Seven Ages of Paris


Alistair Horne - 2002
    Horne makes plain that while Paris may be many things, it is never boring.From the rise of Philippe Auguste through the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIV (who abandoned Paris for Versailles); Napoleon’s rise and fall; Baron Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris (at the cost of much of the medieval city); the Belle Epoque and the Great War that brought it to an end; the Nazi Occupation, the Liberation, and the postwar period dominated by de Gaulle--Horne brings the city’s highs and lows, savagery and sophistication, and heroes and villains splendidly to life. With a keen eye for the telling anecdote and pivotal moment, he portrays an array of vivid incidents to show us how Paris endures through each age, is altered but always emerges more brilliant and beautiful than ever. The Seven Ages of Paris is a great historian’s tribute to a city he loves and has spent a lifetime learning to know.

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw


Hanadi Falki - 2017
    The first Indian Army officer to be promoted to the five-star rank of Field Marshal, Sam Bahadur continues to be the most admired of our Army Chiefs.

Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse


Stanley Meisler - 2015
    Art critics gave them the name "the School of Paris" to set them apart from the French-born (and less talented) young artists of the period. Modigliani and Chagall eventually attained enormous worldwide popularity, but in those earlier days most School of Paris painters looked on Soutine as their most talented contemporary. Willem de Kooning proclaimed Soutine his favorite painter, and Jackson Pollack hailed him as a major influence.Soutine arrived in Paris while many painters were experimenting with cubism, but he had no time for trends and fashions; like his art, Soutine was intense, demonic, and fierce. After the defeat of France by Hitler's Germany, the East European Jewish immigrants who had made their way to France for sanctuary were no longer safe. In constant fear of the French police and the German Gestapo, plagued by poor health and bouts of depression, Soutine was the epitome of the tortured artist. Rich in period detail, Stanley Meisler's Shocking Paris explores the short, dramatic life of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior


Mark Rathbun - 2013
    This autobiographical history of Scientology is told by one of L. Ron Hubbard’s staunchest defenders.

The Best Camera Is the One That's with You: iPhone Photography


Chase Jarvis - 2009
    In The Best Camera Is The One That's With You, Chase reimagines, examines, and redefines the intersection of art and popular culture through images shot with his iPhone. The pictures in the book, all taken with Chase's iPhone, make up a visual notebook-a photographic journal-from the past year of his life. The book is full of visually-rich iPhone photos and peppered with inspiring anecdotes. Two megapixels at a time, these images have been gathered and bound into a book that represents a stake in the ground. With it, Chase underscores the idea that an image can come from any camera, even a mobile phone. As Chase writes, Inherently, we all know that an image isn't measured by its resolution, dynamic range, or anything technical. It's measured by the simple-sometimes profound, other times absurd or humorous or whimsical-effect that it can have upon us. If you can see it, it can move you.This book is geared to inspire everyone, regardless of their level of photography knowledge, that you can capture moments and share them with our friends, families, loved ones, or the world at the press of a button. Readers of The Best Camera Is The One That's With You will also enjoy the iPhone application Chase Jarvis created in conjunction with this book, appropriately named Best Camera. Best Camera has a unique set of filters and effects that can be applied at the touch of a button. Stack them. Mix them. Remix them. Best Camera also allows you to share directly to a host of social marketing sites via www.thebestcamera.com, a new online community that allows you to contribution to a living, breathing gallery of the best iPhone photography from around the globe. Together, the book, app, and website, represent a first-of-its-kind ecosystem dedicated to encouraging creativity through picture taking with the camera that you already have. The Best Camera Is The One That's With You-shoot!

Mary: Spirit Woman of the Old West


Janis Hoffman - 2016
    There are many corrections and many notes stuck between the pages, and the ink and pencil are faded and often difficult to read. I have had to guess at the meaning a few times and hope I haven’t done too much harm to her intent. Many changes were made in punctuation, spelling, paragraphing and chapters, and I’ve updated a few words, like Black Feet to Blackfoot. She made a few mistakes I did not correct, like mixing up the locations of the Little Blue and Big Blue rivers. The name Mary Faraday Huntington does not appear in any of the old records. Whoever wrote the words was neither shy nor humble, has a very foul mouth, and shamelessly talks about things rarely mentioned in stories of the Wild West. Her story is the way it was long ago, not the sugar coated fairly tales of book and film. Her story reminds me of something Jamake Highwater wrote: “The outward rusticity of primal behavior makes Western people devise a self-serving ideal of themselves as civilized, which sets them widely apart from other peoples and from nature. Their withdrawal from an awareness of their place in nature is nearly complete…primal peoples live among animals and vegetation constantly in close contact with the sources of nourishment and death, understanding their environment and expressing their ideas and feelings in terms of the natural world. In contrast, people in the West have created an idealization of their relationship with nature which has neither life nor spirit.” ADVENTURES IN THE WILD WEST OF LONG AGO Mary Faraday Huntington I’ve led a wild life and had a hell of a good time. I still have my nose, all my fingers and my scalp thanks to my high intelligence, strength, quickness, excellent judgment, and a little help from all my many, many friends. I promise not to lie too bad. If you are a prissy little thing, best to pass on by. If you are a refined gentleman, pass on by. 1. You’re just a girrrrrrl 2. The Under Water People 3. Fort Childs 4. Rising Wolf 5. The second best whorehouse in town 1 YOU’RE JUST A GIRRRRRL “You can't race. You’re just a girrrrrrl!” I bounced him a good one and he shrieked and jumped up and down with blood spurting out of his big, ugly nose. Oh my, how he did carry on. I got on my pony and went to the line. The flag dropped and off we went. No problem, I promised Charlie 3 cobs if we win. He got his corn and I got a shiny silver dollar and a tin can full of chewing tobacco. I traded the can for a bunch of fancy ribbons at old man Bailey’s haberdashery. ____________________ My name is Mary Faraday Huntington and I was born in 1834 at Independence, Missouri. My mother died when I was 9 months old and an Indian woman working at a whorehouse was the only one Christian enough to take me in. Don’t know who my father was but he must have been big, strong, and sharp as a whip. Probably an army man having a little fun. Sure they call me a bastard, but they learned quick enough not to do that to my face. Jennie is a Blackfoot spirit woman and a real good mother who cooks and cleans at Polly’s Paradise. We have a little room in the basement. Her real name is Aokii’aki, Water Woman. She taught me sign and Blackfoot, how to live off the land, and how to fight with my hands and feet and knife. And she is teaching me the ways of a spirit woman.

Long Island’s Vanished Heiress: The Unsolved Alice Parsons Kidnapping (True Crime)


Steven Drielak - 2020
    The crime shocked the nation and was front-page news for several months. J. Edgar Hoover personally assigned his best FBI agents to the case, and within a short time, Parsons's husband and their live-in housekeeper, Anna Kupryanova, had become prime suspects. Botched ransom attempts, clashes between authorities and romantic intrigue kept the investigation mired in drama. The crime remained unsolved and has captivated Long Island audiences ever since. Former Suffolk County detective Steven C. Drielak reveals previously classified FBI documents and pieces together the mystery of the Alice Parsons kidnapping.

Crushed: An Amazing True Story of Determination and Survival


Kathryn Mann - 2013
    Crushed and left with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and compression fractures in his chest, spine, and pelvis, Bob pushed his arms forward, dug his fingers into the freezing mud and dragged his mostly paralyzed body forward. Saturated to the skin in freezing rain, far from help, and with the night fast approaching, Bob refused to give up.This includes photographs, documentation, and inspirational verses.This amazing true story was featured on the It's a Miracle series hosted by Richard Thomas. It aired on PAX Television as Chain Reaction in 1999.

Ruth and Martin’s Album Club


Martin Fitzgerald - 2017
    Make them listen to it two more times. Get them to explain why they never bothered with it before. Then ask them to review it.What began as a simple whim quickly grew in popularity, and now Ruth and Martin’s Album Club has featured some remarkable guests: Ian Rankin on Madonna’s Madonna. Chris Addison on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Brian Koppelman on The Smiths’ Meat is Murder. JK Rowling on the Violent Femmes’ Violent Femmes. Bonnie Greer on The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Martin Carr on Paul McCartney’s Ram. Brian Bilston on Neil Young’s Harvest. Anita Rani on The Strokes’ Is This It. Richard Osman on Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure. And many, many more.Each entry features an introduction to each album by blog creator Martin Fitzgerald. What follows are delightful, humorous and insightful contributions from each guest as they have an album forced upon them and – for better or worse – they discover some of the world’s favourite music.Ruth and Martin’s Album Club is a compilation of some of the blog’s greatest hits as well as some exclusive material that has never appeared anywhere before. Throughout, we get an insight into why some people opt out of some music, and what happens when you force them to opt in.

Costa Rica Chica: Retiring Early, Simplifying My Life, & Realizing That Less is Best


Jen Beck Seymour - 2014
    Find out what made them consider this in the first place, how they did it, and why they have no regrets! Bonus chapters include Jen’s special recipe for making bite-sized éclairs and a packing list for YOUR move to Costa Rica!

Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers


Stephen Deusner - 2021
    The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

The Fourteen Infallibles


Sayed Ammar Nakshawani - 2012
    Sayed Ammar Nashawani's lectures on the biographies of the fourteen infallible figures in Shi'a Islam.An invaluable resource that represents a Shi'a view of the history of Islam, the Prophet and Imams for the present day audience. This excellent book will be of benefit to many in understanding the true nature of Islam and also illustrate how the illustrious figures as representing and manifesting universal human values that can serve humanity at large

Letters from Provence


Vincent van Gogh - 1990
    It reproduces extensive extracts from his correspondence and is illustrated with his paintings, drawings and facsimile letters. Van Gogh's letters are a testimony to his struggle to survive and work. Here, the combination of letters and illustrations, concentrating on the period when he painted his greatest works, aims to provide an insight into his daily life in Arles and St-Remy, his spiritual torment and the process of artistic creation itself. The author is an "Observer" journalist specializing in the arts, and has published four previous books, including "Young Vincent: The Story of Van Gogh's Years in England".

Soviet Ghosts: The Soviet Union Abandoned: A Communist Empire in Decay


Rebecca Litchfield - 2014
    Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union. Time and again she risked radiation exposure, experienced arrest and interrogation, and was accused of espionage while collecting the stunning photography in Soviet Ghosts. Join her on an adventure through the ruins of soviet bloc, never before seen by western eyes. The emotional affect of this poetic collection will keep you coming back for more, while a series of expert articles offer in-depth analysis of the historical context. Contemplate the uncanny and disturbing emotional power of the imagery. Discover the story of the rise and fall of the USSR, the empire whose ghost continues to haunt Europe even today... Features A breathtaking collection of images from Pripyat, Chernobyl Stunning imagery of a vast, ruined Bulgarian communist monument. A road trip through the ruined abandonment in East Germany, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Croatia and Russia featuring decaying hospitals, military barracks, prisons, spy stations and sports halls and more. Photographer Rebecca Litchfield captures many abandoned locations, which were either part of the Soviet Union or occupied satellite states during this period of history, including forgotten towns, factories, prisons, schools, monuments, hospitals, theatres, military complexes, asylums & death camps across the former communist states. These photographs deliver a compelling narrative of both moral bankruptcy and flawed ideology. Featuring stunning imagery throughout, this compelling road-trip through the old USSR, breathes new life into these forgotten places, finding both beauty and meaning in their post-apocalyptic decay. Extended essays by Tristi Brownett, Neill Cockwill and Professor Owen Evans, offer considerable contextual depth to the locations imbuing them with a wealth of connection and wonder. By virtue of its holistic approach, the book also explores how and why these once thriving communities became abandoned, whether by natural disaster, man-made catastrophe or simply through the march of time."

Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love, Luck, and Survival


Celia Clement - 2020