Touted as one of America's most livable cities, Columbia has a history of independence and triumph. But that history also has a darker side, one that isn't told quite as often. The capital city's past is filled with salacious tales of debauchery, including a notorious pickpocket bold enough to victimize a mayor and a tradition of dueling that ruined lives over petty insults. From triple hangings at Potter's Field to the lure of ladies of the evening, Columbia has a history as famously hot as its weather. Join author and historian Alexia Helsley as she examines the devilish details of Soda Town.
Each title in The Applause Libretto Library Series presents a Broadway musical with fresh packaging in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.
“Chronicles some of Capitol Hill’s most legendary scandals, ranging from duels to murder to sex” (Roll Call). Local historian and Walking Shtick tour guide Robert S. Pohl brings us Wicked Capitol Hill. Pohl includes such historic crimes as the affair between the congressman and the Capitol Hill cobbler’s daughter that ended in murder at the hands of the press. Tales range from the backrooms of Congress and the docks of the Naval Yard to the bars of 8th Street and the grave of an infamous madam buried at the Congressional Cemetery. Pohl balances the tales between those of government officials misbehaving on the Hill and of truly local crimes. Includes photos!
A multigenerational story of hope and resilience, The Garretts of Columbia is an American history of Black struggle, sacrifice, and achievement. At the heart of David Nicholson's beautifully written and carefully researched book, The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration, are his great-grandparents, Casper George Garrett and his wife, Anna Maria. Papa, as Garrett was known to his family, was a professor at Allen University, a lawyer, and an editor of three newspapers. Dubbed Black South Carolina's "most respected disliked man," he was always ready to attack those he believed disloyal to his race. When his quixotic idealism and acerbic editorials resulted in his dismissal from Allen, his wife, who was called Mama, came into her own as the family bread winner. She was appointed supervisor of rural colored schools, trained teachers, and oversaw the construction of schoolhouses. At 51, this remarkable woman learned to drive, taking to the back roads outside Columbia to supervise classrooms, conduct literacy drives, and instruct rural farm women in the basics of home economics. Though Papa and Mama came of age in the bleak Jim Crow years after Reconstruction, they believed in the possibility of America. Resolutely supporting their country during the First World War, they sent three of their sons to serve. One son wrote a musical with Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance. Another son became a dentist. A daughter earned a doctorate in French. And the family persevered. But, for all that Papa and Mama did to make Columbia a nurturing place, their sons and daughters joined the Great Migration, scattering north in search of the freedom the South denied them. The Garretts embraced the hope of America and experienced the melancholy of a family separated by the search for opportunity and belonging. On the basis of decades of research and thousands of family letters—which include Mama's tart-tongued observations of friends and neighbors—The Garretts of Columbia is family history as American history, rich with pivotal events viewed through the lens of the Garretts's lives.
Tucked away in the northwestern frontier, Portland offered all the best vices: opium dreams, gambling, cheap prostitutes, and drunken brawling. In its early days, Portland was a "combination rough-and-ready logging camp and gritty, hard-punching deep-water port town," and as a young city (established in the late 1840s) it developed an international reputation for lawlessness and violence. In the early 1900s, the British and French governments filed formal complaints about Portland to the US state department, and Congressional testimony from the time cites Portland as the worst place in the world for crimping. Today, tours of the alleged Shanghai Tunnels offer Portland visitors a taste of that seedy past.
In this darkly comical look at the sinister side of our relationship with the natural world, Stewart has tracked down over one hundred of our worst entomological foes—creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs. From the world’s most painful hornet, to the flies that transmit deadly diseases, to millipedes that stop traffic, to the “bookworms” that devour libraries, to the Japanese beetles munching on your roses, Wicked Bugs delves into the extraordinary powers of six- and eight-legged creatures. With wit, style, and exacting research, Stewart has uncovered the most terrifying and titillating stories of bugs gone wild. It’s an A to Z of insect enemies, interspersed with sections that explore bugs with kinky sex lives (“She’s Just Not That Into You”), creatures lurking in the cupboard (“Fear No Weevil”), insects eating your tomatoes (“Gardener’s Dirty Dozen”), and phobias that feed our (sometimes) irrational responses to bugs (“Have No Fear”). Intricate and strangely beautiful etchings and drawings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs capture diabolical bugs of all shapes and sizes in this mixture of history, science, murder, and intrigue that begins—but doesn’t end—in your own backyard.
"Life's too short. I'm not." You might know her as a Tony Award-winning Broadway star, who originated the role of Galinda the Good Witch in the smash musical Wicked and won a Tony for 1999's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Or you may recognize her from her starring roles on TV -- The West Wing, Pushing Daisies, Sesame Street...oh, and her Huge Hit Sitcom Kristin on NBC. (Huge hit. L.A. breast-implant huge. Ask either of the people who watched it.) Or maybe you saw her sexy spread in FHM magazine? Or her appearance on Pat Robertson's The 700 Club? Kristin is a wonderful collection of contradictions -- but everyone who's ever met her remembers her as the little girl with the big voice. At four foot eleven, Kristin Chenoweth is an immense talent in a petite but powerful package. In this lively, laugh-out-loud book, Kristin shares her journey from Oklahoma beauty queen to Broadway leading lady, reflecting on how faith and family have kept her grounded in the dysfunctional rodeo of show biz. The daughter of an engineer and a nurse, Kristin was singing in front of thousands at Baptist conventions by age twelve and winning beauty pageants by age twenty-two. (Well, actually she was second runner-up almost every freaking time. But, hey, she's not bitter.) On her way to a career as a professional opera singer, she stopped in New York to visit a friend and went on a whim to an audition. Through a combination of talent, hard work, and (she's quick to add) the grace of God, Kristin took Broadway by storm. But of course, into every storm, the occasional drizzle of disaster must fall. Filled with wit, wisdom, and backstage insight, A Little Bit Wicked is long on love and short on sleep; it's essential reading for Kristin's legions of fans and an uplifting story for anyone seeking motivation to follow his or her dreams -- over the rainbow and beyond.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Certain Age, a deliciously spicy new Jazz Age adventure and the first book of a breathtaking new trilogy by bestselling author Beatriz Williams. Two generations of women are brought together inside a Greenwich Village apartment —a flapper hiding an extraordinary past, and a modern-day Manattanite forced to start her life anew. When she discovers her banker husband has been harboring a secret life, Ella Gilbert escapes her SoHo loft for a studio in Greenwich Village. Her charismatic musician neighbor, Hector, warns her to stay out of the basement after midnight, when a symphony of mysterious noise strikes up—laughter, clinking glasses, jazz piano, the occasional bloodcurdling scream—even though the space has been empty for decades. Back in the Roaring Twenties, the basement was home to one of the city’s most notorious speakeasies. In 1924, Geneva “Gin” Kelly, a quick-witted flapper from the hills of western Maryland, is a regular at this Village hideaway. Caught up in a raid, Gin lands in the office of Prohibition enforcement agent Oliver Anson, who persuades her to help him catch her stepfather, Duke Kelly, one of the biggest bootleggers in Appalachia. But Gin is nobody’s fool. She strikes a risky bargain with the taciturn, straight-arrow Revenue agent, and their alliance rattles Manhattan society to its foundations, exposing secrets that shock even this free-spirited redhead. As Ella unravels the strange history of her new building—and the family thread that connects her to Geneva Kelly—she senses the Jazz Age spirit of her exuberant predecessor invading her own shy nature, in ways that will transform her existence in the wicked city.
