In late autumn 1968, callow youth Dorian Bond was charged with traveling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship, and Welles offered Bond the role of his personal assistant - as well as a part in his next movie. No formal education could prepare him for the journey that would ensue. This witty and fascinating memoir follows Welles, with Bond in tow, across Europe during the late 1960s as they travel through Italy and France visiting beautiful cities, staying at luxury hotels, eating in legendary restaurants, and reminiscing about Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, among others, and famous movie stars like Rita Hayworth, Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlton Heston and Steve McQueen.
The History Press
|
9780750985864
|
Paperback
Deaf Utopia
By Dimarco, Nyle
A heartfelt and inspiring memoir and celebration of Deaf culture by Nyle DiMarco, actor, producer, two-time reality show winner, and cultural icon of the international Deaf communityBefore becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle "failed" his first test - a hearing test - to the joy and excitement of his parents.In this engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780063062351
|
Hardcover
Anatomy of Innocence
By Caldwell, Laura
Recalling the great muckrakers of the past, an outraged team of America's best-selling writers unite to confront the disasters of wrongful convictions.Wrongful convictions, long regarded as statistical anomalies in an otherwise sound justice system, now appear with frightening regularity. But few people understand just how or why they happen and, more important, the immeasurable consequences that often haunt the lucky few who are acquitted, years after they are proven innocent.Now, in this groundbreaking anthology, fourteen exonerated inmates narrate their stories to a roster of high-profile mystery and thriller writers -- including Lee Child, Sara Paretsky, Laurie R. King, Jan Burke and S. J. Rozan -- while another exoneree's case is explored in a previously unpublished essay by legendary playwright Arthur Miller. An astonishing and unique collaboration, these testimonies bear witness to the incredible stories of innocent men and women who were convicted of serious crimes and cast into the maw of a vast and deeply flawed American criminal justice system before eventually, and miraculously, being exonerated.Introduced by best-selling authors Scott Turow and Barry Scheck, these master storytellers capture the tragedy of wrongful convictions as never before and challenge readers to confront the limitations and harsh realities of the American criminal justice system. Lee Child tells of Kirk Bloodsworth, who obsessively read about the burgeoning field of DNA testing, cautiously hoping that it held the key to his acquittal -- until he eventually became the first person to be exonerated from death row based on DNA evidence. Judge John Sheldon and author Gayle Lynds team up to share Audrey Edmunds's experience raising her children long distance from her prison cell. And exoneree Gloria Killian recounts to S. J. Rozan her journey from that fateful "knock on the door" and the initial shock of accusation to the scars she carries today.Together, the powerful stories collected within the Anatomy of Innocence detail every aspect of the experience of wrongful conviction, as well as the remarkable depths of endurance sustained by each exoneree who never lost hope. 24 photographs
Liveright Publishing Corp
|
9781631490880
|
Hardcover
The Soul of Genius
By Orens, Jeffrey
In 1911, some of the greatest minds in science convened at the First Solvay Conference in Physics, a meeting like no other. Almost half of the attendees had won or would go on to win the Nobel Prize. Over the course of those few days, these minds began to realize that classical physics was about to give way to quantum theory, a seismic shift in our history and how we understand not just our world, but the universe. At the center of this meeting were Marie Curie and a young Albert Einstein. In the years preceding, Curie had faced the death of her husband and soul mate, Pierre. She was on the cusp of being awarded her second Nobel Prize, but scandal erupted all around her when the French press revealed that she was having an affair with a fellow scientist, Paul Langevin.
Pegasus Books
|
9781643137148
|
Hardcover
Their Promised Land
By Buruma, Ian
A family history of surpassing beauty and power: Ian Buruma's account of his grandparents' enduring love through the terror and separation of two world warsDuring the almost six years England was at war with Nazi Germany, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger, Ian Buruma's grandparents, and the film director John Schlesinger's parents, were, like so many others, thoroughly sundered from each other. Their only recourse was to write letters back and forth. And write they did, often every day. In a way they were just picking up where they left off in 1918, at the end of their first long separation because of the Great War that swept Bernard away to some of Europe's bloodiest battlefields. The thousands of letters between them were part of an inheritance that ultimately came into the hands of their grandson, Ian Buruma. Now, in a labor of love that is also a powerful act of artistic creation, Ian Buruma has woven his own voice in with theirs to provide the context and counterpoint necessary to bring to life, not just a remarkable marriage, but a class, and an age. Winifred and Bernard inherited the high European cultural ideals and attitudes that came of being born into prosperous German-Jewish migr families. To young Ian, who would visit from Holland every Christmas, they seemed the very essence of England, their spacious Berkshire estate the model of genteel English country life at its most pleasant and refined. It wasn't until years later that he discovered how much more there was to the story. At its heart, Their Promised Land is the story of cultural assimilation. The Schlesingers were very British in the way their relatives in Germany were very German, until Hitler destroyed that option. The problems of being Jewish and facing anti-Semitism even in the country they loved were met with a kind of stoic discretion. But they showed solidarity when it mattered most. As the shadows of war lengthened again, the Schlesingers mounted a remarkable effort, which Ian Buruma describes movingly, to rescue twelve Jewish children from the Nazis and see to their upkeep in England. Many are the books that do bad marriages justice; precious few books take readers inside a good marriage. In Their Promised Land, Buruma has done just that; introducing us to a couple whose love was sustaining through the darkest hours of the century.
Penguin Books, 2016.
|
9781594204388
|
Print book
Mighty Justice
By Roundtree, Dovey Johnson
"Dovey Johnson Roundtree set a new path for women and proved that the vision and perseverance of a single individual can turn the tides of history." - Michelle ObamaIn Mighty Justice, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation's capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister - in all these places, Roundtree sought justice. At a time when African American attorneys had to leave the courthouses to use the bathroom, Roundtree took on Washington's white legal establishment and prevailed, winning a 1955 landmark bus desegregation case that would help to dismantle the practice of "separate but equal" and shatter Jim Crow laws. Later, she led the vanguard of women ordained to the ministry in the AME Church in 1961, merging her law practice with her ministry to fight for families and children being destroyed by urban violence. Dovey Roundtree passed away in 2018 at the age of 104. Though her achievements were significant and influential, she remains largely unknown to the American public. Mighty Justice corrects the historical record.
Algonquin Books
|
9781616209551
|
Paperback
The Witch of Lime Street
By Jaher, David
History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal.The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics - and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead.
Crown Publishers, 2015.
|
9780307451064
|
Print book
Things I Learned from Falling
By Nelson, Claire
The gripping first-person account of one woman's survival in Joshua Tree National Park against the odds."A vibrantly physical book" - The Guardian * "Uplifting and brave" - Stylist * "A riveting account of loneliness, anxiety and survival" - CosmopolitanIn 2018, writer Claire Nelson made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive.In THINGS I LEARNED FROM FALLING Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling.
HarperOne
|
9780063070172
|
Hardcover
Stand by Your Truth
By Smiley, Rickey
"I'm very passionate about everything that I do and I don't play any games. I just keep it honest. I don't put on airs. That's the only way you can be. If you tell one lie, you've got to tell another lie. I'm cool with who I am. What you see is what you get."Stand-up comic. Single dad. Radio personality. TV star. Prankster. Producer. Community activist. Man of faith. Visit a church, comedy club, college campus, or barber shop, and you'll find few people who aren't familiar with, or fans of, Rickey Smiley. At least four million listeners in over eighty markets tune in every weekday morning to hear him banter with his radio show crew, hilariously prank call an unsuspecting listener, and perform skits etched by his one-man cast of characters including "Lil' Darryl," "Beauford," and "Joe Willie.
Gallery Books
|
9781501178603
|
Hardcover
Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?
By Cassidy, Tina
An eye-opening, inspiring, and timely account of the complex relationship between notable suffragist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson in her fight for women's equality. Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. Expecting a throng of onlookers, he is instead met with minimal interest as the crowd and media alike watch a twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul organize 8,000 suffragists in a first-of-its-kind protest led by a woman riding a white horse just a few blocks away from the Washington platform. The next day, the New York Times calls the procession "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country."Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? weaves together two storylines: Paul's and Wilson's, two seemingly complete opposites who had more in common than either one could imagine. Paul's procession led her to be granted a one-on-one meeting with President Woodrow Wilson, one that would lead to many meetings and much discussion, though little progress. With no equality in sight and patience wearing thin, Paul organized the first group to ever picket on the White House lawn - night and day, through sweltering summer mornings and frigid fall nights. From solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and mental institutions to sitting right across from President Woodrow Wilson, Mr. President,How Long Must We Wait? reveals the inspiring, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Paul's leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America. A rousing portrait of a little-known feminist heroine and an inspirational exploration of a crucial moment in American history - one century before the Women's March - this is a perfect book for fans of Hidden Figures.
Me and Mr Welles
By Bond, Dorian
In late autumn 1968, callow youth Dorian Bond was charged with traveling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship, and Welles offered Bond the role of his personal assistant - as well as a part in his next movie. No formal education could prepare him for the journey that would ensue. This witty and fascinating memoir follows Welles, with Bond in tow, across Europe during the late 1960s as they travel through Italy and France visiting beautiful cities, staying at luxury hotels, eating in legendary restaurants, and reminiscing about Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, among others, and famous movie stars like Rita Hayworth, Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlton Heston and Steve McQueen.
Deaf Utopia
By Dimarco, Nyle
A heartfelt and inspiring memoir and celebration of Deaf culture by Nyle DiMarco, actor, producer, two-time reality show winner, and cultural icon of the international Deaf communityBefore becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle "failed" his first test - a hearing test - to the joy and excitement of his parents.In this engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him.
Anatomy of Innocence
By Caldwell, Laura
Recalling the great muckrakers of the past, an outraged team of America's best-selling writers unite to confront the disasters of wrongful convictions.Wrongful convictions, long regarded as statistical anomalies in an otherwise sound justice system, now appear with frightening regularity. But few people understand just how or why they happen and, more important, the immeasurable consequences that often haunt the lucky few who are acquitted, years after they are proven innocent.Now, in this groundbreaking anthology, fourteen exonerated inmates narrate their stories to a roster of high-profile mystery and thriller writers -- including Lee Child, Sara Paretsky, Laurie R. King, Jan Burke and S. J. Rozan -- while another exoneree's case is explored in a previously unpublished essay by legendary playwright Arthur Miller. An astonishing and unique collaboration, these testimonies bear witness to the incredible stories of innocent men and women who were convicted of serious crimes and cast into the maw of a vast and deeply flawed American criminal justice system before eventually, and miraculously, being exonerated.Introduced by best-selling authors Scott Turow and Barry Scheck, these master storytellers capture the tragedy of wrongful convictions as never before and challenge readers to confront the limitations and harsh realities of the American criminal justice system. Lee Child tells of Kirk Bloodsworth, who obsessively read about the burgeoning field of DNA testing, cautiously hoping that it held the key to his acquittal -- until he eventually became the first person to be exonerated from death row based on DNA evidence. Judge John Sheldon and author Gayle Lynds team up to share Audrey Edmunds's experience raising her children long distance from her prison cell. And exoneree Gloria Killian recounts to S. J. Rozan her journey from that fateful "knock on the door" and the initial shock of accusation to the scars she carries today.Together, the powerful stories collected within the Anatomy of Innocence detail every aspect of the experience of wrongful conviction, as well as the remarkable depths of endurance sustained by each exoneree who never lost hope. 24 photographs
The Soul of Genius
By Orens, Jeffrey
In 1911, some of the greatest minds in science convened at the First Solvay Conference in Physics, a meeting like no other. Almost half of the attendees had won or would go on to win the Nobel Prize. Over the course of those few days, these minds began to realize that classical physics was about to give way to quantum theory, a seismic shift in our history and how we understand not just our world, but the universe. At the center of this meeting were Marie Curie and a young Albert Einstein. In the years preceding, Curie had faced the death of her husband and soul mate, Pierre. She was on the cusp of being awarded her second Nobel Prize, but scandal erupted all around her when the French press revealed that she was having an affair with a fellow scientist, Paul Langevin.
Their Promised Land
By Buruma, Ian
A family history of surpassing beauty and power: Ian Buruma's account of his grandparents' enduring love through the terror and separation of two world warsDuring the almost six years England was at war with Nazi Germany, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger, Ian Buruma's grandparents, and the film director John Schlesinger's parents, were, like so many others, thoroughly sundered from each other. Their only recourse was to write letters back and forth. And write they did, often every day. In a way they were just picking up where they left off in 1918, at the end of their first long separation because of the Great War that swept Bernard away to some of Europe's bloodiest battlefields. The thousands of letters between them were part of an inheritance that ultimately came into the hands of their grandson, Ian Buruma. Now, in a labor of love that is also a powerful act of artistic creation, Ian Buruma has woven his own voice in with theirs to provide the context and counterpoint necessary to bring to life, not just a remarkable marriage, but a class, and an age. Winifred and Bernard inherited the high European cultural ideals and attitudes that came of being born into prosperous German-Jewish migr families. To young Ian, who would visit from Holland every Christmas, they seemed the very essence of England, their spacious Berkshire estate the model of genteel English country life at its most pleasant and refined. It wasn't until years later that he discovered how much more there was to the story. At its heart, Their Promised Land is the story of cultural assimilation. The Schlesingers were very British in the way their relatives in Germany were very German, until Hitler destroyed that option. The problems of being Jewish and facing anti-Semitism even in the country they loved were met with a kind of stoic discretion. But they showed solidarity when it mattered most. As the shadows of war lengthened again, the Schlesingers mounted a remarkable effort, which Ian Buruma describes movingly, to rescue twelve Jewish children from the Nazis and see to their upkeep in England. Many are the books that do bad marriages justice; precious few books take readers inside a good marriage. In Their Promised Land, Buruma has done just that; introducing us to a couple whose love was sustaining through the darkest hours of the century.
Mighty Justice
By Roundtree, Dovey Johnson
"Dovey Johnson Roundtree set a new path for women and proved that the vision and perseverance of a single individual can turn the tides of history." - Michelle ObamaIn Mighty Justice, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation's capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister - in all these places, Roundtree sought justice. At a time when African American attorneys had to leave the courthouses to use the bathroom, Roundtree took on Washington's white legal establishment and prevailed, winning a 1955 landmark bus desegregation case that would help to dismantle the practice of "separate but equal" and shatter Jim Crow laws. Later, she led the vanguard of women ordained to the ministry in the AME Church in 1961, merging her law practice with her ministry to fight for families and children being destroyed by urban violence. Dovey Roundtree passed away in 2018 at the age of 104. Though her achievements were significant and influential, she remains largely unknown to the American public. Mighty Justice corrects the historical record.
The Witch of Lime Street
By Jaher, David
History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal.The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics - and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead.
Things I Learned from Falling
By Nelson, Claire
The gripping first-person account of one woman's survival in Joshua Tree National Park against the odds."A vibrantly physical book" - The Guardian * "Uplifting and brave" - Stylist * "A riveting account of loneliness, anxiety and survival" - CosmopolitanIn 2018, writer Claire Nelson made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive.In THINGS I LEARNED FROM FALLING Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling.
Stand by Your Truth
By Smiley, Rickey
"I'm very passionate about everything that I do and I don't play any games. I just keep it honest. I don't put on airs. That's the only way you can be. If you tell one lie, you've got to tell another lie. I'm cool with who I am. What you see is what you get."Stand-up comic. Single dad. Radio personality. TV star. Prankster. Producer. Community activist. Man of faith. Visit a church, comedy club, college campus, or barber shop, and you'll find few people who aren't familiar with, or fans of, Rickey Smiley. At least four million listeners in over eighty markets tune in every weekday morning to hear him banter with his radio show crew, hilariously prank call an unsuspecting listener, and perform skits etched by his one-man cast of characters including "Lil' Darryl," "Beauford," and "Joe Willie.
Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?
By Cassidy, Tina
An eye-opening, inspiring, and timely account of the complex relationship between notable suffragist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson in her fight for women's equality. Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. Expecting a throng of onlookers, he is instead met with minimal interest as the crowd and media alike watch a twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul organize 8,000 suffragists in a first-of-its-kind protest led by a woman riding a white horse just a few blocks away from the Washington platform. The next day, the New York Times calls the procession "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country."Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? weaves together two storylines: Paul's and Wilson's, two seemingly complete opposites who had more in common than either one could imagine. Paul's procession led her to be granted a one-on-one meeting with President Woodrow Wilson, one that would lead to many meetings and much discussion, though little progress. With no equality in sight and patience wearing thin, Paul organized the first group to ever picket on the White House lawn - night and day, through sweltering summer mornings and frigid fall nights. From solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and mental institutions to sitting right across from President Woodrow Wilson, Mr. President,How Long Must We Wait? reveals the inspiring, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Paul's leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America. A rousing portrait of a little-known feminist heroine and an inspirational exploration of a crucial moment in American history - one century before the Women's March - this is a perfect book for fans of Hidden Figures.