Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Portrait of a Phantom - The...

  Zeke Schein, Poppy Z. Brite

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  The story of one man’s efforts to authenticate a photograph of the influential King of the Delta Blues amid pushback from others. 
   
  After Zeke Schein purchased the lost photograph of Robert Johnson online, he knew he held something important in his hands. But would anyone else see what he saw? One of only three or four known photos of the legendary blues guitarist, the photograph was certainly an exceptional artifact of music history. Despite official recognition of its authenticity by the estate of Robert Johnson, music historians have continued to dispute the photograph’s legitimacy. 
   
  The story of Johnson’s lost photograph is also the story of Schein’s crusade to prove he’s holding a bona fide piece of music history. Much like a modern-day Don Quixote in a felt fedora, Schein is on a mission to convince others to see the truth as only he can. 
   
  “When you love the music and the person behind the music, you want to know more about him. That’s what this book is all about.”—from the foreword by Dion DiMucci, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and author of Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth 
   
  “Magic and mystery meld with humility and history. Portrait of a Phantom is a tale told by a true acolyte and seeker of the source of the blues.”—Patti Smith, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and author of the National Book Award–winner Just Kids 
   
  “A fascinating trip into the world of blues history . . . The details and anecdotes herein give a great perspective to “the Phantom.””—John Hammond, blues singer and musician

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  The Beautiful Cigar Girl - Mary...

  Daniel Stashower

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  On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson—and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case—and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

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  Peppercorn His Life & Locomotives

  Tim Hillier-Graves

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  Arthur Peppercorn, a vicar's son from Herefordshire, was the last L N E R Chief Mechanical Engineer.  He managed his department for a very short time before it was swept away in the wholesale changes that followed Nationalisation of British Railways in 1948.Although a disciple and follower of Sir Nigel Gresley, he was his own man and developed his talent for production engineering that fully complimented the design skills of his greatly respected leader.  He then became a worthy deputy to Edward Thompson during a war that demanded great personal sacrifices from both men.  When he finally became C M E in 1946 he used his wide talents and experience to lead in developing two successful pacific classes of locomotives, that many rate as being among the best locomotives of this type ever to appear in Britain.  This book, which is the first detailed biography of Peppercorn, tells his fascinating story and describes the influences on his life and career, illustrating his many achievements along the way.

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  Sasha and Emma - The Anarchist...

  Paul Avrich, Karen Avrich

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  This “lively” dual biography is “an enormously rich book, offering an absorbing portrait of the world of anarchists in turn-of-the-century America” (The New York Times Book Review). 
   
  In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives and the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped. 
   
  Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with “the first terrorist act in America,” the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman’s closest confidant though the two were often separated—by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma’s growing fame as a champion of causes from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha’s morose moon, Emma became known as “the most dangerous woman in America.” Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street. 
   
  Sasha and Emma is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world. 
   
  “A narrative laced with irony details the remarkable reorientation of this pair after they were deported to a Soviet Russia they had lauded as a utopia but soon fled as a monstrous dystopia. A fully human portrait of two tightly linked yet forever fiercely independent spirits.” —Booklist (starred review) 
   
  “An in-depth look at a lesser-known chapter of American and world history.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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  Music Lessons

  Bob Wiseman

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  Bob Wiseman believes most things in life are universal or, as Lauryn Hill says, everything is everything. Bearing in mind that advice, Wiseman writes about finding the link between music and daily life, like what is common between Mary Margaret O’Hara, hiding around the corner with the lights turned off in order to record herself and his 5-year-old insisting he stop hurrying to her dance lesson and marvel at the fluff ball she is blowing toward the ceiling. Each entry is unique and compellingly written, but the themes throughout — on improvisational music, life lessons, and conflict — are ubiquitous.

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  The American Home Front 1941–1942

  Alistair Cooke

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  A New York Times bestseller: This portrait of the United States at the beginning of World War II is “an unexpected and welcome discovery in a time capsule” (The Washington Post).   In nearly three thousand BBC broadcasts over fifty-eight years, Alistair Cooke reported on America, illuminating our country for a global audience. Shortly before he passed away, a long-forgotten manuscript resurfaced in a closet in his New York apartment. It was a travelogue of America during the early days of World War II that had sat there for sixty years.   Published to stellar reviews, Cooke’s The American Home Front is a “valentine to his adopted country by someone who loved it as well as anyone and knew it better than most” (The Plain Dealer). A portrait frozen in time, the book offers a charming look at the era as it journeys through small towns, big cities, and the American landscape as they once were. The American Home Front is also a brilliant piece of reportage, a historical gem that “affirms Cooke’s enduring place as a great twentieth-century reporter” (American Heritage).   “An interesting eyewitness record . . . It recalls transcontinental travel in the pre-interstate highway era, and with greater depth, social problems that Cooke detected beneath the win-the-war exhortations he encountered from coast to coast.” —Booklist

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