Last Man Out

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Eleanor Dienstag

Whose career comes first when a family moves? Does the one who earns the living have the ultimate power of decision? Forty percent of the population relocates once every four years. Whither Thou Goest is the inside story of the effects of moving on one family -- not just the packing, leave-taking, readjustment and search for new friends, but most important, the balance of power within marriage. When her lawyer husband was offered the job of a lifetime in Rochester, New York, Eleanor Dienstag, career mother and passionate Manhattanite, left her native turf to follow her spouse. Caught between traditional values and burgeoning feminism, she made the move from a Riverside Drive apartment and the joys of the city to a house in a quiet upstate town. The move broke their marriage open, revealing vital issues about sex roles, responsibility, independence and ambition. Then another trauma shook their marriage: the decline of the Stirling Homex Company -- one of the most spectacular business disasters of recent times -- the company for whom the Dienstags left New York. What happens to a wife who moves for the sake of her husband's career when that career explodes? How do you help an ambitious man admit a mistake? How do you strive for an equitable marriage when your husband's job is using all his energy? Whither Thou Goest is the honest story of one woman -- who could be any woman -- facing up to the moral demands of business, marriage and self, and confronting the seductive power of the American dream of upward mobility -- a dream that diminishes both men and women.

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the Countess of Carnarvon

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration for the hit PBS show Downton Abbey, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon and the basis of the fictional character Lady Cora Crawley. Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war. Much like her Masterpiece Classic counterpart, Lady Almina was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvon's ancestral home. Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman. This rich tale contrasts the splendor of Edwardian life in a great house against the backdrop of the First World War and offers an inspiring and revealing picture of the woman at the center of the history of Highclere Castle. - Publisher.

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Bill Whiting

"The true story of the life and untimely death of ... young artist named Daniel Arthur Allen. When one of Dan's mysterious, jewel-like paintings was discovered in the vault of a major museum nearly four decades after his death, artist Bill Whiting began to write about his life with Danny in Rochester, New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the sexual revolution, drugs, gay liberation, and antiwar protests made everyday life anything but predictable"--Back cover.

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Joel Rose

"When Uncle John DeVoe and a man only known as Lozier sit down in the old Centre Market to discuss the impending doom threatening New York City, those around can't help but eavesdrop. Overdevelopment of its southern tip has put the island in jeopardy and unless something can be done to stop it, the city will sink into the harbor. DeVoe and Lozier claim to have been sent to avert disaster and tell the eager listeners of their plan to save their great city. Who were Uncle John DeVoe and the mysterious Lozier? What may have instigated their grand deception and why was it blindly embraced?". "Trailing historical documents that lead him in a direction he never could have anticipated, novelist Rose weaves together a tale of skullduggery against an atmospheric recreation of urban street life in the early nineteenth century. With an eye toward the political and cultural climate of the period, New York Sawed in Half is a playful meditation on the nature of the hoax."--BOOK JACKET.