Letter To Cody

In the United States and Canada, more than 350,000 men, women, and young people have lost their lives to fentanyl and other drug overdoses in the past five years. In Letters from Cody, Eya narrates their story through a series of more than sixty letters reflecting Cody’s thoughts, feelings, experiences, and relationships while he was alive. It offers insight into the perils of drug addiction... Conveying an explosion of emotion as a teenager commits suicide via drug use, because of a family matter, Letters from Cody also calls attention to this underlying issue of American’s opiate overdose epidemic.

Celebrated showman of the Old West, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody took on another role unknown to most Americans, that of the western land developer and town promoter. In this captivating study, Robert E. Bonner demonstrates that the skills Cody acquired from decades in show business failed to prepare him for the demanding arena of business and finance. Bonner examines Cody’s efforts as president of the Shoshone Irrigation Company to develop the Big Horn Basin through large-scale irrigation and town development. This meticulously researched account shows us a Buffalo Bill preoccupied with making a buck and not at all shy about using his fame to do it. Cody spent huge sums, bullied partners, patronized state officials, and exercised his charm in pursuit of developing the high plains east of Yellowstone National Park. His efforts helped shape the city of Cody and the Big Horn Basin. With the famous Irma Hotel as a cornerstone, he built the first infrastructure of the Cody-Yellowstone tourist trade and connected his little Wyoming town with the wealth of the East through personal hospitality and travel. Laced with engaging anecdotes and featuring more than twenty photographs, William F. Cody’s Wyoming Empire is a much needed look at an overly mythologized character. There was more to William F. Cody than the Wild West show—and we cannot construct a full picture of the man without understanding his entrepreneurial activities in Wyoming.

Born in Ireland in 1879, W.P.M. Kennedy was a distinguished Canadian academic and the leading Canadian constitutional law scholar for much of the twentieth century. Despite his trailblazing career and intriguing personal life, Kennedy's story is largely a mystery. Weaving together a number of key events, Martin L. Friedland's lively biography discusses Kennedy's contributions as a legal and interdisciplinary scholar, his work at the University of Toronto where he founded the Faculty of Law, as well as his personal life, detailing stories about his family and important friends, such as Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Kennedy earned a reputation in some circles for being something of a scoundrel, and Friedland does not shy away from addressing Kennedy's exaggerated involvement in drafting the Irish constitution, his relationships with female students, and his quest for recognition. Throughout the biography, Friedland interjects with his own personal narratives surrounding his interactions with the Kennedy family, and how he came to acquire the private letters noted in the book. The result is a readable, accessible biography of an important figure in the history of Canadian intellectual life.

In the early 1900s, the language of America was becoming colloquial English-the language of the businessman, manager, and professional. Since college and high school education were far from universal, many people turned to correspondence education-that era's distance learning-to learn the art of speaking and writing. By the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of Americans were sending coupons from newspapers and magazines to order Sherwin Cody's 100% Self-correcting Course in the English Language, a patented mail-order course in English that was taken by over 150,000 people.Cody's ubiquitous signature advertisement, which ran for over forty years, promised a scientifically-tested invention that improved speaking and writing in just 15 minutes a day. Cody's ad explained that people are judged by their English, and he offered self-improvement and self-confidence through the mail.In this book, linguist Edwin Battistella tells the story of Sherwin Cody and his famous English course, situating both the man and the course in early twentieth century cultural history. The author shows how Cody became a businessman-a writer, grammatical entrepreneur, and mass-marketer whose ads proclaimed "Good Money in Good English" and asked "Is Good English Worth 25 Cents to You?" His course, perhaps the most widely-advertised English education program in history, provides a unique window onto popular views of language and culture and their connection to American notions of success and failure. But Battistella shows Sherwin Cody was also part of a larger shift in attitudes. Using Cody's course as a reference point, he also looks at the self-improvement ethic reflected in such courses and products as the Harvard Classics, The Book of Etiquette, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the U.S. School of Music, and the Charles Atlas and Dale Carnegie courses to illustrate how culture became popular and how self-reliance evolved into self-improvement.

A biography on the infamous Henry John Cody.