From the best-selling author of Leviathan comes this sweeping narrative of one of America’s most historically rich industries. As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name\, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent\, however\, from the Indians clad in deer skins and “good furs” was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing.
The news of Hudson’s 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent\, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade\, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers\, and later between the United States and Great Britain\, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations.
In Fur\, Fortune\, and Empire\, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old\, when the rallying cry was “get the furs while they last.” Beavers\, sea otters\, and buffalos were slaughtered\, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats\, coats\, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur\, Fortune\, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored\, exploited\, and settled\, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates\, fur\, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction\, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history\, including the French and Indian War\, the American Revolution\, and the War of 1812\, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West.
This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic\, including Thomas Morton\, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians\; British explorer Captain James Cook\, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America’s China trade\; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi\; America’s first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor\, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur\; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith\, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape\, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today.
Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s\, Fur\, Fortune\, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience\, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan\: The
History of Whaling In America\, which was chosen as one of the best
nonfiction books of 2007 by The Los Angeles Times and The
Boston Globe\, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S.
Maritime History. A graduate of Brown\, Yale\, and MIT\, where he received
his Ph.D. in environmental policy\, he lives in Marblehead\,
Massachusetts\, with his wife and two children. His website is at
ericjaydolin.com.
Jesse Cooper was an honor-roll student who loved to windsurf and
write poetry. He also had severe cerebral palsy and was quadriplegic\,
unable to speak\, and wracked by seizures. He died suddenly at age
seventeen.
In fiercely honest\, surprisingly funny\, and sometimes
heartbreaking prose\, Jesse’s mother\, Marianne Leone\, chronicles her
transformation by the remarkable life and untimely death of her child.
An unforgettable memoir of joy\, grief\, and triumph\, Knowing Jesse unlocks
the secret of unconditional love and speaks to all families who strive
to do right by their children.
\;
Marianne Leone is an actress who appeared in The Sopranos\,
a screenwriter\, and an essayist published in The Boston Globe.
She lives in Massachusetts with her husband\, actor Chris Cooper\, and two
rescue dogs.
The Jesse Cooper Foundation funds inclusion and
adapted sports for children with special needs\, and supports disabled
orphans in Romania.
\;
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120518T111523Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20101009T230000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20101010T010000Z UID:http://www.jabberwockybookshop.com/event/birth-phoenix-harriet-b-varney-miller URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.jabberwockybookshop.com/event/birth-phoenix-harriet-b-varney-miller SUMMARY:Birth of the Phoenix by Harriet B. Varney Miller DESCRIPTION:Harriett B. Varney Miller has a bachelor’s degree in Economics.
Harriett is actively involved with current social issues\, including
volunteering at the local crisis center\, and having gone to New Orleans
to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Birth of the
Phoenix is her first novel. Harriett lives with her
children in Massachusetts.
\;
“Ms. Miller has gifted us with an authentic glimpse of not
only the suffering but how victims of all kinds of abuse can heal and
transform themselves\, creating new lives that surpass their
expectations. This novel will inspire and encourage women everywhere to
find their power and take control of their lives. I couldn’t put it
down…” Robin Conrad\, Family Violence Advocate\, The Jeanne Geiger
Crisis Center
Following up Finn\, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors . . . William Faulkner\, Toni Morrison\, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle)\, Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth\, a powerful and haunting story of life\, death\, and family in rural America.
The edge of civilization is closer than we think.
It’s as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town\, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older\, wilder\, and far less forgiving world—until one of them dies in his sleep and the other two are suspected of murder.
Told in a chorus of voices that span a generation\, Kings of the Earth examines the bonds of family and blood\, faith and suspicion\, that link not just the brothers but their entire community.
Vernon\, the oldest of the Proctors\, is reduced by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side\, needy and unknowable. And Creed\, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army)\, struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We also meet Del Graham\, a state trooper torn between his urge to understand the brothers and his desire for justice\; Preston Hatch\, a kindhearted and resourceful neighbor who’s spent his life protecting the three men from themselves\; the brothers’ only sister\, Donna\, who managed to cut herself loose from the family but is then drawn back\; and a host of other living\, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this deeply intimate saga of the human condition at its limits.
Born and raised in the remote heart of upstate New York\, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher\, a metalworker\, a folksinger\, an illustrator\, a typeface designer\, a housepainter\, a copywriter\, and an advertising executive. Teaching and advertising took him south to the suburbs of Philadelphia for many years\, and only with the publication of Finn\, his first novel\, was he able to return to the kind of rural surroundings he’d loved from the start\: This time\, in the Green Mountains of Vermont. He is married to novelist Wendy Clinch\, and they have one daughter.
The area known as Dogtown -- an isolated colonial ruin and surrounding 3\,000-acre woodland in storied seaside Gloucester\, Massachusetts -- has long exerted a powerful influence over artists\, writers\, eccentrics\, and nature lovers. But its history is also woven through with tales of witches\, supernatural sightings\, pirates\, former slaves\, drifters\, and the many dogs Revolutionary War widows kept for protection and for which the area was named. In 1984\, a brutal murder took place there\: a mentally disturbed local outcast crushed the skull of a beloved schoolteacher as she walked in the woods. Dogtown's peculiar atmosphere -- it is strewn with giant boulders and has been compared to Stonehenge -- and eerie past deepened the pall of this horrific event that continues to haunt Gloucester even today.
In alternating chapters\, Elyssa East interlaces the story of this grisly murder with the strange\, dark history of this wilderness ghost town and explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power.
East knew nothing of Dogtown's bizarre past when she first became interested in the area. As an art student in the early 1990s\, she fell in love with the celebrated Modernist painter Marsden Hartley's stark and arresting Dogtown landscapes. She also learned that in the 1930s\, Dogtown saved Hartley from a paralyzing depression. Years later\, struggling in her own life\, East set out to find the mysterious setting that had changed Hartley's life\, hoping that she too would find solace and renewal in Dogtown's odd beauty. Instead\, she discovered a landscape steeped in intrigue and a community deeply ambivalent about the place\: while many residents declare their passion for this profoundly affecting landscape\, others avoid it out of a sense of foreboding.
Throughout this richly braided first-person narrative\, East brings Dogtown's enigmatic past to life. Losses sustained during the American Revolution dealt this once thriving community its final blow. Destitute war widows and former slaves took up shelter in its decaying homes until 1839\, when the last inhabitant was taken to the poorhouse. He died seven days later. Dogtown has remained abandoned ever since\, but continues to occupy many people's imaginations. In addition to Marsden Hartley\, it inspired a Bible-thumping millionaire who carved the region's rocks with words to live by\; the innovative and influential postmodernist poet Charles Olson\, who based much of his epic Maximus Poems on Dogtown\; an idiosyncratic octogenarian who vigilantly patrols the land to this day\; and a murderer who claimed that the spirit of the woods called out to him.
In luminous\, insightful prose\, Dogtown takes the reader into an unforgettable place brimming with tragedy\, eccentricity\, and fascinating lore\, and examines the idea that some places can inspire both good and evil\, poetry and murder.
About the Author
Elyssa East received her B.A. in art history from Reed College and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts\, where she was the recipient of three prestigious fellowships\: the Susan G. Hertog Research Assistantship\, a Departmental Research Assistantship\, and a Writing Division Merit Fellowship. Her Master’s thesis—a draft of this manuscript—won an M.F.A. Faculty Selects award. Elyssa has received additional awards and fellowships from the Ragdale\, Jerome\, and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundations\; the University of Connecticut\; and the Phillips Library.
Elyssa’s writing has been published in various New England regional magazines as well as The Brooklyn Rail\, Guernica\, and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood\, and is forthcoming in The New York Times. A scene from Elyssa’s opera libretto\, Mr. Hawthorne’s Engagement\, was performed with singers from the Met Opera as part of American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice series. Elyssa created Columbia University’s Artists’ Resource Center and ran KGB Bar’s Columbia University Faculty Selects Reading Series for three years. Additionally she has worked as a nonfiction reviews editor at Publisher’s Weekly\; the Managing Director of the Maine Summer Dramatic Institute and Executive Producer of Shakespeare in Deering Oaks Park in Portland\, Maine\; an archaeologist’s assistant\; and a dump-truck driver. A native of Georgia\, Elyssa currently resides in New York City.
Praise for Dogtown\: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town…
"\;A MESMERIZING FUGUE of knife-edge true crime\, deviant Yankee Americana\, and historical evildoings. With an insider's authenticity\, East commands a haunted haven where renowned American thinkers and artists seek hideout\, and finds the brilliant pin dot on a mysterious American murder map\, charting a community's bouts of wickedness for generations toward a spellbinding modern homicide. No other book captures our colonial ghost history with such chilly quirks\, intimate lore\, and fireworks. A pure original\, East guides us through stunning supernatural gates into a bountiful wilderness."\; -- MARIA FLOOK\, author of Invisible Eden
"\;This book is a wonder. I fell completely under its spell -- Elyssa East does not merely reupholster the old bones of Dogtown\, she plunges you headlong into the green mystery of this place\; I loved the looking-glass chill of opening her book and finding myself in another world entirely. Dogtown is true literary sorcery\, a portal to one of the strangest places in America."\; -- KAREN RUSSELL\, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
"\;Beautifully written\, deftly told\, and suspenseful to the very end -- a stunning work of reportage. A keenly observant writer with a painter's eye for detail\, East explores the strange\, hypnotic spell that Dogtown seems to cast upon all -- including herself -- who enter its woods. The result is a riveting and very personal book that both dazzles and unnerves."\; -- JULIE OTSUKA\, author of When the Emperor Was Divine
"\;Elyssa East's narrative history of Dogtown\, Massachusetts\, is a fascinating book\, sometimes strange\, sometimes mystical\, but always gripping. Her exploration of its dark\, eccentric past begs the question\: do certain mythic landscapes influence its inhabitants to do great good and\, at times\, to do great evil?"\; -- KATHLEEN KENT\, author of The Heretic's Daughter
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120518T111523Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20101023T230000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20101024T010000Z UID:http://www.jabberwockybookshop.com/event/patriot-pride-vin-femia URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.jabberwockybookshop.com/event/patriot-pride-vin-femia SUMMARY:Patriot Pride by Vin Femia DESCRIPTION:Join local author Vin Femia as he brings the whole story of the New England Patriots in his new book Patriot Pride.
This is Vin Femia's second book. His first\, The Possible Dream\, described
what it took for the Boston Red Sox to finally achieve their goal of
winning the World Series in 2004. Vin has been in the computer
software industry for over 35 years and has been a life-long sports fan.