Other books that might interest you

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  Ty Cobb - A Terrible Beauty

  Charles Leerhsen

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  The New York Times–bestselling, award-winning biography of the baseball superstar: “The best work ever written on this American sports legend.” —The Boston Globe 
   
  Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player ever. His lifetime batting average is still the highest in history, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don’t tell half of Cobb’s tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: When the Hall of Fame began in 1936, he was the first player voted in. 
   
  But Cobb was also one of the game’s most controversial characters. He got in a lot of fights, on and off the field, and was often accused of being overly aggressive. Even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce competitor, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, his reputation morphed into that of a virulent racist who also hated children and women, and was in turn hated by his peers. 
   
  How did this happen? Who is the real Ty Cobb? Setting the record straight, Charles Leerhsen pushed aside the myths, traveled to Georgia and Detroit, and re-traced Cobb’s journey from the shy son of a professor and state senator who was progressive on race for his time to America’s first true sports celebrity. The result is a “noble [and] convincing” (The New York Times Book Review) biography that is “groundbreaking, thorough, and compelling . . . The most complete, well-researched, and thorough treatment that has ever been written” (The Tampa Tribune).

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  Thinking Wild The Gifts of...

  Theo Grutter

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  Theo Grutter is a big, friendly bear of an unpretentious, spontaneous outdoorsman. Born and educated mostly in Switzerland to enter the corporate world, he soon discovered that this life wasn't for him. He moved to Paris and married Clara, a concert pianist. They landed in New York to search for a lifestyle more to their liking in which to raise a family, which soon grew to include five children. They lived in many places, finally settling in a small Mexican Pacific coast fishing village in winter and traveling up to Sitka, Alaska in the summers, where Theo still fishes as a solitary commercial fisherman. Theo and Clara took yearly walkabouts in many exotic countries of the world, with Theo ever observing, learning, and writing about how life works on Earth.Thinking Wild is the fruit of twelve years' work, a series of essays carved in Theo's nonnative and poetic English, written by a remarkable man with deep insight, a fisher philosopher, a seer and seeker railing against man's disrespect of other lifeforms on Earth. All is shared by a man who sees his life as his work of art, and treads a path towards a new way of seeing life more lovingly.

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  Miss Anne in Harlem - The White...

  Carla Kaplan

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  Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan’s cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called “Miss Anne,” who became Harlem Renaissance insiders. The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion—with Harlem at the epicenter. White men could go uptown to see jazz and modern dance, but women who embraced black culture too enthusiastically could be ostracized. Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem. Ethnic and gender studies professor Carla Kaplan brings the interracial history of the Harlem Renaissance to life with vivid prose, extensive research, and period photographs.

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  The Man Behind the Tudors -...

  Kirsten Claiden-Yardley

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  “Shed[s] some light on a rather remarkable man who was really behind the curtain during the reigns of quite a few English kings.” —Adventures of a Tudor Nerd 
   
  Thomas Howard, 2nd duke of Norfolk, lived a remarkable life spanning eighty years and the reigns of six kings. Amongst his descendants are his granddaughters, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth I. The foundations of this dramatic and influential dynasty rest on Thomas’ shoulders, and it was his career that placed the Howard family in a prominent position in English society and at the Tudor royal court. 
   
  Thomas was born into a fairly ordinary gentry family, albeit distantly related to the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk. During the course of the fifteenth century, he and his father would rise through the political and social ranks as a result of their loyal service to Edward IV and Richard III. In a tragic turn of events, all their hard work was undone at the Battle of Bosworth and his father was killed fighting for King Richard.  
   
  Imprisoned for treason and stripped of his lands and titles, Thomas had to start from the beginning to gain the trust of a new king. He spent the next thirty-five years devoting his administrative, military and diplomatic skills to the Tudors whilst rebuilding his family fortunes and ensuring that his numerous children were well-placed to prosper. 
   
  “The Howards are one of the most intriguing families of the 16th century and this book opens up a chapter that hasn’t been much written about.” —The Tudor Blogger

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  Short Nonfiction Collection Vol 041

  Various Various

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  Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include a woman in Alaska, Cuban folklore, and hunting peccaries on the Nueces; Max Planck's Quantum Theory and Newton's world view; church bells and chocolate cake; naval flag signals, rocket life-saving apparatus, and seashore plants and pebbles; also many literary and philosophical figures including Jonathan Swift, Jonathan Edwards, Johann Fichte, Joseph Butler, George Sand, Marie Corelli, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc. (summary by Sue Anderson)

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  The Republic of the Southern...

  Valery Bryusov

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  Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was born on 13th December 1873 into a merchant's family in Moscow.  
   
  His parents did little to involve themselves with his upbringing and Bryusov seems to have spent long periods immersed in books until studying in two private Moscow gymnasia between 1885 and 1893. 
   
  Whilst a student at Moscow State University he completed translations of the French Symbolists and some of Edgar Allan Poe.  Bryusov, influenced by both the Symbolist and Decadent movements, also began to publish his own poems.  
   
  With the appearance of ‘Tertia Vigilia’ he became acknowledged by other Symbolists as an authority in matters of art and then, in 1904, he became the editor of ‘The Balance’, the influential literary magazine.  
   
  With his poems gradually being seen as outdated he worked harder at prose and two historical novels ‘The Altar of Victory’ (regarding life in Ancient Rome) and ‘The Fiery Angel’ (based in 16th century Germany) brought him much recognition as did a series of science fiction short stories.  Over the decades he also translated authors as diverse as Hugo, Racine, Byron, Verlaine, Goethe and Virgil. 
   
  After the 1917 Revolution Bryusov supported the Bolsheviks and was given a position in the cultural ministry of the new state.  
   
  For his Russian translation of the Armenian folk epic ‘David of Sasun,’ he was designated the People's Poet of Armenia in 1923.   
   
  Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov died on 9th October 1924.  He was 50.

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