Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes

Blessin Adams (Author)

Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain

'Grimly fascinating ... engrossing' Daily Mail NINE HISTORIC CRIMES. ONE FAMILIAR OBSESSION. In early modern England, murder truly was most foul. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. Bookshops saw grisly stories of crime and death sell like hot cakes.This history unfolds the true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques, high court trials and so much more.In thrilling narrative, we follow a fugitive killer through the streets of London, citizen detectives clamouring to help officials close the net. We untangle the mystery of a suspected staged suicide through the newly emerging science of forensic pathology. We see a mother trying to clear her dead daughter's name while other women faced the accusations - sometimes true and sometimes not - of murdering their own children.These stories are pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious ...

Bronson Lemer (Author)

The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship

3,In this collection of interrelated essays, Bronson Lemer explores companionship through the lens of a queer veteran, focusing on the difficulty of forming true connections with others, including a "battle buddy" during basic training, the people he meets while teaching in China, and the spirit of a long-dead older sister. Lemer uses lessons from popular culture and literature--the globe-trotting exploits of fictional criminal Carmen Sandiego, the sexual exploration in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, the expatriate longing in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, just to name a few--as a means to think more broadly about the role of the outsider and how we navigate aimlessness while searching for stability and meaning. Lemer's distinct take on the veteran's story boldly engages the intersection of military narratives and queer culture, including examinations into the role of thirst traps in contemporary dating culture, the fears of long-term health damage caused by military service, and the ways in which intimate relationships can lead to a loss of self. Taken together, his essays illustrate how one queer veteran managed to carve out a path that led him, however awkwardly at times, closer to ...

Curtis Chin (Author)

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir

9,This "vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt" memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin's time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980's Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers). Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city's spiraling misfortunes; and where--between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions--he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself. Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung's, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a ...