Publisher description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for. Spanning two turbulent decades, South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest: a masterpiece from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. Praise for South of Broad “Vintage Pat Conroy . . . a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage.”—The Washington Post “Conroy remains a magician of the page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Richly imagined . . . These characters are gallant in the grand old-fashioned sense, devoted to one another and to home. That siren song of place has never sounded so sweet.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “A lavish, no-holds-barred performance.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A lovely, often thrilling story.”—The Dallas Morning News “A pleasure to read . . . a must for Conroy’s fans.”—Associated Press

Fred Shero, the head coach of the teams forever remembered as the Broad Street Bullies, chose the hours before Game 4 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals to inscribe this on the locker room blackboard: Win together now and we walk together forever. Well, of course, that team went on to win not one, but two Stanley Cups. Shero could not have been more prophetic. Thirty years later, members of those Cup teams are still revered in the city of Philadelphia and throughout the hockey world, for that matter. In Walking Together Forever: The Broad Street Bullies Then and Now author Jim Jackson wants to bring people back to those glorious days of the 1974 and 1975 Stanley Cup championships through the telling of so many of the incredible anecdotes that emanated from the many memorable characters that created the glory: Walking Together Forever: The Broad Street Bullies Then and Now will follow the major principals of the Cup wins, taking readers through the remainder of those heroes' hockey careers, into retirement, and up to the present. Many of the stories of their personal trials, travails, and successes since hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup are as compelling as those from the championship years themselves. In the eyes of hockey fans, members of those teams have indeed walked together forever.

A new collection of essays exploring class, whiteness, family, and nostalgia, for better and for worse. I have a nostalgia problem, and I'm not the only American who does. So writes Jennifer Niesslein in the introduction to Dreadful Sorry. But what, exactly, is the problem? Having grown up hand-to-mouth in small-town Pennsylvania and suburban Virginia, Niesslein is keenly aware of both past challenges and relative privilege. In this set of engaging, personal stories, Niesslein digs into how her own sense of self is rooted in nostalgic narratives of her upbringing and of American history writ large. With often wry candor, she address thorny questions of family trauma and the problematic calculus of respectability politics--as well as the lighter nostalgias offered by high school reunions and the plain fact of a long and enduring marriage. In an era of widespread re-evaluation of Confederate monuments and the apparatus of white supremacy, Niesslein aims to diligently scrub out nostalgia that casts the past in a rosy glow, while remaining open-hearted and hopeful that nostalgia--our shared longing for a lost time--can help illuminate our understanding of the present and point the way toward a better future. Charming and frank, this suite of personal essays digs deep, offering truths that will resonate with readers across the spectrum curious about the persistence of memory and our collective longing for days gone by.

This book features various accounts of a cholera outbreak in West London that killed over 500 people in ten days during the late summer of 1854. What had caused the outbreak? Local authorities of the time were flummoxed about the mode by which the disease had spread. What has become known as “the Broad Street pump episode” is one of the most significant early examples of a team-oriented investigation into the causes of an epidemic—a hallmark of epidemiology and public health today. This collection includes documents from the five separate investigations that were conducted into the possible causes. John Snow and Henry Whitehead made independent investigations; inspectors from the General Board of Health and the Sewer Commission, as well as a parish inquiry committee, also scrutinized the outbreak. This volume traces competing notions of how this disease was transmitted, starting with the first pandemic, which reached England in 1831, and it documents how they developed over time.

Wedged between the hustle of New York and the grandeur of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia is America's smallest big city, America's biggest small city, and America's most American city. It is also a city in flux. Bruce Buschel is a native Philadelphian who revisits his hometown and, in doing so, revisits his personal history and the city's complex identity. Buschel was born on Broad Street, his father died on Broad Street; he flunked out of college, sold cameras, and purchased drugs on Broad Street; he wrote for a newspaper on Broad Street, touched JFK's left hand on Broad Street, and met his second wife when she worked on Broad Street. On his thirteen-mile walk down the boulevard, Buschel talks to everyone from the old Italian tailor down the corner from the Chinese Mennonite pastor to the Jewish funeral home director across the street from Bilal, the Muslim restaurateur. On Broad Street, he finds livestock just a few steps from Joe Frazier's gym. The newly dubbed "Gayborhood" is just a stone's throw from the home of the heartbreaking Eagles. A world-class ballet rehearses at the Rock School while outcast rockers practice at the Paul Green School. The gas station attendant on Broad Street may be a recent immigrant, but he has already adopted the brusque manners and terse responses of a fourth-generation Philadelphian. Naturally, William Penn oversees the whole insecure, glorious mess from his perch atop City Hall. After 9/11, Americans were drawn to Philly's authenticity and history. After decades of decay, something positive is happening, and dyspeptic Philadelphians are trying to adjust. A lot has changed since Buschel grew up there, but he hasn't managed to shake the attitudes instilled in childhood -- mere mention of the '64 Phillies (and one of the greatest collapses in baseball history) still stings. He has retained his irreverent sense of humor, his distrust of authority, his ambivalence about New York, his disdain for New Jersey, and, above all, his sense of loyalty -- if not outright love -- for his native city.

The cradle of Jewish life in Philadelphia began with the establishment of the first synagogue, Mikveh Israel, in 1740. With the influx of many German Jews in the 1840s, the community expanded above Spring Garden Street into the Northern Liberties neighborhood. Urban settlement of Philadelphia's Jewish population during the last quarter of the nineteenth century shifted to North Broad Street when the economy improved for the city's residents after the Civil War. North Broad Street soon boasted two elegantly designed synagogues and the newly relocated Jewish Hospital from West Philadelphia. The Jewish Community around North Broad Street weaves the tale of the Jewish community in this part of Philadelphia through a collection of rare and stunning images. The construction of the North Broad Street subway in the 1920s and the row house Jewish community known as Logan are parts of this story. The development of business districts led to a more cohesive north and northwest Jewish community that allowed for satellite Jewish enclaves to flourish, complete with their own synagogues, bakeries, kosher meat markets, and hundreds of other shops that served the general population. In the 1950s, new neighborhoods, such as Mount Airy and West Oak Lane, alleviated an acute housing shortage at a time when 110,000 Jews lived in north-central and northwest Philadelphia.

"Disun Falodun and his bosom friend--Ige -- are young boys growing up within the squeeze and squalor of Makoko. As they sit on the banks of the Lagos Lagoon, they contemplate life on the other side of town--the exclusive district of the Metropolis covering Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and, Broad Street--that mysterious area, so distant, yet so close. Disun is the optimistic of the duo, resolute in his faith in a fair chance at success in Lagos, his ordinary background notwithstanding. Ige, on the other hand -- held by a vibrant, radical mind-- reasoning that the expectation of a fair chance was utopian, entrenches himself in the firm belief that the only reliable choices open to them were illicit. Both set out on a life journey, after making a silent bet as to which of their opposed doctrines is superior."--Author's website.