THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking serieswhere America's finest writers and most brilliant minds tackletoday's most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues.Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voiceson matters political, social, economic, and cultural, willenlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debateacross the country.
This edition has been updated to reflect new developments andincludes new material obtained through the Freedom of InformationAct. Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contractto join the Army and became an icon of post-9/11 patriotism. Whenhe was killed in Afghanistan two years later, a legend was born.But the real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerablymore complicated than the public knew... A stunning account of a remarkable young man's heroic life anddeath, from the bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air,and Under the Banner of Heaven.
Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in hersuburban Philadelphia home—in one of her beloved childhood mysterynovels. She has been back to London countless times since, throughthe pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, shetakes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literarycities. While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed infiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always been thestar, both because of the primacy of English literature and thespecificity of city de*ions. She bases her view of the city onher own detailed literary map, tracking the footsteps of herfavorite characters: the places where Evelyn Waugh's bright youngthings danced until dawn, or where Lydia Bennett eloped with thedastardly Wickham. In Imagined London, Quindlen walks through the city, movingwithin blocks from the great books of the 19th century to thedetective novels of the 20th to the new modernist tradition of the21st. With wit and cha
Song for My Fathers is the story of a young white boy driven bya consuming passion to learn the music and ways of a group of agingblack jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era.Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in localobscurity until Preservation Hall launched a nationwide revival ofinterest in traditional jazz. They called themselves “the mens.”And they welcomed the young apprentice into their ranks. The boy was introduced into this remarkable fellowship by hisfather, an eccentric Southern liberal and failed novelist whosepowerful articles on race had made him one of the most effectivepolemicists of the early Civil Rights movement. Nurtured on hisfather’s belief in racial equality, the aspiring clarinetistembraced the old musicians with a boundless love and admiration.The narrative unfolds against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans inthe 1950s and ‘60s. But that magical place is more than decor; itis perhaps the central player, for this story could not have taken
