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  Robert Frost: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  Of all the authors and poets American schoolchildren may be exposed to over the course of their education, Robert Frost is often one of the first, and on rare occasions that he is not, it is still a near certainty that some of his most famous poems will be discussed at some point. Many will have memorized “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” before finishing grade school or will instantly recall the end of “The Road Not Taken.”  
  	Frost may not be as remembered or influential as other American literary giants, or even poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but his career was historic in terms of its length and breadth of accomplishments. Over the course of several decades, Frost became the first to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and he also earned such recognitions as a Congressional Medal of Honor before being made the poet laureate of Vermont shortly before the end of his life. The many works he put out and the various styles of prose all greatly influenced his contemporaries and future generations of writers, even as he ably described a rural America of a seemingly bygone era and managed to instill universal ideas and teachings therein. Poet Amy Lowell may have described his abilities best early on in Frost’s career, writing of him, “He tells you what he has seen exactly as he has seen it. And in the word exactly lies the half of his talent. The other half is a great and beautiful simplicity of phrase, the inheritance of a race brought up on the English Bible. Mr. Frost's work is not in the least objective. He is not writing of people whom he has met in summer vacations, who strike him as interesting, and whose life he thinks worthy of perpetuation. Mr. Frost writes as a man under the spell of a fixed idea..."

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  Chronicles of a Rochester Major...

  Patrick Crough

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  A longtime Rochester, New York, police detective tells the behind-the-scenes stories of four of his most memorable cases.   Patrick Crough served more than twenty years as a Monroe County Major Crimes detective, where he investigated some of the region’s most tragic crimes. They include horrifying acts, like that of a Valentine’s Day killing rampage that left four people dead, as well as the case against Ed Laraby, the serial rapist who terrorized women in Rochester and Monroe County. But there are also stories of heroism and bravery: strangers coming to the aid of those in peril, parents who laid down their lives to save their children, and the team of people who put violent criminals behind bars.   In these pages, Crough details four of his most memorable cases—in which he was forced to confront evil and chose to pursue truth.

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  Hopeless but Optimistic -...

  Douglas A. Wissing

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  “A fascinating ground level account of the effect of absurd and inappropriate Washington strategies on Afghans and on American soldiers.”—Abdulkader Sinno, author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan & Beyond   Award-winning journalist Douglas A. Wissing’s poignant and eye-opening journey across insurgency-wracked Afghanistan casts an unyielding spotlight on greed, dysfunction, and predictable disaster while celebrating the everyday courage and wisdom of frontline soldiers, idealistic humanitarians, and resilient Afghans. As Wissing hauls a hundred pounds of body armor and pack across the Afghan warzone in search of the ground truth, US officials frantically spin a spurious victory narrative, American soldiers try to keep their body parts together, and Afghans try to stay positive and strain to figure out their next move after the US eventually leaves. As one technocrat confided to Wissing, “I am hopeless—but optimistic.”   Along with a deep inquiry into the 21st-century American way of war and an unforgettable glimpse of the enduring culture and legacy of Afghanistan, Hopeless but Optimistic includes the real stuff of life: the austere grandeur of Afghanistan and its remarkable people; warzone dining, defecation, and sex; as well as the remarkable shopping opportunities for men whose job is to kill.  Silver Medal, War & Military, Foreword Indies AwardsSilver Medal, Current Events, Independent Publisher Book Awards   “A scathing dispatch from an embedded journalist in Afghanistan . . . Pungent, embittered, eye-opening observations of a conflict involving lessons still unlearned.”—Kirkus Reviews “Here we confront in granular detail the waste and folly that is America’s war in Afghanistan.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Age of Illusions

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  Batista Unleashed

  Jeremy Roberts, Dave Batista

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  People around the world know Dave Batista as World Wrestling Entertainment's "the Animal," the rope-shaking, spine-busting World Heavyweight Champion, one of the most popular Superstars in recent years.The crowd turned Batista from heel to babyface after they were electrified by his awesome physique and physical wrestling style.  Few fans, however, know that Batista didn't join the profession until he was thirty years old -- an age at which many wrestlers are thinking about hanging up their boots. Nor do most fans know the tremendous toll the climb to the top has taken on Batista's personal life. While successfully staying away from hard drugs and -- usually -- liquor, he found sex too tempting to resist.  "Women were my drug of choice," the Animal confesses. That addiction cost him his marriage, destroying a relationship that had helped him climb from poverty to the pinnacle of sports entertainment in less than two years.  Now, in Batista Unleashed, the WWE Superstar comes clean about the choices he made and the devastating effects they had on his family. He talks about the injury that stripped him of his title -- an injury he blames on Mark Henry's carelessness. While being sidelined cost Batista untold hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income, it also set the stage for a tremendous comeback that cemented the Animal's reputation as a true champion.  Batista talks about growing up in the worst part of Washington, D.C., where three murders occurred in his front yard before he was nine. He speaks lovingly about his mother -- a lesbian -- and how hard she worked to keep the family not just together but alive. He talks candidly about his own criminal past: a conviction on a drug charge and another, since overturned, on assault. He speaks of his days as a bouncer and a lifeguard, and tells how bodybuilding may have saved his life.  Once he made it to the WWE, Batista realized he wasn't really ready for the big time. His career seemed headed for a fall until Fit Finlay took him under his wing. But his real education came when he joined Evolution and rode with Triple H and Ric Flair, two of sports entertainment's all-time greats. Batista talks about what they taught him, and details some of their wild times on the road.  But the champ also reveals a kinder, gentler side. While his soft-spoken manner in the locker room has sometimes been misinterpreted as arrogance, in truth Batista's always been somewhat shy and quiet. Emotional by nature, he reveals for the first time that the tears fans saw at WrestleMania 21, when he won the World Heavyweight Championship for the first time, were very real. And he speaks movingly about his problems with his ex-wives and teenage daughters, and how it felt to become a grandfather.  While his straight-shooting mouth has occasionally gotten him into trouble -- most notably in a backstage confrontation with Undertaker after some remarks about SmackDown! -- Batista is his own harshest critic. He explains his early limitations as a wrestler and the work he has done to overcome them. Interspersing his memoir with accounts from life on the road, Batista lightens the narrative with a surprising sense of humor. An Animal in the ring, he reveals himself as an honest and even humble man in everyday life.

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  Tony Ryan - Ireland's Aviator

  Richard Aldous

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  In this authorised biography of one of the most remarkable Irishmen of the twentieth century, Richard Aldous is independent in his judgements and frank in his examination of his subject's shortcomings and eccentricities. But most of all, he writes with verve and pace.
  Tony Ryan was born in a railwayman's cottage and rose to enormous success, overseeing the spectacular making of two business fortunes and the dramatic loss of one.
  After an early spell in Aer Lingus, he set up an airline leasing company, Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), which had its headquarters in Shannon and quickly became the largest such enterprise in the world. Ryan was a hard taskmaster and the company reflected his ferocious work ethic. Yet, despite a stellar board of directors, a botched and poorly timed Initial Public Offering in the 1990s saw GPA crash and burn.
  Ryan lost almost everything. All that remained was a little airline running massive deficits. Ryan set about turning Ryanair around, putting in one of his assistants, Michael O'Leary, to help knock it into shape. The rest is history.
  Ryan remade his fortune, lived lavishly and elegantly, was a generous patron of the arts, and in every respect larger than life. His spirit is one that Ireland needs more than ever today. As the nation strives for its own recovery, it can find inspiration in the story of how one of its most famous sons rose and fell, and then rose again. Not one to stand still or lament mistakes, Tony Ryan's determination never to give up is the real lesson of this story. He was in so many ways Ireland's Aviator.

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  Whatever Happened to Hollywood?

  Jesse Lasky Jr.

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  Screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky, Jr. tells his Hollywood tales as an insider, with stories and insights sparkling with poetry, humor and the heat of first-hand observation. The son of the man who produced Hollywood’s first feature film, Jesse’s book is the history of the film industry, the birth of an art form and a compelling personal memoir. There are revealing portraits of Lasky, Sr. and his partners Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. De Mille (for whom Jesse wrote 8 films, including The Ten Commandments)—and friends and colleagues such as Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Alfred Hitchcock, Harry Cohn, Darryl Zanuck, Nick Ray and Sam Fuller. From dating Jean Harlow to writing for Gary Cooper, Edward G. Robinson and Yul Brynner, here are the artists and the conmen, the breathtaking creativity and the destructive treachery, described by a man who knew everyone and saw everything. 
  New edition, music by narrator Richard Niles (richardniles.com) ©2021 Niles Smiles Music (BMI) 
  “Jesse Lasky, the son of one of filmland’s great founders, has written a bitter-sweet memoir of his life as a Hollywood screenwriter. It evaporates the mist of fantasy surrounding the Hollywood dream factory to reveal the realities that built the fairy-tale image.”—Joan Crawford 
  “It is certainly many notches above most of the other books on ‘Hollywood’.”—Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. 
  “… a nostalgic, romantic and frequently hilarious account… impressive!”—Variety 
  “… a good, honest, readable, funny book. I loved it!” —Larry Adler, New Society 
  “…one of the best books about the growth and decline of Hollywood… written with insight, wit and an unusual lack of vanity.”—Films In Review 
  “Hollywood at its best—and worst… something special, an insider’s view, robustly witty, enlightening and full of charm, The next best thing to having been there!” —Cosmopolitan 
  “Lasky’s portraits of the greats with whom he has worked are razor sharp… his style is captivating.” —Films Illustrated

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