A Letter from Author Karen Abbott

My grandmother used to tell me stories about growing up during the Great Depression, and she once related a tale about a cousin who saw Gypsy Rose Lee perform in 1935. “She took a full fifteen minutes to peel off a single glove,” the cousin said, “and she was so damned good at it I would’ve gladly given her fifteen more.” This story got me thinking: who was Gypsy Rose Lee? And how did an awkward girl named Louise Hovick become her? I spent three years researching the answer, research that included connecting with Gypsy’s late sister, the actress June Havoc; I was the last person to interview her.
When I arrived at June’s Connecticut farm I found her lying in bed, her hair done up in pert white pigtails. She was ninety-four years old, give or take, and the legs that once danced on stages across the country were now motionless, two nearly imperceptible bumps tucked beneath crisp white sheets. Her eyes were a bold shade of blue and painfully sensitive to light. She told me the musical Gypsy distorted her childhood so thoroughly it was as if “I didn’t own me anymore.” She realized her sister was “screwing me out in public,” and that, in the end, there was no stopping either Gypsy or Gypsy; the play was both her sister’s monument and her best chance for monumental revisionism.
It took another visit for June to share more personal memories: money was Gypsy’s “god,” and she would do anything to anybody, including June, to make more of it. Gypsy did in fact do things, not only to June but also to herself—“terrible” and “awful” and “shocking” things, things beneath her sister’s formidable intellect and keen wit, things that made June believe, to that day, that love (even love fraught with competition and jealousy) never existed between them at all.
I asked and listened, for as much time as June gave me. I asked until her patience wore thin and her eyes watered with the effort to stay open.
“I hope I didn’t upset you today,” I whispered. “That’s not my intention.”
“I know,” June said. Those startling eyes found their focus, settling on mine. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more open about some things… I’m still ashamed for her. I wish they hadn’t happened.”
“Would Gypsy wish the same?” I asked.
“She had no shame.”
A pause, and I said, feebly, “You were a good sister to her.”
A hand tunneled out from the sheet. She coiled long, blade-thin fingers around my wrist.
“I was no sister,” June said. “I was a knot in her life. I was nothing.”
She retracted her hand, gave her eyes permission to close. I kissed her cheek and crept out the bedroom door. I was grateful she let me inside—even on the periphery, even briefly¬—and I suspected she was saving her own questions for the day she reunited with the sister she did profess to love, the one she still called Louise

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Sam Davis Elliott - Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, Confederate Governor and United States Senator (20 10).jpg

In 1931, when the Nashville Banner conducted a survey to determine the "Greatest Tennesseans" to date, the state's Confederate "War Governor," Isham G. Harris (1818-1897), was tenth on the list, behind such famous Tennesseans as Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. In 1976, however, when the Banner once again conducted the survey, Harris did not appear in even the top twenty-five. The result of fading memories and the death of the generation that knew him, the glaring omission of Harris's name still seemed striking and undeserved. In Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, Sam Davis Elliott offers the first published biography of this overlooked leader, establishing him as the most prominent Tennessean in the Confederacy and a dominating player in nineteenth-century Tennessee politics.
Harris grew up on the frontier in Middle Tennessee, the youngest of a large family. He left home as a teenager, and found and lost a fortune in the boom and bust times of 1830s in Mississippi and West Tennessee. Admitted to the bar in 1841, he enjoyed almost immediate success as an attorney because of his quick intellect, naturally aggressive nature, and native ability to influence people. He launched a political career in 1847 that lasted, with some interruption, for fifty years, having never lost an election. Harris rose to prominence in the 1850s as the leader of the southern rights wing of the Democratic Party, fiercely advocating the right to hold property in slaves. He served in the Tennessee state Senate, as a U.S. congressman, and as governor during the secession crisis, when, Elliott contends, Harris used his political influence and constitutional power to trample on the state constitution to align Tennessee with the Confederacy.
As governor, Harris tirelessly dedicated himself to the Confederate war effort, raising troops and money and establishing a logistical structure and armament industry. When the Federals overran large portions of Middle and West Tennessee in 1862, he attached himself to the headquarters of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. As a volunteer aide, he served each of the army's commanders on nearly every one of its famed battlefields and was deemed a possible successor to Jefferson Davis should the new republic survive.
After the war, Harris went into voluntary exile in Mexico. He returned home in late 1867 and worked behind the scenes to "redeem" Tennessee from Radical rule and eventually became the most famous of the state's Bourbon Democrats. Elected to the U. S. Senate in 1877, he held that seat until his death in 1897. He successfully used the Senate's arcane parliamentary rules to block assertions of Federal power at the expense of states' rights, but advocated imaginative application of Federal power where clearly authorized by the Constitution.
The story of nineteenth-century Tennessee remains incomplete without a thorough understanding of Isham Green Harris. Elliott's exhaustive and entertaining biography provides essential reading for anyone interested in the political and military history of the Volunteer State.

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Sam Davis Elliott - Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, Confederate Governor and United States Senator (20 10).pdf

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David Garoogian - Profiles of Virginia (2007).jpg

Grey House’s Profiles of . . . series is a reconfiguration of the four-volume Profiles of America, which compiled community-by-community information for all 50 states. Each state volume provides statistical information for “all populated places” in the state and all counties plus sections on education, ancestry, Hispanic and Asian populations, and climate. There is also a collection of maps. Numbers are taken from the 2000 census, but many have been updated with figures for 2006

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David Garoogian - Profiles of Virginia (2007).pdf

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Ray S. Cline - The War Department, Washington Comm and Post, The Operations Division (1990).jpg

This is the eighth of some hundred contemplated volumes covering the Army's part in World War II. This particular volume is written from the viewpoint of the Staff of the Army's high command. The Operations Division of the General Staff was the general headquarters within the General Staff with which General Marshall exercised his over-all Army command. Its history presents problems which are likely to arise in future wars.

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Ray S. Cline - The War Department, Washington Comm and Post, The Operations Division (1990).pdf

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Christine S. Richard - Confidence Game, How a Hedg e Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff (2010).jpg

The collapse of America’s credit markets in 2008 is quite possibly the biggest financial disaster in U.S. history. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street’s Bluff is the story of Bill Ackman's six-year campaign to warn that the $2.5 trillion bond insurance business was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Branded a fraud by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and investigated by Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ackman later made his investors more than $1 billion when bond insurers kicked off the collapse of the credit markets.
Unravels the story of the credit crisis through an engaging and human drama
Draws on unprecedented access to one of Wall Street's best-known investors
Shows how excessive leverage, dangerous financial models and a blind reliance on triple-A credit ratings sent Wall Street careening toward disaster

Confidence Game is a real-world "Emperor's New Clothes," a tale of widespread delusion and one dissenting voice in the era leading up to the worst financial disaster since the Great Deion.

Christine Richard is a reporter with Bloomberg News whose work has been recognized by The New York Club and The Newswomen’s Club of New York.

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Christine S. Richard - Confidence Game, How a Hedg e Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff (2010).pdf

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Corwin Smidt, Kevin den Dulk, Bryan Froehle, and J ames Penning - The Disappearing God Gap, Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election (2010).jpg

USA Books - Corwin Smidt, Kevin den Dulk, Bryan Froehle, and James... Gap, Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election 2010.jpg

After the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, the "God Gap" became a hotly debated political issue. Religious voters were seen as the key to Bush's victory, and Democrats began scrambling to reach out to them. Four years later, however, with the economy in a tailspin on election day, religion barely seemed to register on people's radar screens. In this book, a team of well-regarded scholars digs deeper to examine the role religion played in the 2008 campaign. They take a long view, placing the election in historical context and looking at the campaign as a whole, from the primaries through all the way through election day. At the heart of their analysis is data gleaned from a national survey conducted by the authors, in which voters were interviewed in the spring of 2008 and then re-interviewed after the election.

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Corwin Smidt, Kevin den Dulk, Bryan Froehle, and J ames Penning - The Disappearing God Gap, Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election (2010).pdf

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Kalle Lasn - Culture Jam, How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must (1999).jpg

Adbusters is a magazine that attacks the culture of consumerism by turning its own tactics against it--employing the glossy tactics of advertising to encourage people to take part in "Buy Nothing Day" and "TV Turnoff Week." Culture Jam takes the revolution to another level, as the magazine's publisher, Kalle Lasn, issues a call to arms to "the advance shock troops of the most significant social movement" of the early 21st century. Dissatisfied with the results of both academic and mainstream liberalism and feminism, Lasn harks back to the situationist roots of the 1968 Paris uprisings, a brief moment when it seemed possible that men and women might be able to wholly re-create not only their own lives but society as well.

That revolution stumbled and fell, however, and Lasn views contemporary existence as one in which people have almost entirely succumbed to the cultural mandates of consumer capitalism, turning to corporations for guidance about how to look and what to desire. He offers several tips on how you can "demarket your life," including talking back to telemarketers and intensified boycotts (want to strike a blow against tobacco giant Philip Morris? Stop buying Maxwell House coffees, Kraft dairy products, Post cereals, and Miller beer). Lasn also pushes for the return of corporations to a subordinate role in people's lives, citing the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rendered corporations "natural persons" in the eyes of the law as a horrendous miscarriage of justice that must be overturned. (One of his biggest targets is media conglomerates who are able to disseminate their ideology throughout the information spectrum; in an ironic twist of fate, perhaps, the publisher of Culture Jam became a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation scant months before the book's release.)

Culture Jam is an extreme book--among its declarations: "consumer capitalism is by its very nature unethical"--and Lasn's reasoning is not without flaws. One of the weak links in his argument is his insistence that, because none of the major television networks will allow him to purchase airtime for his "subverts," there is "no democracy on the airwaves" and his freedom of speech is being denied. The First Amendment says only that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"; it says nothing about what he deems the "right to communicate ... through any media." On the other hand, he also raises a more plausible line of attack--since it's the government that grants broadcasters access to the airwaves, citizens should press for more say in how broadcast licenses are distributed. But whatever the book's excesses, Lasn is driven by a righteous anger--and Culture Jam may likely convince you, too, that the models of material success presented to us are not only inadequate to true happiness, they must be overturned.

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David S. Reynolds - Waking Giant, America in the A ge of Jackson (2008).jpg

America experienced unprecedented expansion and turmoil in the years between 1815 and 1848. In Waking Giant, Bancroft Prize-winning historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds illuminates the period's exciting political story as well as the fascinating social and cultural movements that influenced it. He casts fresh light on Andrew Jackson, who redefined the presidency, along with John Quincy Adams and James K. Polk, who expanded the nation's territory and strengthened its position internationally.Waking Giant captures the turbulence of a democracy caught in the throes of the controversy over slavery, the rise of capitalism, and the birth of urbanization. Reynolds reveals unknown dimensions of the Second Great Awakening with its sects, cults, and self-styled prophets. He brings to life the reformers, abolitionists, and temperance advocates who struggled to correct America's worst social ills. He uncovers the political roots of some of America's greatest authors and artists, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe to Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, and he reveals the shocking phenomena that marked the age: bloody duels and violent mobs, P. T. Barnum's freaks and all-seeing mesmerists, polygamous prophets and wealthy prostitutes, table-lifting spiritualists and rabble-rousing feminists. All were crucial to the political and social ferment that led to the Civil War.

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Jim Wallis - God's Politics, Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (2005).jpg

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda—an agenda not all people of faith support—the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

The effect of this dilemma was made clear in the 2004 presidential election. The Democrats' miscalculations have left them despairing and searching for a way forward. It has become clear that someone must challenge the Republicans' claim that they speak for God, or that they hold a monopoly on moral values in the nation's public life. Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. In fact, the very survival of America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics—a dependence the nation's founders recognized.

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition—that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. In the tradition of prophets such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu, Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation's public life.

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Thomas Doherty - Pre-Code Hollywood (1999).jpeg

Who says the world of classic Hollywood moviemaking was never risqué? We tend to think of black-and-white movies as representing a sanitized world, where crime never paid, ladies of the evening had hearts of gold, and married couples slept in separate beds. But in fact, censorship in American cinema didn't begin in earnest until 1934, when Will Hays and Joseph Breen began enforcing the legendary Hollywood production code. In this revelatory book, Thomas Doherty looks at sound movies of 1930-34--what is now known as the "pre-code" era.

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David Garoogian - Profiles of New Jersey (2006).jpg

The careful layout gives the user an easy-to-read snapshot of every single place and county in the state of New Jersey, from the biggest metropolis to the smallest unincorporated hamlet. Here is a look at just a few of the data sets you’ll find in each profile: History, Geography, Climate, Population, Vital Statistics, Economy, Income, Taxes, Education, Housing, Health & Environment, Public Safety and more.

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David Garoogian - Profiles of New Jersey (2006).pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 10 - Siły P owietrzne USA.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 10 - Siły P owietrzne USA.pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 16 - Ameryk ańska Piechota Morska w II Wojnie Światowej.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 16 - Ameryk ańska Piechota Morska w II Wojnie Światowej.pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 19 - Armia USA w I Wojnie Światowej.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 19 - Armia USA w I Wojnie Światowej.pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 27 - Wojska Powietrznodesantowe USA.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 27 - Wojska Powietrznodesantowe USA.pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 29 - Piecho ta morska USA w I Wojnie Światowej.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 29 - Piecho ta morska USA w I Wojnie Światowej.pdf

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 32 - Mundur y USA w II Wojnie Światowej.jpg

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del Prado - Żołnierze Wojen Światowych 32 - Mundur y USA w II Wojnie Światowej.pdf

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Alan Balboni - Beyond The Mafia (2006).jpg

Author Alan Balboni traces the history of Italians in Las Vegas from the founding of the city in 1905, recording their activities in the fledgling settlement. As Las Vegas grew, Italian Americans participated in every aspect of the city’s society and economy, including construction, retail establishments, hotels, and—after the statewide legalization of gambling in 1931—the casino industry. Basing his research on well over a hundred interviews, as well as the records of Italian American organizations, public agencies, and other sources, Balboni has produced a sparkling, farsighted, and thoroughly documented account of the history of one of Las Vegas’s most progressive and productive ethnic minorities.

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