Niagara
Alec Soth - 2006
And as with his photographs of the Mississippi, these images are less about natural wonder than human desire. "I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers," says Soth, "the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion." The subject may be hot, but the pictures are quiet, the rigorously composed and richly detailed products of a large-format 8x10 camera. Working over the course of two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls, Soth edited the results of his labors down to a tight and surprising album. He depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots, pawnshop wedding rings and love letters from the subjects he photographed. We read about teenage crushes, workplace affairs, heartbreak and suicide. Oscar Wilde wrote, "The sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life." Niagara brings viewers both the passion and the disappointment--a remarkable portrayal of modern love and its aftermath.
Compacts and Cosmetics: Beauty From Victorian Times to the Present Day (Women with Style)
Medeleine Marsh - 2009
In this fascinating book, vintage accessories’ expert, Madeleine Marsh, discusses just what makes compacts so desirable and reveals their hidden secrets from cameras to cigarettes. Madeleine shows what to buy and where, what to spot when buying and how to make the most of your compacts, vintage cosmetics or beauty accessories.
The Upside of Hunger: A True Tale
Roxi Harms - 2018
the magnificently told story of a man who triumphed over the limitations of history to become his greatest self." The life he was born into was too small for Adam Baumann. But getting out in the midst of a world at war was dangerous.Born in an isolated village in eastern Hungary between the great wars, Adam yearned for more. More excitement, more freedom, more knowledge of the world... and often more food. Locked up for theft at age nine, Adam's life took one tumultuous turn after another. From a twelve-year-old stable hand on a nobleman's estate, to a fifteen-year-old shivering in a foxhole on the Eastern Front, Adam's hunger for a bigger life led him into spine tingling adventures, mind-numbing horror, heart-breaking tears, and terrifying brushes with death. Awakening in a makeshift hospital with a shattered left leg, Adam was catapulted into a series of captures and narrow escapes from enemy forces as Europe reeled from the final destruction and horror of WWII.Never standing still, he journeyed through war-torn landscapes to find and reunite his family, and began to build a life from the ashes, until the results of a medical examination at an American Embassy in Germany changed the course of his future forever.
Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent
Richard Kirshenbaum - 2015
Pot dealers draped in Dolce. Divorce settlements that include the Birkins at their current retail price. Air kisses, landing strips, and lounge-chair bribery. For most of us, the idea of life inside the golden triad of Park Avenue, Sagaponack, and St. Barths is just as exotic as the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Luckily, Richard Kirshenbaum has a VIP pass to the Upper East Side and is willing to share the wealth—of gossip. His New York Observer column on uptown social life provides a fascinating glimpse behind the gilded curtain into the swanky restaurants and eye-popping vacation destinations where the 1 percent gathers.Isn’t That Rich? features highlights from Kirshenbaum’s monthly column as well as several brand-new essays. From cash-strapped blue bloods willing to trade their good names for a taste of nouveau riche treasure to the fine art of donning a cashmere sweater in Capri, our intrepid correspondent exposes the preoccupations of the posh. His insider sources may be anonymous, but “his up-to-the-minute portrait of today’s 1 percent is both insightful and a joy to read, no matter what tax bracket you’re in.” (Mortimer Zuckerman)
History of Australia and New Zealand From 1606 to 1890
Alexander Sutherland - 2012
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
Luc Sante - 1991
This is not the familiar saga of mansions, avenues, and robber barons, but the messy, turbulent, often murderous story of the city's slums; the teeming streets--scene of innumerable cons and crimes whose cramped and overcrowded housing is still a prominent feature of the cityscape.Low Life voyages through Manhattan from four different directions. Part One examines the actual topography of Manhattan from 1840 to 1919; Part Two, the era's opportunities for vice and entertainment--theaters and saloons, opium and cocaine dens, gambling and prostitution; Part Three investigates the forces of law and order which did and didn't work to contain the illegalities; Part Four counterposes the city's tides of revolt and idealism against the city as it actually was.Low Life provides an arresting and entertaining view of what New York was actually like in its salad days. But it's more than simpy a book about New York. It's one of the most provocative books about urban life ever written--an evocation of the mythology of the quintessential modern metropolis, which has much to say not only about New York's past but about the present and future of all cities.
Heroic Mormon Women: True Stories from the Lives of Sixteen Amazing Women in Church History
Ivan J. Barrett - 2012
"As he has recorded the events of history, man has often forgotten to mention the hand that rocked the cradle." These remarkable Mormon women gave their all for the gospel of Christ. With drama and emotion stronger than that found in any work of fiction, the inspirational stories in Heroic Mormon Women will bring to light the incredible strength, virtue, and faith of the heroic women of the restoration. Some women included in this book are: Rachel Ivins Grant Jane Grover Jane Elizabeth Manning James Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball Heroic Marys Elizabeth Claridge McCune Sarah Pea Rich Aurelia Spencer Rogers Amanda Barnes Smith Eliza Roxey Snow Amanda Barnes Smith Lucy Mack Smith Emma Hale Smith
Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
Robert Sullivan - 2004
In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing. With an all-new Afterword by the author
After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
Joseph Weismann - 2017
After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.
Bad Trips
Keath Fraser - 1991
The entries in this collection take us to the farthest extremes of travel with tales of danger, disorientation and bemused discomfort; combines reportage, fiction and poetry representing some of the best-known writers of our time.
The Beatles and Me On Tour
Ivor Davis - 2014
In this first-ever chronicling of that revolutionary tour from the inside, author Ivor Davis serves up the stories behind the stories as only an insider can.In the rowdy and riotous recollections of THE BEATLES AND ME ON TOUR, Ivor Davis, then a reporter for the London Daily Express, shares his unrestricted access to the Liverpool lads as a member of the Beatles entourage. From inside the band’s hotel suites to the concert arenas to the private jets, the madness and magic plays out through Davis’ personal accounts of hanging with the Beatles for thirty-four jam-packed days.Go behind the scenes for all-night Monopoly games with John Lennon, witness the Beatles’ legendary living-room jam with Elvis, and be there the night Bob Dylan introduces the band to pot. Roll up for this definitive account of the legendary band at a critical moment in the history of rock ’n’ roll.
The Biscuit Girls
Hunter Davies - 2014
To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years.Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.
The Usurper King: The Fall of Richard II and the Rise of Henry of Bolingbroke, 1366-99
Marie Louise Bruce - 1986
Byzantium
Robert Wernick - 2016
Here, too, are the stories of the extraordinary emperors and generals who brought the empire into being and ultimately presided over its demise. We witness the glittering city of Constantinople from its rise to greatness through its deadly conclusion. Though Byzantium has faded away, its everlasting contributions to our world today are revealed in this fascinating history.
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
Thomas J. Sugrue - 2008
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North