Philly War Zone

In this true story set in the 1970s, you'll look through the eyes of then 14-year-old Kevin Purcell, who's now a professional advertising writer, as he watches his perfect childhood neighborhood turn into a racial battleground, where two young kids are stabbed to death, including one of Kevin's friends. Read as the author describes what it was like as young kids, black and white, from working-class families suddenly find themselves on the front lines of racial upheaval.

La Brea Tar Pits once trapped prehistoric mammals. Today that killer has a chemical cousin in the Athabasca oil sands of Alberta, Canada—immense deposits of natural asphalt destined for upgrading to synthetic crude oil. If the harvesting of this natural asphalt continues unabated, we might find ourselves stuck in a muck of a different kind. Humanity has used asphalt for thousands of years. This humble hydrocarbon may have glued the first arrowhead to the first shaft, but the changes wrought by this material are most dramatic since its emergence as pavement. Since the 1920s the automobile and blacktop have allowed unprecedented numbers of Americans to experience the beauty of their continent from the Adirondacks to the Rockies and beyond, to Big Sur and the Pacific Coast Highway. Blacktop roads, runways, and parking lots constitute the central arteries of our environment, creating a distinct “political territory” and a “political economy of velocity.” In Asphalt: A History Kenneth O’Reilly provides a history of this everyday substance. By tracing the history of asphalt—in both its natural and processed forms—from ancient times to the present, O’Reilly sets out to identify its importance within various contexts of human society and culture. Although O’Reilly argues that asphalt creates our environment, he believes it also eventually threatens it. Looking at its role in economics, politics, and global warming, O’Reilly explores asphalt’s contribution to the history, and future, of America and the world.

Becoming a widow is one of the most traumatic life events that a woman can experience. Yet, as this remarkable new collection reveals, each woman responds to that trauma differently. Here, forty-three widows tell their stories, in their own words. Some were widowed young, while others were married for decades. Some cared for their late partners through long terminal illnesses, while others lost their partners suddenly. Some had male partners, while others had female partners. Yet each of these women faced the same basic dilemma: how to go on living when a part of you is gone. Widows’ Words is arranged chronologically, starting with stories of women preparing for their partners’ deaths, followed by the experiences of recent widows still reeling from their fresh loss, and culminating in the accounts of women who lost their partners many years ago but still experience waves of grief. Their accounts deal honestly with feelings of pain, sorrow, and despair, and yet there are also powerful expressions of strength, hope, and even joy. Whether you are a widow yourself or have simply experienced loss, you will be sure to find something moving and profound in these diverse tales of mourning, remembrance, and resilience.

"A compelling origin story of a time that really wasn’t so long ago but through the lens of tragedy feels like forever. Kobe-ologists will devour this book, reveling in the anecdotes about his intensity & the engaging game recaps." —Associated Press “Every superhero needs an origin story.” –Jeff Pearlman The inside look at one of the most captivating and consequential figures in our culture—with never-before-heard interviews. Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. The tragedy of that helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter Gianna, unveiled the full breadth and depth of his influence on our culture, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an insight into Kobe that no other analysis has. In The Rise, readers will travel from the neighborhood streets of Southwest Philadelphia—where Kobe’s father, Joe, became a local basketball standout—to the Bryant family’s isolation in Italy, where Kobe spent his formative years, to the leafy suburbs of Lower Merion, where Kobe’s legend was born. The story will trace his career and life at Lower Merion—he led the Aces to the 1995-96 Pennsylvania state championship, a dramatic underdog run for a team with just one star player—and the run-up to the 1996 NBA draft, where Kobe’s dream of playing pro basketball culminated in his acquisition by the Los Angeles Lakers. In researching and writing The Rise, Mike Sielski had a terrific advantage over other writers who have attempted to chronicle Kobe’s life: access to a series of never-before-released interviews with him during his senior season and early days in the NBA. For a quarter century, these tapes and transcripts preserved Kobe’s thoughts, dreams, and goals from his teenage years, and they contained insights into and told stories about him that have never been revealed before. This is more than a basketball book. This is an exploration of the identity and making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him—the essence of the man before he truly became a man.

"American Hardcore sets the record straight about the last great American subculture"—Paper magazine Steven Blush's "definitive treatment of Hardcore Punk" (Los Angeles Times) changed the way we look at Punk Rock. The Sony Picture Classics–distributed documentary American Hardcore premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. This revised and expanded second edition contains hundreds of new bands, thirty new interviews, flyers, a new chapter ("Destroy Babylon"), and a new art gallery with over 125 rare photos and images.

This novel features all the thrilling adventure readers will expect from the Marvel brand, backed up by the young-adult cred of #1 New York Times bestselling author Margaret Stohl. Uncover a new side of the Marvel Universe, accessible to old fans and new readers alike, as Stohl weaves an unforgettable story through the world of the Black Widow.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.