Author: Kirk Wallace Johnson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984880128
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
New York Public Library Best of 2022 A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice. “Riveting…it has a little of everything that a thrilling story needs. It feels quite prescient, as if something we’re living out now, you can see scenes of it then. A gripping book that deserves a wide readership.”--George Packer, author of The Unwinding By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen’s rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else “it’s going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!” The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays—and who now represents the fishermen’s last hope.
Author: Kirk Wallace Johnson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101981628
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
Author: Chigozie Obioma
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316338362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
In this striking novel about an unforgettable childhood, four Nigerian brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book's characters and readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, The Fisherman is an essential novel about Africa, seen through the prism of one family's destiny.
Author: Ralph E. Lapp
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Author: Serena Autiero
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000432858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
This book explores how globalization and transculturality are useful theoretical tools for studying pre-modern societies and their long-distance connections. Among the themes explored are how these concepts can enhance our understanding of trade networks, the spread of religions, the diffusion of global fashions, the migration of technologies, public and private initiatives, and wider cultural changes. In this book, archaeologists and ancient historians demonstrate how in diverse contexts – from the Bronze Age to colonial times – humanity displayed an urge and an incredible capacity to connect with distant lands and people. Adopting and modifying approaches originally developed for the study of contemporary societies, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the human past, not only in economic terms, but also the cultural significance of such interconnections. This book provides both the wider public and the specialist reader with a fresh point of view on global issues relating to the past; in turn, allowing us to look anew at developments in the contemporary world. Its large chronological and geographical scope should prove appealing to those who want more than mere Eurocentric history. Teachers and students of world history and archaeology will find this book a useful resource.
Author: Cornelia Funke
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338215566
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 504
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Book Description
Dragons, myth, and magic unite in the third installment of Cornelia Funke's bestselling Dragon Rider series. Ben and the Greenblooms must protect a mythical new creature rising from the ocean -- a creature who can bring either light or darkness to whoever it first meets. A new peril has emerged in the world of Fabulous Creatures. One that could cause the disappearance of their kind. Luckily, all of our favorite characters are back--Ben and Firedrake, his wonderful dragon friend, plucky Guinevere and the Greenbloom family, Sorrel the irrepressible brownie, the miniature man Twigleg and a host of new Fabulous Animals and sturdy helpers. But the threat is real and qucikly encroaching. A villian from the family's past is seeking revenge. And all the while, the mysterious Aurelia, the most fabulous and powerful creature of all, moves across oceans to its final destination, introducing a new underwater world to enjoy.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Shorthand
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Author: Carl Wieland
Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780890514245
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88
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Book Description
"Monsters" once swam through Earth's oceans, and they were likely the inspiration for ancient sightings by mariners who described fantastic encounters on the open seas. In this colorful new book, Dr. Carl Wieland's laymen-friendly descriptions are complemented by beautiful illustrations. Readers will be amazed that these complex, huge beasts actually lived. This book provides a thoroughly biblical analysis, insisting that these "dragons of the sea" came into existence during the Creation Week as outlined in Genesis. Dragons of the Deep is totally evolution free, explaining the facts about fossils from a biblical perspective--Answers In Genesis.
Author: Joshua Hammer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 150119190X
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
A “well-written, engaging detective story” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a “vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do” (Publishers Weekly), following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey. “Masterfully constructed” (The New York Times) and “entertaining and illuminating” (The Washington Post), The Falcon Thief will whisk you away from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.
Author: Jon Remmerde
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595159672
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Twenty-six short stories, funny stories, and serious stories.
