Book picks similar to
Trailblazing: The True Story of America's First Openly Gay Track Coach by Eric Anderson
nonfiction
memoir
lgbt
biography
Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border
Jan Brewer - 2011
Unfairly tarred by liberal critics as a state comprised of racist rednecks, Arizona is on the front lines in the battle against illegal immigration—and the courageous stand of its leader, a national hero who’s been called so tough that she “eats scorpions for breakfast,” will educate and inspire Americans from coast to coast.
Love in a Dark Time: and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature
Colm Tóibín - 2002
He knows the covert and overt language of homosexuality in literature. In Love in a Dark Time, he also describes the solace of finding like-minded companions through reading.Colm Tóibín examines the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential writers of the past two centuries, figures whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives, either by choice or necessity. The larger world couldn't know about their sexuality, but in their private lives, and in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire defined their expression. This is an intimate encounter with Mann, Baldwin, Bishop, and with the contemporary poets Thom Gunn and Mark Doty. Through their work, Tóibín is able to come to terms with his own inner desires—his interest in secret erotic energy, his admiration for courageous figures, and his abiding fascination with sadness and tragedy. Tóibín looks both at writers forced to disguise their true experience on the page and at readers who find solace and sexual identity by reading between the lines.
A Pirate for Life
Steve Blass - 2012
This insider's view of the humorous and bizarre journey of a World Series champion pitcher turned color commentator will delight Pirates and baseball fans alike. Recounting his first years in the Major Leagues and his battle with the baffling condition that would ultimately bear his own name, Steve Blass tells the story of his life on and off the field with a poignant, dazzling wit and shares the life of a baseball player who had the prime of his career cut short.
Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes
Kamal Al-Solaylee - 2012
The family moved first to Beirut, which suddenly became one of the most dangerous places in the world, then Cairo. After a few peaceful years, even the safe haven of Cairo struggled under a new wave of Islamic extremism that culminated with the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. The family returned to Yemen, a country that was then culturally isolated from the rest of the world.As a gay man living in an intolerant country, Al-Solaylee escaped first to England and eventually to Canada, where he became a prominent journalist and academic. While he was enjoying the cultural and personal freedoms of life in the West, his once-liberal family slowly fell into the hard-line interpretations of Islam that were sweeping large parts of the Arab-Muslim world in the 1980s and 1990s. The differences between his life and theirs were brought into sharp relief by the 2011 revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Yemen.Intolerable is part memoir of an Arab family caught in the turmoil of Middle Eastern politics over six decades, part personal coming-out narrative and part cultural analysis. This is a story of the modern Middle East that we think we know so much about.
Tony 10: The Astonishing Story of the Postman Who Gambled €10,000,000 … and Lost It All
Declan Lynch - 2018
He used the money to fund a gambling addiction that began with a bet of €1 and eventually rose to €10 million, leading to the loss of his job, his family, his home – and winning him a prison sentence.From the heart-stopping moments in a hotel room in Cyprus with his wedding money riding on the Epsom Derby, to the euphoria of winning half a million over a weekend, to the late goals and the horses falling at the last fence, Tony 10 is the story of an ordinary man’s journey from normality to catastrophe. At times, he vowed to get out while he was ahead, only to be taken by another surge of adrenaline, falling deeper and deeper into a compulsion that consumed his life. His disappearance on the morning the fraud was discovered led to a surreal three days on the run in Northern Ireland, and ultimately his arrest, conviction and sentencing to four years in jail.Tony 10 is the mesmerising story of the secret life of a pathological gambler – as well as the most compelling account yet of the damage wrought by the online gambling industry.
And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality
Mark Segal - 2015
Segal fills his book with worthy stories...funny anecdotes and heart."--
Publishers Weekly
"The stories are interesting, unexpected, and witty."--
Library Journal
"Activist Mark Segal who was present at Stonewall and later went on to found the Philadelphia Gay News was a featured judge at Miss'd America and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award the night of the pageant. In his new Memoir And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality, he writes about how he was kicked off a television show in the 1970s called Summertime on the Pier because he was dancing with another man, but four decades later, he cut a rug with his husband Jason Villemez while the Marine Corps Band played Barbra Streisand at the White House's first ever Gay Pride reception hosted by President Obama."--
Huffington Post
"A historic memoir, chronicling [Mark's] life in the LGBT political scene in Philadelphia....Segal also presents his personal and family life in a warm, engaging matter and this writing extends to his interactions with public figures."--
Huffington Post
, Living History: Three Books to Find Yourself In"Much this book focuses on his work, but the more telling pages are filled with love gained and lost, raising other people's children, finding himself, and aging in the gay community. A must-read."--
The Advocate
, 30 Best Books You Missed in 2015"A conversational, nicely constructed combination autobiography and history lesson that recounts Segal's contribution to LGBT activism, from his early days as a member of the Gay Liberation Front in New York to his stewardship of a successful weekly newspaper."--
Philadelphia Inquirer
"Segal’s writing style is engrossing and never ponderous....And Then I Danced is highly recommended for all LGBT history collections and especially for readers with interest in Pennsylvania/Philadelphia politics."--ALA’s GLBT Round TableOn December 11, 1973, Mark Segal disrupted a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News when he sat on the desk directly between the camera and news anchor Walter Cronkite, yelling, "Gays protest CBS prejudice!" He was wrestled to the studio floor by the stagehands on live national television, thus ending LGBT invisibility. But this one victory left many more battles to fight, and creativity was required to find a way to challenge stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Mark Segal's job, as he saw it, was to show the nation who gay people are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers.Because of activists like Mark Segal, whose life work is dramatically detailed in this poignant and important memoir, today there are openly LGBT people working in the White House and throughout corporate America. An entire community of gay world citizens is now finding the voice that they need to become visible.
Queers in History
Keith Stern - 2006
From Egyptian pharaohs, Catholic popes and Abraham Lincoln to Bishop Gene Robinson, Neil Patrick Harris and Angelina Jolie, Queers in History brings these figures, from their work to their sexuality, to life. The hundreds of people whose stories appear in this book are some of the most intriguing personalities of their times: actors and actresses, writers and musicians, businessmen and politicians, scientists and soldiers. But this irresistibly readable encyclopedia intended for gays and straights alike doesn't just report those details that get left out of the standard biographies; it reveals a fascinating picture of queer society and culture throughout recorded history, from the homosexual shudo tradition practiced by samurai in Japan to the modern struggles for equal rights in America. Sir Ian McKellen offers a foreword.
Role Models
John Waters - 2010
From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis--these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.
Branded by the Pink Triangle
Ken Setterington - 2013
Activists, including Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, campaigned openly for the rights of gay men and women, and tried to repeal the old existing law against homosexuality. But all that would change when the Nazis came to power and existence for gay people turned into one of fear. Raids, arrests, prison sentences and expulsions became the daily reality. When the concentration camps were built, homosexuals were imprisoned along with Jews and any other groups the Nazis wanted to suppress. The pink triangle, sewn onto prison uniforms, became the symbol of the persecution of homosexuals, a persecution that would continue for many years after the war. A mix of historical research, first person accounts, and individual stories bring this time to life for readers. Stories of bravery in the face of inhuman cruelty, friendship found in the depths of despair in the camps, and the perseverance of the human spirit will both educate and inspire.
Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back
Reynolds Price - 2009
He gives often moving, and frequently comic, portraits of his great teachers in England -- such men as Lord David Cecil, Nevill Coghill, and W. H. Auden, who was the most distinguished English-language poet of those years. In London the poet and editor Stephen Spender becomes his first publisher and a generous friend who introduces him to rewarding figures like the essayist Cyril Connolly and George Orwell's encouraging widow, Sonia. He spends rich months traveling in Britain and on the Continent; and above all he undergoes the first loves of his life -- one with an Oxford colleague whom he describes as a "romantic friend" and another with an older man. Back in the States, in his first class at Duke he meets a startlingly gifted student in the sixteen-year-old Anne Tyler; and he soon combines the difficult pleasures of teaching English composition and literature with his own hard delight in learning to write a first novel. At the end of three lonely years, he completes the novel -- A Long and Happy Life -- and returns to England for a fourth year before his novel appears in Britain and America and meets with a success that sets the pace for an ongoing life of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations (Ardent Spirits is his thirty-eighth volume). The droll memories recorded here amount to the unsurpassed -- and, again, often comical -- story of a writer's beginnings; and the young man who emerges has proven his right to stand by his fellows of whatever sex and goal. Ardent Spirits is a book that penetrates deeply into the life of a writer, a teacher, and a steadfast lover.
Louis van Gaal: The Biography
Maarten Meijer - 2014
He is certainly, by his own admission, a man who leaves nothing to chance. A disciple in the 1970s of Rinus Michels' Total Football philosophy, he is a fascinating contradiction - an ultra-individualist utterly devoted to the collective effort. He believes in the team over the individual, in always having a plan and a team prepared to follow that plan. Van Gaal led the young Ajax team he moulded to Champions League glory in 1995, went on to win titles across Europe with Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich and is currently in his second stint as national coach of Holland. It is a career that has never been short on colour and drama - from fallouts with players to rants at the media wherever he has managed. Dutch football commentator Maarten Meijer's has written the definitive biography of Van Gaal - both the man and his methods. It offers the best psychological insight so far - from his earliest roots to his greatest triumphs - into the man given the task of returning the glory days to Manchester United.
Palimpsest
Gore Vidal - 1995
But now, surprisingly, he has turned his wit and elegant storytelling gifts to a candid memoir of the first forty years of his life. Palimpsest is written from the vantage point of Vidal's library in his villa on the Italian coast. As visitors come and go, his memory ranges back and forth across a rich history. Vidal's childhood was spent in Washington, D.C., in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T. P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St. Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome, and Paris in the forties and fifties; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. Vidal's famous skills as a raconteur, his forthrightness, and his wicked wit are brilliantly at work in these recollections of a difficult family, talented friends, and interesting enemies. The cast includes Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Jane and Paul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others. Beautifully rendered anecdotes are intermixed with meditations on writing, history, acting, and politics. Perhaps most surprising is the leitmotif of a great, lost love. "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life," Vidal says, "while an autobiography is history." Palimpsest is a true story, but also an extraordinary work of literary imagination.
Sidney Crosby: The Rookie Year
Neely Lohmann - 2022
As one of the greatest NHL players of all time, he reflects on his 2005-06 rookie season with the Pittsburgh Penguins. From a Canadian phenom dubbed "the next Gretzky" to an 18-year-old carrying the burden of a struggling franchise, he talks candidly about the intense pressure he was under, the surreal experience of lacing up alongside his childhood idol Mario Lemieux and the truth about his rivalry with Alex Ovechkin. Sidney Crosby, with the help of his family, coaches and former teammates, gives listeners an all-access pass to one of the most scrutinized and tumultuous rookie seasons in the history of professional hockey. Hosted by Pittsburgh native and Penguins fan Joe Manganiello.
Life in a Jungle: My Autobiography
Bruce Grobbelaar - 2018
And yet, question marks have followed him around; question marks about his goalkeeping suitability after arriving on Merseyside; question marks about his integrity after match fixing allegations were laid against him. Here, Grobbelaar takes you to Africa, where nothing is at it seems; he takes you back to an era when Liverpool ruled Europe; he takes you to the benches of the Anfield dressing room, where only the strongest personalities survived. For the first time, he takes you inside the court room, detailing the draining fight to clear his name.
Assault on Lake Casitas
Brad Alan Lewis - 1990
He would be too old for the 1988 games and the 1980 team had been lost to world politics.Devastated after losing a critical race by nine-tenths of a second, Lewis went to the Olympic selection camp in hopes of earning his way into a national boat. He was not chosen.But Lewis was not to be denied, and his story is more than quest for the gold medal. It is about challenging convention, overcoming and working outside the system."Lewis is a great athlete, highly individualistic and subversive of the established athletic bureaucracy. Even rarer, he tells a great story. This book does for the Olympian rowing establishment what LIAR'S POKER did for Salomon Brothers." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)
