Passionate nomad

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Art Buchwald

The renowned humorist continues his best-selling memoirs, into the dazzling Paris of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Here we find twenty-two-year-old Art, in June 1948, one of the army of "fresh, peach-cheeked Americans" invading postwar France, and ready to embark on the greatest adventure of his life. Over the next fourteen years he would invent himself: a foster child from Queens suddenly hobnobbing with some of the most powerful and famous people in the world; landing a job with the legendary Paris Herald Tribune, with no legitimate experience whatsoever; and telling people where to go and what to eat mostly on the basis of his food-tasting experiences with the Marine Corps mess and the USC student union. He crashed costume balls in Venice, hunted bats in Sussex, ran with the bulls in Pamplona, clashed with police in Paris, spoofed Hemingway in the Congo, and dined with gangsters in Naples. From sidewalk cafes to society weddings, Buchwald reported on the folkways and foibles of the International Set, becoming everybody's favorite American in Paris - and one thing more. For in meeting and marrying a redhead named Ann, and then adopting three children, he also became what his foster childhood had never prepared him to be: a family man. This was perhaps his greatest invention of all.

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Philip Callow

"There are many Stevensons behind the initials RLS, but the one that has endeared him to so many readers for so long is surely the fighter, battling to stay alive. Jorge Luis Borges described Stevenson's brief life as courageous and heroic. In Philip Callow's new biography, one can see why.". "Doctors, called repeatedly to what should have been his deathbed, would find a scarecrow, twitching and alive. A sickly child, Louis became in turn a bohemian dandy, a literary gypsy traipsing through the mountains of France with a donkey, and at twenty-eight the lover of an American woman ten years his senior, the fabulous Fanny.". "He escaped his Scottish town, his family, his friends who had mapped out a literary career for him in London, and instead went chaotically across the Atlantic and overland to California in poverty and despair to reach his beloved, wherupon he escaped into marriage and committed himself to being a nomad. He sailed the Pacific and dreamed of being an explorer; his restlessness was Victorian. All the while he was composing some of the most treasured tales in the English language."--BOOK JACKET.

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Erik Larson

"At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based, was to him preposterous, "an absurd delusion." It was 1900, a year when America felt bigger and stronger than ever before. Nothing in nature could hobble the gleaming city of Galveston, then a magical place that seemed destined to become the New York of the Gulf.". "In Galveston, reassured by Cline's belief that no hurricane could seriously damage the city, there was celebration. Children played in the rising water. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky - until the surf began ripping the city's beloved beachfront apart. Within the next few hours Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this day remains the nation's deadliest natural disaster. Isaac's Storm is based on Cline's own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms. Ultimately, however, it is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature's last great uncontrollable force. As such, Isaac's Storm carries a warning for our time."--BOOK JACKET.

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Stephen T. Powers, Kevin Dennehy

"Just in time for the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings, this compact guidebook not only describes the most critical amphibious invasion of World War II, but features detailed battlefield tours, identifies monuments and locates museums. Learn about the main attractions at both the American and British landing sites, including the airborne operations behind enemy lines... This ... guide features: easy-to-follow maps and tours; where to stay, dine, and shop; describes military museums in Normandy; sections describing the exploits of brave soldiers and units; a special bonus chapter on World War II in Paris"--Back cover.