Blood and Rain


Glenn Rolfe - 2015
    A safe, rural community. Summer is here. School is out and the warm waters of Emerson Lake await. But one man’s terrible secret will unleash a nightmare straight off the silver screen. Under the full moon, a night of terror and death re-awakens horrors long sleeping.Sheriff Joe Fischer, a man fighting for the safety of his daughter, his sanity and his community, must confront the sins of his past. Can Sheriff Fischer set Gilson Creek free from the beast hiding in its shadows, or will a small town die under a curse it can’t even comprehend?One night can—and will—change everything.

Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families


Peter Sichrovsky - 1988
    For, in Born Guilty, Peter Sichrovsky has confronted head-on the issue of war guilt at the most personal level: he has talked to the children (and grandchildren) of former Nazi war criminals in order to find out how they have dealt with this burden of "inherited guilt."What did they really know about their parents' wartime activities, and how did they find out? More deeply, how did they react as suspicions hardened into certain knowledge--with rejection, "understanding," or confusion? And how will they transmit this knowledge to their own children?Peter Sichrovsky, a distinguished Austrian journalist, whose widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land sensitively portrayed the lives of the children of Jewish victims living in Germany and Austria today, here turns his attention to the children of the perpetrators. His penetrating and often moving interviews with the sons and daughters of Nazis, some famous, some not, convey perhaps as never before the painful struggle to accept and come to terms with the terrible burden of their parents' guilt.

Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made


David Halberstam - 1999
    With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph.In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him in to history's greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money


Carrie Gracie - 2019
    But women often get paid less than men, even when they're doing equal work.Mostly they don't know because pay is secret. But what if a woman finds out? What should she do? What should her male colleague do? What should the boss do?Equal is the inside story of how award-winning journalist Carrie Gracie challenged unequal pay at the BBC, alongside a wider investigation into why men and women are still paid unequally. It's a book that will open your eyes, fix your resolve and give you the tools to act - and act now.

This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe


Robert Tombs - 2021
    Islands cannot have the same history as continental plains. The United Kingdom is a European country, but not the same kind of European country as Germany, Poland or Hungary. For most of the 150 centuries during which Britain has been inhabited it has been on the edge, culturally and literally, of mainland Europe.In this succinct book, Tombs shows that the decision to leave the EU is historically explicable - though not made historically inevitable - by Britain's very different historical experience, especially in the twentieth century, and because of our more extensive and deeper ties outside Europe. He challenges the orthodox view that Brexit was due solely to British or English exceptionalism: in choosing to leave the EU, the British, he argues, were in many ways voting as typical Europeans.

Forensic Science of CSI


Katherine Ramsland - 2001
    This fascinating new book - written by an acclaimed biographer with a master's degree in forensic psychology - goes behind the crime-solving techniques dramatized on the TV show to examine the reality of these cutting-edge procedures.From DNA typing and ballistics, to bitemark and blood pattern analysis, here are detailed accounts of the actual techniques used in today's crime investigations. Prominent experts in the field offer rare glimpses into cases ranging from missing persons to murder. For fans of the television show, as well as true crime buffs and science readers - this is the real thing. "With the mind of a true investigator, Katherine Ramsland demystifies the world of forensics with authentic and vivid detail." (John Douglas) "Fascinating...this book is a must for anyone who wonders how the real crime-solvers do it." (Michael Palmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Patient.) Author Biography: Katherine Ramsland has a master's degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She has published thirteen books, including biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz, and has been translated into six languages. Her reference book on Anne Rice's work, The Vampire Companion, was a national bestseller. Next year Writer's Digest Press will publish Mental Judgment: A Guide for Writers to Forensic Psychology.

Humankind: Changing the World One Small Act At a Time


Brad Aronson - 2020
    Following her diagnosis, Brad spent most of the next two-and-a-half years either by her side as she received treatment or trying to shield their five-year-old son, Jack, from the worst of Mia’s illness. Amid the stress and despair of waiting for the treatment to work, Brad and Mia were met by an outpouring of kindness from friends, family, and even complete strangers.Inspired by the many demonstrations of "humankindness" that supported their family through Mia's recovery, Brad began writing about the people who rescued his family from that dark time, often with the smallest of gestures. But he didn't stop there. Knowing that simple acts of kindness transform lives across the globe every day, he sought out these stories and shares some of the best ones here.In HumanKind you’ll meet the mentor who changed a child’s life with a single lesson in shoe tying, the six-year-old who launched a global kindness movement, the band of seamstress grandmothers who mend clothes for homeless people, and more.Brad also provides dozens of ways you can make a difference through the simplest words and deeds. You’ll discover how buying someone a meal or sharing a little encouragement at the right time can transform someone’s world, as well as your own.The resource section at the back of the book provides guidance and organizations that will help you channel and amplify your own acts of kindness. Here you'll discover:• How you can fund a surgery to cure someone's blindness with a donation of less than $200.• Organizations through which you can provide a birthday gift for a child who otherwise wouldn't receive one.• Multiple places where you can send letters of encouragement to support hospitalized kids, lonely seniors, refugees, veterans and others.• And over fifty more ways you can change a life.HumanKind will touch your heart. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll be reminded of what really matters.

The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink


Maria Shriver - 2009
    Johnson called for a War on Poverty and enlisted Sargent Shriver to oversee it, the most important social issue of our day is once again the dire economic straits of millions of Americans. 1 in 3 Americans today live in poverty or teeter on the brink. 70 million are women and the children who depend on them. The fragile economic status of millions of American women is the shameful secret of the modern era—yet these women are also our greatest hope for change, and our nation’s greatest undervalued asset.The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink asks—and answers—big questions. Why are millions of women financially vulnerable when others have made such great progress? Why are millions of women struggling to make ends meet even though they are hard at work? What is it about our nation—government, business, family, and even women themselves—that drives women to the financial brink? And what is at stake?To answer these questions, we examined in detail three major cultural and ecoomic changes over the past 50 years: Women work more outside the home, but still earn less than men. Women lead more families on their own. Women today need higher education to enter the middle class. To forge a path forward that recognizes this reality, The Shriver Report brought together a power packed roster of big thinkers and talented contributors, including Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Lebron James, and challenged them to collaborate with us to develop fresh thinking around practical solutions. This report’s unique combination of academic research, personal reflections, authentic photojournalism, groundbreaking poll results, front line workers, and box office celebrities, is all focused on a single issue of national importance: women and the economy. In The Shriver Report, Davos meets Main Street. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Maria Shriver is a mother of four, a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer, a six-time New York Times best-selling author, and an NBC News Special Anchor covering the shifting roles, emerging power and evolving needs of women in modern life. Since 2009, Shriver has produced a groundbreaking series of Shriver reports that chronicle and explore seismic shifts in the American culture and society affecting women today. Shriver was California’s first lady from 2003 to 2010 and, during that time, she spearheaded what became the nation’s premier forum for women, The Women’s Conference.The Center for American Progress is an independent nonpartisan educational institute dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action. CAP develops new, progressive policy ideas, challenges the media to cover the issues that truly matter, and shapes the national debate. Founded in 2003 by John Podesta to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement, CAP is headed by Neera Tanden and based in Washington, DC. ABOUT THE SHRIVER REPORT The Shriver Report is a multi-platform project of A Woman's Nation, the nonprofit organization led by Maria Shriver that raises awareness, ignites conversation, and inspires impact around the defining issues and fundamental changes facing modern women.

Russia: A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East


Martin Sixsmith - 2011
    Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history.Marking the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of Russia and its unique place in the modern world.

A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century


J.W. Burrow - 2007
    The author sets out not to give us the history of academic discipline but a history of choices: the choice of pasts, and the ways they have been demarcated, investigated, presented and even sometimes learned from as they have changed according to political, religious, cultural, and (often most important) partisan and patriotic circumstances. Burrow aims, as well, to change our perceptions of the crucial turning points in the history of history, allowing the ideas that historians have had about both their own times and their founding civilizations to emerge with unexpected freshness.Burrow argues that looking at the history of history is one of the most interesting ways we have to understand the past. Certainly, this volume stands alone in its ambition, scale and fascination.

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World


Greg Grandin - 2014
    They weren’t. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse, acting as if they were humble servants. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception, he responded with explosive violence.Drawing on research on four continents, The Empire of Necessity explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event—an event that already inspired Herman Melville’s masterpiece Benito Cereno. Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, uses the dramatic happenings of that day to map a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas, capturing the clash of peoples, economies, and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.

A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti


A. Bartlett Giamatti - 1998
    He spoke out against player trading. He banned Pete Rose from baseball for gambling. He even asked sports fans to clean up their acts. Bart Giamatti was baseball's Renaissance man and its commissioner. In A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME, a collection of spirited, incisive essays, Giamatti reflects on the meaning of the game. Baseball, for him, was a metaphor for life. He artfully argues that baseball is much more than an American "pastime." "Baseball is about going home," he wrote, "and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need." And in his powerful 1989 decision to ban Pete Rose from baseball, Giamatti states that no individual is superior to the game itself, just as no individual is superior to our democracy. A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME is a thoughtful meditation on baseball, character, and values by one of the most eloquent men in the world of sport.

How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy


Julian Baggini - 2018
    One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call 'philosophy' in the West is not even half the story. Julian Baggini sets out to expand our horizons in How the World Thinks, exploring the philosophies of Japan, India, China and the Muslim world, as well as the lesser-known oral traditions of Africa and Australia's first peoples. Interviewing thinkers from around the globe, Baggini asks questions such as: why is the West is more individualistic than the East? What makes secularism a less powerful force in the Islamic world than in Europe? And how has China resisted pressures for greater political freedom? Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and paying as much attention to commonalities as to differences, Baggini shows that by gaining greater knowledge of how others think we take the first step to a greater understanding of ourselves.

Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People


Jonathan Dimbleby - 2008
    Even today it remains a country little understood by the West. But as a resurgent world power, with an energy-rich economy, we ignore Russia at our peril.In this timely and revealing portrait, distinguished author and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby crosses eight time zones and covers 10,000 miles, from Murmansk in the Arctic Circle to the Asian city of Vladivostok, in an attempt to get beneath the skin of modern Russia. Travelling by road, rail and boat, his epic journey takes him from the neo-classical splendour of St Petersburg to remote and inaccessible parts of Siberia. At the heart of this magisterial account are Jonathan's encounters with a diverse range of ordinary Russians - from urban intellectuals and the new class of entrepreneurs, to impoverished peasants and Russia's ethnic minorities struggling to cling to their distinctive identities.Jonathan was the only British television journalist to interview President Gorbachev during the Cold War, and, returning to Russia for the first time since those days, he discovers a land transformed. But despite economic progress, he finds aspects of Russian society deeply troubling, and takes an unflinchingly critical look at the way Russia has been run during the Putin years.For Jonathan, crossing the immense Russian landmass became as much an interior journey as an exterior one, and the book contains painfully honest passages as he struggles to meet the challenges of an arduous film trip against the backdrop of great turbulence in his personal life. Filled with a dazzling array of historical and literary references, Russia - A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People is a riveting and illuminating account of modern Russia.

Bound For Distant Seas: A Voyage Alone to Asia Aboard the 28-Foot Sailboat Atom


James Baldwin - 2015
    His story is seasoned by his adventures during his first circumnavigation in 1984-86 as told in Across Islands and Oceans. Alone with little money aboard Atom, his now engineless 28-foot sailboat, James embarks on his odyssey without the comforts and equipment most sailors consider essential. Challenging himself to live as closely with the sea as possible, the author sets sail in 1987 from Florida, bound for new adventures on the distant shores of Asia. He does not return home again for 15 years. In this paean to the sea and foreign lands, the author recounts the best and worst of life on the ocean, visits to far-flung islands, and adventures amid throngs of humanity in some of the world’s most densely populated cities. This unvarnished physical and philosophical saga includes encounters with dead-eyed bureaucrats, native angels of mercy, newly discovered WWII wreckage, fellow expat adventurers, rogues and misfits. The journey takes many unplanned turns as the author faces near misses with lurking dangers, hikes across islands, finds temporary employment ashore, and immerses himself in foreign cultures. Along the way he is tested by sea and society, and he ultimately discovers the priceless treasures of heart and mind that he seeks. James invites you to come aboard Atom for the journey of a lifetime.