The story of the African-American crew of the USS Mason that made history in World War II when they escorted six convoys across the Atlantic.

Few filmmakers, if any, make the kind of impact that Martin Scorsese has made on American cinema. The winner of every prestigious film award, including the Oscar, Scorsese is a living legend. Bestselling author and award-winning filmmaker Mary Pat Kelly's groundbreaking biography reveals how this working-class boy from Manhattan's Little Italy became one of our most acclaimed, celebrated, and influential filmmakers. Martin Scorsese: A Journey maps Scorsese's personal and artistic evolution though his films, from early works like student films and Mean Streets through cinematic masterpieces like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas. Across interviews with Scorsese himself; stars like Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Liza Minelli, and Nick Nolte; colleagues including screenwriters and cinematographers; as well as family and friends, it reveals the story of a man in a way that only his community and fellow artists can, giving us unprecedented, intimate access to the making of these iconic films and the extraordinary mind behind them. Brimming with insight into Scorsese's life, values, process, humor, and inspirations, it is a remarkable account of America's premiere director, the shepherd of countless imaginations.

In a hidden Ireland where fishermen and tenant farmers find solace in their ancient faith, songs, stories, and communal celebrations, young Honora Keeley and Michael Kelly wed and start a family. Because they and their countrymen must sell both their catch and their crops to pay exorbitant rents, potatoes have become their only staple food.
But when blight destroys the potatoes three times in four years, a callous government and uncaring landlords turn a natural disaster into The Great Starvation that will kill one million. Honora and Michael vow their children will live. The family joins two million other Irish refugees--victims saving themselves--in the emigration from Ireland.
Danger and hardship await them in America. Honora, her unconventional sister Maire, and their seven sons help transform Chicago from a frontier town to the "City of the Century." The boys go on to fight in the Civil War and enlist in the cause of Ireland's freedom.
Spanning six generations and filled with joy, sadness, and heroism, GALWAYBAY sheds brilliant light on the ancestors of today's forty-four million Irish Americans--and is a universal story you will never forget."

Threatened by a bully not to tell? Bullied by kids on the playground? Will my parents love me if I do something wrong? These are some of the issues that "Gangsta Angel: A Guardian Angel in Training" addresses. Author Pat Kelly Wendling uses a spunky, pint-size angel with an attitude to help Kids see you don't need to use violence to solve issues. They can turn it around and kill with kindness and become a gang for good. Just as it becomes easier to do something wrong each time you do it, it also becomes easier to do something right each time a good decision is made. The book is geared to 9-11 year olds. A Guardian Angel named Kelly works to protect and empower her human, Bobby, to handle pressure and bullying from others. Angels have rules and Kelly learns that she can't influence her human without his asking for help. This spunky, pint size angel with red pony tails pops messages into his head, uses animals to help and even becomes human. She smiled when she was called a Gangsta Angel by an adult bully when she took on human form to help her human, Bobby, wings and all Kelly teaches Bobby that to handle yourself, use your head and to handle others, use your heart...she is a Gangsta for good.

Scotland's Radical Exports is about the men and women who took trade unionism and working class politics from Scotland to the main countries that make up the Scottish Diaspora. Many of Scotland's industrial workers left home with a formidable combination of trade union conviction and political understanding. Their unrivalled experience made them especially suited to leadership roles. Guided by traditional Scottish models, they formed trade unions wherever they settled, often at a time when membership of a union could mean dismissal, eviction, and deportation. Politically their impact was just as great in the parties of the working class they helped build. Each of the thirteen chapters of the book is a short history of a trade union organisation or a political party, told through the biographies of the Scots who helped shape them. Many of the characters in the book are unknown in Scotland, but their contributions are celebrated by the organisations they helped build. Scotland's Radical Exports records the determination, sacrifices and unqualified heroism of people who passionately believed in the cause for which they fought. It reminds us of their courage and gives them their proper place in Scottish history. "I am exceptionally proud of all of Scotland's achievements and particularly the different ways in which Scots have helped to shape the modern world. Scotland's contribution to the Trades Union movement and enhancing the rights of workers - at home and around the globe - is hugely significant. It is important that these stories are captured and celebrated." -- Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland "Much has been written about Scotland's contribution to the development of the modern world, in science and literature, in trade - good and bad, and of course, in enterprise and philanthropy. This book adds another important chapter to that remarkable history - to the values we shared and the inspirational individuals who spread them far and wide." -- Lord Jack McConnell, First Minister of Scotland, 2001-2007 Pat Kelly is a former president of the STUC and Scottish secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). After graduating from Glasgow University he worked as a civil engineer before he became a full-time trade union official. Since leaving the PCS he has served on the Civil Service Appeal Board and as a non-executive director of NHS24 and Scottish Water. He has four children and lives in Edinburgh with his partner, Jane Lindsay.

Pat Kelly, an Irishman, travels the length and breadth of post-Communist East Germany over 20 years and meets its people while learning German "on the fly" - with often hilarious results. This is a rare piece of Ostalgie travel writing in English, and essential reading for the English speaking visitor to the former East Germany and Berlin. A book filled with humour, quirky travel experiences, Ostalgie, Stasi and the ghost of an extinct state. "DDRuben - Over There" (a play on the German word "druben" meaning "over there," used by both West and East Germans to refer to the other German state.) is the former East Germany (DDR) seen from an Irish independent traveller's perspective and experience over almost a quarter of a century. "Don't Happy - Be Worry " read the ominous graffiti as my train headed for the Iron Curtain in the summer of 1987. When I went "over there" into East Germany, or "druben" as the Germans say, I felt that I had exchanged a 1950s time warp (West Berlin) for a different planet. That different planet, the DDR, crashed to earth on November 9th 1989, and died at midnight on October 2nd 1990, a rare case of a modern European country simply ceasing to exist overnight. Travellers in the eastern part of Germany are haunted by the ghost of this extinct state. Independent travel in the first decade post-DDR was absolute madness, in which you could find your B&B to be a spare futon in the living room of a granny, a high-rise flat in a dodgy suburb, or even a room over a drapery shop. Ostalgie, nostalgia for the old days of the DDR, actually abounds. As one of my seventy-something year old granny hostesses said in halting English over breakfast in her sixth floor high-rise apartment, "Venn vee had ze Stasi, vee had no crime Zey should bring zem back ," before going on to tell me about her summer holidays last year in Siberia. I stayed in the home of a rocket engineer who had loved life in the DDR, and saw his 1942 era home-made radio made of spare parts pilfered from the Wehrmacht. In Berlin, I stayed in the Stasi elite apartment block. I had the most wonderful seaside holidays on the Baltic coast, and went back in time on the ancient steam trains still running in this land that time had forgotten. This is the story of a unique destination, no longer on a map in name, but alive in spirit. DDRuben is the quirky view of a foreigner, English-speaking but not Anglophone in mentality, who has travelled extensively in the former DDR while never actually taking up residence in Germany. A little bit like Crocodile Dundee meets Heinrich Boll It straddles Ostalgie (nostalgia for the good aspects of the former DDR, especially among East Germans) and the bad aspects, which it touches on without emphasis. The book is non-judgmental on the DDR, without overemphasising either Ostalgie or the Stasi State, and with a view to the Alltag or everyday life of people in the former DDR. A rare view is presented of what it was like in the island of West Berlin before the Wall came down, as well as the actual experience of the author of travel in East Berlin under the DDR regime. A "what if" chapter deals with the lost Eastern German Territories beyond the DDR, a subject rarely touched on in any popular writing on the subject.

After ten years in Paris, where she learned photography and became part of the movement that invented modern art, Chicago-born, Irish-American Nora Kelly is at last returning home. Her skill as a photographer will help her cousin Ed Kelly in his rise to Mayor of Chicago. But when she captures the moment an assassin's bullet narrowly misses President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and strikes Anton Cermak in February 1933, she enters a world of international intrigue and danger. Now, she must balance family obligations against her encounters with larger-than-life historical characters, such as Joseph Kennedy, Big Bill Thompson, Al Capone, Mussolini, and the circle of women who surround F.D.R. Nora moves through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II, but it's her unexpected trip to Ireland that transforms her life.