Silicon Valley

Loading …

The Cloud by Matt Richtel

Published on : 29 January, 201328 January, 2013 Published by : Sharon Browning

The Cloud Matt Richtel First Edition: January 29, 2013 HarperCollins Publishers ISBN 978-0-06-225668-3 —♦— In Matt Richtel’s new novel, The Cloud, Nathaniel Idle is not your typical hardass investigative reporter with a steely jaw and even flintier eye. Yes, he is an investigative reporter and has won some accolades exposing […]

Mary Jane Seacole (1805-1881), Jamaican born British Crimean War nurse, portrait. Also known as Mother Seacole. Date: C.1850s

On this day, November 23, in 1805, Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her 1857 memoir,
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman (she was the daughter of a Scottish soldier in the British Army and a free Jamaican woman). She became a nurse, assisting cholera victims in Panama and, after some difficulty joining the nursing corps (which she intimated may have been due to her darker skin), assisting soldiers during the Crimean War. She also established the British Hotel in the Crimea (now Ukraine), catering to Army officers and sightseers, and was known for being an enterprising businesswoman. Hers is a fascinating, varied and lively story. She died in London in 1881 of what may have been a stroke; she was 75.

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.

The Cloud by Matt Richtel

Birthdays