Town Politics

For more than four decades, between 1969 and 2010, the remote former mining town of Trinidad, Colorado, was the unlikely crossroads for approximately 6,000 medical pilgrims who came looking for relief from the pain of gender dysphoria. The surgical skill and nonjudgmental compassion of surgeons Stanley Biber and his transgender protege Marci Bowers made the phrase "going to Trinidad" a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery in the worldwide transgender community.

When philosophy professor Adam Briggle moved to Denton, Texas, he had never heard of fracking. Only five years later, he would successfully lead a citizens' initiative to ban hydraulic fracturing in Denton - the first Texas town to challenge the oil and gas industry. On his journey to learn about fracking and its effects, he leaped from the ivory tower into the fray. In beautifully narrated chapters, Briggle brings us to town hall debates and neighborhood meetings where citizens wrestle with issues few fully understand.

Dufty Dufty Biddle & Dunn is a small firm of provincial solicitors in the English Midland town of Hockham, catering for the legal needs of the local population. No more, no less. Charles Dufty founded the practice fifty years ago, and still acts as a consultant to his son Hugo, the senior resident partner, who has ambitions to expand the firm. The Duftys take on cases which most modern firms wouldn't even look at, yet before you know it the problem is solved.

By 1970 racial tension was at a breaking point in the Southern town of Gallatin, Tennessee. Desegregation had emotions running high. The town was a powder keg ready to erupt. But it was also on the verge of something incredible. Eddie Sherlin and Bill Ligon were boys growing up on opposite sides of the tracks who shared a passion for basketball. They knew the barriers that divided them - some physical landmarks and some hidden in the heart - but those barriers melted away when the boys were on the court.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, Virginia's Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools, locking and chaining the doors. The community's White leaders quickly established a private academy, commandeering supplies from the shuttered public schools to use in their all-White classrooms. Meanwhile, Black parents had few options: keep their kids at home, move across county lines, or send them to live with relatives in other states. For five years, the schools remained closed.

When a black man was accused of attacking a white woman in a rural Florida town, a tinderbox of racial hatred was ignited. On New Year's Day 1923, Rosewood, a town of hard-working, middle-class African Americans, was burned to the ground by an angry mob of whites. After hiding in frigid nearby swamps for days, the few survivors never returned.

What begins as yet another assignment for a reporter, a young millennial who relies happily on email and texting as the primary means of communication, develops into a heartfelt mission to tell the story of the people and places in the letters. Dead Letters is an intimate portrait of small-town America and the people who, at times, risked everything in pursuit of economic prosperity, religious freedom, and social equity.

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But can the SAS pull off a daring prison break and escape from Communist-run Ethiopia alive? In 1975 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, recently deposed in a Communist revolution, is declared dead. In the hands of the brutal army officer Mengitsu Haile Mariam, the country has descended into chaos and bloodshed. Then an astonishing truth emerges. The emperor is being kept alive in prison by Mengitsu, but only until he reveals the location of his billion-pound fortune.

Norwich, a charming Vermont town of roughly 3,000 residents, has sent an athlete to almost every Winter Olympics for the past 30 years - and three times that athlete has returned with a medal. How does Norwich do it? To answer this question, New York Times reporter Karen Crouse moved to Vermont, immersing herself in the lives of Norwich Olympians past and present. There she discovered a culture that's the opposite of the hypercompetitive schoolyard of today's tiger moms and eagle dads.

Una violenta esplosione durante la festa di inaugurazione di villa Brandi, una villa settecentesca restaurata grazie al contributo in denaro di un noto mister del calcio internazionale, provoca l`uccisione di quattro persone e il grave ferimento di una quinta. Caterina Ruggeri, capo della locale Sezione Omicidi, presente alla festa insieme al suo compagno e uscita illesa dall`attentato, prenderà in mano fin da subito le redini delle indagini, che vengono però depistate da oscuri personaggi legati da un lato alla massoneria locale e da un altro ai Servizi Segreti.

Valley View Senior Housing, built in 2019 in Napa County, California, is a very affordable community of 70 cottages. This groundbreaking homeless project was organized by American Canyon’s city government for older homeless people and homeless veterans of the area. This solution-oriented book shares the inspiring story of a compassionate and humane project. Imagine if every city could create one community like this - we could begin to make headway to solve the homeless problem.

"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.

One hundred percent of our homeless guests enjoy full medical coverage, shelter, food, and transportation within one week! Homeless neighbors come to us “in crisis” and quickly move along a path of self-sufficiency and a continuum of care in multiple areas (i.e., employment, housing, education, mental health, etc.) that build self-esteem and view each as an asset, not a liability. How did a small town (Ashland, Oregon) address its big problem? This audiobook tells you “how”.

Think about this: What if you had A tried and proven instruction manual on how to legally, ethically and effectively select and elect the right person for the job. . .every time!

Instead, we have already read This Town and pulled out some of the key take-away points and insights to give you a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter summary & review. In doing so, unfortunately we do not have the space to include all of the many important ideas and anecdotes found in This Town. To get it all, you should first order the full audiobook.