An Invented Life is a story of spiritual and factual exile. It is the story of the Chertok family's life after the Russian Revolution in Eastern Europe and England told through Nina in her coming of age years between the two World Wars. Eminently readable, the book evokes the rich flavor and wit of pre-war Eastern European life in colorful descriptions of place, atmosphere and character. It also brings the reader face to face with the loss and disappearance of that world.
Essays over a lifetime of experience from one of America's most respected authorities on business leadership. This collection spans three decades--covering such revolutions as the information explosion, Watergate, the emergence of Japan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union--and it shows how the ability to adapt, live with ambiguity, and to see new problems creatively is the essence of leadership.
With Roz and Eva everything becomes a contest—who can snag the best role in the school play, have the cutest boyfriend, pull off the craziest prank. Still, they're as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman's hilarious debut novel.
An autobiographical novel about the Post it sticky notes for 3M, the battery operated water guns for Larami, LJN, Entertech, Buddy L, Coleco, Tyco, Cap toys, and Blue Box toys, the Photo Wallet for Kodak then Nikon Camera inventor Alan Amron's life, based on true events. Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra, Dick Clark, Kristy McNichol, Pat Summerall and the Author of the famous book The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger have all met or partnered with Alan Amron in this INVENTED LIFE The Smoking Gun. An Invented Life shares the story of Alan Amron, a visionary inventor. Even as a child, Alan found it fascinating to create new things, always exploring and trying to understand how everything worked. In the book, Alan tells his story and shares snippets from his childhood and youth in Brooklyn, how he always looked at things differently with deeper insight. This is his journey. Alan started his creating and inventing journey at a young age. Many of his inventions were patented and he significantly profited from them as well. Battery-powered water guns, temperature alarms, the digital photo wallet, etc., were among his many creations, yet his most famous and controversial invention was the Post-it sticky notes. Even though he is the inventor of the Post-it sticky notes, he was ripped off of his invention due to an unfortunate set of events. But accepting defeat is not in his nature, so he kept fighting, and finally, after a lengthy legal battle, he got the rightful claim of his creation. But An Invented Life is not all about inventing. Alan tells us about his successes and how he made his way into Hollywood, getting the chance to meet many legends. Loss was part of his journey, though, and he shares various accounts of it because this is also a story of tenacity and determination. Alan had always been a freethinking person, and the preconceived perceptions of some people never constrained him or his imagination. The book shows how he became a successful inventor, an entrepreneur, and a businessman. He met many difficulties along the way, but he never gave up, and his determination changed his life. Alan gives examples of how some minor mistakes and oversights can significantly impact a person’s life. By sharing his story with the world, he wants the readers to be mindful of their decisions, always considering the possible future impact of their actions. An Invented Life is a ride filled with twists and exciting turns of events, depicting both happy and low moments. It provides textbook examples of what not to do and what to do in life. This compelling story provides some great teaching moments for those determined to change their lives for the better.
". . . rarely have inventor and invention been better served than in this book." – New York Times Book Review Here, Edwin Grosvenor, American Heritage's publisher and Bell's great-grandson, tells the dramatic story of the race to invent the telephone and how Bell's patent for it would become the most valuable ever issued. He also writes of Bell's other extraordinary inventions: the first transmission of sound over light waves, metal detector, first practical phonograph, and early airplanes, including the first to fly in Canada. And he examines Bell's humanitarian efforts, including support for women's suffrage, civil rights, and speeches about what he warned would be a "greenhouse effect" of pollution causing global warming.
Joel Baden, a leading expert on the Old Testament, offers a controversial look at the history of King David, the founder of the nation of Israel whose bloodline leads to Jesus, challenging prevailing popular beliefs about his legend in The Historical David. Baden makes clear that the biblical account of David is an attempt to shape the events of his life politically and theologically. Going beyond the biblical bias, he explores the events that lie behind the David story, events that are grounded in the context of the ancient Near East and continue to inform modern Israel. The Historical David exposes an ambitious, ruthless, flesh-and-blood man who achieved power by any means necessary, including murder, theft, bribery, sex, deceit, and treason. As Baden makes clear, the historical David stands in opposition not only to the virtuous and heroic legends, but to our very own self-definition as David’s national and religious descendants. Provocative and enlightening, The Historical David provides the lost truth about David and poses a challenge to us: how do we come to terms with the reality of a celebrated hero who was, in fact, similar to the ambitious power-players of his day?
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Cod comes the dramatic, human story of a simple substance, an element almost as vital as water, that has created fortunes, provoked revolutions, directed economies and enlivened our recipes. Salt is common, easy to obtain and inexpensive. It is the stuff of kitchens and cooking. Yet trade routes were established, alliances built and empires secured – all for something that filled the oceans, bubbled up from springs, formed crusts in lake beds, and thickly veined a large part of the Earth’s rock fairly close to the surface. From pre-history until just a century ago – when the mysteries of salt were revealed by modern chemistry and geology – no one knew that salt was virtually everywhere. Accordingly, it was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. Even today, salt is a major industry. Canada, Kurlansky tells us, is the world’s sixth largest salt producer, with salt works in Ontario playing a major role in satisfying the Americans’ insatiable demand. As he did in his highly acclaimed Cod, Mark Kurlansky once again illuminates the big picture by focusing on one seemingly modest detail. In the process, the world is revealed as never before.
From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A New York Times Notable Book A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
How Hollywood biopics both showcase and modify various notions of what it means to be an American. Biopicsfilms that chronicle the lives of famous and notorious figures from our national historyhave long been one of Hollywoods most popular and important genres, offering viewers various understandings of American national identity. Invented Lives, Imagined Communities provides the first full-length examination of US biopics, focusing on key releases in American cinema while treating recent developments in three fields: cinema studies, particularly the history of Hollywood; national identity studies dealing with the American experience; and scholarship devoted to modernity and postmodernity. Films discussed include Houdini, Patton, The Great White Hope, Bound for Glory, Ed Wood, Basquiat, Pollock, Sylvia, Kinsey, Fur, Milk, J. Edgar, and Lincoln, and the book pays special attention to the crucial generic plot along which biopics traverse and showcase American lives, even as they modify the various notions of the national character. A provocative, critically astute study, this collection examines the biopic as a reflexive, refractive modernist film genre. Admirably researched essays provide close, compelling readings of chosen films, while exploring the multilayered matrices of historical fact, biographical and autobiographical literature, popular media representations, and cultural historiesshaping not only the lives and narratives of the performers, artists, and political/historical figures represented but also the practices of the filmmakers as they worked within or on the margins of the Hollywood industry. Cynthia Lucia, Rider University The volumes greatest strengths include its range, its variety of ideas on the significance of the biopic, and its researchdefinitive in several casesinto the relation between historical figures and their cinematic counterparts. James Morrison, author of Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors
This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.
