It was the most famous bank robbery of all time, involving the legendary James-Younger gang's final shocking holdup the infamous Northfield Raid and the thrilling two-week chase that followed. Mark Lee Gardner, author of the critically acclaimed To Hell on a Fast Horse, takes us inside Northfield's First National Bank and outside to the streets as Jesse James and his band of outlaws square off against the heroic citizens who risked their lives to defeat America's most daring criminals. With vivid detail and novelistic verve, Gardner follows the James brothers as they elude both the authorities and the furious citizen posses hell-bent on capturing them in one of the largest manhunts in the history of the United States. He reveals the serendipitous endings of the Younger brothers Cole, Jim, and Bob and explores the James brothers' fates after the dust settled, solving mysteries about the raid that have been hotly debated for more than 130 years.A galloping true tale of frontier justice featuring audacious outlaws and intrepid heroes, Shot All to Hell is a riveting slice of Wild West history that continues to fascinate today.

He was the ultimate star, defining Hollywood glamour as well as cinematic achievement. She was a bright new actress, beautiful and funny, who would one day prove her talent by being the first woman to receive Academy Award nominations for her work on-screen and behind the camera. On his arm, she found herself traveling in the inner circles of power and glamour in which Cary Grant was king among the Hollywood royalty. Behind closed doors, she discovered a Cary no one knew: a thoughtful, caring, and private person, with dark family secrets that weighed heavily on him. With unparalleled honesty, Dyan Cannon shares the heartwarming and heartbreaking story of her magical romance and stormy marriage to screen legend Cary Grant. Featuring rare photographs and never-before-seen letters and notes from Cary Grant, Dear Cary is told with poignancy and hard-won wisdom, a story for anyone who has ever loved and lost.

A distinctive collection of more than 90 effective poetry-writing exercises combined with corresponding essays to inspire writers of all levels.

1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen. James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.

Daddy is going to camp. That's what I told my children. A child psychologist suggested it. Words like prison and jail conjure up dangerous images for children,she explained. But it wasn't camp . . . Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher, wanted the best for those he loved nice cars, beautiful homes, luxurious clothes. He loaned money to family and friends, gave generously to his church, and invested in his community but his bank account couldn't keep up. Soon White began moving money from one account to another to avoid bouncing checks. His world fell apart when the FBI discovered his scheme and a judge sentenced him to serve eighteen months in a federal prison. But it was no ordinary prison. The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy. Hidden away for decades, this small circle of outcasts had forged a tenacious, clandestine community, a fortress to repel the cruelty of the outside world. It is here, in a place rich with history, where the Mississippi River briefly runs north, amid an unlikely mix of leprosy patients, nuns, and criminals, that White's strange and compelling journey begins. He finds a new best friend in Ella Bounds, an eighty-year-old African American double amputee who had contracted leprosy as a child. She and the other secret people, along with a wacky troop of inmates, help White rediscover the value of simplicity, friendship, and gratitude. Funny and poignant, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is an uplifting memoir that reminds us all what matters most.

This is a story of the unexpected.In Destined to Witness, Hans Massaquoi has crafted a beautifully rendered memoir -- an astonishing true tale of how he came of age as a black child in Nazi Germany. The son of a prominent African and a German nurse, Hans remained behind with his mother when Hitler came to power, due to concerns about his fragile health, after his father returned to Liberia. Like other German boys, Hans went to school; like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Fuhrer's spell. So he was crushed to learn that, as a black child, he was ineligible for the Hitler Youth. His path to a secondary education and an eventual profession was blocked. He now lived in fear that, at any moment, he might hear the Gestapo banging on the door -- or Allied bombs falling on his home. Ironic,, moving, and deeply human, Massaquoi's account of this lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedl?nder's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedl?nder also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence. The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedl?nder's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.

The Pastons family of Norfolk, England, has long been known to medieval scholars for its large collection of personal correspondence, which has survived five centuries. Revealing a wealth of information about manners, morals, lifestyle, and attitudes of the late Middle Ages, the letters also tell the story of three generations of the fifteenth-century Paston family that treads like a historical novel full of memorable characters: Margaret Paston, the indomitable wife and mother who fought the family's battles; her husband, John Paston I, tough, hardheaded, and thrice confined to Fleet Prison but never yielding to his enemies; daughter Margery, who scandalized family and friends by falling in love with the Paston bailiff, Richard Calle; lighthearted, chivalric Sir John; and cheerful, sensible John III, who against all odds succeeded in marrying for love.A Medieval Family traces the Pastons history from 1420, through the stormy Wars of the Roses, to the early 1500s. The family's story, extracted from their letters and papers and told largely in their own words, shows a side of history rarely revealed: the lives and fortunes not of kings and queens but of ordinary middle-class people with problems, tragedies, and moments of happiness.

轻松幽默爱情喜剧：得知城市的女性比男性要多得多，单身的凯蒂决定放弃城市生活，来到偏僻的苏格兰高地小镇——一个男人众多的地方——寻找爱情，她能成功吗？ From New York Times?bestselling author Jenny Colgan comes this hilarious romance about a woman?who?trades in the comforts of city life in hopes of finding love in a small Scottish town in the middle of nowhere.Faced with the harsh reality that there are 25,000 more women than men in London, Katie’s dating prospects are at an all-time low. While she’s glad it’s not a man’s world anymore, it wouldn’t hurt if there were more eligible bachelors. ?More likely to get murdered than married, according to gleeful media reports, Katie resigns herself to the fact that there’s no sex in the city for her and decides to head for the hills—or the Scottish Highlands to be exact. Despite the fact she’s never been one for muddy rain boats—and Fairlish is in the middle of nowhere—the tiny town does have one major draw: men. LOTS of them!But while Katie relishes the chance to do battle with armies of admirers, she’s not excited about going head to head with her shady new boss, Harry. At least there’s the local eye-candy to distract her, including gorgeous newshound Iain. But he is at loggerheads with Harry, and she can’t afford to get on Harry’s bad side any more than she already has.Life in the country might not be one big roll in the hay, but now that Katie has taken the plunge, can she ever turn her back on the delights of Fairlish and return to city life…?

The Fast and the Furious meets Transformers in the second book of this high-stakes series about twelve-year-old Mace Blazer, who pilots state-of-the-art vehicles that transform seamlessly to race on the road, in the air, and even underwater. Mace Blazer is the world’s hottest TURBOnaut. Compared to the other ‘nauts, he drives faster, dares harder, and pulls the craziest stunts. Since he won the Gauntlet Prix and revealed that he’s only twelve, the world has been screaming Mace’s name.Now nothing—not even his friends and family—can hold Mace back from becoming the greatest racer of all time. But when Mace suffers a nearly fatal accident while behind the wheel, he loses the nerve that made him the best. He’s done with driving fast. He’s done with TURBO. Until he finds out that his two best friends have mysteriously disappeared as part of a sinister plot that could destroy not just TURBO, but the world. Mace has no choice but to buckle back in, swallow his fears, and race to save the day. In the thrilling sequel to TURBO Racers: Trailblazer, Mace will have to decide if he’s willing to risk everything to save the sport, and the people, that he loves. Every morph matters in this heart-pounding, exhilarating adventure series by acclaimed author Austin Aslan.

Fans of John Leguizamo's smash-hit one-man shows (Mambo Mouth, Spic-o-rama, Freak, and Sexaholix) have already gotten a glimpse into his life, but this book tells the whole story, carrying readers along on a wild journey from his childhood in Queens to his current home at the top of the Hollywood pyramid. An acclaimed director, producer, and play-wright, and one of the highest-paid Latin actors in the world, Leguizamo shares the stories behind his many roles what inspired them and what transpired as he created them while dishing on his personal relationships with his family, friends, and celebrity colleagues. Here is both an intimate self-portrait and a unique behind-the-scenes look at the magic and chaos of stardom, a keenly intelligent and insanely funny book that celebrates a remarkably talented artist's greatest achievement: growing up Latino in America and succeeding on his own terms.

"I have listened and I have been quiet all my life. But now I will speak."One of the world's foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist, and in so doing, examines the horrors of trauma and denial. Alone in an unlocked house in a safe neighborhood in the suburban town of Concord, Massachusetts, two good, obedient girls, Jessica Stern, fifteen, and her sister, fourteen, were raped on the night of October 1, 1973. The girls had just come back from ballet lessons and were doing their homework when a strange man armed with a gun entered their home. Afterward, when they reported the crime, the police were skeptical.The rapist was never caught. For over thirty years, Stern denied the pain and the trauma of the assault. Following the example of her family, Stern who lost her mother at the age of three, and whose father was a Holocaust survivor focused on her work instead of her terror. She became a world-class expert on terrorism, a lauded academic and writer who interviewed terrorists around the globe. But while her career took off, her success hinged on her symptoms. After her ordeal she could not feel fear in normally frightening situations.Stern believed she'd disassociated from the trauma altogether, until a devoted police lieutenant reopened the sisters' rape case and brought her back to that harrowing night more than three decades past. With the help of the lieutenant, Stern began her own investigation bringing to bear all her skills as a researcher to uncover the truth about the town of Concord, her family, and her own mind. The result is Denial, a candid, courageous, and ultimately hopeful look at a trauma and its aftermath.

In his inimitable New York voice, Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the Mafia characters like John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (named for his weapon of choice), and Jimmy "the Clam" Eppolito interwoven with the remarkable true-crime saga of the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the star witness in the recent trial of two NYPD detectives indicted for carrying out eight gangland executions. Through these unforgettable real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories, Jimmy Breslin captures the moments in which the mob was made and broken.

They were the NFL's ultimate outlaws, black-clad iconoclasts who, with a peculiar mix of machismo and brotherhood, of postgrad degrees and firearms, merrily defied pro football corporatism. The Oakland Raiders of the 1970s were some of the most outrageous, beloved, and violent football teams ever to play the game. In this rollicking biography, Peter Richmond tells the story of Oakland's wrecking crew of castoffs, psychos, oddballs, and geniuses who won six division titles and a Super Bowl championship under the brilliant leadership of coach John Madden and eccentric owner Al Davis.Richmond goes inside the locker room and onto the field with Ken Stabler, Willie Brown, Fred Biletnikoff, George Atkinson, Phil Villapiano, and the rest of this band of brothers who made the Raiders legendary. He vividly recounts days of grueling practices and hell-raising nights of tavern crawling from smoking pot and hiring strippers during training camp to sharing game-day beers with their hardcore fans (including the Bay Area's other badasses, the Black Panthers and the Hells Angels). Richmond reveals a group of men who, after years of coming up short in the AFC Championship game, saw their off-kilter loyalty to the black and silver finally pay off with their emphatic Super Bowl victory in 1977. Funny, raunchy, and inspiring, Badasses celebrates the '70s Raiders as the last team to play professional football the way it was meant to be played: down and very dirty.

Why does Oklahoma have that panhandleDid someone make a mistakeWe are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities the entire state of Maryland(!) have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand.How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey. How the States Got Their Shapes examines: Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii Why Texas and California are so outsized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in size Packed with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Mark Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.

New York Times bestselling author Philip Carlo, one of the foremost chroniclers of the New York Mafia and the criminal mind, returns with a shocking exploration of his most twisted and notorious villain yet Tommy "Karate" Pitera was not like other mafiosi. He was not only a capo in the notorious Bonanno family but also a devoted student of crime a deadly martial artist who'd been trained in Japan as a teenager. Highly skilled with knives and other lethal weapons, dressed entirely in black, Pitera murdered his way to becoming one of the premier assassins in New York City during the 1980s he even killed at the behest of John Gotti.Remorseless and deadly, Pitera took human lives as if he had a God-given right, while at the same time dealing high-grade Sicilian heroin and South American cocaine. There were numerous men within the New York Mafia who killed people, men who weren't afraid of anyone or anything, but all of them looked the other way when they saw Pitera coming. Word on the street was that he didn't just whack people; he made them disappear forever. In hushed whispers people spoke of Pitera's secret burial grounds and the grotesque things he did to his victim's bodies. If the Mafia had a Jeffrey Dahmer, it was surely Tommy Pitera.Like his father and grandfather before him, Jim Hunt had a gift for bringing down bad guys. During Hunt's stellar career at the DEA, he had arrested his share of criminals and had caught many of the elusive drug lords of New York City. But nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered when he and his elite antidrug unit began investigating Tommy Pitera. What started as a routine investigation into a cocaine and heroin ring in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, grew exponentially as Hunt and his team uncovered the layers of death that surrounded Pitera. Through carefully placed wiretaps, dangerous stakeouts, and fearful informants, Hunt managed to turn Pitera's few confidants against him, but not before Pitera had killed an estimated sixty people.Offering the first-ever look at the life and crimes of Tommy "Karate" Pitera, New York Times bestselling author Philip Carlo exposes the man behind some of the most horrific murders in Mafia history and the heroic investigator who brought him down. Getting inside the minds of both killer and detective, Carlo masterfully details the delicate and deadly game of cat-and-mouse that resulted in the capture of a Mafia killer unlike any other. A tale of murder, drugs, money, and ultimately justice, The Butcher is Carlo's most frightening portrayal yet of the depraved depths within a psychopath's mind.

Warrick Dunn was only eighteen when his mother, a Baton Rouge police officer, was shot and killed. Yet somehow he managed to enroll at Florida State University and help his team to a national championship during his freshman year while also caring for his five brothers and sisters. Despite his modest size, Dunn went on to a storied NFL career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Atlanta Falcons, becoming one of only twenty-three running backs in NFL history to exceed the 10,000-yard career rushing mark. Off the field, he created the Warrick Dunn Foundation and its Homes for the Holidays program, helping single parents achieve first-time home ownership. But in his drive to help others, the one person Dunn neglected was himself, as the pain of his mother's loss led to a spiraling depression that went untreated for years.Running for My Life details Dunn's struggle to confront his past and face the grief that consumed him for far too long. Thought-provoking and uplifting, it is the story of an exceptional athlete's secret torment and inspiring courage.

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

For twenty years, Miki "Da Cat" Dora was the king of Malibu surfers a dashing, enigmatic rebel who dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and who still inspires the fantasies of wannabes to this day. And yet, Dora railed against surfing's sudden post-Gidget popularity and the overcrowding of his once empty waves, even after this avid sportsman, iconoclast, and scammer of wide repute ran afoul of the law and led the FBI on a remarkable seven-year chase around the globe in 1974. The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce" and Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." To fully capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing hundreds of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and fellow surfers to uncover the untold truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery.

What 151 movies have you never seen but should?What French film could teach Hollywood how to make a smart, sexy romantic comedy(page 233)Where will you find a female-centric Western with a gender-bending protagonist(page 10)What film won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and then fell off the radar(page 261)What farcical comedy includes such real-life characters as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger(page 50)In what unsung comedy will you find Michael Douglas giving his all-time best performance(page 130)What debut film from the director of The Dark Knight creates palpable chills despite a shoestring budget and a no-name cast(page 79)What John Wayne movie was out of circulation for thirty years and still qualifies as a sleeper(page 121)What terrific Heath Ledger movie was released the same month as Brokeback Mountain and flopped(page 26)What clever modern-day film noir was made for just half a million dollars(page 18)What captivating film stars one of the seminal artists of the twentieth century(page 203)

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers––and fortune hunters––than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale. One of the contenders was Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a thirty–year–old army officer. Handsome and confident, Laing was convinced that Timbuktu was his destiny, and his ticket to glory. In July 1825, after a whirlwind romance with Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul at Tripoli, Laing left the Mediterranean coast to cross the Sahara. His 2,000–mile journey took on an added urgency when Hugh Clapperton, a more experienced explorer, set out to beat him. Apprised of each other's mission by overseers in London who hoped the two would cooperate, Clapperton instead became Laing's rival, spurring him on across a hostile wilderness. An emotionally charged, action–packed, utterly gripping read, The Race for Timbuktu offers a close, personal look at the extraordinary people and pivotal events of nineteenth–century African exploration that changed the course of history and the shape of the modern world.