Book picks similar to
Tales of Old Prague Houses by Magdalena Wagnerová
prague
european-culture
european-history
fairy-tales
Hovhannes Tumanyan's Fairy Tales (Language: Armenian)
Հովհաննես Թումանյան - 1930
His work was mostly written in tragic, sometimes humorous form, as in this title, often centering on the harsh lives of villagers in the Lori region. Tumanyan's inspiration for his writing came considerably from his parents. He was born in the village of Dsegh in the Province of Lori, Armenia. With his father was an offspring of an Armenian princely family of Tumanian (branch of the Mamikonians) and the village's priest and his mother an avid storyteller with a particular interest in fables, Tumanyan had incorporated many of the themes from his mother's stories and his father's preachings into his writings. Tumanyan is usually regarded in Armenian circles as "All-Armenian poet." He earned this title when the Catholicos of Armenia had ordered that Armenian refugees from the west not enter certain areas of his church and house, since he is considered to be "The Catholicos of all Armenians." Tumanyan in response decried that decision claiming that the refugees could seek relief in the Catholicos' quarters under order of "The Poet of all Armenians."
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968
Heda Margolius Kovály - 1973
It also illuminates the chaotic life of a nation during the Stalin era.
Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
Peter Demetz - 1997
In Prague in Black and Gold, Peter Demetz strips away sentimentalities and distortions and shows how Czechs, Germans, Italians, and Jews have lived and worked together for over a thousand years. .
Truman Fires MacArthur: (ebook excerpt of Truman)
David McCullough - 2010
An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.
A Love Sealed at Sunrise
Carol Colyer - 2020
Being rather desperate, when her mother comes to her with a mail-order-bride ad and a set of heart-warming letters from the author, she jumps at her only chance and goes west. Upon her arrival, instead of the eloquent and thoughtful man portrayed in the letters, she finds a hard-working rancher and father, rather short on words and emotionally distant. Although shocked at first, Catherine can’t help but feel charmed by his looks and his kind soul. Will she ever have the chance to break through the walls around his heart before it’s too late?Elias is a widower set on trying to create a better life for his children, but running his ranch on the outskirts of town with two kids is far too demanding. Under these complicated circumstances, looking for a mail-order bride to help him shoulder the responsibilities of the ranch and childrearing, seems to be the simplest solution. However, when Catherine arrives looking breathtaking, he realizes that his life will never be the same again. Expressing his emotions has always been quite a challenge for him, but Catherine makes him want to try. How will he finally trust his heart and let go of his trauma in order to fully devote himself to her?Right when the two of them start to feel closer to each other, a shadow from Catherine’s past appears, threatening to destroy everything they hold dear. Will they let the past ruin their newly created dreams, or will the sunlight of their love destroy any darkness heading towards them menacingly?
Family Feeling
Judith Saxton - 1987
Hywel Fletcher was born the day his father was killed in the pit, and is bitterly resented by his mother. And Huw Pettigrew is the much-loved and hard-working eldest child in a respected working family. Dot and Hywel dream of a contented future caring for their land, while Huw's dreams are more like nightmare . . . Yet when tragedy strikes it is Huw's vision which brings the three together and gives each of them, in the end, their heart's desire.
The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination
Christopher Fulton - 2018
Kennedy. Through Lincoln, crucial evidence ended up in Christopher's hands—evidence that was going to be used to facilitate a new future for America. But the U.S. government's position was clear: that evidence had to be confiscated and classified, and the truth hidden away from the public. Christopher was sent to federal prison for years under a sealed warrant and indictment. The Inheritance, Christopher's personal narrative, shares insider information from his encounters with the Russian Government, President Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Clinton White House, the U.S. Justice Department, the Secret Service, and the Kennedy family themselves. It reveals the true intentions of Evelyn Lincoln and her secret promise to Robert Kennedy—and Christopher's secret promise to John F. Kennedy Jr. The Inheritance explodes with history-changing information and answers the questions Americans are still asking, while pulling them through a gauntlet of some of the worst prisons this country has to offer. This book thrillingly exposes the reality of American power, and sheds light on the dark corners of current corruption within the executive branch and the justice and prison systems.
A Rose Among Thorns
Rosie Goodwin - 2009
So Sassy is devastated when her father marries wealthy widow Elizabeth Bonner. Social climber Elizabeth despairs of a step-daughter who is more at ease with servants than those above stairs, and is jealous of Sassy's growing beauty which threatens to outshine her own daughter. Unwelcome and out of place in this unfamiliar world, Sassy often escapes to her old home on Tuttle Hill and the company of her childhood friends, brothers Thomas and Jack Mallabone. But the trio's bond is threatened by the consequences of her blind adoration for wayward Thomas, much to the dismay of Jack, who has long worshipped Sassy in secret...
4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land
Daniel Wolff - 2005
But behind this archetypal small-town landscape lies a complicated past.Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through 130 years of entwined social and musical history, touching on John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lymon on the way to the town Bruce was born to run from. Out of the details of local history-the boardwalk in the Gilded Age; the celebrities who passed through, from Stephen Crane to Martin Luther King; sensational murder trials; the birth of Mob control; and a devastating mid-century "race riot"-emerges a universal story of one small town's fortunes. Told with grace and full of fascinating detail, Daniel Wolff's tour across thirteen decades of the Fourth of July in Asbury Park captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream reduced to blight and decay, with gentrification as the one hope for a return to its glory days.
A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith
Timothy Egan - 2019
He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the biggest stories of our time: the collapse of religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and makes his way overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium.Making his way through a landscape laced with some of the most important shrines to the faith, Egan finds a modern Canterbury Tale in the chapel where Queen Bertha introduced Christianity to pagan Britain; parses the supernatural in a French town built on miracles; and journeys to the oldest abbey in the Western world, founded in 515 and home to continuous prayer over the 1,500 years that have followed. He is accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther.A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.One of Oprah's Must-Read Books of Fall 2019
Shooters: The Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling
Jonathan Snowden - 2012
From catch wrestling masters Strangler Lewis and Billy Robinson to pro-wrestling icons like Frank Gotch and Lou Thesz, from Olympic heroes Danny Hodge and Kurt Angle to the Japanese wrestler who trained the famous Gracie family and gave birth to the global phenomenon of MMA, Shooters takes you from the shadowy carnival tent and the dingy training hall to the bright lights of the squared circle and the Las Vegas glitz of the Octagon. This volume takes fans of pro wrestling and MMA from Billy Riley’s legendary Wigan Snake Pit to the rigorous UWF Dojo in Tokyo, and draws on meticulous research and original interviews with today’s tough guys.
The Burning Passion of a Fiery Lady
Henrietta Harding - 2020
They call her the "Widow Drake", because she is lonely and grieving, but there is much more around this mysterious widow. She carries secrets buried deep about her marriage that nobody should ever find out! For Susannah, the first glimpse of the tall, handsome master of horses will kindle something deep inside her, something that she never thought she would feel again. But with wounds from the past still bleeding, how can she ever hope to open her heart, and love again?When Jasper Stone arrives at The Willows, to tame the new colt the Widow Drake has purchased, he mistakenly thinks there is nothing exciting about his new assignment. He has been drifting through the country, trying to clear his mind from the painful events that forced him to leave home many months ago...But the Widow Drake is not the middle aged virago Jasper is anticipating. She is a young, beautiful woman; a passionate woman that might be dangerous. How can he hope to keep the fortress he has built around his heart intact?Jasper is not alone in trying to attract the beautiful Widow Drake. A man from her past holds the key to the painful secrets of her past, as well as threatens her very future. As Jasper and Susannah grow closer, she knows she is being drawn to him, as irresistibly as a moth to fire. Can she find the courage to open her heart, even if danger swirls all around her once again?"The Burning Passion of a Fiery Lady" is a historical romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
Bulfinch's Mythology
Thomas Bulfinch - 1855
The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood. The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant's Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them with literature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.
The Work and the Glory (Volumes 1-9)
Gerald N. Lund - 2012
Follow the Steed family on their incredible journey from New York to the Salt Lake Valley.
The Unstoppable Keeper
Lutz Pfannenstiel - 2009
A massive bestseller in Germany, this astonishing, fascinating and at times hilarious book relates a football career in which Lutz: Became the only person to have played professional football in all FIFA Confederations Was wrongly jailed for match fixing in Singapore spending 101 days in horrific conditions Signed for 25 teams (including Notts Forest, Wimbledon's Crazy Gang and Calgary) Stopped breathing three times after his heart stopped during a game Turned down mighty Bayern Munich to play in Malaysia Coached teams in such exotic locations as Norway, Namibia, Armenia and Cuba Kidnapped a Penguin! All this because he simply loved playing football and because, quite simply, goalkeepers are mad!"