The Charlotte & William Bloomberg Medford Public Library
April, 19 2024 01:47:13
When Women Invented Television
By Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin
The New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia tells the little-known story of four trailblazing women in the early days of television who laid the foundation of the industry we know today.It was the Golden Age of Radio and powerful men were making millions in advertising dollars reaching thousands of listeners every day. When television arrived, few radio moguls were interested in the upstart industry and its tiny production budgets, and expensive television sets were out of reach for most families. But four women - each an independent visionary - saw an opportunity and carved their own paths, and in so doing invented the way we watch tv today.Irna Phillips turned real-life tragedy into daytime serials featuring female dominated casts. Gertrude Berg turned her radio show into a Jewish family comedy that spawned a play, a musical, an advice column, a line of house dresses, and other products.
Harper
|
9780062973306
|
Hardcover
The Hunter Killers
By Hampton, Dan
At the height of the Cold War, America's most elite aviators bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at eliminating an impossible new threat. Half never returned. All became legends. From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton comes one of the most extraordinary untold stories of aviation history.Vietnam, 1965: On July 24 a USAF F-4 Phantom jet was suddenly blown from the sky by a mysterious and lethal weapon - a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) , launched by Russian "advisors" to North Vietnam. Three days later, six F-105 Thunderchiefs were brought down trying to avenge the Phantom. More tragic losses followed, establishing the enemy's SAMs as the deadliest anti-aircraft threat in history and dramatically turning the tables of Cold War air superiority in favor of Soviet technology.
William Morrow & Company
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9780062375131
|
Hardcover
They Will Have to Die Now
By Verini, James
"They Will Have to Die Now is the story of what happened after most Americans stopped paying attention to Iraq ... It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades." -- George Packer, author of Our Man and The Assassins' GateJames Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis' last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII."They Will Have to Die Now takes the reader into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor. We meet an Iraqi major fighting his way through the city with a bad leg; a general who taunts snipers; an American sergeant who removes his glass eye to unnerve his troops; a pair of Moslawi brothers who welcomed the Islamic State, believing, as so many Moslawis did, that it might improve their shattered lives. Verini also relates the rich history of Iraq, and of Mosul, one of the most beguiling cities in the Middle East.
W. W. Norton & Company
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9780393652475
|
Hardcover
Russia in Revolution
By Smith, Stephen Anthony
The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Now, to mark the centenary of this epochal event, historian Steve Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War, the revolutions of 1917, and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s when Stalin unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archival scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on different social groups: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationals, the army, women, young people, and the Church.
Oxford University Press
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9780198734826
|
Print book
Endeavour
By Moore, Peter
A Sunday Times (U.K.) Best Book of 2018 and Winner of the Mary Soames Award for HistoryAn unprecedented history of the storied ship that Darwin said helped add a hemisphere to the civilized worldThe Enlightenment was an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. It was a commonplace coal-carrying vessel that no one could have guessed would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. The first history of its kind, Peter Moore's Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World is a revealing and comprehensive account of the storied ship's role in shaping the Western world. Endeavour famously carried James Cook on his first major voyage, charting for the first time New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia. Yet it was a ship with many lives: During the battles for control of New York in 1776, she witnessed the bloody birth of the republic. As well as carrying botanists, a Polynesian priest, and the remains of the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain, she transported Newcastle coal and Hessian soldiers. NASA ultimately named a space shuttle in her honor. But to others she would be a toxic symbol of imperialism. Through careful research, Moore tells the story of one of history's most important sailing ships, and in turn shines new light on the ambition and consequences of the Age of Enlightenment.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|
9780374148416
|
Hardcover
Democracy for Hire
By Johnson, Dennis W
Though they work largely out of the public eye, political consultants-"image merchants" and "kingmakers" to candidates-play a crucial role in shaping campaigns. They persuaded Barry Goldwater to run for president, groomed former actor Ronald Reagan for the California governorship, helped derail Bill Clinton's health care initiative, and carried out the swiftboating of John Kerry. As Dennis Johnson argues in this history of political consulting in the United States, they are essential to modern campaigning, often making positive contributions to democratic discourse, and yet they have also polarized the electorate with their biting messages. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political campaigns were run by local political parties, volunteers, and friends of candidates; but as party loyalties among voters began to weaken, and political parties declined as sources of manpower and strategy, professional consultants swept in to carry the day.
Oxford University Press
|
9780190272692
|
Print book
The Woman Who Would Be King
By Cooney, Kara
An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power. Hatshepsut - the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne and a mother with ties to the previous dynasty - was born into a privileged position in the royal household, and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father's family. Her failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of fate that paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut ascended to the rank of pharaoh in an elaborate coronation ceremony that set the tone for her spectacular reign as co-regent with Thutmose III, the infant king whose mother Hatshepsut out-maneuvered for a seat on the throne.
Crown; First Edition edition
|
9780307956767
|
Hardcover
The Opium War
By Lovell, Julia
An engaging, highly readable, character-driven account of the war that transformed China, and which continues to loom large over modern Chinese history. In October 1839, a Windsor cabinet meeting votes to begin the first Opium War against China. Bureaucratic fumbling, military missteps, and a healthy dose of political opportunism and collaboration followed. Rich in tragicomedy, The Opium War explores the disastrous British foreign-relations move that became a founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism, and depicts China's heroic struggle against Western conspiracy. Julia Lovell examines the causes and consequences of the Opium War, interweaving tales of the opium pushers and dissidents. More importantly, she analyses how the Opium Wars shaped China's self-image and created an enduring model for its interactions with the West, plagued by delusion and prejudice.
The Overlook Press
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9781468311730
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Paperback
The Kelloggs
By Markel, Howard
From the much admired medical historian, author of An Anatomy of Addiction, the story of the two Kellogg brothers: one who became America's most beloved physician between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II, a best-selling author, lecturer and health magazine publisher who was read by millions, and founder of the world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1876; the other, his younger brother, who founded in 1906 the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company.In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping American saga of these two extraordinary men whose lifelong competition with, and enmity toward, each other changed America's notion of health and wellness, and who helped to alter the course of American medicine as it emerged from the ashes of superstition and quackery into our modern era of healing, cures, and prevention.Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, internationally known and revered, at the center of the most significant century of medicine for almost seventy years, creator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; America's patron saint of the pursuit of wellness . . .His brother, Will, who, with John, experimented with malt, wheat, and corn meal to make a product he called corn flakes, followed by puffed rice, shredded wheat, bran flakes, and toasted oat cereals.Will saw the cereals as a potential gold mine after a former patient of Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, C. W. Post, stole Kellogg's recipes in 1895 (they were never copyrighted; John saw them as his gift to humanity) and opened his own food company in Battle Creek. (C. W. Post's Post Toasties--his version of corn flakes--his Grape Nuts, a wheat-based cereal containing neither grapes nor nuts; and Postum, a bran- and molasses-based coffee substitute, were devoured by millions.) The Post Cereal Company eventually became General Foods.Will founded his own cereal company in 1906, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later the Kellogg Company, creating a financial bounty that resulted in endless lawsuits between the brothers. Among the many Kellogg's products that became household staples are Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, All-Bran, Special K, Sugar Frosted Flakes ("They're Great!") , Froot Loops, Eggo waffles, Pop-Tarts, Keebler cookies and even Pringles potato chips.Markel writes of the Kelloggs' ascent into the pantheon of American industrialists by building the Battle Creek Sanitarium (it became a world famous medical center, spa, and grand hotel) . Among his patients: Mary Todd Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Johnny Weissmuller, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Eddie Cantor, and U.S. presidents from William Howard Taft to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Pantheon
|
9780307907271
|
Hardcover
A Few Planes for China
By Buchan, Eugenie
On December 7, 1941, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the first three months of the war the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across thAfter Pearl Harbor, the Japanese seemed unbeatable. Then some American pilots - members of the American Volunteer Group, which became known as the Flying Tigers - started to bring down enemy planes over Burma and western China. But how did they happen to be in the British colony of Burma? The standard explanation is that in 1940 their commander, Colonel Claire Chennault, convinced the Roosevelt administration to set up a covert air force that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo even if the United States and Japan were not yet at war.
When Women Invented Television
By Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin
The New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia tells the little-known story of four trailblazing women in the early days of television who laid the foundation of the industry we know today.It was the Golden Age of Radio and powerful men were making millions in advertising dollars reaching thousands of listeners every day. When television arrived, few radio moguls were interested in the upstart industry and its tiny production budgets, and expensive television sets were out of reach for most families. But four women - each an independent visionary - saw an opportunity and carved their own paths, and in so doing invented the way we watch tv today.Irna Phillips turned real-life tragedy into daytime serials featuring female dominated casts. Gertrude Berg turned her radio show into a Jewish family comedy that spawned a play, a musical, an advice column, a line of house dresses, and other products.
The Hunter Killers
By Hampton, Dan
At the height of the Cold War, America's most elite aviators bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at eliminating an impossible new threat. Half never returned. All became legends. From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton comes one of the most extraordinary untold stories of aviation history.Vietnam, 1965: On July 24 a USAF F-4 Phantom jet was suddenly blown from the sky by a mysterious and lethal weapon - a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) , launched by Russian "advisors" to North Vietnam. Three days later, six F-105 Thunderchiefs were brought down trying to avenge the Phantom. More tragic losses followed, establishing the enemy's SAMs as the deadliest anti-aircraft threat in history and dramatically turning the tables of Cold War air superiority in favor of Soviet technology.
They Will Have to Die Now
By Verini, James
"They Will Have to Die Now is the story of what happened after most Americans stopped paying attention to Iraq ... It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades." -- George Packer, author of Our Man and The Assassins' GateJames Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis' last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII."They Will Have to Die Now takes the reader into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor. We meet an Iraqi major fighting his way through the city with a bad leg; a general who taunts snipers; an American sergeant who removes his glass eye to unnerve his troops; a pair of Moslawi brothers who welcomed the Islamic State, believing, as so many Moslawis did, that it might improve their shattered lives. Verini also relates the rich history of Iraq, and of Mosul, one of the most beguiling cities in the Middle East.
Russia in Revolution
By Smith, Stephen Anthony
The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Now, to mark the centenary of this epochal event, historian Steve Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War, the revolutions of 1917, and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s when Stalin unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archival scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on different social groups: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationals, the army, women, young people, and the Church.
Endeavour
By Moore, Peter
A Sunday Times (U.K.) Best Book of 2018 and Winner of the Mary Soames Award for HistoryAn unprecedented history of the storied ship that Darwin said helped add a hemisphere to the civilized worldThe Enlightenment was an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. It was a commonplace coal-carrying vessel that no one could have guessed would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. The first history of its kind, Peter Moore's Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World is a revealing and comprehensive account of the storied ship's role in shaping the Western world. Endeavour famously carried James Cook on his first major voyage, charting for the first time New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia. Yet it was a ship with many lives: During the battles for control of New York in 1776, she witnessed the bloody birth of the republic. As well as carrying botanists, a Polynesian priest, and the remains of the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain, she transported Newcastle coal and Hessian soldiers. NASA ultimately named a space shuttle in her honor. But to others she would be a toxic symbol of imperialism. Through careful research, Moore tells the story of one of history's most important sailing ships, and in turn shines new light on the ambition and consequences of the Age of Enlightenment.
Democracy for Hire
By Johnson, Dennis W
Though they work largely out of the public eye, political consultants-"image merchants" and "kingmakers" to candidates-play a crucial role in shaping campaigns. They persuaded Barry Goldwater to run for president, groomed former actor Ronald Reagan for the California governorship, helped derail Bill Clinton's health care initiative, and carried out the swiftboating of John Kerry. As Dennis Johnson argues in this history of political consulting in the United States, they are essential to modern campaigning, often making positive contributions to democratic discourse, and yet they have also polarized the electorate with their biting messages. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political campaigns were run by local political parties, volunteers, and friends of candidates; but as party loyalties among voters began to weaken, and political parties declined as sources of manpower and strategy, professional consultants swept in to carry the day.
The Woman Who Would Be King
By Cooney, Kara
An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power. Hatshepsut - the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne and a mother with ties to the previous dynasty - was born into a privileged position in the royal household, and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father's family. Her failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of fate that paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut ascended to the rank of pharaoh in an elaborate coronation ceremony that set the tone for her spectacular reign as co-regent with Thutmose III, the infant king whose mother Hatshepsut out-maneuvered for a seat on the throne.
The Opium War
By Lovell, Julia
An engaging, highly readable, character-driven account of the war that transformed China, and which continues to loom large over modern Chinese history. In October 1839, a Windsor cabinet meeting votes to begin the first Opium War against China. Bureaucratic fumbling, military missteps, and a healthy dose of political opportunism and collaboration followed. Rich in tragicomedy, The Opium War explores the disastrous British foreign-relations move that became a founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism, and depicts China's heroic struggle against Western conspiracy. Julia Lovell examines the causes and consequences of the Opium War, interweaving tales of the opium pushers and dissidents. More importantly, she analyses how the Opium Wars shaped China's self-image and created an enduring model for its interactions with the West, plagued by delusion and prejudice.
The Kelloggs
By Markel, Howard
From the much admired medical historian, author of An Anatomy of Addiction, the story of the two Kellogg brothers: one who became America's most beloved physician between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II, a best-selling author, lecturer and health magazine publisher who was read by millions, and founder of the world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1876; the other, his younger brother, who founded in 1906 the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company.In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping American saga of these two extraordinary men whose lifelong competition with, and enmity toward, each other changed America's notion of health and wellness, and who helped to alter the course of American medicine as it emerged from the ashes of superstition and quackery into our modern era of healing, cures, and prevention.Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, internationally known and revered, at the center of the most significant century of medicine for almost seventy years, creator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; America's patron saint of the pursuit of wellness . . .His brother, Will, who, with John, experimented with malt, wheat, and corn meal to make a product he called corn flakes, followed by puffed rice, shredded wheat, bran flakes, and toasted oat cereals.Will saw the cereals as a potential gold mine after a former patient of Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, C. W. Post, stole Kellogg's recipes in 1895 (they were never copyrighted; John saw them as his gift to humanity) and opened his own food company in Battle Creek. (C. W. Post's Post Toasties--his version of corn flakes--his Grape Nuts, a wheat-based cereal containing neither grapes nor nuts; and Postum, a bran- and molasses-based coffee substitute, were devoured by millions.) The Post Cereal Company eventually became General Foods.Will founded his own cereal company in 1906, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later the Kellogg Company, creating a financial bounty that resulted in endless lawsuits between the brothers. Among the many Kellogg's products that became household staples are Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, All-Bran, Special K, Sugar Frosted Flakes ("They're Great!") , Froot Loops, Eggo waffles, Pop-Tarts, Keebler cookies and even Pringles potato chips.Markel writes of the Kelloggs' ascent into the pantheon of American industrialists by building the Battle Creek Sanitarium (it became a world famous medical center, spa, and grand hotel) . Among his patients: Mary Todd Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Johnny Weissmuller, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Eddie Cantor, and U.S. presidents from William Howard Taft to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
A Few Planes for China
By Buchan, Eugenie
On December 7, 1941, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the first three months of the war the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across thAfter Pearl Harbor, the Japanese seemed unbeatable. Then some American pilots - members of the American Volunteer Group, which became known as the Flying Tigers - started to bring down enemy planes over Burma and western China. But how did they happen to be in the British colony of Burma? The standard explanation is that in 1940 their commander, Colonel Claire Chennault, convinced the Roosevelt administration to set up a covert air force that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo even if the United States and Japan were not yet at war.