A history of England's Premier Anvil Maker Ca. 1800-1860

Six-year-old Anna Pellowski’s older siblings, Jacob, Franciszek, Barney, Mary and Pauline are exposed to English at school, but only Polish is spoken at home. The younger children—Anna, Julian, Anton barely know a word of their new country’s language, but then neither do many of their neighbors. When the family goes to town to celebrate the 100th birthday of the United States, the speaker gives his speech in a mix of German, Polish, Bohemian and Norwegian! Some years before, in the mid 1800’s, Anna’s mother, father and brother Baby Jacob had come from Poland to live in a tiny sod house in Western Wisconsin and establish the very first farm in the entire Latsch Valley. Now the growing family lives in a real house, with neighbors on every side, and the world for quietly curious Anna is filled with fascinating possibilities—as well as lots of hard work. Sometimes she dreams of going back to the Poland she is always hearing about, but increasingly she realizes that life in Latsch Valley, with its rich cultural rhythm of work, play and religious faith, holds everything she could possibly want.

We are all somewhere in the Blacksmith's shop. We are either on the scrap pile, in the Master's hands on the anvil, or in the tool chest. (Some of us have been in all three.) In this collection of writings, best-selling author Max Lucado takes us on a tour of the “shop.” We'll examine all tools and look in all corners, from the shelves to the workbench, from the water to the fire. And for you who make the journey—who leave the heap and enter the fire, dare to be pounded on God's anvil, and doggedly seek to discover your own purpose—take courage, for you await the privilege of being called “God's chosen instruments.” This new edition includes discussion questions and a new foreword from the author.

Discover the thrill of working with hot metal and creating your own pieces. This book shows you how: with lavish photographs, it captures the excitement of working at the fire and explains the techniques to get you started. Drawing on traditional methods, it encourages you to develop your own style and to design your own tools and creations. Step-by-step instructions to shaping, bending, splitting and drawing down hot metal are given along with advice on traditional methods to fasten metal pieces together. Projects included in this new book are making a hanging basket bracket and a toasting fork. Aimed at blacksmiths, sculptors, metal workers and farriers, Creative Blacksmithing explains the techniques required to get started, how to make your own tools and tongs and how to help create your own designs, in particular leaves and organic forms. Superbly illustrated with 176 colour photographs.

"Land of Smoke is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Argentinian authors." – Samanta Schweblin, author of Seven Empty Houses Dazzling, hallucinatory short stories by a rediscovered Argentinian contemporary of García Márquez, whose groundbreaking novel January is being published in English for the first time Resplendent with otherworldly imagery and beguiling prose, Land of Smoke presents a uniquely compelling voice in Latin American literature. An old man wakes up one morning to find that his beloved garden, the envy of all his neighbours, is floating away with him on board. A young woman moves to Buenos Aires, bringing with her a replacement head. A meek German missionary leaves Paraguay for the Pampas, completely unprepared for what he will encounter there. Dazzling and hallucinatory, the stories collected here recall the masters of magical realism ­– but with Gallardo’s distinctive, idiosyncratic slant.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler—hailed by The New Yorker as “a virtuoso of waking dreams”—comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. "Remarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient." —The New York Times Book Review In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as “Cat ’n’ Mouse” reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils—a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part one, “Vanishing Acts,” features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend’s troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into “the kingdom of forbidden things.” Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two’s “Impossible Architectures,” where domes enclose whole cities, and a king’s master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, “Heretical Histories” presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. “A Precursor of the Cinema” proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing “The Wizard of West Orange” a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch—but success brings disturbing consequences. Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits—and occasionally beyond.

IN THIS SWEEPING, monumental work of American history,journalist Michael J. Ybarra tells the story of Senator PatMcCarran's extraordinary career for the first time, and he vividlyre-creates a passionate era of politics that reshaped America andechoes to this day. Brilliantly researched and energeticallywritten, Washington Gone Crazy makes a significant newcontribution to our understanding of the United States in thetwentieth century.McCarran was one of the most shrewd and powerful--andvindictive--lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthygave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but itwas McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws,held the hearings, and bullied the State and Justice Departmentsinto doing his bidding. McCarran was consumed with looking forCommunists in Washington and his obsession almost consumedthe country.The son of illiterate Irish immigrants, McCarran was born in 1876in Nevada, where he grew up to be a sheepherder who taughthimself the law around the campfire, becoming a legendarydefense attorney and judge. After struggling for years against thelocal Democratic political machine, McCarran rode FranklinRoosevelt's landslide into the U.S. Senate in 1932--and brokeranks with Roosevelt during the New Deal's first week. But it wasPresident Harry Truman who would become McCarran's realnemesis. A master of parliamentary procedure, McCarran turnedhis Senate Judiciary Committee into a virtual government withinthe government. McCarran worked with J. Edgar Hoover toundermine the Truman Administration before McCarthy even gotto Washington. He created the most far-reaching anti-sedition lawever enacted in America (the McCarran Internal Security Act),which filled Ellis Island with immigrants alleged to be subversivesand set up concentration camps to hold suspected traitors in thecase of a national emergency. McCarran's Senate Internal SecuritySubcommittee cowed the State Department into sacrificing thecareers of diplomats accused of helping the Communists take overChina. McCarran virtually blackmailed more than one attorneygeneral into carrying out his policies. From Capitol Hill to theUnited Nations, from union halls to Hollywood, McCarran's wrathbroke careers and lives and ultimately, in a self-destructive fit ofpique, cost his party control of the Senate. Ybarra's even-handednarrative shows that McCarran was ultimately half right: Therereally were Communists in Washington--but it was the hunt forthem that did the real damage.

In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we’re at risk of cultural collapse. Jacobs—renowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—pinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Drawing on a vast frame of reference—from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Ireland’s cultural rebirth—Jacobs suggests how the cycles of decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’ career, but one of the most important works of our time.

This is the absolutely guaranteed 100% mostly true story of Terry Bradshaw: the man who gained sports immortality as the first quarterback to win four Super Bowls -- and the man who later became America's most popular sports broadcaster. IT'S ONLY A GAME "I had a real job once," begins a memoir as honest, unexpected, and downright hysterical as Bradshaw himself. From his humble beginnings in Shreveport, Louisiana, to his success as the centerpiece of the highest-rated football studio show in television history, Terry has always understood the importance of hard work. A veritable jack-of-all-trades, he has probably held more jobs than any other football Hall of Famer ever: pipeline worker, youth minister, professional singer, actor, television and radio talk show host, and now one of the nation's most popular speakers. But let's not forget one of the reasons why so many people know and love Terry Bradshaw: he won four Super Bowls! In It's Only A Game, Terry brings the reader right into the huddle and describes the game from the bottom of a two-ton pile to the top of the sports world. You'll sit right on the fifty-yard line and watch as Terry earns the title world's greatest benchwarmer. And you'll also hear about the single greatest play in pro football -- the Immaculate Reception -- as he never saw it. It's Only A Game is much more than a collection of Terry Bradshaw's favorite and funniest stories, it is the personal account of a great man's search for life before and after football...as only Terry could tell it.