William Kennedy

Billy Phelan, small-time bookie, pool hustler, and poker player becomes an unlikely go-between in the 1938 kidnapping of an Albany political boss's son

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

Brian Ketelsen

Erik St. Martin

Summary Go in Action introduces the Go language, guiding you from inquisitive developer to Go guru. The book begins by introducing the unique features and concepts of Go. Then, you'll get hands-on experience writing real-world applications including websites and network servers, as well as techniques to manipulate and convert data at speeds that will make your friends jealous. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Application development can be tricky enough even when you aren't dealing with complex systems programming problems like web-scale concurrency and real-time performance. While it's possible to solve these common issues with additional tools and frameworks, Go handles them right out of the box, making for a more natural and productive coding experience. Developed at Google, Go powers nimble startups as well as big enterprises—companies that rely on high-performing services in their infrastructure. About the Book Go in Action is for any intermediate-level developer who has experience with other programming languages and wants a jump-start in learning Go or a more thorough understanding of the language and its internals. This book provides an intensive, comprehensive, and idiomatic view of Go. It focuses on the specification and implementation of the language, including topics like language syntax, Go's type system, concurrency, channels, and testing. What's Inside Language specification and implementation Go's type system Internals of Go's data structures Testing and benchmarking About the Reader This book assumes you're a working developer proficient with another language like Java, Ruby, Python, C#, or C++. About the Authors William Kennedy is a seasoned software developer and author of the blog GoingGo.Net. Brian Ketelsen and Erik St. Martin are the organizers of GopherCon and coauthors of the Go-based Skynet framework. Table of Contents Introducing Go Go quick-start Packaging and tooling Arrays, slices, and maps Go's type system Concurrency Concurrency patterns Standard library Testing and benchmarking

Go in Action

The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, basis of the film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Francis Phelan, ex-big-leaguer, part-time gravedigger, full-time bum with the gift of gab, is back in town. He left Albany twenty-two years earlier after he dropped his infant son accidentally, and the boy died. Now he's on the way back to the wife and home he abandoned, haunted at every corner by the ghosts of his violent life. Francis; his wino ladyfriend of nine years, Helen; and his stumblebum pal, Rudy, shuffle their ragtag way through the city's bleakest streets, surviving on gumption, muscatel, and black wit. estiny is not their business. 'The premise of Ironweed was so unpromising, that in marketing terms the writer still to this day finds it funny: the story of a bunch of itinerant alcoholics, knocking around Kennedy's hometown, falling out, having visions, trying to pass for sober to cadge a bed for the night in the homeless shelter.' Guardian 'But for all the rich variety of prose and event, from hallucination to bedrock realism to slapstick and to blessed quotidian peace, ''Ironweed'' is more austere than its predecessors. It is more fierce, but also more forgiving.' Quoted from the classic New York Times review of Ironweed, which made it an overnight sensation.

Ironweed

In the sixth novel of the author's Albany Cycle, the lives of high-born Katrina Taylor and her Irish-American playwright husband are shaped by a 1908 murder-suicide in a Manhattan hotel room. Reprint. Tour.

The Flaming Corsage

Ironweed Floor Display

In a Manhattan hotel room, the "Love Nest Killings of 1908" take place. But the mystery of who killed whom, and why, does not unravel until we explore the lives of Katrina Taylor and Edward Daughtery. He is a first-generation Irish American and a successful playwright. She is a high-born Protestant, a beautiful seductive woman with complex attitudes towards life. Their marriage is a passionate one, but a cataclysmic hotel fire changes it into something else altogether. Moving back and forth between the 1880s and 1912, The Flaming Corsagefollows Katrina and Edward as other lives impact upon theirs-their socially opposed families; Edward's flirtatious actress paramour, Melissa Spencer; the physician Giles Fitzroy, and his wife; and Edward's friend, the cynical journalist Thomas Maginn. The Flaming Corsageevocatively portrays through the lens of Albany's robust Irishtown and English-Dutch aristocracy the seething, contradictory impulses of our humanity, lusts and furies that know no bounds of time or place.

Legs

Legsinaugurated William Kennedy's brilliant cycle of novels (including Billy Phelan's Greatest Gameand Ironweed) set in Albany, New York. True to both life and myth, Legsbrilliantly evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond's attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the more elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s. Diamond and his gangster entourage emerge as emblematic figures from an era of American innocence-and corruption.

Francis Phelan is, alongside 'Legs' Diamond, William Kennedy's greatest character. Ex-ball player, latterly a bum, lush and hardcase, he is central to these three Albany novels: father to the pool shark Billy who struggles with his legacy of violence and self-glorification (BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME); brother to artist Peter whose paintings explore the dark corners of his family history, including Francis's life (VERY OLD BONES); and antihero of Pulitzer Prize winning IRONWEED, in which Phelan returns to Albany at the end of the Depression, roaming the familiar streets with his hobo pal Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and present.

The Albany Cycle

The story of two 'street bums' trying to survive in the depression of 1938.

A Screenplay Adapted from His Novel

A Screenplay

This tale, set during the Depression, tells about Francis Phelan and other inhabitants of skid row in Albany, New York. Ironweed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the best-known of William Kennedy's three Albany-based novels. Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally - and fatally - dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present. Chronicles the final wanderings of a one-time ballplayer turned down-and-out murderer.

A Novel

In 1938, Francis Phelan, a murderer, is reduced to flop houses and hobo jungles and returns to a depressed Albany, where--as a gravedigger--he shuffles his rag tag way to survival

Winner of The Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the third in Kennedy’s Albany cycle, Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, and full-time bum with the gift of gab, has hit bottom. Years earlier he’d left Albany after he dropped his infant son accidentally, and the boy died. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and present.

The collected nonfiction of the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ironweed: “A great pleasure to read no matter what the subject” (Library Journal). When William Kennedy arrives in Barcelona, his guidebook recommends taking the trolley around town—but the trolleys haven’t run in the city for years. He’s on his way to interview the novelist Gabriel García Márquez when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees something impossible: a yellow trolley running down the street. Márquez, however, is not surprised; like all great writers of both fiction and nonfiction, he knows that impossible things happen every day. A remarkable collection from one of America’s greatest authors, Riding the Yellow Trolley Car features work from all stages of Kennedy’s career. Through each piece runs the thread that ties together his greatest works: a love and deep understanding of his hometown, the city of Albany, New York, and the good and evil men who have made it what it is. Featuring interviews and essays on some of the most prominent authors of the twentieth century, from Saul Bellow and E. L. Doctorow to Norman Mailer and the legendary García Márquez—as well as insightful reflections on topics from baseball to the death of a prominent cat to Kennedy’s wife’s hiccups—Riding the Yellow Trolley Car is an essential book for all those who love to read, or live to write.

Selected Nonfiction

Riding the Yellow Trolley Car

It's V-J Day, World War II is finally over, and Roscoe is quitting politics after twenty-six years as chief brainstruster of Albany's notorious Democratic machine. The suave, brilliant, unscrupulous Falstaffian wants to hang up his white double-breasted Palm Beach suit and drift into retirement. But how will he relax his hold on the lid without the political pot boiling over, scalding his beloved and her family? Armed with the politician's most powerful credo - 'Righteousness doesn't stand a chance against the imagination' - Roscoe fights his final political battles. Every step forward leads Roscoe into the past - to the early loss of his true love, to his own particular heroics in World War I, the takeover of City Hall and the methodical assassination of the gangster Jack 'Legs' Diamond. ROSCOE is a comic masterpiece from one of America's most revered novelists.

Roscoe

Kennedy's O Albany! is in part the non-fictional stories he covered in his novels, Legs and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. Kennedy retells the exploits of the bootlegger Jack 'Legs' Diamond, the bungled 1933 kidnapping of John O'Connell, Jr., heir to the Albany Democratic machine and explores the Albany of his past, including its demographics and vanished neighborhoods.

Improbable City of Political Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular, Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated Scoundrels

O Albany!

Jonathan West can now officially call himself an MD. It's the spring of 1975, and he's honored to graduate from Yale with his classmates. But his growing unease about the future has cast a shadow on the day. Jonathan may be a skilled doctor, but he's also a CIA assassin. His handlers all expected him to spin out after he completed his first kill, but Jonathan was remarkably unfazed. He was so unaffected that he's beginning to wonder if this is something to be concerned about. Jonathan has many other worries. He has a one-year-old son and a wife who thinks he's just a pharmaceutical researcher. He's also accepted a new mission from the CIA that'll place him in Iran during one of the most turbulent times in history. His target is the Shah of Iran, and the Shah's death could have enormous implications for the entire world. As Jonathan plunges into his new assignment, this healer understands he must once again become an assassin for the greater good. But as he travels from Geneva to Tehran to Egypt in pursuit of his victim, will his scruples get in the way of carrying out his murderous task?

William Kennedy

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