Dawn, a Charleston Legend

Dawn, a Charleston Legend PDF Author: Dawn Langley Simmons
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Following gender modification in 1968, Gordon became Dawn and married a black Charlestonian and was forced to move from South Carolina to escape hostility.

Dawn, a Charleston Legend

Dawn, a Charleston Legend PDF Author: Dawn Langley Simmons
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Following gender modification in 1968, Gordon became Dawn and married a black Charlestonian and was forced to move from South Carolina to escape hostility.

Hangdog Days

Hangdog Days PDF Author: Jeff Smoot
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680512331
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Fast-paced history-cum-memoir about rock climbing in the wild-and-wooly ’80s Highlights ground-breaking achievements from the era Hangdog Days vividly chronicles the era when rock climbing exploded in popularity, attracting a new generation of talented climbers eager to reach new heights via harder routes and faster ascents. This contentious, often entertaining period gave rise to sport climbing, climbing gyms, and competitive climbing--indelibly transforming the sport. Jeff Smoot was one of those brash young climbers, and here he traces the development of traditional climbing “rules,” enforced first through peer pressure, then later through intimidation and sabotage. In the late ’70s, several climbers began introducing new tactics including “hangdogging,” hanging on gear to practice moves, that the old guard considered cheating. As more climbers broke ranks with traditional style, the new gymnastic approach pushed the limits of climbing from 5.12 to 5.13. When French climber Jean-Baptiste Tribout ascended To Bolt or Not to Be, 5.14a, at Smith Rock in 1986, he cracked a barrier many people had considered impenetrable. In his lively, fast-paced history enriched with insightful firsthand experience, Smoot focuses on the climbing achievements of three of the era’s superstars: John Bachar, Todd Skinner, and Alan Watts, while not neglecting the likes of Ray Jardine, Lynn Hill, Mark Hudon, Tony Yaniro, and Peter Croft. He deftly brings to life the characters and events of this raucous, revolutionary time in rock climbing, exploring, as he says, “what happened and why it mattered, not only to me but to the people involved and those who have followed.”

Peninsula of Lies

Peninsula of Lies PDF Author: Edward Ball
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780297847717
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Peninsula of Lies is an enthralling investigation of a bizarre life that begins in Kent, England with the birth of an illegitimate baby and ends in south Carolina, USA with a sex-change and a scandal.Edward Ball unwraps a mystery that has fascinated a succession of authors in the past decade. Who was Gordon Langley Hall, the illegitimate son of two servants at Sissinghurst Castle (home of author Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author and politician)? Gordon becomes the recipient of the millions of an American heiress, author of biographies (including the eccentric English actress, Margaret Rutherford, the original screen 'Miss Marple'), and moves to Charleston, south Carolina. There Gordon changes sex and reinvents him/herself as Dawn Langley Hall. The mystery deepens when Dawn marries a young black mechanic (the matrons of the still-segregated Charleston are appalled), appears around the town apparantly pregnant a few months later claims that the daughter she is seen pushing around the town in a pram is actually her own.Edward Ball, who won the American National Book Award for Slaves in the Family, investigates Hall's story and in the final chapter offers his solution.

Madness Rules the Hour

Madness Rules the Hour PDF Author: Paul Starobin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610396235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
From Lincoln's election to secession from the Union, this compelling history explains how South Carolina was swept into a cultural crisis at the heart of the Civil War. "The tea has been thrown overboard -- the revolution of 1860 has been initiated." -- Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1860 In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: they could submit to abolition -- or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow. In Madness Rules the Hour, Paul Starobin tells the story of how Charleston succumbed to a fever for war and charts the contagion's relentless progress and bizarre turns. In doing so, he examines the wily propagandists, the ambitious politicians, the gentlemen merchants and their wives and daughters, the compliant pastors, and the white workingmen who waged a violent and exuberant revolution in the name of slavery and Southern independence. They devoured the Mercury, the incendiary newspaper run by a fanatical father and son; made holy the deceased John C. Calhoun; and adopted "Le Marseillaise" as a rebellious anthem. Madness Rules the Hour is a portrait of a culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the folly that fractured the Union and started the Civil War.

The Guns at Last Light

The Guns at Last Light PDF Author: Rick Atkinson
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 142994367X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 897

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now, in The Guns at Last Light, he tells the most dramatic story of all—the titanic battle for Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich—all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory. With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson's accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West. One of The Washington Post's Top 10 Books of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson

American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson PDF Author: Peter Kurth
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 589

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Book Description
Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961) was America’s first internationally famous female foreign correspondent. Born outside of Buffalo, New York, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1914 and honed her writing and interviewing skills in the women’s suffrage movement before heading for Europe as a freelance journalist. Reporting from Vienna, Budapest and Berlin during the rise of Nazism, she was the first western journalist to be expelled from Germany by Adolf Hitler after denigrating him in a profile. Her later columns in the Ladies’ Home Journal and radio broadcasts for CBS (published as Listen, Hans) made her, next to Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential woman in the United States. Thompson was married three times: her second marriage was to the American novelist, Nobel Prize-winner, and alcoholic Sinclair Lewis; her third and happiest, to Czech artist Maxim Kopf. She also had several lesbian relationships. Avidly interested in everything from sustainable farming to the fine arts, she divided her later years between New York City and her farm in Barnard, Vermont. “A skillful exploration of the life and personality of the formidable foreign correspondent” — New York Times “[readers] will be pleased to meet a fascinating, driven and indomitable woman who richly deserves this fine biography” — Thomas Griffith, New York Times “Sensationally good ... Kurth’s vividly detailed and dramatic portrayal of Thompson’s life fully compensates for the memoirs she planned but never lived to write. Here was a one-of-a-kind incarnation of energy, honesty and commitment; a woman we must not forget.” — USA Today “Kurth guides us through the tumultuous complexities of the time-the rise of Nazism in Germany; isolationism in America; the Second World War; the establishment of Israel and other issues that Thompson took over as her personal battleground. His daunting task is to show us a mind at work, and he pulls it off.” — Washington Post “In a day of dime-a-dozen pundits jabbering on the talk shows, Thompson’s diligence and influence are worth recalling. Mr. Kurth’s compulsively readable account allows us to re-live an age and do just that.” — Wall Street Journal “Kurth has a surprising grasp of Thompson’s emotional makeup, strictly avoiding the kind of supercilious or paternalistic attitude that such a character invites in male authors. His biography is insightful without being sentimental, warm without being sycophantic.” — Toronto Star “An important asset of this big, solid book is author Kurth’s prolific use of Thompson’s own words. She left 150 file cases of published and unpublished writings — chunks of private thoughts and musings on her three husbands and her own sexuality one would have expected her to burn... Kurth has battled through this paper blizzard and emerged with a clear-as-ice-water picture of a turbulent, complex personality.” —Baltimore Sun “Peter Kurth, author of the haunting Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, proves once again that he is the equal of Stefan Zweig as a biographer of women. His fairness, his control of his material and his eye for the revealing quotation are such that he makes us empathize with Miss Thompson even when we feel like strangling her.” — Washington Times

Raising the Hunley

Raising the Hunley PDF Author: Brian Hicks
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307416488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The history of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is as astonishing as its disappearance. On February 17, 1864, after a legendary encounter with a Union battleship, the iron “fish boat” vanished without a trace somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. For more than a century the fate of the Hunley remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Civil War. Then, on August 8, 2000, with thousands of spectators crowding Charleston Harbor, the Hunley was raised from the bottom of the sea and towed ashore. Now, award-winning journalists Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf offer new insights into the Hunley’s final hours and recount the amazing true story of its rescue. The brainchild of wealthy New Orleans planter and lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley, the Hunley inspired tremendous hopes of breaking the Union’s naval blockade of Charleston, only to drown two crews on disastrous test runs. But on the night of February 17, 1864, the Hunley finally made good on its promise. Under the command of the heroic Lieutenant George E. Dixon, the sub rammed a spar torpedo into the Union sloop Housatonic and sank the ship within minutes, accomplishing a feat of stealth technology that would not be repeated for half a century. And then, shortly after its stunning success, the Hunley vanished. This book is an extraordinary true story peopled with a fascinating cast of characters, including Horace Hunley himself, the Union officers and crew who went down with the Housatonic, P. T. Barnum, who offered $100,000 for its recovery, and novelist Clive Cussler, who spearheaded the mission that finally succeeded in finding the Hunley. The drama of salvaging the sub is only the prelude to a page-turning account of how scientists unsealed this archaeological treasure chest and discovered the inner-workings of a submarine more technologically advanced than anyone expected, as well as numerous, priceless artifacts. Hicks and Kropf have crafted a spellbinding adventure story that spans over a century of American history. Dramatically told, filled with historical details and contemporary color, illustrated with breathtaking original photographs, Raising the Hunley is one of the most fascinating Civil War books to appear in years.

Celia Garth

Celia Garth PDF Author: Gwen Bristow
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480485136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
This New York Times bestseller set during the American Revolution is “an exciting tale of love and war in the tradition of Gone with the Wind” (Chicago Tribune). A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution, supplies and weapons for the rebel army being unloaded there and then smuggled north. Recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, Celia Garth watches all of this thrilling activity from the window of the dressmaker’s shop where she works. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed. The rebel cause seems lost until the Swamp Fox, American General Francis Marion, takes the fight to the British—and one of his daring young soldiers recruits Celia to spy on the rebels’ behalf. Out of the ashes of Charleston and the Carolina countryside will rise a new nation—and a love that will change Celia Garth forever.

Advanced Rock Climbing

Advanced Rock Climbing PDF Author: Topher Donahue
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680510134
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 527

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Book Description
“The old way of climbing was systematic, methodical, and consistent. Now it’s anything goes, reacting to every situation differently.” —Tommy Caldwell • For skilled climbers who want to push to the next level • Tips and advice from Tommy Caldwell, Steph Davis, Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and more of the world’s best climbers • 250 color photographs and 12 illustrations Advanced Rock Climbing: Expert Skills and Techniques is for good climbers who want to get even better—from training to gear, sport climbing to multi-pitch efficiency, and beyond. Each chapter has detailed advice from some of the world’s best climbers and guides—Tommy Caldwell, Angela Hawse, Justen Sjong, Steph Davis, Sonny Trotter, Alex Honnold, Lynn Hill, and more. Through clear, step-by-step instruction, detailed color photographs, and hard-earned wisdom, this new guide helps strong climbers increase their speed on multi-pitch climbs, conserve energy on big faces, train for tendon strength, improvise self-rescue, and more. Advanced Rock Climbing is for someone who has been climbing for several years and aspires to transition from intermediate to advanced levels, experienced climbers who are stuck in a rut, and naturally talented climbers who are climbing high grades but who may not have the experience to go further safely.

Six Miles to Charleston

Six Miles to Charleston PDF Author: Bruce Orr
Publisher: True Crime
ISBN: 9781609491178
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Explore the grizzly tale of Charleston's most infamous serial killers from the beginning of their reign of horror till their eventual incarceration and execution. In 1819, a young man outwitted death at the hands of John and Lavinia Fisher and sparked the hunt for Charleston's most notorious serial killers. Former homicide investigator Bruce Orr follows the story of the Fishers, from the initial police raid on their Six Mile Inn with its reportedly grisly cellar to the murderous couple's incarceration and execution at the squalid Old City Jail. Yet there still may be more sinister deeds left unpunished, an overzealous sheriff, corrupt officials and documents only recently discovered all suggest that there is more to the tale. Orr uncovers the mysteries and debunks the myths behind the infamous legend of the nation's first convicted female serial killer.