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  San Francisco Is Burning - The...

  Dennis Smith

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  At 5:12 a.m. on the morning of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was struck by one of the worst earthquakes in history, instantly killing hundreds. The ensuing fires that ravaged the city for days were responsible for the deaths of as many as 3,000 more. In all, 522 blocks and 28,188 buildings were leveled, and some 200,000 people dislocated.This watershed event in American history has never before been told with the richness of historical detail and insight that our foremost historian of fire, Dennis Smith, brings to it in San Francisco Is Burning. Smith cinematically recounts this terrible tragedy through the stories of the people who lived through those terrible days-from a valiant naval officer who helped save the city's piers and wharves to Eugene Schmitz, the crooked mayor, to the "debonair scoundrel" Abe Ruef, the most erudite city boss in American history. Throughout, Smith reveals many unknown details about the event, from the city's great vulnerability to fire-due to its corrupt and hasty building practices-to the widespread racism the quake unleashed and the atrocities committed by national guardsmen. Told with verve and a seasoned firefighter's knowledge, San Francisco Is Burning is the gripping and definitive account of one of the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.

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  Joan - The Mysterious Life of...

  Donald Spoto

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  The acclaimed biographer and theologian delivers an “engaging and at times gripping biography” of the fifteenth century heretic, saint, and savior of France (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Since her execution at the age of nineteen in 1431, Joan of Arc has maintained a remarkable hold on our collective imagination. She was a teenager of astonishing common sense and a national heroine who led men in to battle as a courageous warrior. Yet she was also abandoned by the king whose coronation she secured, betrayed by her countrymen, and sold to the enemy. In this meticulously researched biography, Donald Spoto captures her astonishing life and the times in which she lived. Neither wife nor nun, queen nor noblewoman, philosopher nor stateswoman, Joan of Arc demonstrates that everyone who follows their heart has the power to change history.

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  A Funny Thing Happened on the...

  Michael J. Fox

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  Michael J. Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but went on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and garner the highest accolades for his acting, as well as for his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches--all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor. 
  In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when "life goes skidding sideways." He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor. Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. He learned Economics as a starving artist; an unexpected turn as a neophyte activist schooled him in Political Science; and his approach to Comparative Literature involved stacking books up against their movie versions. 
  Replete with personal stories and hilarious anecdotes, Michael J. Fox's new book is the perfect gift for graduates.

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  Black Fokker Leader - Carl...

  Peter Kilduff

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  This biography of the WWI fighter pilot offers “an intimate portrait of the last recipient of the ‘Blue Max’” (Barrett Tillman).   One of the most noteworthy German fighter pilots of World War I was Leutnant der Reserve Carl Degelow, whose squadron of mostly black Fokker D.VII fighters posed a formidable threat to some of Britain’s most celebrated air units on the Western Front.  Black Fokker Leader, filled with new information and original photos, is based on the author’s research of significant German archival material and documentation, as well as British, French, and Belgian sources, shedding new light on this legendary ace. The biography offers previously unpublished material about Degelow and his comrades: how he was almost court-martialed; how his career was saved by Josef Jacobs; how Degelow helped Willy Rosenstein escape from Nazi Germany; and much more. Also included are new insights into men like Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Degelow’s wing commander in WWI; and V-2 rocket chief Gen. Hans Jeschonnek, a Degelow protégé in 1918.  

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  Smells Like Dead Elephants -...

  Matt Taibbi

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  From “the only political writer in America that matters” comes a collection of his best reportage about the worst of times (Harford Advocate).   Matt Taibbi is notorious as a journalistic agitator, a stone thrower, a “natural provocateur” (Salon.com). Now, bringing together his most incisive, intense, and hilarious pieces from his “Road Work” column in Rolling Stone, the “political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S. Thompson and P. J. O’Rourke so much fun” shines a scathing spotlight on the corruption, dishonesty, and sheer laziness of our leaders (The Washington Post).   With no shortage of outrages to compel Taibbi’s pen, these pieces paint a shocking portrait of our government at work—or, as Taibbi points out in “The Worst Congress Ever,” rarely working. Taibbi has plenty to say about George W. Bush, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and all the rest, but he doesn’t just hit inside the Beltway. Taibbi gets involved in the action. He infiltrates Senator Conrad Burns’s birthday party under disguise as a lobbyist for a fictional oil firm that wants to drill in the Grand Canyon. He floats into apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans in a dinghy with Sean Penn. He goes to Iraq as an embedded reporter, where he witnesses the mind-boggling dysfunction of our occupation and spends three nights in Abu Ghraib prison. And he reports from two of the most bizarre and telling trials in recent memory: California v. Michael Jackson and the evolution-vs.-intelligent-design trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.   A brilliant collection from one of the most entertaining political writers of today, Smells Like Dead Elephants is “the funniest angry book and the angriest funny book since Hunter S. Thompson roared into town” (James Wolcott).

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  Mystic Minstrel George Harrison...

  Geoffrey Giuliano

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  A touching tribute to the life and work of George Harrison. Much more than the inspirational heart of the Beatles, he was also the godfather of world music, an early advocate of yoga, a dedicated environmentalist, fountainhead of many charitable causes, and a brilliant composer and lyricist. Giuliano spent 30 years researching the life of this man, even living amongst him in pastoral Henley during George’s “quiet years” of tending his Victorian gardens and writing music that remains mostly unheard to this day.

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