Stars when the sun shines: a memoir

By Stier, Wayne

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 900

Call Number: 910.4092 STI

From Zen cherry blossoms to the Noh stage. From Hawaiian breathing lessons to an Okinawan rodeo. From Balinese wise men to the Egyptian pyramids. It all started in small town Minnesota and it ended much later than the doctors said it would. In his early 20s, Wayne Stier was diagnosed with cancer and a less than 50% chance of living more than 5 years. He and his wife Mars responded by seizing the day and moving to Japan. This extraordinary memoir is full of memorable lines and lessons. Some funny. "Rule of slapstickstand up quick and pretend it didn't happen. "Some koanlike: "A dog's bark is a dot pointing out the silence." Stier's writing will change the way you look at the world. His writing is an act of discovery and rediscovery, from the landlocked plains of the midwest to the slope of an active volcano. In Japan, Wayne became a Kyogen actor and the second foreigner ever to perform on the Noh stage. On the Big Island of Hawaii he built his home and art studio, with living trees forming the corner posts, and wrote the myth of his own life. In Bali, an old man told Wayne to look at the skyfilled with shining stars even when the sun is shining. Stars when the Sun Shines is about looking at the world through continuously new eyes. It's bound to change the way the reader looks at the world as well. Stier's writing burns through illusions to conclusions about a life so full he forgot he was dying, until he did, in Hawaii, on May 30, 2009, weeks after his 62nd birthday. For readers who gravitate to Eat, Pray, Love because of its spiritual odyssey or The Last Lecture because of its message to live in the moment in spite of impending finality, they will have an interest in Stars When the Sun Shines because it offers a combination of both. - (Red Wheel/Weiser)

Paris

By Tillier, Alan

Publishing Date: 2012

Classification: 900

Call Number: 914.4361 TIL

Describes highlights in each region of the city; recommends hotels, shops, restaurants, and art galleries; and offers a brief survey of the city's history.

South Africa

Publishing Date: 2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 916.8

With over 1000 full-color photographs, this book is a travel guide to South Africa, including its history, wildlife, game reserves, museums, sports, hotels, and restaurants.

New Zealand

Publishing Date: 2003

Classification: 900

Call Number: 919.3044

Includes over 1000 photographs, illustrations, and maps, this book is a travel guide to New Zealand, presenting information on the country's landscapes, history, architecture, wildlife, parks, beaches, museums, crafts, entertainment, and accommodations.

Waterloo: the history of four days, three armies, and three battles

By Cornwell, Bernard

Publishing Date: [2014]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.2742 COR

From the New York Times bestselling author comes the definitive, illustrated history of one of the greatest battles ever fought -- a riveting nonfiction chronicle published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's last stand. On June 18, 1815, the armies of France, Britain, and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days, the French army had beaten the Prussians at Ligny and fought the British to a standstill at Quatre-Bras. The Allies were in retreat. The little village north of where they turned to fight the French army was called Waterloo. The blood-soaked battle to which the town gave its name would become a landmark in European history. In his first work of nonfiction, Bernard Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting chronicle of every dramatic moment -- from Napoleon's daring escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the three battlefields and their aftermath. Through quotes from the letters and diaries of Emperor Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and the ordinary officers and soldiers, Cornwell brings to life how it actually felt to fight those famous battles -- as well as the moments of amazing bravery on both sides that left the outcome hanging in the balance until the bitter end. Published to coincide with the battle's bicentennial in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy -- and of the final battle that determined the fate of nineteenth-century Europe. - Jacket flap.

The happiest man on Earth: the beautiful life of an Auschwitz survivor

By Jaku, Eddie

Publishing Date: [2021]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5318 JAK

"Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'"--Publisher.

The luckiest man in the world: stories from the life of Papa Jake

By Larson, Jake

Publishing Date: [2021]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 940.5412 LAR

Stalin: new biography of a dictator

By Khlevniuk, O. V.

Publishing Date: [2015]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 947.084 KHL

Joseph Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk's estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year. Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that left long-lasting scars on the peoples over which he ruled and altered the course of world history.--Adapted from book jacket.

The last Englishmen: love, war, and the end of empire

By Baker, Deborah

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 954.035 BAK

"John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalaya. Michael Spender was the first to draw a detailed map of the North Face of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers--W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender--achieved literary fame, they vied to be included on an expedition that would deliver Everest's summit to an Englishman, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain's struggle to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine where each man's wartime loyalties would lie. Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep"--Dust jacket flap.

The Republic for which it stands: the United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896

By White, Richard

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.8 WHI

"During Reconstruction Northerners attempted to remake the United States in their own image. They would make incarnate the new world Republicans imagined at the end of the Civil War. That new world seemed possible because the Republican Party controlled the Union in 1865 as fully as any political party would ever control the country. Reconstruction would produce a nation built around free labor with a homogeneous citizenry whose rights would be guaranteed by a newly empowered federal government. Black as well as white citizens would inhabit a largely Protestant country of independent producers. They never realized that dream. The government's attempts to implement this vision confronted significant obstacles. Southern whites successfully resisted, and Indians resisted with far less success. Freedpeople both grasped the opportunities that the Republican vision offered them and attempted to articulate their own version of republican America. The United States became a nation of immigrants, Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant. New technologies transformed the economy, as Americans significantly shifted into wage workers instead of independent producers. Capitalism produced the very rich and the very poor. The Gilded Age thrived where Reconstruction failed, the template of American modernity. The era was full of paradoxes. Notoriously corrupt, it also formed a seedbed of reform. It spawned racial, religious, and social conflicts as deep as the country had seen to date, but a newly diverse nation emerged. The newest volume in the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands offers a magisterial account of the Gilded Age's real legacy that lies buried beneath its capitalists of legend and its corrupt politicians."--Provided by publisher.

Ike: an American hero

By Korda, Michael

Publishing Date: ©2007

Classification: 900

Call Number: 973.921 KOR

This biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower places particular emphasis on his brilliant generalship and leadership in World War II, and provides, with the advantage of hindsight, a far more acute analysis of his character and personality than any previously available, reaching the conclusion that he was perhaps America's greatest general and one of America's best presidents. The book starts with the story of D-Day--it was Ike's plan, Ike's decision, Ike's responsibility. But there is more to this book than military history. It is a full biography of a remarkable man, a late starter, a perfectionist, a brilliant leader of men, behind whose easy-going, affable persona was a very different man, fiercely ambitious, hot-tempered, shrewd, and tightly wound. It is as well the portrait of a tumultuous and often difficult marriage, for Mamie was every bit as stubborn and forceful as her husband.--From publisher description.

Where I come from: stories from the deep South

By Bragg, Rick

Publishing Date: 2020

Classification: 900

Call Number: 975 BRA

"From the best-selling, Pulitzer prize-winning author of All Over But the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of his irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun. A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns by the celebrated author, newspaper columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, culled from his best-loved pieces in Southern Living and Garden & Gun. From his love of Tupperware ("My Affair with Tupperware") to the decline of country music, from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pick-up truck, the best way to kill fire ants, the unbridled excess of Fat Tuesday, and why any self-respecting Southern man worth his salt should carry a good knife, Where I Come From is an ode to the stories and the history of the deep south, written with tenderness, wit, and deep affection--a book that will be treasured by fans old and new"--