Grover Gardner
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.
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Found in the treacherous Strait of Gibraltar, a man who answers only to the name of Christopher Columbus is delivered to a mental institution in Sevilla, Spain. Nurse Consuela, a lonely young woman searching for love, who listens to his fantastical tales of adventure and romance day after day, tries desperately to make some sense of why this man has been locked up. Waiting for Columbus vividly and tenderly explores the fragility of the mind when faced...
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A towering epic to rank with Douglas Preston's Blasphemy and Michael Crichton's PreyPandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies, and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people can prevent global chaos.Gary Morgan-a brilliant renegade scientist pilloried by the scientific community for his belief in a space elevator: a pillar to the sky, which he believes will make space flight fast, simple, and affordable.Eva...
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"The final and most personal work from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Will Durant--discovered thirty-two years after his death--is a message of insight for everyone who has sought meaning in life or the council of a wise friend in navigating life's journey ... [containing] twenty-two short chapters on everything from youth and old age, religion and morals, to sex, war, politics, and art"--Amazon.com.
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Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? Beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Wuthnow brings us into America's small towns, farms, and rural communities so we can hear from farmers who want government out of their business, factory workers who believe in working hard to support their families, town managers who find the federal government unresponsive...
8) Heroes of history: a brief history of civilization from ancient times to the dawn of the modern age
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At Will Durant's death in 1981, his personal papers were dispersed among relatives, collectors, and archive houses. Twenty years later, scholar John Little discovered the previously unknown manuscript of Heroes of History in Durant's granddaughter's garage. Written shortly before he died, these twenty-one essays serve as an abbreviated version of Durant's bestselling, eleven-volume series, The Story of Civilization. Durant traces the lives and ideas...
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In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that natural selection among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific basis of that time constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that illuminates this cautious naturalist who sparked an intellectual revolution. Drawing...
10) Thunder Road
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"When an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his Top Secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him, because the Major owes a sizable gambling debt to a local mobster. The search takes Sharp from the hideaway poker rooms of Fort Worth's Thunder Road, to the barren ranch lands of New Mexico, to secret facilities under construction in the Nevada desert"--
11) Andrew Carnegie
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The definitive account of the life of Andrew Carnegie Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists-in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel....
12) The looting machine: warlords, oligarchs, corporations, smugglers, and the theft of Africa's wealth
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The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing...
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In this mischievous book, a #3 bestseller in France that's racking up press coverage and rights sales around the world, literature professor Bayard contends that in this age of infinite publication, the truly cultivated person is not the one who has read a book, but the one who understands the book's place in our culture
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For centuries we've believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance--in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn't work, you didn't eat, or else you were stealing from someone. If only you worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe even make something of yourself. In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly...
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Bing Crosby (Gary Giddins) volume 2
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"Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists ever have. From the dizzy era of Prohibition through the dark days of the Second World War, he was a desperate nation's most beloved entertainer. But he was more than just a charismatic crooner: Bing Crosby redefined the very foundations of modern music, from the way it was recorded to the way it was orchestrated and performed. In this much-anticipated follow-up to the universally...
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"In June 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny rode out of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with two thousand soldiers, bound for California. At the time, the nation was hell-bent on expansion: James K. Polk had lately won the presidency by threatening England over the borders in Oregon, while Congress had just voted, in defiance of the Mexican government, to annex Texas. After Mexico declared war on the United States, Kearny's Army of the West was sent out,...
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The world's most distinguished author of the literature of the fantastic presents his most extraordinary stories of worlds lost and dreams fulfilled...
In his illustrious forty-five year career as a novelist and author of short fiction, Robert Silverberg has belonged in the company of the best writers of the 20th century. His writing has been compared to Conrad, Huxley, and Orwell.
In this definitive collection Silverberg presents the novellas...
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From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic MagLev trains, this is a chronicle of our relationship with rail travel. Zoellner examines both the engineering and mechanics of rail as well as how it helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil. Zoellner also considers America's ambivalence about mass...
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"Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique's experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets. This novella falls after Captain Vorpatril's Alliance...
20) October fury
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Drama on the high seas as the world holds its breath
It was the most spectacular display of brinkmanship in the Cold War era. In October 1962, President Kennedy risked inciting a nuclear war to prevent the Soviet Union from establishing missile bases in Cuba. The risk, however, was far greater than Kennedy realized.
October Fury uncovers startling new information about the Cuban missile crisis and the potentially calamitous confrontation between...