walker amp company (152 results)

Softcover. Condition: Good. "You have to talk about how jazz is like a language. Musical improvisation can put people at a distance, primarily because of jazz's limited exposure. When people realize that everyone who creates a sentence is improvising within basic rules, making statements up spontaneously, the music begins to make more sense." -Jonny KingImagine you are in the audience of a jazz club. The piano player invites you up on stage to meet the musicians after the set is finished. You listen to them talkabout the tempo of the last tune, the order of songs for their next set, and the different jazz greats they admire.What Jazz Is gives you the experience of "being there" as Jonny King takes you on stage and into the core of modern jazz. From the unique perspective of a professional jazz pianist, King explores the basic elements and language of jazz. He explains each instrument's role in locking in the tempo, establishing the harmony, and stating the melody, and he reveals the order and logic behind the seeming randomness of improvisation. Along the way, he celebrates the distinctive playing styles of such classic jazz artists as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, as well as his contemporaries, such as Kenny Garrett, Christian McBride, and Joshua Redman. Whether you are about to attend a jazz club for the first time or buy your umpteenth CD, your listening experience will be enhanced by reading this eloquent and passionate account of how jazz works and why it sizzles!.

Softcover. Condition: Good. No number has captured the attention and imagination of people throughout the ages as much as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi-or ? as it is symbolically known-is infinite and, in The Joy of pi, it proves to be infinitely intriguing. With incisive historical insight and a refreshing sense of humor, David Blatner explores the many facets of pi and humankind's fascination with it-from the ancient Egyptians and Archimedes to Leonardo da Vinci and the modern-day Chudnovsky brothers, who have calculated pi to eight billion digits with a homemade supercomputer.The Joy of Pi is a book of many parts. Breezy narratives recount the history of pi and the quirky stories of those obsessed with it. Sidebars document fascinating pi trivia (including a segment from the 0. J. Simpson trial). Dozens of snippets and factoids reveal pi's remarkable impact over the centuries. Mnemonic devices teach how to memorize pi to many hundreds of digits (or more, if you're so inclined). Pi-inspired cartoons, poems, limericks, and jokes offer delightfully "square" pi humor. And, to satisfy even the most exacting of number jocks, the first one million digits of pi appear throughout the book.A tribute to all things pi, The Joy of pi is sure to foster a newfound affection and respect for the big number with the funny little symbol.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Illustrated. Created at the end of the Civil War, Arlington National Cemetery has become a part of the landscape as fixed in the national imagination as the White House or the Capitol building. The mansion at Arlington's heart, and the rolling hills on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, Arlington became a Union encampment, a haven for freedmen, and a pauper's cemetery for soldiers dying in the nation's bloodiest conflict.With the passage of time, new layers of meaning were added to Arlington, which would become our nation's most honored shrine. More than three hundred thousand rest in Arlington's 624 acres, representing every war the nation ever fought. Each tombstone tells a story, from the Tomb of the Unknowns, so carefully tended today, to the eternal flame at John F. Kennedy's grave to the final resting places of ordinary citizen-warriors sleeping among Arlington's rolling green hills. Their stories, and the cemetery's time-honored rituals-the horse-drawn caissons, the rifle salutes, the sounding of Taps-still speak to us all.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. We sell Rare, out-of-print, uncommon, & used BOOKS, PRINTS, MAPS, DOCUMENTS, AND EPHEMERA. We do not sell ebooks, print on demand, or other reproduced materials. Each item you see here is individually described and imaged. We welcome further inquiries.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. Once part of a large culture of stone circles, Stonehenge-built around 3000 B.C. and developed over the next 1,500 years-is the most famous. The remains of a once-wealthy and evidently learned tribal community, it reflects the apparently disparate subjects of archaeology, astronomy, metrology, sacred geometry, and even shamanism. How were eclipses predicted at Stonehenge? Why were some stones brought all the way from Wales? What is the secret geometry of seven eights? These and many other questions are answered-and Stonehenge's secrets revealed-in this fascinating small book.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Annotated. New York Times Bestseller * Soon to be a TV series starring Dan AykroydThere aren't many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history. -Los Angeles TimesBeer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just ways to quench thirst. They also represent six eras that span the course of civilization-from the adoption of agriculture, to the birth of cities, to the advent of globalization. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century through each epoch's signature refreshment. As Standage persuasively argues, each drink is in fact a kind of technology, advancing culture and catalyzing the intricate interplay of different societies. After reading this enlightening book, you may never look at your favorite drink in quite the same way again.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart.Known among their families as Georgie, Willy, and Nicky, they were, respectively, the royal cousins George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Nicholas II of Russia-the first two grandsons of Queen Victoria, the latter her grandson by marriage. In 1914, on the eve of world war, they controlled the destiny of Europe and the fates of millions of their subjects. The outcome and their personal endings are well known-Nicky shot with his family by the Bolsheviks, Willy in exile in Holland, Georgie still atop his throne. Largely untold, however, is the family saga that played such a pivotal role in bringing the world to the precipice.Drawing widely on previously unpublished royal letters and diaries, made public for the first time by Queen Elizabeth II, Catrine Clay chronicles the riveting half century of the royals' overlapping lives, and their slow, inexorable march into conflict. They met frequently from childhood, on holidays, and at weddings, birthdays, and each others' coronations. They saw themselves as royal colleagues, a trade union of kings, standing shoulder to shoulder against the rise of socialism, republicanism, and revolution. And yet tensions abounded between them.Clay deftly reveals how intimate family details had deep historical significance: the antipathy Willy's mother (Victoria's daughter) felt toward him because of his withered left arm, and how it affected him throughout his life; the family tension caused by Otto von Bismarck's annexation of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark (Georgie's and Nicky's mothers were Danish princesses); the surreality surrounding the impending conflict. "Have I gone mad?" Nicholas asked his wife, Alexandra, in July 1914, showing her another telegram from Wilhelm. "What on earth does Willy mean pretending that it still depends on me whether war is averted or not?" Germany had, in fact, declared war on Russia six hours earlier. At every point in her remarkable book, Catrine Clay sheds new light on a watershed period in world history.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable-that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love todayfrom the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 0. Your home is an extension of yourself; therefore when your home is in turmoil, your life is in turmoil. However, when you attend to your home, you begin to feel less hurried and more in tune with your life. There is delight and calm to be found in the midst of washing dishes or changing the water in a vase of flowers; there is pleasure to be experienced in the repetitions of daily life.Gary Thorp shows how the principles of Zen can bring harmony and peace to your life at home. You don't need special surroundings to achieve the tranquillity of Zen; you can find it anywhere, in the action of dusting a shelf, organizing your closet, or feeding your cat. "Zen" means, simply, meditation, and it does not require you to be seated quietly in a formalized posture. Thorp closely observes many everyday activities, evaluating their capacity to bring satisfaction and self-growth and provide an opportunity for Zen practice.Sweeping Changes may not only change your feelings toward housekeeping, it is likely to help you see your home, and your place in it, in a new and nurturing light. Whether you live in a small room, an apartment, or on an estate, you will find something of spiritual and practical value in this engaging, insightful book.

Softcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. For forty years and in nine previous books, scholar and religious commentator Tom Harpur has challenged church orthodoxy and guided thousands of readers on subjects as controversial as the true nature of Christ and life after death. Now, in his most radical and groundbreaking work, Harpur digs deep into the origins of Christianity. What he has discovered will have a profound effect on the way we think about religion.Long before the advent of Jesus Christ, the Egyptians and other peoples believed in the coming of a messiah, a madonna and her child, a virgin birth, and the incarnation of the spirit in flesh. The early Christian church accepted these ancient truths as the very tenets of Christianity but disavowed their origins. What began as a universal belief system based on myth and allegory became instead, in the third and fourth centuries A.D., a ritualistic institution headed by ultraconservative literalists. "The transcendent meaning of glorious myths and symbols was reduced to miraculous, quite unbelievable events. The truth that Christ was to come in man, that the Christ principle was potentially in each of us, was changed to the exclusivist teaching that the Christ had come as a man."Harpur's message is clear: Our blind faith in literalism is killing Christianity. Only with a return to an inclusive religion will we gain a true understanding of who we are and who we are intended to become. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur has written a book of rare insight and power.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. The story of the world's best-remembered celebrity couple, set against the political backdrop of their time.On a stiflingly hot day in August 30 b.c., the thirty-nine-year-old queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, took her own life rather than be paraded in chains through Rome by her conqueror, Octavian-the future first emperor, Augustus. A few days earlier, her lover of eleven years, Mark Antony, had himself committed suicide and died in her arms. Oceans of mythology have grown up around them, all of which Diana Preston explores in her stirring history of the lives and times of a couple whose names-more than two millennia later-still invoke passion, curiosity, and intrigue.Preston views the drama and romance of Cleopatra and Antony's personal lives as an integral part of the great military, political, and ideological struggle that culminated in the full-fledged rise of the Roman Empire, joined east and west. Perhaps not until Joanna in fourteenth-century Naples or Elizabeth I of England would another woman show such political shrewdness and staying power as did Cleopatra during her years atop the throne of Egypt. Her lengthy affair with Julius Caesar linked the might of Egypt with that of Rome; in the aftermath of the civil war that erupted following Caesar's murder, her alliance with Antony, and his subsequent split with Octavian, set the stage for the end of the Republic.With the keen eye for detail, abundant insight, and storytelling skill that have won awards for her previous books, Diana Preston sheds new light on a vitally important period in Western history. Indeed, had Cleopatra and Antony managed to win the battle of Actium, the centuries that followed, which included the life of Jesus himself, could well have played out differently.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. Years ago, noted science teacher and writer Chet Raymo embarked upon his own quest to reconcile the miracle stories he learned as a child with the science he learned as an adult. Skeptics and True Believersis the culmination of that search-a passionate, ever-inquisitive statement that science and religion can mutually reinforce the way we experience the world.Acknowledging that the scientific and the spiritual communities are increasingly split, Raymo builds strong bridges between them. He illustrates his argument with an array of thought-provoking stories, such as the remarkable migratory flight of a small bird called the red knot; the long, glorious glide of the Comet Hyakutake across the night sky; a hilarious alien abduction that didn't happen. Together, they are compelling evidence that religion should embrace the reliable knowledge of the world that science provides, while at the same time science should respect and nourish humankind's need for spiritual sustenance. "Miracles are explainable," Raymo paraphrases the writer Tim Robinson, "it is the explanations that are miraculous."For anyone drawn to reflect on life's meaning and purpose, Chet Raymo's uncompromising skepticism and reverence for mystery will affirm and inspire.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. The codfish. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been spurred by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it, and the settlement of North America was driven by it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious than gold. Indeed, the codfish has played a fascinating and crucial role in world history.Cod spans a thousand years and four continents. From the Vikings, who pursued the codfish across the Atlantic, and the enigmatic Basques, who first commercialized it in medieval times, to Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, and Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs, and of course the fishermen, whose lives have interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the fifteenth-century politics of the Hanseatic League and the cod wars of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. He embellishes his story with gastronomic detail, blending in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present.And he brings to life the cod itself: its personality, habits, extended family, and ultimately the tragedy of how the most profitable fish in history is today faced with extinction.From fishing ports in New England and Newfoundland to coastal skiffs, schooners, and factory ships across the Atlantic; from Iceland and Scandinavia to the coasts of England, Brazil, and West Africa, Mark Kurlansky tells a story that brings world history and human passions into captivating focus.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. When she was 13, Virginia Galilei, eldest daughter of the great scientist Galileo, was placed by her father in a convent near him in Florence and took the name Suor Maria Celeste. Unable to see him except on his occasional visits, she wrote him continually, as her 124 surviving letters (which Galileo kept) attest. Now, for the first time, all of these letters are reproduced in English, translated by Dava Sobel, and in their original Italian, and Ms. Sobel has also written an introduction and annotations placing the letters in historical context.The 124 letters span only a decade of Maria Celeste's 33 years. In that dramatic period, a pope came to power who battled the Protestant Reformation; the Thirty Years' War embroiled all of Europe; the bubonic plague erupted across Italy; and a new philosophy of science, promulgated most forcefully by Galileo himself, threatened to overturn the order of the universe. Maria Celeste's evocative, beautifully written letters touch on all of these situations, but they dwell in the small details of everyday life; and though Galileo's letters to her have not survived, it is clear from hers that he answered every one. Especially for those who have read Ms. Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, but even for those who haven't, Maria Celeste's letters provide an indelible chronicle of convent life in the early 17th century, a memorable portrait of deep affection between a famous father and his daughter, and fascinating insight into Galileo himself.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. From one of the world's greatest humanitarian activists comes a searing personal memoir that is also an urgent call to confront suffering in all its many forms.Having seen things we hope never to see, confronted suffering and dispassion and evil we hope never to encounter, and faced deep personal torment, James Orbinski still believes in "the good we can be if we so choose." His chosen medium for revealing this is stories from his own experience-a doctor's indelible testimony from the front lines in Peru, Somalia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Zaire-embodied in which are warnings, hope, and lessons in how we can inject humanitarian activity into our lives. Being political, he has discovered, is not only reserved for politicians; admitting imperfection is essential to compassion. With an eye for detail like that of the finest journalist and the empathy of the most committed doctor, Orbinski's powerful voice is matched by the urgency of his message. At a time of great political and moral uncertainty, An Imperfect Offering is invaluable reading for anyone who wants to make a difference.Excerpt:"This book is a series of stories in which I ask, again and again, how to be in relation to the suffering of others.' It is a personal narrative about the political journey I have taken over the last twenty years as a humanitarian doctor, as a citizen, and as a man. It is about the mutuality that can exist between us, if we so choose. I have come to see humanitarianism not as separate from politics, but in relation to it, and as a challenge to political choices that too often kill or allow others to be killed. At its best, politics is an imperfect human project. It is at its worst when we delude ourselves into thinking it can be perfect. Speaking is the first political act. It is the first act of liberty, and it always implicitly involves another. In speaking, one inherently recognizes that "I am and I am not alone." In this space lies our humanity." (a composite from chapter 1).

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. English is the world's lingua franca-the most widely spoken language in human history. And yet, as historian and linguist Nicholas Ostler persuasively argues, English will not only be displaced as the world's language in the not-distant future, it will be the last lingua franca, not replaced by another.Empire, commerce, and religion have been the primary raisons d'etre for lingua francas--Greek, Latin, Arabic have all held the position--and Ostler explores each through the lens of civilizations spanning the globe and history, from China and India to Russia and Europe. Three trends emerge that suggest the ultimate decline of English and other lingua francas. Movements throughout the world towards equality in society will downgrade the status of elites--and since elites are the prime users of non-native English, the language will gradually retreat to its native-speaking territories. The rising wealth of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will challenge the dominance of native-English-speaking nations--thereby shrinking the international preference for English. Simultaneously, new technologies will allow instant translation among major languages, enhacing the status of mother tongues and lessening the necessity for any future lingua franca.Ostler predicts a soft landing for English: It will still be widely spoken, if no longer worldwide, sustained by America's continued power on the world stage. But its decline will be both symbolic and significant, evidence of grand shifts in the cultural effects of empire. The Last Lingua Franca is both an insightful examination of the trajectory of our own mother tongue and a fascinating lens through which to view the sweep of history.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. Golf formally came to America in 1884. Russell Montague-a thirty-two-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer-had moved to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to improve his health. His Scottish neighbors, George Grant and Alexander and Roderick MacLeod, were also men of leisure. When Grant's golf-obsessed nephew Lionel Torin arrived from Ceylon, these five built, purely for their own pleasure, a nine-hole course on Montague's land-unaware that it was the first course in the United States, and tenuously launching what has arguably become America's most popular sport.Oakhurst tells the memorable story of this historic course, from its birth and brief first life of fifteen years to its miraculous restoration 110 years later. Weaving the lives of the founders through a fascinating history of golf, the evolution of its equipment, and the genesis of course design, Paula DiPerna and Vikki Keller recount colorful stories of early matches that astonished local residents, who thought the founders mad: "It may be a fine game for a canny Scotchman, but no American will ever play it except Montague," one opined. Some sixty years after Oakhurst had fallen into neglect, legendary local golfer Sam Snead gave it new life, convincing his friend Lewis Keller to buy the land. Their dream of restoring the course was realized in 1994, when Keller and noted golf architect Bob Cupp-relying on scant clues, and intuition-unearthed the dormant holes one by one.As Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, and many others who have played the course discovered, only period equipment (hickory-shafted clubs, gutta-percha balls) is allowed, and nineteenth-century rules prevail-making Oakhurst the only place in America where anyone can experience the game as it was first played. It is an important chapter in sports history, a nostalgic piece of Americana, and Oakhurst brings its magic alive.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. A nineteenth-century Band of BrothersThe 95th Rifles was one of history's great fighting units, and Mark Urban brings them and the Napoleonic War gloriously to life in this unique chronicle. Focusing especially on six soldiers in the first battalion, Urban tells the Rifles' story from May 25, 1809, when they shipped out to join Wellington's army in Spain, through the battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Drawing on diaries, letters, and other personal accounts, Urban has fashioned a vivid narrative that allows readers to feel the thrill and horror of famous battles, the hardship of the march across Europe, the bravery and camaraderie of a nineteenthcentury Band of Brothers whose innovative tactics created the modern notion of infantryman.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. The history of art has produced few works as ambitious and as valuable as the Amber Room. Famous throughout Europe as "the eighth wonder of the world," its vast and intricately worked amber panels were sent in 1717 by Frederick I of Prussia as a gift to Peter the Great of Russia. Erected some years later, they quickly became a symbol of Russia's imperial might.For more than two hundred years the Amber Room remained in its Russian palace outside St. Petersburg (Leningrad), but when the Nazi army invaded Russia and swept towards Leningrad in 1941, the panels were wrenched from the walls, packed into crates, and disappeared from view, never to be seen again.Dozens of people have tried to trace the whereabouts of the Amber Room, and several of them have died in mysterious circumstances. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark have gone further along the trail of this great lost treasure than anyone before them, and have unraveled the jumble of evidence surrounding its fate. Their search catapulted them across eastern Europe and into the menacing world of espionage and counterespionage that still surrounds Russia and the former Soviet bloc. In archives in St. Petersburg and Berlin, amid boxes of hitherto unseen diaries, letters, and classified reports, they have uncovered for the first time an astounding conspiracy to hide the truth.In a gripping climax that is a triumph of detection and narrative journalism, The Amber Room shows incontrovertibly what really happened to the most valuable lost artwork in the world, and why the truth has been withheld for so long.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. On September 15, 1776, the British army under General William Howe invaded Manhattan Island, landing at an open field on the banks of the East River, roughly where the United Nations sits today. George Washington's Continental Army, still in disarray after its miraculous escape following the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn some two weeks earlier, retreated north to Harlem Heights, leaving New York in British hands. Control of the city was Howe's primary objective; located at the mouth of the strategically vital Hudson River, it had become the centerpiece of England's strategy for putting down the American rebellion. However, as Barnet Schecter reveals in his stirring narrative, far from furnishing a key to the colonies, New York proved to be the fatal albatross that strangled the British war effort.The Battle for New York tells the story of how the city became the pivot on which the American Revolution turned-from the political and religious struggles of the 1760s and early 1770s that polarized its citizens and increasingly made New York a hotbed of radical thought and action; to the campaign of 1776, which turned today's five boroughs and Westchester County into a series of battlefields; to the seven years of British occupation and martial law, during which time Washington and Congress were as focused on getting the city back as the British were on holding it. The extraordinary campaign in the fall of 1776, which forms the dramatic heart of Schecter's chronicle, has been overshadowed by more famous engagements at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown, and by the winter at Valley Forge. Yet the contest for New York was by far the largest military venture of the Revolutionary War; it involved almost every significant participant in the war on both sides; and there can be little doubt that during this campaign, the fate of America hung in the balance on several occasions. Moreover, the outcome had a direct impact on the major turning points of the rest of the war.Schecter delights in linking eighteenth-century events with the city's modern landscape, illuminating the forgotten battlefield that remains in our midst. He skillfully weaves into his narrative the memorable and passionate voices of those who were there-American private Joseph Martin, British second-in-command Henry Clinton, patriot-turned-Tory William Smith, minister Ewald Shewkirk, Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold, and many others-thereby tracing the impact and meaning of the revolution in personal terms and giving his story a powerful human dimension. A profound and memorable saga in its own right, The Battle for New York offers valuable new insight into the American Revolution.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. A chance meeting on the muddy foreshore of the Thames River launched Kevin Rushby on a voyage to rediscover the lost pirate settlements that once dotted the islands and atolls of the Indian Ocean. Hitching rides on a motley assortment of freighters, dhows, yachts, and fishing smacks, Rushby sailed up the east coast of Africa, then turned east to the islands of Comoros and Madagascar, his ultimate objective being to locate the descendants of the infamous sixteenth-century pirates - such as Captain Misson, the legendary French pirate who may have been dreamed up by Daniel Defoe; English sailor-turned-buccaneer Thomas White; and Rhode Islander Thomas Tew - who carved kingdoms for themselves in the remote jungles of northeast Madagascar. As he traveled, Rushby met up with the crackpot dreamers, the tough settlers, the fighters and the failures, who live on the coasts and islands now. His is a romantic story in the old-fashioned sense of the word, full of adventure and colorful incident: voyages to islands where forgotten Portuguese forts lie covered in jungle, where some have tried to shoot their way to paradise, and where the ocean can destroy lives and dreams as quickly as men and women create them.

Softcover. Condition: Good. 1. An inspiring guide to staying in control of your health care, your life, and your dreams despite having chronic illness, by a popular journalist and award-winning blogger.Twenty-seven-year-old Laurie Edwards is one of 125 million Americans who have a chronic illness, in her case a rare genetic respiratory disease. Because of medical advances in the treatment of serious childhood diseases, 600,000 chronically ill teens enter adulthood every year who decades ago would not have survived-they and people diagnosed in adulthood face the same challenges of college, career, and starting a family as others in their twenties and thirties, but with the added circumstance of having chronic illness.Life Disrupted is a personal and unflinching guide to living well with a chronic illness: managing your own health care without letting it take over your life, dealing with difficult doctors and frequent hospitalizations, having a productive and satisfying career that accommodates your health needs, and nurturing friendships and a loving, committed relationship regardless of recurring health problems. Laurie Edwards also addresses the particular needs of people who have more than one chronic illness or who are among the twenty-five million Americans with a rare disorder. She shares her own story and the experiences of others with chronic illness, as well as advice from life coaches, employment specialists, and health professionals.Reading Life Disrupted is like having a best friend and mentor who truly does know what you're going through.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar. And she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens.In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or interviewing Nelson Mandela's family about coming to terms with his own son's death from AIDS. Nolen's stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who can't get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds.Imagine the entire population of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles combined infected with HIV, and its magnitude in Africa is clear. Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind.Click here to learn more about Stephanie Nolen and her book, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa.Click here to listen to an interview with author Stephanie Nolen, as she talks about some of the people she has met covering AIDS in Africa.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Line drawings and a supporting text introduce potential seafarers to the equipment, skills, and maneuvers of sailing.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. On May 7, 1915, toward the end of her 101st eastbound crossing, from New York to Liverpool, England, R.M.S. Lusitania-- pride of the Cunard Line and one of the greatest ocean liners afloat-- became the target of a terrifying new weapon and a casualty of a terrible new kind of war. Sunk off the southern coast of Ireland by a torpedo fired from the German submarine U-20, she exploded and sank in eighteen minutes, taking with her some twelve hundred people, more than half of the passengers and crew. Cold-blooded, deliberate, and unprecedented in the annals of war, the sinking of the Lusitania shocked the world. It also jolted the United States out of its neutrality-- 128 Americans were among the dead-- and hastened the nation's entry into World War I.In her riveting account of this enormous and controversial tragedy, Diana Preston recalls both a pivotal moment in history and a remarkable human drama. The story of the Lusitania is a window on the maritime world of the early twentieth century: the heyday of the luxury liner, the first days of the modern submarine, and the climax of the decades-long German-British rivalry for supremacy of the Atlantic. It is a critical chapter in the progress of World War I and in the political biographies of Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. Above all, it is the story of the passengers and crew on that fateful voyage-- a story of terror and cowardice, of self-sacrifice and heroism, of death and miraculous survival.With a historian's insight and a novelist's gift for characterization and detail, Preston re-creates the events surrounding the Lusitania's last voyage, from the behind-the-scenes politics in each country and the German spy ring in New York, to the extraordinary scene as the ship sank and the survivors awaited rescue, to the controversial inquests in Britain and the United States into how the ship came to be hit and why she sank so quickly. Captain William Turner, steadfast and trustworthy but overconfident, believed that "a torpedo can't get the Lusitania-- she runs too fast."The passenger list included the rich and powerful (American millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, theater producer Charles Frohman, Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat) as well as newlyweds and nursemaids, galley cooks and stokers, Quakers and cardsharps, ship's detectives and German stowaways. Preston weaves their voices throughout her compelling narrative, giving it a powerful immediacy.Drawing on a vast array of sources-- including interviews with survivors, letters and memoirs, recently released American and Admiralty archives, and previously untranslated German documents-- Diana Preston has resolved the controversies surrounding the Lusitania and written the definitive account of this pivotal event in western history.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Illustrated, Subsequent. A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller Longitude.The Illustrated Longitude recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem.To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of 20,000-- truly a king's ransom-- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story.The Illustrated Longitude brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of Longitude, redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes-- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. A personal exploration of wildness, territory, and the elusive nature of our livesIn this concise, richly contemplative book, Gary Thorp records his singularquest to see a mountain lion, or cougar-the "cat of one color"- in the wild hills and mountains of northern California, where he lives. Using the traditional form of Japanese writing known as nikki bungaku (literary diary), Thorp recounts his meditations and adventures, from taking a one-day class on tracking animals, to visiting a mountain lion in the zoo, to his numerous forays into the hills during the day and night. The pursuit of one thing invariably leads him to discover many others: The tracks of a solitary mountain lion, for example, evoke a marvelous world of photographic imagery, literary events, dancing foxes, ocean voyages, and blind poets, all gathered together just beyond the limits of human vision. Thorp explores what it means to seek something you might not find and ponders the difference between seeing only darkness and being blind, offering as well bright glimpses into the Zen tradition. Combining an elusive and challenging pursuit with a centuries-old way of uncovering life's ultimate answers, Caught in Fading Light will give readers a new way of seeing, and will captivate nature lovers and Zen practitioners alike.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. In The Story of Charlotte's Web Michael Sims's shows how E. B. White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole." By mining the raw ore of his childhood in Mount Vernon, New York, in the first decade of the twentieth century, White translated his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into a book that would be read the world over. Building on a visit to White's farm in Maine, viewing his handwritten first draft of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims chronicles White's animal-rich childhood, his writing about urban nature for the New Yorker, his scientific research into how spiders spin webs and lay eggs, his friendship with his legendary editor, Ursula Nordstrom, the composition and publication of his masterpiece, and his ongoing quest to recapture an enchanted childhood.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. Anyone alive in Florence on August 19, 1418, would have understood the significance of the competition announced that day concerning the city's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, already under construction for more than a century. "Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Domeshall do so before the end of the month of September." The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible to build: not only would it be enormous, but its original and sacrosanct design eschewed (shunned) the flying buttresses that supported cathedrals all over Europe. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air.Of the many plans submitted, one stood out-a daring and unorthodox solution to vaulting what is still the largest dome (143 feet in diameter) in the world. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith and clock maker named Filippo Brunelleschi, then 41, who would dedicate the next 28 years to solving the puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architecture.Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes (some among the most renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction-all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. This drama was played out amidst plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence-events Ross King weaves into the story to great effect, from Brunelleschi's bitter, ongoing rivalry with the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to the near capture of Florence by the Duke of Milan. King also offers a wealth of fascinating detail that opens windows onto fifteenth-century life: the celebrated traditions of the brickmaker's art, the daily routine of the artisans laboring hundreds of feet above the ground as the dome grew ever higher, the problems of transportation, the power of the guilds.Even today, in an age of soaring skyscrapers, the cathedral dome of Santa Maria del Fiore retains a rare power to astonish. In telling the story of the greatest engineering puzzle of the Renaissance and one of the world's architectural marvels, Ross King brings its creation to life in a fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Reprint. A distinguished scientist reveals how we are losing the world's songbirds, why this predicts widespread environmental problems, and what we can do to save the birds and their habitats.Wood thrush, bobolinks, the Eastern kingbird-migratory songbirds are disappearing at a frightening rate. Following the birds on their six-thousand-mile migratory journey, renowned biologist Bridget Stutchbury leads us on an ecological field trip to explore firsthand their major threats, and reveals what a vital part of our ecosystem they are.