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A Cadillac takes an ornery old black man and an angry white teenager down a road neither has traveled before. Views: 43
Johnny Harlow seems to have it all: he's good looking, desired by women, and envied by men; he's also the reigning Formula One world champion and the poster boy for the world's most thrilling and richly financed sport. But after a wreck kills his best friend and maims his girlfriend, he takes a hard turn and is driven to drink.Johnny realizes something is rotten in his beloved sport: too many things are going wrong in too many races. And when he is the apparent cause of the latest accident, he decides the time has come to sort things out. But what he begins to uncover has nothing to do with cars...and there are people will do anything to prevent him from discovering the truth. Views: 43
SUMMARY:
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev’s plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro—never swayed by conventional political considerations—demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator’s overthrow.Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history’s most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time. Views: 42
The fatherless Moody family moved from Colorado to Medford, Massachusetts, in 1912, when Ralph was entering his teens. "I tried as hard as I could to be a city boy, but I didn't have very good luck," he says at the beginning of The Fields of Home. "Just little things that would have been all right in Colorado were always getting me in trouble." So he is sent to his grandfather's farm in Maine, where he finds a new set of adventures. Views: 42
Klaus Mann, son of Thomas and bold political activist, strove beyond his father's shadow to become a talented author. Klaus was an exile, forced abroad while the Nazis defiled his homeland; a homosexual in a time of bigotry and intolerance; a heroin addict slithering between recovery and relapse. Above all he was a writer. Allan Massie vividly imagines Klaus's final days – trailing from café to bar in the haze of his various vices, replaying a lifetime of affairs and relationships while he toils over an unfinished manuscript. Encounters with family, old flames and famous literary figures reveal the roots of his fragile state. References to Mephisto, his most famous work and the battle for its German publication expose the bitter fall-out with Gustaf Gründgens, his brother-in-law and ex-lover. Massie uses compassion, affection and subtle prose to lead us into Klaus's mind and reveal the dashed hopes and inner turmoil of a flawed, singular character. Beyond the... Views: 42
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher. Someone older who understood you when you were young and searching, who helped you see the world as a more profound place, and gave you advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of your mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Tuesdays With Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift to the world. Views: 42
Three novels from a multiple Academy Award winner and the New York Times–bestselling author of The Princess Bride. In Boys and Girls Together, author William Goldman offers a beautiful tale of early adulthood inspired by his own experiences. Five friends—all young, creative, ambitious, and troubled—make their way to New York City to pursue their dreams. Together they struggle, fight, love, make art, and face the hard truths of life. In Marathon Man—the New York Times–bestselling thriller Goldman adapted into the classic film starring Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier—Columbia University student and aspiring marathon runner Thomas "Babe" Levy is trying to clear his late father's name after accusations of Communist affiliation. But soon Thomas finds himself embroiled in a Nazi conspiracy—and running for his life. In Goldman's debut novel, The Temple of... Views: 42
This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive--dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son. Views: 42
A vital, illuminating collection of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner's elegant, passionately engaged nonfiction My Generation is the definitive gathering of William Styron's nonfiction, exposing the core of this greatly gifted, highly convivial, and profoundly serious artist from his literary emergence in the 1950s to his death in 2006. Here are fifty years of Styron's essays, memoirs, reviews, op-eds, articles, eulogies, and speeches, reflecting the same brilliant style and informed thinking that he brought to his towering fiction and to a deeply committed public life. Including many newly collected and never-before-published items, this compendium ranges from the original mission statement of The Paris Review, which Styron helped found in 1953, to a 2001 tribute to his friend Philip Roth--creating an essential overview of the post--World War II world of arts and letters. In these pages, Styron writes vividly of... Views: 42
