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Five floors up : the heroic family story of four generations in the FDNY / by McDonald, Brian,author.;
"Seen through the eyes of four generations of a firefighter family, Five Floors Up is on one level the story of the modern New York City Fire Department. From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, to the culture-busting department of today, a Feehan has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. The tale especially shines the spotlight on the career of William M. Feehan. "Chief" Feehan is the only person tohave held every rank in the FDNY including being New York City's 28th Fire Commissioner. He died in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. But Five Floors Up is at root an intimate look at a firefighter clan, the selflessness and bravery of not only those who face the flames, but the family members who stand by their sides. Alternately humorous and harrowing, rich with anecdotes and meticulously researched and reported, Five Floors Up takes us inside a world few of us truly understand,and documents an era that is quickly passing us by"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Feehan, William, 1929-2001; Feehan, William, 1929-2001.; New York (N.Y.). Fire Department; Fire fighters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Gwyneth : the biography / by Odell, Amy,1985-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Author Amy Odell takes readers inside the world of one of the most influential and polarizing celebrities of the modern era -- complete with exclusive new stories about her childhood, acting career, romances, and her lifestyle brand Goop. Love her or hate her, Gwyneth Paltrow has managed to stay on the A-list, her influence spanning entertainment, fashion, and the modern wellness industry. Gwyneth was born to parents viewed as Hollywood royalty, and that immense privilege turned her into a target of backlash when, at just twenty-six, she won an Oscar. Rather than cave in to criticism, she leveraged the attention for valuable endorsement deals and film roles, eventually founding her controversial wellness and lifestyle company, Goop. Over the decades, she has participated in countless carefully managed interviews, but the real Gwyneth -- the basis of her motives, desires, strengths, faults, and vulnerabilities -- has never been fully revealed, until now. Based on exclusive conversations with more than 220 sources, including close current and former friends and colleagues, this deeply researched biography provides insight and behind-the-scenes details of her relationships, family, friendships, iconic films, and tenure as the CEO of Goop. Gwyneth offers the fascinating, definitive look at how Paltrow rose to prominence, stayed in the limelight, and shaped culture -- for better or worse -- for so long"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Paltrow, Gwyneth, 1972-; Health promotion industry; Motion picture actors and actresses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick : stories from the Harlem Renaissance / by Hurston, Zora Neale,author.; West, Genevieve,editor,writer of introduction.; Jones, Tayari,writer of foreword.; Hurston, Zora Neale.John Redding goes to sea.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Conversion of Sam.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Bit of our Harlem.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Drenched in light.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Spunk.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Magnolia flower.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Black death.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Bone of contention.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Muttsy.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Sweat.; Hurston, Zora Neale.Short stories.Selections.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-250).In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston-- the sole black student at the college-- was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world." During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston's "lost" Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer's voice and her contributions to America's literary traditions.
Subjects: Short stories.; African Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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We don't know ourselves : a personal history of modern Ireland / by O'Toole, Fintan,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A celebrated Irish writer's magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O'Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government?in despair, because all the young people were leaving?opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don't Know Ourselves, O'Toole, one of the Anglophone world's most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society-perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O'Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of "deliberate unknowing," which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don't Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; O'Toole, Fintan, 1958-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Carnie King The Story of Patty Conklin and Conklin Shows [electronic resource] : by Thurston, John.aut; cloudLibrary;
The story of the audacious showman who built the greatest carnival dynasty in North America. Enter the realm of the carnie king, Patty Conklin, the flamboyant founder of what would become the world’s largest carnival company. Patty started on the mean streets of New York selling peanuts before becoming a a small-time operator. Willing to try anything to promote his show, he established himself as a carnie celebrity. Winning the midway contract for the Canadian National Exhibition in 1937, he made it his personal world’s fair. It became the foundation for his son and grandson to expand Conklin Shows until they were playing the biggest fairs and exhibitions throughout North America. Carnie King begins with the birth of Joseph Renker to German immigrant parents, tells of his personal transformation into Patty Conklin, and follows his incredible life through to his death in 1970. It covers his company's history after Jim Conklin took over, expanded it beyond recognition, then handed it on to his own son. Not only a history of Conklin Shows, Carnie King explores how midways work and their commercial and popular presence in North America The story it tells is based on dozens of interviews with carnies and access to the Conklin archives. It includes anecdotes about a range of characters and insights about life on the midway. Carnie King is at once a revealing look at a unique part of twentieth-century culture and a vivid account of three generations of showmen and their dominance of midways across the continent.General adult.
Subjects: Electronic books.; 20th Century; Circus; Entertainment & Performing Arts;
© 2024., Dundurn Press,
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The biggest ideas in the universe : space, time, and motion / by Carroll, Sean M.,1966-author.;
"The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables. No one else could so smoothly guide readers to grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come"--
Subjects: Physics.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The Holocaust : an unfinished history / by Stone, Dan,1971-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.The defining event of twentieth-century Europe-the extermination of millions of Jews-has been commemorated, institutionalised and embedded in our collective consciousness. But in this nuanced and perceptive new history, Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute, contends that the true dimension of the horror wrought by the Nazis is inadvertently brushed aside in our current culture of commemoration. This is due in part to practical or conceptual challenges, such as the continent-wide scale of the crime and the multiplicity of sources in many languages; and in part to an unwillingness to confront the reality that the Holocaust could not have happened without the assistance of numerous non-Nazi states and agents. Structured around four themes-trauma, collaboration, genocidal fantasy and post-war consequences-The Holocaust demonstrates the genocidal logic of much European thinking in the wake of WWI, explores how the Holocaust's effects unfolded even after the liberation of the camps in 1945, and stresses the ways in which Europeans continue, even now, to draw on a reservoir of fascist vocabulary and imagery in times of crisis. It is a deeply researched and indispensable examination of a trauma that still reverberates today.
Subjects: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Demon Copperhead : a novel / by Kingsolver, Barbara,author.;
Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Opioid abuse; Orphans; Teenage boys;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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So Far Gone A Novel [electronic resource] : by Walter, Jess.aut; CloudLibrary;
"A warm, funny, loving novel. . . . It's an American original."—Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake "So Far Gone is a marvel.”—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins—and in the propulsive spirit of Charles Portis’ True Grit—comes a hilarious, empathetic, and brilliantly provocative adventure through life in modern America, about a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren. Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons. Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia? With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called “a genius of the modern American moment” (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Subjects: Electronic books.; Cultural Heritage; Literary; Action & Adventure;
© 2025., HarperCollins,
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Children's book of music / by Mallett, Richard.; Stanley, Ann Marie.;
Early music (50,000 BCE-1600 CE) -- Classical music (1600-1900) -- Modern music (1900- ).Discover the power of music and be inspired by cultures from all over the world with the Children's Book of Music. You'll find out how instruments are made and played and learn about the fascinating lives and achievements of great composers and musicians, from Bach to Bowie, Bjork, and Beyonce. The book is packed with facts and photos highlighting musical styles from around the globe, from the very earliest music through classical and blues, reggae, Afropop, hip-hop, and dance.
Subjects: Music; World music; Composers; Musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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