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  William Powell: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  Movie stars are revered for their ability to captivate audiences, and Hollywood began to flourish before the onset of television, allowing movies to enjoy relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment. The popularity of various actors would thus extend well beyond the success of any of their individual films, reflecting their much broader cultural significance as monuments of Hollywood during its Golden Age.  
  	In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own, and while older silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton reached the peak of Hollywood, some actors born near the beginning of the 20th century were ready to capitalize. While actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant remain household names, and actresses like Greta Garbo are still widely remembered, few had careers that enjoyed the success of William Powell. 
  	In a career spanning several decades, Powell would receive three Oscar nominations for Best Actor for critically acclaimed movies, so it is somewhat ironic that he is mostly remembered today for his association with the more famous Myrna Loy. Together, they starred in 14 films, including the 1934 box office hit, The Thin Man.  
  	One thing that helped Powell’s career along in the old days when Hollywood would only cast white actors in major roles, no matter what the nationality of the character was supposed to be, were his dark good looks. In pointing this out, a contemporary profile of Powell explained, “Many people imagine that William Powell has a foreign look. His first big stage success, his first big picture roles, were all in foreign parts — Spanish, Italian, Cuban. As a matter of fact, he is American to the core. Perhaps that look is his heritage from a paternal grandfather named Brady. The black Irish fit into any nationality. There is, too, a good strong strain of Holland Dutch, and a bit of French and English.”

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  Cristiano and Leo - The Race to...

  Jimmy Burns

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  Cristiano and Leo is the fascinating account of the lives and rivalry between two of the best footballers to ever play the game, Ronaldo and Messi. 
  The rivalry between Ronaldo and Messi has defined football to a generation of fans – everyone has an opinion on who is the greatest. 
  Do you prefer Ronaldo whose work ethic and physique have been honed for one purpose – scoring goals. Or Messi, whose superhuman natural talent means he can do the seemingly impossible with a football. 
  Between them they have scored over 1300 goals, won the Ballon d’Or ten times, and taken the beautiful game to even greater heights. But statistics alone cannot do justice to their skill, athleticism and dedication to stay at the top for so long of one of the most competitive sports in the world. 
  Cristiano and Leo tells their definitive story, from children kicking a ball halfway around the world from each other to facing each other in the epic clash El Clásico, between Real Madrid and Barcelona. This is the essential book to understand one the most compelling rivalries in sporting history.

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  Wisdom of Wildly Creative Women...

  Angela LoMenzo

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  Angela LoMenzo shares powerful real stories documented from interviews with a diverse group of accomplished women that encourages us to dig deep into our own creative lives!Women from all walks of life. Artists, musicians, authors, fashion designers, entrepreneurs, and others from a multitude of creative careers share their experiences with depression, bullying, infertility, cancer, assault, loss of loved ones, drug addiction, and many other issues women often do not have a safe space to talk about. These stories show you just how real life is.Powerful affirmations and true-life stories to empower you. This book is packed with words of wisdom from women who have both overcome adversity and achieved an authentic life honoring their individuality and freedom of personal expression. Their real stories illustrate that it is possible to live the life you have always desired now.Inside, you'll find:● Words of wisdom from wildly creative women● Raw and authentic interviews featuring stories by women redefining the role of a woman● And much more!

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  The Opium Queen

  Gabrielle Paluch

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  Olive Yang was a widely mythologized genderqueer lesbian opium-pioneer in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. After escaping an arranged marriage with a noble cousin, Olive felt that she had no choice but to lead a life of banditry with an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA. As her smuggling empire grew, she became so powerful and infamous that novelists were inspired to write about her evil ruthlessness and beauty. Yet, Olive’s real life and identity remained a mystery to many. Opium Queen is a journey to uncover the true story behind the propaganda and legends. Declassified intelligence documents portray Olive as a critical operator in one of the most important fronts of the clandestine Cold War against China. Through extensive interviews with the Yang family, Olive emerges as a complex anti-hero, searching for a way to live as an open homosexual in an era when such a lifestyle was considered deeply shameful in Burma. The great military alliances that facilitate narcotics traffic in Myanmar today are Olive’s lasting legacy in the Golden Triangle, as is the disenfranchisement of the people of Kokang. Through the story of Olive’s formidable life, Opium Queen examines historic events that underpinned critical diplomatic relationships between the U.S., Myanmar, and China and were at the root of Myanmar’s current political crisis.

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  Samuel Colt: The Life and Legacy...

  Charles River Editors

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  By the time weapons industrialist Samuel Colt was born, the Lewis and Clark Expedition sent to the Pacific by Thomas Jefferson had only recently returned with their report on the first overland continental journey. Outside of a small group of mountain men trapping and trading fur for European fashion magnates, few white settlers had found their way across the Great Plains. The firearms of the Revolution demonstrated little difference between a soldier’s flintlock musket and a hunting weapon taken from the mantle. 
  Trapped in the same technological rut as future wars drew near in the new century, Samuel Colt entered the pool of visionaries in search of the invention that would tip the power balance in favor of those who possessed it. As an observant child of the Industrial Revolution, Colt would ultimately lead the way with the most defining design changes in weaponry, and through constant trial and error, he gave the military what it wanted despite fierce resistance and apathy: an answer to the reloading conundrum. The half-minute intervals in which soldiers, lawmen, and hunters were at their most vulnerable was effectively eliminated after centuries of resignation, and the ensuing refinements to his handguns in particular were crucial to the outcomes of multiple wars, the American expansion west, and cowboy life along the frontier. With a mixture of perseverance, audacity, sales charm, and the curiosity of an engineer, Colt remains the most well-known manufacturer of arms in the nation’s history, and the ongoing argument as to whether Colt was in the end more of an innovator than inventor is rendered mute by reality. The evolutionary leap of his designs and ensuing products affected the balance of power in conflicts around the world, so much so that according to arms historian James E. Serven, they “shaped the destiny of American firearms” and helped the embryonic United States deal with both external and domestic violence.

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  All the Wild Hungers - A Season...

  Karen Babine

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  A “lovely” memoir of caring for a mother with cancer, reflecting on our appetites for food and for life (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When her mother is diagnosed with a rare cancer, Karen Babine—cook, collector of vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast.   In this series of mini-essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. As she notes that her sister’s unborn baby is the size of lemon while her mother’s tumor is the size of a cabbage, she reflects on what draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease. What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations?   Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family’s experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable.   “[Babine] continues to navigate her way through extraordinary challenges with ordinary comforts, finding poetry in the everyday. Reading this quiet book should provide the sort of balm for those in similar circumstances that writing it must have for the author.”―Kirkus Reviews   “Profound…Anyone who has experienced a family member’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book…In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book’s title is the hunger for life.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune

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