By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 29, 2023 | GwinnettForum has released for sale the second edition of its small book, 366 Facts about Gwinnett County, Ga. It is an updated version of the book released in 2018 for the Gwinnett Bicentennial. It is also “Improved.”
You may remember that former County Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash asked GwinnettForum to produce a list of distinctive facts about this fast-growing county, to celebrate its Bicentennial in 2018. She wanted to put one fact a day about the county on the county website.
The 4.25 x 5.5 inch book with a red cover contained these facts in 378 pages.
The new book, published in a blue cover, updated the previous facts to the year 2023.
The index came about when Bill Bolton, who keeps up my cars and operates a service station in Norcross, told us “That’s a pretty interesting book, but if I want to tell someone about one of those facts, to get it right I have to read back through the entire book to tell them.” So, GwinnettForum improved the 2023 edition by adding an index.
(The index somewhat backfired. When I handed one guy a copy of the new book, the first thing he did was to go to the Index. He told me: “I’m not in it!”)
For anyone wanting to purchase a copy of the book, priced at $10, they should go to the gift shop at the Hudgens Museum for the Arts in Duluth. It is the only outlet that is selling this updated 2023 edition.
Everyday developments that make life a little easier? Here are some we have thought of.
- The roll-away cart for garbage pick up
- Automobile back-up cameras
- GPS (Global Positioning Systems)
- Roller luggage
- E-Z pass for your car to use the speedy lanes
- Thumb drives
- Fingernail clippers
- Grab bars in bathrooms
- Zoom meetings
- Little free libraries
- Portable chargers
- Automatic lights on autos
- Pliers
- Lights on electric drills
- LED night lights with sensors that turn on automatically.
Modern inventors have come up with so many other ways to make life easier. You may think of your own favorites. What’s on your list?
What’s Mark Twain’s bestselling book? You might be surprised.
It’s not Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.
It’s Innocents Abroad, published July 20, in 1869, firmly establishing Mark Twain as a serious writer. This was Twain’s second book, an outgrowth of an assignment from a California newspaper, which had sent him around the world to write travel sketches. It remained his best-selling book throughout his lifetime.
As the bestselling book of Twain’s lifetime (and one of the most popular travelogs ever published), The Innocents Abroad documents Twain’s voyages in Europe and the Middle East in hilarious fashion. (A large party chartered a steamer to take them to the Old World.)
We’ve read it, and one reason it is so popular is that it reads so well in the modern day. Twain explains matters through problems he and his group encounter, as if they just stepped off the boat yesterday.) This group of travelers over 150 years ago experienced the same problems tourists do today.
But Innocents Abroad is not his own personal best favorite. That would be his fictional account of a saga of France, his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896). We’ve not read that one, but have ordered it online.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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