Translated by Jennifer Baverstam This book is the first in the five-volume Stockholm Series. A masterpiece of historical realism, this sweeping narrative creates unforgettable characters and gives a cross-section of life in nineteenth-century Stockholm. City of My Dreams broke the record for bestsellers in Sweden. Fogelstrom, who was born in 1917, is greatly respected as a chronicler of his people. Ingmar Bergman made one of his earlier novels into a movie, Summer with Monika. A statue of him is at the entrance to the hall where the Nobel prizes are awarded. Size 6x9, over 332 pages. Perfect bound
In this carefully researched and hauntingly written memoir, Lisa Gruenberg not only records her own life, but also that of relatives long lost to darkness, terror, and murder. In dreamlike sequences she weaves known facts of the lives of those lost into tableaus of imagined family dinners, conversations and leisure activities set in the Vienna landscape. She especially brings back to life some of the girls and women whose fates remain largely unknown. Indeed, she embodies her aunt Mia as she walks in her shoes, sees with her eyes, and speaks with her voice. These flights into the past are presented within the framework of Gruenberg's own family, her husband and daughters, and her father. He escaped from Vienna in 1939 and shared few of his memories with her, and that only late in life when disease had beaten down his defenses against remembering. The trauma and feeling of guilt often described in Holocaust survivors is reflected in this memoir, also the burden shared by so many of their children and grandchildren. At the same time, this tale is one of lightness and finding balance in all these difficulties and trials. There is an endless network of cousins and friends of cousins, one more colorful than the next. They are spread all over the world and Gruenberg seeks many of them out in her search for the past. At the center stands author's ability to look at the truth unflinchingly, including truths apparent in herself. She shares her insights in all their nakedness, starkness and, yes, hilarity. This, together with the author's luminous prose, make My City of Dreams an important landmark in 21st century testimony of the Holocaust.
A sweeping epic of two families—one Dutch, one English—from the time when New Amsterdam was a raw and rowdy settlement, to the triumph of the Revolution, when New York became a new nation’s city of dreams. In 1661, Lucas Turner, a barber surgeon, and his sister, Sally, an apothecary, stagger off a small wooden ship after eleven weeks at sea. Bound to each other by blood and necessity, they aim to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam; but soon lust, betrayal, and murder will make them mortal enemies. In their struggle to survive in the New World, Lucas and Sally make choices that will burden their descendants with a legacy of secrets and retribution, and create a heritage that sets cousin against cousin, physician against surgeon, and, ultimately, patriot against Tory. In what will be the greatest city in the New World, the fortunes of these two families are inextricably entwined by blood and fire in an unforgettable American saga of pride and ambition, love and hate, and the becoming of the dream that is New York City.
In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.
Granada, the city of the Alhambra Palace and the last Moorish kingdom of Andalucia, has a special place in our imagination, whether we have visited it or not. As well as being a city of exceptional beauty and interest, it is a symbol for all of us of what happens when different civilizations meet. That is why "Granada, City of My Dreams," in the words of the author, was written not only as a guide but as "a book about Granada for the nun in Norway sitting in her armchair and wishing to travel there in the mind." For, what fascinates us about this universal city is not only its monuments but its marvellous story, "the encounter between Moor and Christian, gypsy and Jew, medieval and Renaissance, glistening snow and Mediterranean sun, in this green balcony of Europe overlooking the naked shores of Africa." Lawrence Bohme, poet, illustrator and curious traveller, has filled these pages with luminous descriptions and drawings, the culmination of forty years of wanderings through the palaces and labyrinths of his adopted homeland, Granada. Things about Granada you can find in this book... A history of Granada / Mirador de San Cristobal and San Miguel Alto / Cathedral quarter / Plaza de Bibarrambla / Mercado de San Agustin / chumbos, caracoles and chirimoyas / Corral del Carbon / Alcaiceria / Madraza / Royal Chapel / Cathedral / Sagrario / the heroic feat of Hernan del Pulgar / Gran Via de Colon / the sons of the sugar beet / Albaicin / The Gate of Paradise / Caldereria to San Nicolas / Placeta de Carvajales / Minaret of San Jose / Plaza de San Miguel Bajo / Palace of King Badis / Cuesta de la Lona / Palace of Dar al-Horra / Convent of Santa Isabel la Real / View from San Nicolas / from San Nicolas to Plaza Larga / from Plaza Larga down Cuesta de la Alhacaba to Puerta de Elvira / Hospital Real / Saint John of God and the Triumph of the Virgin / Plaza Nueva / Casa de Pisa / River Darro and its bridges / El Banuelo - the Bath / Convents of Zafra and Concepcion / Casa de Castril / Paseo de los Tristes / Sacromonte / San Juan de los Reyes / Alhambra / Alhambra Alta / Monastery of San Francisco / Church of Santa Maria de la Alhambra and the two monks / Puerta del Vino - Gate of Wine / Alcazaba / Palace of Carlos Quinto / Nasrid Palaces / a brief history of al-Andalus, from the Visigoths to the Catholic Monarchs / Mexuar and its oratory / Cuarto Dorado / Tower of Comares / The Hall of Power / Courtyard of the Lions / Hall of Abencerrajes / Hall of the Kings - Sala de los Reyes / Hall of the Two Sisters / Sala de camas - the Bath / Rooms of Carlos Quinto / Tocador de la Reina - Queen's Dressing Room / Partal, Torre de las Damas and the Mosque / The four towers / Generalife / Hill of the Martyrs / Torres Bermejas / Saint John of the Cross / Casa de Manuel de Falla / Realejo / Campo del Principe / Church of Santo Domingo / Casa de los Tiros / Vestiges and ghosts of the old Granada / Puerta Real / Palace of Bibataubin / Plaza del Campillo, Calle Ganivet and the old "Manigua" / Calle Recogidas, and the convent which gave it its name / The uncloistered fountains of San Agustin and La Trinidad / Street of the Boards and Street of the Little Bridges / Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo / The Green Bridge and "French Granada" / Ermita de San Sebastian / Alcazar Genil / Puerta de San Lorenzo, the gate that got lost / Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo / Acequia Gorda and Paseo de las Palmas / Epilogue - What became of the Moors of Granada? / some other pieces / Aben Humeya and the War of the Alpujarra / The Queen and the gypsies / The King's Jews / The multiple origins of "marrano" / Moro, mudejar and morisco."
Invited by a Wall Street bigwig to participate in a financial treasure hunt that promises to rescue America's economy, Peter Fallon begins a race against time to find a box of valuable eighteenth-century bonds, a search that pits him against renegade treasury agents and the Russian mob.
This sweeping history of New York’s millions of immigrants, both famous and forgotten, is “told brilliantly [and] unforgettably” (The Boston Globe). Written by an acclaimed historian and including maps and photos, this is the story of the peoples who have come to New York for four centuries: an American story of millions of immigrants, hundreds of languages, and one great city. Growing from Peter Minuit’s tiny settlement of 1626 to a clamorous metropolis with more than three million immigrants today, the city has always been a magnet for transplants from around the globe. City of Dreams is the long-overdue, inspiring, and defining account of the young man from the Caribbean who relocated to New York and became a founding father; Russian-born Emma Goldman, who condoned the murder of American industrialists as a means of aiding downtrodden workers; Dominican immigrant Oscar de la Renta, who dressed first ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama; and so many more. Over ten years in the making, Tyler Anbinder’s story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs. In so many ways, today’s immigrants are just like those who came to America in centuries past—and their stories have never before been told with such breadth of scope, lavish research, and resounding spirit. “Anbinder is a master at taking a history with which many readers will be familiar—tenement houses, temperance societies, slums—and making it new, strange, and heartbreakingly vivid. The stories of individuals, including those of the entrepreneurial Steinway brothers and the tragic poet Pasquale D’Angelo, are undeniably compelling, but it’s Anbinder’s stunning image of New York as a true city of immigrants that captures the imagination.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Rita Jackson is a young woman on the skids, spending her time in shelters and on the dot-com-drunk streets of late 1990s San Francisco. She's a young woman haunted by the murder of her mother when she was thirteen, and a young bride haunted by the disappearance of her husband, Jimmy, who split after a nasty argument more than a year earlier. Together Jimmy and Rita were slipping into drugs and hard times. Rita is filled with feelings of guilt and failure, and the hope that she will one day and Jimmy. She doesn't know that he is still in the city, still in love with her, waiting tables in an expensive restaurant while trying to get a foothold in the straight life. When Rita witnesses the aftermath of a murder, her own life is endangered. She becomes involved with Gary Shepard, a married criminal investigator drawn to the dark side of this young woman. What unfolds is a story of three flawed people struggling with themselves as much as with their circumstances, as each of them is pulled more deeply and dangerously into the consequences of their decisions. When a drunken night leads Jimmy to jeopardize his second and last chance, it seems unlikely that these sweet, damaged people will ever come to anything, let alone find and -- miracle of miracles -- save one another. But fate, in Addonizio's hands, works in strange and beautiful geometries. And redemption, she tells us, is never impossible.
From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California—bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges—seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world’s iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles’ meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city’s identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up—of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun—were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained. Spanning the years from 1900 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and imagination.
