In 1943, while the world was convulsed by war, a few visionaries -- in the private sector and in the military -- committed to protect Europe's cultural heritage from the indiscriminate ravages of World War II.In the midst of the conflict, the Allied Forces appointed the monuments officers-a motley group of art historians, curators, architects, and artists-to ensure that the great masterworks of European art and architecture were not looted or bombed into oblivion. The journalist Ilaria Dagnini Brey focuses her spellbinding account on the monuments officers of Italy, quickly dubbed "the Venus Fixers" by bemused troops.Working on the front lines in conditions of great deprivation and danger, these unlikely soldiers stripped the great galleries of their incomparable holdings and sent them into safety by any means they could. They worked with skeptical army strategists to make sure air raids didn't take out the heart of an ancient city, and patched up Renaissance palazzi and ancient churches whose lead roofs were sometimes melted away by the savagery of the attacks. Sometimes they failed. But to an astonishing degree, they succeeded, and anyone who marvels at Italy's artistic riches today is witnessing their handiwork.In the course of her research, Brey gained unprecedented access to private archives and primary sources, and the result is a book at once thorough and grandly entertaining-a revelatory take on a little-known chapter of World War II history. The Venus Fixers is an adventure story with the gorgeous tints of a Botticelli landscape as its backdrop.
One of the best parts of summer is finding some downtime to lay back and unwind with your favorite crossword puzzles. This collection some of the best puzzles from the New York Times and is perfect for solving in the sun! Features:-75 easy to hard Times puzzles, perfect for solvers of all skill levels-Portable format is perfect for travel or solving at home-Edited by the biggest name in crosswords, Will Shortz.
The Extraordinary Story Of The U.S. Coast GuardSince its inception more than 200 years ago, the United States Coast Guard has rescued over 1.1 million people. Yet, despite having more than fifty thousand active and reserve members, most of us know very little about this often neglected but crucial branch of the U.S. military.Filled with altruism and adrenaline, Rescue Warriors brings us into the daily lives of "Coasties" as well as dozens of death-defying rescues at sea and on hurricane-ravaged shores. A masterpiece of adventure reporting, Rescue Warriors is the definitive book on America's Coast Guard.
Trace Bonham is living large as the teen driver for a pro Super Stock racing team. He's on billboards and on the road instead of stuck in school. And he's blowing away the competition wherever he races. But Trace is worried that those who think his crew is illegally "juicing" his engine may be right. It's up to him to discover what is going on--and what he's going to do about it.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Overstory, Richard Powers's Gain braids together two stories on very different scales.In one, Laura Body, divorced mother of two and a real-estate agent in the small town of Lacewood, Illinois, plunges into a new existence when she learns that she has ovarian cancer. In the other, Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in nineteenth-century Boston, grows over the course of a century and a half into an international consumer products conglomerate based in Laura's hometown. Clare's stunning growth reflects the kaleidoscopic history of America; Laura Body's life is changed forever by Clare.Gain's stunning conclusion reveals the countless invisible connections between the largest enterprises and the smallest lives.
On September 13, 1998, John Scalzi sat down in front of his computer to write the first entry in his blog Whatever--and changed the history of the Internet as we know it today.What, you're not swallowing that one? Okay, fine: He started writing Whatever and amused about 15 people that first day. If that many. But he kept at it, for ten years and running. Now 40,000 people drop by on a daily basis to see what he's got to say.About what? Well, about whatever: Politics, writing, family, war, popular culture and cats (especially with bacon on them). Sometimes he's funny. Sometimes he's serious (mostly he's sarcastic). Sometimes people agree with him. Sometimes they send him hate mail, which he grades on originality and sends back. Along the way, Scalzi's become a best-selling, award-winning author, a father, and a geek celebrity. But no matter what, there's always another Whatever post to amuse and/or enrage his readers.Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded collects some of the best and most popular Whatever entries from the first ten years of the blog - a decade of Whatever, presented in delightfully random form, just as it should be. * Winner of the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book* Introduction by Star Trek actor Wil WheatonOld Man's War Series #1 Old Man's War #2 The Ghost Brigades #3 The Last Colony #4 Zoe's Tale #5 The Human Division #6 The End of All Things Short fiction: "After the Coup" Other Tor Books The Android's Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts Lock In The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)
A cryptic murder resurrects dark memories of past atrocities in this latest mystery from the master of Norwegian crime writing.Award-winning author K. O. Dahl received international acclaim for his gripping debut thriller, The Fourth Man, which introduced readers to Detective Inspector Frank Frølich and Detective Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda. Now the Oslo detectives are back. It's Friday the thirteenth, the Norwegian capital is enveloped in freezing cold, and Reidar Folke Jespersen passes what will be the last day of his life.The aging antique dealer leaves home and takes a taxi to a nearby café. A few hours later, through the window of the café, he watches his wife enter the door to a flat on the other side of the street, where her lover lives. In the early hours of the following morning, Jespersen is found stabbed to death, sitting naked in an armchair in the display window of his antique shop. Detectives Frølich and Gunnarstranda are called to the scene. Their only clues are a numerical combination written in ink on the body of the dead man, a red string tied around his neck, a few missing World War II objects, and a number of people extremely satisfied with the news of the man's death. Questions of love and betrayal, loyalty and guilt consume the investigation, just as they fill the private lives of the investigators. K. O. Dahl's dark and poetic writing moves through the shadows of one country's history---a country where victims, perpetrators, and even police officers are haunted by the past, still trying to cope with dark memories of the Nazi occupation. The Man in the Window, the second installment in Dahl's Oslo police mysteries, is an intricate and chilling detective story about love, revenge, and the inescapable past.
Thrilling submarine espionage and an inside look at the U.S. Navy's "silent service" Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War -- the one man aboard a sub who makes the critical decisions -- taking readers closer to the Soviet target than any work on submarine espionage has ever done before. This is the untold story of a covert submarine espionage operation against the Soviet Union during the Cold War as experienced by the Commanding Officer of an active submarine. Few individuals outside the intelligence and submarine communities knew anything about these top-secret missions. Cloaking itself in virtual invisibility to avoid detection, the USS Blackfin went sub vs. sub deep within Soviet-controlled waters north of the Arctic Circle, where the risks were extraordinarily high and anything could happen. Readers will know what it was like to carry out a covert mission aboard a nuke and experience the sights, sounds, and dangers unique to submarining.
Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of the Edgar® Award-winning author Jason Goodwin's captivating historical mystery seriesJason Goodwin's first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, brought home the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. His follow-up, The Snake Stone, more than lived up to expectations and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review as "a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth." Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin takes us back into his "intelligent, gorgeous and evocative" (The Independent on Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly compelling.Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini's vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but -- aware that the sultan's advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting -- decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killer's victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d'Aspi d'Istria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.The Paperback Edition Includes an Author Interview, Bonus Inspector Yashim Recipe, and an Excerpt from the Next Inspector Yashim Mystery, An Evil Eye
This follow-up to Why Is Snot Green? tackles more of life's burning questions, many submitted by real-life 10-year-olds.
Blue Heaven is the break-out novel from C. J. Box, the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series. A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother are on the run in the Idaho woods, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder-four men who know exactly who William and Annie are. And where their mother lives.Retired policemen from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the local sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children. Now there's nowhere left for William and Annie to hide...and no one they can trust. Until they meet Jess Rawlins.Rawlins, an old-school rancher, knows trouble when he sees it. He is only one against four men who will stop at nothing to silence their witnesses. But in this thrilling mystery novel from C.J. Box, these ex-cops don't know just how far Rawlins will go to protect William and Annie...and see that justice is done.Blue Heaven is the winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
In this internationally bestselling debut, a heartbroken woman embarks on a grand exploration of life and love as a glassblower in the city of her ancestors, Venice, and learns that the past may not be as clear as blown glass.
In this masterful debut that starts off as a mystery and becomes much more, Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the rocky, windswept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from the northeastern tip of Scotland. Though her husband grew up here, it's the first time he's been back in twenty years. Digging in the peat on their new property, Tora unearths a human body, at first glance a centuries-old bog body, interesting but not uncommon. But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman's heart has been cut out, and that she was killed within a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her-even when the police, her colleagues, and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spellbinding debut about secrets worth killing for that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.
Frederik Pohl was on a streak when this Hugo Award-finalist novel was published in 1980. Now back in print after an absence of nearly a decade, this unique science fiction novel is as fresh and entertaining as ever. The story begins when the hero of Gateway finances an expedition to a distant alien spaceship that may end famine forever. On the ship, the explorers find a human boy, and evidence that reveals a powerful alien civilization is thriving on a transport ship headed right for Earth....
Both a uniquely intimate look at what makes a sniper tick and a harrowing read filled with dramatic war tales, Trigger Men is a book about killing and what it takes to be the ultimate warrior.Hans Halberstadt takes readers deeper inside the elusive world of snipers than ever before, from recruitment and training to the brutality of the killing fields. Mixed into the thrilling narrative, for the first time ever in their own words, American combat snipers talk about what it is like to kill a man and what it takes to become one of the elite. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how Shadow Team confidence led to success that led to even more aggressive operations. Readers will learn how snipers think and interact as a team, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet strikes its target.
A tale of contention over love and money-among dragonsJo Walton burst onto the fantasy scene with The King's Peace, acclaimed by writers as diverse as Poul Anderson, Robin Hobb, and Ken MacLeod. In 2002, she was voted the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.Now Walton returns with Tooth and Claw, a very different kind of fantasy story: the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.Except that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses...in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. In which society's high-and-mighty members avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw.
Knots and Crosses introduces gifted mystery novelist Ian Rankin, a fascinating locale and the most compellingly complex detective hero at work today.Inspector John Rebus: His city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders...and he's tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. Once John Rebus served in Britain's elite SAS. Now he's an Edinburgh cop who hides from his memories, misses promotions and ignores a series of crank letters. But as the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloid headlines scream, Rebus cannot stop the feverish shrieks from within his own mind. Because he isn't just one cop trying to catch a killer, he's the man who's got all the pieces to the puzzle....
Moneyball for the New England Patriots, award-winning sportswriter Christopher Price goes into the inner workings of the legendary football franchise in The Blueprint For years, the New England Patriots were a certifiable joke of a franchise. They were run on the cheap and were once the very example of how not to manage a team. They hired inept coaches--one of whom (Clive Rush) was nearly electrocuted when he grabbed a microphone at his introductory press conference. In 1968 their scouting director, Ed McKeever, suggested they draft a wide receiver . . . before someone in the organization realized the player had been dead for six months. They plucked ex-players out of the stands minutes before kickoff--Bob Gladieux was enjoying a beer at the game when he heard his name called over the P.A. (The Patriots had cut a player earlier that morning and found themselves short. Gladieux, who would go on to spend four years in the league as a running back, made the tackle on the opening kickoff.) And they played in a run-down stadium that was one of the worst venues in professional sports. There were brief moments of success, but on each occasion, front-office infighting would invariably cause the franchise to slide back down to the basement again.But in the first four months of 2000, everything changed. The hiring of head coach Bill Belichick and Vice President of Player Personnel Scott Pioli and the drafting of quarterback Tom Brady turned the fortunes of the franchise around. And their nontraditional approach to acquiring personnel--remembering that it's not about collecting talent, it's about assembling a team--quickly led to three Super Bowl titles in four seasons. It's a feat that, in the salary cap era, with free agency, planned parity and balanced scheduling, is in many ways even more impressive than anything achieved by the past dynasties of Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and San Francisco.Along the way, Christopher Price has had a front-row seat for football history, chronicling the rise to power of the NFL's unlikeliest superpower. Price takes the reader inside the franchise to give him a dynamic portrait of a mighty organization at the height of its power. Readers are immersed in the locker room during the strange and tumultuous days of 2001 and 2003, when major personnel moves involving a pair of the most popular players in franchise history--Drew Bledsoe and Lawyer Milloy--threatened to rock their championship foundation to the core. Readers get an up-close look at the team that dominated the league on the way to a record-setting winning streak in 2004. And Price analyzes what went wrong when they fell short in 2005 and 2006, and how they plan to return to Super Bowl form. The Blueprint explores how the Patriots went from the dregs to a dynasty, becoming the gold standard for professional sports franchises everywhere. It will prompt sports fans (and those who study organizations) to acknowledge what many football insiders have believed for a long time: when it comes to building a successful system, the Patriots have the Blueprint.
The basis for the hit series "Shetland" now airing on PBS.Winner of Britain's coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves's Raven Black introduces a dazzling suspense series to U.S. mystery readers.It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man--loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when detective Jimmy Perez and his colleagues from the mainland insist on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbors nervously lock their doors, while a killer lives on in their midst.
New York Times crosswords--one of life's simple pleasures!· Seventy-five easy, enjoyable crossword puzzles from The New York Times· Edited by crossword legend Will Shortz· Convenient format is perfect for carrying anywhere
The definitive, New York Times Notable Book and Spur Award-winning biography of the legendary chief and his dramatic role in the history of westward expansionReviled by the United States government as a troublemaker and a coward, revered by his people as a great warrior chief, Sitting Bull has long been one of the most fascinating and misunderstood figures in American history. Distinguished historian Robert M. Utley has forged a compelling portrait of Sitting Bull, presenting the Lakota perspective for the first time and rendering the most unbiased, historically accurate, and vivid portrait of the man to date.The Sitting Bull who emerges in this fast-paced narrative is a complex, towering figure: a great warrior whose skill and bravery in battle were unparalleled; the spiritual leader of his people; a dignified but ultimately tragically stubborn defender of the traditional ways against the steadfast and unwelcome encroachment of the white man.
Celia Rivenbark is an intrepid explorer and acid commentator on the land south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In this collection of screamingly funny essays, you'll discover:*How to get your kid into a character breakfast at Disney World (or run the risk of eating chicken out of a bucket with Sneezy)*Secrets of Celebrity Moms (don't hate them because they're beautiful when there are so many other reasons)*ebay addiction and why "It ain't worth having if it ain't on ebay"*Why today's children's clothes make six-year-olds look like Vegas showgirls with an abundance of anger issues*And so much more! Celia Rivenbark's essays about life in today's South are like caramel popcorn---sweet, salty, and utterly irresistible.
Fifteen-year-old Meryem lives in a rural village in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. Her simple, conventional way of life changes dramatically after her uncle, a sheikh in a dervish order, rapes her-and condemns her to death for shaming the family. Asked to carry out the "honor killing" is his son Cemal, a commando in the Turkish army. So begins a long, mystifying voyage for Meryem as her shell-shocked cousin ushers her to the shining metropolis of Istanbul where another troubled soul, the Harvard-educated professor Irfan, embarks on his own journey of transformation-one that catapults him into the heart of Meryem and Cemal's conflict. The crossed-paths and interwoven destinies of these three characters makes for an affecting, by turns brutal and life-affirming portrayal of traditional and modern-day Turkey that no reader will soon forget."Livaneli is an essential force in Turkey's musical, cultural, and political scene."--Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winner and author of Snow"Bliss is eye-opening and deeply moving."--Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Compelling [for] American readers ...hard to put down."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer"With lush scenes of Turkish life and nuanced depictions of the [characters'] inner lives. . .a convergence of lost, likable souls."--Entertainment Weekly
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