Owen Jones

#2

This elliptical story of nineteenth-century shtetl Europe is narrated by Shimek whose older brother drowned, leaving an orphaned daughter. This baby niece - Buzie - who is raised as Shimek's sister, becomes at first an audience for his magical tales; then his companion on journeys through Edenic woods and fields; and, at last, the love of his life. This love, first frustrated by Shimek's inability to speak his heart, is finally and ironically shattered on a fine point of Jewish tradition: Though an uncle may marry his niece, Shimek and Buzie have been raised as brother and sister. Shimek's tribute from the Biblical Song of Songs - "my sister, my bride" - becomes a mocking taboo. . Told in four parts, gorgeously written and translated, framed by the periodic cycle of the natural world, and magically decorated with a dozen specially commissioned paintings, this edition of The Song of Songs brings to compassionate life two of the most memorable star-crossed lovers in modern literature.

#3

1961

Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755, or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 under the presidency of George Washington. He also founded America's first political party, the Federalist Party, in 1791. Born out of wedlock in Charlestown on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. He was given a scholarship and pursued his education at King's College (now Columbia University) in New York City where, despite his young age, he was an anonymous but prolific and widely read pamphleteer and advocate for the American Revolution. He then served as an artillery officer in the American Revolutionary War, where he saw military action against the British Army in the New York and New Jersey campaign, served for four years as aide-de-camp to Continental Army commander-in-chief George Washington, and fought under Washington's command in the war's climactic battle, the Siege of Yorktown, which secured American victory in the war and with it the independence of the United States.