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Nonfiction
Allergy-Free Kids by Robin Nixon Pompa
Based on recent groundbreaking studies that will change the way parents feed their children, Allergy-Free Kids is a revolutionary guide to preventing food allergies.
When her infant daughter was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies, Robin Nixon Pompa found Dr. Gideon Lack, a clinical researcher on the verge of a breakthrough in allergy prevention and treatment that would heal her daughter and, later, her sons.
The secret: building acceptance of allergens through repeated careful feedings. Instead of avoiding eggs, nuts, and other allergens, as previous recommendations held, most parents should introduce them into their children’s diets, “early, carefully and often, for at least the first five years of life.” This life-changing approach is being embraced by the medical community, especially for peanut allergy, and is reflected in new guidelines from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the National Institutes of Health and other major medical associations.
Allergy-Free Kids includes a concise, easy-to-understand overview of the research as well as seventy simple and delicious kid-friendly recipes to help parents integrate unfamiliar allergen foods into a child’s diet. Divided by allergen, Allergy-Free Kids contains sections on Eggs, Peanuts and Tree Nuts, Cow’s Milk, Sesame, Wheat and Fish. It also discusses other foods, such as kiwi and soy, which are increasingly causing allergic reactions. The book includes feeding advice, and maintenance doses, followed by recipes suitable for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, including Open Sesame Sweet Potatoes, Nut Flour Crackers, Cocoa “Puffs” and Eggs-Pretending-to-be-Muffins.
Following the new medical guidelines, Allergy-Free Kids empowers parents to help their kids avoid a lifelong struggle with food allergies—and bring variety and joy back to family meals.
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An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal
Award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems.
It is well documented that our healthcare system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn’t just explain the symptoms; she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. Rosenthal spells out in clear and practical terms exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship, explaining step by step the workings of a profession sorely lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate a byzantine system and also to demand far-reaching reform.
Breaking down the monolithic business into its individual industries–the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, drug manufacturers–that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal tells the story of the history of American medicine as never before. The situation is far worse than we think, and it has become like that much more recently than we realize. Hospitals, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Americans are dying from routine medical conditions when affordable and straightforward solutions exist.
Dr. Rosenthal explains for the first time how various social and financial incentives have encouraged a disastrous and immoral system to spring up organically in a shockingly short span of time. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
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Arnie by Tom Callahan
In this definitive biography, veteran sportswriter Tom Callahan shines a spotlight on one of the greatest golfers ever to play the game, Arnold Palmer.
The winner of more than ninety championships, including four Masters Tournaments, Arnold Palmer was a legend in twentieth century sports: a supremely gifted competitor beloved for his powerful hitting, his nerve on the greens, and his great rapport with fans. Perhaps above all others, Palmer was the reason golf’s popularity exploded, as the King of the links helped define golf’s golden age along with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
In addition to his talent on the golf course, Palmer was a brilliant entrepreneur off it, and one of the first sportsmen to create his own successful marketing brand. Forging an alliance with sports agent Mark McCormick, Palmer parlayed his popularity into lucrative deals, and helped pave the way for the multi-million-dollar contracts that have become standard for stars across all sports. But beyond his business acumen, Palmer was always a larger-than-life character, and Arnie recounts a host of unforgettable anecdotes from a long life in the spotlight.
Tom Callahan knew Palmer well for many years, and now pays tribute to this golfing icon. Filled with great stories from the key people in Palmer’s life, Arnie is an entertaining and illuminating portrait of a remarkable man and his extraordinary legacy.
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Ballplayer by Chipper Jones
Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones—one of the greatest switch-hitters in baseball history—shares his remarkable story, while capturing the magic nostalgia that sets baseball apart from every other sport.
Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame–worthy statistics during a nineteen-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small town Pierson, Florida. A kid who grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad dreaming that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer.
With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency. His journey begins with learning the art of switch-hitting and takes off after the Braves made him the number one overall pick in the 1990 draft, setting him on course to become the linchpin of their lineup at the height of their fourteen-straight division-title run.
Ballplayer takes readers into the clubhouse of the Braves’ extraordinary dynasty, from the climax of the World Series championship in 1995 to the last-gasp division win by the 2005 “Baby Braves”; all the while sharing pitch-by-pitch dissections of clashes at the plate with some of the all-time great starters, such as Clemens and Johnson, as well as closers such as Wagner and Papelbon. He delves into his relationships with Bobby Cox and his famous Braves brothers—Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, among them—and opponents from Cal Ripken Jr. to Barry Bonds. The National League MVP also opens up about his overnight rise to superstardom and the personal pitfalls that came with fame; his spirited rivalry with the New York Mets; his reflections on baseball in the modern era—outrageous money, steroids, and all—and his special last season in 2012.
Ballplayer immerses us in the best of baseball, as if we’re sitting next to Chipper in the dugout on an endless spring day.
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The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
The gripping true story of the origins of the mafia in America—and the brilliant Italian-born detective who gave his life to stop it
*Film rights optioned by Paramount Studios, starring Leonardo DiCaprio*
Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public and the Black Hand’s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand’s activities spread far beyond New York’s borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country’s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino’s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand’s power would take him all the way to Sicily—but at a terrible cost.
Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.
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Blast the Sugar Out by Ian K Smith
Blast The Sugar Out! is the ultimate guide to eating well—and frequently—while dieting or making a lifestyle change after a diagnosis of diabetes or pre-diabetes. This book includes more than two dozen food swaps—vegetable and fruit flavored waters instead of soda, grains instead of rice, oven-baked sweet potatoes instead of fries—which are key to an achievable and permanent change in lifestyle.
Dr. Ian provides structured meal plans and more than 50 easy-to-follow recipes that are both nutritious and low or no sugar make Blast the Sugar Out! both a great primer for first-timers and a rich source of ideas for more knowledgeable readers.
The book includes exercise routines and motivation to get bodies back on a healthy track and kick start weight loss.
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Castles by Marc Morris
Beginning with their introduction in the eleventh century, and ending with their widespread abandonment in the seventeenth, Marc Morris explores many of the country’s most famous castles, as well as some spectacular lesser-known examples.
At times this is an epic tale, driven by characters like William the Conqueror, King John and Edward I, full of sieges and conquest on an awesome scale. But it is also by turns an intimate story of less eminent individuals, whose adventures, struggles and ambitions were reflected in the fortified residences they constructed. Be it ever so grand or ever so humble, a castle was first and foremost a home.
To understand castles—who built them, who lived in them, and why—is to understand the forces that shaped medieval Britain.
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Citrus by Catherine Phipps
Citrus fruits are the most exiciting family of ingredients with which to cook. They satisfy almost every part of the palate – sweet, sour, bitter, and umami-enhancing, how many other foods are as versatile and transformative?
From the smallest squeeze of lemon, to the zing of lime zest, citrus fruits are almost magical. No longer seen as exotic, they are truly international. take the humble lime: cornerstone of the American key lime pie, fragrant in Thai curries, fresh in Mexican guacamole, used to cook raw fish in South American ceviche, pickled in India, and dried in the Middle East.
Citrus offers 150 inspiring recipes that celebrate these wonderful fruits. Through fresh salads, soups, seafood, Asian and Mediterranean-influenced meat dishes, preserves and pickles, to the world of sweet pies, cakes, and cocktails, Catherine Phipps explores the myriad uses of oranges and lemons, and all things in between. Her recipes are straightforward, easy to follow, and work perfectly every time. Citrus is a vibrant, colorful source of delight and inspiration.
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Climate of Hope by Michael Bloomberg
In 2006, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth set off a heated political debate when it threatened that inaction on climate change would lead to a dark and frightening future by 2016.
Well, that ten year window has closed—and we have neither resolved the threats to our climate, nor gone past the point of no return. To Mayor Bloomberg and Carl Pope, it’s clear that to treat climate change as either a lost cause or a non-issue is the wrong approach. Global leaders are stymied by the enormity of the doom-and-gloom scenarios. So what happens when you tell leaders that they can definitely—right now, this year—reduce the number of children who have asthma attacks, save thousands of Americans from dying of respiratory disease, cut energy bills, increase the security of our energy supply, make it easier for everyone to get around town, increase the number of jobs in their community—all while increasing the long-term stability of the global climate? That is actionable. That future is within our grasp.
The changing climate should be seen as a series of discreet, manageable problems that should be attacked from all angles, each with a solution that can make our society healthier and our economy stronger. In these times, when it’s less and less clear if the federal government will be willing to tackle climate change, Bloomberg and Pope lay out a powerfully persuasive argument about how cities can play an outsize role in fighting and reversing the dangerous effects of a warming planet. Together they lay out the economic and personal health reasons for businesses and individual citizens to support climate change action plans.
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Drain the Swamp by Ken Buck
Lavish parties. Committee chairmanships for sale. Pay-to-play corruption. Backroom arm-twisting. Votes on major legislation going to the highest bidder. Welcome to Washington, D.C., the swamp that President Donald Trump was elected to drain.
Congressman Ken Buck is blowing the whistle on the real-life House of Cards in our nation’s capital. Elected in 2014 as president of one of the largest Republican freshman classes ever to enter Congress, Buck immediately realized why nothing gets done in Congress, and it isn’t because of political gridlock—in fact, Republicans and Democrats work together all too well to fleece taxpayers and plunge America deeper into debt.
“It is an insular process directed by power-hungry party elites who live like kings and govern like bullies,” Buck reports.
Buck has witnessed first-hand how the unwritten rules of Congress continually prioritize short-term political gain over lasting, principled leadership. When Buck tangled with Washington power brokers like former Speaker John Boehner, he faced petty retaliation. When he insisted Republicans keep their word to voters, he was berated on the House floor by his own party leaders. When other members of Congress dared to do what they believed to be right for America instead of what the party bosses commanded, Buck saw them stripped of committee positions and even denied dining room privileges by the petty beltway bullies.
In Drain the Swamp, Buck names names and tells incredible true stories about what really happened behind closed doors in Congress during legislative battles that have ensued over the last two years including budget, continuing resolutions, omnibus, trade promotion authority, Iran, and more. If the Trump administration is going to bring real change to Washington, it first needs to get the whole story—from deep inside the swamp.
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Eat Delicious by Dennis Prescott
Five years ago, Dennis Prescott was a Canadian musician who didn’t know how to cook. After cooking his way through a few Jamie Oliver books, he realized that food, not music, was his passion and he threw himself into not just creating delicious recipes, but styling and photographing them in a way that will leave you drooling. Now, in just three years, Dennis has amassed a devoted following of over 140,000 people on Instagram and has partnered with institutions like Food & Wine and Eater. In Eat Delicious, his debut cookbook, Dennis focuses on the food he loves best—comfort food from around the globe that can be prepared by any home cook, no matter what their skill level. Stuffed with gorgeous, full-colour photography that will leave you hungry, Eat Delicious is a perfect fit for lovers of Jamie Oliver or Smitten Kitchen.
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Food Swings by Jessica Seinfeld
From bestselling cookbook author Jessica Seinfeld comes an all-new collection of 125 delectable recipes for the way we eat today: sometimes healthy, sometimes indulgent—always satisfying. We can eat totally clean sometimes, while other times we like to reach for more traditional calorie-filled comfort foods. Food Swings offers simple and delicious recipes that speak to both sides of your personality. One half of the book provides recipes for your controlled side, the other half for when you need to feel the wind in your hair. All of it is meant to be enjoyed equally in this fun, something-for-everyone book for home cooks and eaters everywhere.
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The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple
The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actions–and inactions–have defined the course of our country
What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United States–as did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as “the gatekeepers,” wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS’s agenda, and–most crucially–enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks.
Through extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeen living chiefs and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker’s expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution–and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout might have been prevented by a more effective chief.
Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details, The Gatekeepers offers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington.
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H.H. Holmes by Adam Selzer
In 1896, H.H. Holmes, “arch fiend of the century,” was paid to write a “confession” by newspapers. Published a month before his execution, he confessed to twenty-seven murders. Today he’s suspected of far more, but many of those he confessed to were actually lies. Some of the “victims” were even still alive. But clues found in his famous “murder castle” backed many of his stories up.
So, how much of the confession was real? Did it contain dark hints that he was leaving a lot out? Holmes, the star of DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, is now often said to be the most prolific serial killer in American history.
In fact, two confessions were written at the same time – one for one paper, and one for another. THE CONFESSION OF HH HOLMES contains the complete 10,000 confession as published in the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, as well as detailed notes as to differences between that version and the slightly different one that appeared the same day in THE NEW YORK JOURNAL. In addition, there are over 20,000 words of new explanation and analysis, based on new findings and evidence from 1895, telling what we know of the true stories of each crime he wrote about. Also included is the bizarre, completely different “confession” published a day earlier in another paper, which included Holmes’ most famous line: “I was born with the devil in me….”
CHICAGO UNBELIEVABLE asserts that the truth about Holmes will never really be known – most of the evidence has long since vanished, and the information that survives tends to be dubious. But the information and analysis of the confessions here is essential for anyone interested in trying to get to the bottom of the tantalizing mystery. Includes an active table of contents and active internal links for easy navigation, and more than a dozen illustrations.
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Hallelujah Anyway by Anne Lamott
From the bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow and Stitches comes a powerful exploration of mercy, its limitless (if sometimes hidden) presence, why we ignore it, and how we can embrace it.
“Mercy is radical kindness,” Anne Lamott writes in her enthralling and heartening book, Hallelujah Anyway. It’s the permission you give others–and yourself–to forgive a debt, to absolve the unabsolvable, to let go of the judgment and pain that make life so difficult.
In Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy Lamott ventures to explore where to find meaning in life. We should begin, she suggests, by “facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves.” It’s up to each of us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy everywhere–“within us and outside us, all around us”–and to use it to forge a deeper understanding of ourselves and more honest connections with each other. While that can be difficult to do, Lamott argues that it’s crucial, as “kindness towards others, beginning with myself, buys us a shot at a warm and generous heart, the greatest prize of all.”
Full of Lamott’s trademark honesty, humor and forthrightness, Hallelujah Anyway is profound and caring, funny and wise–a hopeful book of hands-on spirituality.
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Hamlet Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole
Two years. 193,000 miles. 190 countries. One play. For the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth the Globe Theatre undertook an unparalleled journey, to take Hamlet to every country on the planet, to share this beloved play with the entire world. The tour was the brainchild of Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Globe, and in Hamlet Globe to Globe, Dromgoole takes readers along with him.
From performing in sweltering deserts, ice-cold cathedrals, and heaving marketplaces, and despite food poisoning in Mexico, the threat of ambush in Somaliland, an Ebola epidemic in West Africa and political upheaval in Ukraine, the Globe’s players pushed on. Dromgoole shows us the world through the prism of Shakespeare—what the Danish prince means to the people of Sudan, the effect of Ophelia on the citizens of Costa Rica, and how a sixteenth-century play can touch the lives of Syrian refugees. And thanks to this incredible undertaking, Dromgoole uses the world to glean new insight into this masterpiece, exploring the play’s history, its meaning, and its pleasures. Hamlet Globe to Globe is a highly enjoyable book about an unprecedented theatrical adventure.
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Incendiary by Michael Cannell
Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling.
Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall―for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters “FP” and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters. His victims were left cruelly maimed. Tabloids called him “the greatest individual menace New York City ever faced.”
In desperation, Police Captain Howard Finney sought the help of a little known psychiatrist, Dr. James Brussel, whose expertise was the criminal mind. Examining crime scene evidence and the strange wording in the bomber’s letters, he compiled a portrait of the suspect down to the cut of his jacket. But how to put a name to the description? Seymour Berkson―a handsome New York socialite, protégé of William Randolph Hearst, and publisher of the tabloid The Journal-American―joined in pursuit of the Mad Bomber. The three men hatched a brilliant scheme to catch him at his own game. Together, they would capture a monster and change the face of American law enforcement.
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Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.
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Last Hope Island by Lynne Olson
A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days
When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France.
As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known to occupied countries as “Last Hope Island.” Getting there, one young emigré declared, was “like getting to heaven.”
In this epic, character-driven narrative, acclaimed historian Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history. Here we meet the courageous King Haakon of Norway, whose distinctive “H7” monogram became a symbol of his country’s resistance to Nazi rule, and his fiery Dutch counterpart, Queen Wilhelmina, whose antifascist radio broadcasts rallied the spirits of her defeated people. Here, too, is the Earl of Suffolk, a swashbuckling British aristocrat whose rescue of two nuclear physicists from France helped make the Manhattan Project possible.
Last Hope Island also recounts some of the Europeans’ heretofore unsung exploits that helped tilt the balance against the Axis: the crucial efforts of Polish pilots during the Battle of Britain; the vital role played by French and Polish code breakers in cracking the Germans’ reputedly indecipherable Enigma code; and the flood of top-secret intelligence about German operations—gathered by spies throughout occupied Europe—that helped ensure the success of the 1944 Allied invasion.
A fascinating companion to Citizens of London, Olson’s bestselling chronicle of the Anglo-American alliance, Last Hope Island recalls with vivid humanity that brief moment in time when the peoples of Europe stood together in their effort to roll back the tide of conquest and restore order to a broken continent.
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Letterman by Jason Zinoman
New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman delivers the definitive story of the life and artistic legacy of David Letterman, the greatest television talk show host of all time and the signature comedic voice of a generation.
In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer’s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman’s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality.
Zinoman argues that Letterman had three great artistic periods, each distinct and part of his evolution. As he examines key broadcasting moments—”Stupid Pet Tricks” and other captivating segments that defined Late Night with David Letterman—he illuminates Letterman’s relationship to his writers, and in particular, the show’s co-creator, Merrill Markoe, with whom Letterman shared a long professional and personal connection.
To understand popular culture today, it’s necessary to understand David Letterman. With this revealing biography, Zinoman offers a perceptive analysis of the man and the artist whose ironic voice and caustic meta-humor was critical to an entire generation of comedians and viewers—and whose singular style ushered in new tropes that have become clichés in comedy today.
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My Fellow Soldiers by Andrew Carroll
From the New York Times bestselling author of War Letters, a marvelously vivid and moving account of the American experience in World War I, centered on an intimate portrait of General Pershing, drawing on a rich trove of newly uncovered letters
Based on an astonishing collection of letters and diaries harvested by Andrew Carroll and the Center for American War Letters over many years, My Fellow Soldiers tells the story of the American experience in World War I with General John Pershing in the foreground against a landscape of extraordinary voices, to convey the grassroots perspective of American doughboys, war nurses, and their families with extraordinary intimacy and power.
Andrew Carroll’s portrait of General Pershing, the US Commander in Europe, is a revelation. The scope of the challenge facing Pershing in World War I, and his ultimate mastery of it, were truly remarkable. Leading a military force that on the eve of its entry into the war was downright primitive compared to the European combatants, the general surmounted enormous obstacles to command 1.5 million American soldiers to decisive victories.
But Pershing himself–often misunderstood as a starchy, even wooden leader–concealed inner agony from those around him: almost two years before the US entered the war, his beloved wife and three young daughters perished in a house fire; only his six-year-old son Warren survived. Even as Pershing steered the American war effort, he wrote his son heartfelt letters from the front. Before leaving for Europe, Pershing also had a passionate romance with George Patton’s sister, Anita. But once he was in France, Pershing fell madly in love with a young painter named Micheline Resco, whom he later married in secret.
Woven throughout Pershing’s story are the voices and experiences of an extraordinary group of American men and women, gathered from a stunning cross-section of stories and letters gathered by Carroll, from both the famous and unheralded, including Harry Truman, Ernest Hemingway, Teddy Roosevelt, and his youngest son Quentin. If Pershing provides the heart of this story, the chorus of these “lesser-known” voices that enfold it make the high stakes of this epic American saga piercingly real. Never before has the war’s profound impact on America been conveyed with such humanity and emotional force.
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Nevertheless by Alec Baldwin
One of the most accomplished and outspoken actors today chronicles the highs and lows of his life in this beautifully written, candid memoir.
Over the past three decades, Alec Baldwin has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most gifted, hilarious, and controversial leading men. From his work in popular movies, including Beetlejuice, Working Girl, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Cooler, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed to his role as Jack Donaghy on Tina Fey’s irreverent series 30 Rock—for which he won two Emmys, three Golden Globes, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards—and as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, he’s both a household name and a deeply respected actor.
In Nevertheless, Baldwin transcends his public persona, making public facets of his life he has long kept private. In this honest, affecting memoir, he introduces us to the Long Island child who felt burdened by his family’s financial strains and his parents’ unhappy marriage; the Washington, DC, college student gearing up for a career in politics; the self-named “Love Taxi” who helped friends solve their romantic problems while neglecting his own; the young soap actor learning from giants of the theatre; the addict drawn to drugs and alcohol who struggles with sobriety; the husband and father who acknowledges his failings and battles to overcome them; and the consummate professional for whom the work is everything. Throughout Nevertheless, one constant emerges: the fearlessness that defines and drives Baldwin’s life.
Told with his signature candor, astute observational savvy, and devastating wit, Nevertheless reveals an Alec Baldwin we have never fully seen before.
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Prince Charles by Sally Bedell Smith
From the New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth the Queen comes the first major biography of Prince Charles in more than twenty years–perfect for fans of The Crown.
Sally Bedell Smith returns once again to the British royal family to give us a new look at Prince Charles, the oldest heir to the throne in more than three hundred years. This vivid, eye-opening biography–the product of four years of research and hundreds of interviews with palace officials, former girlfriends, spiritual gurus, and more, some speaking on the record for the first time–is the first authoritative treatment of Charles’s life that sheds light on the death of Diana, his marriage to Camilla, and his preparations to take the throne one day.
Prince Charles brings to life the real man, with all of his ambitions, insecurities, and convictions. It begins with his lonely childhood, in which he struggled to live up to his father’s expectations and sought companionship from the Queen Mother and his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten. It follows him through difficult years at school, his early love affairs, his intellectual quests, his entrepreneurial pursuits, and his intense search for spiritual meaning. It tells of the tragedy of his marriage to Diana; his eventual reunion with his true love, Camilla; and his relationships with William, Kate, Harry, and his grandchildren.
Ranging from his glamorous palaces to his country homes, from his globe-trotting travels to his local initiatives, Smith shows how Prince Charles possesses a fiercely independent spirit and yet has spent more than six decades waiting for his destined role, living a life dictated by protocols he often struggles to obey. With keen insight and the discovery of unexpected new details, Smith lays bare the contradictions of a man who is more complicated, tragic, and compelling than we knew, until now.
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The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn
By the New York Times bestselling author of Manson, the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre—the largest murder-suicide in American history.
In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.
In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.
Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.
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The Schmuck in My Office by Jody Foster
Everyone has a “schmuck” in their office—a difficult, disruptive person who upsets the workplace, confuses coworkers, and causes concern. It’s hard to understand why schmucks act the way they do, but one thing is certain—they seem to come in all shapes and sizes. . . .
– Narcissus—the condescending attention-seeker who carelessly steps on everyone’s toes
– The Flytrap—the bringer of chaos whose emotional instability causes an office maelstrom
– The Bean Counter—the orderly perfectionist who never gives up control, even when it’s full-steam-ahead to disaster
– The Robot—the unreadable stone wall who just can’t connect
Sound like anyone you know? These are just a few of the more prominent types of difficult people at work. In this book, Dr. Jody Foster explains the entire spectrum of people we may think of as schmucks, how they can decrease productivity, destroy teams, and generally make everyone else unhappy. Along with nailing down the various types, she looks at personality traits and explains how dysfunctional interactions among coworkers can lead to workplace fiascos. She helps readers understand schmucks as people, figure out how to work with them, and ultimately solve workplace problems. She also makes readers consider the most difficult thing of all: despite where your finger may be pointing, sometimes you are the “schmuck”! Let Dr. Foster teach you how to make your workplace a happier and more productive one.
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The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner
The book will cover Caitlyn Jenner’s childhood as Bruce Jenner and rise to fame as a gold-medal-winning Olympic decathlete; her marriages and her relationships with her children; her transition; and her experience as the world’s most famous transgender woman.
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Shattered by Jonathan Allen
It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is tragic story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything than the core problem of Hillary’s campaign–the candidate herself.
Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors’ deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered will offer an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders.
Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign’s difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016.
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Stirring Up Fun with Food by Sarah Michelle Gellar
More than 100 fun food-crafting ideas that will engage, delight, and amaze kids-from actress, entrepreneur, and mom, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and former Martha Stewart Living contributor Gia Russo.
Why stop with making basic brownies? Why not put them on a stick and decorate them? Why not take boring broccoli and turn it into a yummy cheese muffin instead? Sarah Michelle Gellar learned quickly that to get her kids to be adventurous with food, she had to involve them in preparing it. She wanted that process to be fun and help them develop self-confidence, creative thinking, and even math skills! So Sarah and co-author Gia Russo came up with more than 100 fun food-crafting ideas that take basic food preparation to a surprising new level.
Organized by month, the book offers projects for every occasion and theme, including Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, Shark Week, Halloween, and even a Star Wars Day with licensed Star Wars creations! The possibilities are endless!
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There is No F*cking Secret by Kelly Osbourne
People ask Kelly Osbourne all the time: “What’s your secret?”
Kelly Osbourne may not always have been a typical role model, but no one can say that her perspective isn’t hard won after spending three decades in the spotlight: from growing up completely exposed to the heavy metal scene–replete with crazy antics most readers have only begun to hear about–to spending her teenage years as the wild middle child of an even wilder Ozzy Osbourne, to the family’s popular stint on their wacky eponymous reality show. Since then, Osbourne has forged her own path as a style icon and powerful woman in the media who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is and be honest with her fans. But being the daughter of a music legend hasn’t always been glamorous; growing up Osbourne is an experience that Kelly wouldn’t trade, but there are battle scars, and she is finally now ready to embrace and reveal their origins.
Told as a series of letters to various people and places in her life, There Is No F*cking Secret gives readers an intimate look at the stories and influences that have shaped Osbourne’s highly speculated-about life, for better or for worse. The stories will make readers’ jaws drop, but ultimately, they will come away empowered to forge their own path to confidence, no matter how deranged and out of control it may be, and to learn the ultimate lesson: that there just is no f*cking secret.
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The True Jesus by David Limbaugh
David Limbaugh, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus on Trial and The Emmaus Code, now approaches the question of Jesus Christ’s divinity–In what sense was Jesus God? How do we know?–with the same precise, methodical form of enquiry he has employed in his career as lawyer and law professor. Examining the New Testament closely, Limbaugh zeroes in on esoteric passages not commonly linked to Jesus Christ’s divinity and draws forth startling new evidence that Jesus was Creator–not created.
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