Yesteryear I Lived In Paradise

This memoir, written by Myrtle Scharrer Betz (1895-1992), tells the story of Henry Scharrer (Myrtle's father), who homesteaded 156 acres on what is now Caladesi Island State Park off the gulf coast of Pinellas County, Florida. It is a rare and beautifully written first-person account spanning the time from 1883, when Henry first arrives in America from Switzerland, until his death in 1934. Historic photos, illustrations, a checklist of "Birds Seen On or Around Caladesi Island 1918-1935," and a "Timeline" addendum, complement and clarify the history, extending to the years before and after the narrative itself. Myrtle's stories, told with honesty and humility, provide insight into pioneer living as it transitioned into the Progressive and then the Depression Era. The chapters are organized into topics exactly as Myrtle hand wrote them in her 87th year. As the only child born at Caladesi Island, Myrtle developed into a capable woman who could garden, fish, hunt, cook, row, sail, swim, read and write. Her curiosity led her to learn, appreciate and respect the animals and plants of her island home and the sea surrounding it. The reader feels they are hearing the stories directly from Myrtle and will come away with deeper insights regarding the challenges, sorrows, discomforts, natural wonders, and joys of the people who prevailed in coastal Florida.

The first Latin American actor to become a superstar, Ramon Novarro was for years one of Hollywood's top actors. Born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, he arrived in America in 1916, a refugee from civil wars. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's biggest box office attractions, starring in now-classic films, including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's top leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and he became Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the “Latin Lover” category. Yet, despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's enduring hold on fame stems from his tragic death—his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween 1968 in what has become one of Hollywood's most infamous scandals. A lifelong bachelor, Novarro carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and to Catholicism. His murder shattered that persona. News reports revealed that the dashing screen hero had not only been gay, but he was dead at the hands of two young, male hustlers. Since then, details of his murder have achieved near mythic proportions, obscuring Novarro's professional legacy. Beyond Paradise presents a full picture of the man who made motion picture history. Including original interviews with Novarro's surviving friends, family, coworkers, and the two men convicted of his murder, this biography provides unique insights into an early Hollywood star—a man whose heart was forever in conflict with his image and whose myth continues to fascinate today.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

The fear of the unknown at war with the burning need to see distant shores... In the late 1800s, one man set out across an ocean in an ancient sailing vessel, determined to seek his family's fortune in a new land. What grew from his bravery and triumph is a family saga that spans several generations and countless homelands. Paradise on Earth is the intricately woven story of a family that left its native province of Punjab in the then British India (presently in Pakistan) for the breathtaking shores of Kenya and the beauty of its hinterlands. A tale of faith, family, and the entrepreneurial spirit is recorded here, along with awe-inspiring descriptions of the geography, its people, its history, and what it means to survive, adapt and thrive in a new land. Written first as a memoir for the generations that came after, this story is equal parts genealogy, history, and travelogue, sure to delight anyone who craves adventure.

The bestselling author of Deep Economy shows that we’re living on a fundamentally altered planet — and opens our eyes to the kind of change we’ll need in order to make our civilization endure. Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We’ve created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend—think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions of dollars it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we’ve managed to damage and degrade. We can’t rely on old habits any longer. Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back—on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change—fundamental change—is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.