Search results for ""author christopher""

Christopher Knowlton, author of Cattle Kingdom and former Fortune writer, takes an in-depth look at the spectacular Florida land boom of the 1920s and shows how it led directly to the Great Depression.The 1920s in Florida was a time of incredible excess, immense wealth, and precipitous collapse. The decade there produced the largest human migration in American history, far exceeding the settlement of the West, as millions flocked to the grand hotels and the new cities that rose rapidly from the teeming wetlands. The boom spawned a new subdivision civilization—and the most egregious large-scale assault on the environment in the name of “progress.” Nowhere was the glitz and froth of the Roaring Twenties more excessive than in Florida. Here was Vegas before there was a Vegas: gambling was condoned and so was drinking, since prohibition was not enforced. Tycoons, crooks, and celebrities arrived en masse to promote or exploit this new and dazzling American frontier in the sunshine. Yet, the import and deep impact of these historical events have never been explored thoroughly until now. In Bubble in the Sun Christopher Knowlton examines the grand artistic and entrepreneurial visions behind Coral Gables, Boca Raton, Miami Beach, and other storied sites, as well as the darker side of the frenzy. For while giant fortunes were being made and lost and the nightlife raged more raucously than anywhere else, the pure beauty of the Everglades suffered wanton ruination and the workers, mostly black, who built and maintained the boom, endured grievous abuses. Knowlton breathes dynamic life into the forces that made and wrecked Florida during the decade: the real estate moguls Carl Fisher, George Merrick, and Addison Mizner, and the once-in-a-century hurricane whose aftermath triggered the stock market crash. This essential account is a revelatory—and riveting—history of an era that still affects our country today.

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The richly imagined fables, vignettes, and prose poems of Flares reveal the elementary strangeness of this world. Here is the improvised travel record of a poet haunted by history, who documents what he discovers in foreign lands with an exacting and hallucinatory eye. Composed in transit, on diplomatic missions to scores of countries, Flares will endure in the reader’s imagination as a series of signals in the night, illuminating the hidden corners of our time here on earth.

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Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The classic story of the learned Doctor Faustus who sells his soul to the devil. This edition of Christopher Marlowe's play contains two self-contained versions, known as the A-text and the B-text, allowing readers to compare the available versions, and performers to choose the version that suits them best. It also contains a full introduction, notes on further reading, a chronology and a glossary of difficult words. Edited by D. Bevington & E. Rasmussen, and introduced by Simon Trussler.

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A celebration of outdoor swimming – looking at the history, design and social aspect of pools. Few experiences can beat diving into a pool in the fresh air, swimming with blue skies above you. Whether it's a dip into a busy and bustling city pool on a sweltering summer day, or taking the plunge in icy waters, the lido provides a place of peace in a frenetic world. The book begins with a history of outdoor pools – their grand beginnings after the buttoned-up Victorian era, their falling popularity in the 20th century, and the newfound appreciation for the outdoor pool, or lido, and outdoor swimming in the 21st century. Journalist and architectural historian Christopher Beanland picks the very best of the outdoor pools around the world, including the Icebergs Pool on Bondi Beach, Australia; the 137m seawater pool in Vancouver, Canada; Siza's concrete sea pools in Porto, Portugal; the restored art deco pool in Saltdean, UK, and the pool at the Zollverein Coal Mines in Essen, Germany. The book also features lost lidos and the fascinating history behind the architecture of the pools, along with essays on swimming pools in art, and the importance of pools in Australia. In addition there are interviews with pool users around the globe about why they swim. The book is illustrated throughout with beautiful colour photography, as well as archive photography and advertising.

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Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George's Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. 'You must break these men or they will break you', Oliver Cromwell declared of the 'lunaticks'. This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch - strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.

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A beautiful illustrated hardcover collection of original Australian mystery stories by popular writers and devoted Sherlockians, including Kerry Greenwood, Meg Keneally, Samuel Wagan Watson, Lucy Sussex, Kaaron Warren and many more. It's 1890. Holmes' fame has spread even to the colonies and he and his stalwart chronicler Watson are swept up in an array of mysteries 'down under'. They find themselves summoned from location to location, dealing with the exciting and unique mysteries of this strange island continent.

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Become a football trivia expert with these tough questions! The Ultimate Football Trivia Book tests and expands your knowledge on the sport of football--covering players' careers from Draft Day to the rookie season, the Pro Bowl, and beyond! In this collection of 600 questions, seasoned football writer Chris Price tests your level of expertise on a

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A history of gladiators—with an added bite! It’s hard for modern readers to truly grasp the spectacle that was arena sports in ancient Rome, which pitted man against man and man against beast in mortal combat. Our modern games of football and hockey, or even boxing and MMA, truly pale in comparison. The Gladiators is a comprehensive survey of these ancient sports, focusing on gladiatorial combat and the beast hunts (venationes). While many books have been written on arena spectacles in ancient Rome, they generally neglect the venationes, despite the fact that the beast hunts, of various dangerous wild animals (including lions, tigers, elephants, and rhinos), were almost as popular as gladiatorial spectacles and endured over a longer period of time. Dr. Christopher Epplett gives a full and detailed treatment of both types of spectacle. The author starts by explaining the origins of these bloody combat sports in the late Roman Republic before surveying the growth of these events during the first two centuries of the Empire, when emperors possessed the resources to stage arena spectacles on an unmatched scale. The details of the training, equipment, and fighting styles used by different types of combatants are covered, as are the infrastructure of the arenas and behind-the-scenes organization that was essential to the successful staging of arena events. Particular attention is paid to the procurement of the countless wild animals necessary to stage venationes throughout the Empire. A gladiator book with added bite, The Gladiators is sure to be welcomed by scholars and general readers alike. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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Christopher Merkner is a Shirley Jackson for the contemporary Midwest, where the ties of family and community intersect darkly with suburban American life. In these stories, an enraged village gaslights unsuspecting vacationers and a young man delays a impending confession, fondling the nostrils of his mother's pet pig. Sharp and uneasy, for these inheritors of tradition, that which binds them most closely-offering stability and identity and comfort-are precisely the qualities that set them back, pull them down, burden, limit, and ruin them. "Merkner's first short story collection provides a voyeuristic vantage point on fractured lives. He has the striking ability to turn the familiar into the uncanny and morph the comfortable into the weird, and, clearly, he's at home in that strange realm. In most of the stories, we witness lives at the moment an individual's identity begins to fray, sometimes slowly and sometimes swiftly. These changes are both painful and thought provoking to witness through the book's unrelenting first-person perspective. At times Merkner's prose evokes unease, but more often it encourages a chuckle, and his plot twists will leave even the most seasoned reader surprised. In each story, even those that only run for three pages, the tension mounts deliciously, many times with no foreseeable relief. The true beauty of these tales lies in their delicate endings, which manage to both tie up loose ends and leave everything hanging, so that they are simultaneously satisfying and mysterious. Such complexity makes great reading for lovers of short fiction, and for all who wish to witness a new master at work."-Booklist Christopher Merkner teaches creative writing at West Chester University. His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review, Gettysburg Review, New Orleans Review, and Best American Mystery Stories. He and his wife and kids live in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

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An Amazon Charts bestseller. There’s more than one way to stoke the flames of revenge… Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her. Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.

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An in-depth look at revolutionary new ways to handle sexual assaults.

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