Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Gonna Do Great Things - The Life...

  Gary Fishgall

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  A major reappraisal of the life of legendary entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., Gonna Do Great Things is at once an intimate portrait and an exuberant celebration of a wholly American icon. Through his multifaceted talent and personality, Sammy became one of the most magnetic and contentious figures in modern entertainment history. His outstanding talents as a dancer, singer, actor, impressionist, and comedian, combined with his close association with megastars and his interracial marriage, made him a celebrity in the truest sense.Born in Harlem in 1925, Sammy debuted onstage with Will Mastin's vaudeville troupe when he was only three years old. He was an instant hit, and his talent propelled him into one of the most luminous entertainment careers of his generation. No one could please a crowd like Sammy, whose overwhelming energy and infectious humor exhilarated audiences for sixty years. However, Sammy's life was not without hardship, and his high-spirited attitude often masked a fragile ego. From an impoverished, broken home, he lacked even a single day of formal education, and the rigors of his blossoming show business career denied him the traditional pleasures of childhood. Racism constantly affected his life, particularly when he joined the army in 1943. Because he refused to acknowledge any race-related restrictions, his very existence became a political statement. An active member of the Civil Rights movement and America's first African-American superstar, Sammy paved the way for other black entertainers. As a charter member of the Rat Pack, Sammy spent the 1950s and 1960s basking in an image of "cool" and endearing himself to the public. But by the 1970s he was relying on cocaine and alcohol, flirting with Satanism, indulging in scandalous sexual behavior, and becoming the punchline of jokes on Saturday Night Live. Though his fans still adored him, his performances suffered. A four-pack-a-day smoker, Sammy succumbed to cancer when he was sixty-four, shortly after celebrating six decades in the spotlight.Renowned biographer of Hollywood giants Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster, and Gregory Peck, Gary Fishgall brings an actor's and director's understanding of the entertainment industry to Sammy's complicated existence. Meticulously researched and filled with insights gathered from interviews with those who knew Sammy best, Gonna Do Great Things reveals the fascinating and controversial life of this beloved entertainer.

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  Housebroken - Admissions of an...

  Laurie Notaro

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  #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurie Notaro isn't exactly a domestic goddess-unless that means she fully embraces her genetic hoarding predisposition, sneaks peeks at her husband's daily journal, or has made a list of the people she wants on her Apocalypse Survival team (her husband's not on it). Notaro chronicles her chronic misfortune in the domestic arts, including cooking, cleaning, and putting on Spanx while sweaty (which should technically qualify as an Olympic sport). Housebroken is a rollicking new collection of essays showcasing her irreverent wit and inability to feel shame from defying nature in the quest to make her own Twinkies, to begging her new neighbors not to become urban livestock keepers, to teaching her eight-year-old nephew about hoboes.

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  Crime Classics: Blackbeards 14th...

  Elliott Lewis

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  A famous pirate gets his. The year is 1714 and the place is the Caribbean.

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  The Awakening

  Kate Chopin

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  When first published in 1899, "The Awakening" shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

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  The Rise of Socialism - 1884-1918

  Eugene V. Debs, William Morris,...

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  The birth of liberation movements in the C19th saw a rise in fighting for the rights of workers. 
  William Morris believed decries the belief “not that Commerce was made for man, but that man was made for Commerce”, with the profit motive that renders all work miserable when “It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.” 
  Edward Carpenter demands of those whose only question is “Does It Pay?” to know why any action is undertaken. On starting a farm, he found, “that if I was happy in the life..., and if we were cultivating genuine and useful products… that it might really pay me better to get 1%, than 10% with jangling and wrangling.” 
  Annie Besant attacks a reactionary appeal to the ‘natural’ role of men and women by pointing out that it is equality of opportunity and representation that women want.  
  Eduard Bernstein confronts a misunderstanding that people still have today. Marx and Engels realized in their lifetimes that society was further away than they initially thought from a genuine socialism – that many small revolutions would be necessary, and that a single grand rewriting of society could not work. The next writer also refers to it, in saying that “A few.. only know what Socialism is, and they are Socialists. The rest are opposed to it because the little they know about it is not true.” 
  Eugene Debs rails against the approach government takes in promoting  “equality” between capitalist and labourer.  
  We end with Debs' response to being sentenced to ten years imprisonment, for the crime of “opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. .”

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  Head to Head

  Lorraine Mason

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  Oliver Hill was, and is, a maverick. Born to an Establishment South African family – his father was an Anglo director – his future was pre-determined; a top school (Bishops), a first class degree at Wits University, on to Oxford, and then the steady climb up the Anglo-American corporate ladder.However, his parents recognised the rebel in Ollie and sent him to America where, with a first class degree in chemistry, he went to work for the famous "platinum king", Charlie Engelhard, while waiting to see whether his application to Harvard Business School would be successful. He was accepted– although in the early 'Sixties Harvard Business School was accepting no more than 20 foreign applicants a year. Ollie graduated with four distinctions – plus a lifelong passion for free thinking and, in particular, free markets.Returning to South Africa with a wife and daughter, and another child on the way, Ollie joined forces with a successful engineer, John Hahn, and together they founded a formidable independent force in the Southern African mining and chemicals industries.

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