Vacationland

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Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

When Gregory White Smith and Steve Naifeh stumbled on Joye Cottage, it was love at first sight. They'd just finished their Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Jackson Pollack, and they were fed up with apartment life in New York City. What better way to escape than to sell everything and get a steal on a rundown, turn-of-the-century mansion built by robber baron William C. Whitney in that most exotic of all places, the American South? So what if none of its sixty rooms was air-conditioned? So what if the roof leaked and plaster fell from the high ceilings in murderous chunks? So what if the grand old place was rumored to be haunted? Smith and Naifeh were determined to make their lifelong fantasy of living in a palace come true - and nothing could stop them. . On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye is the story of their three-year adventure transforming this "handyman special from hell" into a home - while adjusting to the rhythms of small-town life in magnolia-shaded Aiken, South Carolina. As the authors of bestselling true crime books, Smith and Naifeh had encountered all kinds of colorful characters, but nothing could have prepared them for the crew that showed up to "help": an ex-Mafia plasterer, brawling painters, feckless security men, randy gardeners, and heavily armed carpenters.

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James Martin, SJ

"James Martin, SJ, gifted storyteller, editor at large of America magazine, popular media commentator, and New York Times bestselling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, brings the Gospels to life in Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and invites believers and seekers alike to experience Jesus through Scripture, prayer and travel. Combining the fascinating insights of historical Jesus studies with profound spiritual insights about the Christ of faith, Father Martin recreates the world of first-century Galilee and Judea to usher you into Jesus's life and times and show readers how Jesus speaks to us today. Martin also brings together the most up-to-date Scripture scholarship, wise spiritual reflections, and lighthearted stories about traveling through the Holy Land with a fellow (and funny) Jesuit, visiting important sites in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The person at the heart of the Gospels can seem impossibly distant. Stories about his astonishing life and ministry--clever parables that upended everyone's expectations, incredible healings that convinced even skeptics, nature miracles that dazzled the dumbstruck disciples--can seem far removed from our own daily lives, hard to understand, and at times irrelevant. But in Jesus you will come to know him as Father Martin knows him: Messiah and Savior, as well as friend and brother"--

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Roger Conant

Diary of a "New York Times" reporter who accompanied a shipload of matrimony-minded women and their agent, Asa Mercer, from the east coast to San Francisco and Seattle in 1866.

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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.