"Good SciFi comedy is as rare as hen's teeth. This was a fun read." Kelly Frank is EarthCent's top diplomat on Union Station, but her job description has always been a bit vague. The pay is horrible and she's in hock up to her ears for her furniture, which is likely to end up in a corridor because she's behind on rent for her room. Sometimes she has to wonder if the career she has put ahead of her personal life for fifteen years is worth it. When Kelly receives a gift subscription to the dating service that's rumored to be powered by the same benevolent artificial intelligence that runs the huge station, she decides to swallow her pride and give it a shot. But as her dates go from bad to worse, she can only hope that the supposedly omniscient AI is planning a happy ending.
Read Double Living first! After spending their lives in a closed society of gamers and hackers, the anarchists from Bits seize the opportunity to explore new options on an alien colony ship contracted by EarthCent to visit a circuit of sovereign human communities. The members of Mouser's gaming group rebuild their lives on Flower, but not everybody is happy abiding by the rules. Can a group of independent people adapt to being manipulated by alien artificial intelligence for the greater good, or will they split up an go their own ways. Bits of Flower and Double Living both take place on the sentient colony ship, Flower, with overlapping timelines and characters. But Bits of Flower ends second, so it contains spoilers for Double Living.
A history of the Midwestern transportation hub and its impact on the city and the region, plus stunning photographs of the station’s architecture. More than a century before airlines placed it at the center of their systems, Chicago was already the nation’s transportation hub—from Union Station, passengers could reach major cities on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts as well as countless points in between. Chicago’s history is tightly linked to its railroads. Railroad historian Fred Ash begins in the mid-1800s, when Chicago dominated Midwest trade and was referred to as the “Railroad Capital of the World.” During this period, swings in the political climate significantly modified the relationship between the local government and its largest landholders, the railroads. From here, Ash highlights competition at the turn of the twentieth century between railroad companies that greatly influenced Chicago’s urban landscape. Profiling the fascinating stories of businessmen, politicians, workers, and immigrants whose everyday lives were affected by the bustling transportation hub, Ash documents the impact Union Station had on the growing city and the entire Midwest. Featuring more than one hundred photographs of the famous beaux art architecture, Chicago Union Station is a beautifully illustrated tribute to one of America’s overlooked treasures. “The book includes more than 100 illustrations, a quarter of which are in color—but the real value is in author Ash’s narrative; he’s devoted decades to the study of terminals in the Railroad Capital, and it shows in this marvelous work.” —Classic Trains “The station’s history is thoughtfully revealed alongside concurrent economic and political events unfolding in Chicago at given points in time, thus providing the reader with a deeper understanding of why certain station milestones occurred when they did and the way they did.” —The Michigan Railfan
This book is aimed at an audience of family and friends. The authors hope that their sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and friends will gain an understanding of the places and times that affected them during their childhood and early years. But also, the authors hope that this little book may serve as a catalyst to others to take time to revisit the times and places where they grew up. You may or may not want to write them down or record them on audio or video. Whatever you do, the authors believe that the mentalsnapshots that will come to mind will surprise you. Some will be sharp and clear as if taken by a twenty-first century digital camera. Others will be wrinkled and blurred as if carelessly stored in a neglected desk drawer. Whatever is recalled, in whatever condition, will lead not only to nostalgic recollection, but to an enriching evaluation of our lives and the values of our culture.
Fear Street -- Where Your Worst Nightmares Live... Emma and her best friend Sydney always share their secrets. And now they have a big one: They found a duffel bag filled with cash and swore never to tell anyone. But Sydney broke her promise -- she told her boyfriend, Jason. Now Emma is terrified. She doesn't trust Jason. She knows he would do anything to get the money for himself. Even if it means killing someone who gets in his way...
The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award* *A New York Times Notable Book* *Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award* This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” (The New York Times Book Review). Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads, and the amazing story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Hailed by critics, S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history.
Emigration from Scotland has always been very high. However, emigration from Scotland between the wars surpassed all records; more people emigrated than were born, leading to an overall population decline. Why was it so many people left?Marjory Harper, whose knowledge is grounded in a deep understanding of the local records, maps out the many factors which worked together to cause this massive diaspora. After an opening section where the author sets the Scottish experience within the context of the rest of the British Isles, the book then divides the country geographically, starting with the Highlands, then coastal Scotland, and the urban Lowland highlighting in turn the factors that particularly influenced each of these areas. Harper then discusses the organised religious and political movements that encouraged emigration. By interweaving personal stories with statistical evidence Harper brings to life the reality behind the dramatic historical migration.
"Empire Builders" by Francis Lynde is a work of fiction, but it effectively describes the relationship between big business expansion with the focus on building and operating railroads in the West and the effects on the land owners and those who used public land to graze their stock. It also explains the forming of associations and backroom planning to take control of the Rail Road Commission.
