Win ROAD TO VALOR by Aili and Andres McConnon

Combining the inspiring, against-the-odds appeal of Unbroken with the poignancy and heartbreak of Life Is Beautiful, ROAD TO VALOR is the untold story of Italian sports legend and World War II hero Gino Bartali --- and you can win your own copy!

ROAD TO VALOR: A True Story of World War II Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation

by siblings Aili and Andres McConnon

Gino Bartali, “The Lion of Tuscany,” is best known as an Italian cycling superstar: the man who not only won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948, but to this day holds the record for the longest time span between victories.  However, there is another thread to Bartali’s epic story—his secret efforts to help save Jews in Italy during the Holocaust and German occupation—the full details of which have not been revealed until now.

Set in Italy and France against the turbulent backdrop of an unforgiving sport and threatening politics, ROAD TO VALOR: A True Story of World War II Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation (Crown Publishers, June 12, 2012) is the breathtaking account of one man’s unsung heroism and his resilience in the face of adversity. Based on nearly ten years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Bartali’s family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, it is the first book ever written about Bartali in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of his wartime work. 

Authors Aili and Andres McConnon chronicle Bartali’s remarkable journey from childhood to champion, starting in impoverished rural Tuscany where a scrawny, mischievous boy painstakingly saves his money to buy a bicycle and before long is racking up wins throughout the country. At the age of 24, he stuns the world by winning his first Tour de France and quickly becomes an international sports icon.

After Mussolini’s Fascists try to hijack Bartali’s victory for propaganda purposes and as the Nazis occupy Italy, Bartali, a devout Catholic, becomes involved in the Italian resistance and undertakes dangerous missions to help those being targeted. In addition to sheltering a family of four Jews in an apartment he financed with his cycling winnings, Bartali smuggles counterfeit identity documents past Fascist and Nazi checkpoints. Recognizing him simply as a national hero in training, the soldiers never suspect he’s hiding precious papers in the hollow frame of his bicycle, documents that helped save countless Jews hiding in Tuscany and Umbria from deportation to work and death camps.

After the grueling wartime years, Bartali fights to rebuild his career as Italy emerges from the rubble. In 1948, the stakes are raised when midway through the Tour de France an assassination attempt in Rome sparks nationwide political protests and riots. Despite numerous setbacks and a legendary snowstorm in the Alps, the chain-smoking, Chianti-loving, 34-year-old underdog comes back and wins the most difficult endurance competition on earth. Bartali’s inspiring performance helps unite his fractured homeland and restore pride and spirit to a country still reeling from war and despair.

An epic tale of courage and redemption, ROAD TO VALOR is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

About the Authors:

AILI McCONNON is a Canadian journalist living in New York who has been a staff writer for BusinessWeek and has also written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. She has appeared as a commentator on ABC, MSNBC, and CNN.

 

ANDRES McCONNON has been a historical researcher for several books. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University. Aili and Andres are siblings, born in Toronto.

Visit www.roadtovalorbook.com 

To win a copy of ROAD TO VALOR by Aili and Andres McConnon, send an email to contest@gmail.com, with "ROAD TO VALOR” as the subject or click here. Make sure to include your name and mailing address in the US only. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, email addresses and mailing addresses, will be purged after winner is notified. This contest ends July 12, 2012. Good luck!

Win EAT THE CITY by Robin Shulman

I am so excited about this book, Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York by Robin Shulman, and you can win your own copy!

New York is not a city for growing and manufacturing food. It’s a money and real estate city, with less naked earth and industry than high-rise glass and concrete.   Yet in this intimate, visceral, and beautifully written book, Robin Shulman introduces the people of New York City  - both past and present - who  do grow vegetables, butcher meat, fish local waters, cut and refine sugar, keep bees for honey, brew beer, and make wine. In the most heavily built urban environment in the country, she shows an organic city full of intrepid and eccentric people who want to make things grow.  What’s more, Shulman artfully places today’s urban food production in the context of hundreds of years of history, and traces how we got to where we are.

In these pages meet Willie Morgan, a Harlem man who first grew his own vegetables in a vacant lot as a front for his gambling racket. And David Selig, a beekeeper in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn who found his bees making a mysteriously red honey. Get to know Yolene Joseph, who fishes crabs out of the waters off Coney Island to make curried stews for her family. Meet the creators of the sickly sweet Manischewitz wine, whose brand grew out of Prohibition; and Jacob Ruppert, who owned a beer empire on the Upper East Side, as well as the New York Yankees.

Eat the City is about how the ability of cities to feed people has changed over time. Yet it is also, in a sense, the story of the things we long for in cities today: closer human connections, a tangible link to more basic processes, a way to shape more rounded lives, a sense of something pure.

Of course, hundreds of years ago, most food and drink consumed by New Yorkers was grown and produced within what are now the five boroughs. Yet people rarely realize that long after New York became a dense urban agglomeration, innovators, traditionalists, migrants and immigrants continued to insist on producing their own food. This book shows the perils and benefits—and the ironies and humor—when city people involve themselves in making what they eat.

Food, of course, is about hunger. We eat what we miss and what we want to become, the foods of our childhoods and the symbols of the lives we hope to lead. With wit and insight, Eat the City shows how in places like New York, people have always found ways to use their collective hunger to build their own kind of city.

ROBIN SHULMAN is a writer and reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, the Guardian, and many other publications.  She lives in New York City.

To win a copy of EAT THE CITY by Robin Shulman, send an email to contest@gmail.com, with "EAT THE CITY " as the subject or click here. Make sure to include your name and mailing address in the US only. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, email addresses and mailing addresses, will be purged after winner is notified. This contest ends July 10, 2012. Good luck!

Win FULL BODY BURDEN by Kristen Iversen

I am delighted to offer two lucky readers copies of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen. 

A gripping work of narrative nonfiction, ten years in the making, about a young woman growing up next to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated “the most contaminated site in America.”

*A 2012 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick*

Radioactive contamination. Misplaced plutonium and other radioactive materials. A sealed grand jury report.  Stonewalling by government officials. These are among the real-life incidents occurring at nuclear sites worldwide.  In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdown, as well as nuclear disasters and accidents at nuclear power plants and weapons sites such as Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the Mayak facility in Russia, Rocky Flats in Colorado, and former nuclear weapons sites like Hanford in Washington and Fernald in Ohio, the safety of America’s nuclear industry is receiving fresh scrutiny, as are the issues of waste disposal and global nuclear disarmament.  The health effects of short-term, high-level radioactive contamination are fairly well known. Yet, what are the health effects of long-term, low-level exposure? While scientists and physicists continue to debate the topic, one fact is certain: there is no safe level of exposure to plutonium. Even one millionth of a gram, which is easily inhaled, is potentially lethal.  And too many of us are at risk of exposure to this or other radioactive substances.

Kristen Iversen’s haunting new book, FULL BODY BURDEN: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (Crown; June 5, 2012), skillfully combines investigative journalism with personal memoir.  Drawing on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, along with her own experiences growing up just miles from Rocky Flats, Iversen presents a full picture about a childhood lived in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and—unknown to those who lived there—tainted with invisible deadly particles of plutonium.

FULL BODY BURDEN is also about the destructive power of secrets—both family secrets and government secrets. Her father’s hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what they made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)—best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions. In her early thirties, she even worked at Rocky Flats, typing up memos in which accidents were identified merely as “incidents.”

A brilliant work of investigative journalism—FULL BODY BURDEN is a shocking account of the government’s sustained attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents’ vain attempts to seek justice in court.

“Superbly crafted tale of Cold War America’s dark underside.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“In this powerful work of research and personal testimony, Iversen, director of the M.F.A. creative writing program at the University of Memphis chronicles the story of America’s willfully blinkered relationship to the nuclear weapons industry through the haunting experience of her own family in Colorado.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Iversen seems to have been destined to write this shocking and infuriating story of a glorious land and a trusting citizenry poisoned by Cold War militarism and 'hot' contamination, secrets and lies, greed and denial....News stories come and go. It takes a book of this exceptional caliber to focus our attention and marshal our collective commitment to preventing future nuclear horrors.” —Booklist, starred review

“With meticulous reporting and a clear eye for details, Iversen has crafted a chilling, brilliantly written cautionary tale about the dangers of blind trust. Through interviews, sifting through thousands of records (some remain sealed) and even a stint as a Rocky Flats receptionist, she uncovers decades of governmental deception. Full Body Burden is both an engrossing memoir and a powerful piece of investigative journalism.” —BookPage

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KRISTEN IVERSEN grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver. She is director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Memphis and also editor-in-chief of The Pinch, an award-winning literary journal. She is also the author of Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Biography and the Barbara Sudler Award for Nonfiction. Iversen has two sons and currently lives in Memphis. Visit www.kristeniversen.com/.

To win a copy of FULL BODY BURDEN by Kristen Iversen, send an email to contest@gmail.com, with "FULL BODY BURDEN" as the subject or click here. Make sure to include your name and mailing address in the US only. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, email addresses and mailing addresses, will be purged after winner is notified. This contest ends July 5, 2012. Good luck!

Win THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS by Gabrielle Donnelly

I am delighted to offer two lucky readers copies of THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS by Gabrielle Donnelly. 

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women remains as beloved today as when it was first published in 1868.  Gabrielle Donnelly’s THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS brings the story 150 years into the future through the imagined lives of Jo March’s descendants—three sisters living in London who are thoroughly modern and at the same time thoroughly March.

Sisters Emma, Lulu, and Sophie Atwater couldn’t be more different. They adore each other and drive each other mad in equal measure. Middle sister Lulu feels that she is the failure of the family. One day, she goes to the attic in search of a book and stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great grandmother Jo March. Finally, Lula feels there is someone who would understand her. It seems that Jo didn’t always adore her own sisters Meg, Beth, and Amy, and like Lulu, Jo found herself alone at a crossroads in life.

As Lulu discovers hidden secrets about her ancestors, she also finds solace and guidance in Jo’s words, discovering that they share so many similarities, even though they are worlds apart. And that the fierce, undying—if sometimes infuriating—bond of sisterhood links the Atwater women today every bit as firmly as it did the March sisters all those years ago. The Little Women Letters is a warm, engaging tip of the hat to the multitudes of Little Women fans who wonder what Jo’s descendents would be like today. 

Praise includes:

“Fans of Louisa May Alcott can rejoice” (USA TODAY) as Gabrielle Donnelly brings Little Women into the future and imagines the lives of Jo March’s ancestors. 

“The perfect pool-side read.” —The Washington Post 

“A light, spirited tale about modern women with old-fashioned values.” —Publishers Weekly

“Donnelly writes with obvious passion for the classic tale and successfully applies a fresh sensibility to the three modern sisters….Beautifully crafted.” —Booklist

"For those who yearn for the verve and wit and chagrin of Alcott, The Little Women Letters offers a thoroughly modern…twist." —The Seattle Times

To win a copy of THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS by Gabrielle Donnelly, send an email to contest@gmail.com, with "LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS" as the subject or click here. Make sure to include your name and mailing address in the US only. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, email addresses and mailing addresses, will be purged after winner is notified. This contest ends July 9, 2012. Good luck!