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  Bill Pickett: The Life of the...

  Editors Charles River

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  The Wild West made legends out of many men and women through the embellishment of their stories, but it was Buffalo Bill Cody who truly brought the Wild West to life and provided the images that people still associate with the 19th century West today. Though he had a long career that spanned service in the Civil War, trapping, and even a stint with the Pony Express, Buffalo Bill eventually became synonymous with his world-famous Wild West Show. By depicting stereotypical Western scenes like riding the Pony Express, and gunfights between cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill became one of the men most responsible for establishing how the public remembered the Wild West, and the show influenced subsequent film and literature. The show also featured several kinds of activities that are still part of rodeos today, including riding bucking broncos, roping livestock, and target shooting.  
  	Almost absent in the perceptions of modern America is the comprehension of African Americans participating so prolifically in the building of the nation. Print fiction idealizing the cowboy life to Eastern readers would not depict what had ignited the war for which so many had an utter revulsion. The black man of the post-war years did not inspire the white spirit so essential for reveling in the old system. The 20th century’s television and cinematic offerings operated on the same drive, and the existence of black cattle workers was all but blotted out. Indeed, many of the modern age are barely aware that an African-American ever “stepped foot on the West bank of the Mississippi River.”[1] No one saw the black cowboy on screen or in print, the two information industries that shaped our perception of America’s westward expansion. Therefore, a collective assumption that they must never have existed at all was nationally internalized.

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  Godforsaken Grapes - A Slightly...

  Jason Wilson

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  A New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine best book, this “genial excursion” to little-known wine destinations “will make you curious and thirsty.” (Eric Asimov, The New York Times).   Eighty percent of the wine we drink is made from only twenty grapes. Yet, there are nearly 1,400 known varieties of wine grapes in the world—from altesse to zierfandler. In Godforsaken Grapes, Jason Wilson looks at how that came to be and embarks on a journey to discover what we miss.   Stemming from his own growing obsession, Wilson moves far beyond the “noble grapes,” hunting down obscure and underappreciated wines from Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, France, Italy, the United States, and beyond. In the process, he looks at why these wines fell out of favor (or never gained it in the first place), what it means to be obscure, and how geopolitics, economics, and fashion have changed what we drink.   A combination of travel memoir and epicurean adventure, Godforsaken Grapes is an entertaining love letter to wine.   “You’ll walk away with a better understanding of the wine industry and an itch to book a ticket to destinations you’ve never heard of before.” —Imbibe Magazine   “Funny, enlightening [and] prodigiously researched.” —San Francisco Chronicle   “Wilson offers a spirited, highly personal argument for drinking more adventurously.” —Punch   “A delightful dive into more esoteric grapes.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune   “Wonderful . . . [you’ll] never order another pinot noir again.” —Tom Bissell, author of Apostle and The Disaster Artist   “Original, obsessive, and wildly insightful. Drink it down!” —Andrew McCarthy, actor, director, and author of the New York Times bestselling travel memoir The Longest Way Home

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  Roosevelt: The Soldier of...

  James MacGregor Burns

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  The “engrossing” Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning history of FDR’s final years (Barbara Tuchman). The second entry in James Macgregor Burns’s definitive two-volume biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins with the president’s precedent-breaking third term election in 1940, just as Americans were beginning to face the likelihood of war. Here, Burns examines Roosevelt’s skillful wartime leadership as well as his vision for post-war peace. Hailed by William Shirer as “the definitive book on Roosevelt in the war years,” and by bestselling author Barbara Tuchman as “engrossing, informative, endlessly readable,” The Soldier of Freedom is a moving profile of a leader gifted with rare political talent in an era of extraordinary challenges, sacrifices, heroism, and hardship. 

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  The Tall Boy - A Memoir

  Jess Gregg

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  “Walk tall, man,” the junkie behind him whispered. “Don’t let the bastards see that you care.” They were standing in line at police headquarters in Los Angeles, waiting to be fingerprinted. The twenty-two year old writer had just been arrested on a “vag-lewd” charge. Or, to put it more clearly, he had been busted for being gay. Entrapment, police stings, and unauthorized raids were still the acceptable tactics for catching and imprisoning gays in America in the mid-twentieth century. The gay world, regarded as criminal or sick, was a scorned minority with its own private vocabulary, but no voice politically, forced to rely on intuition, courage, and laughter to survive. What led up to this arrest, and the struggle to live it down afterwards, lies at the core of this very frank, and sometimes hilarious memoir. The Tall Boy includes close-ups of some of the legendary theatre and film figures Gregg came to know and work with, among them Elia Kazan, Tennessee Williams, Agnes de Mille, Gower Champion, Joshua Logan, Colette, Gian Carlo Menotti, Sir John Gielgud, Jean Cocteau, and Scan Connery. Just as colorful are the profiles of less celebrated figures—Ma Coyle, cheerleader to a generation of gay boys, Raymond, the smoldering icon at the Hollywood hotel, and Marty, the good-looking lesbian with whom Gregg set up housekeeping in an effort to go straight. Jess Gregg does not hold back in telling of the struggles and perils of those days. Neither does he stint on the fun and adventure. Or the progress. The twentieth century proved to be revolutionary; the walls that came tumbling down were not just social and cultural, but sexual.

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  Ryan White - My Own Story

  Ryan White, Ann Marie Cunningham

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  Ryan White was a typical 13-year-old living in a small town in the Midwest. Then, it was discovered that Ryan had contracted AIDS through tainted blood products he had been given for his hemophilia. Denied the right to return to school, he went to court. Newspaper headlines followed the many legal battles, and although Ryan won the court case, his own fight had just begun. With great courage, he spoke out against the many misconceptions about the disease and called for AIDS sufferers to be treated with compassion. In this moving, personal account— narrated by Lukas Haas who played Ryan in a television film— the young advocate shares the struggle not only for himself but for others, ensuring his brief life had an everlasting impact long after he was gone.

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  A Company of Tanks

  William Henry Lowe Watson

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  'A Company of Tanks', first published in 1920, is the final part of W H L Watson's memoirs of World War One.  Watson, a young History graduate from Oxford University, enlisted as a Corporal in the Royal Engineers on the outbreak of the war and was sent over to France as a motorcycle despatch rider. In 1915 he published 'Adventures of a Despatch Rider' based on his letters home, but by then he had been promoted to Lieutenant and transferred to the Divisional Cyclists (known as the Gaspipe Cavalry because the cycle frame tubes resembled gas pipes).'A Company of Tanks' picks up his story in October 1916, when Major Watson (as he had become) volunteered to join the Heavy Machine Gun Corps (as the Tank Corps was then called) and was placed in command of No. 11 Company, D Battalion.  Watson tells how the tank crews trained by carrying dummy tanks of wood and canvas (to the great amusement of local children) before engaging in initially disastrous battles. At Bullecourt, tanks were delayed by a blizzard and then, conspicuous against snow, devastated by enemy fire that penetrated inadequate armour. In the Third Battle of Ypres they were bogged down in mud and gassed. Lessons were learned, and  at Cambrai tanks began be used more sucessfully. At the end of 1917, after a bout of trench fever, Watson returned to England to form a company of 'Carrier Tanks' (used to provide logistical support on the battlefield) which he commanded in France until the end of the war. After the war, Watson joined the Civil Service and rose to high rank in the Ministry of Labour before his untimely death in 1932, at the age of 41.'A Company of Tanks' is a personal memoir filled with details of the messy process of industrial war, with its tragedy and horror but also humour, people, landscape, food and drink. It will be of interest to professional historians or anyone interested in World War One. In this audiobook, it is read by Stephen Lowe Watson, a grandson of the author.

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