Broken Glass

Author: Alain Mabanckou
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593763085
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
An irreverent, allusive, scatalogical, tragicomic masterpiece that centers on the patrons of a run-down bar as they try to document the details of their lives in a country that appears to have forgotten the importance of remembering. In Republic of the Congo, in the town of Trois-Cents, in a bar called Credit Gone West, a former schoolteacher known as Broken Glass drinks red wine and records the stories of the bar and its regulars for posterity: Stubborn Snail, the owner, who must battle church people, ex-alcoholics, tribal leaders, and thugs set on destroying him and his business; the Printer, who had his respectable life in France ruined by a white woman, his wife; Robinette, who could outdrink and outpiss any man; and Broken Glass himself, whose own tale involves as much heartbreak, squalor, disappointment, and delusion. But Broken Glass fails spectacularly at staying out of trouble as one denizen after another wants to rewrite history in an attempt at making sure his portrayal will properly reflect their exciting and dynamic lives. Despondent over this apparent triumph of self-delusion over self-awareness, Broken Glass drowns his sorrows and riffs on the great books of Africa and the West. Brimming with life, death, and literary allusions, Broken Glass is Mabanckou's finest novel--a mocking satire of the dangers of artistic integrity.

Broken Glass

Author: Alex Beam
Publisher:
ISBN: 0399592717
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
"In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time--unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, whose discoveries put her in contention for the Nobel Prize, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began an intimate relationship, spending weekends together, sharing interests in transcendental philosophy, Catholic mysticism, wine-soaked picnics, and architecture. Their collaboration would produce one of the most important works of architecture of all time, a blindingly original house made up almost entirely of glass and steel. But the minimalist marvel, built in 1951, was plagued by cost over-runs and a sudden chilling of the two friends' mutual affection. Though the building became world-famous, Farnsworth found it impossible to live in the transparent house, and she began a public campaign against him, cheered on by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies, in turn, sued her for unpaid monies. The ensuing trial covered not just the missing funds and the structural weaknesses of the home, but turned into a trial of modernist art and architecture itself. Interweaving personal drama and cultural history, Alex Beam presents a stylish, enthralling tapestry of a tale, illuminating the fascinating history behind one of the twentieth-century's most beautiful and significant architectural projects"--

From Broken Glass

Author: Steve Ross
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316513083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
From the survivor of ten Nazi concentration camps who went on to create the New England Holocaust Memorial, a "devastating...inspirational" memoir (The Today Show) about finding strength in the face of despair. On August 14, 2017, two days after a white-supremacist activist rammed his car into a group of anti-Fascist protestors, killing one and injuring nineteen, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized for the second time in as many months. At the base of one of its fifty-four-foot glass towers lay a pile of shards. For Steve Ross, the image called to mind Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in which German authorities ransacked Jewish-owned buildings with sledgehammers. Ross was eight years old when the Nazis invaded his Polish village, forcing his family to flee. He spent his next six years in a day-to-day struggle to survive the notorious camps in which he was imprisoned, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau among them. When he was finally liberated, he no longer knew how old he was, he was literally starving to death, and everyone in his family except for his brother had been killed. Ross learned in his darkest experiences--by observing and enduring inconceivable cruelty as well as by receiving compassion from caring fellow prisoners--the human capacity to rise above even the bleakest circumstances. He decided to devote himself to underprivileged youth, aiming to ensure that despite the obstacles in their lives they would never experience suffering like he had. Over the course of a nearly forty-year career as a psychologist working in the Boston city schools, that was exactly what he did. At the end of his career, he spearheaded the creation of the New England Holocaust Memorial, a site millions of people including young students visit every year. Equal parts heartrending, brutal, and inspiring, From Broken Glass is the story of how one man survived the unimaginable and helped lead a new generation to forge a more compassionate world.

Broken Glass

Author: Robert V. Hine
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826339973
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
The story of a father's relationship with his daughter and her struggles with mental illness.

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

Author: Chanrithy Him
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393076164
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
"A gut-wrenching story told with honesty, restraint, and dignity." —Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child." In a mesmerizing story, Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy's family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America. A Finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.

Broken Glass

Author: Sally Grindley
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747586152
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
A powerful story of two brothers surviving on their own on the streets of an Indian city. Written by Sally Grindley, winner of the Gold Nestle Book Prize.

Benno and the Night of Broken Glass

Author: Meg Wiviott
Publisher: Kar-Ben Publishing
ISBN: 0822599759
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

Book Description
In 1938 Berlin, Germany, a cat sees Rosenstrasse change from a peaceful neighborhood of Jews and Gentiles to an unfriendly place where, one November night, men in brown shirts destroy Jewish-owned businesses and arrest or kill Jewish people. Includes facts about Kristallnacht and a list of related books and web resources.

Dancing on Broken Glass

Author: Ka Hancock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451637381
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
A powerfully written novel offering an intimate look at a beautiful marriage and how bipolar disorder and cancer affect it, Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock perfectly illustrates the enduring power of love. Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn’t have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is. An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary, Dancing on Broken Glass takes readers on an unforgettable journey of the heart.

Rebuilt from Broken Glass

Author: Fred Behrend
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612495036
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Symbolized by a three-hundred-year-old Seder plate, the religious life of Fred Behrend's family had centered largely around Passover and the tale of the Jewish people's exodus from tyranny. When the Nazis came to power, the wide-eyed boy and his family found themselves living a twentieth-century version of that exodus, escaping oppression and persecution in Germany for Cuba and ultimately a life of freedom and happiness in the United States. Behrend's childhood came to a crashing end with Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) and his father's harrowing internment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. But he would not be defined by these harrowing circumstances. Behrend would go on to experience brushes with history involving the defeated Germans. By the age of twenty, he had run a POW camp full of Nazis, been an instructor in a program aimed at denazifying specially selected prisoners, and been assigned by the U.S. Army to watch over Wernher von Braun, the designer of the V-2 rocket that terrorized Europe and later chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the moon. Behrend went from a sheltered life of wealth in a long-gone, old-world Germany, dwelling in the gilded compound once belonging to the manufacturer of the zeppelin airships, to a poor Jewish immigrant in New York City learning English from Humphrey Bogart films. Upon returning from service in the U.S. Army, he rose out of poverty, built a successful business in Manhattan, and returned to visit Germany a dozen times, giving him unique perspective into Germany's attempts to surmount its Nazi past.

Walking on Broken Glass

Author: Christa Allan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1682998029
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
Leah Thornton's life, like her Southern Living home, has great curb appeal. But a paralyzing encounter with a can of frozen apple juice in the supermarket shatters the façade, forcing her to admit that all is not as it appears. When her best friend gets in Leah's face about her refusal to deal with her life and her drinking, Leah is forced to make a decision. Can this brand-conscious socialite walk away from the country club into 28 days of rehab? Can she leave what she has now to gain back what she needs? Joy, sadness, pain and a new strength converge, testing her marriage, her friendships and her faith.