Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

• 

  Ants Among Elephants - An...

  Sujatha Gidla

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother's battles with caste and women's oppression. 
  A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

  Mostra libro

• 

  The Women Who Inspired London...

  Lucy Merello Peterson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This is the story of women caught up in thetumultuous art scene of the early twentiethcentury, some famous and others lost totime.By 1910 the patina of the belle poquewas wearing thin in London. Artists wereon the hunt for modern women who couldhold them in thrall. A chance encounter onthe street could turn an artless child intoan artists model, and a model into a muse.Most were accidental beauties, plucked fromobscurity to pose in the great art schoolsand studios. Many returned home to livesthat were desperately challenging  almostall were anonymous.Meet them now. Sit with them in theCaf Royal amid the wives and mistressesof Londons most provocative artists. Peekbehind the brushstrokes and chisel cuts atwomen whose identities are some of arthistorys most enduring secrets. Drawing ona rich mlange of historical and anecdotalrecords and a primary source, this isstorytelling that sweeps up the reader inthe cultural tides that raced across Londonin the Edwardian, Great War and interwarperiods.A highlight of the book is a reveal of theAvico siblings, a family of models whosefaces can be found in paint and bronze andstone today. Their lives and contributionshave been cloaked in a century of silence.Now, illuminated by family photos and oralhistories from the daughter of one of themodels, the Avico story is finally told.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Faces of the Civil War Navies -...

  Ronald S. Coddington

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Explore the human side of the Civil War through archival images and biographical sketches of Confederate and Union sailors. 
   
  During the American Civil War, more than one hundred thousand men fought on ships at sea or on one of America’s great inland rivers. There were no large-scale fleet engagements, yet the navies, particularly the Union Navy, did much to define the character of the war and affect its length. The first hostile shots roared from rebel artillery at Charleston Harbor. Along the Mississippi River and other inland waterways across the South, Union gunboats were often the first to arrive in deadly enemy territory. In the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic seaboard, blockaders in blue floated within earshot of gray garrisons that guarded vital ports. And on the open seas, rebel raiders wreaked havoc on civilian shipping. 
   
  In Faces of the Civil War Navies, Civil War photograph collector Ronald S. Coddington focuses his skills on the Union and Confederate navies. Using identifiable cartes de visite of common sailors on both sides of the war, many of them never before published, Coddington uncovers the personal histories of each individual. These unique narratives are drawn from military and pension records, letters, diaries, period newspapers, and other primary sources. In addition to presenting the personal stories of seventy-seven intrepid volunteers, Coddington also focuses on the momentous naval events that ushered in an era of ironclad ships and other technical innovations. 
   
  Taken collectively, these “snapshots” show that the history of war is not merely a chronicle of campaigns won and lost, it is the collective personal odysseys of thousands of individual men.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Scientists - The Wright Brothers...

  Kelly Mass

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This book contains three biographies: 
  The Wright Brothers - Orville and Wilbur Wright were 2 American air travel leaders who are commonly credited with developing, structure, and flying the world's first effective motor-driven plane. On December seventeenth, 1903, four miles (6 kilometers) south of Cat Hawk, North Carolina, they made the first regulated, supported flight of a powered, heavier-than-air airplane with the Wright Leaflet. The brothers were also the first to develop airplane controls, leading the way for fixed-wing powered flight. 
  Michael Faraday - Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, Surrey, on September twenty-second, 1791. (which is now part of the London District of Southwark). He originated from a bad home. His dad, James, was a Christian who came from the Glasite sect. At the time of the winter season of 1790, James Faraday moved his marriage partner and 2 kids from Outhgill, Westmorland, where he had been an apprentice to the town blacksmith. In the fall of that year, Michael was born. Michael Faraday, the 3rd of 4 kids, needed to inform himself after getting just a primary school education. 
  George Stephenson - George Stephenson was a British civil and mechanical engineer who lived from June the 9th 1781 to August the 12th 1848. Stephenson, called the "Dad of Railways," was regarded by Victorians as a great example of exertion and a desire to enhance. Samuel Smiles, a self-help supporter, applauded his achievements in particular. The four feet eight +12 inches (1.435 m) basic gauge used by the majority of the world's trains is based upon his chosen rail gauge, at times described as 'Stephenson gauge.'

  Mostra libro

• 

  Farther Off from Heaven - A Memoir

  William Humphrey

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

  William Humphrey’s acclaimed memoir is a richly detailed portrait of small-town Texas and a poignant account of the tragedy that shaped the author’s life  At three o’clock in the morning on July 5, 1937, William Humphrey awoke to his mother’s urgent cry: “Get dressed as quick as you can! Your daddy has been hurt.” Rushing to the doctor’s office, mother and son arrived to find Clarence Humphrey battered beyond recognition: his chest crushed, his face bruised black and caked with blood, his teeth shattered. He soon drew his final breath.   In that terrible moment, thirteen-year-old William knew that nothing would ever be the same again: “I felt slip from me in that moment not only the certainty of my future but the fixity of my past. It was as if I had been wakened out of my childhood.” He moved with his mother to Dallas soon after, and although he set his classic novels, Home from the Hill and The Ordways, in his hometown of Clarksville, he would not return for thirty-two years.   A masterpiece of autobiography, Farther Off from Heaven is the fiercely honest, exquisitely crafted story of William Humphrey’s childhood and the sudden end of his innocence. This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Humphrey including rare photos form the author’s estate.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Untamed - The Wildest Woman in...

  Will Harlan

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The inspiring biography of the adventuresome naturalist Carol Ruckdeschel and her crusade to save her island home from environmental disaster.   In a “moving homage . . . that artfully articulates the ferocities of nature and humanity,” biographer Will Harlan captures the larger-than-life story of biologist, naturalist, and ecological activist Carol Ruckdeschel, known to many as the wildest woman in America. She wrestles alligators, eats roadkill, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built by hand in an island wilderness. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia (Kirkus Reviews).   Cumberland, the country’s largest and most biologically diverse barrier island, is celebrated for its windswept dunes and feral horses. Steel magnate Thomas Carnegie once owned much of the island, and in recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island’s future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high school diploma becomes an outspoken advocate on a celebrated but divisive island? Untamed is the story of an American original who fights for what she believes in, no matter the cost, “an environmental classic that belongs on the shelf alongside Carson, Leopold, Muir, and Thoreau” (Thomas Rain Crowe, author of Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods).   “Vivid. . . . Ms. Ruckdeschel’s biography, and the way this wandering soul came to settle for so many decades on Cumberland Island, is big enough on its own, but Mr. Harlan hints at bigger questions.” —The Wall Street Journal   “Wild country produces wild people, who sometimes are just what’s needed to keep that wild cycle going. This is a memorable portrait.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature   “Deliciously engrossing. . . . Readers are in for a wild ride.” —The Citizen-Times

  Mostra libro