To Be Frank

To Be Frank
Author: Frank Morsani
Publisher: Blackwood Books
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2015-09-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692525135

TO BE FRANK, the life story of philanthropist and businessman Frank Morsani, explores his inspiring journey of hard work, perseverance and integrity--delving into detail about the winning management style that has defined his entire career. Frank has truly lived the American Dream--and his message to young people is that they can live it, too. This is a uniquely American portrait of a down-to-earth man from humble roots. Coming of age in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, Frank took on the responsibility of running his family's farm as a young teen, while his father traveled as a pipeline welder. His immigrant Italian grandparents' steadfast work ethic formed a legacy that Frank brought to his Korean War service on a naval aircraft carrier, his career as a nationally successful automobile dealer, as a champion of small business who aided three U.S. Presidential administrations, and as Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Frank and his wife Carol's lifelong commitment to giving back to their community has supported and sustained diverse areas in their adopted home of Tampa Bay, from education and medicine to culture and sports.Their unstinting efforts have strengthened the University of South Florida, the University of Tampa and their alma mater of Oklahoma State in significant and lasting ways. Frank's remarkably successful management and leadership approach, forged through hands-on experience in both business and the Navy, are detailed in a special chapter. Unfailingly straightforward and engaging, Frank and Carol have lived their values--touching and improving the lives of others through far-reaching commitments to their community and the wider world. Theirs is a story that embodies key lessons--benefits for us all, no matter our walk of life.

The Fighter

The Fighter
Author: Michael Farris Smith
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316432334

A blistering novel of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta. The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separates friend from foe. But in a single twisted night, Jack loses his chance to win it all back. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack is robbed of the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet -- the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay -- and open a path that could lead him back home. Yet this sudden reversal of fortunes introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker. Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows, heartbroken by his own betrayals, Jack is forced to step into the fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death. With the raw power and poetry of a young Larry Brown and the mysticism of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Farris Smith cements his place as one of the finest writers in the American literary landscape.

The Portrait's Subject

The Portrait's Subject
Author: Sarah Blackwood
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781469652610

"Between the invention of photography in 1839 and the end of the nineteenth century, portraiture became one of the most popular and common art forms in the United States. ... images of human surfaces became understood as expressions of human depth during this era. Combining visual theory, literary close reading, and in-depth archival research, Blackwood examines portraiture's changing symbolic and aesthetic practices, from daguerreotype to X-ray. Considering painting, photography, illustration, and other visual forms alongside literary and cultural representations of portrait making and viewing, Blackwood argues that portraiture was a provocative art form used by writers, artists, and early psychologists to imagine selfhood as hidden, deep, and in need of revelation, ideas that were then taken up by the developing discipline of psychology"--