Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies (And Why We Don't Learn Them From Movies Any More)


Hadley Freeman - 2015
    Comedy in Three Men and a Baby, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ghostbusters, and Back to the Future; all a teenager needs to know in Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, and Mystic Pizza; the ultimate in action from Top Gun, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; love and sex in 9 1/2 Weeks, Splash, About Last Night, The Big Chill, and Bull Durham; and family fun in The Little Mermaid, ET, Big, Parenthood, and Lean On Me.In Life Moves Pretty Fast, Hadley puts her obsessive movie geekery to good use, detailing the decade’s key players, genres, and tropes. She looks back on a cinematic world in which bankers are invariably evil, where children are always wiser than adults, where science is embraced with an intense enthusiasm, and the future viewed with giddy excitement. And, she considers how the changes between movies then and movies today say so much about society’s changing expectations of women, young people, and art—and explains why Pretty in Pink should be put on school syllabuses immediately.From how John Hughes discovered Molly Ringwald, to how the friendship between Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi influenced the evolution of comedy, and how Eddie Murphy made America believe that race can be transcended, this is a “highly personal, witty love letter to eighties movies, but also an intellectually vigorous, well-researched take on the changing times of the film industry” (The Guardian).

First Girl in the West


Eliza Spalding Warren - 2013
    Her story is unparalleled—and offers fascinating insights into the earliest days of the emigrants. Eliza’s parents launched the Oregon Trail era with the original covered wagon trek in 1836. Settling in the region that is now the junction of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, Eliza grew up among native peoples. She learned their language and understood their culture better than any pioneer girl of the era. Eliza was at the Whitman Mission on the day of the fateful attacks that so profoundly changed the course of western history. Her telling of that story is uniquely valuable—even though she was just 10 years old—because she was the only survivor who spoke the language of the attackers. This first-person account is an eye-opening look at life in the early West.Eliza’s story is as fresh and readable today as the day it was written—a rare example of a historic document that can still engage modern readers, even children. This enhanced edition adds dozens of photos, maps, graphics, and notes to the original manuscript. The bonus material provides a layer of context that gives readers deeper insight into her compelling story.

Mosquito Point Road: Monroe County Murder & Mayhem


Michael Benson - 2020
    There’s Killer of the Cloth, The Baby in the Convent, Mosquito Point Road, Death of a First Baseman, The Blue Gardenia, and Pure/Evil. Three of the killers are female.

The Alamo


John Myers Myers - 1948
    John Myers Myers authored sixteen books, including Doc Holliday and Tombstone's Early Years, also available as Bison Books.

Prince Charming: The John F. Kennedy, Jr. Story


Wendy Leigh - 1993
    It shows the kind of father that John Kennedy was, and the kind of mother that Jacqueline Kennedy turned out to be. It examines the Kennedy clan, with its loyalties, scandals, secret feuds and open splits, and the roles that Robert and Ted Kennedy played in trying to be father figures to John, Jr. It offers a riveting, at times shocking account of Jackie's strange marriage to Aristotle Onassis, her relationships with other men, and how they affected John as he grew up in a world that he never made but that would not let him forget who he was and what was expected of him. But most of all, of course, the revealing spotlight is on John Kennedy, Jr., himself, bewildered at his father's death and its devastating effects on all he thought was normal; growing up with Secret Service men as his constant companions; trying to be just another kid in a New York private school and finding how impossible that was; his break-out years at Phillips Andover, where he displayed a wild streak few imagined in him; his time at Brown University, where he discovered the power he had over women. It reveals his dreams of becoming an actor and how close he was to total commitment before familial pressures made him choose law as a career. And it intimately details his relationships with a string of the most stunning and sexy women in America - including Madonna and Daryl Hannah - a list that indicates he is his father's son in more ways than one.

True Crime 2017: Homicide & True Crime Stories of 2017 (Annual True Crime Anthology)


Jack Rosewood - 2017
    Some of the horrible stories you will read about includes: A Florida serial killer stalked a close-knit suburb of Tampa, killing Seminole Heights residents seemingly at random. A member of a neo-Nazi organization used his vehicle to kill a protestor in Charlottesville, Virginia, more than 50 years after the world defeated Hitler’s racist rise to power. A couple was sentenced to death for brutalizing a 10-year-old girl for years, beating her, depriving her of food, forcing her to walk on the hot pavement of a sizzling summer in Arizona, only to let her die in an airtight box overnight, her punishment for eating a Popsicle without asking after sweltering in 115-degree heat. Two young girls were smart enough to record pictures and audio of a man suspected in their deaths, evidence that will hopefully soon solve their murders. A blood-soaked man carried his mother’s decapitated head into a grocery store, attacking a clerk and stabbing him as well before being apprehended from police. The UK was rocked by terrorist bombings that turned joyous moments deadly in an instant. The death of Charles Manson gave us an opportunity to look back at the bloody mayhem inspired by a murderous man with a messiah complex. Keep the lights on, Dear Reader, and welcome to 2017’s most horrifying true stories.

Someone Like Me: An Unlikely Story of Challenge and Triumph Over Cerebral Palsy


John W. Quinn - 2010
    He kept his cerebral palsy a secret from the record- keepers and medical authorities for 20 years. He had a distinguished and highly decorated career despite the pain he endured to appear normal.He served on board destroyers, a battleship, two aircraft carriers and functioned as an administrator for a Seal unit. The outside world also impacted on him further aggravating his CP when he was challenged by alcoholism and excessive grief caused by the suicide of a brother. With help, John Quinn triumphed over both, as he did the painful cerebral palsy.

Buddy Holly: A Biography


Ellis Amburn - 1995
    "In illuminating the scope of Holly's influence . . . that inspired musicians from Paul McCartney to Keith Richards, this book shines".--Entertainment Weekly. of photos.

The Oatman Massacre: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival


Brian McGinty - 2005
    In this riveting account, Brian McGinty explores the background, development, and aftermath of the tragedy.Roys Oatman, a dissident Mormon, led his family of nine and a few other families from their homes in Illinois on a journey west, believing a prophecy that they would find the fertile “Land of Bashan” at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers. On February 18, 1851, a band of southwestern Indians attacked the family on a cliff overlooking the Gila River in present-day Arizona. All but three members of the family were killed. The attackers took thirteen-year-old Olive and eight-year-old Mary Ann captive and left their wounded fourteen-year-old brother Lorenzo for dead.Although Mary Ann did not survive, Olive lived to be rescued and reunited with her brother at Fort Yuma.On Olive’s return to white society in 1857, Royal B. Stratton published a book that sensationalized the story, and Olive herself went on lecture tours, telling of her experiences and thrilling audiences with her Mohave chin tattoos.Ridding the legendary tale of its anti-Indian bias and questioning the historic notion that the Oatmans’ attackers were Apaches, McGinty explores the extent to which Mary Ann and Olive may have adapted to life among the Mohaves and charts Olive’s eight years of touring and talking about her ordeal.

Winter: Notes from Montana


Rick Bass - 1991
    Bass and his friend Elizabeth discovered the Yaak valley in northwest Montana. It was remote -- with no electricity or phone service, only erratic radio reception, and reachable by a gravel-and-dirt road that required four-wheel drive. There was one saloon, a general store and a handful of year-round residents. The nearest town, Libby, was 40 miles away. As caretakers of a defunct hunting lodge, the couple settled into their winter idyll. Bass writes exuberantly about their season in the wilderness: blizzards, woodchopping, wildlife, the occasional social gatherings at the Dirty Shame Saloon. He speaks to the wildness and freedom of valley people, the slow-motion quality of life, and the the physical and psychological hardships of wilderness living. This charming celebration will give readers a fresh perception of winter.

The Price Of Freedom (A Story Of Courage And Faith, In The Face Of Danger.)


Simon Ivascu - 2009
    

Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains


William F. Drannan - 1903
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

FERRY PILOT: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic


Kerry McCauley - 2020
    

The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West


John Branch - 2018
    Now Bill and Evelyn Wright, parents to 13 children and grandparents to many more, find themselves struggling to hang on to the majestic landscape where they’ve been running cattle for 150 years as the West is transformed by urbanization, battered by drought, and rearranged by public-land disputes. Could rodeo, of all things, be the answer?In a powerful follow-up to his prize-winning, best-selling first book, New York Times reporter John Branch delivers an epic and intimate family story deep in the American grain. Written with great lyricism and filled with vivid scenes of ranch life and the high drama of saddle-bronc competition, The Last Cowboys chronicles three years in the life of the Wrights, each culminating in rodeo’s National Finals in Las Vegas. Will Bill and Evelyn be able to hold the family together as rodeo injuries pile up and one of their sons goes off on a religious mission? Will their son Cody, a two-time world champion, make it to the finals one last time—and compete with his own son? And will the younger generation—Rusty, Ryder, Stetson, and the rest—be able to continue the family’s ways in the future?This is a grand and compelling work of reporting that, like Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, offers deep insight into American ritual and tradition. And in telling the Wright family’s story, from branding days to rodeo nights to annual Christmas gatherings, Branch captures something vital of the grit, determination, and integrity that fuel the American Dream.An unforgettable book by one of the finest reporters of our time, The Last Cowboys is a moving tribute to an American way of life.

Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Union


Reggie Nadelson - 2006
    Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters— musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives—who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life