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  Tough Guys in the Room - Al...

  Howard Jackson

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  ‘WEAK IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO REMEMBER ABOUT ME.’Al Capone.Back then, hot headed gangsters, not so gentle dames and bullet riddled corpses filled the newspaper headlines. And some of the stories below the headlines were even true. The 1920s was a period in American history when even the respectable were unwilling to stay sober. And not so fast cars carried assassins across Chicago, a city that for many captures the essence of the USA.In TOUGH GUYS IN THE ROOM, the story of Al Capone and his rivals is told in separate and stand-alone topics that cover key figures and events. The crimes and conflict are remembered, and the context that shaped those events and protagonists is explained. The police and the law abiding that made a doomed attempt to impose Prohibition also make an appearance. TOUGH GUYS IN THE ROOM offers a detached and impartial perspective on what happened between the Chicago gangs of the 1920s. There are also some surprises.TOUGH GUYS IN THE ROOM is a must for fans of gangsterdom. This account of what happened in Chicago is kept simple but that does not prevent author Howard Jackson from taking an independent line on the St Valentine’s Day massacre and the character of Al Capone.

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  A Constellation of Ghosts

  Laraine Herring

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  A ghost is not what you think it is, says Raven. A ghost is a commitment. When Laraine Herring receives an unexpected colon cancer diagnosis, her father, thirty years dead, returns to her as a raven, setting off a magical journey into complicated grief, inherited trauma, and ancestral healing. As she struggles with redefining her expectations for her life, she slips farther and farther underground into the ancestral realm, where she finds herself writing a play directed by her father-as-raven. It will be a cast of only four: you and me and my mother and my father, and we will speak until there are no more words between us, says Raven. And then you can decide the ending. Tick, tock, write. With one foot in her old life and one foot in the next, Herring grapples with how the silences around her father’s polio and the judgments of her fundamentalist grandparents shaped her, and as she wrestles with the uncertainty of her future, she must decide what to carry forward and what to leave behind. Utilizing speculative elements and an innovative structure blending lyrical prose with a script format, A Constellation of Ghosts takes the reader into the liminal spaces between one world and another, where choices unspool into lives, and the stories we’ve told ourselves fall apart under the scrutiny of multiple perspectives like flesh from bone, reminding us that grief is the unexpected ferryman who can usher all of us back together again.

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  Snapshots Sent Home - From...

  JT Blatty

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  "Snapshots of truth . . . Blatty drew the portraits of veterans with love and honesty . . . fearless, furious, broken, hopeless, hopeful, undeterred as forces of nature. It's so easy to start romanticizing them, especially the fallen ones, yet Blatty respects them too much to turn these courageous spirits into cardboard heroes. They are humans instead, with all their follies, anger, broken hearts, and broken lives. The power of a great book is that it stays with you long after you finish reading. It's been ten years since Russians occupied my hometown. It's two years since my whole country turned into a war zone . . . in the fog of the war, these snapshots of truth are as rare as beams of light." —Tetyana Strelchenko, director of America House, Kyiv, UkraineLike many post-9/11 combat veterans, JT Blatty struggled to regain her sense of purpose in the first years returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2018, a chance encounter brought her to Ukraine, drawn in by the familiarity of war and those who serve in wars. Over five years, JT captured the oral history and portraits of a tribe of revolutionaries, the Donbas volunteer soldiers. As she embedded with them on the front line in bunkers and forests, and in Kyiv flats, JT's story began to blend with theirs in a universal bond of combat veterans, compelling her to stay as a new war began. 
   
  This audiobook includes a bonus epilogue by the author.

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  America's Youngest Ambassador -...

  Lena Nelson

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  In 1982, amid the nuclear paranoia that engulfed the US and the Soviet Union, Samantha Smith, a fifth grader from Manchester, Maine, wrote a letter to the Kremlin asking the Soviet leader if he was going to start a war. When Pravda, the biggest Soviet newspaper, published her letter—and Samantha received an unprecedented invitation to visit the Soviet Union —her family embarked on a historic journey. 
   
   
   
  The story of a young American girl's letter to the Soviet leader and her innocent curiosity about the other side of the Iron Curtain holds an important lesson for every American. America's Youngest Ambassador provides insights into a forgotten era and has an important message for young people who strive to be more involved in facilitating change, both locally and worldwide. 
   
   
   
  Juxtaposing Samantha's narrative with that of her own childhood in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Lena Nelson explores the consequences of government propaganda on both sides of the ocean and reveals how Samantha Smith's journey in the summer of 1983 helped melt the hearts of the Soviets and thaw the ice of the Cold War. Drawing on interviews conducted in both the US and Russia with key players in the events of those days, Nelson blends storytelling, anecdotes, and analysis of Soviet-American relations to tell the story of this unprecedented moment in history.

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  Leading the Dillinger Gang

  Editors Charles River

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  America has always preferred heroes who weren’t clean cut, an informal ode to the rugged individualism and pioneering spirit that defined the nation in previous centuries. The early 19th century saw the glorification of frontier folk heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. After the Civil War, the outlaws of the West were more popular than the marshals, with Jesse James and Billy the Kid finding their way into dime novels. And at the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s, there were the “public enemies”, common criminals and cold blooded murderers elevated to the level of folk heroes by a public frustrated with their own inability to make a living honestly. 
  	Two months after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, a petty thief who had spent almost a decade behind bars for attempted theft and aggravated assault was released from jail. By the end of the year, that man, John Dillinger, would be America’s most famous outlaw: Public Enemy Number One. From the time of his first documented heist in early July 1933, until his dramatic death in late July of the following year, he would capture the nation’s attention and imagination as had no other outlaw since Jesse James. 
  	The man who became Public Enemy Number One after the deaths of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd was Lester Joseph Gillis, whose alias “George Nelson” eventually gave way to the nickname “Baby Face Nelson”. Despite the almost playfully innocent nickname, and the fact that he was not as notorious as two of his partners in crime, Dillinger and Floyd, Baby Face Nelson was the worst of them all. In an era where the outlaws were glorified as Robin Hood types, Baby Face was a merciless outlier who pulled triggers almost as fast as he lost his temper. He was believed to have been responsible for the deaths of more FBI agents than anybody else in American history.

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  Walden

  Henry David Thoreau

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  Walden is a book by American author Henry David Thoreau, first published in 1854. The book is a personal reflection on Thoreau's experience of living in a cabin he built himself on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. 
  The book is divided into eighteen chapters, each detailing Thoreau's observations and musings on topics such as nature, solitude, simplicity, self-reliance, and the importance of living deliberately. Thoreau sought to live a simple, intentional life, in which he could cultivate his own thoughts and gain a deeper understanding of himself and the world around him. 
  Throughout the book, Thoreau also reflects on the value of nature, which he saw as a source of spiritual and intellectual inspiration. He describes the changing seasons, the wildlife around Walden Pond, and the rhythms of life in the natural world. 
  In addition to its philosophical themes, Walden is also a work of social and political criticism. Thoreau critiques the materialism and consumerism of his time, arguing that people are too often focused on acquiring wealth and possessions, rather than living a meaningful life. He also discusses issues such as slavery and the role of the individual in society. 
  Overall, Walden is a classic work of American literature that continues to inspire readers with its message of simplicity, self-reliance, and appreciation for the natural world.

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