Memoirs of a Main Street Boy

Memoirs of a Main Street Boy

Author: Ralph W. Crosby

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781681142715

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Ralph Crosby's "Memoirs of a Main Street Boy" tells the tale of growing up at a tempestuous time in U.S. history - from the Great Depression, through World War II and the Cold War - in a town where America's colonial history was even more tempestuous, amid classic homes and institutions that still exist. The story takes you through the author's interplay with these historic places and events that helped shape U.S. history, as well as shaping his life and those of his generation. You will discover: How Annapolis became the first capital of the United States. Why the Revolutionary War officially ended in the Maryland State House. Why John Paul Jones' body waited seven years in Annapolis to be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel. How a young Francis Scott Key, attending school in Annapolis, became the poet who would write "The Star-Spangled Banner." How much George Washington liked to gamble in card games and on the races in Annapolis. How the author and his friends, like youngsters throughout the U.S., contributed to the Second World War effort. Why the U.S. Naval Academy was located in Annapolis and why it almost left. Why Annapolis stayed calm while cities around it erupted in flames when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. Why the tiny Annapolis port once supplied the world with tobacco and oysters. What it was like when radio was king of entertainment media. How religious and social discrimination impacted a small town in the mid-20th century. That, before he became famous as the symbol of press freedom, John Peter Zenger managed one of America's earliest newspapers in Annapolis. Why some view the Annapolis burning of the ship Peggy Stewart more critical to the Revolution than the more famous Boston Tea Party. What it was like to be a school boy when the fearful nuclear age began. And much more... This is not an autobiography. It is a memoir of growing up in one of the country's most disruptive yet most dynamic eras-from the end of the Great Depression, through World War II to the Cold War. That the growing up occurred in and around places where Washington, Jefferson and Franklin and their comrades planned war and made peace gives the story a unique perspective. Ralph W. Crosby has enjoyed great success in a multifaceted career as journalist, author, and marketer. A graduate of the University of Maryland College of Journalism, Ralph began his professional life as a newspaperman in Baltimore, later becoming a Washington Correspondent and magazine writer during the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson era; culminating his journalistic career in 1972 as an editor with the Kiplinger organization. All the while he lived in his hometown, Annapolis, Maryland, where he still resides with his wife, Carlotta. Currently, he is chairman of Crosby Marketing Communications, an award-winning advertising and public relations firm he founded in 1973. The firm, with 50-plus employees, has offices in Annapolis and Washington, D.C. "Memoirs of a Main Street Boy" is his third published book.


Boys Keep Swinging

Boys Keep Swinging

Author: Jake Shears

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-02-20

Total Pages: 5

ISBN-13: 1501140140

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In this “exhilarating yet poignant account of one boy taking flight” (Shelf Awareness, starred review), one of rock music's most entrancing figures transforms the vividness of his musical world into an unforgettable literary account of overcoming the odds and finding his true voice. Long before hitting the stage as the lead singer of the iconic glam rock band Scissor Sisters, Jake Shears was Jason Sellards, a teenage boy living a fraught life, resulting in a difficult time in high school as his classmates bullied him and few teachers showed sympathy. It wasn’t until years later, while living and studying in New York City, that Jason would find his voice as an artist and, with a group of friends and musicians who were also thirsting for stardom and freedom, form the band Scissor Sisters. First performing in the smoky gay nightclubs of New York, then finding massive success in the United Kingdom, Scissor Sisters would become revered by the LGBTQ community, sell out venues worldwide, and win multiple accolades with hits like “Take Your Mama” and “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’,” as well as their cult-favorite cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” “Brutally honest” (Elton John), candid, and courageous, Shears’s writing sings with the same powerful, spirited presence that he brings to his live performances. Boys Keep Swinging is “a wild, sexy, emotional ride through underground New York at the millennium. From the fringes to the top, it's a tale that speaks to the outsider in all of us” (Andy Cohen).


Bad Boy

Bad Boy

Author: Walter Dean Myers

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-06

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 0061974935

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A classic memoir that's gripping, funny, and ultimately unforgettable from the bestselling former National Ambassador of Books for Young People. A strong choice for summer reading—an engaging and powerful autobiographical exploration of growing up a so-called "bad boy" in Harlem in the 1940s. As a boy, Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciously—he would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys' teasing. He aspired to be a writer (and he eventually succeeded). But as his hope for a successful future diminished, the values he had been taught at home, in school, and in his community seemed worthless, and he turned to the streets and to his books for comfort. Don’t miss this memoir by New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers, one of the most important voices of our time.


Life

Life

Author: Keith Richards

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2010-11-12

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 0316178721

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The long-awaited autobiography of Keith Richards, guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life. Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever. With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.


Blue-Eyed Boy

Blue-Eyed Boy

Author: Robert Timberg

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0143127594

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From journalist Robert Timberg, a memoir of the struggle to reclaim his life after being severely burned as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. In January 1967, Robert Timberg was a short-timer, counting down the days until his combat tour ended. He had thirteen days to go when his vehicle struck a Viet Cong land mine, resulting in third-degree burns of his face and much of his body. He survived, barely, then began the arduous battle back, determined to build a new life and make it matter. Remarkable as was his return to health--he endured no less than thirty-five operations--perhaps more remarkable was his decision to reinvent himself as a journalist, one of the most public of professions. Blue-Eyed Boy is a gripping, occasionally comic account of what it took for an ambitious man, aware of his frightful appearance but hungry for meaning and accomplishment, to master a new craft amid the pitying stares and shocked reactions of many he encountered on a daily basis. Timberg was at the top of his game as White House correspondent for The Baltimore Sun when suddenly his work brought his life full circle: the Iran-Contra scandal broke. At its heart were three fellow Naval Academy graduates and Vietnam-era veterans. Timberg's coverage of that story resulted in his first book, The Nightingale's Song, a powerful work of narrative nonfiction that follows the three academy graduates most deeply involved in Iran-Contra--Oliver North among them--as well as two other well-known Navy men, John McCain and James Webb, from the academy through Vietnam and into the Reagan years. In Blue-Eyed Boy, Timberg relates how he came to know these five men and how their stories helped him understand the ways the Vietnam War and the furor that swirled around it continue to haunt the nation, even now, nearly four decades after its dismal conclusion. Timberg is no saint, and he has traveled a hard and often bitter road.


Mrs. Musterman, Milliner of Main Street

Mrs. Musterman, Milliner of Main Street

Author: Elizabeth Leah Reed

Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.

Published: 2021-02-28

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1627878556

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Who Was Mrs. Musterman? We often think of women who came of age in 1900 as submissive flowers waiting to be plucked, but not Lillian Johnson. No, this remarkable woman left her small Virginia town and headed to the big city -- Baltimore -- to become a milliner. She took her creativity to Annapolis, Maryland, where she created Gainsborough hats, married, and became Mrs. Musterman. When her third child was born, her husband fell ill and suddenly she became the sole breadwinner of the family. Then her employer died. What was she to do? How would she survive? If she can possibly succeed, she must have her own shop and years of crowning the heads of the women of Annapolis. She once said, "Nothing is impossible if you really want to do it."


Riverine

Riverine

Author: Angela Palm

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2016-08-16

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1555979424

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Angela Palm grew up in a place not marked on the map, her house set on the banks of a river that had been straightened to make way for farmland. Every year, the Kankakee River in rural Indiana flooded and returned to its old course while the residents sandbagged their homes against the rising water. From her bedroom window, Palm watched the neighbor boy and loved him in secret, imagining a life with him even as she longed for a future that held more than a job at the neighborhood bar. For Palm, caught in this landscape of flood and drought, escape was a continually receding hope. Though she did escape, as an adult Palm finds herself drawn back, like the river, to her origins. But this means more than just recalling vibrant, complicated memories of the place that shaped her, or trying to understand the family that raised her. It means visiting the prison where the boy that she loved is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder. It means trying to chart, through the mesmerizing, interconnected essays of Riverine, what happens when a single event forces the path of her life off course.


On Main Street

On Main Street

Author: Prudence Hatch McMann

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0595137350

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On Main Street illuminates the lives of people from earlier generations who influenced the author. The book captures the essence and innocence of a Maine town when communities were more insular and self-sufficient. While the individual events are those of Dexter, they reflect an era of great change in America. The stories’ universal themes combine the child’s sense of wonder with the adult’s observations and experience. On Main Street is about change and loss, connections and ironies, nostalgia and realities. It is told with subtle, self-deprecating humor, new found wisdom, and insight. This book will be enjoyed by an audience spanning several generations. On Main Street celebrates the lives of the author’s family members—a grandfather who is known for his egocentricities and eccentricities, his children who grew up in two very different worlds, and a great-aunt whose strength of character shines through. This book also details the lives of ordinary people and unusual characters in the community from Louis Chabot, who worked the looms at Amos Abbott Woolen Mill, to Jere Abbott, son of the mill owner, who became a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and a benefactor of Colby College’s art museum.


Boys in the Trees

Boys in the Trees

Author: Carly Simon

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1250095905

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Carly Simon's New York Times bestselling memoir, Boys in the Trees, reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters performing folk songs with her sister Lucy in Greenwich Village, to a meteoric solo career that would result in 13 top 40 hits, including the #1 song "You're So Vain." She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, for her song "Let the River Run" from the movie Working Girl. The memoir recalls a childhood enriched by music and culture, but also one shrouded in secrets that would eventually tear her family apart. Simon brilliantly captures moments of creative inspiration, the sparks of songs, and the stories behind writing "Anticipation" and "We Have No Secrets" among many others. Romantic entanglements with some of the most famous men of the day fueled her confessional lyrics, as well as the unraveling of her storybook marriage to James Taylor.


Relief by Execution

Relief by Execution

Author: Gint Aras

Publisher: Little Bound Books

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781947003477

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Between the years of 1996-1999, Gint Aras lived a hapless bohemian's life in Linz, Austria. Decades later, a random conversation with a Polish immigrant in a Chicago coffeehouse provokes a question: why didn't Aras ever visit Mauthausen, or any of the other holocaust sites close to his former home? The answer compels him to visit the concentration camp in the winter of 2017, bringing with him the baggage of a childhood shaped by his family of Lithuanian WWII refugees. The result is this meditative inquiry, at once lyrical and piercing, on the nature of ethnic identity, the constructs of race and nation, and the lasting consequences of collective trauma.