The local citizens call that evening Devil's Night; tourists, sociologists and even some visiting firefighters gather to witness this outpouring of urban frustration when houses, abandoned buildings and unused factories burn to the ground in an orgy of arson.In capturing Devil's Night and other troubling Motown movements, Ze'ev Cha-fets—hailed as a "1980s de Tocqueville" by The New York Times—returns to the city of his youth. In the early 1960s Detroit seemed like the model American city. Industry was booming as both blacks and whites found steady work in the auto industry. But in 1967 the worst race riot in American history erupted; overnight, Detroit was violently jerked from an existence as a prosperous, integrated industrial center to that of a chaotic, seething ghetto. Chafets goes back to the city where he grew up and learned the facts of life, a city where his strongest friendship was an unlikely one—with a fatherless black teenager from the ghetto—a city where reality set in early when Chafets's own grandfather was killed in a holdup.Chafets leads us through the wilderness of the distinct subcultures of contemporary Detroit. He meets the black intelligentsia who view their "independent state" as progress for black America; he spends time with cops whose conflicting attitudes of pride in their work and bitterness at their city's staggering crime rate lead to frustration; he explores the growing sects in the Muslim and Christian communities that provide ecstatic, religious escape; he talks to whites from the segregated suburbs to find out why they fled and about the roots of their continuous antagonism; and he converses with Mayor Coleman Young, who, despite the abysmal social and financial conditions of his city, is convinced he is leading Detroit— and its black populace—to a better and brighter future.Poignant, perceptive, and at times hilariously funny, Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit gives an unprecedented look at what Ze'ev Chafets calls "America's first Third World City."

    While these buildings might stand as ghosts of the past today, their stories live on within these pages. The team behind BuildingsofDetroit.com brings you the memories of those who caught trains out of the majestic Michigan Central Station, necked with girlfriends in the balcony of the palatial Michigan Theatre, danced the night away at the Vanity Ballroom and kicked out the jams at the Grande Ballroom. As Detroit Free Press Architecture Critic John Gallagher said, the buildings in these pages held a central place in the story of Detroit's Auto Century. It was America's story, too. Detroiters lived, loved, toiled, played, celebrated and dreamed great dreams in these buildings and thereby helped shape a nation."

    So the next time the fates collide and you're reminded of what a small world it can be, you'll realize we're all victims of coincidence ...

    If you’ve turned on a television or logged on to Netflix at any time in the past fifteen years, chances are you’ve watched an episode of The Office. You can probably also rattle off your favorite episode, Dwight quote, Jim prank, and cringeworthy Michael Scott moment. And you may even have been one of the over 5 million viewers who tuned in (and cried) when the finale aired, only to see the show get new life as a streaming staple, becoming the #1 most-streamed show on Netflix and winning over a whole new generation of viewers.Now for the first time, viewers are invited to get an exclusive look behind the scenes of Dunder Mifflin, in this all-new official oral history from the producers and cast. Based off hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with key actors, writers, producers, executives, and even some Office super fans (like Billie Eilish), and illustrated with never-before-seen photos and stills from the show, Welcome to Dunder Mifflin is a must-have for anyone who’s ever found themselves re-watching the show for a third time because they just can’t get enough.So grab your Dundies and a pot of Kevin’s chili, and call a meeting of the Party Planning Committee to celebrate this one-of-a-kind look behind the scenes of one of television’s most beloved and enduring comedies, from the people who were there from the very beginning.

    Renowned craft historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing how makers have always been central to America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's “craftivists.” From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to the AIDS Quilt.Adamson documents how craft has long been implicated in debates around inequality, education, and class, as well as America's failures to live up to its loftiest ideals. Yet artisanship has also been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who built traditional arts into businesses that preserved cherished folkways. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union: from the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.

    Growing from Peter Minuit's tiny settlement of 1626 to one with more than three million immigrants today, the city has always been a magnet for transplants from all over the globe. It is only fitting that the United States, a "nation of immigrants," is home to the only world city built primarily by immigration. More immigrants have entered the United States through New York than through all other entry points combined, making New York's immigrant saga a quintessentially American story.City of Dreams is the long-overdue, inspiring, and defining account of New York's both famous and forgotten immigrants: the young man from the Caribbean who relocated to New York and became a Founding Father; an Italian immigrant who toiled for years at railroad track maintenance before achieving his dream of becoming a nationally renowned poet; Russian-born Emma Goldman, who condoned the murder of American industrialists as a means of aiding downtrodden workers; Dominican immigrant Oscar de la Renta, who dressed first ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama. Over ten years in the making, Tyler Anbinder's story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs. Today's immigrants are really no different from those who have come to America in centuries past—and their story has never before been told with such breadth of scope, lavish research, and resounding spirit.

    “Searching observations and astonishing comprehension of the Venetian taste and character” (New York Herald Tribune).

    From the Bodleian, the Folger and the Smithsonian to the fabled libraries of middle earth, Umberto Eco’s mediaeval library labyrinth and libraries dreamed up by John Donne, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Stuart Kells explores the bookish places, real and fictitious, that continue to capture our imaginations.The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders is a fascinating and engaging exploration of libraries as places of beauty and wonder. It’s a celebration of books as objects and an account of the deeply personal nature of these hallowed spaces by one of Australia’s leading bibliophiles.

    Maybe your teacher took the controversial stand that the Civil War was all about states’ rights… or maybe you learned all about the horrors slavery, but never quite figured out why things didn’t get better after the war ended. If you didn’t go to school in the United States, things are even more confusing. When the media is full of references to the Confederate flag, the legacy of slavery, and poverty in the American South, you might have a vague sense that things are bad because of the Civil War… but why? Why does a war that happened over a hundred and fifty years ago still cast a shadow over the United States? This book will tell you why. It will lead you, step-by-step, through the causes of the Civil War, and the effects. But unlike your high school history teacher, it won’t put you to sleep with long-winded biographies and lists of dates. The names you’ll learn are the big players, the ones with big personalities, who made big differences. In just a few minutes a day, you can read bite-sized stories from the Civil War – quick, easy explanations to guide you through the main points, with just enough scary, surprising, or just plain strange facts to keep you coming back for more. Each chapter ends with a bonus helping of trivia and some quick questions to test your knowledge. By the time you’re finished, you’ll know all the facts your history teacher never taught you – from who said slavery was a “positive good” (and why they thought that), to who dressed up in women’s clothing to escape from Union soldiers.

    They were poorly fed, ill-equipped, coming off a string of demoralizing defeats at the hands of the British, and faced a harsh winter ahead. Their general, a focused and forceful man named George Washington, was at the lowest point in his career. The Continental Congress was in exile, its treasury depleted. When the rebels arrived at Valley Forge, it looked like they would be on the losing side of history.As days passed, however, Washington realized that the British would not attack, and he embarked on a mission to reshape his army from the top-down. Aided by his close advisors Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Henry Knox, and William Howe, his wife Martha, and new friends and allies, Washington transformed the troops from a rag-tag band of volunteers to a fighting force that was ready to take on the British. In six months, he turned the tide of the Revolution and changed the future of the United States forever.Valley Forge is a riveting, true American underdog story, with a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that perfectly capture the innovation, energy, and birth of our nation. In this breathtaking account of this seminal moment in the battle for independence, New York Times bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin uncover new and rarely seen documents and research to finally give it the credit it deserves.

    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.

     The Giants of The Polo Grounds is the definitive work on baseball’s New York Giants and their tenure in New York City. An “Editor’s Choice” of The New York Times when it was first published more than 20 years ago, the book was also a Spitball Magazine nominee for the Best Baseball Book of the year. Author Noel Hynd, a former contributor to Sports Illustrated, has now created a new edition that maintains all the previous text, but expands the work to more than 600 pages from the original 375. Included this time are more stories about McGraw, Ott, Durocher and Mays and their opponents, plus more on the men and women from other sports and various fields of entertainment who also were ‘giants’ of the Polo Grounds: from boxers Jack Dempsey and Sugar Ray Robinson to entertainers Annie Oakley and Tallulah Bankhead to football’s Red Grange and soccer’s Béla Guttmann. The Giants of The Polo Grounds is the story of a famous team, a renowned ball park, an invincible spirit and America’s most vibrant city from the 1880’s to the 1950’s. The new edition is packed with remarkable anecdotes about Broadway, New York politics, good guys and bad guys who made the Giants' era in New York unique and memorable. The new edition, practically the equivalent of two volumes, also features more than 100 photos and illustrations, most of them new, some rarely seen. Critical Praise for The Giants of The Polo Grounds “A compelling and comprehensive history of an extraordinary ball club.” -New York Times “Grandly digressive! The owners, stars like Mathewson and Mays, various eccentric players are all here in this vivid history by Sports Illustrated contributor Hynd.” - Publishers’ Weekly “Fans of all ages will treasure the crazy quilt text for its stylish recall of the game’s summer roots.” -Kirkus Library Journal “Just plain enjoyable as baseball is supposed to be.” - The Pennsylvania Gazette Think of it as a grand slam into the center field bleachers in the bottom of the 9th!

    Very Good conditions. May have soft reading marks and name of the previous owner.

    Through the centuries, she’s been embraced and reviled, worshipped and feared, praised and battered—all the while standing at the crossroads of American politics, business, society, and culture. Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author Teresa Carpenter, a lifelong diary enthusiast, scoured the archives of libraries, historical societies, and private estates to assemble here an almost holographic view of this iconic metropolis. Starting on January 1 and traveling day by day through the year, these journal entries are selected from four centuries of writing—from the early 1600s to the present—allowing New York natives and visitors, writers and artists, thinkers and bloggers, to reach across time and share vivid and compelling snapshots of life in the Capital of the World. “Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I’d never seen before, walked through the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, stepped outside, got my first look at the city and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!”—Edward Robb Ellis, May 22, 1947“My experience is that a man cannot go anywhere in New York in an hour. The distances are too great—you must have another day to it. If you have got six things to do, you have got to take six days to do them in.”—Mark Twain, February 2, 1867“A Peregrine falcon just flew past my window.”—Johnny/Quipu Blogspot, February 5, 2003“I had a lot of dates but decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.”—Andy Warhol, March 11, 1978“At ten we have Orders to march up the River for Mount-Washington. Adieu, New-York; perhaps forever!”—Philip Vickers Fithian, September 3, 1776New York Diaries reveals intimate, whimsical, profound, sobering, and indelible reflections on such historical moments as President Washington’s first State of the Union address, the death of Abraham Lincoln, the sinking of the Titanic, the end of World War II—even the first incursion of Europeans into the city’s Upper Bay on September 11, 1609, a presage to our country’s greatest catastrophe nearly four hundred years later. Featuring familiar faces and fascinating unknowns, these pages provide a rich mosaic that is uniquely New York.With excerpts from the writing of Sherwood Anderson • William H. Bell • Albert Camus • Chad the Minx • Noël Coward • Dorothy Day • John Dos Passos • Thomas Edison • Allen Ginsberg • William B. Gould • Keith Haring • Henry Hudson • Anne Morrow Lindbergh • Judith Malina • H. L. Mencken • John Cameron Mitchell • Joyce Carol Oates • Eugene O’Neill • Philippe Petit • Edgar Allan Poe • Theodore Roosevelt • Elizabeth Cady Stanton • William Steinway • Alexis de Tocqueville • Mark Twain • Gertrude Vanderbilt • Andy Warhol • George Washington • Kurt Weill • Walt Whitman • and many others.

    Once it had been a forbidding place of exile, inhabited by thousands of the disease’s victims who had been removed from their families and confined against their will, far away from a society that feared and misunderstood their condition. When Brooke Jarvis came across a posting for a job in Kalaupapa, tending to the needs of the handful of remaining patients, it seemed like an impossibly exotic opportunity for a college student. But what she found there was both more remarkable and more familiar than what she had imagined. When We Are Called to Part is the absorbing, affecting, and often funny story of life in the last years of a rapidly vanishing community. “Even a prison,” she would learn, “eventually becomes a home, becomes something you mourn.”