Other books that might interest you

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  Always Crashing in the Same Car...

  Matthew Specktor

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  Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment.In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor's first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother's cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or "cracking up," he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of "success" and "failure" that haunt the artist's life and the American imagination.Part memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, Always Crashing in the Same Car explores Hollywood through a certain kind of collapse. It's a vibrant and intimate inspection of failure told through the lives of iconic, if under-sung, artists—Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, and Hal Ashby, among others—and the author's own family history. Through this constellation of Hollywood figures, he unearths a fascinating alternate history of the city that raised him and explores the ways in which curtailed ambition, insufficiency, and loss shape all our lives.

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  A History Lover's Guide to...

  Paul Kirkamn

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  Discover the sights, sounds, and rich history of Kansas City—from ancient burial mounds to a world-class jazz museum. 
   
  Kansas City is often seen as a “cow town” with great barbecue and steaks. But it’s also a city with more boulevards than Paris and more working fountains than Rome. There are burial mounds that date back more than two thousand years. The National World War I Museum and Memorial, opened in 1926, stands more than two hundred feet tall. Leila’s Hair Museum has a collection that brings tourists from all over the nation. The Kansas City Jazz Museum features a historic district and world-class museum that document a time when dance halls, cabarets, speakeasies, and even honky-tonks and juke joints fostered the development of a new musical style. Join Missouri historian Paul Kirkman as he cuts a trail past the stockyards and takes you on a tour into the heart of America—Kansas City. 
   
  Includes photos and information on Kansas City landmarks

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  Haunted Tombstone

  Cody Polston

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  The founder of the Southwest Ghost Hunter’s Association guides readers through the supernatural history of the legendary Arizona town.   Once the rowdiest town in the Old West, Tombstone still holds echoes from those wild days of thieves, outlaws and gamblers. The ghost of the Swamper is said to stalk Big Nose Kate's Saloon, afraid someone might find his stolen hoard of silver. The Brunckow Cabin played host to a string of mysterious murders in the late 1800s, and some say that a menacing specter remains. Pictures of cowboy Billy Clanton's headstone in the infamous Boot Hill Graveyard are frequently reported to have unexplainable apparitions. From the ghosts of the O.K. Corral to the feuding prostitutes lingering in the Bird Cage Theatre, eerie wraiths live again in these stories.

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  Letters from England 1846-1849

  Elizabeth Davis Bancroft

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  Elizabeth Bancroft went to England with her husband, historian George Bancroft, for three of the most dynamicy years in European hstory. As Ambassador to England from the United States, George moved in the highest circles. In his wife's letters to their sons, her uncle, her brother, and Mrs. Polk (the President's wife), we see glimpses not only of early Victorian English life, but also of Queen Victoria herself! Mrs. Bancroft speaks of dinners with Benjamin Disraeli, visits to Wordsworth, weekends in the country with Louis Napolean and Sir Robert Peel with such matter of fact aplomb that one cannot help being impressed.

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  A History of Hunting in the...

  Bob Plott

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  Discover the history and lore of this region’s legendary outdoorsmen—and their faithful dogs: “Well worth reading” (Bear Hunting Magazine).   Man versus beast—it’s an age-old struggle that has been part of the rugged terrain of the Great Smoky Mountains since humans first encountered the region centuries ago. Bob Plott, a descendant of the breeder of the Plott hound and an avid outdoorsman in North Carolina, takes readers on a quest back through time for a glimpse into the minds and the rifles of the region’s most intrepid hunters.   From the primitive weaponry and prevailing tactics of the Cherokee to the audacious rifle-toting ridge runners, and even a gruesome gang of cannibalistic rogues, these stories are truly a gripping tribute to mountain life and the adventure of the game.

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  Field Notes - A City Girl's...

  Sara Jewell

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  Reflections on country life on Canada’s eastern coast: “Gentle humor and prose as clear and lilting as the song of the hermit thrush at dusk.” —Deborah Carr, author of Sanctuary: The Story of Naturalist Mary Majka Sara Jewell has lived at eighteen different addresses—but there was one that remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from the New Brunswick border, and the red soil stained her heart. Life, as it’s wont to do, eventually took Jewell away from the east coast. But when her marriage and big-city life started to crumble, she wanted only one thing: a fresh start in Pugwash.Field Notes includes forty-one essays on the differences, both subtle and drastic, between city life and country living. From curious neighbors and unpredictable weather to the reality of roadkill and the wonders of wildlife, award-winning narrative journalist Sara Jewell strikes the perfect balance between honest self-examination and humorous observation—in a delightful memoir accented with original drawings by Joanna Close. “A born storyteller . . . her sharp-witted but kind-hearted portraits of country people, places, and customs make for a remarkable first book.” —Harry Thurston, author of A Place Between the Tides and the Deer Yard

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