Book picks similar to
The Boy Grows Up: The inspirational story of his journey from broken boy to family man by Richard McCann
childhood
biography
2-where-ebook
what-300-social-sciences
Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life
Eddie Olczyk - 2019
Against all odds, he played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic hockey team as a 17-year-old, and four months later he was drafted in the first round by his hometown Chicago Blackhawks. During an illustrious 16-year career, he played for and alongside some of the greatest franchises and players in history, winning a Stanley Cup with the unforgettable 1994 New York Rangers. Years later, he coached former teammate Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby on the Pittsburgh Penguins before transitioning into the broadcast booth, where he has become one of the most recognizable voices of the sport. He then combined his skills as an analyst with his second passion— horse racing—and became an integral part of NBC’s coverage of thoroughbreds. Away from the spotlight, Olczyk and his wife of three decades raised four adoring children. He was respected and admired by fans, friends, and peers. Life was sweet. Then, at 7:07 pm on August 4, 2017, his entire world turned upside down. In Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life, one of the biggest names in American hockey has written an inspiring and entertaining memoir of his life both on and off the ice. From shooting hundreds of tennis balls at a goal in his childhood living room to the ups and downs of his improbable hockey career to rollicking stories from the booth and the backstretch, Olczyk guides readers on his journey toward his ultimate test: a battle against Stage 3 colon cancer. For years, Olczyk’s goal was to be the best husband, father, broadcaster, and handicapper he could be. Today he has a new one: to bring as much awareness and support to those fighting cancer as he possibly can. In this emotional but often hilarious autobiography, you’ll learn why the people who know Eddie Olczyk best might describe him as “tremendously tremendous.”
The Girl in the Shadows: My Life in a Cult
Katy Morgan-Davies - 2019
Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who brainwashed those around him.Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.
Guarding Diana - Protecting The Princess Around the World
Ken Wharfe - 2017
Wherever she went, in public or in private, she was shadowed by her Scotland Yard personal protection officer, Inspector Ken Wharfe, whose job it was it keep her safe, even to the extent of sacrificing his own life, if necessary.In public Diana was fêted wherever she went, greeted by adoring crowds and fawned over by the media. In private she craved anonymity, and it was Ken Wharfe’s brief to protect her and keep her away from prying eyes.The SAS-trained officer from the Yard’s elite Special Operations 14, Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department, was with the Princess every step of the way. As she dazzled among Washington society or walked the sand of exclusive Caribbean beaches he watched over her. In the foothills of the Himalayas, the heat and dust of India and the heart of Africa, he was always just a heartbeat away.‘Purple Five Two’ – the woman, the princess – was Ken’s charge. In private when they travelled, they often posed as man and wife under assumed names, ‘Mr and Mrs Hargreaves’, to throw the determined paparazzi desperate for a photograph off the scent. Whenever she wanted a private holiday it would be to Ken she would turn, who would be despatched in secret to find the idyllic spot.In the six years that Ken was at Diana’s side they travelled hundreds of thousands of miles together, sharing secrets, laughter and tears on a truly extraordinary journey. This is their exclusive story.
For the Love of Scott!
Jo Hamilton - 2011
She taught her family how to read Scott’s medical chart and to ask pointed questions, no longer leaving his care to the medical professionals who had overdosed him with drugs to the very brink of death in less than three days.“Jo, you have to tell people what they’ve done to me. You have to tell them!”pleaded her little brother, as he lay writhing in agony.In “For the Love of Scott!”, the author recollects her family’s poignant story of love, bewilderment, and lingering frustration when faced with catastrophic medical mistakes. Read the experiences of Scott Hamilton’s family members as they struggle through a storm of horrific medical errors that could have been prevented and recognize what you need to do when someone you love is faced with life-threatening circumstances created by health experts.It took Jo 27 years to put this heartbreaking event down on paper. Writing opened old wounds and required hours of research and documentation. It forced her family to relive a chapter in their own lives that they desperately wanted closed. Yet, they rallied together to help Jo with her mission to keep that promise.To help further her goals, Jo Hamilton will be donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of her book, to the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal Winner, Scott Hamilton's foundation, The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative. The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative was created to help with cancer research, support cancer patients and their families, and find a cure cancer.
A Heart So Big
Rio Hogarty - 2014
Nearly seventy years ago, Rio started to do her bit for vulnerable children, one child at a time. While she was still in school, she thought nothing of bringing home a schoolmate who needed refuge. It was the start of opening her home and her heart to children in need. She has never stopped. A Heart So Big is the astonishing and moving story of Rio's life and how she has tried to make a difference. She has fostered over 140 children and in 2010, in an award created especially for her, she was named Mother of the Year at the annual People of the Year Awards. It includes stories of trauma - Rio has rescued children from the direst of circumstances and seen the price they pay for the failures of adults. And Rio has had her share of heartache along the way. But it is also a story full of humour, searing honesty and good old-fashioned fighting spirit. Rio Hogarty's A Heart So Big is an uplifting account of an amazing and inspiring life. 'She is instinctively protective of children in need, and doesn't take "no" for an answer. She's also fearless.' The Herald
Gimson's Presidents: Brief Lives From Washington to Trump
Andrew Gimson - 2020
Helping to bring these forgotten figures into the light, Andrew Gimson's illuminating accounts are accompanied by sketches from Guardian sartirical cartoonist, Martin Rowson, making this the perfect gift for all lovers of history and politics.
How Not to Get Married: Confessions of a Wedding Photographer
George Mahood - 2019
In his tongue-in-cheek memoir, he lifts the lid on the industry and the traditions and trends associated with the modern wedding. Sometimes controversial, often insightful, but always amusing, George Mahood offers some practical advice to those planning their own wedding, sharing stories of the weddings he photographed as well as his own marriage, while shedding some light on the role of the wedding photographer and what it is like to document the most important day in these couples' lives.
Monkee Business: The Revolutionary Made-For-TV Band
Eric Lefcowitz - 2013
Everything but control over their careers. Author Eric Lefcowitz chronicles the kaleidoscopic journey of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, following each of the four Monkees, together and apart, from 1965 to the present day. A must-read for music fans, “Monkee Business" is the definitive biography of a rock and roll legend.
Celebrating the Seasons with the Yorkshire Shepherdess: Farming, Family and Delicious Recipes to Share
Amanda Owen - 2021
Amanda Owen and her family have charmed millions of viewers of Our Yorkshire Farm and inspired three books. Now, in a book full of stunning photographs, Amanda takes readers behind the scenes of their life at Ravenseat Farm and on a journey to a beautiful but remote place. Month by month she describes their activities, from lambing and shearing to haymaking. Her photographs will show the Swaledale landscape she writes about, imbued with history, and the flora and fauna, from rare wildflowers to the hares glimpsed in the field and the curlews flying above. In many ways Amanda and her family live a simple life, in tune with nature, and Amanda's attitude to food is the same. She believes in buying good, seasonal ingredients when it comes to feeding her family and shares her favorite recipes here, all easy and cheap to make. As inspirational as Amanda herself, this book will delight everyone who has followed her adventures so far.
The Forgotten Child: A little boy abandoned at birth. His fight for survival. A powerful true story.
R. Gallear - 2019
A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside.After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.Everything feels as though it’s looking up; Richard is put into local authority care and regains his health. However, after nearly five blissful years in a rural care home filled with loving friends, it soon unfolds that his turbulent start in life is only the beginning…Based on a devastating true story, this inspirational memoir follows Richard’s traumatic birth, abusive childhood, and search for the truth.
Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People
Nevin Martell - 1999
Traces the evolution of the Dave Matthews Band, and describes their experiences on the road.
Rasputin
Harold Shukman - 1997
Yet, his purposes were obstensibly beneficient. An uneducated peasant, he left Siberia to become a wandering holy man and soon acquired a reputation as a healer. The empress was desperate to find a cure for the haemophilia from which her son Alexei suffered, and in 1905 Rasputin was presented at court. His positive effect on the heir's health made him indispensable. But his religious teachings were unorthodox, and his charismatic presence aroused in many ladies of the St Petersburg aristocracy an exalted response, which he exploited sexually. Shady financial dealings added to the atmosphere of debauchery and scandal, and he was also seen as a political threat. He was assassinated in 1916.
Young Einstein: From the Doxerl Affair to the Miracle Year
L. Randles Lagerstrom - 2013
In 1905 an unknown 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, who had supposedly failed math in school, burst on to the scientific scene and swept away the hidebound theories of the day. The clerk, Albert Einstein, introduced a new and unexpected understanding of the universe and launched the two great revolutions of twentieth-century physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The obscure origin and wide-ranging brilliance of the work recalled Isaac Newton’s “annus mirabilis” (miracle year) of 1666, when as a 23-year-old seeking safety at his family manor from an outbreak of the plague, he invented calculus and laid the foundations for his theory of gravity. Like Newton, Einstein quickly became a scientific icon--the image of genius and, according to Time magazine, the Person of the Century.The actual story is much more interesting. Einstein himself once remarked that “science as something coming into being ... is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.” In this profile, the historian of science L. Randles Lagerstrom takes you behind the myth and into the very human life of the young Einstein. From family rifts and girlfriend troubles to financial hardships and jobless anxieties, Einstein’s early years were typical of many young persons. And yet in the midst of it all, he also saw his way through to profound scientific insights. Drawing upon correspondence from Einstein, his family, and his friends, Lagerstrom brings to life the young Einstein and enables the reader to come away with a fuller and more appreciative understanding of Einstein the person and the origins of his revolutionary ideas.About the cover image: While walking to work six days a week as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein would pass by the famous "Zytglogge" tower and its astronomical clocks. The daily juxtaposition was fitting, as the relative nature of time and clock synchronization would be one of his revolutionary discoveries in the miracle year of 1905.
Never Call Me Mummy Again
Peter Kilby - 2013
In rural Gloucestershire in the early 1940s, Peter's family lived in poverty. It wasn't long before his father introduced a new woman into their lives, his mistress Flossie. On meeting her, Peter made a mistake; he called her 'Mummy'. Dragged outside, trampled on and shouted at, Peter never made that mistake again. Thus began a childhood of terrible abuse from which Peter tried time and again to run away. The arrival of a new sister, who was treated like a princess, only served to intensify the harm directed towards Peter. After running away one time too many, Flossie pulled Peter into the bedroom that he shared with his brothers and sister and committed an act of unforgivable evil. It didn't end there though - the catalogue of cruelties continued until, finally, Peter was able to escape for good.In this, his heart-breaking yet profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting memoir, Peter recounts a childhood like no other and a stepmother from hell.
No More Hurt
Eaton Hamilton - 1994
LGBT Studies. Lesbian. Queer. Child sexual abuse. Mothers. Parenting."A true story about Ellen's discovery that her daughters were being sexually abused by their father. There are no arrests, no happy endings and no one gets "healed". Instead, it's a painful account of how the children are harmed and how communities respond to such accusations. At a time when so much focus is on convictions and criminals, I found this a moving reminder that the reality of these situations is much more complex." (Ros Coward Observer)"Ellen Prescott writes with a literary flair that adds to the power of her story. She hits the reader in the gut on page 1: "In 1982, when my daughters were four and one, I decided to kill them . . . I was so in love with them, there at the door of their bedroom, that all I could think of was murder." You'd have to be anesthetized to put the book down at this point." (Toronto Star)"I recommend it to anyone, including most physicians who need a better understanding of human responses to suffering." (Willard Edwin Smith, BSc, MD, FRCP)"Well paced and … excruciatingly well written." (Quill and Quire)"This is a gripping story which I read from start to finish at one sitting." (Geist)"I liked Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey so much that I bought a couple of copies for my office and they are rotating amongst my clients. I’m sure that it will be of tremendous help to both survivors and mothers of survivors." --Caren Durante, M.Ed."I was very impressed with the writer’s account and with her accomplishment of dealing with her own and her daughters’ abuse experiences. I appreciate your bringing this book to my attention." Dr. J. Adler, Registered Psychologist"I’m writing to tell you how much I admired and relished Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey. I stayed in bed for 2 days and read it slowly. The story’s truth had my inner organs hiding behind each other, shifting all around. Having been abused as a kid myself, I was the victims; being a parent, I was the mother; being a man, I was the abuser. The critical me admired the smooth, unblinking text." –a reader"Thank you for writing about your experience. It helped me understand a lot about myself and my relationships to read about all of you. I have never read a personal account that so closely mirrored mine. I wish I had had a mother like you to hold me and comfort me and reassure me that not all life was pain. You’re a heck of a writer." –a reader'You'd tell me if Daddy touched your private parts, wouldn't you, Carolina?''No,' said Carolina firmly.'Why not, honey?''Because it's a secret.'It is only when long-buried memories from her own childhood start to surface that Ellen realises the terrible truth about her two young daughters: Carolina and Amy are being sexually abused by their father.Ellen writes with unflinching honesty about the heartbreak of finding out her daughters were abused, her fears of losing custody and her fight to have her story believed by sceptical doctors and social workers.A harrowing true story of sexual abuse from a mother's point of view, No More Hurt is a deeply affecting chronicle of Ellen's hard-won battle to create a place of safety and love for herself and her daughters.