Anonyponymous - The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words
In this clever and funny book, John Bemelmans Marciano illuminates the lives of these anonyponymous persons. A kind of encyclopedia of linguistic biographies, the book is arranged alphabetically, giving the stories of everyone from Abu “algorithm” Al-Khwarizmi to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Along with them you'll find the likes of Harry Shrapnel, Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, and many other people whose vernacular legacies have long outlived their memory.
One moment Joseph Schwartz is a happily retired tailor in 1949 Chicago. The next he’s a helpless stranger on Earth during the heyday of the first Galactic Empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, just a pebble in the sky, despised by all the other 200 million planets of the Empire because its people dare to claim it’s the original home of man. And Earth is poor, with great areas of radioactivity ruining much of its soil—so poor that everyone is sentenced to death at the age of sixty.
A lone gunman unleashes pandemonium when he shoots into a crowd of people in a public plaza in Indiana. Five people are killed in cold blood, shot through the head. But he leaves a perfect trail of evidence behind him, and soon the local police chief tracks him down. After his arrest, the shooter's only words are, 'Get Jack Reacher for me.' What could possibly connect this psychopath and the wandering dropout ex army cop?
The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence–unless, somehow, they can learn a new life. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher. Here is PAT CONROY’S extraordinary drama based on his own experience–the true story of a man who gave a year of his life to an island and the new life its people gave him.
Legends of The Kaw - The Folk-Lore of the Indians of the Kansas River Valley
The Kaw (or Kanza) are an American Indian people of the central Midwestern United States. The tribe known as "Kaw" have also been known as the "Wind People, " "People of water, " Kansa, Kaza, Kosa, and Kasa. Their tribal language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan language. The toponym "Kansas" was derived from the name of this tribe. The Kaw are closely related to the Osage Nation, with whom members often intermarried.
