Book picks similar to
Kaiso!: Writings by and about Katherine Dunham by Vèvè A. Clark
dance
african-american-studies
biography-memoir
history
The Kennedy Conspiracy: 12 Startling Revelations About the JFK Assassination
Bill Sloan - 2012
Author Bill Sloan, award-winning journalist and co-author of JFK: THE LAST DISSENTING WITNESS, was working at the City Desk of the DALLAS TIMES HERALD just four blocks away when the fatal shots were fired. He helped cover the fast-moving sequence of events that followed, and later interviewed many of the people involved. Accounts in THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY include those of Ed Hoffman, who saw the man who shot the president (and it wasn’t Oswald)—but was unable to communicate it to the authorities because he was deaf and mute; Gary Cornwell, deputy chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who saw the classified information still withheld from the public, and reveals how the FBI turned the investigation into “a joke, a farce, and a national disgrace”; James Tague, who was wounded by a bullet that the Warren Commission insisted was never fired; and Dr. Joe D. Goldstritch, who was in the Parkland ER when Kennedy’s body was brought in, and who witnessed the surgical procedure that destroyed the neat entry wound in the president’s throat.
Practical Stoicism: Exercises for Doing the Right Thing Right Now
Grey Freeman - 2017
Practical Stoicism is a collection of short readings written to help bridge the gap between the essential teachings of the great Stoic philosophers and the things we must do, in the here and now, to achieve the fulfillment they promised. Pick a starting point anywhere within its pages whenever you need a quick reminder of how to move your philosophy out of your head and into your life. Version 2.3.1
A Companion To Easter Island (Guide To Rapa Nui)
James Grant-Peterkin - 2010
This guidebook includes the island's history, culture and all of its significant archaeological sites. It also contains all of the practical information needed for your visit, including island activities and up-to-date restaurant and shopping recommendations. It will also tell you the best times to visit the sites in order to get the optimal light for photography and to avoid the crowds, as well as many other 'local' tips that no other guidebook will tell you. Contains over 100 color photos of Easter Island, as well as color maps of both the island and the one town, Hanga Roa. New, Updated edition (2014).
Descent: My Epic Fall from Cycling Superstardom to Doping Dead End
Dekker Thomas - 2017
I’ve been lionized by the public and the press. The world is at my feet. I’ve spread my wings and here I am, soaring above everything and everyone. But in reality, the descent has already begun.”
At age 20, Thomas Dekker was already earning €100,000 a year—as an amateur bike racer. The next year, he turned pro and his salary quadrupled then rose again to €900,000 as he established his position as a super-domestique among Europe’s wealthiest superteams. The sport marveled at Dekker’s rise as the young racer set his ambitions on capturing cycling’s biggest prizes for himself. Before long, though, Dekker found himself corrupted by money, dazzled by fame, and cracking under the relentless pressure to perform at a superhuman level. In his tell-all book DESCENT: My Epic Fall from Cycling Superstardom to Doping Dead End, Dekker reveals a sordid way of life full of blood bags, drugs, prostitutes, and money. DESCENT tells the story of a yearslong bender that exposes the brutal truth of his life as a professional cyclist. And Dekker is not alone; he names those who fell with him and those who aided in his downfall. In DESCENT, we take an unflinching look at the European peloton as it roars through its modern boom years—the height of the EPO era—and what we see is shocking. You won’t be able to turn away from this page-turning read about one man’s rise, fall, and redemption and what his story reveals about professional sports.
Gerda's Story: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor
Gerda Nothmann Luner - 2019
Told through the eyes of a young girl, the book shares Gerda’s memories of Hitler’s rise to power and passionately describes the cruel toll that history can have on those who experience it. The book is much more than Gerda’s story. Through letters she received from her parents, who made the heartbreaking decision to send their two daughters to live with foster families in the relative safety of Holland, we learn how a mother and father try to raise a child from far away in times of great distress. Letters from them to Gerda’s foster parents, and desperate notes to an American family they hoped would act as sponsors, reveal their growing despair. The story is both deeply personal and universal as people wrestle with terrible choices to save their children and protect their families. These issues remain as relevant today as they were during the Holocaust. In 1939, while trying to arrange an escape from Germany, her parents sent 12-year-old Gerda and her younger sister to live with separate families in Holland, which was still safe for Jews. What was intended as a temporary move became permanent and Gerda never saw her parents again. Ultimately, she was the only member of her immediate family to survive and also had to bear the loss of the foster family she had come to love as her own. Gerda describes in searing detail her experiences in six concentration camps, her protection as a worker for the Philips Corporation, and her arrival in the U.S. in 1948 as an 18-year-old Holocaust survivor literally alone in the world. The memoir is a testament to the loving family Gerda built in America. Her husband added translations of the letters from her parents, grandparents and sister. After her oldest child and first grandchild were born, Gerda added notes to them. This group effort illustrates the special generational pull of trauma endured by Holocaust survivors.
Happily Ever After: My Journey with Guillain-Barr Syndrome and How I Got My Life Back
Holly Gerlach - 2012
In less than three days, she was paralyzed and could no longer breathe on her own. She was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that occurs when the body's immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system. She was admitted to the hospital, where she spent two and a half months in the intensive care unit on a ventilator. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, and worst of all, she couldn't hold her newborn daughter. She felt like her life was over as she couldn't be the mother that she had always wanted to be. As the weeks went on, the paralysis began to wear off. And once she was able to breathe on her own again, she started on her road to recovery. With intense physiotherapy, she learned how to use her muscles again and eventually how to walk again. She was determined, and worked hard, and after a long four months in the hospital, she was able to reach her goal of getting back to her husband and daughter. Holly Gerlach shares her inspirational story, where she faced the most terrifying and challenging experiences of her life. The book follows her entire journey, starting with the beginning symptoms, through the many months she spent in the hospital. The story continues on well past her release from the hospital, where she fought to regain her independence and eventually got her life back.
FERRY PILOT: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic
Kerry McCauley - 2020
Minus Nine to One: The Diary of an Honest Mum
Jools Oliver - 2006
Having longed for children since before she can remember, she was suddenly faced with an array of unfamiliar, unexpected and sometimes downright embarrassing emotional and physical reactions. And when Poppy (and a year later Daisy) was born she had to learn a whole new set of skills.From trying to conceive and a first positive pregnancy test to Poppy's first birthday, Minus Nine To One takes you through the worries, surprises, excitement, miracles and sheer bloody hard work that Jools - and all new mums in their own different ways - have to cope with along the way. As Jools writes, 'This certainly isn't meant to be read as a guidebook, or a medical reference book - it is simply my story and I hope that you can relate to it in some way (and maybe even relax with it in the bath!).'Down to earth, personal and very, very funny, this is the book no aspiring mother will want to be without.
Flashing Saber: Three Years in Vietnam
Matthew Brennan - 1985
The Blues, as they were called, were perpetually understrength and considered to be acceptable losses in hopeless situations—but their amazingly successful record proved otherwise.A firsthand account of mortal combat with the Ninth Cavalry, Flashing Saber is the remarkable story of the brave men who served in the First Air Cavalry Division's reconnaissance squadron. Included is an account of an air-ground raid that overran a regimental command post and killed more high-ranking enemy officers than any similar engagement of the war. The story begins when a teenager, an Eagle Scout and West Point Prep School student, goes to Vietnam in 1965. Motivated by patriotism and the desire to see combat firsthand, Brennan volunteers for front line duty and spends years as an artillery forward observer and infantryman. Promoted to sergeant and then to lieutenant, Brennan participates in hundreds of assault landings.An expansion and careful reworking of his previous work, Brennan's War, published in 1985, and in the vein of classic memoirs by Johnnie Clark and Frederick Downs, Flashing Saberis a harrowing firsthand account of life and death in war, one filled with breathtaking details about a renowned unit.
Tunnel Rats
Jimmy Thomson - 2011
It doesn't matter how small the tunnel is you never know what's around the bend ... You don't know if it's abandoned, you don't know if it's booby trapped and you don't know why the tunnel is there in the first place."They were young, they were Australian, they were Army engineers and they were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, not only did they follow their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, but matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps.Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson.Thrilling, inspiring and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of 'We Make and We Break', they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats.
The Orphan Train
Brent Ford - 2013
As a resolute Bobby, teamed up with with old timer, Diggory, set off after the killers, Ella is placed at the mercy of an unscrupulous priest and soon finds herself aboard one of America's infamous, Orphan Trains. Bobby and Diggory, now accompanied by his reluctant, young schoolteacher, Miss Halfpenny, are faced with the critical dilemma of searching for his sister, or the continued quest of his parents' killer. And so, a desperate pursuit ensues across America's still untamed and perilous Wild West.
Truman Fires MacArthur: (ebook excerpt of Truman)
David McCullough - 2010
An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.
Memoirs of a Former Fatty: How one girl went from fat to fit
Gemma Reucroft - 2016
I was also so chronically unfit that I couldn’t manage more than one flight of stairs without getting seriously out of breath. I was eating my way to a whole host of health problems and my knees were knackered. Now nearly four years on, I am over 80lbs lighter and a whole heck of a lot fitter. I’m now training to be a Personal Trainer so that I can help other people like me. This is why I have written this book. Along the way I learned a lot, and came up with some ideas of my own about how and why people lose weight….or don’t. This is my story.
L.E.O.: The True Stories of Lt. Wayne Cotes
Wayne Cotes - 2018
Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.
MRF Shadow Troop: The untold true story of top secret British military intelligence undercover operations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1972-1974
Simon Cursey - 2013
They are 300 times more effective than an ordinary patrol... If we are going to have murderers and terrorists roaming the towns, then we have to have somebody who is able to go out and find them.” Contemporary press report Some think it stood for ‘Military Reconnaissance Force’, others ‘Mobile Reconnaissance Force’. Many people thought it didn’t exist at all and was made up, a figment of the press’s imagination. To the members of the group that was just fine. It added to the illusion, and the speculation about the unit’s name and mission only added to the uncertainty amongst their targets — terrorists — members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the IRA, the provos. For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. Amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period. Simon Cursey was recruited into the Military Reaction Force — the unit’s true name — in 1972. This book is his personal account of his time with the group and in it he reveals the truth about their operations — the briefings, missions, political wrangling, and government-sanctioned law-bending. With documents and photographs to corroborate all his revelations, MRF Shadow Troop is a fascinating, exciting but above all accurate historical text about the pioneers of counter-terrorism.