How does a good kid overcome a bad childhood? Jason Schmidt’s searing debut memoir explores that question with unflinching clarity and wit, in the tradition of Jeannette Walls??? ,.,Jason Schmidt wasn’t surprised when he came home one day during his junior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier.,Jason???s life with Mark was full of secrets???about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights???people with normal lives???ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason???s home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything., is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn’t seem to have one?
The remarkable tale of six brothers growing up in the ???50s and ???60s as their father???a highly respected Mayo Clinic surgeon???slowly goes insane.,Author Luke Longstreet Sullivan has a simple way of describing his new memoir: ???It???s like , . . . only funnier.??? , tells the astonishing story of Sullivan???s father and his descent from one of the world???s top orthopedic surgeons at the Mayo Clinic to a man who is increasingly abusive, alcoholic, and insane, ultimately dying alone on the floor of a Georgia motel room. For his wife and six sons, the years prior to his death were characterized by turmoil, anger, and family dysfunction; but somehow they were also a time of real happiness for Sullivan and his brothers, full of dark humor and much laughter.,Through the 1950s and 1960s, the six brothers had a wildly fun and thoroughly dysfunctional childhood living in a forbidding thirty-room mansion, known as the Millstone, on the outskirts of Rochester, Minnesota. The many rooms of the immense home, as well as their mother???s loving protection, allowed the Sullivan brothers to grow up as normal, mischievous boys. Against a backdrop of the times???the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, fallout shelters, JFK???s assassination, and the Beatles???the cracks in their home life and their father???s psyche continue to widen. When their mother decides to leave the Millstone and move the family across town, the Sullivan boys are able to find solace in each other and in rock ???n??? roll.,As , , follows the story of the Sullivan family???at times grim, at others poignant???a wonderful, dark humor lifts the narrative. Tragic, funny, and powerfully evocative of the 1950s and 1960s, , is a tale of public success and private dysfunction, personal and familial resilience, and the strange power of humor to give refuge when it is needed most, even if it can???t always provide the answers.
In the New York Times bestseller that the Washington Post called ???Lean In for misfits,??? Sophia Amoruso shares how she went from dumpster diving to founding one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world.,Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age twenty-two she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school???a job she???d taken for the health insurance. It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay.,Flash forward to today, and she???s the founder of Nasty Gal and the founder and CEO of Girlboss. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she???s written GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers.,GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn???t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It???s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.
One of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that “buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist” (Science Digest).,Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that ???can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist??? (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets???and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman???s life shines through in all its eccentric glory???a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
From the author of ,and, Anna Quindlen???s classic reflection on a meaningful life is the perfect gift for graduation, or any occasion.,???,In this treasure of a book, Anna Quindlen, the bestselling novelist and columnist, reflects on what it takes to ???get a life??????to live deeply every day and from your own unique self, rather than merely to exist through your days. ???Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us,??? Quindlen writes, ???because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives.??? Her mother died when Quindlen was nineteen: ???It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason. . . . I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted.??? But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? In , Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living.
G.H. Hardy was one of this century’s finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as a ‘real mathematician ??? the purest of the pure’. He was also, as C. P. Snow recounts in his Foreword, ‘unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything’. This ‘apology’, written in 1940, offers a brilliant and engaging account of mathematics as very much more than a science; when it was first published, Graham Greene hailed it alongside Henry James’s notebooks as ‘the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist’. C. P. Snow’s Foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into Hardy’s life, with its rich store of anecdotes concerning his collaboration with the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan, his idiosyncrasies and his passion for cricket. This is a unique account of the fascination of mathematics and of one of its most compelling exponents in modern times.
???Malcolm???s writing is immediate and intelligent, infused with a wry humour and illuminated by extracts from a diary he kept throughout his political career,??? Summers said. ???From page one the book is entertaining, sophisticated and provocative, and we see Malcolm as we have never seen him before.???,Mr Turnbull said, ???The only thing that is more fun than writing an adventure story is living it. I love stories, and love telling them. And this time I am telling my own ??? an Australian adventure.???
Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest tennis player ever, a man whose hard-nosed work ethic led to an unprecedented number one world ranking for 286 weeks, and whose prodigious talent made possible a record-setting fourteen Grand Slam titles. While his more vocal rivals sometimes grabbed the headlines, Pete always preferred to let his racket do the talking.,Until now.,In A Champion???s Mind, the tennis great who so often exhibited visible discomfort with letting people ???inside his head??? finally opens up. An athletic prodigy, Pete resolved from his earliest playing days never to let anything get in the way of his love for the game. But while this single-minded determination led to tennis domination, success didn???t come without a price. The constant pressure of competing on the world???s biggest stage???in the unblinking eye of a media machine hungry for more than mere athletic greatness???took its toll.,Here for the first time Pete speaks freely about what it was like to possess what he calls ???the Gift.??? He writes about the personal trials he faced???including the death of a longtime coach and confidant???and the struggles he gutted his way through while being seemingly on top of the world. Among the book???s most riveting scenes are an early devastating loss to Stefan Edberg that led Pete to make a monastic commitment to delivering on his natural talent; a grueling, four-hour-plus match against Alex Corretja during which Pete became seriously ill; fierce on-court battles with rival and friend Andre Agassi; and the triumphant last match of Pete???s career at the finals of the 2002 U.S. Open.,In A Champion???s Mind, one of the most revered, successful, and intensely private players in the history of tennis offers an intimate look at the life of an elite athlete.
Categories: | Biographies & Memoirs, non-fiction |
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A blend of This Is Spinal Tap and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the cult classic confessions of a debauched rock ‘n’ roller and his adventures in excess on the ’80s hair-metal nostalgia tour through Middle America-available again, and now revised and updated.,Once upon a time at the start of the new century, the unheard-of Unband got a chance to drink, fight, and play loud music with ’80s metal bands like Dio and Def Leppard. To the mix they brought illegal pyrotechnics, a giant red inflatable hand with movable digits, a roadie dubiously named Safety Bear, a high tolerance for liver damage, and an infectious love of rock & roll and everything it represents.,Unband bassist Michael Ruffino takes us on an epic joyride across a surrealistic American landscape where we meet mute Christian groupies, crack-smoking Girl Scouts, beer-drinking chimps, and thousands of head-bangers who cannot accept that hair metal is dead. Here, too, are uncensored portraits of Ronnie James Dio, Anthrax, Sebastian Bach, Lemmy of Motorhead, and others.,Adios, Motherfucker is gonzo rock storytelling at its finest-excessive, incendiary, intelligent, hilarious, and utterly original.
Categories: | Biographies & Memoirs, non-fiction |
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Recommended By | |
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Published By |
A blend of This Is Spinal Tap and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the cult classic confessions of a debauched rock ‘n’ roller and his adventures in excess on the ’80s hair-metal nostalgia tour through Middle America-available again, and now revised and updated.,Once upon a time at the start of the new century, the unheard-of Unband got a chance to drink, fight, and play loud music with ’80s metal bands like Dio and Def Leppard. To the mix they brought illegal pyrotechnics, a giant red inflatable hand with movable digits, a roadie dubiously named Safety Bear, a high tolerance for liver damage, and an infectious love of rock & roll and everything it represents.,Unband bassist Michael Ruffino takes us on an epic joyride across a surrealistic American landscape where we meet mute Christian groupies, crack-smoking Girl Scouts, beer-drinking chimps, and thousands of head-bangers who cannot accept that hair metal is dead. Here, too, are uncensored portraits of Ronnie James Dio, Anthrax, Sebastian Bach, Lemmy of Motorhead, and others.,Adios, Motherfucker is gonzo rock storytelling at its finest-excessive, incendiary, intelligent, hilarious, and utterly original.
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