La Belle
La Belle

Author: James E. Bruseth

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2017-03-03

Total Pages: 916

ISBN-13: 1623493617

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In 1995, Texas Historical Commission underwater archaeologists discovered the wreck of La Salle’s La Belle, remnant of an ill-fated French attempt to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River that landed instead along today’s Matagorda Bay in Texas. During 1996–1997, the Commission uncovered the ship’s remains under the direction of archaeologist James E. Bruseth and employing a team of archaeologists and volunteers. Amid the shallow waters of Matagorda Bay, a steel cofferdam was constructed around the site, creating one of the most complex nautical archaeological excavations ever attempted in North America and allowing the archaeologists to excavate the sunken wreck much as if it were located on dry land. The ship’s hold was discovered full of everything the would-be colonists would need to establish themselves in the New World; more than 1.8 million artifacts were recovered from the site. More than two decades in the making, due to the immensity of the find and the complexity of cataloging and conserving the artifacts, this book thoroughly documents one of the most significant North American archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century.

The Maison Premiere Almanac
The Maison Premiere Almanac

Author: Joshua Boissy

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1984825704

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A delightful, imaginative, and thoroughly original cocktail compendium and bartending manual with 90 drink recipes from the popular and influential Brooklyn bar and restaurant. A major player in both the craft cocktail revival and the bar and restaurant renaissance, Maison Premiere offers an immersive experience that channels a time when cocktails were not merely a pleasure but an essential part of daily life in late-nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and Paris. As captivating as the bar itself, The Maison Premiere Almanac is both a visual delight—drawing on photography, illustration, and graphic design—and a detailed guide to the rarefied subjects that make Maison Premiere unique, including deep explorations into the art of the cocktail and cutting-edge bartending techniques and equipment. There are also primers on absinthe (a Maison specialty) and recipes for highly refined cocktails, including martinis, toddys, punches, and mint juleps. Tutorials on oysters include how to confidently select and prepare them at home and how to eat them with style. The Almanac is packed with curious information and useful knowledge on cocktails and bartending for both enthusiastic beginner bartenders and seasoned cocktail lovers.

First Platoon
First Platoon

Author: Annie Jacobsen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1524746673

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A powerful story of war in our time, of love of country, the experience of tragedy, and a platoon at the center of it all. This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly nineteen-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the U.S. Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world. First Platoon is an American saga that illuminates a transformation of society made possible by this new technology. Part war story, part legal drama, it is about identity in the age of identification. About humanity—physical bravery, trauma, PTSD, a yearning to do right and good—in the age of biometrics, which reduce people to iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more. And about the power of point of view in a burgeoning surveillance state. Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. First Platoon reveals a post–9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. A Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars. And a people at its mercy, in its last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.

Robert Lindley Murray: the Reluctant U.S. Tennis Champion
Robert Lindley Murray: the Reluctant U.S. Tennis Champion

Author: Roger W. Ohnsorg

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2011-02-03

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1426945132

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Robert Lindley Lin Murray, a middle-distance runner and tennis player and a Phi Beta Kappa chemical engineer at Stanford University, went east after graduating in 1914 to play tennis. He beat the top intercollegiate players, won several tournaments, and earned a fourth place national ranking. Murray won the 1916 U.S. Indoor title and joined Hooker Electrochemical in Niagara Falls, New York. Reluctant to play in the 1917 and 1918 national championships due to wartime contracts, Murray was persuaded by Hookers president to play and he won them both, the latter over Bill Tilden. Murray rose through the ranks of Hooker to president, CEO, and chairman of the board and was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame a year before retiring. Leading into Murrays exploits is a concise history of tennis, when and where the game was introduced to the United States, and American tennis through Lin Murrays brief but brilliant career. Also included is a review of California tennis and the significant impact of its players during the second decade of the twentieth century. The book concludes with short biographies of Murrays female and male contemporaries, before shorts and skirts replaced flannels and petticoats.