Lights Of Fortitude

Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it ... this from old Frosted Moses in the warm corner by the door. There might have been an answer, but Dicky Tasset, the Town Idiot, filled in the pause with the tale that he was telling Mother Figgis. "And I ran-a mile or more with the stars dotted all over the ground for yer pickin', as yer might say...." A little boy, Peter Westcott, heard what old Frosted Moses had said, and turned it over in his mind. He was twelve years old, was short and thick-necked, and just now looked very small because he was perched on so high a chair. It was one of the four ancient chairs that Sam Figgis always kept in the great kitchen behind the taproom. He kept them there partly because they were so very old and partly because they fell in so pleasantly with the ancient colour and strength of the black smoky rafters.

This is the extraordinary story of a father and a son that arose in the 19th century to spread the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh throughout Iran with indomitable strength and resilience. Varqá the father, a physician and a talented poet, and his gifted adolescent son Rúḥu’lláh, both of penetrating spiritual insight, took the New Gospel with zeal and courage to a generation blind in the most dire fanaticism. Operating in the midst of a country sunk into corruption and bigotry, Varqá and Rúḥu’lláh were able to teach both the rich and the poor, the prince and the commoner, the scholar and the illiterate, the believer and the laic, in freedom or in prison. Their saga ended with their tragic martyrdom in the royal prison of Tehran in 1896 but has continued to live like a legend inspiring Bahá’ís around the world to serve. Varqá’s legacy of service and consecration was continued by Valíyu’lláh Varqá and Dr ‘Alí-Muḥammad Varqá, his son and grandson, respectively, all three of whom were designated as Hands of the Cause of God.

WINNER OF THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY An engrossing, epic history of the US Army in the Pacific War, from the acclaimed author of The Dead and Those About to Die “This eloquent and powerful narrative is military history written the way it should be.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian "Out here, mention is seldom seen of the achievements of the Army ground troops," wrote one officer in the fall of 1943, "whereas the Marines are blown up to the skies." Even today, the Marines are celebrated as the victors of the Pacific, a reflection of a well-deserved reputation for valor. Yet the majority of fighting and dying in the war against Japan was done not by Marines but by unsung Army soldiers. John C. McManus, one of our most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor—a rude awakening for a military woefully unprepared for war—to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower. At the pinnacle of this richly told story are the generals: Douglas MacArthur, a military autocrat driven by his dysfunctional lust for fame and power; Robert Eichelberger, perhaps the greatest commander in the theater yet consigned to obscurity by MacArthur's jealousy; "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, a prickly soldier miscast in a diplomat's role; and Walter Krueger, a German-born officer who came to lead the largest American ground force in the Pacific. Enriching the narrative are the voices of men otherwise lost to history: the uncelebrated Army grunts who endured stifling temperatures, apocalyptic tropical storms, rampant malaria and other diseases, as well as a fanatical enemy bent on total destruction. This is an essential, ambitious book, the first of three volumes, a compellingly written and boldly revisionist account of a war that reshaped the American military and the globe and continues to resonate today. INCLUDES MAPS AND PHOTOS

"Patience, one of the New York Public Library lions, is missing and Fortitude, the other lion, searches the building from top to bottom seeking him"--Provided by publisher.

Who are ocean angels? What distinguishes them from other people? Are you one of them? In 8 Ocean Angels, the author, Grant King, presents notable characters he considers as real-life ocean angels—such as Francois-Marie Arouet, Massimo Bontempelli, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, and Socrates—and describes how they ultimately represent these entities in how they see life and relate to nature and the entire cosmos. The narrative uses repetition of words, lines, and ideas to create a meditative tone, effectively drawing you into mantric reading as you go through each chapter. A book on enlightenment and discoveries, it beckons for introspection, guiding you to the awareness of your real capabilities, of the real nature of life, and of the truth about our relationship with a higher power. Spiritual and personal, the book paves the way for the understanding that we are not solitary entities but are interconnected elements in a majestic and grand design.

How electric light created new spaces that transformed the built environment and the perception of modern architecture. In this book, Sandy Isenstadt examines electric light as a form of architecture—as a new, uniquely modern kind of building material. Electric light was more than just a novel way of brightening a room or illuminating a streetscape; it brought with it new ways of perceiving and experiencing space itself. If modernity can be characterized by rapid, incessant change, and modernism as the creative response to such change, Isenstadt argues, then electricity—instantaneous, malleable, ubiquitous, evanescent—is modernity's medium. Isenstadt shows how the introduction of electric lighting at the end of the nineteenth century created new architectural spaces that altered and sometimes eclipsed previously existing spaces. He constructs an architectural history of these new spaces through five examples, ranging from the tangible miracle of the light switch to the immaterial and borderless gloom of the wartime blackout. He describes what it means when an ordinary person can play God by flipping a switch; when the roving cone of automobile headlights places driver and passenger at the vertex of a luminous cavity; when lighting in factories is seen to enhance productivity; when Times Square became an emblem of illuminated commercial speech; and when the absence of electric light in a blackout produced a new type of space. In this book, the first sustained examination of the spatial effects of electric lighting, Isenstadt reconceives modernism in architecture to account for the new perceptual conditions and visual habits that followed widespread electrification.

Oxford's unique collection of university and college buildings both old and new form a major part of this book. The city itself with its medieval walls and castle and ancient churches is also fully described. Among the county's distinguished houses are Vanbrugh's Blenheim and Kent's Rousham Park, each in magnificently landscaped grounds, while village churches range from notable Norman examples such as Iffley to G.E. Street's inventive Victorian creations such as St Simon & St Jude at Shipton-under-Wychwood. Other attractive towns in this still strongly rural county vary from stone-built Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds to brick-built Henley on the Thames.