Book picks similar to
Dirty Old Boston: Four Decades of a City in Transition by Jim Botticelli
boston
nonfiction
history
photography
Capturing Camelot: Stanley Tretick's Iconic Images of the Kennedys
Kitty Kelley - 2012
His photographs helped define the American family of the early sixties and lent Kennedy an endearing credibility that greatly contributed to his popularity. Accompanied by an insightful, heartwarming essay from Kitty Kelley—Tretick's close friend—about the relationship between the photographer and JFK, Capturing Camelot includes some of the most memorable images of America's Camelot and brings to life the uniquely hopeful historical era from which it emerged.
Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows
Vivian Maier - 2012
Though she created more than 10,000 negatives during her lifetime, only a few of them were ever seen by others. Shortly after her death in 2009, the first group of her unseen photographs—gritty with humanity and filled with empathy and beauty—were shown online. What followed was a firestorm of attention, catapulting Maier from previous obscurity to being labeled as one of the masters of street photography. Her work has appeared in numerous museum exhibits and a feature-length documentary on her life and art has already been planned. Features 275 black and white photos on heavy gloss paper.
American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked.
James Burke - 2007
Over the two hundred-plus years that separate us, these connections are often surprising and always fascinating. Burke turns the signers from historical icons into flesh-and-blood people: Some were shady financial manipulators, most were masterful political operators, a few were good human beings, and some were great men. The network that links them to us is also peopled by all sorts, from spies and assassins to lovers and adulterers, inventors and artists. The ties may be more direct for some of us than others, but we are all linked in some way to these founders of our nation. If you enjoyed Martin Sheen as the president on television's The West Wing, then you're connected to founder Josiah Bartlett. The connection from signer Bartlett to Sheen includes John Paul Jones; Judge William Cooper, father of James Fenimore; Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales; an incestuous astronomer; an itinerant math teacher; early inventors of television; and pioneering TV personality Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the inspiration for Ramon Estevez's screen name, Martin Sheen.
The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America
Eric Jaffe - 2010
Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king of England’s “best highway” to the current era. Centuries before the telephone, radio, or Internet, the Boston Post Road was the primary conduit of America’s prosperity and growth. News, rumor, political intrigue, financial transactions, and personal missives traveled with increasing rapidity, as did people from every walk of life.From post riders bearing the alarms of revolution, to coaches carrying George Washington on his first presidential tour, to railroads transporting soldiers to the Civil War, the Boston Post Road has been essential to the political, economic, and social development of the United States. Continuously raised, improved, rerouted, and widened for faster and heavier traffic, the road played a key role in the advent of newspapers, stagecoach travel, textiles, mass-produced bicycles and guns, commuter railroads, automobiles—even Manhattan’s modern grid. Many famous Americans traveled the highway, and it drew the keen attention of such diverse personages as Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Robert Moses. Eric Jaffe weaves this entertaining narrative with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s flair for storytelling. A cast of historical figures, celebrated and unknown alike, tells the lost tale of this road.Revolutionary printer William Goddard created a postal network that united the colonies against the throne. General Washington struggled to hold the highway during the battle for Manhattan. Levi Pease convinced Americans to travel by stagecoach until, half a century later, Nathan Hale convinced them to go by train. Abe Lincoln, still a dark-horse candidate in early 1860, embarked on a railroad speaking tour along the route that clinched the presidency. Bomb builder Lester Barlow, inspired by the Post Road’s notorious traffic, nearly sold Congress on a national system of expressways twenty-five years before the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Based on extensive travels of the highway, interviews with people living up and down the road, and primary sources unearthed from the great libraries between New York City and Boston—including letters, maps, contemporaneous newspapers, and long-forgotten government documents—The King’s Best Highway is a delightful read for American history buffs and lovers of narrative everywhere.
St. John Feet, Fins and Four Wheel Drive
Pam Gaffin - 1994
John, Virgin Islands. It tells you exactly where to go, how to get there, and what to do and see when you arrive. It contains everything you need to know about the St. John's beaches and hiking trails, as well as its confusing system, of roads, foot-paths and goat-trails. Recommended by Caribbean Travel and Life and by many St. Johnians since locals are NOT on vacation and can't always take time off from work to be a tour guide for their guests. Best Selling St John Guidebook since 1994. Updated in 2009.
The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy
Larry J. Sabato - 2013
Kennedy died almost half a century ago-yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato-himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency-explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors. A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn't died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK's assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public's view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK's presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions-often in surprising ways-of every president since. Among the hundreds of books devoted to JFK, The Kennedy Half-Century stands apart for its rich insight and original perspective. Anyone who reads it will appreciate in new ways the profound impact JFK's short presidency has had on our national psyche.
Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia
John Thorn - 1989
the eighth edition of Total Baseball: the ultimate baseball encyclopedia is the most striking, compelling and comprehensive single volume ever devoted to America's pastime.
Cannibal Killers: Monsters with an Appetite for Murder and a Taste for Human Flesh
Chloe Castleden - 2010
It has long been a taboo subject, with even the tabloid press shying away from publishing precise details of cannibal crimes. When Albert Fish kidnapped, killed, and consumed ten-year-old Grace Budd in New York in 1928, he went to great pains to assure her parents, in a letter he wrote six years later that brought about his arrest, that he had not sexually assaulted her. But at the time, the court portrayed Fish as a sexually motivated criminal rather than as a cannibal. Yet, sexual depravity and cannibalism are far from being mutually exclusive. Andrei Chikatilo, the Butcher of Rostov, is proof of that, having eaten parts of the sexual organs of some of his fifty-six victims. Tsutomu Miyazaki, the Japanese Dracula, murdered little girls, molested their corpses, and drank their blood. These and many other cases, including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, Joachim Kroll (the Duisburg Man Eater), and Daniel Rakowitz—who murdered his roommate and made soup from her brains—are studied in chilling detail.
Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters
Cary J. Griffith - 2018
Over the next two weeks, the fire he set would consume 75,000 acres of forest and 144 buildings. More than one thousand firefighters would rally to extinguish the blaze, at a cost of 11 million dollars. Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. Cary J. Griffith describes what happened in the minutes, hours, and days after Posniak struck that fateful match—from the first hint of danger to the ensuing race to flee the fire or defend imperiled property to the incredible efforts of firefighters and residents battling a blaze that lit up the Gunflint Trail like the fuse to a powder keg.We meet locals faced with losing everything: the sheriff and his deputy tasked with getting everyone out alive; tourists caught unawares; men and women using every piece of equipment and modern firefighting technique against impossibly high winds and dry conditions to suppress a wildfire as it grew to historic proportions; and, finally, Stephen Posniak, who in the aftermath tragically took his own life—the fire’s only fatality.In sharp detail, Gunflint Burning describes the key events of the Ham Lake fire as they unfold, providing readers with a sense of being on the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.
New Orleans Ghosts
Victor C. Klein - 1993
The table of contents lists all of the addresses so that the reader may view and explore all of the sites personally. The work also contains a bibliography of thirty-three sources, one hundred thirty-one footnotes and an index of one hundred sixteen entries. It is fully illustrated with photographs, a map, and Marie Laveau's death certificate.It is the first book written exclusively about the ghosts of New Orleans since Jeanne de Lavigne's 1946 classic Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans. The author visited personally each of the sites, conducted interviews and took photographs. During the course of his research the author experienced two paranormal occurrences which are documented in the narratives.New Orleans Ghosts also contains an epilogue that articulates the six theories that apply to ghostly phenomenon. Each of the theories is further highlighted by being exemplified by reference to individual stories within the text.This book alone has been responsible for the creation of a growing arm of New Orleans tourism-- the "Ghost Tour." Before 1993 such tours did not exist. In 1998 the author is aware of ten such tours. Virtually all of these tour guides have informed the author that his book is the "Bible" for haunted tour guides.
Hawaii the Big Island Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
Andrew Doughty - 1996
Andrew Doughty unlocks the secrets of an island so big and divers that many visitors never realize all that it has to offer.
Samuel Adams: A Life
Ira Stoll - 2008
Thomas Jefferson called Samuel Adams “truly the man of the Revolution.” Adams, filled with religious fervor, inspired others to fight on and overcome the challenges of the Revolutionary War. He was the editor of the influential Boston Gazette, planner of the Boston Tea Party, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and yet, he is largely ignored and unknown today. Understanding the leading part Adams played in building and sustaining support for the revolutionary cause gives readers new insight into the way religion motivated the founding of America.
Humanity: How Jimmy Carter Lost an Election and Transformed the Post-Presidency (Kindle Single)
Jordan Michael Smith - 2016
Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed. Republicans cheered his demise and trotted out his name to scare voters for years to come. Carter and his wife Rosalynn returned to their farm in the small town of Plains, Georgia. They were humiliated, widely unpopular, and even in financial debt. 35 years later, Carter has become the most celebrated post-president in American history. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize, written bestselling books, and become lauded across the world for his efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. Ex-presidents now adopt the Carter model of leveraging their eminent status to benefit humanity. By pursuing diplomatic missions, leading missions to end poverty and working to eradicate disease around the world, Carter has transformed the idea of what a president can accomplish after leaving the White House.This is the story of how Jimmy Carter lost the biggest political prize on earth--but managed to win back something much greater. Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer at Salon and the Christian Science Monitor. His writing has appeared in print or online for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, BBC, and many other publications. Born in Toronto, he holds a Master's of Arts in Political Science from Carleton University. He lives in New York City. www.jordanmichaelsmith.typepad.com.Cover design by Adil Dara.
Queen Victoria's Family: A Century of Photographs 1840-1940
Charlotte Zeepvat - 2001
A photograph album of Queen Victoria's family exploring the lives, personalities, tastes and contributions of the Queen, her children and her children's children through four generations.
The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington
Paul Lockhart - 2011
In the tradition of David McCullough’s 1776,Lockhart illuminates the Battle of Bunker Hill as a crucial event in thecreation of an American identity, dexterously interweaving the story of thispivotal pitched battle with two other momentous narratives: the creation ofAmerica’s first army, and the rise of the man who led it, George Washington.