Paul McGowan tells all (and then some) in this riotous tale of misbegotten success that’s 99% true in all the best ways. From his not-so-innocent youth growing up in the shadow of Disneyland and summer evenings in the innocent 1950s, to his dope-smoking, snake-eating, draft-dodging, loony-bin misadventure through Europe, to his struggles to build a thriving enterprise from a stack of dusty albums???see how the CEO of a worldwide company took fifty years to become an overnight success.,Unlike Paul, you may never get picked up by the Secret Service or carry the shame of bankruptcy, but you just might see yourself in his repeated failures or in his refusal to let life keep him down. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry as Paul describes the struggle of finding his place in a community you never knew existed. Through it all, you’ll discover what Paul did: life’s detours offer the best opportunities to find your way.
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.
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.
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.
There will come a time when people decide you???ve had enough of your grief, and they???ll try to take it away from you.,Bad art is from no one to no one.,Am I happy? Damned if I know, but give me a few minutes and I???ll tell you whether you are.,Thank heaven I don???t have my friends??? problems. But sometimes I notice an expression on one of their faces that I recognize as secret gratitude.,I read sad stories to inoculate myself against grief. I watch action movies to identify with the quick-witted heroes. Both the same fantasy: I???ll escape the worst of it.,???from 300 Arguments,300 Arguments, a foray into the frontier of contemporary nonfiction writing, is at first glance a group of unrelated aphorisms. But, as in the work of David Markson, the pieces reveal themselves as a masterful arrangement that steadily gathers power. Manguso???s arguments about desire, ambition, relationships, and failure are pithy, unsentimental, and defiant, and they add up to an unexpected and renegade wisdom literature.
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.
Alberto Giacometti was born in Switzerland and became a student of the arts early in life. He travelled to Paris in his early twenties and became a painter, sculptor and printmaker. Throughout his life and work he focused on three core themes, standing women, busts and a man in movement. He experimented with surrealism and cubism and kept a riotously colourful list of acquaintances and contemporaries including Picasso and Mir??.,Giacometti was in many ways the perfect subject for a study on the creative process. He was bohemian but still driven. James Lord, an author and his biographer, agreed to sit for a portrait by the artist and this book is the result of his recording of those days. He did not merely experience the day to day activity in the studio or Giacometti’s many idiosyncrasies, Lord recorded the artist’s emotional state and the tribulations and distractions that occurred over the 18 days of sitting. Lord shows us a man who seems irritable but warm, engaging but absorbed in his work.,’Giacometti’s Portrait’ details Alberto’s fixation on his younger brother as a model for his work, his messy surroundings and the cigarette ash dropping to the floor as he became distracted. Creatives of all kinds will appreciate the reliance of Giacometti on the ritual and instinctive in striving to create a meaningful work of art. The two eggs the artist needed to eat, the two glasses of beaujolais and the two cups of coffee that were required are familiar to all of us from the student writing an essay to the artist creating a masterpiece. The earthly fortifications that surround the creation of art which is supposed to transcend them remain fascinating.
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.
| Recommended By | Aileen Lee, Andrew Wilkinson, John Green, Mindy Kaling, Sheryl Sandberg, Tom Hanks |
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| Published By |
Before Liz Lemon, before “Weekend Update,” before “Sarah Palin,” Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.,She has seen both these dreams come true.,At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on ,; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon???from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.,Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.
| Recommended By | Aileen Lee, Andrew Wilkinson, John Green, Mindy Kaling, Sheryl Sandberg, Tom Hanks |
|---|---|
| Published By |
Before Liz Lemon, before “Weekend Update,” before “Sarah Palin,” Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.,She has seen both these dreams come true.,At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on ,; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon???from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.,Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.
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