The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese. Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.

This is the true story of an elite Massachusetts boarding school that for years employed a ring of pedophiles in positions of power over boys ages 8 to 14. It is a true account of how these sexual predators singled out children to victimize, how they got away with it, and how the school could cover it up for decades. John Sweeney was one of the children violated at The Fessenden School and in the beginning he thought he was the only one. (Wrong.) When he called his mother to tell her about the first sexual assault she didn't believe him. When he ran to the headmaster's office his story was dismissed as the active imagination of a pubescent boy. Once a favored student with special privileges, Johnny then became a target for pedophile faculty living in his dorm and the damage done to his young psyche manifested itself for decades in otherwise inexplicable anxiety, shame, secrecy, self-hatred, guilt and depression. Like other sexually-abused children, John gravitated toward living on the edge, where sex, drugs and danger allowed him to forget. After decades of struggling with his childhood secret out of the blue one day in 2011 Fessenden admitted to the public that the school had for years employed a child molester as assistant headmaster and there was the possibility that misconduct may have occurred on school grounds. The named assistant headmaster, Arthur Preston Clarridge, had been Johnny's chief sexual and psychological torturer. The shock of the truth emerging from the school after all these years was almost harder for John to deal with than the original crimes. When his father begged John for his forgiveness--because he and Johnny's mother had not believed him when Clarridge first sexually assaulted him--he was faced with a choice: did he undergo years of intense therapy to address the trauma of what had happened at Fessenden and seek justice? Or did he just crawl away in shame and die like a classmate? At turns fascinating and horrific, cringe-worthy and laugh-out-loud funny, THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND by John Sweeney details the kinds of crimes that were committed at The Fessenden School and the kinds of damage they did to some of its students. So while the school continues to boast of famous alumni--General George S. Patton, Howard Hughes, Ted Kennedy--Fessenden can now also boast of giving birth to a movement to eradicate the sexual abuse of children from every school, led by one of its less-heralded students, former Green Beret John Sweeney.

The Prep School Hockey Guide is the ultimate resource for hockey players, parents, counselors, educational consultants, coaches and administrators as they investigate private boarding and junior boarding schools with competitive hockey programs in the United States and Canada. Use this valuable reference guide to discover when and where coaches regularly scout and recruit and what traits and qualities they seek in prospective student-athletes. Learn how independent boarding schools provide maximum academic and athletic development as well as exposure to college hockey programs. Includes a full-page of detailed information on each program. This 18th annual edition includes articles by coaches, college counselors and educational consultants which provide the "inside" information to assist in the entire process from investigation and application through graduation.

African Americans have risen from the slave plantations of nineteenth-century Florida to become the heads of corporations and members of Congress in the twenty-first century. They have played an important role in making Florida the successful state it is today. This book takes you on a tour, through the 67 counties, of the sites that commemorate the role of African Americans in Florida's history. If we can learn more about our past, both the good and the not-so-good, we can make better decisions in the future. Behind the hundreds of sites in this book are the courageous African Americans like Brevard County's Malissa Moore, who hosted many Saturday night dinners to raise money to build a church, and Miami-Dade's Gedar Walker, who built the first-rate Lyric Theater for black performers. And of course also featured are the more famous black Floridians like Zora Neale Hurston, Jackie Robinson, Mary McCleod Bethune, and Ray Charles.

This handbook aims to be a guide to the best private schools of the country. It has been undertaken with the parent especially in mind, but it is hoped that it may be of value to school and college authorities and all others interested in the subject. It is believed that this Handbook is the first volume which attempts a critical and discriminating treatment of the private schools of the country. It is an endeavor to classify the schools on their merits -- at least a step, it is hoped, toward eventual standardization. - Editor's foreword.