In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: . . . And Other Complaints
A couple years back, I was at the Phoenix airport bar. It was empty except for one heavy-set, gray bearded, grizzled guy who looked like he just rode his donkey into town after a long day of panning for silver in them thar hills. He ordered a Jack Daniels straight up, and that's when I overheard the young guy with the earring behind the bar asking him if he had ID. At first the old sea captain just laughed. But the guy with the twinkle in his ear asked again. At this point it became apparent that he was serious. Dan Haggerty's dad fired back, "You've got to be kidding me, son." The bartender replied, "New policy. Everyone has to show their ID."
In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London -- and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey -- under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum.
The most unlikely star of the air defense of England against the Nazis was an obsolete biplane known as the "Stringbag"--a version of the Fairey Swordfish that earned legendary battle honors. Endearing to its pilots for its maneuverability and simplicity, the Stringbag finally gets a well-deserved chronicle. From its design origins and early peacetime service to its rush into war action, this torpedo-spotting reconnaissance aircraft soon became the standard carrier-borne torpedo bomber, and participated in such crucial operations as the Bismarck attack, Taranto, Norway, and the Channel Dash.
Why Iceland?: How One of the World's Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown's Biggest Casualty
As late as the mid 1980s, Iceland’s economy revolved around little else than a semi-robust cod-fishing industry. By the end of the century, however, it had transformed itself into a major player in world finance, building an international banking empire worth twelve times its GDP. The tiny island nation of 300,000 was one of the global economy’s great success stories.
The British essayist and author Virginia Woolf was born into publishing, and her writings problematized the condition of the woman in a male-dominated society. With a close group of fellow writers, she developed a new, more personal way of telling stories, and she became a leader in the literary revolution that followed World War I.
