A celebration of the San Francisco films of Alfred Hitchcock, this book examines the master director's familiarity with Northern California and how it greatly influenced his decision to use the Bay Area location in several of his landmark motion pictures. More importantly, this book shows how San Francisco was often the source of inspiration for many of these same cinema classics. The masterpieces that are examined are Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, The Birds, Suspicion, Psycho, and Family Plot. Hitchcock fans are taken on a journey around the Bay Area, experiencing cinematographic intrigue and learning about Bay Area history, lore, and the timeless elegance of San Francisco and its picturesque surroundings. Hundreds of historical and contemporary photos are included, with an emphasis on those buildings and businesses that no longer exist.--From publisher description.

When Anthea and her brothers and sisters walk down to the sea, a thick fog rolls in. It's up to Anthea, who is blind, to lead her family to safety. Suggested level: primary.

Nursed back to health by Arctic aborigines, a Canadian sailor finds his loyalties torn between his new people and the life he left behind—a novel full of “passion, strength, and beauty of a world we . . . have never understood” (Farley Mowat) John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor is left behind by his ship, stranded on the northeastern tip of Siberia. Having had his hands amputated, crippled with little hope of returning home, the Chukchi community decides to adopt this wounded stranger and teaches him to live as a true human being. From thinking of Chukchi as savages, John comes to know his new companions as real people who share the best and worst of human traits with his own kind. He begins to understand ehri community, respects them, and makes an effort to be accepted as one of them. Though crippled, John rises to the Chukchi view of a person. But how much longer will John commit to this newfound perspective when presented with the opportunity to return to his own past and family? Rytkheu’s empathy, humor, and provocative voice guide us across the magnificent landscape of the North and reveal all the complexity and beauty of a vanishing world. A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic chronicle of the people of Chukotka, and a politically and emotionally charged adventure story.

Footsteps in the Fog is a celebration of the San Francisco films of Alfred Hitchcock. The master director's familiarity with Northern California greatly influenced his decision to use Bay Area locations in several of his landmark motion pictures, and more importantly was often the source of inspiration for many of these same cinema classics. Three of Hitchcock's masterpieces were set in the San Francisco area: Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, and The Birds. In addition, Rebecca, Suspicion, Marnie, Topaz, Psycho, and Family Plot utilized Bay Area locations and/or were inspired by Northern California events and settings. Footsteps in the Fog examines these famous films, taking the reader on a journey around the Bay Area, while weaving together cinemagraphic intrigue, Bay Area history and lore, and the timeless elegance of San Francisco and its picturesque surroundings. Over 400 historical and contemporary photos are featured in the book, including impromptu off-camera images and shots from the films themselves—many never before seen! Footsteps in the Fog can be used as a companion to viewing the Northern California Hitchcock films, as a guide for visiting the sites and settings used in these motion pictures, and as a source of biographical information about Alfred Hitchcock's personal connections to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Hitchcock loved Northern California; he often entertained Hollywood celebrities at his ranch and vineyard outside of Santa Cruz, and frequented such San Francisco institutions as Jack's Restaurant, the Fairmont Hotel, the Top of the Mark, and the historic Bercut Brothers' Grant Market. Hitchcock fans everywhere will rejoice as they revisit and rediscover the locations and settings used in the great director's most beloved films.

What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

Happy Baby is the story of Theo, once an orphan in the Chicago foster care system and now a grown man living in California. Theo, saturated with memories of abuse and heartache, and filled with the simple wish to understand more about himself, returns to Chicago to reconnect with an old girlfriend from his troubled youth. Told in reverse order, this edgy and powerful novel slowly and subtly turns mysterious, as we attempt to recognize the root of Theo's plight and the source for his quietly wavering humanity.