Living My Life, Vol. 1
Author: Emma Goldman
Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous-and notorious-woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin's Bolshevik experiment, and more. Sounding a call still heard today, Living My Life is a riveting account of political ferment and ideological turbulence.
Library Journal
This Penguin Classics edition combines Goldman's two-volume autobiography into a single unit. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Book review: Homes and Libraries of the Presidents Third Edition or Chosen Soldier
Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes
Author: Kyle Cassidy
In 2004 after a fractious election in which the gun argument played a significant part, photo-journalist Kyle Cassidy hit the road to learn why so many people owned so many guns. His search for answers took him on a journey that extended over two years and 15,000 miles. Ultimately, more than a hundred gun owners opened their doors and their lives to him, answering the single question he asked: "why". The result is a collection of striking and thought provoking photographs: Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes.
Few issues generate as much debate as firearms. Without taking a pro or con stance, Armed America shows the faces of American gun owners and gives voice to each individual "why"...without ancillary comment, editorializing, or judgment. These "everyman" portraits reveal people from different backgrounds, living in various locations, with one common connection.
"I tried to remove 'gun owner' from my mind as much as possible when making the actual photograph," says Cassidy. "I would go into someone's house and immediately start thinking 'how can I capture this person or this family fairly?" While it would be very easy for any photographer to pose a man with a military weapon in a stern and menacing way, light it dramatically and come away with a shocking photograph, Cassidy chose another more accurate and startling route. "I would ask myself 'What's this guy like every day? How do his friends and family see him?' He's a guy who owns a parakeet, or two cats, or a poodle, he's got two kids—he doesn't frown all day long because he's got a gun."
This riveting collection of 100+ photos will capture every reader's attention—whatever their stance ongun control.
The Washington Post - Alan Cooperman
Cassidy asked each subject the same question: "Why do you own a gun?" Their answers are next to their pictures, without comment. The result is highly political, even polemical. The question is, in which direction? Each picture in Armed America could be a pro-gun advertisement—or an anti-gun poster. That's what makes the book so riveting.
Rachel Bridgewater - Library Journal
A dinner-party conversation after the election of 2004 got photojournalist Cassidy wondering about gun owners in America. He found himself curious to learn more about them, to seek some greater understanding of gun ownership by hearing from the owners themselves. This curiosity eventually resulted in this compelling collection of photographs of American gun owners. Cassidy photographed people in their homes and asked them one question: "Why do you own a gun?" The responses are as varied as the people depicted in these pages. The color photographs are stirring, beautifully composed, and humane. Though the subject is gun ownership, Cassidy never fixates on the guns. Instead, they appear as one aspect of his subjects' lives. The handful of photos that seem staged to show off the gun rather than the individual are the least effective in the book. Photography at its best gives us a window through which to see the world differently, and these photos live up to that high ideal by allowing the viewer to move beyond preconceptions about who owns guns and why. Highly recommended.
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