Equipped with his cheerful optimism and a pith helmet, this Odysseus in a dinghy takes you with him from the borders of north Wales to the Black Sea - 4,900 kilometers over salt and fresh water, under sail, at oars, or at the end of a tow rope - through twelve countries, 282 locks, and numerous trials and adventures, including an encounter with Balkan pirates.

    There's no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace and funerals are a community affair. Heather Lende posts both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper. If anyone knows the going-on in this close-knit town—from births to weddings to funerals—she does. Whether contemplating the mysterious death of eccentric Speedy Joe, who wore nothing but a red union suit and a hat he never took off, not even for a haircut; researching the details of a one-legged lady gold miner's adventurous life; worrying about her son's first goat-hunting expedition; observing the awe-inspiring Chilkat Bald Eagle Festival; or ice skating in the shadow of glacier-studded mountains, Lende's warmhearted style brings us inside her small-town life. We meet her husband, Chip, who owns the local lumber yard; their five children; and a colorful assortment of quirky friends and neighbors, including aging hippies, salty fishermen, native Tlingit Indians, and volunteer undertakers—as well as the moose, eagles, sea lions, and bears with whom they share this wild and perilous land. Like Bailey White's tales of Southern life or Garrison Keillor's reports from the Midwest, NPR commentator Heather Lende's take on her offbeat Alaskan hometown celebrates life in a dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful place.

    Only one man can reveal the whole, astounding truth: Sam Brower, the private investigator who devoted years of his life to breaking open the secret practices of the FLDS and bringing Warren Jeffs and his inner circle to justice. In Prophet's Prey, Brower implicates Jeffs in his own words, bringing to light the contents of Jeffs's personal priesthood journal, discovered in a hidden underground vault, and revealing to readers the shocking inside world of FLDS members, whose trust he earned and who showed him the staggering truth of their lives.Prophet's Prey offers the gripping, behind-the-scenes account of a bizarre world from the only man who knows the full story.

    That's me." - Bob Brown.Bob Brown, former Senator and Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens, is one of Australia's most thoughtful and recognized public figures. Since his retirement from public life in 2012, Bob has had time to consider the things that are truly important. One is the power of human thought to influence change and this book, the first time that Bob has spoken about his life since retirement, illustrates through his stories why he remains optimistic about the future. Optimism reflects on the simple things, the moments that are meaningful, and the big questions that have concerned Bob Brown. It is a powerful read as well as a meditation on the great and the small. Inspirational, compassionate and outraged, Bob's stories are rich with metaphor, entertaining and full of warmth. His stories reveal a complex man with a quick wit, a passion for activism and a joy for life.

    Linnea Smith went to Peru on an ecotourism vacation. She was so moved that she abandoned her thriving medical practice in Wisconsin to serve the Yagua Indians in the deepest part of the Amazon rainforest of Peru-alone.Taken straight from the pages of Dr. Smith’s journal, La Doctora offers readers a rare glimpse into the suspense and drama of practicing medicine in a culture far removed from the sophisticated supplies and supports of 20th-century medicine.Learn how Dr. Smith evolved from a “strange white woman” to an adopted member of the indigenous community. Her story of adventure, self-discovery and service creates inspiring testimony to one person’s power to make a lasting difference.

    Millions of fans have enjoyed Bremer’s observations, insight, and magical storytelling on television broadcasts. Now, in this striking memoir, the Minnesota native and lifelong Twins fan takes fans behind the mic, into the clubhouse, and beyond as only he can. Told through 108 unique anecdotes–one for each stitch in a baseball–Bremer weaves the tale of a lifetime, from childhood memories of the ballfield in remote Dumont, Minnesota, to his early radio days as the “Duke in the Dark,” to champagne soaked clubhouses in 1987 and 1991, and his encounters with Twins legends ranging from Calvin Griffith and Harmon Killebrew, to Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek, to Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Game Used gives fans a rare seat alongside Bremer and his broadcast partners, including Killebrew, Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris, Jim Kaat, Tom Kelly, and other Twins legends.

    The personal story of the youngest person to sail around the world single handedly from October 2009 to May 2010 - at the age of 16: 240 days and 23,000 nautical miles.

    After five days under consular protection, Smith was evacuated from a very different China to the country he first visited 23 years earlier.The visit marked a new twist in Australia’s 50-year diplomatic relationship with China which was now coming apart at the seams. But it also symbolised the authoritarianism creeping into every aspect of society under President Xi Jinping over the last three years.From Xinjiang’s re-education camps to the tear-gas filled streets of Hong Kong, Smith’s account of Xi Jinping’s China documents the country’s spectacular economic rise in the years leading up to the coronavirus outbreak.Through first-person accounts of life on the ground and interviews with friends as well as key players in Chinese society right up to the country’s richest man, The Last Correspondent explores what China’s rise to become the world’s newest superpower means for Australia and the rest of the world.

    When he turned 50 he gave himself the birthday present to end all others--a trip to the end of the Earth to run his most unforgettable race.            The Coolest Race on Earth is both Hanc’s story and the story of the Antarctica Marathon, first held in 1995 and now an annual event that sells out years in advance. It’s full of humor, adventure, and inspiring characters--including a wheelchair-bound competitor, three record-breaking grandmothers, and an ex-Marine who described the race as “the hardest thing I ever did in my life, next to Vietnam.”            Muddy, cold, hilly, the race is by all accounts horrible--up and down a melting glacier twice, past curious penguins and hostile skuas, and finally to a bleak finish line. Even the best runners take longer to run the Antarctica Marathon than any other.            Yet the allure of marathon running combined with the fascinating reputation of the Last Continent has persuaded runners to brave a trip across the world’s most turbulent body of water, the Drake Passage, to a land of extinct volcanoes and craggy mountain peaks, lost explorers and isolated scientists, penguin rookeries and whale sightings, all for a chance to run those crazy 26.2 miles. The Coolest Race on Earth brings the world’s most difficult marathon to life in a book that’s not only a ripping read, but also a deeply funny meditation on what makes people run.

    This is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another.Derek Black grew up at the epicenter of white nationalism. His father founded Stormfront, the largest racist community on the Internet. His godfather, David Duke, was a KKK Grand Wizard. By the time Derek turned nineteen, he had become an elected politician with his own daily radio show—already regarded as the "the leading light" of the burgeoning white nationalist movement. "We can infiltrate," Derek once told a crowd of white nationalists. "We can take the country back."Then he went to college. At New College of Florida, he continued to broadcast his radio show in secret each morning, living a double life until a classmate uncovered his identity and sent an email to the entire school. "Derek Black ... white supremacist, radio host ... New College student???" The ensuing uproar overtook one of the most liberal colleges in the country. Some students protested Derek's presence on campus, forcing him to reconcile for the first time with the ugliness of his beliefs. Other students found the courage to reach out to him, including an Orthodox Jew who invited Derek to attend weekly Shabbat dinners. It was because of those dinners—and the wide-ranging relationships formed at that table—that Derek started to question the science, history, and prejudices behind his worldview. As white nationalism infiltrated the political mainstream, Derek decided to confront the damage he had done.Rising Out of Hatred tells the story of how white-supremacist ideas migrated from the far-right fringe to the White House through the intensely personal saga of one man who eventually disavowed everything he was taught to believe, at tremendous personal cost. With great empathy and narrative verve, Eli Saslow asks what Derek Black's story can tell us about America's increasingly divided nature.

    She relayed her fun and frank exploits in the bestseller A Round-Heeled Woman. Now Juska continues her astonishing story in this much anticipated new adventure.Five years after that fateful ad, Juska has become a friend and confessor for women of all ages who confide in her their poignant, tragic, or blissful stories– unaccompanied women who are alone for now, but ever searching for intimacy. And in spite of Juska’s own success, “unaccompanied” is a description that applies to her as well. She’s still looking for a man to keep her company–not a husband, not even a partner, but simply the perfect lover, once described by Katharine Hepburn as one who “lives nearby and visits often.”Unaccompanied Women embraces not only Juska’s continuing explorations of Eros (note to fans: her younger lover, Graham, is still on the scene) but also a blossoming literary career that catapults her from San Francisco to New York, London, and Paris. At book signings, earnest men place themselves purposely at the end of the line in order to engage her in private conversations, while women linger to confess their own erotic longings and their experiences with the good, the bad, and even the ugly. All the while, Juska is coping with the unnerving possibility of losing her home, a tiny cottage in Berkeley, California–and so her search broadens and intensifies, not just for love, friendship, and sex but also for enough money to keep a roof over her head. Jane Juska shares all this richness of living in a poignant and humorous exploration of emotional terrain rarely discussed in our society. This wise and warmhearted book provides vivid evidence that the pursuit of pleasure and lasting relationships is not just for the young, but also for the young at heart.From the Hardcover edition.

    These are stories which Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - because they were too painful and close to home. In the footsteps of Xinran's Good Women of China, this is personal, immediate, full of harrowing, tragic detail but also uplifting, tender moments. Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women - students, successful business women, midwives, peasants, all with memories which have stained their lives. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity... these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned. Here are the 'extra-birth guerrillas' who travel the roads and the railways, evading the system, trying to hold onto more than one baby; naive young student girls who have made life-wrecking mistakes; the 'pebble mother' on the banks of the Yangzte still looking into the depths for her stolen daughter; peasant women rejected by their families because they can't produce a male heir; and finally there is Little Snow, the orphaned baby fostered by Xinran but 'confiscated' by the state. The book sends a heartrending message from their birth mothers to all those Chinese girls who have been adopted overseas (at the end of 2006 there were over 120,000 registered adoptive families for Chinese orphans, almost all girls, in 27 countries), to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten.

    In an attempt to stop the legendary Barbary Pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, William Eaton set out on a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The operation was sanctioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who at the last moment grew wary of "intermeddling" in a foreign government and sent Eaton off without proper national support. Short on supplies, given very little money and only a few men, Eaton and his mission seemed doomed from the start. He triumphed against all odds, recruited a band of European mercenaries in Alexandria, and led them on a march across the Libyan Desert. Once in Tripoli, the ragtag army defeated the local troops and successfully captured Derne, laying the groundwork for the demise of the Barbary Pirates. Now, Richard Zacks brings this important story of America's first overseas covert op to life.

    And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Horner.Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic.

    To reach them, Marsden must head north, sailing a course along the exposed and exhilarating western coasts of Ireland and Scotland. It is a course that has been followed for centuries by explorers and adventurers, fishermen and monks, all drawn to the western seas and their distant horizons. But as much as the journey of men, this book is about the journey of ideas: of nostalgia and a very particular kind of geographical yearning; of a culture and language that has been shaped by its dramatic topography; of the local legend and lore that live on to this day.Combining travel writing, memoir and cultural history, The Summer Isles is a book about the search for real places, for imagined places, and for places that might always exist somewhere in between.