Author : Omar M. McRoberts
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 23,15 MB
Release : 2005-07
Category : History
ISBN : 0226562174
Long considered the lifeblood of black urban neighborhoods, churches are thought to be dedicated to serving their surrounding communities. But Omar McRoberts's work in Four Corners, a tough Boston neighborhood containing twenty-nine congregations, reveals a very different picture.
Author : Beverly Swerling
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 21,88 MB
Release : 2007-01-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0743298721
Set against the dramatic backdrop of America’s during the War of 1812, Beverly Swerling’s gripping and intricately plotted sequel to the much-loved City of Dreams plunges deep into the crowded streets of old New York. Poised between the Manhattan woods and the sea that is her gateway to the world, the city of 1812 is vibrant but raw, a cauldron where the French accents of Creole pirates mingle with the brogues of Irish seamen, and shipments of rare teas and silks from Canton are sold at raucous Pearl Street auctions. Allegiances are more changeable than the tides, love and lust often indistinguishable, the bonds of country weak compared to the temptation of fabulous riches from the East, and only a few farseeing patriots recognize the need not only to protect the city from the redcoats, but to preserve the fragile Constitutional union forged in 1787. Joyful Patrick Turner, dashing war hero and brilliant surgeon, loses his hand to a British shell, retreats to private life, and hopes to make his fortune in the China trade. To succeed he must run the British blockade; if he fails, he will lose not only a livelihood, but the beautiful Manon, daughter of a Huguenot jeweler who will not accept a pauper as a son-in-law. When stories of a lost treasure and a mysterious diamond draw him into a treacherous maze of deceit and double-cross, and the British set Washington ablaze, Joyful realizes that more than his personal future is at stake. His adversary, Gornt Blakeman, has a lust for power that will not be sated until he claims Joyful’s fiancée as his wife and half a nation as his personal fiefdom. Like the Turners before him, Joyful must choose: his dreams or his country. Swerling’s vividly drawn characters illuminate every aspect of the teeming metropolis: John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America, brings the city’s first Chinese to staff his palatial Broadway mansion; Lucretia Carter, wife of a respectable craftsman, makes ends meet as an abortionist serving New York’s brothels; Thumbless Wu, a mysterious Cantonese stowaway, slinks about on a secret mission; and the bewitching Delight Higgins, proprietress of the town’s finest gambling club, lives in terror of the blackbirding gangs who prey on runaway slaves. They are all here, the butchers and shipwrights, the doctors and scriv-eners, the slum dwellers of Five Points and the money men of the infant stock exchange...conspiring by day and carousing by night, while the women must hide their loyalties and ambitions, their very wills, behind pretty sighs and silken skirts.
Author : BJ Hoff
Publisher : Harvest House Publishers
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 41,83 MB
Release : 2011-04-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0736940537
In Book Four of her bestselling The Emerald Ballad Series, BJ Hoff continues to build the drama and excitement of her sweeping mid-19th century Irish American saga. In Ireland, poet, patriot, and schoolmaster Morgan Fitzgerald is locked in conflict with his closest friend’s rebel son—who steals the heart of Morgan’s adopted daughter. Among the streets of New York, Pastor Jess Dalton and his feisty wife, Kerry, continue to battle against poverty and persecution while taking the Gospel to both the powerful and the poor of the city. Readers will be swept into an epic tale of life and death, heartache and victory, all the while revealing the ancient, enduring glory of an entire people. About This Series: BJ Hoff’s Emerald Ballad series was one of the most memorable series published in the 1990s. With combined sales of 300,000 copies, these beloved books found a place in the hearts of BJ’s many fans. Now redesigned and freshly covered the saga is available again to a new generation of readers—and BJ’s many new fans due to her highly successful Amish series, The Riverhaven Years—The Emerald Ballad series will once again find an enthusiastic audience.
Author : Doug J. Swanson
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 34,75 MB
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 1101979879
“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.
Author : Charles Marsh
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 530 pages
File Size : 43,89 MB
Release : 2015-04-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0307390381
Winner, Christianity Today 2015 Book Award in History/Biography Shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography In the decades since his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and anti-Hitler conspirator, has become one of the most widely read and inspiring Christian thinkers of our time. With unprecedented archival access and definitive scope, Charles Marsh captures the life of this remarkable man who searched for the goodness in his religion against the backdrop of a steadily darkening Europe. From his brilliant student days in Berlin to his transformative sojourn in America, across Harlem to the Jim Crow South, and finally once again to Germany where he was called to a ministry for the downtrodden, we follow Bonhoeffer on his search for true fellowship and observe the development of his teachings on the shared life in Christ. We witness his growing convictions and theological beliefs, culminating in his vocal denunciation of Germany’s treatment of the Jews that would put him on a crash course with Hitler. Bringing to life for the first time this complex human being—his substantial flaws, inner torment, the friendships and the faith that sustained and finally redeemed him—Strange Glory is a momentous achievement.
Author : Lauren K. Denton
Publisher : Thomas Nelson
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 37,64 MB
Release : 2019-03-19
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0785219633
As three generations of women navigate the uncertain paths of their hearts and futures, one summer promises to bring change—whether they’re ready for it or not. At thirty-eight, garden shop owner Jessie McBride thinks her chances for romance are years behind her and, after her failed marriage, she’s fine with that. She lives contentedly with her fiery mother and her quiet, headstrong daughter. But the unexpected arrival of two men on Glory Road make her question if she’s really happy with the status quo. Handsome, wealthy Sumner Tate asks her to arrange flowers for his daughter’s wedding, and Jessie finds herself drawn to his continued attention. Ben Bradley, her lingering what-could-have-been from her high school days who’s known her better than anyone and whom she hasn’t seen in years, moves back to the red dirt road. Jessie finds her heart being pulled in directions she never expected. Meanwhile, Jessie’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Evan, is approaching the start of high school and trying to navigate a new world of identity and emotions—particularly as they relate to the cute new guy who’s moved in just down the road. At the same time, Jessie’s mother, Gus, increasingly finds herself forgetful and faces a potentially frightening future. For these three strong Southern women, the roots they’ve planted on Glory Road will give life to the adventures waiting just around the curve. Praise for Glory Road: “Rich colorful characters capturing my heart, combined with a story that kept me up till the wee hours, Glory Road is a perfect read. Lauren Denton has done it again!” —Lisa Patton, bestselling author of Rush and Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter Stand-alone Southern women’s fiction novel Book length: approximately 95,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs
Author : Woody Guthrie
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 34,49 MB
Release : 1983-09-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1440672784
First published in 1943, this autobiography is also a superb portrait of America's Depression years, by the folk singer, activist, and man who saw it all. Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and traveled this whole country over—not by jet or motorcycle, but by boxcar, thumb, and foot. During the journey of discovery that was his life, he composed and sang words and music that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. Behind him Woody Guthrie left a remarkable autobiography that vividly brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die. “Even readers who never heard Woody or his songs will understand the current esteem in which he’s held after reading just a few pages… Always shockingly immediate and real, as if Woody were telling it out loud… A book to make novelists and sociologists jealous.” —The Nation
Author : Tony Rennell
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 46,66 MB
Release : 2014-07-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1466874813
Queen Victoria's death in January 1901 shook Britain to its core, and reverberated not just throughout the Commonwealth, but around the world. She was a woman in her eighties, and yet it seems no one could contemplate the end of a reign that had lasted so long. Most could not remember a time when she was not Queen, and the very stability of everyday life seemed to depend on her regency. The anxiety of the government and the royal family about the prospect of the Queen's death was such that the news of her illness was deliberately concealed from the public for more than a week. When it came, people from England to Jamaica wept in the streets, and this grief was surpassed only by fear for the future. "God help us" was the standard reaction from all strata of society. The Last Days of Glory is the definitive account of those last 23 days in January 1901, when Victoria traveled to Osborne House to die. The momentous reaction to the Queen's passing attached to it more significance and a greater sense of change than the turn of the century had carried just a year earlier. Through the prism of those last days Tony Rennell presents us with a series of resonant and absorbing snapshots of a fading Empire at the end of the Victorian Age, and captures a nation coping with change, balancing comfortable nostalgia with the arrival of a new order.
Author : Jon Krakauer
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 45,39 MB
Release : 2010-07-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 030738604X
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "gripping book about this extraordinary man who lived passionately and died unnecessarily" (USA Today) in post-9/11 Afghanistan, from the bestselling author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. In 2002, Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army and became an icon of American patriotism. When he was killed in Afghanistan two years later, a legend was born. But the real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerably more complicated than the public knew. Sent first to Iraq—a war he would openly declare was “illegal as hell” —and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers. Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s family and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush used Tillman’s name to promote his administration’ s foreign policy. Long after Tillman’s nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had “probably” been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible. Drawing on Tillman’s journals and letters and countless interviews with those who knew him and extensive research in Afghanistan, Jon Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer’s storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war. This edition has been updated to reflect new developments and includes new material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Author : Sean Wilsey
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 28,26 MB
Release : 2006-04-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1101201134
“In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess.” With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. Sean's mother is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse. His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms. When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Follow Sean as he candidly recounts his life growing up in a wealthy family all while discovering who he is amongst San Francisco's social elite.
