This classic collection includes the title story, acclaimed as Asimov's single finest Robot tale, and now made into a Hollywood movie starring Robin Williams. Each of the eleven stories here sparkle with characteristic Asimov inventiveness and imagination.

Examines the impact of the 1976 bicentennial on the way Americans celebrate the nation's past

There always seemed to be an adventure to be had and a story to be told, written or remembered! Pursuing a dream to travel, see amazing places, meet wonderful people from all walks of life, and sharing thoughts and experiences in my journals was the best way to memorialize it! Starting in my early youth, fantasizing about travel and adventure from books, movies to re-enacting them with make shift forts, rafts, and friends, a little "Walter Mitty-esque"! It was amazing to read our old encyclopedias, looking at world history and maps, learning about legendary figures! I wanted to be a writer, an artist, a singer, an athlete...lead a cavalry charge, swing from tree to tree, climb the highest peaks, cross the great divide, etc...endless dreams. At the age of 17, I was fully grown and asserting my young adulthood, with a say in my life decisions about my future education, activities, and travel! One of my best friends and I took off for NYC, Boston, and Walden Pond the summer before our senior year in high school for a TRULY awakening experience!!! A year later in college at Alfred State together with some other friends, 2 years later off to Arizona State with another friend, back east to SUNY Oswego, Outward Bound program in North Carolina and ultimately off to Bruges, Belgium to end my senior year of college and beyond... Did I say MIND-BLOWING, 5 years later and 22... on roads less traveled! Come join the ride and or continue on your own journey!!!

From the acclaimed poet—a refreshing, singular collection of poems about boys and boyhood, historical cycles and personal history, memory and meaning. Bicentennial summons the world of Chiasson’s seventies childhood in Vermont: early VCRs, snow, erections, pizza, snowmobiles, high-school cliques, and the Bicentennial celebration, but his book is also an elegy for his father, whom he never knew and who died in 2009. In these poems, Chiasson movingly revisits the kind of autobiographical poems he wrote as a young man, but with a new existential awareness that individuals are always vanishing in time, and throughout the collection he ponders time’s conundrums. “All of history, even the Romans, / they happen later, tonight sleep tight,” he tells his sons at bedtime. “You’ll learn this later. Tonight, goodnight.” In the topsy-turvy world of Bicentennial, history has both happened and is waiting to happen; boys grow up to be men; men never forget what it is to be boys; and fatherhood is the best answer to fatherlessness.

By creating a snapshot of the Ghent community during its Bicentennial year, this collection of portraits provides a record for the future. Digital and smartphone technologies have enabled us to capture billions of fleeting moments yet, only a tiny fraction are intended to have lasting impact or to be printed and archived in any way. Photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are more readily to-hand, often serving as our only tactile document of history. "All of Us: Portraits of an American Bicentennial " is Richard Beaven's response to: a 'box of prints in the basement' from today which can be rediscovered and held by the community of tomorrow. Beaven's aim was to reflect a broad narrative of our town through those who live and work here. For nearly a year, he sought out and connected with possible subjects most of who were strangers beforehand. He photographed as diverse a representation of the community as he could find portraying each person in a similar way and describing each by name and their time connected with Ghent. He resisted any additional categorization ensuring an equal platform for all. The viewer is left to imagine and question for themselves what makes each subject unique or familiar based only on gesture, expression and setting. This was a humbling and deeply insightful journey for Beaven's. He would like to thank his Ghent neighbors for their time, support and the gift of understanding that we truly have more in common than that which separates us.

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, millions of Americans engaged with the past in brand-new ways. They became absorbed by historical miniseries like Roots, visited museums with new exhibits that immersed them in the past, propelled works of historical fiction onto the bestseller list, and participated in living history events across the nation. While many of these activities were sparked by the Bicentennial, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows that, in fact, they were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in Americans' relationship to history during the 1960s and 1970s. For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level: to consider the feelings and motivations of historic individuals and, most importantly, to use this in reevaluating both the past and the present. This thought-provoking book charts the era's shifting feeling for history, and explores how it serves as a foundation for the experience and practice of history making today.

Philip Kent fights for his new country during the Revolutionary War, in the historical family saga from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author. The engrossing follow-up to The Bastard finds Philip Kent standing as a Continental solider at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In a bold move, Kent has taken up arms for the future of his new family. Spirited and unwavering in his dedication to his adopted homeland, Kent fights in the most violent battles in America’s early history. As the Revolution rages, Kent’s story interweaves with the trials of a vivid cast of characters, both famous and unknown. The result is a tautly plotted epic novel that transports the reader into the thrilling adventure of a man’s fight for a new life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of John Jakes including rare images from the author’s personal collection.