One Summer

Publisher : National Geographic Books
Release Date :
ISBN : 0385680899
Pages : 0 pages
Rating Book: 4.8/5 (385 users)

Download or read book One Summer written by Bill Bryson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth (so famous that Minnesota consider renaming itself after him). It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that have made him our favorite writer of narrative non-fiction, he rolls out an unforgettable cast of vivid and eccentric personalities to bring to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage and changed the world forever.

Reinventing an Urban Vernacular

Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Release Date :
ISBN : 1134822596
Pages : 250 pages
Rating Book: 4.3/5 (134 users)

Download or read book Reinventing an Urban Vernacular written by Terry Moor and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With increasing population and its associated demand on our limited resources, we need to rethink our current strategies for construction of multifamily buildings in urban areas. Reinventing an Urban Vernacular addresses these new demands for smaller and more efficient housing units adapted to local climate. In order to find solutions and to promote better urban communities with an overall environmentally responsible lifestyle, this book examines a wide variety of vernacular building precedents, as they relate to the unique characteristics and demands of six distinctly different regions of the United States. Terry Moor addresses the unique landscape, climate, physical, and social development by analyzing vernacular precedents, and proposing new suggestions for modern needs and expectations. Written for students and architects, planners, and urban designers, Reinventing an Urban Vernacular marries the urban vernacular with ongoing sustainability efforts to produce a unique solution to the housing needs of the changing urban environment.

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

Publisher : Penguin UK
Release Date :
ISBN : 0241451957
Pages : 176 pages
Rating Book: 4.4/5 (241 users)

Download or read book A Really Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary Bill Bryson takes us from the Big Bang to the dawn of science in this book about basically everything. Ever wondered how we got from nothing to something? Or thought about how we can weigh the earth? Or wanted to reach the edge of the universe? Uncover the mysteries of time, space and life on earth in this extraordinary book - a journey from the centre of the planet to the dawn of the dinosaurs, and everything in between. And discover our own incredible journey, from single cell to civilisation, including the brilliant (and sometimes very bizarre) scientists who helped us find out the how and why. Adapted from A Short History of Nearly Everything, the ground-breaking bestseller, this book is stunningly illustrated throughout, and accessible for all ages ************************************************************************ Reviews for A Short History of Nearly Everything: 'It's the sort of book I would have devoured as a teenager. It might well turn unsuspecting young readers into scientists.' Evening Standard 'I doubt that a better book for the layman about the findings of modern science has been written' Sunday Telegraph 'A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again' Daily Express 'The very book I have been looking for most of my life' Daily Mail

One Summer

Publisher : Random House
Release Date :
ISBN : 1448169542
Pages : 672 pages
Rating Book: 4.4/5 (448 users)

Download or read book One Summer written by Bill Bryson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world.

Troublesome Words

Publisher : Penguin UK
Release Date :
ISBN : 0241974542
Pages : 256 pages
Rating Book: 4.4/5 (241 users)

Download or read book Troublesome Words written by Bill Bryson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Troublesome Words is playful and riddlesome guide to the English language from the bestselling author of Notes from a Small Island and A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson What is the difference between mean and median, blatant and flagrant, flout and flaunt? Is it whodunnit or whodunit? Do you know? Are you sure? With Troublesome Words, journalist and bestselling travel-writer Bill Bryson gives us a clear, concise and entertaining guide to the problems of English usage and spelling that has been an indispensable companion to those who work with the written word for over twenty years. So if you want to discover whether you should care about split infinitives, are cursed with an uncontrollable outbreak of commas or were wondering if that newsreader was right to say 'an historic day', this superb book is the place to find out.

New Perspectives on Detective Fiction

Publisher : Routledge
Release Date :
ISBN : 1317435249
Pages : 264 pages
Rating Book: 4.1/5 (317 users)

Download or read book New Perspectives on Detective Fiction written by Casey Cothran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.

Soil Science Americana

Publisher : Springer Nature
Release Date :
ISBN : 3030711358
Pages : 623 pages
Rating Book: 4.3/5 (3 users)

Download or read book Soil Science Americana written by Alfred E. Hartemink and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book narrates how the study of the soil became a science and institutionalized in the USA between 1860 and 1960. The story meanders through the activities, ideas, publications, and correspondence of people who influenced the progressions, that led to the budding and early blossoming of American and international soil science. Interwoven is a tale of two farm boys who grew up 900 km apart in the Midwest USA in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Emil Truog and Charles Kellogg met in the late 1920s and shared a natural connection to the soil. Both were practical pioneers and believed that understanding soils was crucial to helping people on the land make a better living. The USA is a big country, its soil science is geographically intertwined, and the cradle of its history primes back to a few people. “Soil Science Americana is an intellectual biography, not of one individual but of a new scientific field from its emergence to its complete coming of age.” — Louise O. Fresco, President, Wageningen University and Research “In a lively, personal voice, Hartemink traces the roots of modern soil science in the United States...creating a book that will engage both the expert and non-expert in the underappreciated field of soil science.” — Jo Handelsman, Director, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery “The intellectual master piece is of interest to soil scientists, general public and the policy makers, and will remain pertinent for generations to come.” — Rattan Lal, World Food Prize Laureate 2020, The Ohio State University

Organized Crime in the United States, 1865–1941

Publisher : McFarland
Release Date :
ISBN : 147662996X
Pages : 300 pages
Rating Book: 4.7/5 (476 users)

Download or read book Organized Crime in the United States, 1865–1941 written by Kristofer Allerfeldt and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-01-19 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do Americans alternately celebrate and condemn gangsters, outlaws and corrupt politicians? Why do they immortalize Al Capone while forgetting his more successful contemporaries George Remus or Roy Olmstead? Why are some public figures repudiated for their connections to the mob while others gain celebrity status? Drawing on historical accounts, the author analyzes the public’s understanding of organized crime and questions some of our most deeply held assumptions about crime and its role in society.

Shall We Wake the President?

Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Release Date :
ISBN : 1493024655
Pages : 264 pages
Rating Book: 4.9/5 (493 users)

Download or read book Shall We Wake the President? written by Tevi Troy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of presidential dealings with disasters shows that whatever their ideology, presidents need to be prepared to deal with unexpected crises. In recent years, the expectations have grown as the disasters seem to appear to be coming more frequently. Since 2001, numerous unpredictable crises, including terror attacks, massive storms, and an economic collapse, have shaken Americans to their core. It seems as if technology, for all of its beneficences, also provides mankind with increasingly powerful ways to wreak destruction, including nuclear explosions, bioterror attacks, and cyber-attacks. In addition, instantaneous and incessant communications technologies send us word of disasters taking place anywhere in the nation far more rapidly, giving disasters an immediacy that some may have lacked in the past. In 21st century America, the eyes of the American people look to the president to lead the response to whatever disasters happen to strike. President Obama and his team learned this and were taken aback by the sheer number of crises that a president needed to deal with, including swine flu, BP’s Macondo oil spill, and the Somali pirates who attacked an American ship. Many of these did not quite reach disaster status, but Obama’s reaction to the constant stream of crises was both revealing and unnerving: “Who thought we were going to have to deal with pirates?” In Shall We Wake the President?, Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior White House aide and deputy secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, looks at the evolving role of the president in dealing with disasters, and looks at how our presidents have handled disasters throughout our history. He also looks at the likelihood of similar disasters befalling modern America, and details how smart policies today can help us avoid future crises, or can best react to them should they occur. In addition, he provides information on what individuals can do to prepare for disasters. This book includes sections on how American presidents have dealt with a variety of disasters, including health crises, terror attacks, economic upheaval, bioterror and cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and civil breakdown. In doing so, Shall We Wake the President? will provide lessons from presidents of the past that will inform policy strategies for presidents of the future.

AQA A-level History: The Making of a Superpower: USA 1865-1975

Publisher : Hachette UK
Release Date :
ISBN : 1471837556
Pages : 533 pages
Rating Book: 4.7/5 (471 users)

Download or read book AQA A-level History: The Making of a Superpower: USA 1865-1975 written by Steve Waugh and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exam Board: AQA Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: June 2016 AQA approved Enhance and expand your students' knowledge and understanding of their AQA breadth study through expert narrative, progressive skills development and bespoke essays from leading historians on key debates. - Builds students' understanding of the events and issues of the period with authoritative, well-researched narrative that covers the specification content - Introduces the key concepts of change, continuity, cause and consequence, encouraging students to make comparisons across time as they advance through the course - Improves students' skills in tackling interpretation questions and essay writing by providing clear guidance and practice activities - Boosts students' interpretative skills and interest in history through extended reading opportunities consisting of specially commissioned essays from practising historians on relevant debates - Cements understanding of the broad issues underpinning the period with overviews of the key questions, end-of-chapter summaries and diagrams that double up as handy revision aids The Making of a Superpower: USA 1865-1975 This title explores the era of reconstruction, the development of the US as an economic power, its role in international affairs, domestic issues and its emergence as a superpower. It considers breadth issues of change, continuity, cause and consequence in this period through examining key questions on themes such as governance, economy, society, the role of the USA in world affairs, ideology and the impact of key individuals.

Anthony Fokker

Publisher : Smithsonian Institution
Release Date :
ISBN : 1588346153
Pages : 433 pages
Rating Book: 4.8/5 (588 users)

Download or read book Anthony Fokker written by Marc Dierikx and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive biography of Anthony Fokker, the famed Dutch pilot and daredevil aviator Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation tells the larger-than-life true story of maverick pilot and aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker. Fokker came from an affluent Dutch family and developed a gift for tinkering with mechanics. Despite not receiving a traditional education, he stumbled his way into aviation as a young stunt pilot in Germany in 1910. He survived a series of spectacular airplane crashes and rose to fame within a few years. A combination of industrial espionage, luck, and deception then propelled him to become Germany's leading aircraft manufacturer during World War I, making him a multimillionaire by his midtwenties. When the German Revolution swept the country in 1918 and 1919, Fokker made a spectacular escape to the United States. He set up business in New York and New Jersey in 1921, and shortly thereafter became the world's largest aircraft manufacturer. The U.S. Army and Navy acquired his machines, and his factories equipped legendary carriers such as Pan American and TWA at the dawn of commercial air transport. Yet despite his astounding success, his empire collapsed in the late 1920s after a series of ill-conceived business decisions and deeply upsetting personal dramas. In 1927, aviator Richard Byrd solicited a Fokker three-engine plane to be the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. The plane was damaged on a test flight and Charles Lindbergh beat him to it. Lindbergh's solo adventure in the Spirit of St. Louis earned him--and cost Fokker--a lasting place in the history books. Using previously undiscovered records and primary sources, Marc Dierikx traces Fokker's extraordinary life and celebrates his spectacular achievements.

Neither Here, Nor There

Publisher : Random House
Release Date :
ISBN : 1409095878
Pages : 320 pages
Rating Book: 4.0/5 (49 users)

Download or read book Neither Here, Nor There written by Bill Bryson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Bryson’s first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

Only Losers will win

Publisher : Lulu Press, Inc
Release Date :
ISBN : 1678189812
Pages : pages
Rating Book: 4.7/5 (678 users)

Download or read book Only Losers will win written by Pavel Verblyudenko and published by Lulu Press, Inc. This book was released on 2022-01-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only Losers Will Win is a book about business as an occasion to think about the essence of what is happening to us and the world. It’s 222 pages of travel diaries and sketches from all over the world, precious memories, stories that life itself comes up with, side by side with reflections on the most challenging problems of the modern business world. Only Losers Will Win consists from 12 chapters covering most of the fundamentals of the modern business practice from strategy, vision, mission, hiring, cultural differences to project management and challenges of execution. Book contains the drawings done by the author, was published in December 2021 and available in e-book version, soft cover and hard cover versions.

The Captain Myth

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Release Date :
ISBN : 1620407183
Pages : 272 pages
Rating Book: 4.2/5 (62 users)

Download or read book The Captain Myth written by Richard Gillis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The War on the Shore, the Battle of Brookline, the Miracle of Medinah--the Ryder Cup inspires such nicknames, and is golf's version of an all-star game and one of international sports' most intense, high-profile tournaments. For almost ninety years, the biennial men's golf competition has been a key symbol of the game, knitting together the sporting cultures of the U.S., the UK, and continental Europe, and inspiring an intense rivalry among professional golfers and a passionate following across the globe. Purportedly in charge of the two teams are the captains, whose reputations are shaped forever by the results of the twenty-eight matches held over three days. In his seminal exploration of the world of the Ryder Cup, Richard Gillis explores what it takes to win this coveted trophy. Accustomed to playing for and winning large sums of money, the twelve players on each side are paid nothing for this competition; instead they play for national pride alone. Even more, in this singularly individual sport, fierce competitors such as Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson, or Rory McIlroy and Jason Day, must act as a team. Having consulted leadership gurus, team building experts, and sports psychologists, and exploring the often surprising roles played by some of the game's greatest stars since the first match in 1927, Gillis has written a book of probing and insightful analysis that every fan of golf will want to read as the 2016 Ryder Cup unfolds.

America the Ingenious

Publisher : Artisan Books
Release Date :
ISBN : 1579656943
Pages : 273 pages
Rating Book: 4.7/5 (579 users)

Download or read book America the Ingenious written by Kevin Baker and published by Artisan Books. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is a nation of inventors, tinkerers, researchers, and adventurers. What is it that makes America such a fertile place to explore, discover, and launch the next big thing? Baker brings his eye for historical detail to the grand, and grandly entertaining, tale of American innovation. You'll meet people who followed their passions and changed our world; the women who created things to make their own lives easier. And you'll learn how immigration leads to innovation.

Open Door Era

Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Release Date :
ISBN : 1474401333
Pages : 224 pages
Rating Book: 4.7/5 (474 users)

Download or read book Open Door Era written by Michael Patrick Cullinane and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the Open Door, the most influential U.S. foreign policy of the twentieth centuryIn 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay wrote six world powers calling for an aOpen Door in China that would guarantee equal trading opportunities, curtail colonial annexation, and prevent conflict in the Far East. Within a year, the region had succumbed to renewed colonisation and war, but despite the apparent failure of Hays diplomacy, the ideal of the Open Door emerged as the central component of U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth century. Just as visions of aManifest Destiny shaped continental expansion in the nineteenth century, Woodrow Wilson used the Open Door to make the case for a world asafe for democracy, Franklin Roosevelt developed it to inspire the fight against totalitarianism and imperialism, and Cold War containment policy envisioned international communism as the latest threat to a global system built upon peace, openness, and exchange. In a concise yet wide-ranging examination of its origins and development, readers will discover how the idea of the Open Door came to define the American Century.Key FeaturesUncovers the ideological wellspring of U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth centuryPresents debates over U.S. foreign policy, including the aWisconsin School critique of the Open Door as a mechanism of informal empireReveals both the consistency of U.S. foreign policy thinking and offers a deeper context to critical foreign policy decisionsContextulises the roots of contemporary U.S. policy

The Endless End of Cinema

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Release Date :
ISBN : 1501348574
Pages : 225 pages
Rating Book: 4.0/5 (51 users)

Download or read book The Endless End of Cinema written by Gianluca Sergi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film is dead! Three little words that have been heard around the world many times over the life of the cinema. Yet, some 120 years on, the old dog's ability to come up with new tricks and live another day remains as surprising and effective as ever. This book is an exploration of film's ability to escape its own 'The End' title card. It charts the history of cinema's development through a series of crises that could, should, ought to have 'ended' it. From its origins to Covid - via a series of unlikely friendships with sound, television and the internet - the book provides industry professionals, scholars and lovers of cinema with an informing and intriguing journey into the afterlife of cinema and back to the land of the living. It is also a rare collaboration between an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a film scholar, a chronicle of their attempt to bridge two worlds that have often looked at each other with as much curiosity as doubt, but that are bound by the deep love of cinema that they both share.