My Valley

My Valley PDF

Author: Claude Ponti

Publisher: Elsewhere Editions

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 0914671626

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In My Valley, Claude Ponti leads us on a journey through an enchanted world inhabited by "Touims" (tiny, adorable, monkey-like creatures), secret tree dwellings, flying buildings, and sad giants. Clever language and beautifully detailed maps of imaginary landscapes will delight children and adults alike. Ponti himself has said, "My stories are like fairytales, always situated in the marvelous, speaking to the interior life and emotions of children. That way each child can get what they want out of the images: the characters and dreams are their own."

Guardians of the Valley

Guardians of the Valley PDF

Author: Dean King

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-03-19

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1982144475

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* “We see through this book the immense power of language…to change the minds of lawmakers and tourists alike.” —The New York Times Book Review * “A poignant portrait of an era when mere words could change the world.” —San Francisco Chronicle * The dramatic and uplifting story of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir’s journey to save Yosemite is “a rich, enjoyable excursion into a seminal period in environmental history” (The Wall Street Journal). In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life. Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is devastated, Johnson, an arbiter of the era’s pressing issues in the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement. “Comprehensively researched and compellingly readable” (Booklist, starred review), Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the towering environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.

The Valley

The Valley PDF

Author: John Renehan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-03-10

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0698186273

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*Named one of Wall Street Journal's Best Books of 2015 *Selected as a Military Times's Best Book of the Year “You’re going up the Valley.” Black didn’t know its name, but he knew it lay deeper and higher than any other place Americans had ventured. You had to travel through a network of interlinked valleys, past all the other remote American outposts, just to get to its mouth. Everything about the place was myth and rumor, but one fact was clear: There were many valleys in the mountains of Afghanistan, and most were hard places where people died hard deaths. But there was only one Valley. It was the farthest, and the hardest, and the worst. When Black, a deskbound admin officer, is sent up the Valley to investigate a warning shot fired by a near-forgotten platoon, he can only see it as the final bureaucratic insult in a short and unhappy Army career. What he doesn’t know is that his investigation puts at risk the centuries-old arrangements that keep this violent land in fragile balance, and will launch a shattering personal odyssey of obsession and discovery as Black reckons with the platoon’s dark secrets, accumulated over endless hours fighting and dying in defense of an indefensible piece of land. The Valley is a riveting tour de force that changes our understanding of the men who fight our wars and announces John Renehan as one of the great American storytellers of our time.

The Entrance

The Entrance PDF

Author: Crystal Jackson

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780985961947

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Author and historian, Crystal Jackson, delivers an authentic and compelling account of one town's epic journey through American history. Since our nation's birth, Pacoima has been a microcosm of America's social development and evolution. Once called Pacoinga, this was sacred Indian land until Spain invaded in the 1700s. From the Mission era and genocide of the area's natives to the rise of a Black middle-class suburban community, the town's diverse racial history is unlike any other. Jackson's powerful book peels back the jaw-dropping layers of this historic town to expose the provocative racial threads that bind American history. As some in America strived to contain and diminish people of color, time after time, Pacoimabroke free and flew to unimaginable heights. The town blends a unique divergence of cultures, including Native, Latino, Black, Japanese, and White has defied all odds over that last 150 years. Their remarkable history reveals stories that redefine the development of America's minority culture. Jackson has spent five years researching the town and interviewed dozens of current and former residents. US Congressman Tony Cárdenas, US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and Calif. Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, are among the many people raised in Pacoima, that Jackson interviewed for the book. She also interviewed 90-year-old residents, Indian chiefs, Mexican migrants, families of Japanese internment camp survivors and civil rights leaders who vividly described the town's growth and evolution. Despite the stolen Indian land, punishment for speaking Spanish, forced imprisonment, civil rights violations, and a tragic crack epidemic that nearly destroyed the town, Pacoima has defied all odds to make a significant impact on the country and even the world.

Emily of Deep Valley

Emily of Deep Valley PDF

Author: Maud Hart Lovelace

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-04-26

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0062094289

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“I re-read these books every year, marveling at how a world so quaint—shirtwaists! Pompadours! Merry Widow hats!—can feature a heroine who is undeniably modern.” —Laura Lippman “There are three authors whose body of work I have reread more than once over my adult life: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Maud Hart Lovelace.” —Anna Quindlen Often considered Maud Hart Lovelace’s best novel, Emily of Deep Valley is now back in print. This gorgeous volume includes a new foreword by acclaimed young adult author Mitali Perkins, and compelling historical material about the real people who inspired Lovelace’s beloved characters. Emily of Deep Valley joins the Harper Perennial Modern Classics library next to other enduring favorites like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books.

True Sisters

True Sisters PDF

Author: Sandra Dallas

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1250005027

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Four women seeking the promise of salvation and prosperity in a new land.

Troublemakers

Troublemakers PDF

Author: Leslie Berlin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 145165152X

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Acclaimed historian Leslie Berlin’s “deeply researched and dramatic narrative of Silicon Valley’s early years…is a meticulously told…compelling history” (The New York Times) of the men and women who chased innovation, and ended up changing the world. Troublemakers is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. “In this vigorous account…a sturdy, skillfully constructed work” (Kirkus Reviews), historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic—were born. “There is much to learn from Berlin’s account, particularly that Silicon Valley has long provided the backdrop where technology, elite education, institutional capital, and entrepreneurship collide with incredible force” (The Christian Science Monitor). Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from the factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together, these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.

A Tale of Two Valleys

A Tale of Two Valleys PDF

Author: Alan Deutschman

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2003-04-08

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0767914600

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When acclaimed journalist Alan Deutschman came to the California wine country as the lucky house guest of very rich friends, he was surprised to discover a raging controversy. A civil war was being fought between the Napa Valley, which epitomized elitism, prestige and wealthy excess, and the neighboring Sonoma Valley, a rag-tag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. But the antics really began when new-money invaders began pushing out Sonoma’s poets and painters to make way for luxury resorts and trophy houses that seemed a parody of opulence. A Tale of Two Valleys captures these stranger-than-fiction locales with the wit of a Tom Wolfe novel and uncorks the hilarious absurdities of life among the wine world’s glitterati. Deutschman found that on the weekends the wine country was like a bunch of gracious hosts smiling upon their guests, but during the week the families feuded with each other and their neighbors like the Hatfields and McCoys. Napa was a comically exclusive club where the super-rich fought desperately to get in. Sonoma’s colorful free spirits and iconoclasts were wary of their bohemia becoming the next playground for the rapacious elite. So, led by a former taxicab driver and wine-grape picker, a cheese merchant, and an artist who lived in a barn surrounded by wild peacocks, they formed a populist revolt to seize power and repel the rich invaders. Deutschman’s cast of characters brims with eccentrics, egomaniacs, and a mysterious man in black who crashed the elegant Napa Valley Wine Auction before proceeding to pay a half-million dollars for a single bottle. What develops is nothing less than a battle for the good life, a clash between old and new, the struggle for the soul of one of America’s last bits of paradise. A dishy glimpse behind the scenes of a West Coast wonderland, A Tale of Two Valleys makes for intoxicating reading.