Books by Geoffrey Wolff
The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum (Vintage Departures)
In 1895 Joshua Slocum set sail from Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the Spray, a thirty-seven-foot sloop. More than three years later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, and his account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, made him internationally famous. But scandal soon followed, and a decade later, with his finances failing, he set off alone once more—never to be seen again.
In this definitive portrait of an icon of adventure, Geoffrey Wolff describes, with authority and admiration, a life that would see hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, smallpox, and no shortage of personal tragedy.
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Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father
Duke Wolff was a flawless specimen of the American clubman -- a product of Yale and the OSS, a one-time fighter pilot turned aviation engineer. Duke Wolff was a failure who flunked out of a series of undistinguished schools, was passed up for military service, and supported himself with desperately improvised scams, exploiting employers, wives, and, finally, his own son.
In The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of this Gatsbyesque figure, a bad man who somehow was also a very good father, an inveterate liar who falsified everything but love.
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A Day at the Beach
by Gary D. Schmidt, Helen Schulman, Ron Koertge, Geoffrey Wolff
In an insightful novel that takes place over the course of an eventful twenty-four hours, the troubled marriage of famed choreographer Gerhard Falktopf and his dancer wife Suzannah is profoundly affected by the events of September 11, a national tragedy that suddenly brings to light their hidden desires, dreams, conflicts, and differences.
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A Day at the Beach
by Gary D. Schmidt, Helen Schulman, Ron Koertge, Geoffrey Wolff
With these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family.
He shares with us, then, the wisdom of an alert man learning through the unsettling collisions of time, place, and local custom, and through the force of hardship and hazard, to bring his many disparate selves together -- with astonishing high-stakes candor and dazzling literary agility.
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A Day at the Beach
by Gary D. Schmidt, Helen Schulman, Ron Koertge, Geoffrey Wolff
Look Both Ways meets Seedfolks in this masterful novel from two titans of kid lit that follows a diverse cast of young people whose lives intersect in surprising and hilarious ways over the course of a summer day.
Here’s what’s so cool about the beach. Kids are everywhere! Kids you know, kids you want to know. Wandering from one blanket to another, from one family to another. Somebody’s mom reads a fat summer novel. Somebody’s dad snores with an iPad on his chest. Babies cry. Girls laugh. Frisbee players whoop! Kites in the perfect blue sky.
Some kids bodysurf. Some don’t even like the water. They build sand cities for their friends and sand jails for the grown-ups, and when the tide comes in everything gets washed away.
There’s the other world, where all kids hear is tomorrow, next week, next year. And then there’s the beach, where everything is right now!
Why can’t every day be a day at the beach?
From two-time Newbery honoree Gary D. Schmidt and two-time PEN Award winner Ron Koertge comes a moving and often laugh-out-loud funny middle grade novel about family, friendship, and belonging, told by a group of kids spending a day at the beach. Thoughtful vignettes brilliantly weave together an irresistible tale of tween conflict and connections.
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$18.99
The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum
A masterful biographer now offers a thrilling, definitive portrait of one of history’s most legendary icons of adventure.
In 1860, sixteen-year-old Joshua Slocum escaped a hardscrabble childhood in Nova Scotia by signing on as an ordinary seaman to a merchant ship bound for Dublin. Despite having only a third-grade education, Slocum rose through the nautical ranks at a mercurial pace; just a decade later he was commander of his own ship. His subsequent journeys took him nearly everywhere: Liverpool, China, Japan, Cape Horn, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, San Francisco, and Australia—where he met and married his first wife, Virginia, who would sail along with him for the rest of her life, bearing and raising their children at sea. He commanded eight vessels and owned four, enduring hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, smallpox, a mutiny, and the death of his wife and three of his children. Yet his ultimate adventure and crowning glory was still to come.
In 1895 Slocum set sail from Gloucester, Massachusetts—by himself—in the Spray, a small sloop of thirty-seven feet. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn’t be replicated until 1925. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made him internationally famous. He met President Theodore Roosevelt on several occasions and became a presence on the lecture circuit, selling his sea-saga books whenever and wherever he could. But scandal soon followed, and a decade later, with his finances failing, he set off alone once more—and was never seen again.
Geoffrey Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant times—from the Golden Age of Sail to a shockingly different new century—in vivid, fascinating detail.
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Providence (Nonpareil Books, 17)
Attorney Adam Dwyer Has Six Months To Live. Carla Dwyer Has To Try And Relax. Lieutenant Tom Cocoran Has Twenty Years On The Force. Baby And Skippy Have A Couple Of Hours To Kill. Sometimes, Providence Is Just Murder As A Series Of Events Hilarious As They Are Tragic Upset The Equilibrium Of Life In A Small, Strange City. Between Boston And New York Lies Providence, Rhode Island. Long Considered One Of The Most Corrupt Cities In The Country, It Was Often Difficult To Discern Who Was More Corrupt, The Mafia Bosses Or The Suits At City Hall. Providence Is A Fast-paced Black Comedy Of Parallel Lives In The Small, East Coast Port City. Adam Dwyer Is A Criminal Lawyer Dying Of Leukemia. He And His Wife Clara Receive Another Blow When Their Home Is Robbed By Two Young Thugs, Skippy And Baby. Tom Corcoran, The Police Officer Assigned To The Case, Becomes Involved With Skippy's Waitress Girlfriend, Lisa. Long Out Of Print, This New York Times Bestselling Novel Is A Raucous Gallery Of Grotesques, A Litany Of Sex, Violence, Crime, And Corruption Cast Against A Precisely Drawn Portrait Of Providence, From The Streets Of Federal Hill (home Of The City's Mafiosi) To The Fashionable Upper East Side (rife With Homes Ripe For Robbing). This Nonpareil Edition Includes A New Afterword By Acclaimed Television And Film Writer Ian Maxton-graham-- Provided By Publisher.
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$18.95
Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby (New York Review Books Classics)
Includes an afterword by the author
Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the lost generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.
Black Sun is novelist and master biographer Geoffrey Wolff's subtle and striking picture of a man who killed himself to make his life a work of art.
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Sailing Alone Around the World: The Illustrated Edition
by Joshua Slocum, Geoffrey Wolff
The first illustrated edition of the classic sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum, the first man to circumnavigate the globe alone!
Sailing Alone Around the World is Joshua Slocum's memoir about sailing alone around the world aboard his sloop, Spray. The book was an immediate success when it was first published in 1900 and was highly influential in inspiring later travelers to do the same.
Slocum was a highly experienced navigator and ship owner. He rebuilt and refitted the derelict sloop Spray in a seaside pasture in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Between April 24, 1895, and June 27, 1898, Slocum, aboard Spray, crossed the Atlantic twice (to Gibraltar and back to South America), negotiated the Strait of Magellan, and crossed the Pacific. He also visited Australia and South Africa before crossing the Atlantic (for the third time) to return to Massachusetts after a journey of 46,000 miles.
Filled with art, photographs, maps, artifacts, and period illustrations, this new edition will be popular with armchair travelers and maritime enthusiasts around the world. Included in this edition are excerpts from those who, inspired by Slocum, also circumnavigated the globe, as well as other well-known sailors, sailing enthusiasts, and sailing writers such as Henry Dana, Geoffrey Wolff, William F. Buckley, and Nathaniel Philbrick.
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