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  King Hancock - The Radical...

  Brooke Barbier

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  Americans are more familiar with his signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock's life, Brooke Barbier depicts a patriot of fascinating contradictions—a child of enormous privilege who would nevertheless become a voice of the common folk; a pillar of society uncomfortable with radicalism who yet was crucial to independence.Orphaned young, Hancock was raised by his merchant uncle, whose business and vast wealth he inherited—including household slaves, whom Hancock later freed. By his early thirties, he was one of New England's most prominent politicians, earning a place on Britain's most-wanted list and the derisive nickname King Hancock. While he eventually joined the revolution against England, his ever moderate—and moderating—disposition would prove an asset after 1776. Barbier shows Hancock appealing to southerners and northerners, Federalists and Anti-Federalists. He was a famously steadying force as president of the fractious Second Continental Congress. As governor of Massachusetts, Hancock convinced its delegates to vote for the federal Constitution and calmed the fallout from the shocking Shays's Rebellion. An insightful study of leadership in the revolutionary era, King Hancock traces a moment when passion was on the side of compromise and accommodation proved the basis of profound social and political change.

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  Our Lives Out Loud - In Pursuit...

  Ann Louise Gilligan, Katherine...

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  A fascinating story of love and campaigning for equality and social justice.
  When Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan met it was love. It has been love through twenty-seven years together. But that love had consequences which brought this couple to the High Court, and beyond.
  They met at Boston College. Returning to Ireland, their relationship had to be kept secret. Jobs were at stake, and elevation to positions of authority could be jeopardised.
  What would happen if one of them died? Only a married couple received the support of the state in such circumstances.
  Ireland rejected their Canadian marriage and they had to make a huge decision: to go public and fight or to stay quiet and suffer the consequences? Here they offer their deeply personal story – out loud for all to read.
  Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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  Transit of Venus - Travels in...

  Julian Evans

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  With the potent myths of the Pacific Ocean in mind, Julian Evans journeys ever deeper into a world of gin-clear lagoons, palms and sand, in search of both remnants of the fabulous kingdoms of the nineteenth-century European imagination -fed by an abundance of fruits, fish and guilt-free sex -and their twentieth century reality. Ever since Captain Cook first went to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, the Pacific has offered this promise of Paradise, shadowed by a darker underbelly. With humour and honesty, Evans uncovers the modern reality: a brave new ocean where the islanders have money and booze, military coups and cold-war politi, atomic explosions and rising sea levels, but where, in the remotest atolls, beyond all our modernity and rationality, the old dreams continue to assert themselves.

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  Culprit Fay and Other Poems

  Joseph Rodman Drake

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  A collection, The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, was published posthumously by his daughter in 1835. His best-known poems are the long title-poem of that collection and the patriotic "The American Flag" which was set as a cantata for two soloists, choir and orchestra by the Czech composer Antonin Dvorák in 1892-93, as his Op. 102. In the early part of the 19th Century both Drake and his friend Halleck were widely hailed by Americans as among the leading literary personalities and talents produced by this country. That they had been leading lights in the New York area was true, but the glimmer for both could not really hold. It was finally diminished by Edgar Allan Poe when he wrote a serious study of the two poets called The Halleck - Rodman Review. Looking at The Culprit Fay by Drake, Poe showed that the imagery many marveled at was quite second-rate and ordinary. In fact, he briefly invented new lines to show how easily it could be done. The reputations of both Drake and Halleck never recovered. (Summary excerpted from Wikipedia)

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  Blood Crimes - The Pennsylvania...

  Fred Rosen

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  Two brothers turn from Jehovah’s Witnesses in Allentown, PA, to neo-Nazi murderers in this true crime investigation from the author of Lobster Boy. Raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses and frustrated with their parents’ repressive rules, Bryan and David Freeman rebelled as teenagers. Encouraged by an acquaintance he met while institutionalized at a reform school, Bryan became a neo-Nazi. Bryan then indoctrinated David, and their flare for defiance took a dark turn. After callously murdering their father, mother, and younger brother, the skinhead brothers took flight across America, with police from three states in hot pursuit. They were eventually captured in Michigan and returned to Pennsylvania for trial.   During the trial, author Fred Rosen uncovered evidence that one of the brothers might not have been as culpable as authorities claimed, and divulged the history of a family torn apart by stringent religious beliefs.

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  Bible For Young People Vol 2

  Anonymous Anonymous

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  The Bible for Young People tells the sweet and simple stories of the Bible in the Bible language, omitting only genealogies and doctrines, and whatever is generally regarded as unprofitable to young readers. Moreover, it is so divided into subjects, forming complete stories, that the child will be interested in every part of it. ...Verse divisions have been disregarded, and a totally new system of chapters introduced in place of the familiar ones, and it is hoped that this novelty will give fresh interest to the old book. One of the features which will be appreciated is the table of contents, giving the subject of each book and its subdivisions, so that one may readily turn to any Bible story of which he is in search."With great discrimination and sympathy, the compiler, Mrs. Joseph B. Gilder, has accomplished this task, and the book now stands as the embodiment of what is universally considered the best in the Bible for young people, "best" meaning here what is most suited to the minds of girls and boys and appropriate to their moral range." Volume 2 comprises the stories of the New Testament.  - Summary from Publisher's note

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