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?
A stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown from the author of Men Explain Things To Me.,Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit’s life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. Solnit is interested in the stories we use to navigate our way through the world, and the places we traverse, from wilderness to cities, in finding ourselves, or losing ourselves. While deeply personal, her own stories link up to larger stories, from captivity narratives of early Americans to the use of the color blue in Renaissance painting, not to mention encounters with tortoises, monks, punk rockers, mountains, deserts, and the movie Vertigo. The result is a distinctive, stimulating voyage of discovery.
The triumphant true story of the man who achieved one of the greatest feats of our era???the mapping of the human genome.,Growing up in California, Craig Venter didn???t appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the navy and went to Vietnam, where the life and death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing his advanced degrees, Venter quickly established himself as a brilliant and outspoken scientist. In 1984 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and left in 1991 to form his own nonprofit genomics research center, where he sequenced the first genome in history in 1995. In 1998 he announced that he would successfully sequence the human genome years earlier, and for far less money, than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project would??? a prediction he kept in 2001, is the triumphant story of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in science today. In his riveting and inspiring account Venter tells of the unparalleled drama of the quest for the human genome, a tale that involves as much politics (personal and political) as science. He also reveals how he went on to be the first to read and interpret his own genome and what it will mean for all of us to do the same. He describes his recent sailing expedition to sequence microbial life in the ocean, as well as his groundbreaking attempt to create synthetic life. Here is one of the key scientific chronicles of our lifetime, as told by the man who beat the odds to make it happen.
The true story of Kim Philby, the Cold War’s most infamous spy, from the master espionage writer and author of The Spy and the Traitor.,Who was Kim Philby? Those closest to him???like his fellow MI6 officer and best friend since childhood, Nicholas Elliot, and the CIA???s head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton???knew him as a loyal confidant and an unshakeable patriot. Philby was a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain???s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union. Together with Elliott and Angleton he stood on the front lines of the Cold War, holding Communism at bay. But he was secretly betraying them both: He was working for the Russians the entire time. ,Every word uttered in confidence to Philby by his colleagues in the West made its way to Moscow, leading countless missions to their doom and subverting American and British attempts to subdue the Soviet threat. So how was this cunning double-agent finally exposed? In A Spy Among Friends, Ben Macintyre expertly weaves the heart-pounding tale of how Philby almost got away with it all???and what happened when he was finally unmasked.,Based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, this is Ben Macintyre???s epic telling of one of the greatest spy stories ever, a Cold War history that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.,Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration’s policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.
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.
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.
In their second collaboration, biographers Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman present the story of Claude Shannon???one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century and the architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded. Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed the first wearable computer, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called ???the Magna Carta of the Information Age.??? In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Soni and Goodman reveal Claude Shannon???s full story for the first time. With unique access to Shannon???s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and always playful genius to life.
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An insightful and essential new survey of Wyeth???s entire career, situating the milestones of his art within the trajectory of 20th-century American life.,This major retrospective catalogue explores the impact of time and place on the work of beloved American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917???2009). While previous publications have mainly analyzed Wyeth???s work thematically, this publication places him fully in the context of the long 20th century, tracing his creative development from World War I through the new millennium.,Published to coincide with the centenary of Wyeth???s birth, the book looks at four major chronological periods in the artist???s career: Wyeth as a product of the interwar years, when he started to form his own ???war memories??? through military props and documentary photography he discovered in his father???s art studio; the change from his ???theatrical??? pictures of the 1940s to his own visceral responses to the landscape around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his family???s home in Maine; his sudden turn, in 1968, into the realm of erotic art, including a completely new assessment of Wyeth???s ???Helga pictures??????a series of secret, nude depictions of his neighbor Helga Testorf???within his career as a whole; and his late, self-reflective works, which includes the discussion of his previously unknown painting entitled ,, now believed to be Wyeth???s last work.
| Recommended By | |
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| Published By |
An insightful and essential new survey of Wyeth???s entire career, situating the milestones of his art within the trajectory of 20th-century American life.,This major retrospective catalogue explores the impact of time and place on the work of beloved American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917???2009). While previous publications have mainly analyzed Wyeth???s work thematically, this publication places him fully in the context of the long 20th century, tracing his creative development from World War I through the new millennium.,Published to coincide with the centenary of Wyeth???s birth, the book looks at four major chronological periods in the artist???s career: Wyeth as a product of the interwar years, when he started to form his own ???war memories??? through military props and documentary photography he discovered in his father???s art studio; the change from his ???theatrical??? pictures of the 1940s to his own visceral responses to the landscape around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his family???s home in Maine; his sudden turn, in 1968, into the realm of erotic art, including a completely new assessment of Wyeth???s ???Helga pictures??????a series of secret, nude depictions of his neighbor Helga Testorf???within his career as a whole; and his late, self-reflective works, which includes the discussion of his previously unknown painting entitled ,, now believed to be Wyeth???s last work.
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