![]() ![]() “Slavery wasn’t an aberration in an industrial economy slavery was its engine,” she reminds. ![]() Stewart and preacher David Walker to contemporaries like “rascal” Bill Clinton, sporting a “grin like a 1930s comic-strip scamp.” “To study the past is to unlock the prison of the present,” writes the author, noting recurrent debates about guns, abortion, and race. ![]() Lepore offers crisp, vivid portraits of individuals from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine to Liberator writer Maria W. ![]() The author recounts major events-the Revolution, Civil War, world wars, Vietnam, 9/11, and the war on terror-while emphasizing the importance of facts and evidence in the national story, as well as the roles of slavery (“America’s Achilles’ heel”) and women, both absent in the founding documents. In this mammoth, wonderfully readable history of the United States from Columbus to Trump, the author relies on primary sources to “let the dead speak for themselves,” creating an enthralling, often dramatic narrative of the American political experiment based on Thomas Jefferson’s “truths” of political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. “A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos,” writes Lepore (History/Harvard Univ. The celebrated New Yorker writer and Bancroft Prize winner tells the American story. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Below her, "dozens of alligators their icicle overbites and the awesome diamonds of their heads through 300,000-plus gallons of filtered water." Hilola's husband, who calls himself Chief Bigtree, provides the dramatic voiceover and follows her with a spotlight to build suspense. Four nights a week, Hilola climbs the ladder above the Gator Pit and takes a daredevil dive into danger. Mom Hilola Bigtree, the "swamp centaur," is the star performer and core of the family business, adept at the arcane art of alligator wrestling. ![]() Russell's setting, the outlandish and fading coastal Florida theme park from which the book takes it title, is inhabited by a clan of "Bigtrees," a self-invented showbiz tribe who have no Seminole or Miccosukee blood but adopt the costumes of buckskin vests, headbands, feathers and gator "fang" necklaces nonetheless. Her book has its roots in "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," a short story from her first collection, 2006's St. Stripped down, Swamplandia!, Karen Russell's debut novel, is one more young writer's saga of a dysfunctional family. ![]() ![]() ![]() Soon Cara will be in for the fight of her life-not just for herself and the boy she loves, but for the future of her planet.ĭo you ever finish a book and kind of falter for a moment? Your brain is telling you that maybe the plotline wasn’t perfect, or that the characters were too perfect, or that the writing style was not up there with literary giants like Charlotte Bronte or whoever. ![]() But Aelyx has been hiding the truth about the purpose of his exchange, and its potentially deadly consequences. ![]() She realizes that Aelyx isn’t just her only friend she’s fallen hard for him. Threatening notes appear in Cara’s locker, and a police officer has to escort her and Aelyx to class.Ĭara finds support in the last person she expected. She’s certain about one thing, though: no human boy is this good-looking.īut when Cara’s classmates get swept up by anti-L’eihr paranoia, Midtown High School suddenly isn’t safe anymore. Humans and L’eihrs have nearly identical DNA, but cold, infuriatingly brilliant Aelyx couldn’t seem more alien. Still, Cara isn’t sure what to think when she meets Aelyx. Cara’s blog following is about to skyrocket. ![]() Not only does she get a free ride to her dream college, she’ll have inside information about the mysterious L’eihrs that every journalist would kill for. Handpicked to host the first-ever L’eihr exchange student, Cara thinks her future is set. Now Cara Sweeney is going to be sharing a bathroom with one of them. ![]() |