Other books that might interest you

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  Lethal Passage - The Story of a Gun

  Erik Larson

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  This devastating book illuminates America’s gun culture—its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists—but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. 
    
  “One of the most readable anti-gun treatises in years.”—Washington Post Book World 
    
  It begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day’s end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another. 
    
  In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as “the gun that made the eighties roar.” The result is a book that can—and should—save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate.

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  Stars of the Silent Film Era

  Editors Charles River

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  Only a select few actors become international stars in their time, but none had as unique a career as Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was the first true film star, and he managed to do so even when films were still silent. He has been honored with too many awards to count, and the fact that his name remains instantly recognizable nearly a century after his first film is a testament to his influence.  
  In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own, and alongside actor and director Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton was at the peak of Hollywood. It’s no surprise that Keaton was so effective in silent films, because he had been practicing comedy in his family’s vaudeville acts as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged”, becoming a popular performer by the age of 5. Indeed, his physical form of comedy, which initially involved having his father throwing him around the stage, translated well onto the screen, and some of his slapstick and other comic gags remain legendary even today. 
  Everything about Rudolph Valentino, from his body to the characters he played, was exotic. His career may have been abbreviated by his premature death at the age of 31, but Valentino popularized the (somewhat racist) stereotype of the “Latin lover” in Hollywood, and even his name was markedly more out of the ordinary than those of other actors.  
  Of all the great movie stars, there may be none more enigmatic than Greta Garbo, who remains internationally famous despite the fact her life and career raise more questions than answers. How did a Swedish actress with very little film acting experience in her native land arrive in the United States and achieve instant stardom? Most actresses had to wait years before they were offered starring roles in major films, yet Garbo was ushered to the front of the line and perched atop the MGM pantheon at a time in which it was the studio par excellence. 

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  Weed Man - The Remarkable...

  John McCaslin

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  The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Americans in the early 1970s were smoking upwards of 35,000 pounds of marijuana per day. By the time the decade drew to a close, Time magazine reported that reefer had become “the most widely accepted illegal indulgence since drinking during Prohibition.” 
  You can thank Jimmy Moree for helping to feed America’s insatiable pot habit. Nicknamed “Jimmy Divine” for his teetotaling ways, he would become one of the most successful marijuana traffickers of the 1970s, smuggling high-grade South American weed across the tempestuous seas into North American ports of call. 
  He was born and grew up poor in the Bahamas. That life was forever changed on a morning jog when Jimmy literally stumbled onto several million dollars’ worth of prime Colombian grass. He disposed of the weed with a little help from a law-enforcement friend and was surprised to earn over three hundred thousand dollars for his trouble. It was the first deal of many. The money was easy, and the perks fantastic. Jimmy went on to make, and give away, a fortune. 
  And now award-winning journalist John McCaslin is telling Jimmy’s story. Several of the characters are identified by their actual names or by nicknames. Identities of others have been changed to protect the guilty. Rest assured, you’re in for a white-knuckle ride on the open seas where adventure, enterprise, and entire fortunes go up in smoke. 
  “McCaslin brings his exceptional reportorial talent to bear in a fascinating exposé of the drug trade.” —G. GORDON LIDDY 
  “Told in a breezy, witty style, McCaslin’s book captures moments in relatively recent Caribbean history when it was . . . possible to make a fortune by the ability to steer a boat stealthily through dangerous seas.” —MARK BOWDEN 
  Endorsements 
  "I'm delighted to see that John McCaslin has climbed out of his political trench in Washington long enough to set sail on this astonishing journey through the precarious Caribbean reefs, and beyond. Somehow, in typical McCaslin fashion, he manages to bring his readers back to the nation's capital in a chapter that will certainly have official tongues wagging in Washington."  -- Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News and former co-host of NBC's Today 
  "This story is so compelling . . . John McCaslin has put it all together in a way that simply made me want to just keep on reading. Wow."  --Wolf Blitzer, anchor and host of the CNN newscast The Situation Room 
  "For years everybody in Washington has turned to John McCaslin's Inside The Beltway column for the inside skinny on what is going on in our nation's capital. Now, in Weed Man: The Remarkable Journey of Jimmy Divine, McCaslin brings his exceptional reportorial talent to bear in a fascinating expose of the drug trade."  --G. Gordon Liddy, Watergate figure and nationally-syndicated radio host

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  Reporting from the Front - War...

  Brian Best

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  When the war was declared in August 1914, one of the first acts to be implemented by the politicians and military was a strict censorship on the newspapers. As the poacher turned gamekeeper, Winston Churchill said: The war is going to be fought in a fog and the best place for correspondence about the war is London, The military sought to have one of their officers, dubbed “Eyewitness”, to be the official spokesman to enable them to control what the newspapers could print. In the early stages of the war, there were many reporters on the Continent who were evading military arrest and sending back reports about the reality of the situation. Several volunteered with the various ambulance services just to disguise their real purpose, but all were eventually banished. Having finally cleared all reporters from fighting area, the military was persuaded to allow a small number of accredited war reporters to be chaperoned around the battle fronts. They were closely watched and their reports thoroughly scrutinised, until they eventually became almost a part of the Headquarters hierarchy. Later, diaries and letters revealed how many of them really felt and they had to bear the post-war shame of not writing the truth. The Western Front was not the only front in this world war. Reporters found censorship less rigidly applied on the Eastern Front, Palestine and Italy. One correspondent, whose reports famously brought about the sacking of the campaign commander and the ending of the fruitless and bloody Gallipoli Expedition, bravely broke ranks and was finished as a war reporter. War reporting was not confined to print. The emergence of photographers and cinematographers on the battlefield has left us with an extraordinary record. Unlike their writing brothers, the photographers could get close to the action and shoot what they liked. The resultant film was, of course, censored but thankfully nothing was discarded and museum archives are full of their stunning work. Having been the pre-war stars of their newspapers, the war reporters experienced a post-war wave of anger and cynicism which took years to overcome.

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  In the Shadow of the American...

  David Wojnarowicz

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  From life in the streets and love in the alleys to fame in the spotlight and an untimely death—raw, biting, and brilliant selections from the personal journals of one of the most uniquely creative artists of the late twentieth centuryWhen his life ended at age thirty-seven—a casualty of the AIDS epidemic that took so many before their time—David Wojnarowicz had long since established himself as one of America’s most vital artists and activists. In the Shadow of the American Dream is a stunning collection of riveting and revealing chapters from Wojnarowicz’s extensive personal diaries—thirty volumes’ worth of memories and lucid observations, some bitter, some sweet—that the author began writing when he was seventeen and continued until his death two decades later. Here is a brilliant chronicle of an artist’s emergence—a young man’s still achingly fresh memories of his unhappy adolescence and his glorious discovery of self. Wojnarowicz recalls his life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with no shame or regret, and shares his hitchhiking journeys across the country. He talks of art and love and sex—embracing who he is fully and accepting his heartbreaking fate without pathos—while providing fascinating glimpses into the vibrant and colorful New York art scene and poignant views of life and death among the AIDS community.At once frightening and courageous, joyous and disturbing, enlightening and honest, In the Shadow of the American Dream is a treasured addition to the enduring literary legacy of David Wojnarowicz and a true testament to his unique brilliance.

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  Shadows of Love Shadows of...

  William T. Vollmann

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  In this landmark collection, William T. Vollmann offers a kaleidoscopic retrospective of the visual artwork he has produced over four decades, with new commentary from Vollmann on his process, inspiration, and the many intersections with his writing. 
   
   
   
  The celebrated author of over twenty-five books (among them the National Book Award–winning novel Europe Central; the seven-volume Rising Up and Rising Down, based on Vollmann's career as a war correspondent; and the two-volume climate change investigation Carbon Ideologies), Vollmann's equally ambitious and prolific career as a photographer, printmaker, and painter reflects the artist’s deep interest in people existing on the margins, a profound empathy for his subjects, and the humility and generosity to meet them on their terms. 
   
   
   
  In Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness, a series of essays  commissioned especially for this book lays out Vollmann's views on what photographs can and should say, how he chooses what to represent (beauty, suffering, compassion, love, desire, ideology), thoughts on photographic consensuality, and any number of technical descriptions. Particularly useful for Vollmann fans and scholars are the cross-references between these artistic and photographic projects and his books.

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