The Bay Rats

Have you ever wondered about going back, you know, living your life over again — a redo, if you will? What would you say if such an opportunity surfaced? I'm sure each of us has pondered such an event at least once in our lives. I know I have. After all, time has a way of moving awfully slowly while pulling on a clam rake. The fact is the Great South Bay and her white caps have always had a way of bringing the what-ifs out of me. I sometimes thought I'd probably leave well enough alone. Heck, I liked what I did. Yes, it was difficult, all right, but I enjoyed the challenge. Scratching out a living had never been an easy undertaking, and like a lot of things, it became harder over time. Islanders knew what was expected of them out there on that bay and were willing to accept her demands. We were also happy to receive its rewards. But like it's been said, nothing lasts forever. Our world, Long Island's shellfish business, began to change. I suppose you could say it began to do what most things do when their brought up from the bottom — smell. The stink came about quicker than most of us baymen ever thought it would. As the inevitable end of a once-great era drifted closer, digger after digger began lifting anchor. However, a few did hold tight, refusing to alter course. As we watched our once peaceful, always beautiful way of life drift off, we cringed as a different, much harsher way of surviving sailed up. As the business we knew spoiled, we stood fast, trying our best to fend off the inevitable. The battles that followed, as hopeless as they eventually were, did offer us something — another day. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe I would tweak a few things!

Have you ever wondered about going back, you know, living your life over again -- a redo, if you will?What would you say if such an opportunity surfaced? I'm sure each of us has pondered such an event at least once in our lives. I know I have. After all, time has a way of moving awfully slowly while pulling on a clam rake. The fact is the Great South Bay and her white caps have always had a way of bringing the what-ifs out of me. I sometimes thought I'd probably leave well enough alone. Heck, I liked what I did. Yes, it was difficult, all right, but I enjoyed the challenge. Scratching out a living had never been an easy undertaking, and like a lot of things, it became harder over time. Islanders knew what was expected of them out there on that bay and were willing to accept her demands. We were also happy to receive its rewards. But like it's been said, nothing lasts forever.Our world, Long Island's shellfish business, began to change. I suppose you could say it began to do what most things do when their brought up from the bottom -- smell. The stink came about quicker than most of us baymen ever thought it would.As the inevitable end of a once-great era drifted closer, digger after digger began lifting anchor. However, a few did hold tight, refusing to alter course. As we watched our once peaceful, always beautiful way of life drift off, we cringed as a different, much harsher way of surviving sailed up. As the business we knew spoiled, we stood fast, trying our best to fend off the inevitable. The battles that followed, as hopeless as they eventually were, did offer us something -- another day.Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe I would tweak a few things!

Journey back to the wonder and hope of your own childhood―wherever it may have been―with this collection of recollections and reflections that blend memoir, history, nostalgia, and photos from back in the day.

**Vulture's The Best Books of 2016** **Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2016** **featured in NPR's Guide to 2016's Great Reads** The powerful account of one writer's unlikely friendship with his childhood bully, now the president of a motorcycle club in one of America's most dangerous cities. Once upon a time, Alex Abramovich and Trevor Latham were mortal enemies: miniature outlaws in a Long Island elementary school, perpetually at each other's throats. Then they lost track of each other. Decades later, when they met again, Abramovich was a writer and Latham had become President of the East Bay Rats, a motorcycle club in Oakland. In 2010, Abramovich moved to California to immerse himself in Latham's world - one of fight clubs, booze-filled nights, and beat-downs on the city's streets. But dangerous, dysfunctional Oakland was also becoming one of America's most rapidly gentrifying cities, and the questions Abramovich had arrived with were thrown into brutal relief: How do we live with the burden of violence? How do we overcome it? Do we overcome it? As Trevor, the Rats, and the city they live in careen between crises and moments of renaissance, Abramovich explores issues of friendship, family, history, and destiny - and looks at what happens when those things fail. Bullies is at once a vivid, visceral narrative of an unusual friendship and an incisive portrait of a beautiful, terrible city.

Here, biologists and statisticians come together in an interdisciplinary synthesis with the aim of developing new methods to overcome the most significant challenges and constraints faced by quantitative biologists seeking to model demographic rates.

After spending more of his youth tugging on clam rakes than he did in classrooms, and most of his adult years dealing with the not so honest characters of New York Citys toughest fish markets, Evert Bay Scott decided to write of it. He wanted to tell of his life and take his readers out there with him, along the shores of Long Island. Mr. Scott takes you on board telling about the run-ins, characters and con men that he came to know on the darker side of the clamming game; the side he wound up on. So hold on tight, this adventure on the Great South Bay is about to set sail!

Sarah and her brother have grown up next to the world’s largest garbage dump on Staten Island in New York City. Little do they know, thousands of rodents at the dump have mutated into gruesome, killer rats and one of the workers there has just been badly mauled. Without mercy, the rats wreak havoc and devistation upon the once-peaceful neighborhood, entering homes through kitchen sinks and toilets. Now the entire city stands on the brink of total infestation. Can the kids save millions of innocent people from the approaching and unrelenting rat horde?