Includes a chronological essay on death in America, as well as a bibliography.Sleeping Beauty is coveted for having played a large role in the rediscovery of the normalcy of postmortem photography. In 1990, Dr. Stanley B. Burns' landmark publication Sleeping Beauty, Memorial in Photography in America, ushered in a new era of appreciation of the importance of these images. Since the publication of Sleeping Beauty, exhibitions based on the 3-book series of memorial images have been created regularly. Perhaps the most prestigious was Le Dernier Portrait at Paris' Musée d'Orsay in 2002. To accompany the exhibit, Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement and the Family, American & European Traditions was produced. In 2011, Sleeping Beauty III: Memorial Photography, The Children was written. Numerous other documentarians and feature filmmakers have utilized these poignant photographs, most notably in The Others. The Burns Archive serves as the premier source of images related to death, mourning and medial practices. Postmortem photography is the taking of a photograph of a deceased loved one, and was a normal part of American and European culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has nothing to do with images of violence, crime, or war. Death, and personally dealing with death, was prevalent throughout the entire world as epidemics would come quickly and kill quickly. Advances in medicine removed unexpected death from everyday life and professionals took over. Commissioned by grieving families, postmortem photographs not only helped in the grieving process, but often represented the only visual remembrance of the deceased and were among a family's most precious possessions. Mourning periods were based on family relationships and could last from months to years. Small photographs of the deceased were often carried in lockets or kept close to the body for greater intimacy. As many of the diseases that killed our ancestors were conquered and photography advanced during the century, society grew more and more distant from death, and practices, styles, and traditions of mourning and memorialization changed.The earliest postmortem photographs were often close-ups of the face or full body, at times depicted to appear lifelike or napping. Children were often positioned in a crib, posed with a favorite toy, or with a family member, most often the mother. Later photographs depict the subject in a coffin. Flowers, like forget-me-nots and calla lilies, were common in postmortem photography of all types. Later photographic memorials involve a shrine usually including a living portrait and flowers dedicated to the deceased.

    Some are humorous, some sad, some sublime. I have changed the names and in a few cases altered circumstances slightly to protect privacy as much as possible. I sincerely hope that with these measures - and with some of the details blurry enough in my memory - no one will recognize themselves or acquaintances, or take offense if they do.I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I appreciated having had the chance to live them. ~The Author

    By experimenting with new concepts of time, integrating Eastern philosophies into Western music, and exploring multiphonics and other new sounds on his saxophone, he opened avenues of expression that influenced musicians and composers from jazz to rock to avant-garde.Bill Cole focuses on two aspects of John Coltrane in this provocative study: Coltrane the musician and Coltrane the religious person. Deeply interrelated, both aspects are bound up with Coltrane's identification as an African- American. Coltrane accepted the traditional African belief in the magical powers of sound and connected his music to its African roots via a devout religiosity. Cole shows how Coltrane's influences extended from tribal tone languages to speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. -- he even adapted King's rhythmic inflections into a saxophone solo.Bill Cole offers a lengthy musical analysis of Coltrane's career; it also includes a detailed discography with recording data and personnel and over two dozen photographs. Cole draws on quotes from Coltrane himself, transcriptions of his improvisations, analyses of his music, research into West African religion, and his own personal reminiscences of the man, to offer a stimulating perspective on Coltrane's music, life, and thought.

    But what has been said about our "first families' families" - the colossal collection of animals, exotic and familiar, stubborn and playful, large and tiny, who have been welcome, and often celebrated, residents of the White House and its grounds since the days of George Washington? Over the years, the White House has been home to a unique assortment of pets. As a guest of John Quincy Adams, General Lafayette kept a live alligator in the East Room. Calvin Coolidge's Enoch, a huge white goose, gift from actress Marie Dressler, was said to be worth $100,000. Young Tad Lincoln surveyed his home grounds in a cart drawn by two pet goats. Warren Harding's Laddie Boy, a talented Airedale, was interviewed by reporters on national affairs. There were Franklin Roosevelt's famous Fala, Caroline Kennedy's Macaroni, Lyndon Johnson's beagles Him and Her. And Teddy Roosevelt's whole menagerie, which included a lion, snakes, roosters, a zebra, and five bears. The list of presidential pets is endless, and the stories about them and their owners are bizarre, hilarious, touching, and filled with incidents that point out many a first-family soft spot, peculiarity and, in every case, unabashed love of animals. Margaret Truman, a former White House resident herself, charts this special heritage with warmth and imagination.

    Jahana continues to struggle with her grief a year after her mother's death. She wishes she knew her maternal relatives, but her mother refused to talk about them. To help her move on, Jahana's husband buys her a DNA kit. When the results come in, she discovers more than she bargained for. Her DNA reveals a family secret she would like to ignore, but can't. The Lie is too big.

    It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the last half century.To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is that first Interview with Miles Davis.

    This book features over 100 photographs by a select group of renowned photographers whose work appears in the award-winning Mutter Museum calendars. Highlights include a bust of an early-19th-century Parisian widow with a six-inch horn protruding from the forehead; the connected livers of Chang and Eng, the world-famous Siamese twins; the skeleton of a 7’6” giant from Kentucky; and a collection of 139 skulls showing anatomic variation among ethnic groups in central and eastern Europe. Historical photographs from the museum’s archives, brief background texts about the collection, stunning photographs by acclaimed photographers including William Wegman and Joel-Peter Witkinand, and an introductory essay on the museum are also included.

    From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy’s stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life, and the Depression.

    Rythm Oil—you don't have to know how to spell "rhythm" to have it in your body and soul—is a potion sold on Beale Street in Memphis. The home of Sun Records, B. B. King, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Memphis is also the home of fantastic stories and broke-down dreams. As Booth makes his way from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta to the depths of the Georgia woods exploring the sounds, the music, and the culture of the American South, "he has produced some of the most gracefully written, thoughtful, and thought-stirring musings on the characters—the famous and the forgotten, the infamous and the unknown—who command the kingdom or drift through the shadowland of the South's rich-chorded patrimony" (Nick Tosches, Los Angeles Times).

    In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it.In the bestselling and award-winning tradition of This Boy, In My Life vividly transports us to a world that is no longer with us - a world of Dansettes and jukeboxes, of heartfelt love songs and heart-broken ballads, of smoky coffee shops and dingy dance halls. From Bob Dylan to David Bowie, from Lonnie Donnegan to Bruce Springsteen, all of Alan's favourites are here. As are, of course, his beloved Beatles, whom he has worshipped with undying admiration since 1963.But this isn't just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man.

    So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

    To populate these "comfort stations," as they were euphemistically called, the Japanese army drafted or tricked around two-hundred thousand girls, most from rural Korea, into coming to work in military "factories." Instead, they were forced into sexual slavery.After the war, the surviving comfort women, gripped with a crushing sense of shame, rarely if ever spoke about their ordeals. As a result, their suffering has barely been acknowledged in the history books. Realizing that the survivors were dying off, the Council was formed to record their accounts before it was too late; before Japanese revisionists erased these unfortunate events from the history books forever."Story of a Comfort Girl" is the moving first-person account of one such survivor.

    Great promises are ones that don’t fall apart during difficult times; they reveal hope in the midst of the storm. Precious promises are ones that we find strong enough to hold us up and resilient enough to get us through. God’s promises become exceedingly great and precious to us when nothing else will do.By digging into the theology of God’s promises, Pastor James uncovers 5 major categories of promises in the Bible and the 5 areas God repeatedly makes promises concerning. From dealing with fear and doubt to God’s goodness, help, and victory, the Bible has much to say about God’s presence in our difficulty.Always True will point you to God’s promises, which are just that: always true.

    A painting of a corn dog. A clock made out of an old “mostly clean” cheese grater. All this and more await you in the pages of Regretsy, a veritable sideshow of handcrafts gone wrong. Based on the eponymous hit blog and arranged in categories such as Décor, Pet Humiliation, and Christmas, Regretsy showcases the best of the worst, ranging from the hilariously absurd to the purely horrifying. Each page of this jaw-dropping volume features the actual seller’s online listing with a light coat of snarky commentary to give it a good shellacking. So join us as we descend into handmade hell and gawk, gasp, and marvel at the disturbingly odd artifacts that Regretsy has collected for your viewing pleasure, proving that you can never have too much of a bad thing.

    Almost immediately he realized his task was not only to modernize his country but to save the EU and a crumbling international order. From the decline of NATO, to Russian interference, to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protestors, Macron's term unfolded against a backdrop of social conflict, clashing ambitions, and resurgent big-power rivalries.In The Last President of Europe, William Drozdiak tells with exclusive inside access the story of Macron's presidency and the political challenges the French leader continues to face. Macron has ridden a wild rollercoaster of success and failure: he has a unique relationship with Donald Trump, a close-up view of the decline of Angela Merkel, and is both the greatest beneficiary from, and victim of, the chaos of Brexit across the Channel. He is fighting his own populist insurrection in France at the same time as he is trying to defend a system of values that once represented the West but is now under assault from all sides. Together these challenges make Macron the most consequential French leader of modern times, and perhaps the last true champion of the European ideal.