Ocean State Libraries

"Film scholar Felix Funicello from Wishin' and Hopin' is confronted by the ghost of a Hollywood silent film director who invites him to revisit scenes from his past and gain insights into the lives of three women who indelibly shaped his life." -- "Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater, is confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood's silent...

A gripping narrative of the second and final war of independence that secured the nation's permanence and established its claim to the entire continent, by the author of the enormously successful and acclaimed Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution.This dramatic account of the War of 1812 fills a surprising gap in the popular literature of the nation's formative years. It is this war, followed closely on the War of Independence, that...

"How did two men move the world away from wars for land and treasure to wars over ideas and ideologies--a change that would go on to kill millions? In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson--champion of American democracy but also of segregation, advocate for free trade and a new world order based on freedom and justice--thrust the United States into the First World War in order to make the 'world safe for democracy'--only to see his dreams for a liberal international...

Explores the subtle, secret influences that affect the decisions we make--from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat. "You think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual, personal tastes, and opinions. Our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Other peoples behavior has a huge influence on everything we do, from the mundane to the momentous. Berger integrates research and thinking...

An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War. During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. This book explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. Historian Faust delineates the...

Historian Chris Wickham defies conventional views of the "Dark Ages" in European history with a work of rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a "middle" period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its...

"Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family's former glory - of what was had, and what was lost. And then Kojo arrives one Christmas, like an annunciation: Maya's cousin, and her mother's...

"We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions...

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy," said F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps no event in American history better illustrates this view than the Civil War and its principal players in the years after the conflict. The value of military glory and ties to greatness would turn toward the tragic even among the victors—like earthquake survivors stumbling into another world, simply trying to make a new life. Their struggle would be a constant...