Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Roadside Americans - The Rise...

  Jack Reid

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  Between the Great Depression and the mid-1970s, hitchhikers were a common sight for motorists, as American service members, students, and adventurers sought out the romance of the road in droves. Beats, hippies, feminists, and civil rights and antiwar activists saw "thumb tripping" as a vehicle for liberation, living out the counterculture's rejection of traditional values. Yet, by the time Ronald Reagan, a former hitchhiker himself, was in the White House, the youthful faces on the road chasing the ghost of Jack Kerouac were largely gone—along with sympathetic portrayals of the practice in state legislatures and the media. 
  In Roadside Americans, Jack Reid traces the rise and fall of hitchhiking, offering vivid accounts of life on the road and how the act of soliciting rides from strangers, and the attitude toward hitchhikers in American society, evolved over time in sync with broader economic, political, and cultural shifts. In doing so, Reid offers insight into significant changes in the United States amid the decline of liberalism and the rise of the Reagan Era.

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  A Natural State - Essays on Texas

  Stephen Harrigan

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  “The personal essay at its best. What Edward Abbey did for the desert Southwest and what E. B. White did for Maine, Harrigan has done for Texas.” —Houston Chronicle   In this remarkable collection of essays, Stephen Harrigan explores, with an unfailing depth of feeling, the human longing to feel at home in the world of nature. In vivid and convincing prose, he evokes the landscape of his home territory, Texas, and his own reactions, sometimes droll, sometimes haunted, to the extraordinary power of place that Texas projects.  “Like our best nature writers, he tells us not only what’s out there, but connects it to our everyday lives . . . A Natural State is recommended reading not just for Texans but for all who would explore their connections to the natural world.” —The Washington Post  “While ‘luminous’ is not a word that you would think of in connection with the Lone Star State, that’s what these pieces are . . . They are filled with poetry, wit, and delightfully offbeat observations.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune  “Harrigan defty weaves fact, historical perspective, and personal experience into a tightly interlaced evocative fabric . . . By the end of the book, he brings the vast Texas landscape within grasp of even the most skeptical reader.” —The Denver Post  “Harrigan’s observations are not those of an academically trained naturalist but rather the fresh outlook of a city-bred tourist rejoicing in the exhilaration of discovery.” —Booklist  “Though several of the essays display a strong ecological bent, the author is never shrill. He is an accomplished prose stylist who combines accurate research with an unerring eye for detail. Highly recommended.” —Science

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  The Object at Hand - Intriguing...

  Beth Py-Lieberman

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  With charm and exuberance, The Object at Hand presents a behind-the-scenes vantage point of the Smithsonian collections. Veteran Smithsonian magazine editor Beth Py-Lieberman weaves together adaptations of the magazine's extensive and compelling coverage and interviews with scholars, curators, and historians to take listeners on an unforgettable journey through the Smithsonian museums.Objects are grouped into the themes audacity, utopia, fierce, haunting, deception, lost, desire, triumph, scale, optimism, playful, rhythm, and revealing to engage with the emotional dimensions of each object, how they relate to each other, and how they fit into the larger American story.Py-Lieberman reflects on the profound connections between even outwardly dissimilar objects and offers insight and stories from Smithsonian experts. The book explores artworks, scientific specimens, historical artifacts, airplanes, spacecraft, plants, and so much more, contemplating how each item represents different facets of humanity and resonates with cultural meaning in surprising ways. Whimsical, affecting, and insightful, The Object at Hand offers an intimate and exclusive tour of the Smithsonian collections.

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  Fringes - Life on the Edge of...

  Ben Mercer

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  LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2020 
  Sports books tend to detail extraordinary achievements, triumphs against the odds or commemorate World Cup winning captains. 
  This book does not do that. 
  For many, playing professional sport is the Dream Job. Few manage it, very few make it to the top and for the rest, life is very different. This is their story. 
  In Fringes, Ben Mercer invites you to witness life at the outer edges of professional rugby. This is a first hand account of what life is like as a journeyman professional athlete. You play, but to the wider public you don't exist. You earn but you don't drive a flash car. You sometimes pack out a stadium but sometimes, you play in a deserted park. This is the story for the majority of sports professionals. Only the minority taste the top, only one person gets to lift the cup or win the medal, only 15 get to play for England at any one time. For the rest, that’s not the case. 
  Ben Mercer is a former professional rugby player who after becoming disillusioned and uninspired plying his trade in the English Second Division, accepted an offer out of the blue to go to France and do something different - help an amateur team turn professional. This is a first hand account of what life is like in the lower reaches of professional sport - where your employment status is as precarious as your health and barely anyone will know your name. 
  If you've wanted to know what life is really like as a professional athlete, on the Fringes, away from the glitz and glamour of the international game then look no further.

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  Campus Ghosts of Norman Oklahoma

  Jeff Provine

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  A study of supernatural activity in the halls of higher learning from the author of Haunted Oklahoma City.   Since Norman’s inception more than 120 years ago as a college town, it has gathered a shadowy history and more than a few residents who refuse to leave. Ghostly organ music and sinister whispers fill school buildings in the night. Patients walk the surgical suites of the old infirmary, which was once a quarantine ward for polio victims. Long-deceased sisters still occupy their sororities—one even requiring an exorcism—and dorms are notorious for poltergeists and unexplainable sounds. Professor Jeff Provine sheds light on some of the darker corners of this historic campus and the secrets that reside there.

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  Transylvania and Beyond

  Dervla Murphy

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  Shortly after the execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Dervla Murphy travelled to Romania and found a nation both exhilarated and bewildered by revolution. Eager to explore a country that had hitherto been inaccessible to outsiders, Murphy describes in lucid detail a journey on two planes: cycling and ambling through the rural Carpathians, and exploring the mind-set of a post-Communist society in the grips of an identity crisis. She is treated to tremendous hospitality wherever she goes, and in urban blocs, small towns and traditional villages she gets to know the ordinary Romanians – the teachers, farmers, professors, factory-workers, writers, engineers, vets, army officers, shepherds, students and doctors. Transylvania and Beyond is the story of their hopes, fears and prejudices, a passionate insight into what Murphy calls 'one of Europe's least European countries.'

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