulfillment written by Alec MacGillis and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “A grounded and expansive examination of the American economic divide . . . It takes a skillful journalist to weave data and anecdotes together so effectively.” —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States. In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth “a billion dollars” that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly-line labor. Eight decades later, the market capitalization of Amazon.com has exceeded $1.5 trillion, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around $30 billion. We have entered the age of one-click America—and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, Amazon’s sway will only intensify. Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new office towers displace a historic Black neighborhood. In Ohio, cardboard makers supplant auto manufacturers, and in suburban Virginia, homeowners try to protect their town from the environmental impact of a new data center. When a warehouse replaces a fabled steel plant on the outskirts of Baltimore, a new model of work becomes visible. Fulfillment also shows how Amazon has become a force in Washington, D.C., ushering readers through a revolving door for lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos’s Kalorama mansion. With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality—not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
