On October 27, 2004 the Boston Red Sox won the World Series by completing a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, capping an improbable postseason run that saw the team exorcise demons and send its fans into paroxysms of joy. Catsam's goal in writing this diary was to chronicle the day-to-day existence of an impassioned sports fan and to provide insight into what it means to root root root for the home team. Although Bleeding Red chronicles in great depth much of the 2004 season, it is truly a memoir about identity, unrequited love, and almost inexplicable loyalty to a team, to an idea. Even knowing the results, one cannot help but be caught up in Catsam's emotions, a blend of humor and passion. "Passionate, lively, and funny, Bleeding Red is a captivating, intensely personal record of the most glorious baseball season of the author's life. It should be fine reading not only for citizens of the "Red Sox Nation" but for all baseball lovers¯except perhaps Yankees fans." - Charles C. Alexander, author of Our Game and Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era. "When you are crazy about something it is always refreshing to find someone crazier. [Bleeding Red provides] a great way to remember the best year in the history of mankind or any other species." - Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live cast member and lifelong Red Sox fan.

Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan's Diary of the 2004 Season

History

Catsam, Derek

Americas

VELLUM

Echoes of a Distant Clarion: Recollections of a Diplomat and Soldier

This book gives an inside view of 20th-century national and international events, through the life of a diplomat, soldier, and intelligence officer. Engaging boyhood experiences are followed by pioneer paratrooper training and combat in Europe in World War II. Assigned as special agent, Kormann goes behind the lines to apprehend Nazi war criminals and uncover a mass grave. As an Army Counter Intelligence Corps field office commander in Berlin 1945-47, he is assigned to track down Hitler's deputy, Martin Bormann, and the American traitor, "Axis Sally." He foresees the Soviet threat and the coming Cold War, rescues a German scientist from the Soviet NKVD in a case that made international headlines, and reveals Russian espionage and kidnapping efforts. As a new State Department officer in 1950, Kormann is placed in charge of three counties in Bavaria in the final days of the American occupation of Germany, where the requisitioning of land for a NATO tank training area displaces thousands of Germans and creates an uproar. In subsequent Cold War assignments he is involved in historic actions: the abortive Hungarian Revolution; international efforts to deal with the Russians; the U-2 spy plane affair; and the Berlin Wall. He served as political officer at Embassy Manila at the onset of the Marcos regime; as officer-in-charge at Embassy Benghazi, Libya, when it was attacked and burned during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; as deputy chief of mission at Embassy Cairo during the Kissinger Middle East "shuttle diplomacy"; and on the staff of George H. W. Bush when he was Director of Central Intelligence.

Biographies & Memoirs

Kormann, John G.

Leaders & Notable People

This book gives an inside view of 20th-century national and international events, through the life of a diplomat, soldier, and intelligence officer. Engaging boyhood experiences are followed by pioneer paratrooper training and combat in Europe in World War II. Assigned as special agent, Kormann goes behind the lines to apprehend Nazi war criminals and uncover a mass grave. As an Army Counter Intelligence Corps field office commander in Berlin 1945-47, he is assigned to track down Hitler's deputy, Martin Bormann, and the American traitor, "Axis Sally." He foresees the Soviet threat and the coming Cold War, rescues a German scientist from the Soviet NKVD in a case that made international headlines, and reveals Russian espionage and kidnapping efforts. As a new State Department officer in 1950, Kormann is placed in charge of three counties in Bavaria in the final days of the American occupation of Germany, where the requisitioning of land for a NATO tank training area displaces thousands of Germans and creates an uproar. In subsequent Cold War assignments he is involved in historic actions: the abortive Hungarian Revolution; international efforts to deal with the Russians; the U-2 spy plane affair; and the Berlin Wall. He served as political officer at Embassy Manila at the onset of the Marcos regime; as officer-in-charge at Embassy Benghazi, Libya, when it was attacked and burned during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; as deputy chief of mission at Embassy Cairo during the Kissinger Middle East "shuttle diplomacy"; and on the staff of George H. W. Bush when he was Director of Central Intelligence. "John Kormann's memoir is timely and significant--an engrossing chronicle of one Foreign Service officer's courage, commitment, and good sense in war and in peace. His personal life and professional achievements as a diplomat and earlier, as a military officer in postwar Germany, trace the trajectory of America's emergence as the dominant superpower in the twentieth century, providing a ground-level perspective on many of the major crises that punctuated the Cold War era." --The Hon. DANIEL A. O'DONOHUE, President Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired "John Kormann's book runs the gamut from harrowing incidents to hilarious vignettes. His experiences reflect just how exciting and diverse a career in foreign service can be. Particularly noteworthy is the way he used his diplomatic and military skills to benefit both sectors. This memoir provides real insight into the challenges the author and his family faced on four continents." --The Hon. KENNETH L BROWN, President Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

This book describes how the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) conducted its varied media, cultural, and educational exchange programs in nine countries during the Cold War, through the eyes of a Foreign Service veteran. It depicts the excitement, frustrations, satisfactions-and sometimes glamour-of a career in the Foreign Service of the United States Information Agency (USIA). It describes how the U.S. government agency responsible for what is now called "public diplomacy" conducted its varied media, cultural, and educational exchange programs in nine countries during the Cold War. The author, a 32-year veteran of USIA, demonstrates how USIA operated at its headquarters in Washington and abroad, where it was known as the U.S. Information Service (USIS). When at overseas posts he describes both American and local personnel; some of USIA's achievements and, at times, the lack thereof; his professional relationships with embassy colleagues of the Department of State and other agencies; and addresses such unusual events as an earthquake in Mexico, a murder in Montevideo, coups d'état in Venezuela and Bolivia, and a civil war in the Dominican Republic.

Nine Lives: A Foreign Service Odyssey (Memoirs and Occasional Papers)

Hansen, Allen C.

Historical

Poverty and prosperity, fear and fun, mistakes, corruption, incompetence, language and cultural glitches, and developmental successes-the author recounts his government service on six continents in a 34-year career. Take one Pennsylvania-born, university-trained development economist, mix with the people, problems, and opportunities of 43 countries, stir in a variety of U.S. government programs, and you can learn a lot. Howard Steele certainly did, and survived gun-toting Bolivian revolutionaries, Viet Cong mortar and rifle fire, deadly anarchy in Sri Lanka, a shakedown by Tanzanian police, Taiwanese cockroaches the size of kittens, and sheep's eye stew in Saudi Arabia. Marriage survival was more difficult. As Steele advanced from midlevel technician to a senior rank U.S. representative, he at times had to battle his own government and navigate its bureaucracy, just as he did with dozens of overseas regimes and their national cultures. From Brazil, just after its 1964 revolution, to Switzerland in 1995-with assignments in South Vietnam, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Nepal, among numerous others along the way-Steele recounts his service on six continents in a 34-year career. He tells it as it happened, no partisan spin, all authentic, on-the-scene detail. Poverty and prosperity, fear and fun, mistakes, corruption, incompetence, language and cultural glitches, and developmental successes are all here.

Bushels and Bales: A Food Soldier in the Cold War

Steele, Howard L.

Professionals & Academics

A lifelong lover of opera and classical music, the author served 35 years in the US Foreign Service. These memoirs recall his devoted engagement with music, especially opera, in the context of that career. This book recalls the author's devoted engagement with music, especially opera, in the context of his 35-year long career in the US Foreign Service. In these memoirs Hans "Tom" Tuch shares fascinating stories from his Cold War service in Moscow, Sofia, and Berlin, including Vice President Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union in 1959 (and his famous "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev), the U-2 disaster, and other crises in US-Soviet relations. He also writes about his friendship with Georg Solti in the 1950s, his attendance at the 1949 and 1950 Salzburg Festivals, the 1951 Maggio Musicale in Florence, the 1953 Pablo Casales music festival, and the 1954 Bayreuth Festival. The many opera productions and concert performances he enjoyed in 1950s Europe featured eminent conductors and outstanding vocal artists, among them Wilhelm Fürtwaengler, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm, George Szell, Sir John Barbirolli, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Maria Callas, Kirsten Flagstadt, Kathleen Ferrier, Irmgard Seefried, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In 1952, he was the State Department escort on the Boston Symphony's first postwar European trip. He later escorted the New York Philharmonic on its 1959 tour of the Soviet Union and the New York City Ballet on its 1962 Soviet tour.

Arias, Cabalettas, and Foreign Affairs: A Public Diplomat's Quasi-Musical Memoir (Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series / Association for Diplo)

Arts & Photography

Tuch, Hans N.

Music

A new book on the Lincoln assassination reveals scores of interconnections between Gonzaga College High School and the president’s murder, ranging from the assassins themselves to a key witness, an arresting policeman and the doctor who treated the dying Lincoln and later identified the corpse of assassin John Wilkes Booth. In the Web of History: Gonzaga College and the Lincoln Assassination by Paul Warren is a social history of the time, and notes that the school, then Gonzaga College, was within a stone’s throw of Ford’s Theater, where Booth shot Lincoln. As such, scores of alumni, their parents, teachers and relatives played important roles in one of the most dramatic events in U.S. history. Some 40 individuals and places associated with Gonzaga are written about in In the Web of History. Their names appear throughout the Lincoln assassination literature but most never were connected to Gonzaga until now. Michael W. Kauffman, author of American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, writes that In the Web of History is “...a fascinating account of the Gonzaga Connection, and I’m amazed by all the research that went into it.” Kauffman’s book is viewed by many historians as the best and most comprehensive ever written about the assassination.

In the Web of History: Gonzaga College and the Lincoln Assassination

Warren, Paul

This action-packed memoir by a leading American diplomat provides provocative reflections on events and leaders, American and foreign, 1959 to 1989. Over the course of his career, Ambassador Dean found himself embroiled in controversy in hot spots in Asia and the Middle East. Serving several stints in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, he worked on development projects in all three countries and with the U.S. military in Central Vietnam in the early 1970s. He brokered the deal that ended the war in Laos and faced down an attempted coup d'état in 1973 against the neutralist regime of Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma. As ambassador in Cambodia, he was the last man out on April 12, 1975, as the last helicopter left Phnom Penh and Khmer Rouge forces approached the city. He was notably willing to work with anyone and everyone-communists and capitalists, diplomats and spies, urbanites and peasants, entrenched leaders and emerging reformers, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. "A thoroughly readable, even fascinating, account of Dean's life and experiences as one of America's top twentieth-century diplomats." Robert V. Keeley, author, publisher, career diplomat, and former U.S. ambassador to Greece. "Dean's career reflects his strongly held belief that America should lead through the good example of its own principled behavior and decency, not through brute force and threats." John V. Whitbeck, international lawyer and author of The World According to Whitbeck. "Ambassador Dean comes across in this memoir as exactly what he is Ambassador Dean comes across in this memoir as exactly what he is Ambassador Dean comes across in this memoir as exactly what he isa dedicated and talented man deeply proud of his record in the practice of American diplomacy." Bruce Laingen, U.S. ambassador (ret.) and former president, American Academy of Diplomacy.

Danger Zones: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests

Dean, John Gunther

Memoirs

Danger Zones: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests (Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series / Association for Diplo)

This book by a practitioner (not an academic, a government official, or a pundit) has been written for practitioners and offers fresh thinking on how to do international development work. It combines that thinking with practical guidance, in plain English, on what to do-and perhaps just as importantly-what not to do on the ground. We Do Know How takes buzzwords commonly used in development circles-"demand-driven," "results-oriented," "accountability," and others-and makes them real, spelling out a proven approach for expanding business sales and generating jobs for poor people. Although government has a role to play in development, in the end the actions of businesses drive economic growth and expand people's incomes. We Do Know How shows how to build on the incentives that drive businesses and, in the process, create jobs for the poor. Specifically, it urges development practitioners to support only those business opportunities for which there is market demand, abiding by the maxim, "produce what you can sell," not "sell what you produce." More than that, it cautions practitioners not to become solutions looking for problems but to search creatively for ways to solve the specific problems that stand most in the way of clients meeting buyers' requirements. We Do Know How challenges much conventional wisdom on how to do development work. At the same time, and in contrast to other books on development, it shows how, by maintaining focus and discipline, development practitioners can deliver demonstrable increases in jobs for those who need them.

We Do Know How: A Buyer-Led Approach to Creating Jobs for the Poor

Business & Money

Riordan, James T.

Economics

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the VELLUM publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by VELLUM

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the VELLUM publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan's Diary of the 2004 Season

Echoes of a Distant Clarion: Recollections of a Diplomat and Soldier

Echoes of a Distant Clarion: Recollections of a Diplomat and Soldier

Nine Lives: A Foreign Service Odyssey (Memoirs and Occasional Papers)

Bushels and Bales: A Food Soldier in the Cold War

Arias, Cabalettas, and Foreign Affairs: A Public Diplomat's Quasi-Musical Memoir (Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series / Association for Diplo)

In the Web of History: Gonzaga College and the Lincoln Assassination

Danger Zones: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests

Danger Zones: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests (Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series / Association for Diplo)

We Do Know How: A Buyer-Led Approach to Creating Jobs for the Poor