Author: Joseph Caldwell Publisher: Delphinium Books ISBN: 1504059921 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 147
Book Description
The bohemian, free-spirited existence that blessed many of Manhattan’s gifted artists and writers in the nineteen fifties and sixties has, with current skyrocketing rents and the high-income requirements of basic living, been nearly extinguished. And only for the likes of an astute observer such as Joseph Caldwell, perhaps be almost forgotten. In his charming, brutally candid memoir, the author describes his tenure working at WQXR, the venerated classical music station, marching in civil protests and being arrested, his accomplished acquaintances, all of it part of the libertine life of a young gay man who becomes a noted playwright and novelist and Rome Prize winner. But then the mantle of the AIDS epidemic falls heavily on the city and exultation in free love and sex is replaced by unrelenting fear. In a twist of fate, a quixotic love that plagues Caldwell his entire life gives him one last chance at a relationship but in a completely unexpected and tragic ways. This memoir is an important chronicle of the changing tide of artistic and gay life in New York City in the shadow of the plague years.
Author: Publisher: Fordham Univ Press ISBN: 0823281051 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
Named a Gift Book for the Discerning New Yorker by The New York Times In the Shadow of Genius is the newest book by photographer and author Barbara Mensch. The author combines her striking photographs with a powerful first-person narrative. She takes the reader on a unique journey by recalling her experiences living alongside the bridge for more than 30 years, and then by tracing her own curious path to understand the brilliant minds and remarkable lives of those who built it: John, Washington, and Emily Roebling. Many of Mensch’s photographs were inspired by her visits to the Roebling archives housed at Rutgers University, where she pieced together through notebooks, diaries, letters, and drawings the seminal locations and events that affected their lives. Following in their footsteps, Mensch traveled to Mühlhausen, Germany, the birthplace of John Roebling; to Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, where Roebling established a utopian community in 1831; to Roebling aqueducts and bridges in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York; and to the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Washington Roebling, the son of the famous engineer, valiantly served as a Union soldier. The book begins and ends with Mensch’s unique photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge, including never-before-seen images captured deep within the structure. The book creatively fuses contemporary photography with the historical record, giving the reader a new perspective on contemplating the masterwork. Fernanda Perrone, Curator of Special Collections and the Roebling Family Archive at Rutgers University, has contributed a Foreword.
Author: Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Publisher: Henry Holt and Company ISBN: 1250776759 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 309
Book Description
“In climbing the Seven Summits, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado did nothing less than take back her own life—one brave step at a time. She will inspire untold numbers of souls with this story, for her victory is a win on behalf of all of us.”—Elizabeth Gilbert Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. “The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward. In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.
Author: Mao Xiang Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231546866 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
Amid the turmoil of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China, some intellectuals sought refuge in romantic memories from what they perceived as cataclysmic events. This volume presents two memoirs by famous men of letters, Reminiscences of the Plum Shadows Convent by Mao Xiang (1611–93) and Miscellaneous Records of Plank Bridge by Yu Huai (1616–96), that recall times spent with courtesans. They evoke the courtesan world in the final decades of the Ming dynasty and the aftermath of its collapse. Mao Xiang chronicles his relationship with the courtesan Dong Bai, who became his concubine two years before the Ming dynasty fell. His mournful remembrance of their life together, written shortly after her early death, includes harrowing descriptions of their wartime sufferings as well as idyllic depictions of romantic bliss. Yu Huai offers a group portrait of Nanjing courtesans, mixing personal memories with reported anecdotes. Writing fifty years after the fall of the Ming, he expresses a deep nostalgia for courtesan culture that bears the toll of individual loss and national calamity. Together, they shed light on the sensibilities of late Ming intellectuals: their recollections of refined pleasures and ruminations on the vagaries of memory coexist with political engagement and a belief in bearing witness. With an introduction and extensive annotations, Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge is a valuable source for the literature of remembrance, the representation of women, and the social role of intellectuals during a tumultuous period in Chinese history.
Author: Rusty Williams Publisher: Texas A&M University Press ISBN: 1623494052 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
Winner, 2017 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book Winner, 2016 Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History, sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society At the beginning of America’s Great Depression, Texas and Oklahoma armed up and went to war over a 75-cent toll bridge that connected their states across the Red River. It was a two-week affair marked by the presence of National Guardsmen with field artillery, Texas Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, angry mobs, Model T blockade runners, and even a costumed Native American peace delegation. Traffic backed up for miles, cutting off travel between the states. This conflict entertained newspaper readers nationwide during the summer of 1931, but the Red River Bridge War was a deadly serious affair for many rural Americans at a time when free bridges and passable roads could mean the difference between survival and starvation. The confrontation had national consequences, too: it marked an end to public acceptance of the privately owned ferries, toll bridges, and turnpikes that threatened to strangle American transportation in the automobile age. The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle documents the day-to-day skirmishes of this unlikely conflict between two sovereign states, each struggling to help citizens get goods to market at a time of reduced tax revenue and little federal assistance. It also serves as a cautionary tale, providing historical context to the current trend of re-privatizing our nation’s highway infrastructure.
Author: Norm Macdonald Publisher: Random House ISBN: 0812993632 Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”
Author: Kimberly J. Brown (Journalist) Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1640120696 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
"A bridge shouldn't just fall down," Senator Amy Klobuchar said after the August 1, 2007, collapse of the Minneapolis I-35W eight-lane steel truss bridge, which killed 13 motorists, injured 145, and left a collective wound on the city's psyche and infrastructure. On her way to a soccer game with a fellow teammate, Kimberly J. Brown experienced the collapse firsthand, falling 114 feet in her teammate's car to the Mississippi River. Although terrified, injured, and in shock, she survived. In this sobering memoir and exposé, Brown recounts her harrowing experience. In the aftermath of the disaster, Brown became both an advocate for survivors and an unofficial whistle-blower about decaying infrastructure. She details her investigation and correspondence with Thornton Tomasetti engineers, including the false official account of the collapse and the eventual revelation of its real causes. In addition, she chronicles the ongoing decay of America's bridges and the continuing challenges faced by leaders to address infrastructure problems across the country. After nearly a decade of research into the collapse and her active and ongoing recovery from psychic and physical injuries, Brown shares her experience and answers the questions we should all be asking: Why did this bridge collapse? And what could have been done to prevent this tragedy?
Author: Michael Finkel Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 006184098X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 438
Book Description
The improbable but true story of a man accused of murdering his entire family and the journalist he impersonated while on the run In 2001, Mike Finkel was on top of the world: young, talented, and recently promoted to a plum job at the New York Times Magazine. Then he made an irremediable slip: Under extraordinary pressure to keep producing blockbuster stories, he fabricated parts of an article. Caught and excommunicated from the Times, he retreated to his home in Montana, swearing off any contact with the media. When the phone rang, though, he couldn’t resist. At the other end was a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, whom Finkel congratulated on being the first in what was sure to be a long and bloodthirsty line of media watchdogs. The reporter was puzzled. In Waldport, Oregon, Christian Longo had killed his young wife and three children and dumped their bodies into the bay. With a stolen credit card, he fled south, making his way to Cancun, where he lived for several weeks under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel, journalist for the New York Times. True Story is the tale of a bizarre and convoluted collision between fact and fiction, and a meditation on the slippery nature of truth. When Finkel contacts Longo in jail, the two men begin a close and complex relationship. Over the course of a year, they exchange long letters and weekly phone calls, playing out a cat-and-mouse game in which it’s never quite clear if the pursuer is Finkel or Longo—or both. Finkel’s dogged pursuit of the true story pays off only at the end, in the gripping trial scenes in which Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally tells the whole truth. Or so he says.
Author: Frederic Colier Publisher: Books We Live by ISBN: 1628480033 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 107
Book Description
Ever since Salinger, nine seems to be a magic number when it comes to rendering debut short story collections. Frederic Colier’s A Memoir of Absence is no exception. Embarking on an evocative journey through the heartland of our own delusions, Colier’s terse prose guides us beyond the barren cultural plane of our all-too-malleable American dreams taking us into a realm of intellectual urgency, linguistic renewal, and eventual hope. Here – where relativist cant, contemporary platitudes, and even shocking news become no more than the white noise of a fleeting civilization – there is nothing more alarming than the ensuing silence left by those collisions that never get the chance to take place: In the title story, an estranged father and son are each relegated their own brand of dystopia only to find that it is their respective torments that ineffably bind them to one another. While one pursues impossible love around the globe, the other tries making sense of the void surrounding him. Oddly, it is their parallel misfortunes that find shelter in the harmonious space of absence recalled. Similarly, Lipstick on the Fishbowl depicts how grief often blinds one from seeing the object of loss. As a bereaved businessman searches for the proper way to express loss for his departed wife, he begins to overlook the significance of her passing. As for those in throes of jealousy misreading even the best of intentions, The Depth of Swimming Pool is a somber portrayal of a woman who – in her state of constant apprehension – ends up undermining that which she most desires. But whether it is observers dreaming of becoming participants, or the emotionally alienated hordes for whom pain becomes a final solace, the terrain traversed by Colier’s nine stories is neither one that would fill a postcard nor one that sports the trendy wasteland so readily employed by our time’s countdown artists. As the lonely overweight opera singer Josephina considers the abject proposals of a sexless man, or the abused young woman in Cristianos y Moros finally returns home to confront her dismissive parents, we note with relief that Colier’s intention is not to flesh out some vague musings about our era but to attend to those who straddle the crossroads of a world where choosing a direction is no longer a value in itself. If there is a poignancy to be had, A Memoir of Absence says we’re to find it in those uncertain moments when event is temporarily subsumed by interpretation. This does not mean that observations made by characters are lucid or objective. On the contrary, it is our vulnerability to catch phrases, our compromised visions, and our pathos while estimating our own suffering hearts that bring integrity to our lives. Colier’s short stories are the fragments of a lost anthem – the disparate melodies that once made up what we mystically referred to as, the human spirit.
Author: Joseph Caldwell
Author: 
Author: Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Author: Mao Xiang
Author: Bolton (England). Public Libraries
Author: Rusty Williams
Author: Norm Macdonald
Author: Kimberly J. Brown (Journalist)
Author: Michael Finkel
Author: Frederic Colier