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Download A Truck Full Of Money: One Man's Quest To Recover From Great Success A perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age and the wild, mad adventure that is start-up culture. Charles Duhigg Fortune, mania, genius, philanthropy the bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains gives us the inspiring story of Paul English, the founder of Kayak.com and Lola. Tracy Kidder, the master of the nonfiction narrative (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the bestselling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur, who as a boy rebelled against authority. Growing up in working-class Boston, English discovers a medium for his talents the first time he sees a computer. As a young man, despite suffering from what would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, he begins his pilgrim s journey through the ups and downs in the brave new world of computers...

Download Stick It!: My Life Of Sex, Drums, And Rock 'n' Roll He ran with teenage gangs in Brooklyn before becoming a global rock star in the Summer of Love. He was managed by the mob, hung with Hendrix, trashed thousands of hotel rooms, unwittingly paid for an unknown Led Zeppelin to support him on tour, taught John Bonham (as well as Fred Astaire) a thing or two about drumming, and took part in Zeppelin’s infamous deflowering of a groupie with a mud shark. After enrolling in Rod Stewart’s Sex Police, he hung out with Kojak, accidentally shared a house with Prince, became blood brothers with Ozzy Osbourne, and got fired by Sharon. He formed an all-blond hair metal band, jammed with John McEnroe and Steven Seagal, became a megastar in Japan, got married five times, slept with 4,500 groupies—and, along the way, became a rock legend by single-handedly reinventing hard rock and heavy metal drumming. Carmine Appice has enjoyed a jaw-dropping rock-and...

Download Hunting Camp 52: Tales From A North Woods Deer Camp Meet the Jolly Boys—five men from northern Wisconsin who built a deer hunting shack in 1955 and established a tradition that has now lasted over six decades. Hunting Camp 52, affectionately known as Blue Heaven, is a place where every trail, rock, and ravine has its own nickname; every kill is recorded by hand on a window shade; every hunter happily croons along during evening songfests; and every rowdy poker game lasts late into the night. The outhouse is always cold, the porcupines are always a problem, and the vehicles are always getting stuck in the mud, but there’s nowhere else these men would rather be. In Hunting Camp 52: Tales from a North Woods Deer Camp, John Marvin Hanson—the son of one of the original Jolly Boys—recounts the sidesplitting antics, the memorable hunts, and the profound camaraderie that has developed over almost sixty seasons at Blue Heaven. Hanson also includes more ...

Download Pour Me, A Life Serialized in Esquire, A.A. Gill's Pour Me a Life is a riveting meditation on the author's alcoholism, seen through the lens of the memories that remain, and the transformative moments that saved him from a lifelong addiction and early death. “ Pour Me a Life is an unapologet­ically honest, raw, and often har­rowing account of the life of a man who, up until now, we only thought we knew. Here is A.A. Gill at his best. A real-life Bright Lights, Big City .” —Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, and author of the New York Times bestseller 32 Yolks Best known for his hysterically funny and often scathing restaurant reviews for the London Sunday Times , A.A. Gill’s Pour Me a Life is a riveting memoir of the author’s alcoholism, seen through the lens of the memories that remain, and the transformative moments in art, food, religion, and family that saved him from a lifelong addiction and early death. By his early t...

Download Edward Viii: The Uncrowned King Edward VIII came to the throne in January 1936, provoked a constitutional crisis by his determination to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, and abdicated in December. He was never crowned king. In choosing the woman he loved over his royal birthright, Edward shook the monarchy to its foundations. Given the new title 'Duke of Windsor' and essentially sent into exile, he remained a visible skeleton in the royal cupboard until his death in 1972 and he haunts the house of Windsor to this day. Drawing on unpublished material, notably correspondence with his most loyal (though much tried) supporter Winston Churchill, Piers Brendon's superb biography traces Edward's tumultuous public and private life from bright young prince to troubled sovereign, from wartime colonial governor to sad but glittering expatriate.

Download Rasputin And Other Ironies A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings Ranging from portraits of Rasputin and Lenin to observations on the Russian Revolution, and from profiles of cultural figures to moving domestic scenes, this short collection includes writings by the inimitable Teffi never before published in English. Everything is here - politics, society, art and literature, love and family life - and all is told in Teffi's multifaceted style: amusing, sincerely moving, ironic and always honest, pervaded by an intensely felt understanding of humanity's simultaneous tragedy and absurdity.

Download Incredible Baseball Stats: The Coolest, Strangest Stats And Facts In Baseball History As America's pastime since the mid-1800s, baseball offers the sights, sounds, and even smells that are deeply entrenched in our culture. But for some, the experience can be less sensory. Some, such as Ryan Spaeder and Kevin Reavy, live for baseball statistics. Stats give the game historical context and measurables for past, present, and predictive analysis. Incredible Baseball Stats helps tell unique baseball stories, showcasing extraordinary stats and facts in baseball history, through the 2015 season. For example, in 2015, the Nationals’ Bryce Harper broke out in a major way. He batted .330/.460/.649 with 42 home runs en route to his first MVP Award. It was his fourth MLB season, but he was still younger than NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant. He became the youngest player to lead the league in both on-base percentage and homers in the same season since ...

Download The Indisputable Existence Of Santa Claus: The Mathematics Of Christmas How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list ? Can you predict Her Majesty's Christmas Message? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner - shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night - or fatter - as he tucks into a mince pie and a glass of sherry in billions of houses across the world? Full of diagrams, sketches and graphs, beautiful equations, Markov chains and matrices, Proof That Santa Exists brightens up the bleak midwinter with stockingfuls of mathematiccal marvels. And proves once and for all that maths isn't just for old men with white hair and beards who associate with elves. Maths has never been merrier.

Download The Tao Of Bill Murray: Real-life Stories Of Joy, Enlightenment, And Party Crashing “Reading The Tao of Bill Murray is like spending time with Bill, but probably safer.”—Danny Rubin, screenwriter of Groundhog Day This collection of the most epic, hilarious, and strange Bill Murray stories, many of which have never before been reported, spotlights the star’s extraordinary ability to infuse the everyday with surprise, absurdity, and wonder. No one will ever believe you. New York Times bestselling author Gavin Edwards, like the rest of us, has always been fascinated with Bill Murray—in particular the beloved actor’s adventures off-screen, which rival his filmography for sheer entertainment value. Edwards traveled to the places where Murray has lived, worked, and partied, in search of the most outrageous and hilarious Bill Murray stories from the past four decades, many of which have never before been reported. Bill once paid a child five dollars t...

Download Stalin's Singing Spy : The Life And Exile Of Nadezhda Plevitskaya Stalin's Singing Spy follows the remarkable life of Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a Russian peasant girl who achieved fame as one of Tsar Nicholas II's favorite singers and infamy as one of Stalin's agents. Pamela A. Jordan traces Plevitskaya's life from her childhood in an isolated village to national stardom. She always declared that she was foremost an artist who sang for all people, regardless of their ideological leanings or socioeconomic background. She claimed throughout her career to be fundamentally apolitical, yet decades later in Europe, Plevitskaya was unmasked as one of Joseph Stalin's secret agents along with her husband, White Russian General Nikolai Skoblin. Their experiences in exile shed light on Stalin's covert operations and the hardships Russian emigres faced in interwar Europe, an era of great political and economic turmoil. In addition, ...

Download How To Talk Dirty And Influence People: An Autobiography During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions; he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, “So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy.” Although Bruce died when he was only forty, his influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire are incalculable. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People remains a brilliant existential account of his life and the forces that made him the most important and controversial entertainer in history.

Download Bill Riley On The Air And At The Iowa State Fair Many know Bill Riley as Mr. Iowa State Fair, the voice of the Drake Relays or the force behind the Bill Riley Talent Search. He wore all of those hats, along with countless more. An Iowan through and through, Bill worked tirelessly on behalf of the state’s outdoor spaces and young people, raising money for bike trails and the Des Moines Children’s Zoo, later known as the Blank Park Zoo. In the last years of his life, he collected these memories from a career stretching back to the debut of television in the Hawkeye State.

Download Lives Of The Great Gardeners Entertaining and accessible―the lives of the men and women, many of them multitalented artists, who created some of the world’s most extraordinary gardens, and whose legacy continues to inspire Throughout history, great gardeners have risen from all walks of life. Some have been aristocratic amateur gardeners, others professional designers with an international practice. Some have come to garden-making from sculpture or painting; some have been hands-on nurserymen or botanists. What they all have in common is the ability to take an idea and develop it to meet the needs and aesthetics of their times. The book is organized into four thematic sections. Gardens of Ideas moves from the politically allusive gardens of eighteenth-century England to Charles Jencks’s Scottish garden inspired by twenty-first-century cosmography. Gardens of Straight Lines explores the lives of the great formalist gardeners, from Le Nôtre at Ve...

Download Bloom: Navigating Life And Style From rising YouTube star Estée Lalonde comes a book that's about more than just living the perfect lifestyle; it's about giving readers the confidence to live the lifestyle that's perfect for you. What makes you happy? What makes you you? What defines your style? In Bloom, YouTube personality Estée Lalonde shares the moments, people and things that have made her who she is today. She reveals her life lessons, and offers her tips for surviving life and finding yourself. With the same charming and friendly voice and advice that has made her a global star, Estee guides readers in discovering their own bloom story and celebrating what makes them unique.

Download The Keys From Snapchat sensation, business mogul, and recording artist DJ Khaled, the book They don't want you to read reveals his major keys to success. - Stay away from They - Don’t ever play yourself - Secure the bag - Respect the code - Glorify your success - Don’t deny the heat - Keep two rooms cooking at the same time - Win, win, win no matter what

Download A Cole Porter Companion Balancing sophisticated melodies and irresistible rhythms with lyrics by turns cynical and passionate, Cole Porter sent American song soaring on gossamer wings. Timeless works like "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "At Long Last Love" made him an essential figure in the soundtrack of a century and earned him adoration from generations of music lovers. In A Cole Porter Companion , a parade of performers and scholars offers essays on little-known aspects of the master tunesmith's life and art. Here are Porter's days as a Yale wunderkind and his nights as the exemplar of louche living; the triumph of Kiss Me Kate and shocking failure of You Never Know ; and his spinning rhythmic genius and a turkey dinner into "You're the Top" while cultural and economic forces take "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" in unforeseen directions. Other entries explore notes on ongoing Porter scholars...

Download The Book Of Isaias: A Child Of Hispanic Immigrants Seeks His Own America In a green town in the middle of America, a bright 18-year-old Hispanic student named Isaias Ramos sets out on the journey to college. Isaias, who passed a prestigious national calculus test as a junior and leads the quiz bowl team, is the hope of Kingsbury High in Memphis, a school where many students have difficulty reading. But Kingsbury’s dysfunction, expensive college fees, and forms printed in a language that’s foreign to his parents are all obstacles in the way of getting him to a university. Isaias also doubts the value of college and says he might go to work in his family’s painting business after high school, despite his academic potential. Is Isaias making a rational choice? Or does he simply hope to avoid pain by deferring dreams that may not come to fruition? This is what journalist Daniel Connolly attempts to uncover in The Book of Isaias as he follows Isaias...

Download Harry T. Burleigh : From The Spiritual To The Harlem Renaissance Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) played a leading role in American music and culture in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was also the first African American composer to create a significant body of art song. An international roster of opera and recital singers performed his works and praised them as among the best of their time. Jean E. Snyder traces Burleigh's life from his Pennsylvania childhood through his fifty-year tenure as soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. As a composer, Burleigh's pioneering work preserved and transformed the African American spiritual; as a music editor, he facilitated the work of other black composers; as a role model, vocal coach, and mentor, he profoundly influenced American song; and in private life he was friends with Marian Anderson, Will Marion Cook, and other America lumin...

Download Hillary: Vita E Potere In Una Dynasty Americana - Gennaro Sangiuliano «Sono molto orgogliosa di essere stata una Goldwater girl, avevo idee radicate nel conservatorismo. Io non sono nata democratica.» E da questo paradosso, solo apparente, che Gennaro Sangiuliano prende le mosse per ricostruire il lungo cammino politico e sentimentale di Hillary Rodham Clinton, ex First Lady, ex Segretario di Stato durante l'amministrazione Obama ma, soprattutto, prima candidata donna alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti d'America. Nata nel 1947 a Park Ridge, sobborgo di Chigago, Hillary cresce con la passione politica che respira in famiglia - il padre è un convinto anticomunista -e quel Goldwater per il quale parteggia non è altro che il candidato repubblicano nella campagna presidenziale del 1964. Dopo la febbrile stagione del '68 e della contestazione studentesca, Hillary matura una diversa coscienza politica e a Yale, dove si è iscritta per divent...

Download Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet In Politics Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics ­celebrates the work of Abdilatif Abdalla, one of Kenya's most well-known poets and a committed political activist. It includes commentary essays on aspects of Abdilatif Abdalla's work and life, through inter-weaving perspectives on poetry and politics, language and history; with contributions by East African writers and scholars of Swahili literature, including Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Said Khamis, Ken Walibora, Ahmed Rajab, Mohamed Bakari, and Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir, among others. Abdalla became famous in 1973, with the publication of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), a collection of poems written secretly in prison during three years of solitary confinement (1969-72). He was convicted of circulating pamphlets against Jomo Kenyatta's KANU government, criticizing it as 'dictatorial' and calling for political resistance in the pamphlet, 'Kenya: Twendapi...

Download In Search Of Anne Brontë Anne Brontë, the youngest and most enigmatic of the Brontë sisters, remains a bestselling author nearly two centuries after her death. The brilliance of her two novels and her poetry belies the quiet, truthful girl who often lived in the shadow of her more outgoing sisters. Yet her writing was the most revolutionary of all the Brontës, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. This revealing new biography opens Anne’s most private life to a new audience, and includes unpublished letters from Anne to the family to which she was governess as well as first publication of a controversial image that could be the only photograph of the three Brontë sisters.

Download Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life And Times Of Gus Grissom Unlike other American astronauts, Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom never had the chance to publish his memoirs―save for an account of his role in the Gemini program―before the tragic launch pad fire on January 27, 1967, which took his life and those of Edward White and Roger Chaffee. The international prestige of winning the Moon Race cannot be understated, and Grissom played a pivotal and enduring role in securing that legacy for the United States. Indeed, Grissom was first and foremost a Cold Warrior, a member of the first group of Mercury astronauts whose goal it was to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. Drawing on extensive interviews with fellow astronauts, NASA engineers, family members, and friends of Gus Grissom, George Leopold delivers a comprehensive survey of Grissom’s life that places his career in the context of the Cold War and the history of human spaceflight. Calcula...

Download Agatha Christie On Screen This book is a comprehensive exploration of 90 years of film and television adaptations of the world’s best-selling novelist’s work. Drawing on extensive archival material, it offers new information regarding both the well-known and forgotten screen adaptations of Agatha Christie’s stories, including unmade and rare adaptations, some of which have been unseen for more than half a century. This history offers intriguing insights into the discussions and debates that surrounded many of these screen projects – something that is brought to life through previously unpublished correspondence from Christie herself and a new wide-ranging interview with her grandson, Mathew Prichard. Agatha Christie on Screen takes the reader on a journey from little known silent film adaptations, through to famous screen productions including 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express, as well as the television series of the Poirot and Miss Marple st...

Download Barry Miles - Io Sono Burroughs. Una Biografia William Burroughs ha cinque anni quando, seduto con il fratello nella casa di famiglia, in un quartiere altoborghese di St. Louis, scoppia improvvisamente a piangere: «Era come la sensazione disperata e assoluta di essere vulnerabile». William ne è ancora ignaro, ma lo Spirito del Male è già penetrato in lui, entità ostile che lo perseguiterà per tutta la vita. Che studi medicina a Vienna o antropologia ad Harvard, che faccia il disinfestatore a Chicago o si rifugi tra le braccia dell’amico Allen Ginsberg a New York, lo Spirito del Male non gli darà mai pace, portandolo alle azioni più sconsiderate e alle sperimentazioni più folli, ma anche, per reazione violenta, alle visioni più lucide e alle verità più drammaticamente insondabili. L’uccisione della moglie nella delirante e ubriaca imitazione di Guglielmo Tell, la ricerca di giovani corpi nei casini di Tangeri, l’automutilazione del mignolo per f...

Download Who Is Hillary Clinton? (who Was...?) Who Is Hillary Clinton? Readers of our New York Times best-selling series can find out now! At age fourteen, Hillary Clinton thought it would be thrilling to become an astronaut, so she sent an application to NASA. The reply was a flat out rejection: the space program didn't take women. It was a critical moment for the young girl, one that made her realize the world she lived in needed changing and that she had better try to make those changes happen. Clinton's life has been a thrilling series of firsts—First Lady of the US, then first First Lady to become a US Senator, Secretary of State, and possibly the first woman to run as the Democratic candidate for President. This easy-to-read biography gives readers a firm grounding not only in Clinton's life history but the history of the times in which she's lived. It comes out as she makes her historic run for the White House. Age Range: 8 - 12 y...

Download Who Is Elton John? (who Was...?) How does a little boy from the London suburbs named Reginald Kenneth Dwight grow up to become one of the biggest pop stars of all time? A lot of talent and a lot of personality! Elton John, as he would later call himself, started playing piano at the age of three. Although he was trained to play classical music, Elton's real love was rock and roll. He cut his first album in 1969 and has dominated the airwaves ever since with songs like "Your Song," "Crocodile Rock" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." Known for his outlandish stage costumes and giant glasses, Elton John continues to write songs for Broadway musicals, Hollywood soundtracks, and Top-40 hits. Age Range: 8 - 12 years

Download The New Russia After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has ever been in the past 25 years. Putin's motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia's elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin's regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that in order to further his own personal power, Putin has corrupted the achievements of perestroika and created a system which offers no future for Russia. Faced with this, Gorbachev advocates a radical reform of politics and new fostering of pluralism and social democracy. Gorbachev's insightful analysis moves beyond internal politics to address wider problems in the region, including the Ukraine conflict, as well as the global challenges of poverty and climate change. Above all el...

Download Glasgow : The Autobiography Glasgow: The Autobiography tells the story of the fabled, former Second City of the British Empire from its origins as a bucolic village on the rivers Kelvin and Clyde, through the Industrial Revolution to the dawning of the second millennium. Arranged chronologically and introduced by journalist and Glasgowphile Alan Taylor, the book includes extracts from an astonishing array of writers. Some, such as William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Dirk Bogarde and Evelyn Waugh, were visitors and left their vivid impressions as they passed through on. Many others were born and bred Glaswegians who knew the city and its inhabitants - and its secrets - intimately. They come from every walk of life and, in addition to professional writers, include anthropologists and scientists, artists and murderers, housewives and hacks, footballers and comedians, politicians and entrepreneurs, immigrants and locals. Together they present a varied ...

Download Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep A portrait of a woman, an era, and a profession: the first thoroughly researched biography of Meryl Streep—the “Iron Lady” of acting, nominated for nineteen Oscars and winner of three—that explores her beginnings as a young woman of the 1970s grappling with love, feminism, and her astonishing talent. In 1975 Meryl Streep, a promising young graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was finding her place in the New York theater scene. Burning with talent and ambition, she was like dozens of aspiring actors of the time—a twenty-something beauty who rode her bike everywhere, kept a diary, napped before performances, and stayed out late “talking about acting with actors in actors’ bars.” Yet Meryl stood apart from her peers. In her first season in New York, she won attention-getting parts in back-to-back Broadway plays, a Tony Award nomination, and two roles in Shakespeare in the Park productions. Even then, people said,...

Download The Chernobyl Herbarium (critical Climate Change) We entrust readers with thirty fragments of reflections, meditations, recollections, and images - one for each year that has passed since the explosion that rocked and destroyed a part of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986. The aesthetic visions, thoughts, and experiences that have made their way into this book hover in a grey region between the singular and self-enclosed, on the one hand, and the generally applicable and universal, on the other. Through words and images, we wish to contribute our humble share to a collaborative grappling with the event of Chernobyl. Unthinkable and unrepresentable as it is, we insist on the need to reflect upon, signify, and symbolize it, taking stock of the consciousness it fragmented and, perhaps, cultivating another, more environmentally attuned way of living.

Download With Winston Churchill At The Front : Winston In The Trenches 1916 Following his resignation from the Government after the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, Winston Churchill's political career stalled. Never one to give in, Churchill was determined to continue fighting the enemy. He was already a Major in the Territorial Reserve and he was offered promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and with it command of a battalion on the Western Front. On 5 January 1916, Churchill took up his new post with the 6th (Service) Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. The battalion's adjutant was Captain Alexander Dewar Gibb who formed a close relationship with Churchill that lasted far beyond their few weeks together in the war. Dewar Gibb subsequently wrote an account of his and Churchill's time together in the trenches. Packed with amusing anecdotes and fascinating detail, Gibb's story shows an entirely different side to Churchill's character from the ...

Download Pier Review: A Road Trip In Search Of The Great British Seaside Fifty-five piers. Two weeks. One eccentric road trip. Before the seaside of their youth disappears forever, two friends from the landlocked Midlands embark on a peculiar journey to see all the surviving pleasure piers in England and Wales. With a clapped-out car and not enough cash, Jon and Danny recruit Midge, a man they barely know, to be their driver, even though he has to be back in a fortnight to sign on. Join Jon and Danny as they take a funny and nostalgic look at Britishness at the beach, amusement in the arcades, and friendship on the road.

Download Waylon: Tales Of My Outlaw Dad In a signed copy of his autobiography, Texas-born country "Outlaw" icon Waylon Jennings penned a personal note to his son Terry: "I did my best. Now it's your turn." Two decades later, Terry Jennings finally completes the true story of his father's remarkable, unvarnished life with Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad. Born when Waylon was only nineteen, Terry came of age just as Waylon's career hit the stratosphere with hits like "I've Always Been Crazy" and "Good Hearted Woman," one of his famous Willie Nelson duets. Terry dropped out of high school and joined his dad on tour, and the two became more like brothers than father and son. On the road, they toured with legends like Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Jessi Colter, Waylon's fourth and final wife. Together father and son led a hard-partying lifestyle centered around music, women, and drugs....

Download River Of Time: My Descent Into Depression And How I Emerged With Hope Naomi Judd's life as a country music superstar has been nonstop success. But offstage, she has battled incredible adversity. Struggling through a childhood of harsh family secrets, the death of a young sibling, and absent emotional support, Naomi found herself reluctantly married and an expectant mother at age seventeen. Four years later, she was a single mom of two, who survived being beaten and raped, and was abandoned without any financial support and nowhere to turn in Hollywood, CA. Naomi has always been a survivor: She put herself through nursing school to support her young daughters, then took a courageous chance by moving to Nashville to pursue their fantastic dream of careers in country music. Her leap of faith paid off, and Naomi and her daughter Wynonna became The Judds, soon ranking with country music's biggest stars, selling more than 20 million records a...

Download The Battle Of Aleppo: The History Of The Ongoing Siege At The Center Of The Syrian Civil War In December 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor’s self immolation triggered protests that spread from his hometown in Sidi Bouzid to cities across the country. The next month, on January 14, the country’s autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country. This would be the start of what became known as the “Arab Spring,” which ultimately saw anti-government protests responded to with violence, reform, or both in countries across the Middle East. In Syria, the protests that began as early as January 2011 and increased in intensity the following March devolved into a complex armed conflict that involves multiple armed groups and wages to this day. Like the other dictators, Bashar al-Assad faced popular demonstrations against his regime at the height of the Arab Spring, but he steadfastly refused to step down from power, and the protes...

Download The Making Of Donald Trump The culmination of nearly 30 years of reporting on Donald Trump, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, David Cay Johnston, takes a revealingly close look at the mogul's rise to power and prominence. Covering the long arc of Trump’s career, Johnston tells the full story of how a boy from a quiet section of Queens, NY would become an entirely new, and complex, breed of public figure. Trump is a man of great media savvy, entrepreneurial spirit, and political clout. Yet his career has been plagued by legal troubles and mounting controversy. From the origins of his family’s real estate fortune, to his own too-big-to-fail business empire; from his education and early career, to his whirlwind presidential bid, The Making of Donald Trump provides the fullest picture yet of Trump’s extraordinary ascendency. Love him or hate him, Trump’s massive influence is undeniable, and figures as diverse as Woody Guthrie (who ...

Download Dead Presidents: An American Adventure Into The Strange Deaths And Surprising Afterlives Of Our Nation’S Leaders An entertaining exploration into the death stories of our nation’s greatest leaders―and the wild ways we choose to remember and memorialize them. To public radio host and reporter Brady Carlson, the weighty responsibilities of being president never end. As Carlson sees it, the dead presidents (and the ways we remember them) tell us a great deal about ourselves, our history, and how we imagine our past and future. For American presidents, there is life after death―it’s just a little weird. In Dead Presidents, Carlson takes readers on an epic trip to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials from sea to shining sea. With an engaging mix of history and contemporary reporting, Carlson recounts the surprising origin stories of the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, Grant’s Tomb, and JFK’s Eternal Flame. He explores whether Willi...

Download Let The People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt And The Birth Of The Presidential Primary “Cowan has brought to life a fascinating part of TR’s story usually left out of the history books. He tells it with verve and suspense, warts and all, his insights deepened by his own impressive background as a democracy activist.”―Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars Let the People Rule tells the exhilarating story of the four-month campaign that changed American politics forever. In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt came out of retirement to challenge his close friend and handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican Party nomination. To overcome the power of the incumbent, TR seized on the idea of presidential primaries, telling bosses everywhere to “Let the People Rule.” The cheers and jeers of rowdy supporters and detractors echo from Geoffrey Cowan’s pages as he explores TR’s fight-to-the-finish battle to win popular support. After sweeping nine ...

Download Top Ten Books That Transformed My Spiritual Life This autobiographical work introduces ten books that transformed me from an agnostic and a rebel to a committed Christian communicator and apologist. Read my story, read about the books, and decide if you too need to read one or more of these tent great books.

Download Life Is Not An Accident This big hearted memoir by the most promising professional basketball player of his generation details his rise to NBA stardom, the terrible accident that ended his career and plunged him into a life altering depression, and how he ultimately found his way out of the darkness Ten years ago, Jay Williams was at the beginning of a brilliant professional basketball career. The Chicago Bulls’ top draft pick and the second pick up of the entire draft he had the great Michael Jordan’s locker. Then he ran his high performance motorcycle head on into a light pole, severely damaging himself and ending his career. In this intense, hard hitting, and deeply profound memoir, Williams talks about the accident that transformed him. Sometimes, the memories are so fresh, he feels like he’ll never escape the past. Most days, he finds a quiet peace as a commentator on ESPN and as an entrepreneur who can only look back in astonishment at hi...

Download United: Thoughts On Finding Common Ground And Advancing The Common Good NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A passionate new voice in American politics, United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy, responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future. Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless. He chose public service. He chose to move to a rough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked as a tenants’ rights lawyer before winning a seat on the City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor, and for more than seven years he was the public face of an American city that had gone decades with too little positive national attention and investment. In 2013, Booker became the first African American elected to repr...

Download The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin After surviving nearly a decade of heroin abuse and hard living on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, Tracey Helton Mitchell decided to get clean for good. With raw honesty and a poignant perspective on life that only comes from starting at rock bottom, The Big Fix tells her story of transformation from homeless heroin addict to stable mother of three—and the hard work and hard lessons that got her there. Rather than dwelling on the pain of addiction, Tracey focuses on her journey of recovery and rebuilding her life, while exposing the failings of the American rehab system and laying out a path for change. Starting with the first step in her recovery, Tracey re-learns how to interact with men, build new friendships, handle money, and rekindle her relationship with her mother, all while staying sober, sharp, and dedicated to her future. A decidedly female story of addiction, The Big Fix describes t...

Download Back From The Dead This inspiring memoir from sports and cultural icon Bill Walton recounts his devastating injuries and amazing recoveries, set in the context of his UCLA triumphs under John Wooden, his storied NBA career, and his affinity for music and the Grateful Dead. In February 2008, Bill Walton suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse—the culmination of a lifetime of injuries—that left him unable to move. He spent three years on the floor of his house, eating his meals there and crawling to the bathroom, where he could barely hoist himself up onto the toilet. The excruciating pain and slow recovery tested Walton to the fullest. But with extraordinary patience, fortitude, determination, and sacrifice—and pioneering surgery—he recovered, and now shares his life story in this remarkable and unique memoir. Walton grew up in San Diego in the 1950s and 1960s and was deeply influenced by the political and cultural upheavals of that period. Alth...

Download Life Without A Recipe: A Memoir Of Food And Family “Diana Abu-Jaber is the Ambassador of Big-Heartedness.”―Patrick Volk, on The Language of Baklava On one side, there is Grace: prize-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber’s tough, independent sugar-fiend of a German grandmother, wielding a suitcase full of holiday cookies. On the other, Bud: a flamboyant, spice-obsessed Arab father, full of passionate argument. The two could not agree on anything: not about food, work, or especially about what Diana should do with her life. Grace warned her away from children. Bud wanted her married above all―even if he had to provide the ring. Caught between cultures and lavished with contradictory “advice” from both sides of her family, Diana spent years learning how to ignore others’ well-intentioned prescriptions. Hilarious, gorgeously written, poignant, and wise, Life Without a Recipe is Diana’s celebration of journeying without a map, of learning to ignore the sc...

Download The Cage: Escaping The American Dream Most people spend their lives trying to escape some kind of cage. Rollie Peterkin left behind conventional success and stepped into one. When his college wrestling career ended in heartbreak, Rollie fell short of his dream of standing on the national podium. After graduating with an Ivy League degree, he tried to take solace in the lucrative Wall Street job offer that awaited him. He vigorously launched himself into his new career as a bond trader and grew accustomed to fancy dinners, expense accounts, late nights, and early mornings. Rollie was achieving all of his goals, but began to feel like something was missing. During a trip to Peru, a chance encounter with a legendary cage fighter would inspire him to question the well-worn path to success he had always known. Soon after, Rollie plotted his escape and ultimately left behind the life of luxury to pursue a savage dream. Along the way he faced life-cha...

Download In Memory Of Bread: A Memoir When Paul Graham was suddenly diagnosed with a serious wheat allergy at the age of thirty-six, he was forced to say goodbye to traditional pasta, pizza, sandwiches, and more. Gone, too, were some of his favorite hobbies, including brewing beer with a buddy and gorging on his wife’s homemade breads. Struggling to understand why he and so many others had become allergic to wheat, barley, rye, oats, and other dietary staples, Graham researched the production of modern wheat and learned that not only has the grain been altered from ancestral varieties but it’s also commonly added to thousands of processed foods. In writing that is effortless and engaging, Paul explores why incidence of the disease is on the rise while also grappling with an identity crisis—given that all his favorite pastimes involved wheat in some form. His honest, unflinching, and at times humorous journey towards health and acceptance makes an inspir...

Download Twenty Letters To A Friend: A Memoir In this riveting, New York Times-bestselling memoir—first published by Harper in 1967—Svetlana Alliluyeva, subject of Rosemary Sullivan’s critically acclaimed biography, Stalin’s Daughter, describes the surreal experience of growing up in the Kremlin in the shadow of her father, Joseph Stalin. Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, his second wife. In 1967, she fled the Soviet Union for India, where she approached the U.S. Embassy for asylum. Once there, she showed her CIA handler something remarkable: A personal memoir about growing up inside the Kremlin that she’d written in 1963. The Indian Ambassador to the USSR, whom she’d befriended, had smuggled the manuscript out of the Soviet Union the previous year—and returned it to her as soon as she arrived in India. Structured as a series of letters to a “frie...

Download One In A Billion: The Story Of Nic Volker And The Dawn Of Genomic Medicine The breathtaking story of a young boy with a never-before-seen disease, and the doctors who take a bold step into the future of medicine to save him—based on the authors’ Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting. In this landmark medical narrative, in the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher chronicle the story of Nic Volker, the Wisconsin boy at the center of a daring breakthrough in medicine—a complete gene sequencing to discover the cure for an otherwise undiagnosable illness. At just two years old, Nic experienced a searing pain that signaled the awakening of a new and deadly disease, one that would hurl Nic and his family up against the limits of modern medicine. For years, through false starts and failed cures, Nic holds on to life, buoyed up by...

Download The Happy Medium: Life Lessons From The Other Side The world-famous medium and star of Lifetime Movie Network’s #1 rated show The Haunting Of . . . tells her story, shares some astonishing, never-before-revealed details of her celebrity readings, and teaches you how to harness your own energy and access the world beyond our own. When she was nine years old, Kim Russo discovered she had an amazing gift—she could communicate with the dead. Deeply skeptical, she denied her talent for years. But as she gradually reconciled her ability with her religious beliefs, Kim embraced who she is—and ultimately accepted her soul’s mission as a voice for the spirit world. Known as the “Happy Medium” for her authenticity, warmth, and her honest, positive readings, Kim has helped people from all walks of life to connect with those who have passed on. Now, this world-renowned medium demystifies the world of the dead for everyone. The key to understanding, she con...