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Secret Historian
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Download or read book Secret Historian written by Justin Spring and published by Farrar Straus Giroux. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from the secret diaries and journals of novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, this is a reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, documenting his experiences in vivid (and often very funny) detail. After leaving academe to become tattoo artist Phil Sparrow, Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat homosexual pornography as Phil Andros. An archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided biographer Justin Spring with the material for an illuminating life-and-times biography. More than merely the story of one remarkable man, this is a moving portrait of gay life long before gay liberation.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Secret Historian written by Justin Spring and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2010 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very funny) detail. After leaving the world of academe to become Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street, Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his name and identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat pro-homosexual pornography under the name of Phil Andros. Until today he has been known only as Phil Sparrow—but an extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided Justin Spring with the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. More than merely the story of one remarkable man, Justin Spring's Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation.
Book Synopsis The Historian by : Elizabeth Kostova
Download or read book The Historian written by Elizabeth Kostova and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The record-breaking phenomenon from Elizabeth Kostova is a celebrated masterpiece that "refashioned the vampire myth into a compelling contemporary novel, a late-night page-turner" (San Francisco Chronicle). Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family’s past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe—in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world. “Part thriller, part history, part romance...Kostova has a keen sense of storytelling and she has a marvelous tale to tell.” —Baltimore Sun
Download or read book The Walls Have Ears written by Helen Fry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the elaborate and brilliantly sustained World War II intelligence operation by which Hitler's generals were tricked into giving away vital Nazi secrets At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners' cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites--and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation. On arrival at stately-homes-turned-prisons like Trent Park, high-ranking German generals and commanders were given a "phony" interrogation, then treated as "guests," wined and dined at exclusive clubs, and encouraged to talk. And so it was that the Allies got access to some of Hitler's most closely guarded secrets--and from those most entrusted to protect them.
Download or read book Hidden History written by Gerry Docherty and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think you know about British history and the causes of the First World War? Think again. This fascinating and gripping study of events at the turn of the Twentieth Century is a remarkable insight into how political and social factors that we widely accept to be the causes of The Great War, were really just a construct put together by a very small, but powerful, political elite... 'Thought-provoking . . . Docherty and Macgregor do not mince their words . . . their arguments are powerful' -- Britain at War 'Simply astonishing' -- ***** Reader review 'Very illuminating' -- ***** Reader review 'You simply MUST read this book' -- ***** Reader review 'This is a page-turner' -- ***** Reader review *********************************************************************************** Hidden History uniquely exposes those responsible for the First World War. It reveals how accounts of the war's origins have been deliberately falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of very rich and powerful men in London responsible for the most heinous crime perpetrated on humanity. For ten years, they plotted the destruction of Germany as the first stage of their plan to take control of the world. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was no chance happening. It lit a fuse that had been carefully set through a chain of command stretching from Sarajevo through Belgrade and St Petersburg to that cabal in London. Our understanding of these events has been firmly trapped in a web of falsehood and duplicity carefully constructed by the victors at Versailles in 1919 and maintained by compliant historians ever since. The official version is fatally flawed, warped by the volume of evidence they destroyed or concealed from public view. Hidden History poses a tantalising challenge. The authors ask only that you examine the evidence they lay before you . . .
Book Synopsis The Secret World by : Christopher Andrew
Download or read book The Secret World written by Christopher Andrew and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 1019 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A comprehensive exploration of spying in its myriad forms from the Bible to the present day . . . Easy to dip into, and surprisingly funny.” —Ben Macintyre in The New York Times Book Review The history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful WWII intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada. Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of WWI, the grasp of intelligence shown by US President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and eighteenth-century British statesmen. In the first global history of espionage ever written, distinguished historian and New York Times–bestselling author Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia—and shows us its continuing relevance. “Accurate, comprehensive, digestible and startling . . . a stellar achievement.” —Edward Lucas, The Times “For anyone with a taste for wide-ranging and shrewdly gossipy history—or, for that matter, for anyone with a taste for spy stories—Andrew’s is one of the most entertaining books of the past few years.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Remarkable for its scope and delightful for its unpredictable comparisons . . . there are important lessons for spymasters everywhere in this breathtaking and brilliant book.” —Richard J. Aldrich, Times Literary Supplement “Fans of Fleming and Furst will delight in this skillfully related true-fact side of the story.” —Kirkus Reviews “A crowning triumph of one of the most adventurous scholars of the security world.” —Financial Times Includes illustrations
Book Synopsis The Secret History of Wonder Woman by : Jill Lepore
Download or read book The Secret History of Wonder Woman written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the origin of one of the world’s most iconic superheroes hides a fascinating family story—and a crucial history of feminism in the twentieth-century. “Everything you might want in a page-turner … skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history—fun.” —Entertainment Weekly The Secret History of Wonder Woman is a tour de force of intellectual and cultural history. Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore argues, is the missing link in the history of the struggle for women’s rights—a chain of events that begins with the women’s suffrage campaigns of the early 1900s and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston. The Marston family story is a tale of drama, intrigue, and irony. In the 1920s, Marston and his wife brought into their home Olive Byrne, the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century. Even while celebrating conventional family life in a regular column that Marston and Byrne wrote for Family Circle, they themselves pursued lives of extraordinary nonconformity. Marston, internationally known as an expert on truth—he invented the lie detector test—lived a life of secrets, only to spill them on the pages of Wonder Woman. Includes a new afterword with fresh revelations based on never before seen letters and photographs from the Marston family’s papers, and 161 illustrations and 16 pages in full color.
Book Synopsis The Immortality Key by : Brian C. Muraresku
Download or read book The Immortality Key written by Brian C. Muraresku and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience! A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations. The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle. Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive. If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at UPenn and MIT, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity. The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots. Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the NYT bestselling author of America Before.
Book Synopsis Restricted Data by : Alex Wellerstein
Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.
Download or read book Zero Fail written by Carol Leonnig and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This is one of those books that will go down as the seminal work—the determinative work—in this field. . . . Terrifying.”—Rachel Maddow The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming mismanagement of the Obama and Trump years, right up to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6—by the Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Carol Leonnig has been reporting on the Secret Service for The Washington Post for most of the last decade, bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today—from a toxic work culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders, who put protecting the agency’s once-hallowed image before fixing its flaws. But the Secret Service wasn’t always so troubled. The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by its failure to protect the president on that fateful day in Dallas, this once-sleepy agency was radically transformed into an elite, highly trained unit that would redeem itself several times, most famously in 1981 by thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and excellence would not last forever. By Barack Obama’s presidency, the once-proud Secret Service was running on fumes and beset by mistakes and alarming lapses in judgment: break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing into the windows of the residence while confused agents stood by, and a massive prostitution scandal among agents in Cartagena, to name just a few. With Donald Trump’s arrival, a series of promised reforms were cast aside, as a president disdainful of public service instead abused the Secret Service to rack up political and personal gains. To explore these problems in the ranks, Leonnig interviewed dozens of current and former agents, government officials, and whistleblowers who put their jobs on the line to speak out about a hobbled agency that’s in desperate need of reform. “I will be forever grateful to them for risking their careers,” she writes, “not because they wanted to share tantalizing gossip about presidents and their families, but because they know that the Service is broken and needs fixing. By telling their story, they hope to revive the Service they love.”
Book Synopsis Skulls and Keys by : David Alan Richards
Download or read book Skulls and Keys written by David Alan Richards and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mysterious, highly influential hidden world of Yale’s secret societies is revealed in a definitive and scholarly history. Secret societies have fundamentally shaped America’s cultural and political landscapes. In ways that are expected but never explicit, the bonds made through the most elite of secret societies have won members Pulitzer Prizes, governorships, and even presidencies. At the apex of these institutions stands Yale University and its rumored twenty-six secret societies. Tracing a history that has intrigued and enthralled for centuries, alluring the attention of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Skulls and Keys traces the history of Yale’s societies as they set the foundation for America’s future secret clubs and helped define the modern age of politics. But there is a progressive side to Yale’s secret societies that we rarely hear about, one that, in the cultural tumult of the nineteen-sixties, resulted in the election of people of color, women, and gay men, even in proportions beyond their percentages in the class. It’s a side that is often overlooked in favor of sensational legends of blood oaths and toe-curling conspiracies. Dave Richards, an alum of Yale, sheds some light on the lesser known stories of Yale’s secret societies. He takes us through the history from Phi Beta Kappa in the American Revolution (originally a social and drinking society) through Skull and Bones and its rivals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While there have been articles and books on some of those societies, there has never been a scholarly history of the system as a whole.
Book Synopsis Secret History, Second Edition by : Nick Cullather
Download or read book Secret History, Second Edition written by Nick Cullather and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this book, published in 1999, was well-received, but interest in it has surged in recent years. It chronicles an early example of “regime change” that was based on a flawed interpretation of intelligence and proclaimed a success even as its mistakes were becoming clear. Since 1999, a number of documents relating to the CIA’s activities in Guatemala have been declassified, and a truth and reconciliation process has unearthed other reports, speeches, and writings that shed more light on the role of the United States. For this edition, the author has selected and annotated twenty-one documents for a new documentary Appendix, including President Clinton’s apology to the people of Guatemala.
Book Synopsis The Perfect Nazi by : Martin Davidson
Download or read book The Perfect Nazi written by Martin Davidson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if you found out that your grandfather had been a Nazi SS officer? This is the confession that Martin Davidson received from his mother upon the death of demanding, magnetic grandfather Bruno Langbehn. The Perfect Nazi is Davidson's exploration of his family's darkest secret. As Davidson dove into his research, drawing on an astonishing cache of personal documents as well as eyewitness accounts of this historical period, he learned that Bruno's story moved lock-step in time with the rise and fall of the Nazi party: from his upbringing in a fiercely military environment amid the aftermath of World War I, to his joining the Nazi party in 1926 at the age of nineteen, more than six years before Hitler came to power, to his postwar involvement with the Werewolves, the gang of SS stalwarts who vowed to keep on after the defeat of Nazism. Davidson realized that his grandfather was in many ways the "perfect Nazi," his individual experiences emblematic of the generation of Germans who would plunge the world into such darkness. But he also realized that every fact he uncovered was a terrible truth he himself would have to come to terms with...
Book Synopsis Who is the Historian? by : Nigel A. Raab
Download or read book Who is the Historian? written by Nigel A. Raab and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who Is the Historian? highlights the skill set imparted to those pursuing a historical education, and clearly demonstrates the value of the historian in the contemporary world
Book Synopsis The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by : Robert Kirk
Download or read book The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies written by Robert Kirk and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Secret Commonwealth is a guide to fairies, doppelgängers, wraiths, and other beings that its author Robert Kirk, an unusually inquisitive seventeenth-century Scottish minister, identifies as being ?of a middle nature betwixt man and angel.? Circulated in manuscript by its author, whose religious and scientific interests drew him at some genuine personal risk to investigate the hidden realities of the spiritual world, this short work was first published by Sir Walter Scott and then again in the late nineteenth century in an edition prepared by the famous collector of fairy tales, Andrew Lang, and dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson. Nonetheless, Kirk’s work, which is a fine example of English prose, an important document in the history of ideas, and an enchanting introduction to fairy lore has remained a rarity"--Publisher description.
Book Synopsis The Secret History of MI6 by : Keith Jeffery
Download or read book The Secret History of MI6 written by Keith Jeffery and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authorized history of the world's oldest and most storied foreign intelligence service, drawing extensively on hitherto secret documents Britain's Special Intelligence Service, commonly called MI6, is not only the oldest and most storied foreign intelligence unit in the world - it is also the only one to open its archives to an outside researcher. The result, in this authorized history, is an unprecedented and revelatory look at an organization that essentially created, over the course of two world wars, the modern craft of spying. Here are the true stories that inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond's novels and John le Carré George Smiley novels. Examining innovations from invisible ink and industrial-scale cryptography to dramatic setbacks like the Nazi sting operations to bag British operatives, this groundbreaking history is as engrossing as any thriller - and much more revealing. "Perhaps the most authentic account one will ever read about how intelligence really works." -The Washington Times
Book Synopsis A Spectacular Secret by : Jacqueline Goldsby
Download or read book A Spectacular Secret written by Jacqueline Goldsby and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This incisive study takes on one of the grimmest secrets in America's national life—the history of lynching and, more generally, the public punishment of African Americans. Jacqueline Goldsby shows that lynching cannot be explained away as a phenomenon peculiar to the South or as the perverse culmination of racist politics. Rather, lynching—a highly visible form of social violence that has historically been shrouded in secrecy—was in fact a fundamental part of the national consciousness whose cultural logic played a pivotal role in the making of American modernity. To pursue this argument, Goldsby traces lynching's history by taking up select mob murders and studying them together with key literary works. She focuses on three prominent authors—Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Stephen Crane, and James Weldon Johnson—and shows how their own encounters with lynching influenced their analyses of it. She also examines a recently assembled archive of evidence—lynching photographs—to show how photography structured the nation's perception of lynching violence before World War I. Finally, Goldsby considers the way lynching persisted into the twentieth century, discussing the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the ballad-elegies of Gwendolyn Brooks to which his murder gave rise. An empathic and perceptive work, A Spectacular Secret will make an important contribution to the study of American history and literature.
