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The Mongolian chronicles : a story of eagles, demons, and empires / by Smutylo, Allen,1946-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."In the shadows of the Altai Mountains live the Kazakh nomads of western Mongolia. These hard-living nomads survive on windswept steppes, grazing their herds and keeping an ancient practice alive: hunting not with traps or guns, but on horseback with golden eagles. The Mongolian Chronicles recounts a story of this untamed world, seen through the eyes of artist, writer, and traveller Allen Smutylo. Smutylo lived with seven eagle hunters and their families for several weeks over two years, affording him rare insight into a disappearing culture. His extraordinary narrative is set within the context of Mongolia's turbulent past -- the long shadow cast by the empire of Genghis Khan, the deprivations of early twentieth century warlords-cum-mystics -- and its protean present, where ancient customs and shamanistic beliefs exist among an increasingly urbanized people. Smutylo's vivid prose and powerful artwork portray a Mongolia of contradictions and extremes. Readers will encounter a country with a vast wilderness that nonetheless has one of the most polluted capitals on earth; a modern economy in which tent-dwelling nomads still rely on their animals for survival; a people unchanged for millennia, yet recognizing that their way of life may disappear with their generation."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Smutylo, Allen, 1946-; Kazakhs; Falconers; Hunting;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Skull water / by Fenkl, Heinz Insu,1960-author.;
"Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu--the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army--spends his days with his "half and half" friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to find some in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die. Insu's quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea's darkest corners, opening them up to a world beyond their grasp. Meanwhile, Big Uncle has embraced his solitude and fate, and as he recalls his wartime experiences of betrayal and lost love, he attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see--or think we know. Largely autobiographical and deeply rooted in time and place, Skull Water is the story of a boy coming into his own--and the ways the past continues to haunt the present in a country struggling to confront its troubled history as it moves into modernity."--
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Folklore; Racially mixed people; Traditional medicine; Uncles; Vietnam War, 1961-1975;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Unit : my life fighting terrorists as one of America's most secret military operatives / by Gamal, Adam,author.; Kennedy, Kelly,1970-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The first and only book to ever be written by a member of America's most secret military unit -- an explosive and unlikely story of immigration, service, and sacrifice. Inside our military is a team of operators whose work is so secretive that the name of the unit itself is classified. Highly-trained in warfare, self-defense, infiltration, and deep surveillance, 'the Unit,' as the Department of Defense has asked us to refer to it, has been responsible for preventing dozens of terrorist attacks in the Western world. Never before has a member of this unit shared their story -- until now. From Adam Gamal, one of the only Muslim Arab Americans to serve inside 'the Unit,' comes a gripping firsthand account of our nation's most secretive military group. When Adam arrived in the United States at the age of nineteen, he spoke no English, and at 5'1" and 112 pounds, he was far from what you might expect of a soldier. But compelled into service by a debt he felt he owed to his new country, he rose through the ranks of the military to become one of its most elite and skilled operators. With humor and humility, Adam shares stories of life-threatening injuries, of the camaraderie and capabilities of his team, of the incredible missions -- but also of the growth he experienced as he learned to adhere to more moderate Islamic beliefs. Enthralling and eye-opening, The Unit is at once a gripping account of the fight against terror and an urgent examination of the need for diversity"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Gamal, Adam.; United States. Army. Special Forces; United States. Army; Egyptian Americans; Muslims; Special operations (Military science); Terrorism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The sweet blue distance / by Donati, Sara,1956-author.;
"In 1857 a young midwife braves the perilous journey west from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory in this captivating epic from Sara Donati, the international bestselling author of Where the Light Enters. Carrie Ballentyne's life was upended in 1845 when she had to leave the only home she'd ever known in the mountains of upstate New York. With her are her widowed mother and younger brother Nathan, but the separation from Bonner, Ballentyne, and Savard relatives weighs heavily. In time Carrie finds footing as a midwife and nurse, but she never feels at ease in the city. So when, a decade later, she receives an invitation from a doctor in Santa Fe to join him at his practice, she readily accepts. The trip across the country is long and often dangerous, but she travels the last leg on horseback with men who have been hired to see her safely through the Native nations fighting the westward flood of colonizers. On that journey she makes friends who will be with her for all her life: Eva, a young widow; and Eli, an experienced surveyor. Once Carrie is established in Santa Fe, it becomes clear that her employer is not everything she was led to believe, and she is forced to face far more challenges and responsibilities than she anticipated. But she dedicates herself to the work and the women, providing health care, delivering babies, and earning the trust of her patients. In the course of that first summer in New Mexico, determined to make a life for herself in a new kind of wilderness far beyond her imagination, Carrie finds friendship, support, and even love where she least expected"--
Subjects: Western fiction.; Novels.; Midwives; Frontier and pioneer life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last million : Europe's displaced persons from World War to Cold War / by Nasaw, David,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of this global military conflict did not cease with the signing of truces and peace treaties. Millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany, a country in complete disarray. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate foreigners, and attempted to repatriate them to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the USSR. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained over a million displaced persons who either refused to go home or, in the case of many, had no home to which to return. They would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, divided by nationalities, temporary homelands in exile, with their own police forces, churches, schools, newspapers, and medical facilities. The international community couldn't agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of fruitless debate and inaction, an International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept anyone for resettlement, finally passed a Displaced Persons Bill - but as Cold War fears supplanted memories of WWII atrocities, the bill only granted visas to those who were reliably anti-communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators, Waffen-SS members, and war criminals, while barring the Jews who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the passage of the controversial UN resolution for the partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors finally able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany."--
Subjects: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.; International Refugee Organization.; World War, 1939-1945; Refugees; Refugees; Jewish refugees; Political refugees; Jews; Humanitarianism; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A light beyond the trenches / by Hlad, Alan,author.;
By April 1916, the fervor that accompanied war's outbreak has faded. In its place is a grim reality. Throughout Germany, essentials are rationed. Hope, too, is in short supply. Anna Zeller, whose fiancé, Bruno, is fighting on the western front, works as a nurse at an overcrowded hospital in Oldenburg, trying to comfort men broken in body and spirit. But during a visit from Dr. Stalling, the director of the Red Cross Ambulance Dogs Association, she witnesses a rare spark of optimism: as a German shepherd guides a battle-blinded soldier over a garden path, Dr. Stalling is inspired with an idea--to train dogs as companions for sightless veterans. Anna convinces Dr. Stalling to let her work at his new guide dog training school. Some of the dogs that arrive are themselves veterans of war, including Nia, a German shepherd with trench-damaged paws. Anna brings the ailing Nia home and secretly tends and trains her, convinced she may yet be the perfect guide for the right soldier. In Max Benesch, a Jewish soldier blinded by chlorine gas at the front, Nia finds her person. War has taken Max's sight, his fiancée, and his hopes of being a composer. Yet despite all he's given for his country, the tide of anti-Semitism at home is rising, and Max encounters it first-hand in one of the school's trainers, who is determined to make Max fail. Still, through Anna's prompting, he rediscovers his passion for music. But as Anna discovers more about the conflict's escalating brutality--and Bruno's role in it--she realizes how impossible it will be for any of them to escape the war unscathed ...
Subjects: Historical fiction.; War fiction.; Blind; Dogs; Dogs; Guide dogs; Jewish soldiers; Man-woman relationships; Nurses; World War, 1914-1918;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Marriott cell : an epic journey from Cairo's Scorpion Prison to freedom / by Fahmy, Mohamed Fadel,author.; Shaben, Carol,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The revealing, widely anticipated story by the internationally award-winning journalist is as riveting as a political thriller: it opens an astonishing window onto the closed world of geo-political power brokering as he takes us behind his headline-generating seizure and 438-day imprisonment in Cairo's notorious Scorpion Prison with leading terrorists; through the love story that made front-page news; to the profoundly personal drama of one man's fight for freedom, supported by Canadians across the country and media world-wide. With a foreword by international human rights lawyer, Amal Clooney. On the night of December 29, 2013, the Egyptian government's anti-terror forces led a dramatic raid on the Marriott Hotel, seizing Fahmy, Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief for the independent English Al Jazeera, and two fellow journalists in what quickly became an international cause célèbre condemned as a travesty of justice. Inside the maximum-security Scorpion Prison, Fahmy found himself with some of the most hardened Al Qaeda and ISIS extremists and Muslim Brotherhood leaders: always intrepid, he never stopped being a journalist, courageously taking advantage of his unexpected proximity to "interview" them and gain insight into their goals, into the feuds between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE on the one hand, and Qatar and its allies, including Turkey, on the other, and surfacing shocking details of torture inside military camps. Thrown into the toxic mix is the complex geo-political power brokering of our Western governments also, which left three men, wrongly convicted of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood and "fabricating news," struggling in a terrifying web he describes as "Global McCarthyism" and a war on journalism. Threaded through it all is an inspiring love story, as Fahmy's fiancée, Marwa, used every means at her disposal to fight for his release and his health, even to risking her own freedom smuggling cell phones and messages in and out of prison."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Fahmy, Mohamed Fadel; Fahmy, Mohamed Fadel.; False arrest; False imprisonment; Journalists; Journalists; Prisons;
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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The scientist and the spy : a true story of China, the FBI, and industrial espionage / by Hvistendahl, Mara,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A riveting true story of industrial espionage in which a Chinese-born scientist is convicted of trying to steal U.S. trade secrets, by a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. In September 2011, sheriff's deputies in Iowa encountered three neatly dressed Asian men at a cornfield that had been leased by Monsanto to grow corn from patented hybrids. What began as a routine inquiry into potential trespassing blossomed into a federal court case that saw one of the men -- Mo Hailong, also known as Robert Mo -- plead guilty to conspiracy to steal trade secrets from U.S. agro-giants DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto on behalf of the China-based DBN Group, one of the country's largest seed companies. The Mo case was part of the U.S. government's efforts to stanch the rising flow of industrial espionage by Chinese companies -- some with the assistance of the Chinese government itself -- on American companies. And it's not an isolated one. Economic espionage costs U.S. companies billions of dollars a year in lost revenue. As former Attorney General Eric Holder once put it, "There are only two categories of companies affected by trade secret theft: Those that know they've been compromised and those that don't know it yet." Using the story of Mo and of others involved in the case, journalist Mara Hvistendahl uncovers the fascinating and disquieting phenomenon of industrial espionage as China marches toward technological domination. In The Scientist and the Spy, she shines light on U.S. efforts to combat theft of proprietary innovation and technology and delves into the efforts to slow the loss of such secrets to other nations. As technology and innovation become more and more valuable, government agencies like the FBI and companies around the world are growing increasingly concerned -- and are increasingly outspoken about -- the threats posed to Western competitiveness. General Keith Alexander, the ex-director of the National Security Agency, has described Chinese industrial espionage and cyber crimes as "the greatest transfer of wealth in history." The Scientist and the Spy explains how the easy movement of experts and ideas affects development and the important role that espionage plays in innovation, both for the spies and the spied-upon. She also asks whether the current U.S. counter-espionage strategy helps or harms the greater public good. The result is a compelling nonfiction thriller that's also a call to arms on how we should rethink the best ways to safeguard intellectual property"--
Subjects: True crime stories.; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation.; Agricultural industries; Business intelligence; Confidential business information; Spies;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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