McQueen's Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon


Matt Stone - 2007
    No other Hollywood star has been so closely linked with cars and bikes. It is this connection that McQueens Machines explores, giving readers a close-up look at the cars and motorcycles McQueen drove in movies, those he owned, and others he raced.From the 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback he drove in Bullitt (in the greatest car chase of all time) to his Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow in "The Thomas Crown Affair", from the Triumph motorcycle of "The Great Escape" to the Gulf-Porsche 917K he actually raced in "Le Mans", the cars and bikes that McQueen made famous in films make another appearance here.The book also features the cars, motorcycles, and even airplanes that McQueen owned over the years, including two motorcycles that fetched record prices at a recent auction: a 1937 Crocker "Hemi-head" V-Twin and a 1920 Indian Powerplus Daytona. Among notable cars profiled in the book are a 1959 Porsche Speedster bought new by McQueen, a 1957 Jaguar XKSS, a 1963 Ferrari 250 Lusso, a 1953 Siata 208S, a 1965 Ferrari 275 NART Spyder, and a 1969 "Le Mans" Porsche 911S.With a foreword by Steve's son, Chad McQueen, and a wealth of details about the stars amateur racing career, his movie stunt work, and his car and motorcycle collecting, McQueens Machines draws a fascinating picture of one outsized mans driving passion. See Motorbooks author Matt Stone interviewed by Jay Leno on JayLenosGarage.com: http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/j...

A Whole New Ball Game: The Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League


Sue Macy - 1993
    For twelve seasons, from 1943 to 1954, the AAGPBL captured America's attention with top-notch playing and strong personalities.

The Bremer Detail: Protecting the Most Threatened Man in the World


Frank Gallagher - 2014
    In May 2003 President George W. Bush appointed Paul Bremer as presidential envoy to Iraq. Bremer banned the Ba'ath party and dismantled the Iraqi army, which made him the prime target for dozens of insurgent and terrorist groups. Assigned to protect him during his grueling sixteen-hour days were Blackwater security expert Frank Gallagher and a team of former Marines, SEALs, and other defense professionals. When they arrived, Baghdad was set to explode. As the insurgency gathered strength Bremer and the men who guarded him faced death daily. They were not in the military, but Gallagher and his team were on the front lines of the Iraq War. This fascinating memoir takes the reader deep behind the scenes of a highly dangerous profession.

Stand by Your Man


Tammy Wynette - 1979
    An autobiography with Joan Dew - illustrated with photo section - Burt Reynolds Ode to Tammy

The Commandos


Douglas C. Waller - 1995
    An experienced Pentagon correspondent for Newsweek  reveals the excruciating training and dangerous missions of America's elite fighting forces, including the Navy SEALs and Delta Force, following them into battle in Desert Storm.

Mississippi: An American Journey


Anthony Walton - 1996
    Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the yawning cotton fields of the Delta and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenged us to see Mississippi's memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan.  He weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, redneck demagogues and martyred civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen, black and white. Mississippi is a national saga in brilliant microcosm, splendidly written and profoundly moving.

Across Islands and Oceans


James Baldwin - 2012
    His inland forays are unique in the literature of circumnavigators as he finds danger, humor, friendship and romance in places most sailors will never visit. James' story unfolds in his earnest exploration of distant lands and seas, his meditations on the people whose lives he touched, and his greater voyage to explore his own private ocean of solitude.His adventure is not merely an attempt to seek thrills, nor even to tempt death, but rather a voyage of discovery as he set out in the direction of his youthful dreams to meet the life he imagined."Go seek what you will, where you will,but be a seeker all of your life."-James Baldwin

I Loved Lucy: My Friendship with Lucille Ball


Lee Tannen - 2001
    Lee first met Lucy as a child, but their close and enduring relationship began almost twenty-five years later. Now, Tannen gives us an intimate portrait of the "lost" Lucy years: from what life was like in her Beverly Hills and Palm Springs hideaways to how she traveled, what she ate, and how she entertained. I Loved Lucy reveals for the first time the private face of a beloved star whose public persona is the most famous in television history.

Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth


Marc Peyser - 2015
    When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his beautiful and flamboyant daughter was transformed into "Princess Alice," arguably the century's first global celebrity. Thirty-two years later, her first cousin Eleanor moved into the White House as First Lady. Born eight months and twenty blocks apart from each other in New York City, Eleanor and Alice spent a large part of their childhoods together and were far more alike than most historians acknowledge. But their politics and temperaments couldn't have been more distinct. Do-gooder Eleanor was committed to social justice but hated the limelight; acid-tongued Alice, who became the wife of philandering Republican congressman Nicholas Longworth, was an opponent of big government who gained notoriety for her cutting remarks (she famously quipped that dour President Coolidge “looked like he was weaned on a pickle”). While Eleanor revolutionized the role of First Lady with her outspoken passion for human rights, Alice made the most of her insider connections to influence politics, including doing as much to defeat the League of Nations as anyone in elective office.The cousins themselves liked to play up their oil-and-water relationship. “When I think of Frank and Eleanor in the White House I could grind my teeth to powder and blow them out my nose,” Alice once said. In the 1930s they even wrote opposing syndicated newspaper columns and embarked on competing nationwide speaking tours. Blood may be thicker than water, but when the family business is politics, winning trumps everything.Vivid, intimate, and stylishly written, Hissing Cousins finally sets this relationship center stage, revealing the contentious bond between two political trailblazers who short-circuited the rules of gender and power, each in her own way.

How Barack Obama Won: A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election


Chuck Todd - 2009
       Although much has changed in the nearly four years since, How Barack Obama Won remains the essential guide to Obama’s electoral strengths and offers important perspective on his 2012 bid. The votes in each state for Obama and McCain are broken down by percentage according to gender, age, race, party, religious affiliation, education, household income, size of city, and according to views about the most important issues (the economy, terrorism, Iraq, energy, healthcare), the future of the economy (worried, not worried) and the war in Iraq (approve, disapprove).

Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World


Hugh Brewster - 2012
     The intimate atmosphere onboard history’s most famous ship is recreated as never before.    The Titanic has often been called “an exquisite microcosm of the Edwardian era,” but until now, her story has not been presented as such. In Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, historian Hugh Brewster seamlessly interweaves personal narratives of the lost liner’s most fascinating people with a haunting account of the fateful maiden crossing. Employing scrupulous research and featuring 100 rarely-seen photographs, he accurately depicts the ship’s brief life and tragic denouement, presenting the very latest thinking on everything from when and how the lifeboats were loaded to the last tune played by the orchestra. Yet here too is a convincing evocation of the table talk at the famous Widener dinner party held in the Ritz Restaurant on the last night. And here we also experience the rustle of elegant undergarments as first-class ladies proceed down the grand staircase in their soigné evening gowns, some of them designed by Lady Duff Gordon, the celebrated couterière, who was also on board.      Another well-known passenger was the artist Frank Millet, who led an astonishing life that seemed to encapsulate America’s Gilded Age—from serving as a drummer boy in the Civil War to being the man who made Chicago’s White City white for the 1893 World Exposition. His traveling companion Major Archibald Butt was President Taft’s closest aide and was returning home for a grueling fall election campaign that his boss was expected to lose. Today, both of these once-famous men are almost forgotten, but their ship-mate Margaret Tobin Brown lives on as “the Unsinkable Molly Brown,” a name that she was never called during her lifetime.        Millionaires John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, writer Helen Churchill Candee, movie actress Dorothy Gibson, aristocrat Noelle, the Countess of Rothes, and a host of other travelers on this fateful crossing are also vividly brought to life within these pages. Through them, we gain insight into the arts, politics, culture, and sexual mores of a world both distant and near to our own. And with them, we gather on the Titanic’s sloping deck on that cold, starlit night and observe their all-too-human reactions as the disaster unfolds. More than ever, we ask ourselves, “What would we have done?”

Cairnaerie


M.K.B. Graham - 2017
     Geneva Snow commits the unforgivable Southern sin. No longer the apple of her father’s eye, she is a pariah, defying her society's most sacrosanct rule. To protect her—and hoping for a change of heart—her shattered yet steadfast father hides her at Cairnaerie, his mountain estate. But his iron-willed daughter is unrepentant. After years of solitude, an older and wiser Geneva is finally mellowing, and she is desperate to leave a legacy worthy of the father she loved and lost. To that end, she engages an unwitting young history professor for help to escape Cairnaerie long enough to attend the wedding of her granddaughter—a girl dangerously unaware of her lineage. But when a postman’s malevolence and a colleague’s revenge converge, Geneva's long-kept secret is exposed. For a second time, she faces a calamity of her own making. Only this time, there is no place to hide.

Coles to Jerusalem: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with Reverend Richard Coles (Kindle Single)


Kevin Jackson - 2015
    Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman.Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson’s light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation.With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.

The Native People of Alaska: Traditional Living in a Northern Land


Steve J. Langdon - 1987
    Completely revised for 2002.

Captive: Daughter of Ninmah as Told By Khalvir


Lori Holmes - 2020
    The Ancestors Saga will continue with Book 3, Enemy Tribe, launching in early 2021. A hunter, a protector, a Raknari warrior. He is Forbidden.Raised his entire life for the sole purpose of defending his clan, Khalvir serves the chief who saved him from certain death. A death at the hands of the hated elves; a people who see him only as an abomination to be destroyed.Now a captive in his enemy’s clutches, Khalvir must find a way to escape the mysterious elf witch who holds him. An elf whose motives remain shrouded but whose very presence calls to his soul, threatening to turn every truth he has ever known into a lie…