Her compelling and demanding collection The Death of Adam—in which she reflected on her Presbyterian upbringing, investigated the roots of Midwestern abolitionism, and mounted a memorable defense of Calvinism—is respected as a classic of the genre, praised by Doris Lessing as “a useful antidote to the increasingly crude and slogan-loving culture we inhabit.” In this new collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as a modern rhetorical master.

    And with a thump, down came Father Iggy.From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell--and a special way of telling them.In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death's door. Discover what scares them and what moves them to tears. Learn about rookie mistakes and why death sometimes calls for duct tape.Enjoy tales of the dearly departed spending eternity naked from the waist down and getting bottled and corked--in a wine bottle. And then meet their families--the weepers, the punchers, the stolidly dignified, and the ones who deliver their dead mother in a pickup truck.If there's one thing undertakers know, it's that death drives people crazy. These are the best "bodies of work" from America's darkest profession."Sick, funny, and brilliant! I love this book." --Jonathan Maberry

    This has been perpetrated by the systematic, ongoing falsification of history in much the same way as perpetrated by the powers that be in the suspiciously prophetic novel ‘1984’, by George Orwell. We have all been deceived on a monumental scale by a tiny clique of people who by their own birthright and bloodlines absolutely believe that they have the divine right to rule over us by whatever method best suits their purposes. In order to achieve this they have lied, deceived, murdered and even committed genocide down the millennia in an attempt to bring their ultimate goal to fruition. Find out about the use of drugs, vaccinations, micro-chipping, mind control, trans-humanism and 24/7 distractions such as non-stop sports, entertainments and the invasive ‘celebrity culture’ that attempts to pervade our whole lives.

    written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834.While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles, which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway) and being something of a non-conformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and after returning he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.

    The bestselling author of 'Damaged' tells the story of Dawn, a sweet and seemingly well-balanced girl whose outward appearance masks a traumatic childhood of suffering at the hands of the very people who should have cared for her.

    She provides a rare and fascinating insight into a world that has long since vanished. Mollie left school at age fourteen and became a scullery maid for a wealthy gentleman with a mansion house in London’s Knighsbridge and a Tudor manor in Norfolk.            Even though Mollie's days were long and grueling and included endless tasks, such as polishing doorknobs, scrubbing steps, and helping with all of the food prep in the kitchen, she enjoyed her freedom and had a rich life. Like any bright-eyed teenager, Mollie also spent her days daydreaming about boys, dresses, and dances. She became fast friends with the kitchen maid Flo, dated a sweet farmhand, and became secretly involved with a brooding, temperamental footman. Molly eventually rose to kitchen maid for Lord Islington and then cook for the Earl of Leicester's niece at the magnificent Wallington Hall.

    In Don't Look Behind You, Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell.

    In the decades since his death in September 1973, millions have read THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and THE SILMARILLION and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in South Africa in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood and brought up in near-poverty. He served in the first World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost many of the closest friends he'd ever had. After the war he returned to the academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford where he was a close friend of C.S. Lewis and the other writers known as The Inklings.Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while grading essay papers he found himself writing 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit' -- and worldwide renown awaited him. Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE SILMARILLION and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century's most cherished author.

    He was also a murderer and a braggart, a shameless adventurer who at different times experienced both papal persecution and imprisonment, and the adulation of the royal court. Inn-keepers and prostitutes, kings and cardinals, artists and soldiers rub shoulders in the pages of his notorious autobiography: a vivid portrait of the manners and morals of both the rulers of the day and of their subjects. Written with supreme powers of invective and an irrepressible sense of humour, this is an unrivalled glimpse into the palaces and prisons of the Italy of Michelangelo and the Medici.

    Keys residents boarded up their shacks under an ominous sky and sank their skiffs in the mangroves. Atlantic tarpon raced between the Keys to the relative safety of the Gulf of Mexico. In Key West, Ernest Hemingway secured his stone house and his 38-foot boat Pilar against the oncoming storm. And yet, through the long Labor Day Weekend of 1935, the superintendents of three government work camps in the Florida Keys, which housed more than 600 World War I veterans building a highway across the islands, did virtually nothing to evacuate the men in their charge.In Hemingway's Hurricane, author Phil Scott chronicles the days of calamity when the low-lying Upper Florida Keys were stripped bare and submerged by the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the United States. From eyewitness accounts and depositions, he reconstructs the events in each camp as the hurricane made landfall—the terror, bravery, and sacrifices of men left to fend for themselves. He also explores why the train promised from Miami arrived too late to evacuate the men, and why those who tried to escape in their own vehicles were turned back by the National Guard. And he reveals Hemingway's horror when the novelist arrived in his boat two days after the storm to aid the veterans, only to discover that more than 250 had died in the storm, some sand-blasted by fierce winds, others skewered by flying timbers, and many simply blown out to sea.Ernest Hemingway's very public outrage over so many needless deaths spurred a congressional investigation that was widely dismissed as a whitewash. It was also a key factor in landing Hemingway on an FBI watch list, which contributed to his suicide twenty-six years later. In Hemingway's Hurricane, the Depression, bureaucratic failure, the cast-aside soldiers of an earlier war, a great novelist, and a killing storm come together in an American tragedy.The Final BlowThey were the forgotten members of the Lost Generation, traumatized veterans of the Great War who had struggled for years to claw their way back into the American Dream. Described by one journalist as "shell-shocked, Depression-shocked, and whiskey-shocked," they grasped for one last chance at redemption under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Six hundred of them were shuffled off to the Florida Keys to build a highway to Key West. On Labor Day Weekend 1935, the most intense hurricane ever to strike the U.S. took aim on their flimsy shacks, and the two men responsible for evacuating the veterans from harm's way waited too long.After the storm, Ernest Hemingway took his boat from his home in Key West to aid the veterans in the Upper Keys. But he found few survivors among the wreckage and bloated corpses, and his public cries of outrage bound him forever to the storm."Hemingway's Hurricane brilliantly and compellingly captures the events surrounding the 1935 storm, showing how human factors compounded the awful force of sky and sea."

    Julia Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to life the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.

    She writes songs about her anatomy, talks trash about her one-eyed rescue pug, and sexually harasses her husband, Stephen. And it pays the bills! Now, in her first-ever book, Laura recounts how she went from being a dangerously impulsive, broke, unemployable, suicidal, cocaine-addicted narcissist, crippled by fear and hopping from one toxic romance to the next…to a more-happy-than-not, somewhat rational, meditating, vegan yogi with good credit, a great marriage, a fantastic career, and four unfortunate-looking rescue animals. Still, above all, Laura remains an amazingly talented, adorable, and vulnerable, self-described…Idiot. With her signature brand of offbeat, no-holds-barred humor, Idiot introduces you to a wildly original—and undeniably relatable—new voice.Oh, the places I've peed --High school Hammer time --My summer of (possibly too much) freedom --How to ignore a hundred red flags --The Damon inside --A spoonful of sugar --Look, Mom! I'm on TV! --New beginnings (but, like, for real) --Two apartments and a home --Maggie: cat --Walking through fear

    p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px} Over the last forty years, Cousin Sal has made bets with doctors, lawyers, teachers, agents, bookies, writers, comedians, radio DJs, tv producers, baseball players, front office executives, bandleaders, movie stars, publicists, weed lab owners, hedge fund operators, and even professional wrestlers. From his early days growing up in Brooklyn and Long Island flipping baseball cards to now hosting podcasts and TV shows and managing several offshore accounts we don't talk about, Cousin Sal has truly become the average American sports fan's go to source for gambling tips. So here's how not to do it... With hilarious tales of love and loss, winning and (a lot) of losing, crazy family and fatherhood, and a life saga that inspired the Phil Collins' song, "Against All Odds," Cousin Sal has now written THE Vegas super-system, MIT-algorithmic, sharp-approved book for how to gamble like a pro -- or at least not how not to go broke and lose your kids to Child Protective Services.

    In barely six years, a small group of young, ambitious programmers in Silicon Valley built an $11.5 billion business out of the ashes of a failed podcasting company. Today Twitter boasts more than 200 million active users and has affected business, politics, media, and other fields in innumerable ways. Now Nick Bilton of the New York Times takes readers behind the scenes with a narrative that shows what happened inside Twitter as it grew at exponential speeds. This is a tale of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles as the four founders—Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Noah Glass—went from everyday engineers to wealthy celebrities, featured on magazine covers, Oprah, The Daily Show, and Time’s list of the world’s most influential people. Bilton’s exclusive access and exhaustive investigative reporting—drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails—have enabled him to write an intimate portrait of fame, influence, and power. He also captures the zeitgeist and global influence of Twitter, which has been used to help overthrow governments in the Middle East and disrupt the very fabric of the way people communicate.

    B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—and coordinated its daily life—at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings and funerals, gardens and playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home. For twenty-eight years, first as assistant to the chief usher, then as chief usher, he witnessed national crises and triumphs, and interacted daily with six consecutive presidents and first ladies, their parents, children and grandchildren, and houseguests—including friends, relatives, and heads of state.In Upstairs at the White House, West offers an absorbing and novel glimpse at America’s first families, from the Roosevelts to the Kennedys andthe Nixons. Alive with anecdotes ranging from the quotidian (Lyndon B. Johnson’s showerheads) to the tragic (the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination), West’s book is an enlightening and rich account of the American history that took place just behind the Palladian doors of the North Portico.