???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.???
In 1999, after a series of wildly adventurous jobs around the world, Sam Sheridan found himself in Australia, loaded with cash and intent on not working until he???d spent it all. It occurred to him that, without distractions, he could finally indulge a long-dormant obsession: fighting. Within a year, he was in Bangkok training with the greatest fighter in muay Thai (Thai kickboxing) history and stepping through the ropes for a professional bout. That one fight wasn???t enough. Sheridan set out to test himself on an epic journey into how and why we fight, facing Olympic boxers, Brazilian jiu-jitsu stars, and Ultimate Fighting champions. Along the way, Sheridan delivers an insightful look at violence as a career and a spectator sport, a behind-the-pageantry glimpse of athletes at the top of their terrifying game. ??An extraordinary combination of gonzo journalism and participatory sports writing, , is a dizzying first-hand account of what it???s like to reach the peak of finely disciplined personal aggression, to hit???and be hit.
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 this intimate portrait of an extraordinary father???son relationship, Mark K. Shriver discovers the moral principles that guided his legendary father and applies them to his own life,When Sargent “Sarge” Shriver???founder of the Peace Corps and architect of President Johnson’s War on Poverty???died in 2011 after a valiant fight with Alzheimer’s, thousands of tributes poured in from friends and strangers worldwide. These tributes, which extolled the daily kindness and humanity of “a good man,” moved his son Mark far more than those who lauded Sarge for his big-stage, headline-making accomplishments. After a lifetime searching for the path to his father’s success in the public arena, Mark instead turns to a search for the secret of his father’s joy, his devotion to others, and his sense of purpose. Mark discovers notes and letters from Sarge; hears personal stories from friends and family that zero in on the three guiding principles of Sarge’s life???faith, hope, and love???and recounts moments with Sarge that now take on new value and poignancy. In the process, Mark discovers much about himself, as a father, as a husband, and as a social justice advocate. A Good Man is an inspirational and deeply personal story about a son discovering the true meaning of his father’s legacy.
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?
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.
At age thirty-five, Cami Walker was burdened by a battle with multiple sclerosis, a chronic neurological condition that made it difficult for her to walk, work, or enjoy her life. Seeking a remedy for her depression after being hospitalized, she received an uncommon prescription from an African medicine woman: ,., is the insightful story of the author’s life change as she embraces and reflects on the naturally reciprocal process of giving and receiving. Many of Walker’s gifts were simple ???a phone call, spare change, a Kleenex. Yet the acts were transformative. By Day 29, not only had Walker’s health and happiness improved, but she had created a worldwide giving movement.,The book also includes personal essays from others whose lives changed for the better by giving, plus pages for the reader to record their own journey. More than a memoir, , offers inspiring lessons on how a simple daily practice of altruism can dramatically alter your outlook on the world.
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.
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???Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times. . . . Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.??? ???Ping Fu???s ???Shanghai Papa???,Ping Fu knows what it???s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student.,Ping Fu also knows what it???s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and , magazine???s Entrepreneur of the Year. To be a friend and mentor to some of the best-known names in tech??nology. To build some of the coolest new products in the world. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States.,It sounds too unbelievable for fiction, but this is the true story of a life in two worlds. Born on the eve of China???s Cultural Revolution, Ping was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the teenagers in Mao???s Red Guard. At twenty-five, she found her way to the United States; her only resources were $80 in traveler???s checks and three phrases of English: thank you, hello, and help. Yet Ping persevered, and the hard-won lessons of her childhood guided her to success in her new home??land.,Aided by her well-honed survival instincts, a few good friends, and the kindness of strangers, she grew into someone she never thought she???d be: a strong, independent, entrepreneurial leader. A love of problem solving led her to computer science, and Ping became part of the team that created NCSA Mosaic, which became Netscape, the Web browser that forever changed how we access information. She then started a company, Geomagic, that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repair??ing NASA spaceships.,depicts a journey from imprisonment to freedom, and from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao???s China to the high-stakes, take-no-prisoners world of technology start-ups in the United States. It is a tribute to one woman???s courage in the face of cruelty and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.
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???Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times. . . . Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.??? ???Ping Fu???s ???Shanghai Papa???,Ping Fu knows what it???s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student.,Ping Fu also knows what it???s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and , magazine???s Entrepreneur of the Year. To be a friend and mentor to some of the best-known names in tech??nology. To build some of the coolest new products in the world. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States.,It sounds too unbelievable for fiction, but this is the true story of a life in two worlds. Born on the eve of China???s Cultural Revolution, Ping was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the teenagers in Mao???s Red Guard. At twenty-five, she found her way to the United States; her only resources were $80 in traveler???s checks and three phrases of English: thank you, hello, and help. Yet Ping persevered, and the hard-won lessons of her childhood guided her to success in her new home??land.,Aided by her well-honed survival instincts, a few good friends, and the kindness of strangers, she grew into someone she never thought she???d be: a strong, independent, entrepreneurial leader. A love of problem solving led her to computer science, and Ping became part of the team that created NCSA Mosaic, which became Netscape, the Web browser that forever changed how we access information. She then started a company, Geomagic, that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repair??ing NASA spaceships.,depicts a journey from imprisonment to freedom, and from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao???s China to the high-stakes, take-no-prisoners world of technology start-ups in the United States. It is a tribute to one woman???s courage in the face of cruelty and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.
