Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 981
Release: 1991-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 019974369X

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Unbroken

Unbroken
Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812974492

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton

The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton
Author: Jerry Grillo
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0820358495

Col. Bruce Hampton was a charismatic musical figure who launched and continued to influence the jam band genre over his fifty-plus years performing. Part bandleader, soul singer, storyteller, conjuror, poet, preacher, comedian, philosopher, and trickster, Col. Bruce actively sought out and dealt in the weird, wild underbelly of the American South. The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton is neither a true biography in the Boswellian sense nor a work of cultural studies, although it combines elements of both. Even as biographer Jerry Grillo has investigated and pursued the facts, this life history of Col. Bruce reads like a novel—one full of amazing tales of a musical life lived on and off the road. Grillo’s interviews with Hampton and his bandmates, family, friends, and fans paint a fascinating portrait of an artist who fostered some of the best music ever played in America. Grillo aims not so much to document and demystify the self-mythologizing performer as to explain why his fans and friends loved him so dearly. Hampton’s family history, his place in Atlanta and southeastern musical history, his significant friendships and musical relationships, and the controversies over personnel in his Hampton Grease Band over the years are all discussed. What emerges is a portrait of a P. T. Barnum of the musical world, but one who included his audience and invited them through the tent door to share his inside joke, with plenty of joy to go around.

Principles of Management

Principles of Management
Author: David S. Bright
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9781998109166

Black & white print. Principles of Management is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the introductory course on management. This is a traditional approach to management using the leading, planning, organizing, and controlling approach. Management is a broad business discipline, and the Principles of Management course covers many management areas such as human resource management and strategic management, as well as behavioral areas such as motivation. No one individual can be an expert in all areas of management, so an additional benefit of this text is that specialists in a variety of areas have authored individual chapters.

Permanent Present Tense

Permanent Present Tense
Author: Suzanne Corkin
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2013-05-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0141931566

In Permanent Present Tense Suzanne Corkin tells the incredible story of the amnesiac Henry Gustave Molaison - known only as H.M. until his death in 2008 - and what he taught medical science, neuroscience and the world. In 1953, at the age of twenty-seven, Molaison underwent an experimental psychosurgical procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The outcome was devastating - when Molaison awoke he was unable to form new memories and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison's tragedy would prove a gift to humanity, illuminating functions and structures of the brain and revolutionizing the neuroscience of memory. His amnesia became a touchstone for memory impairment in other patients. For nearly five decades, distinguished neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin studied Molaison and oversaw his care. Her account of his life and legacy in Permanent Present Tense reveals an intelligent man who, despite his profound amnesia, was altruistic, friendly, open, and humorous. She explores how his case transformed an entire field, helping to address eternal questions. How do we store and retrieve memories? How do we know that there are different kinds of memory, controlled by different brain circuits? Is our identity bound up with remembering? If you can recall people or events for only a few seconds and cannot learn from the past or plan the future, can you still live a meaningful life? Permanent Present explores the astonishing complexity of the human brain with great clarity, sensitivity, and grace, showing how one man's story challenged our very notions of who we are. Suzanne Corkin is Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience and head of the Corkin Lab at MIT. The author of nine books, Corkin lives in Charlestown, Massachusetts. 'A fascinating account of perhaps the most important case study in the history of neuroscience, rich with implications for our understanding of the brain, our experience, and what it means to be human' Steven Pinker, author of 'How the Mind Works' and 'The Stuff of Thought' 'The best way to understand memory is to witness the ways it can disassemble. In this remarkable book, Suzanne Corkin gifts us with a rare insider's view, revealing how a man who could not remember his immediate past so profoundly influenced science's future' David Eagleman, neuroscientist and New York Times-bestselling author of 'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' 'Suzanne Corkin has written an enjoyable and sensitive story of H.M.'s life and what it has taught us about memory. Millions of patients have been the source of advances in science but few are celebrated as individuals. We learn through H.M. that 'Our brains are like hotels with eclectic arrays of guests-homes to different kinds of memory, each of which occupies its own suite of rooms' Philip A. Sharp, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 'Drawing on her unique investigations over more than four decades, neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin relates the fascinating story of how one severely amnesic man transformed our understanding of mind, brain, and memory' Howard Gardner, author of 'Multiple Intelligences'

JFK's Last Hundred Days

JFK's Last Hundred Days
Author: Thurston Clarke
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2013-07-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101617802

A Kirkus Best Book of 2013 A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s last hundred days that asks what might have been Fifty years after his death, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke argues that the heart of that legend is what might have been. As we approach the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, JFK’s Last Hundred Days reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise. Kennedy’s last hundred days began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick Kennedy, and during this time, the president made strides in the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, and his personal life. While Jackie was recuperating, the premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment. Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss of his son convinced Kennedy to work harder as a husband and father, and there is ample evidence that he suspended his notorious philandering during these last months of his life. Also in these months Kennedy finally came to view civil rights as a moral as well as a political issue, and after the March on Washington, he appreciated the power of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the first time. Though he is often depicted as a devout cold warrior, Kennedy pushed through his proudest legislative achievement in this period, the Limited Test Ban Treaty. This success, combined with his warming relations with Nikita Khrushchev in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, led to a détente that British foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas- Home hailed as the “beginning of the end of the Cold War.” Throughout his presidency, Kennedy challenged demands from his advisers and the Pentagon to escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy began a reappraisal in the last hundred days that would have led to the withdrawal of all sixteen thousand U.S. military advisers by 1965. JFK’s Last Hundred Days is a gripping account that weaves together Kennedy’s public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of all—not who killed him but who he was when he was killed, and where he would have led us.

The Heritage of Arung Palakka

The Heritage of Arung Palakka
Author: Leonard Y. Andaya
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2014-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004287221

With the entrance of the European Union into the field of International Investment Law and Arbitration, a new specialist field of law, namely ‘European Investment Law and Arbitration’ is in the making. This new field of law draws on EU Law, Public International Law, International Investment Law, International Arbitration Law and Practice and International Economic Law, while others fields of law such as Energy Law are also relevant. The European Investment Law and Arbitration Review is the first law periodical specifically dedicated to the field of ‘European Investment Law and Arbitration’. The timing could not be better. The first EU integrated investment treaties with Canada (CETA), US (TTIP) and Singapore (EU-SING) are either negotiated or about to be signed and ratified by the EU and its Member States. These are “integrated” investment treaties in that they combine free trade agreement provisions with international investment agreement norms. Moreover, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is about to deliver its first judgments and Opinions directly relating to intra-EU BITs and the EU-SING FTA. More generally, the public debate and discussions within academic and practitioner circles about the pros and cons of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) and investment treaties in general is intensifying almost on a daily basis. The Review will cover all these issues, but also goes beyond that by offering space for more innovative approaches and themes.

The Hunt for Zero Point

The Hunt for Zero Point
Author: Nick Cook
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0307419436

This riveting work of investigative reporting and history exposes classified government projects to build gravity-defying aircraft--which have an uncanny resemblance to flying saucers. The atomic bomb was not the only project to occupy government scientists in the 1940s. Antigravity technology, originally spearheaded by scientists in Nazi Germany, was another high priority, one that still may be in effect today. Now for the first time, a reporter with an unprecedented access to key sources in the intelligence and military communities reveals suppressed evidence that tells the story of a quest for a discovery that could prove as powerful as the A-bomb. The Hunt for Zero Point explores the scientific speculation that a "zero point" of gravity exists in the universe and can be replicated here on Earth. The pressure to be the first nation to harness gravity is immense, as it means having the ability to build military planes of unlimited speed and range, along with the most deadly weaponry the world has ever seen. The ideal shape for a gravity-defying vehicle happens to be a perfect disk, making antigravity tests a possible explanation for the numerous UFO sightings of the past 50 years. Chronicling the origins of antigravity research in the world's most advanced research facility, which was operated by the Third Reich during World War II, The Hunt for Zero Point traces U.S. involvement in the project, beginning with the recruitment of former Nazi scientists after the war. Drawn from interviews with those involved with the research and who visited labs in Europe and the United States, The Hunt for Zero Point journeys to the heart of the twentieth century's most puzzling unexplained phenomena.

The Boys of Winter

The Boys of Winter
Author: Wayne Coffey
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2005-10-25
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1400047668

The true story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and the Miracle on Ice, which Sports Illustrated called the greatest moment in sports history—with a new afterword by Ken Morrow for the fortieth anniversary of the Miracle on Ice “An unvarnished and captivating read.”—Parade Once upon a time, they taught us to believe. They were the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a blue-collar bunch led by an unconventional coach. Their “Miracle on Ice” has become a national fairy tale, but the real Cinderella story is even more remarkable. Wayne Coffey casts a fresh eye on this seminal sports event, giving readers an ice-level view of the amateurs who took on a Russian hockey juggernaut at the height of the Cold War. He details the unusual chemistry of the Americans—formulated by their fiercely determined coach, Herb Brooks—and seamlessly weaves portraits of the boys with the fluid action of the game itself. Coffey also traces the paths of the players and coaches since their stunning victory, examining how the Olympic events affected their lives. Told with warmth and an uncanny eye for detail, The Boys of Winter is an intimate, perceptive portrayal of one Friday night in Lake Placid and the enduring power of the extraordinary.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2004-05-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393069192

Beloved, best-selling science writer Mary Roach’s “acutely entertaining, morbidly fascinating” (Susan Adams, Forbes) classic, now with a new epilogue. For two thousand years, cadavers – some willingly, some unwittingly – have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have helped make history in their quiet way. “Delightful—though never disrespectful” (Les Simpson, Time Out New York), Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die? “This quirky, funny read offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical profession. . . . You can close this book with an appreciation of the miracle that the human body really is.” —Tara Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal “Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting.” —Entertainment Weekly