The experts at Off Track Planet bring you a roadtripping guide to 'Merica. This guide includes all the information you'll need to take on the great nation of 'Merica, a country filled with rich culture, museums, shopping, sightseeing, partying, art and music, festivals, nightlife, and more. This edgy reference book will include information on fashion, climate, health and safety, budgeting, and where to stay, as well as show you how to navigate every mode of transportation from buses to Uber; explore the finest art museums to the most tagged urban beauty; discover bodegas, delis, corner stores, and tasting menus around the country; visit weird landmarks; take cheap must-do tours; and crash anywhere from a hostel to a couch. Complete with pre-departure suggestions, OTP Tips and Fun Facts, as well as illustrated maps and 200+ full-color photos, this comprehensive travel guide is equally as entertaining as it is informative.
With This Here's a Merica, L. D. Brodsky reprises his auto-factory-assembly-line worker from south St. Louis, first introduced in Yellow Bricks and Catchin' the Drift o' the Draft. In one of the six pieces that bind the collection, this lovable redneck, who takes the English language all the way back to its murky origins, hosts a "Stupor Bowl Tailgate Key Party," in which he and his three buddies know the score of the game even before it starts and what trophies they'll win: the house keys and wives they swap for the night. We also join him on his extended "lunch break" from the car plant to a "sportin' bar" on the East Side, where Julie No-Name, between performances, indulges him in an "afternoon delight." Other characters jump from the pages as well, including a Vietnam vet, now a doorman, who finds himself transported back to the war whenever it rains, shooting wildly at passing cars with his umbrella as he escorts residents to and from their apartment building. In a postmodern examination of the writing process itself, Brodsky chronicles the rise of another intriguing individual -- a sous-chef who begins his career at a fowl facility, rendering chicken parts into words, and eventually becomes the toast of Manhattan for transforming gizzards into Petrarchan sonnets, necks into short stories. These unique protagonists, and the others in this volume's forty-two fast-paced fictions, lead the reader through a house of mirrors in which everyday reality is twisted in ways magically satirical and absurdly surreal. Their distorted reflections, which become strikingly familiar to us as we recognize our own afflictions and foibles in them, hover in the subconscious long after This Here's a Merica is closed.
Why would a man tie up a cheap suitcase with grass rope, leave his family and his paesani in Italy to risk his life and meager possessions among the dock thieves of Naples and Genoa to suffer the congestion and stench of steerage accommodations aboard ship, to endure the assembly-line processing of Ellis Island, to wander almost incommunicado through a city of sneering strangers speaking an unknown tongue, to perform ten to twelve hours of heavy manual labor a day for wages of perhaps $1.65—most of which he probably owed to the "company store" before he got it? Why were there not just a few such men but droves of them coming to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? How did they survive and—some of them—prosper? How did they surmount the language barrier? Why did some stay, some go home, and some bounce back and forth repeatedly across the Atlantic? Michael La Sorte examines these questions and more in this lively study of Italian immigration prior to World War I. In exploring for answers, he draws upon the commentary of recent scholars, as well as the statistical documents of the day. But most importantly, he has searched out individual stories in the published and unpublished diaries, letters, and autobiographies of immigrants who lived the "greenhorn" (grignoni) experience. In their own language, the men bring to life the teeming tenements of New York's Mulberry Street, the exploitative labor-recruiting practices of Boston's North Square, and the harsh squalor of work camp life along the country's expanding railroad lines. What emerges is a powerful, moving, alternately funny and appalling picture of their everyday lives. Through detailed narration, La Sorte traces the men's lives from their native villages across the Atlantic through the ports of entry to their first immigrant jobs. He describes their views of Italy, America, and each other, the cultural and linguistic adjustments that they were compelled to make, and their motives for either Americanizing or repatriating themselves. His chapter on "Italglish" (a hybrid language developed by the greenhorns) will echo in the ears of Italian-Americans as the sound of their parents' and grandparents' voices.
A serial killer is murdering E-Congress! Virtual reality e-representatives form a more perfect union in a future America of a hundred states. Until someone reaches into the computerized Congress and murders them one by one. Only Nevada, the e-rep sergeant-at-arms with a shadowy past, stands a chance of tracking the killer. But the trail grows deadlier with every step Nevada takes. America's digitized government might rule from a virtual Capitol, but e-blood runs thick in the hallowed halls. When the killing stops, will Nevada make America's high tech tomorrow safe for e-democracy? Or will a terrible secret pull the trigger on a nation's hopes and dreams? Only "Acirema the Rellik" knows for sure. Don't miss this exciting tale by award-winning storyteller Robert T. Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected science fiction that really packs a punch.
La Merica (la mer'.e.ca) Ancient Portuguese name for America. Meaning: "The Western Star" This book is made possible by the re-discovery of an ancient science handed down to the Portuguese, by successive secret societies, within the important ancient cultures that preceded them. You will read of the hidden history of the Celts, the Vikings, the Knights Templar, and the Freemasons, as well as the part the author's ancestors played in this history. You may be surprised to read that they all helped shape the pre-Columbian history of the Americas. Evidence is presented that proves Sir Henry Sinclair of Scotland lived in what became, Baltimore, Maryland, and that the Portuguese ceded North America to the Templars in 1362 AD. For the first time unknown facts about Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland are revealed. The solutions to the Newport Tower and Kensington Runestone Mysteries are presented. The true purpose of the Voyage of Columbus is revealed. As you read this incredible story, please compare the physical information presented here against theories some use by some to validate past history. Please remember that the evidence presented here is the product of research, the universal science of mathematics, and physical evidence. (Over 150 photos and charts are included, to validate the information contained in the book.)
