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Diary and Observations of Thomas Alva Edison
Par Dagobert D. Runes. 1987
Gain insight into the unique thinking and philosophy of the world&’s most prolific inventor with this collection of his writings.American…
scientist and businessman Thomas Edison contributed much to the well-being and comfort of our modern life. He gave us the electric light, the phonograph, and the motion-picture camera, along with more than one thousand other inventions. Edison was, as fellow inventor Guglielmo Marconi put it, &“one of the world&’s greatest benefactors.&” In this volume, editor Dagobert D. Runes presents Edison&’s diary along with a selection of his social and philosophical ideas taken from available notes, statements, and observations. Readers will discover that many of Edison&’s casual remarks made decades ago have a definite contemporary significance. His propositions in ethics, philosophy, music, and education show a rare combination of whimsy and deep sincerity.Calum's Road
Par Roger Hutchinson. 2011
This story of a Scottish lighthouse keeper&’s years-long quest to build a road and revive a town is &“an incredible…
testament to one man&’s determination&” (The Sunday Herald).Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature&’s Ondaatje Prize Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of the Scottish island of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago—until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. With his newly idle hours, he embarked upon a project: to build a road out of the settlement of Arnish—a road that he hoped would lead new generations of people to this quiet, beautiful place. And so, at the age of fifty-six, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the &“impossible&” road, using hand tools. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert, and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calum&’s Road, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable man&’s devotion to his visionary project. &“MacLeod defied powers [outside] his control in the only way he could . . . paints a compelling picture of the man.&” —Sunday Times &“Wonderful.&” —The Telegraph &“A gem of a book.&” —Alexander McCall SmithThe remarkable true story of Jovita Valdovinos, a Mexican revolutionary who disguised herself as a man to fight for her…
rights, told by her great-niece, award-winning author, Aida Salazar!Jovita soñaba con poder usar pantalones como sus hermanos Ramón y Luciano.Cuando su padre y sus hermanos marcharon a la Guerra Cristera a luchar por el derecho a practicar libremente su religión, ella quiso ayudar. Entonces sobrevino la tragedia, y Jovita se vio obligada a cortarse el pelo, ponerse pantalones y continuar la lucha. Disfrazada de hombre, se puso al mando de un batallón que la siguió sin dudar.Jovita dreamed of wearing pants like her brothers, Ramón and Luciano.When her father and brothers joined the Cristeros War to fight for the right to practice religion freely, she wanted to help. Then tragedy struck, compelling Jovita to cut her hair, put on pants, and continue the fight. Disguised as a man, she commanded a battalion who followed her without question.Love in a Time of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War
Par Florian Illies. 2021
An ingeniously orchestrated popular history brings to life the most pivotal decade of the twentieth centuryAs the Roaring Twenties wind…
down, Jean-Paul Sartre waits in a Paris café for a first date with Simone de Beauvoir, who never shows. Marlene Dietrich slips away from a loveless marriage to cruise the dive bars of Berlin. The fledgling writer Vladimir Nabokov places a freshly netted butterfly at the end of his wife&’s bed. Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Zelda and Scott, Dalí and Gala, Picasso and his many muses, Henry and June and Anaïs Nin, the entire extended family of Thomas Mann, and a host of other fascinating and famous figures make art and love, write and row, bed and wed and betray. They do not yet know that they, along with millions of others, will soon be forced to contemplate flight—or fight—as the world careens from one global conflict to the next.Recollections of Early Texas: Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins (Personal Narratives of the West)
Par John Holland Jenkins. 1958
&“[A] firsthand account by one who measured up to the demands of danger and hardships and lived to write about…
it . . . Invaluable . . . Well documented.&” —Library Journal As a teenager in the 1950s, John Holmes Jenkins set to work on collecting and editing his great-great-grandfather&’s writings about his experiences on the Texas frontier. John Holland Jenkins joined General Sam Houston&’s army at age thirteen after losing his stepfather at the Alamo. In addition to fighting the Mexicans, he faced peril from Indian warriors as well as the everyday difficulties of pioneer life. His reports on the events of the time were included in newspapers with very small readerships—and, his descendant would discover, were sometimes used word-for-word in respected history textbooks without any credit given to the source. This volume includes these memoirs of the Texas Republic and early statehood, along with illustrations, notes, biographical sketches, a bibliography, and an index. &“Fascinating . . . A commendable job.&” —The New York Times &“[These reminiscences] light up for whoever will read the earliest days of early English-speaking Texas.&” —J. Frank Dobie, from the forewordThe War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865
Par Janet Elizabeth Croon. 2018
A remarkable account of the collapse of the Old South and the final years of a young boy’s privileged but…
afflicted life.LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a horrific leg injury left him an invalid, the educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty twelve-year-old began keeping a diary in 1860—just as secession and the Civil War began tearing the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique manuscript of the demise of the Old South is published here for the first time in The War Outside My Window.LeRoy read books, devoured newspapers and magazines, listened to gossip, and discussed and debated important social and military issues with his parents and others. He wrote daily for five years, putting pen to paper with a vim and tongue-in-cheek vigor that impresses even now, more than 150 years later. His practical, philosophical, and occasionally Twain-like hilarious observations cover politics and the secession movement, the long and increasingly destructive Civil War, family pets, a wide variety of hobbies and interests, and what life was like at the center of a socially prominent wealthy family in the important Confederate manufacturing center of Macon. The young scribe often voiced concern about the family’s pair of plantations outside town, and recorded his interactions and relationships with servants as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family’s declining fortunes.Unbeknownst to LeRoy, he was chronicling his own slow and painful descent toward death in tandem with the demise of the Southern Confederacy. He recorded—often in horrific detail—an increasingly painful and debilitating disease that robbed him of his childhood. The teenager’s declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. “I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he wrote on March 17, 1863. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.” Morphine and a score of other “remedies” did little to ease his suffering. Abscesses developed; nagging coughs and pain consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he often wrote, “Saw off my leg.”The War Outside My Window, edited and annotated by Janet Croon with helpful footnotes and a detailed family biographical chart, captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South.Winner, 2018, The Douglas Southall Freeman AwardNurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero
Par Marissa Moss, John Hendrix. 2011
When Frank Thompson sees a recruitment poster for the new Union army, he’s ready and willing to enlist. Except Frank…
isn’t his real name. In fact, Frank is really Sarah Emma Edmonds, in disguise. Only nineteen years old, Sarah has already been dressing as a man for three years and living on the run in order to escape an arranged marriage. She’s tasted freedom, and as far as she’s concerned, there’s no going back. Eager to fight for the North during the Civil War, Sarah joins a Michigan infantry regiment. She excels as a soldier and even takes on the grueling task of nursing the wounded. Because of her heroism, she is asked to become a spy, cross enemy lines, and infiltrate a Confederate camp. For her first mission, Sarah must once again disguise herself and rely on the kindness of enslaved people to help her do her job. This incredible true story of a brave young woman who makes an unlikely choice to fight for her country is one that should not be lost to history.The Lost Queen: The Life and Tragedy of the Prince Regent's Daughter
Par Anne M. Stott. 2020
A look at the tragically short life of the only daughter of Britain’s King George IV who won the heart…
of a nation.As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents’ marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy. When she broke off her engagement to a Dutch prince, her father put her under virtual imprisonment, and she endured a period of profound unhappiness. But she held out for the freedom to choose her husband, and when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, she finally achieved contentment. Her happiness was cruelly cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of twenty-one, only eighteen months later. A shocked nation went into mourning for its “people’s princess,” the queen who never was.“This perspicacious study of Charlotte’s short life is superb. Anne Stott is an accomplished and highly readable biographer whose earlier subjects have included William Wilberforce and Hannah More. She wears her research lightly—which is not to say that the book is anything less than scholastic (quite the opposite). Highly recommended.” —Naomi Clifford, author of The Murder of Mary AshfordChasing Shadows: Memoirs of a Sixties Survivor
Par Fred Wilcox. 1996
CHASING SHADOWS tells the story of a young man who pays a heavy price for pursuing his own dream. When…
he announces that he intends to be a poet instead of a doctor, his working class family thinks he&’s gone crazy. They send him to psychiatrists who shoot electricity though his brain, warn him that he&’ll never hold a job, and confide that he will suffer from nervous breakdowns all his life. After a stint in a state mental hospital, he spends the &‘60's on the mean streets of New York City, not as a fair-weather hippie with a room of his own in Scarsdale whenever he tires of the hard life, but as a fugitive from everyone, and everything, he once loved.Discover the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright—a story for kids 6 to 12 about making ideas take flight The…
Wright brothers were the first people ever to build and fly an airplane, doing what many people at the time didn't think was possible. Before they made history with their airplane, Wilbur and Orville were curious kids who loved learning about the world around them and how it worked. They fell in love with the idea of flying and taught themselves everything they needed to know to make their dream come true. Explore how the Wright brothers went from young boys growing up in Ohio to world-famous inventors, aviators, and businessmen. How will their hard work and big imaginations inspire you? The Story of the Wright Brothers includes: Lasting change—Learn about how the Wright brothers' inventions changed how we live today. Helpful glossary—Find definitions for some of the more advanced words and ideas in the book. Visual timeline—Watch the Wright brothers progress from curious kids to famous flyers. Explore how Wilbur and Orville brought their dreams to life in this fun and colorful biography for kids.Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
Par Catherine Clinton. 2004
Every schoolchild knows of Harriet Tubman's heroic escape and resistance to slavery.But few readers are aware that Tubman went on…
to be a scout, a spy, and a nurse for the Union Army, because there has never before been a serious biography for an adult audience of this important woman.This is that long overdue historical work, written by an acclaimed historian of the antebellum era and the Civil War. Illiterate but deeply religious, Tubman left her family in her early 20s to escape to Philadelphia, then a hotbed of abolitionism.There she became the first and only woman, fugitive slave, and black to work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. So successful was she in spiriting away slaves that the state of Maryland put a $40,000 bounty on her head.Within a year of starting her work, fellow slaves and Northerners began referring to Tubman as 'Moses' because of how many people she had freed. With impeccable scholarship that draws on newly available sources and research into the daily lives of slaves, HARRIET TUBMAN is an enduring work on one of the most important figures in American history.&“A thoroughly enjoyable story of heroism and true friendship&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this is the true account of a…
German shepherd who was adopted by the Royal Air Force during World War II, flying countless combat missions and ultimately saving the life of his owner and dearest friend.In the winter of 1939, in the cold snow of no-man&’s-land, two loners met and began an extraordinary journey that would turn them into lifelong friends. One was an orphaned puppy, abandoned by his owners as they fled Nazi forces. The other was a different kind of lost soul—a Czech airman bound for the Royal Air Force and the country that he would come to call home. Airman Robert Bozdech stumbled across the tiny German shepherd—whom he named Ant—after being shot down on a daring mission over enemy lines. Unable to desert the puppy, Robert hid Ant inside his jacket as he escaped. In the months that followed, the pair would save each other&’s lives countless times as they flew together with RAF Bomber Command. Finally grounded after being injured on a flight mission, Ant refused to abandon his duty, and refusing food and sleep until they were reunited. By the end of the war, Robert and Ant had become true war heroes, and Ant was justly awarded the Dickin Medal, the &“Animal VC.&” With beautiful vintage black-and-white photos of Robert and Ant, The Dog Who Could Fly is a deeply moving story of loyalty in the face of adversity and the unshakable bond between a man and his best friend.&“The story of a remarkable Scottish family set against the great sweep of Scotland&’s history . . . [a] remarkable piece of research&”…
(Magnus Linklater, former Scottish editor of The Times). The Haldanes have been in Scotland for over eight hundred years, and their story illustrates many of the defining themes of Scotland&’s history. Haldanes played significant roles in the Bruce war of independence, the political upheavals which accompanied the establishment of the Stewart dynasty, the religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Darien Scheme and the Act of Union, the Jacobite rebellions, the development of the East India Company, and in the theological controversies of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, Haldanes are still to be found in the public eye with some influence on matters of national significance. In this book, Neil Stacy follows the fortunes of the family, highlighting the extraordinary contributions they have made in so many areas, as well as uncovering some of the more colorful episodes in the family&’s history, such as long-buried secrets of romance in the teeth of parental opposition, a military career threatened by a youthful liaison with a blackmailing barmaid, and an attempt to run a temperance hotel in the western Highlands which ended in high farce. &“For producing so many individuals of unusual distinction there can be few families to rival the Haldanes of Gleneagles. Neil Stacy does them proud, he relates their 900-year saga with clarity and wit.&” —John Keay, author of India: A History &“I had expected to be intrigued and entertained by this comprehensive history of the Haldanes of Gleneagles; and I was, abundantly.&” —Richard Holloway, former Bishop of EdinburghThe Elder Sons of George III: Kings, Princes, and a Grand Old Duke
Par Catherine Curzon. 2020
Follow the sensational lives of four Georgian Era royals through scandal, corruption, and coronation in this revealing family biography.For nearly…
sixty years, King George III reigned over a tumultuous kingdom. His health and realm were in turmoil, while family life held challenges of its own. From the corpulent Prinny and the Grand Old Duke of York, to a king who battled the Lords and the disciplinarian Duke of Kent, this is the story of George III’s elder sons.Born during half a decafde of upheaval, George, Frederick, William, and Edward defined an era. Their scandals intrigued the nation and their efforts to build lives outside their parents’ shadow led them down diverse paths. Whether devoting themselves to the military or to pleasure, every moment was captured in the full glare of the spotlight.The sons of George III were prepared from infancy to take their place on the world’s stage, but as the king’s health failed and the country lurched from one drama to the next, they found that duty was easier said than done. With scandalous romances, illegal marriages, rumors of corruption and even the odd kidnapping plot, their lives were luridly dramatic, and never, ever dull.Bandit Mentality: Hunting Insurgents in the Rhodesian Bush War, A Memoir
Par Lindsay O’Brien. 2017
A former officer of British South Africa&’s anti-terrorist unit recounts his experiences on the frontlines of the Rhodesian Bush war…
from 1976–1980. A native of New Zealand, Lindsay &‘Kiwi&’ O&’Brien served in the British South Africa Police Support Unit&’s anti-terrorist battalion. He traveled across the country as a section leader and a troop commander before joining the UANC political armies as trainer and advisor. The BSA Support Unit started poorly supplied and equipped, but the caliber of the men, mostly African, was second-to-none. Support Unit specialized in the &“grunt&” work inside Rhodesia with none of the flamboyant helicopter or cross-border raids carried out by the army. O&’Brien&’s war was primarily within selected tribal lands, seeking out and destroying Communist guerilla units in brisk close-range battles with little to no support. O&’Brien moved from the police to working with the initial UANC deployment in the Zambezi Valley where the poorly trained recruits had to learn fast or die. O&’Brien&’s account is a foreign-born perspective from a junior commander uninterested in promotion and the wrangling of upper command. He was decorated and wounded three times.Titanic: 'Iceberg Ahead'
Par James W. Bancroft. 2021
Using a unique approach, the author explores the disaster through the lives of fifty people linked to the sinking, from…
all walks of life and geographical regions.To have sailed on ‘the voyage of the century’ aboard White Star Line’s RMS Titanic – described at the time as ‘a floating palace’ – was like being one of the first passengers to fly on Concorde. On 10 April 1912, people from all walks of life began embarking on Titanic, then the largest ship afloat, for what was to be the trip of a lifetime on the ship’s maiden voyage across the north Atlantic. Many were looking forward to starting new lives in the United States. However, just before midnight on Sunday, 14 April 1912, Titanic’s crew began to send out distress signals stating, ‘We have struck an iceberg.' The liner had been steaming at speed when it collided with an enormous iceberg which stripped off her bilge under the waterline for more than 100 yards, opened up five of the front compartments and flooded the coal bunker servicing one of the boilers. The damage was fatal, and some three hours after the disaster began to unfold the last visible part of Titanic slipped beneath the waves. There were only sixteen lifeboats and four collapsible dinghies – which was completely insufficient for the number of passengers making the crossing. As a consequence, more than 1,500 passengers and crew died: two out of every three people onboard perished. Much has been written about the Titanic disaster, and it has been the subject matter for several films. The author is well-known for his depth of research and his attention to detail, and in a new style of format, he has selected fifty people involved in the disaster, and by using their specific eyewitness accounts he has managed to make the confusing situation much clearer, making it possible for the reader to experience the dreadful events as they unfolded. The book also includes biographical tributes to the fifty people, who came from all walks of life and geographical regions, telling who they were, their experiences during the disaster, and what happened to those who were fortunate enough to survive.Upstairs at the Roosevelts': Growing Up with Franklin and Eleanor
Par Curtis Roosevelt. 2017
Curtis Roosevelt knew what it was like to live with a president. His grandfather was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From the…
time Curtis, with his sister, Eleanor, and recently divorced mother, Anna Roosevelt Dall, moved into his grandparents’ new home—the White House—Curtis played, learned, slept, ate, and lived in one of the most famous buildings in the world with one of its most famous residents. Curtis Roosevelt offers anecdotes and revelations about the lives of the president and First Lady and the many colorful personalities in this presidential family. From Eleanor’s shocking role in the remarriage of Curtis’s mother to visits from naughty cousins and trips to the “Home Farm,” Upstairs at the Roosevelts’ provides an intimate perspective on the dynamics of one of America’s most famous families and those who visited, were friends, and sometimes even enemies.William Lyon Mackenzie King: Dreams and Shadows
Par Lian Goodall. 2003
Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was Canadas tenth and longest serving prime minister and an important figure on the international scene, especially…
during the Second World War. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of Mackenzie King.Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Par Arthur Krystal. 2023
Surely enough has been written about F. Scott Fitzgerald, the man who coined "the Jazz Age" and symbolized the Roaring…
Twenties, whose very name conjures up a meteoric rise and an equally spectacular fall? But the better question might be, Why has so much ink been spent on a writer who completed only four novels, who fell from grace in the 1930s only to be resurrected twenty years later? The answer, according to the cultural critic Arthur Krystal, "is the problem that is Fitzgerald."Drawn to the glitter of fame but aspiring to the empyrean heights of Joseph Conrad and James Joyce, Fitzgerald careened from the perfection of The Great Gatsby to the hack world of Hollywood screenwriting, penning stories that were either brilliant distillations of the age or superficial works of fiction. Like America itself, Fitzgerald was a work in progress, a self-created and conflicted human being striving for ideals that neither he nor the nation could ever live up to. Beset by contradictions, buoyed by hope, fueled by alcohol, unable to settle permanently in any one place, Fitzgerald possessed what John Updike aptly described as "an aptitude for chaos and a dream of order."In this unusual and concise biography—more a layering of impressions than a chronological guide—Krystal gives us not only the peripatetic and turbulent life of a cultural icon but also the intellectual sweep of a period in history that created our modern America. Some Unfinished Chaos delivers a nuanced portrait of a man whose various sides embodied the trends, passions, and pursuits of the imperfect society that both glorified and dismissed him.A Refugee at Hanover Tavern: The Civil War Diary of Margaret Wight (Civil War Ser.)
Par The Hanover Tavern Foundation. 2013
An account of life on the home front written by a Southern woman trying to survive the daily struggles of…
the Civil War. The Hanover Tavern outside Richmond was a place of refuge during the Civil War. Life at the Tavern was not always safe as residents weathered frequent Union cavalry raids on nearby railroads, bridges, and farms. Margaret Copland Brown Wight and some of her family braved the war at the Tavern from 1862 until 1865 in the company of a small community of refugees. She kept a diary to document each hardship and every blessing—a day of rain after weeks of drought, news of her sons fighting in the Confederate armies, or word from her daughter caught behind enemy lines. Wight&’s diary, discovered more than a century after the war, is a vital voice from a time of tumult. Join the Hanover Tavern Foundation as the diary is presented here for the first time. Includes photos