For the first time, fans of Cohen’s hit podcast, Mea Culpa, can now read the very best of his essays and political analysis from the show all in once place. This book serves as a snapshot of an incredibly dark 50 days in the run up to the most divisive election in modern history. With his signature wit and New Yawk sensibility, get inside the head of Donald J. Trump from the man who knew him best.

    Throughout, Olson makes a compelling case for preserving the wilderness. He puts forth his own life as an example of how nature can have a spiritual effect on the human soul, and proposes diligence on behalf of those who fight to conserve our forests, wetlands, and dunes.

    

    Buell examines three pairs of commanders from the North and South, who met each other in battle. Following each pair through the entire war, the author reveals the human dimensions of the drama and brings the battles to life. 38 b&w photos.From the Hardcover edition.

    

    I want a baby but not in that crazy, desperate way where I cringe whenever I see someone else with one, or I think nasty, evil thoughts about people who are pregnant, but a child of my own would complete my life and make my husband extremely happy.Jay-Jay Feeney has been married to Dom Harvey since 2004. She always imagined they'd get married, have children, grow old. But so far, things haven't worked out quite as she expected. A high-profile job, an unpredictable family life, and medical procedures and emergencies have kept her on her toes. Here is Jay-Jay's story, told with a mix of brutal honesty and humor, in which she charts the highs and lows of life lived both in the public gaze and in the shadow of infertility.

    *Includes Lucille Ball's own quotes about her life and career. *Includes a Bibliography for further reading.*Includes a Table of Contents.Lucille Ball, one of the most famous and versatile stars in American history, is above all defined by her charisma. She did not possess the overwhelming beauty of her contemporaries in the entertainment industry, yet her infectious enthusiasm continues to endear her to the American public even decades following her death. Indeed, at the time that I Love Lucy (1951-1957) ended, the show still remained the most-watched show in America. Ball possessed an intangible quality that captivated audiences, who were transfixed by even the most banal plot sequences in her sitcoms. That Ball was able to withhold her popularity even after the ending of I Love Lucy testifies to the fact that she was always the star attraction on the famous sitcom. Indeed, even after separating from Arnaz, Ball continued to achieve high ratings on her subsequent programs, most notably The Lucy Show (1962-1968) and Here’s Lucy (1968-1974). Without doubt, Ball’s longevity and the magnitude of her popularity make her the most cherished comedienne in American history. Given Ball’s immense fame, it is easy to strip her career out of its original context and assume that she would have risen to fame regardless of the medium. However, it is important to remember that I Love Lucy actually began when Ball was already 40 years of age, a relatively advanced age for someone in the entertainment industry. In fact, from 1933 through the end of the 1940s, Ball appeared in over 80 films (with very minor roles in almost all of these) while serving as a contract player for the MGM and RKO film studios. There is thus a massive discrepancy between the fame she achieved in the television medium and her lack of success in cinema. To this end, Ball’s career reflects the evolutions that occurred throughout the mid-1950s with regard to the entertainment industry, mass culture, and the ways in which the American public consumed popular culture. Where Ball was unable to rise to prominence in cinema, she represented the ideal actress for the television medium, and in this regard she introduced a new model for media celebrity, one that was more accessible if less physically dazzling. This biography explores the entirety of Ball’s life and career, with attention paid to her both her childhood and her pre-television and television periods. In so doing, this study provides as complete a picture as possible of the enormity of Ball’s rise to fame and how she was able to capture the favor of the American public. American Legends: The Life of Lucille Ball profiles the life and career of one of America’s most iconic actresses.

    Uncover their mesmerizing, realistic stories of combat, courage, and distress in readable and balanced stories told from the front lines.Witness the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners.World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities.If you like gripping, authentic accounts of life and combat during WWI, then you won't want to miss WWI: Tales from the Trenches.

    At a glance, it bears few similarities to any place we know and inhabit. But upon closer examination, the differences between this complex virtual reality and our own might not be as vast as we think. In “How You Play the Game,” author and philosopher Charlie Huenemann looks philosophically at the game of Minecraft (“What is the point of this game? How does one win? Well, this depends on what you want to do”) and grapples with the ethical conundrums, existential crises and moral responsibilities of the virtual realm. From the Overworld to the Ender Dragon, Huenemann offers an entertaining, insightful and often hilarious examination of Minecraft and the strange worlds—both virtual and not—surrounding it.Charlie Huenemann is a Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University. He writes for 3quarksdaily, and has published several books on the history of philosophy.Cover design by Adil Dara.

    

    Volumes have been written about them, past and present. Understandably, most of these revolve around the skill, cunning and bravery that characterizes this distinctive band of brothers, but there are other dimensions to those who take to the skies to do battle that have not been given the emphasis they deserve - until now.You do not have to be an aviation aficionado to enjoy Colonel Steve Ladd's fascinating personal tale, woven around his 28-year career as a fighter pilot. This extremely engaging account follows a young man from basic pilot training to senior command through the narratives that define a unique ethos. From the United States to Southeast Asia; Europe to the Middle East; linking the amusing and tongue-in-cheek to the deadly serious and poignant, this is the lifelong journey of a fighter pilot.The anecdotes provided are absorbing, providing an insight into life as an Air Force pilot, but, in this book, as Colonel Ladd stresses, the focus is not on fireworks or stirring tales of derring-do. Instead, this is an articulate and absorbing account of what life is really like among a rare breed of arrogant, cocky, boisterous and fun-loving young men who readily transform into steely professionals at the controls of a fighter aircraft.From F-4 Phantom to A-10 Warthog is a terrific read: the legacy of a fighter pilot.

     But what about the voices of the common soldier? Frank Wilkeson, when he wrote his account of the civil war, aimed to rectify this and reassert the importance of looking at the accounts of the men who carried the muskets, served the guns, and rode their saddles into the heat of battle. As he states in his preface, “The epauleted history has been largely inspired by vanity or jealousy, saving and excepting forever the immortal record”. Wilkeson and his fellow comrades who lived on the frontlines of the conflict had no need to rescue their reputations or assert their actions and thus their accounts provide a brilliant and unbiased alternative view of this bloody war. After lying about his age Frank Wilkeson was just sixteen when he joined the Union Army in 1864. Through the course of the next year he saw some of the ferocious battles of Grant’s Overland Campaign. Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac is a wonderfully refreshing account of the American Civil War that takes the reader to the heart of what it would have been like to have served in the front ranks. “Wilkeson’s words have a robustness that remind us that colorful writing was in the American air, and contemporaries like Mark Twain didn’t come out of the blue (or the gray).” Robert Cowley, HistoryNet “deeply portrays the experience of the ordinary soldier on campaign and in battle.” Civil War Talk “[The memoir is] unlike most others by Civil War Veterans who tended to romanticize and sometimes glorify the experiences they went through . . . . His emphasis on the seamy, unheroic, horrific side of war is a healthy corrective to romanticism." James McPherson Frank Wilkeson was an American journalist, soldier, farmer and explorer. His memoir Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac was first published in 1887 and he passed away in 1913.

    Lee, Stonewall Jackson assumed his nickname during the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War. It is said that The Army of Northern Virginia never fully recovered from the loss of Stonewall's leadership when he was accidentally shot by one of his own men and died in 1863. Davis highlights Stonewall Jackson as a general who emphasized the importance of reliable information and early preparedness (he so believed in information that he had a personal mapmaker with him at all times) and details Jackson's many lessons in strategy and leadership.

    As Conroy's writings have been rooted in autobiography more often than not, his readers have come to know and appreciate much about the once-secret dark familial history that has shaped Conroy's life and work. Conversations with the Conroys opens further the discussion of the Conroy family through five revealing interviews conducted in 2014–15 with Pat Conroy and four of his six siblings: brothers Mike, Jim, and Tim and sister Kathy. In confessional and often comic dialogs, the Conroys openly discuss the perils of being raised by their larger-than-life parents, USMC fighter pilot Col. Don Conroy (the Great Santini) and southern belle Peggy Conroy (née Peek); the complexities of having their history of abuse made public by Pat's books; the tragic death of their youngest brother, Tom; the chasm between them and their sister Carol Ann; and the healing, redemptive embrace they have come to find over time in one another. With good humor and often-striking candor, these interviews capture the Conroys as authentic and indeed proud South Carolinians, not always at ease with their place in literary lore, but nonetheless deeply supportive of Pat in his life and writing. Edited and introduced by the Palmetto State's pre-eminent historian, Walter Edgar, Conversations with the Conroys includes the first publications of Pat Conroy's interview with Edgar as the keynote address of the 2014 One Book, One Columbia citywide "big read" program, the unprecedented interview with the Conroy siblings for SCETV Radio's Walter Edgar's Journal, the resulting live Conroy Family Roundtable held at the 2014 South Carolina Book Festival, and a recent interview in Charleston following Pat Conroy's induction into the Citadel's Athletics Hall of Fame. This collection is augmented with an afterword from National Book Award–winning poet Nikky Finney and nearly fifty photographs, many from the Pat Conroy Archive in the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries, and published here for the first time. Through the resulting treasure trove of text and images, this volume is as much a keepsake for Conroy's legion of devoted fans as it is a wealth of insider information to broaden the understanding of readers and researchers alike of the idiosyncratic world of Pat Conroy and his family.

    Disneyland expert Gavin Doyle has swept aside the pixie dust and uncovered little-known stories about the happiest place on earth that will make you a master of the magic.Doyle develops each of his dozens of secrets into a brief story that illuminates a forgotten moment in Disney history, or sheds light on a neglected area of the park, or reveals something new about an iconic attraction, such as: Why is the address of Disneyland 1313 Harbor Boulevard? What's up with the Jewish menorah on Main Street? Why is there a fake book called "Walt & You" at City Hall? Where can you find Sherlock Holmes at Disneyland? Is there really a pet cemetery at the Haunted Mansion? Shhh! It's a Disneyland secret. Until you read this book...