Other books that might interest you

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  The Face of a Naked Lady - An...

  Michael Rips

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  A son uncovers the remarkable secret life of his midwestern father—and his Nebraska city—in this “beguiling [and] deeply unusual” memoir (The Boston Sunday Globe).   Nick Rips’s son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility. Upon his father’s death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden portfolio of paintings—all done by his father, all of a naked black woman.   His solid Republican father, Michael would eventually discover, had an interesting past and another side to his personality. Raised in one of Omaha’s most famous brothels, Nick had insisted on hiring a collection of social misfits to work in his eyeglass factory—and had once showed up in his son’s high school principal’s office in pajamas.   As Michael searches for the woman in the paintings, he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless man with five million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a flying trapeze artist on her last sublime ride. Ultimately, in his investigations through his Nebraska hometown, he will discover the mysterious woman—as well as a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous permeates the everyday.   “Writing with similar pain and urgency as Nick Flynn in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and August Kleinzahler in Cutty, One Rock, Rips’ terse, flinty syntax perfectly embodies the hard-boiled nature of this nearly surreal true-life tale.” —Booklist   “An amazing, beautiful book—a study of a certain family in a certain place at a certain time that gives us, in stunning shorthand, the reality of America.” —Joan Didion, author of The White Album   “At once a lyrical family portrait, a philosophical inquiry, a bittersweet evocation of a lost time and place, and an enthralling domestic mystery.” —Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief   “Quirky, funny, moving, and immensely readable . . . a brilliantly observed story about place, family, and race in America.” —Randall Kennedy

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  The Shield of Heracles

  Hesiod

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  The Shield of Heracles is an archaic Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The subject of the poem is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against Cycnus, the son of Ares, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing through Thessaly.It has been suggested that this epic may reflect anti-Thessalian feeling after the First Sacred War (595–585 BCE): in the epic, a Thessalian hero interfering with the Phocian sanctuary is killed by a Boeotian hero (Heracles), whose mortal father Amphitryon had for allies Locrians and Phocians. This was a pastiche made to be sung at a Boeotian festival at midsummer at the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios.To serve as an introduction, fifty-six lines have been taken from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. The late 3rd- and early 2nd-century BCE critic Aristophanes of Byzantium, who considered the Catalogue to be the work of Hesiod, noted the borrowing, which led him to suspect that the Shield was spurious.

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  Isn't That Rich? - Life Among...

  Richard Kirshenbaum

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  Celebrated ad man Richard Kirshenbaum, the original New York observer, reveals the fashions, foibles, and outrageous extravagances of the private-jet set Paid friends. Pot dealers draped in Dolce. Divorce settlements that include the Birkins at their current retail price. Air kisses, landing strips, and lounge-chair bribery. For most of us, the idea of life inside the golden triad of Park Avenue, Sagaponack, and St. Barths is just as exotic as the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Luckily, Richard Kirshenbaum has a VIP pass to the Upper East Side and is willing to share the wealth—of gossip. His New York Observer column on uptown social life provides a fascinating glimpse behind the gilded curtain into the swanky restaurants and eye-popping vacation destinations where the 1 percent gathers.Isn’t That Rich? features highlights from Kirshenbaum’s monthly column as well as several brand-new essays. From cash-strapped blue bloods willing to trade their good names for a taste of nouveau riche treasure to the fine art of donning a cashmere sweater in Capri, our intrepid correspondent exposes the preoccupations of the posh. His insider sources may be anonymous, but “his up-to-the-minute portrait of today’s 1 percent is both insightful and a joy to read, no matter what tax bracket you’re in.” (Mortimer Zuckerman)

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  George Stephenson - His...

  Kelly Mass

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  George Stephenson was a British civil and mechanical engineer who lived from June the 9th 1781 to August the 12th 1848. Stephenson, called the "Dad of Railways," was regarded by Victorians as a great example of exertion and a desire to enhance. Samuel Smiles, a self-help supporter, applauded his achievements in particular. The four feet eight +12 inches (1.435 m) basic gauge used by the majority of the world's trains is based upon his chosen rail gauge, at times described as 'Stephenson gauge.' 
  Rail transport, which was created by Stephenson and was a crucial element of the Industrial Revolution, was just one of the most essential innovative developments of the nineteenth century. The Mobility No. 1 was the first steam engine to transport guests on a public railway, the Stockton and Darlington Train, in 1825. It was built by George and his child Robert's company, Robert Stephenson & Business. The Liverpool and Manchester Train, which opened in 1830, was the world's first public inter-city train path to use engines. 
  In this book, you will learn more about his inventions and his life.

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  Vagabond - A horseback adventure...

  Jeremy James

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  The journey starts when author and long-rider Jeremy James buys two horses from gypsies at a fair in southern Bulgaria. He and his long-suffering friend Chumpie then set off on horseback, winding northwards to Berlin, and on the way they encounter a marvellous array of local characters from all walks of life as they ride from Bulgaria to Berlin, via Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
  
     
  
  On a low budget, they are sustained by local fire-water, indigestible food and the forceful personalities of their horses who steal, run away, misbehave or suddenly comply at will and add a whole new dimension to the experience of travel.
  
  After five long months, they finally reach their destination. It has taken Jeremy through an Eastern Europe full of surprises, which, with the collapse of communism, has almost disappeared today.

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  Honeymoons - through writers' eyes

  Rose Baring, Roger Hudson

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  The honeymoon – no other holiday inspires so much anticipation of blissful happiness, nor such potential for catastrophic disappointment. Using extracts from fiction and from real-life diaries and letters, Honeymoons: through writers' eyes takes you on a rollercoaster of an emotional journey into the heart of human longing, to examine what it is we are seeking, what we expect, when we embark on life together. There are real journeys to Pisa and Rome, through Switzerland and India and to the moors of Yorkshire. We hear about the consummations of royal weddings; and the dire consequences of marriages of convenience and those entered into with calculation. The road is littered with pleasures, great and small, not to mention surprises, disappointments, cads and one or two corpses.

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