Bøger af Jim Murphy

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Blacky has been an ocean-rescue lifeguard on the Atlantic Ocean at Jones Beach State Park for 15 years, and his job means everything to him. The summer of 1971 changes Blacky's life when a new love awakens his hardened heart and a lover from his past comes crashing back into his life. All this, while New York State and the Jones Beach lifeguards are engaged in a deadly standoff during a lifeguard strike. Jones Beach State Park, located on the south shore of New York's Long Island, is the largest, oceanfront public bathing facility in the history of the world. The park, founded in 1929, attracts more than 15 million visitors every summer. The Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps. consists of approximately 350 elite ocean-rescue lifeguards, men and women who watch over and protect thousands of swimmers in the rough ocean. The lifeguards make 500 rescues on any given weekend and thousands of rescues over the course of the summer season. In 1971, The Jones Beach lifeguards went on an eight-week strike in a bitter dispute with New York State involving workforce size, pay raises, continued employment for older lifeguards, and multiple safety issues. The result of the strike had deadly consequences.

This powerful book is kaleidoscopic in all ways-patterns of language, history, and landscape tumble down the page to be formed anew on the next. It is reflective and absorbing at once. It brings dignity and insight to a raw, unlettered world in order to find its worth and its grief. It is an effort to remember and redeem, and a further effort to find the truth. Yet finally, I think, this book is joyous; it delivers a rare and hard-sought vision of joy. One cannot read this book and not feel lifted and, thereby, free. Maurice Manning, author of "The Gone and the Going Away", Professor of English at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and past recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions.

The story of Gil, a two-bit purse snatcher who gets recruited by a Mexican drug cartel in Miami. Gil moves rapidly up the ranks of the cartel until he is made the mayor of a small but strategic town just across the Mexican border from Arizona. Here, Gil encounters an unusual individual who convinces him to turn against the cartel, resulting in an adventure beyond his imaginings.

Sam is a blacksmith in a small rural township. He has spent his whole life there and is quite content with his lot. Now, however, things are changing. For some reason a mature, red dragon has taken up residence in a cave outside the town and it has already killed Ralf and his family. As a member of the group sent to find help to deal with the dragon, Sam is leaving town for the first time in his life. And the outside world is nothing like the safe, predictable existence that he has been used to until now. He learns of other races in the world and the mighty wars between them that have shaped the whole land, wars that are still being fought and have a great deal to do with the arrival of the dragon. Can Sam and his compatriots survive the journey and find a way to rid the town of its dragon problems? That is for the reader to discover as he follows the young blacksmith through his journey and sees a completely different person end the trip to the one who had started out.

In Versions of May we are pushed from our present moments "forward into other histories, / no sights, no path, no guide." Every poem is a little trip, visiting cathedrals, temples, tombs, battlefields, forests, and creeks, and with every stop, there is an opportunity to "delete our presence here, and free us from/ ourselves." What comes after we are gone charts the pulse of this collection. When the poet communes with his troubled heroes - Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Jim Morrison, and many more - we have fleeting moments of understanding that are easy and pure, just like "pouring light into a suitcase." And in the spirit of passing it on, passing it down, passing it forward, we are given hope that the greats that came before us can hear us and that when we die, we'll all "become the chords." With both vastness and precision, Jim Murphy peers between the notes for the universal mysteries that happen when you are looking the other way. -Elizabeth Hughey, Author of White Bull

Without seeming to at first glance, Jim Murphy's Versions of May succeeds in speaking to the anxieties that move beneath the surface waters of our times. It is a collection of tremendous depth and breadth, piercing insight and tenderness. Global, and yet attentive to particulars of nature and human spirit, these poems artfully blend elements of elegy, Zen, jazz, and popular music. In line after line that resonate with echoes of terror and loss, but simultaneously with stunning celebrations of beauty, they sweep us off center, in the traditions of Zen or jazz masters, leaving us almost breathless, startled by the silence and light. "No truths / but this bright and noble moment," Murphy writes, and elsewhere, "We vanished. We left in total silence." These are poems to be savored, ones that will stay with us long after our reading. -Anand Prahlad, Curators Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri-Columbia

Gold...silver...precious gems...the stuff dreams are made of. This is the story of a hoard of just such valuable metals and stones, whose journey begins in the year 1311, when the Knights Templar were prosecuted. A small band of valiant knights escape with the hoard and the turbulent journey begins. It's 2525, and enter Mary and James McGoldenck, a young couple from Laramie, Wyoming, who fall in love with metal detecting and rock hounding, and because of those activities, trek all over Wyoming seeking buried treasures. Enter a villain from Louisiana, Jean Pierre LaCroix - drug dealer, money launderer, human trafficker, murder - these are just a few of his methods of making money. Follow Mary and James as they deal with deadly encounters, ambushes, difficult terrains, a mysterious American Indian, Thomas Light Horse, who shows up out of nowhere, and an old rancher named Chester Wilcox, who owns the ranch that holds Crashed Wagon Canyon.

The Great Fire of 1871 was one of the most colossal disasters in American history. Overnight, the flourishing city of Chicago was transformed into a smoldering wasteland. The damage was so profound that few people believed the city could ever rise again.It all began one Sunday evening when a small fire broke out inside the O'Learys' barn. The panic was slow to build at first. People ignored the danger signals, and even the fire department was unable to locate the fire. This city, built of wood, was connected by hundreds of miles of wooden sidewalks and roads. In time, wild flames, fueled by a steady wind, engulfed everything in their path. As people took to the crowded streets, hours of mounting chaos, fear, and panic followed before the relentless flames were halted. When at last they were, a new kind of drama was only just beginning. Nearly 100,000 people were homeless and searching through the burnt rubble for their families.By weaving personal accounts of actual survivors together with the carefully researched history of Chicago and the disaster, Jim Murphy constructs a riveting narrative that recreates the event with drama and immediacy. And finally, he reveals how, even in a time of deepest despair, the humar spirit triumphed, as the people of Chicago found the courage and strength to build their city once again.

A unique, fast, and quirky guide to Philadelphia’s heroes and historic sites

From one of the most acclaimed writers of nonfiction for children, Invincible Microbe illuminates the seemingly unstoppable killer thats been haunting us for centuries: tuberculosis. Well-researched and including over 100 archival photos and prints, this compelling biography of a deadly germ is a must-read.

The story of the American Revolution as experienced by a Connecticut farm boy who enlisted in the army in 1776. A Young Patriot skillfully weaves together excerpts from the boy's wartime account with the author’s explanatory text to create a fascinating and factual history of the American Revolution.Only fifteen when he enlisted, Joseph Plumb Martin spent the rest of his teen and young adult years marching, working, fighting, foraging, and starving while serving under the likes of Washington and Lafayette.Through the mix of Martin’s observations and experiences, the historical context that Murphy provides, and maps and archival prints, the book vividly reveals the grit and drama of war—and a teenager who was eyewitness to a Revolution.A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

This contemporary classic explores the role of boys who fought in the Civil War. No reader’s vision of America’s most brutal and bloody war will be the same after reading this book.“This wrenching look at our nation’s bloodiest conflict through the eyes of its youthful participants serves up history both heartbreaking and enlightening.” —Publishers WeeklySome Union and Confederate soldiers were as young as twelve when they went off to fight in the Civil War. It is thought that as many as ten to twenty percent of all Civil War soldiers may have been under sixteen.The Boys' War follows these young soldiers through the rigors of camp life and drilling, right into the chaos of the battlefield. Jim Murphy skillfully weaves together firsthand accounts and personal letters of these countless young men with historical context to paint their portrait—young soldiers who, either seeking escape from the drudgery of farm work or embracing fantasies of glory, participated in the Civil War.Handsomely produced with numerous period photographs and drawings, The Boys' War is a winner of the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.“Making extensive use of the actual words—culled from diaries, journals, memoirs, and letters—of boys who served in the Union and Confederate armies as fighting soldiers as well as drummers, buglers, and telegraphers, Murphy describes the beginnings of the Civil War and goes on to delineate the military role of the underage soldiers and their life in the camps and field bivouacs. Also included is a description of the boys' return home and the effects upon them of their wartime experiences. An excellent selection of more than 45 sepia-toned contemporary photographs augment the text of this informative, moving work.” —School Library Journal (starred review)“This well-researched and readable account provides fresh insight into the human cost of a pivotal event in United States history.” —The Horn Book (starred review)

Powerful and riveting, this Newbery Honor–winning narrative describes the illness known as yellow fever, the toll it took on the nation’s capital—and the eventual triumph over the disease.Long before Covid and the West Nile virus, yellow fever was a medical mystery that forced thousands in Philadelphia, the nation’s temporary capital, to flee and brought the workings of the federal government to a virtual halt. A riveting account of this country’s first large-scale medical epidemic, An American Plague is generously illustrated with archival prints and photographs and includes a bibliography, map, and index.This is the story of how half the city’s residents fled and half of those who remained died; neighboring towns, cities and states barricaded themselves; George Washington himself fled, setting off a constitutional crisis; and bloodletting caused blood to run through the streets. It is also the story of a little known chapter in Black history in which free Blacks nursed the sick only to be later condemned for their heroic efforts.Meticulously researched, first-hand accounts, newspaper clippings, death lists, and period engravings recreate the fear and panic while exploring the political, social, cultural, medical and scientific history of the times. A final chapter explores the causes of the epidemic and provides a wake-up call about the potential for epidemics today.Newbery Honor Book * National Book Award Finalist * Winner of the Sibert Medal