Download or read book The Library Book written by Susan Orlean and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post). On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. “A book lover’s dream…an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.

Download or read book The Library Chronicle written by and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dangerous Games written by Margaret MacMillan and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan explores here the many ways in which history affects us all. She shows how a deeper engagement with history, both as individuals and in the sphere of public debate, can help us understand ourselves and the world better. But she also warns that history can be misused and lead to misunderstanding. History is used to justify religious movements and political campaigns alike. Dictators may suppress history because it undermines their ideas, agendas, or claims to absolute authority. Nationalists may tell false, one-sided, or misleading stories about the past. Political leaders might mobilize their people by telling lies. It is imperative that we have an understanding of the past and avoid these and other common traps in thinking to which many fall prey. This brilliantly reasoned work, alive with incident and figures both great and infamous, will compel us to examine history anew—and skillfully illuminates why it is important to treat the past with care.

Download or read book Bible Reader s Companion written by Larry Richards and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2002 with total page 948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you were to read through the Bible in a year with The Bible Reader's Companion at your side, you'd have a whole new and exciting grasp of the Word of God and you'd have truth to live by each day.--Kay Arthur,

Download or read book The Library written by Sir John Young Walker MacAlister and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Chronicle written by and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book London written by A. N. Wilson and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its two thousand years of history, London has ruled a rainy island and a globe-spanning empire, it has endured plague and fire and bombing, it has nurtured and destroyed poets and kings, revolutionaries and financiers, geniuses and visionaries of every stripe. To distill the magic and the majesty of this infinitely enthralling city into a single brief volume would seem an impossible task–yet acclaimed biographer and novelist A. N. Wilson brilliantly accomplishes it in London: A History. Founded by the Romans, London was a flourishing provincial capital before falling into ruin with the rest of the Roman Empire. Centuries passed before the city rose to prominence once again when William the Conqueror chose to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In Chaucer’s day, London Bridge opened the way for expansion over the Thames. By the time Shakespeare’s plays were being mounted at the Globe, London was a dense, seething, and explosively growing metropolis–a city of brothels and taverns and delicate new palaces and pleasure gardens. With deftly sketched vignettes and memorable portraits in miniature, Wilson conjures up the essence of London through the ages–high finance and gambling during the Georgian age, John Nash’s stunning urban makeover at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the waves of building and immigration that transformed London beyond recognition during the reign of Queen Victoria, the devastation of the two world wars, the painful and corrupt postwar rebuilding effort, and finally the glamorous, polyglot, expensive, and sometimes ridiculous London of today. Every age had its heroes and villains, from church builder Christopher Wren to jail breaker Jack Sheppard, from urbane wit Samuel Johnson to wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, and Wilson places each one in the drama of London’s history. Exuberant, opinionated, surprising, often funny, A. N. Wilson’s London is the perfect match of author and subject. In a one short irresistible volume, Wilson gives us the essence of the people, the architecture, the intrigue, the art and literature and history that make London one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

Download or read book The American Revolution written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2002-03-05 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft.

Download or read book Kingdom of Priests written by Eugene H. Merrill and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the origins and exodus to the restoration and new hope, Kingdom of Priests offers a comprehensive introduction to the history of Old Testament Israel. Merrill explores the history of ancient Israel not only from Old Testament texts but also from the literary and archeological sources of the ancient Near East. After selling more than 30,000 copies, the book has now been updated and revised. The second edition addresses and interacts with current debates in the history of ancient Israel, offering an up-to-date articulation of a conservative evangelical position on historical matters. The text is accented with nearly twenty maps and charts.

Download or read book Sister Carrie written by Theodore Dreiser and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hidden under layers of error and corruption, the original version of Sister Carrie has finally emerged. The American classic that has been read in English courses for many decades is not the text as Dreiser wrote it. Even before it was submitted to Doubleday, Page and Company, the manuscript of Sister Carrie had been cut and censored. Dreiser's wife Sara-­-nicknamed "Jug"—and his friend Arthur Henry persuaded the author to make many changes. Both Jug and Henry felt that the novel was too bleak, the sexuality too explicit, the philosophy too intense. In a description of Carrie, for instance, Dreiser had written, "Her dresses draped her becomingly, for she wore excellent corsets and laced herself with care. . . . She had always been of cleanly instincts and now that opportunity afforded, she kept her body sweet." Apparently this passage was too intimate for Jug, for she revised it to: "Her dresses draped her becomingly. . . . She had always been of cleanly instincts. Her teeth were white, her nails rosy." Jug and Henry urged Dreiser to make his bleak ending more equivocal. He changed it, but Jug, still dissatisfied, rewrote his second ending. Her version was published with the first edition and has appeared with every edition since printed. Doubleday, Page and Company further insisted that all real names—of theaters, bars, streets, actors, etc.—be changed to fictitious ones. The editors of this new edition have gone back to the original handwritten manuscript as well as to the typescript that went to the publisher and have restored the text of Sister Carrie to its original purity. Errors of typists and printers have been corrected; cut and censored passages have been reinstated. Not only have original names been restored, but the Pennsylvania edition includes maps, illustrations, and historical notes that further identify these people and places. The edition also includes a selected textual apparatus for the scholar. The characters are significantly altered in this new text: Carrie has more emotional depth, conscience, and sexuality; Hurstwood shows more passion; Drouet is a bit less likable; Ames is a bit more vulnerable. With the inclusion of the original ending, Dreiser's vision becomes- more bleak and deterministic: In its expanded and purified form, Sister Carrie is more tragic and infinitely richer; in effect it is a new work of art by one of the major American novelists of this century.

Download or read book The Cumulative Book Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Baseball written by George Vecsey and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account ofbaseball, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day.

Download or read book Willing s Press Guide written by and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coverage of publications outside the UK and in non-English languages expands steadily until, in 1991, it occupies enough of the Guide to require publication in parts.

Download or read book The Catholic Church written by Hans Kung and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary book, the renowned Hans Kung chronicles the Roman Catholic Church’s role as a world power throughout history. He examines great schisms — between East and West, Catholicism and Protestantism — the evolving role of the papacy and the stories of the great reforming popes; and the expansion of a global Church infrastructure. The book concluded with a searching assessment of how the Catholic faith will confront the immense challenges posed in the new millennium by the scientific community, by women questioning their role in the Church, and by those seeking reform of the strictures against abortion and contraception. The Catholic Church is a landmark book by a controversial and profoundly influential thinker.

Download or read book The Tir Nan Og Chronicles written by K. E. Bruder and published by Tate Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elisabeth O'Reilly grew up being told of a mythical land called Tir Nan Og and its ten towns. Years later she finds out the fairy tales are real.

Download or read book The Eagle written by and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bibliography Library Economy 1876 1920 written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: