Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans

Martin Booth

Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

At seven years old, Martin Booth found himself with all of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in 1952. This is his memoir of that youth, a time when he had access to corners of the colony normally closed to a gweilo, a pale fellow like him. From the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, and from a drunken child molester to the Queen of Kowloon (the crazed tramp who may have been a Romanov), Martin saw it all--but his memoir illustrates a deeper challenge in his warring parents. This is an intimate and powerful memory of a place and time now past.

Tom Gjelten

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause

In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account of their struggles and adventures across five generations, Gjelten brings to life the larger story of Cuba's fight for freedom, its tortured relationship with America, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the violent division of the Cuban nation.

John M., III Jones, Robert C. Rowland

Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War

President Ronald Reagan's famous address to the Houses of Parliament is now considered--in its spirit if not in its actual words--to be the initial enunciation of his "Evil Empire" stance. In this important volume by two experienced rhetorical scholars, Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones offer a historical-descriptive treatment that includes both rhetorical analysis and a narrative of the drafting of the speech. They consider Reagan's focus on "ultimate definition," "dialectical engagement," and other rhetorical tools in crafting and presenting the momentous address. They also note the irony of Reagan's use of Leon Trotsky's phrase "ash-heap of history" to predict the demise of Communism.Rowland and Jones present three reasons for the importance of this speech. First, it offers new insights into President Reagan himself, through a view of his role in the drafting of the speech as well as the ideas it contains. Second, the speech is an act of rhetorical history, and its analysis helps recover a significant rhetorical artifact. Finally, the address ultimately expresses a rhetorical framework for the Cold War that systematically subverted the narrative, ideology, and values of ...