In A Curious Discovery, media titan John Hendricks tells the remarkable story of building one of the most successful media empires in the world, Discovery Communications.,John Hendricks, a well-respected corporate leader and brand builder, reveals that his professional achievements would not have been possible without one crucial quality that has informed his life since childhood: curiosity. ,This entrepreneur???s story takes you behind the scenes of some of the network???s most popular shows and greatest successes, and imparts crucial lessons from the network???s setbacks.,With insights, anecdotes, photographs, and real-world wisdom, A Curious Discovery is more than a powerful autobiography and corporate history: It also a valuable primer for business innovators and entrepreneurs.
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.
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?
As he is driving home from a minister’s conference, Baptist minister Don Piper collides with a semi-truck that crosses into his lane. He is pronounced dead at the scene. For the next 90 minutes, Piper experiences heaven where he is greeted by those who had influenced him spiritually. He hears beautiful music and feels true peace.,Back on earth, a passing minister who had also been at the conference is led to pray for Don even though he knows the man is dead. Piper miraculously comes back to life and the bliss of heaven is replaced by a long and painful recovery.,For years Piper kept his heavenly experience to himself. Finally, however, friends and family convinced him to share his remarkable story.
Writing with an exuberant love of language and detail, Anjelica Huston shares her enchanted childhood in Ireland, her teen years in London, and her coming of age as a model and nascent actress in New York.,Writing with an exuberant love of language and detail, Anjelica Huston shares her enchanted childhood in Ireland, her teen years in London, and her coming-of-age as a model and nascent actress in New York.,Living with her glamorous and artistic mother, educated by tutors and nuns, intrepid on a horse, Huston was raised on an Irish estate to which???between movies???her father brought his array of extraordinary friends, from Carson McCullers and John Steinbeck to Peter O???Toole and Marlon Brando. Every morning, Anjelica and her brother visited their father while he took his breakfast in bed. ???What news???? he???d ask. ???I???d seen him the night before,??? Anjelica recalls. ???There wasn???t much to report.??? So she became a storyteller.,In London, where she lives with her mother and brother in the early sixties when her par??ents separate, Huston encounters the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. She understudies Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. Seventeen, striking, precocious, but still young and vulnerable, she is devastated when her mother dies in a car crash.,Months later she moves to New York, falls in love with the much older, brilliant but disturbed photographer Bob Richardson, and becomes a model. Living in the Chelsea Hotel, working with Richard Avedon and other photographers, she navigates a volatile relationship and the dynamic cultural epicenter of New York in the seventies.,A Story Lately Told ends as Huston launches her Hollywood life. The second part of her story???Watch Me???opens in Los Angeles in 1973 and will be published in Fall 2014. Beguiling and beautifully written, Huston???s memoir is a treasure.
Hemingway’s memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him – James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway’s life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city.
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.
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.
| Recommended By | Balaji S. Srinivasan, Daniel Pink, Mark Bittman, Matt Mullenweg, Ramit Sethi, Ryan Holiday, Scott Belsky, Susan Cain, Tim Ferriss |
|---|---|
| Published By |
For a quarter century, more than a million readers???scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities???have been inspired by Anne Lamott???s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne???s father???also a writer???in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:,???Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he???d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother???s shoulder, and said, ???Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.??????,An essential volume for generations of writers young and old, Bird by Bird is a modern classic. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition will continue to spark creative minds for years to come.
| Recommended By | Balaji S. Srinivasan, Daniel Pink, Mark Bittman, Matt Mullenweg, Ramit Sethi, Ryan Holiday, Scott Belsky, Susan Cain, Tim Ferriss |
|---|---|
| Published By |
For a quarter century, more than a million readers???scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities???have been inspired by Anne Lamott???s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne???s father???also a writer???in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:,???Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he???d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother???s shoulder, and said, ???Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.??????,An essential volume for generations of writers young and old, Bird by Bird is a modern classic. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition will continue to spark creative minds for years to come.
