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It is hard to love the high, cold plains of the American West. They are vast and harsh and demanding. And perhaps because they are so hard to love, prairies challenge the imaginative mind and the adventurous heart. The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice. Their stories are as diverse as the tellers, ranging from fiction by Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, and William Kittredge, to the childhood histories of Mary Clearman Blew and Judy Blunt and the nonfiction narratives of Jim Harrison, Gretel Ehrlich, and Rick Bass. There are works by Native American prairie dwellers such as M. L. Smoker and James Welch and the photographic interpretations of Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James. Personal or poetic, journalistic or scientific, these works eloquently attest to the prairie s abundance in all its human and natural variety, offering pictures as wide open and rich as the land they depict.
In this book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is inherently political and is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school where professionals are trained.
Chris O'Dell has packed a lot in a small amount of time and is probably surprised that she made as far as she has, considering the life she have lived. Hanging around with the Beatles, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones and managing tours for George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Santana, Earth, Wind & Fire and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In the early 1980s she worked with Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, The Grateful Dead, and The Band. During all those years, drugs were everywhere. She smoked marijuana, popped black bombers, dropped LSD, and drank endless Scotch and cokes (the Beatles' favourite drink). Getting deep into cocaine while touring with the Stones by the end of the tour in New York she was shooting up the drug. Now sixty years old and with a full life she reflects back on her past.
In 1968, English folk-singer Adam Earnshaw vanishes during a tour of the U.S. In The Pieces, a dazzling array of voices – university friends, lovers, fellow-musicians, a pirate radio DJ, an expatriate American record producer, an obsessive, self-destructive teenage girl – contribute their own fragments to the puzzle of his life. All, in their very different ways, have been indelibly touched by their encounter, more than fifty years ago, with the brilliant but elusive Earnshaw. But none, ultimately, can explain the riddle of what happened to him. In the end, there is an answer. But when it finally comes, it forces us to rethink everything we have just read.
Only in America could Walter A. Soplata, the son of penniless Czech immigrants, accomplish so much single-handedly saving historic aircraft from World War II and other periods. After a childhood spent building model airplanes while dreaming about having his own airfield, Soplata worked in a large scrapyard taking apart hundreds of warplane engines. Shocked to see a rare engine or sometimes a complete warplane on its way to the recycling furnace, he began collecting whatever he could find and afford. He eventually collected nearly 20 complete airplanes and countless pieces of others. One of his Corsair fighters included the experimental F2G Corsair #74 that won the Cleveland National Air Races in 1947. Among other priceless airplanes he rescued was an experimental XP-82 Twin Mustang, an F-82E Twin Mustang, an X-prototype Skyraider, a stainless steel BT-12, and an F7U Cutlass--Soplata hauled the Cutlass fuselage home by stuffing it inside a junked school bus for its 600-mile journey. The story of a workaholic father and his aviation-obsessed son, this book records the accomplishments of a rare bird, just like the many airplanes he saved.
On May 20, 1938, a young man from the Bronx informs his parents that he is leaving for the Catskills to begin his new job as a waiter. Instead, he sails for Europe to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, the opening round in the fight against Hitler and Mussolini. The man, Dave Lipton--the author's uncle--sends letter after letter home detailing his hopes and begging for forgiveness. He never receives a reply. Decades later, Eunice Lipton stumbles upon clues for this silence, uncovering details of Dave's exhilarating political life in New York, his shuttered romantic life, and his deep friendship with another volunteer. A Distant Heartbeat tells a tale of passion and heroism, centered on a fierce competition between brothers, a packet of missing letters, and the unforeseen results of family betrayal.
Includes Special sessions.
Little Bill gets in big trouble when he tells a fib to explain why he has come home late for dinner, in the eighth title of a popular series that proves that honesty is the best policy. Simultaneous.