Kennedy and Me and Five Days in November.Secret Service agent Clint Hill brings history intimately and vividly to life as he reflects on his seventeen years protecting the most powerful office in the nation. Hill walked alongside Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, seeing them through a long, tumultuous era—the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War; Watergate; and the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard M. Nixon. Some of his stunning, never-before-revealed anecdotes include: -Eisenhower’s reaction at Russian Prime Minister Khrushchev’s refusal to talk following the U-2 incident -The torture of watching himself in the Zapruder film in a Secret Service training -Johnson’s virtual imprisonment in the White House during violent anti-Vietnam protests -His decision to place White House files under protection after a midnight phone call about Watergate -The challenges of protecting Ford after he pardoned Nixon With a unique insider’s perspective, Hill sheds new light on the character and personality of these five presidents, revealing their humanity in the face of grave decisions.

    Fiona has also had successful shows at the Edinburgh and Adelaide fringe festivals, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.This book contains her stories - funny and sometimes sad stories about her upbringing as part of a large Irish-Catholic family on a wheat farm in South Australia, her chaotic and disorganised family life ever since, living in Alice Springs and making it as a stand-up comedian. She also talks of a darker side of the life of many performers - alcohol.This book is for anyone who likes to laugh (and cry), who wants to read about a woman living her life on her terms.

    As an adult, he became a high-ranking police officer.In this fascinating look at life on both sides of the law, Corey Pegues opens up about why he joined the New York Police Department after years as a drug dealer. Pegues speaks honestly about the poor choices he made while coming of age in New York City during the height of the crack epidemic. He’s equally candid about why he turned his life around, and takes you inside the NYPD, where he becomes a decorated officer despite bureaucratic pitfalls and discriminatory practices. Written with the voice and panache of someone who knows the streets, Once a Cop is a credible and informative look at the forces that lead some into a life of crime and what it means to make good on a second chance.

    It's also a book for anyone who has ever mismatched her shoes or trimmed her own bangs when a professional might have been a better choice or added too much soap to the washer and watched it overflow.(Not that KariAnne Wood has ever done any of these things.)A debut memoir from the beloved Thistlewood Farms blogger, So Close to Amazing is a collection of hilarious and heartfelt reflections on getting it almost right--and how, instead of giving up, we can choose to simply embrace our real selves right where we are. It's a story of transparency and honesty and recognizing that perfection is completely overemphasized and overrated. It's about grace and learning from mistakes and rejoicing in every victory, no matter how small. Because when you find joy in the "you" God created you to be, you'll discover the amazing that was there all along.Contains beautiful DIY project ideas anyone can do, whether you're Pinterest perfect or craft challenged! Homemade signs, centerpieces, recipe walls, and more!

    The Mafia’s go-to defender, he has tried an estimated 300 criminal cases, and won most of them. His roster of clients reads like a history of organized crime: Meyer Lansky, Nicky Scarfo, and “Lefty” Rosenthal, as well as Mike Tyson and boxing promoter Don King, along with a midget, a dentist, and a federal judge.After thirty-five years as a defender, he ran for mayor of Las Vegas, and America’s greatest Mob lawyer became the mayor of its sexiest city. He was so popular his image appeared on the 5, 25, and 100 chips. While mayor of Vegas, he starred on the screen in Rush Hour 2 and CSI. He is as large a character in the history of organized crime as any of his clients and as legendary a figure in the history of Las Vegas as the entrepreneurs (his friends and clients) who built the city. This is his astonishing story—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

    He was about to surpass the legendary Bobby Knight to become the all-time NCAA wins leader in men’s basketball. Then, on a two-lane road in South Dakota, everything changed in an instant.In How Lucky You Can Be, acclaimed sports journalist Buster Olney tells the remarkable story of the successive tragedies that befell Coach Meyer but could not defeat him. Laid low by a horrific car accident that led to the amputation of his left leg below the knee, Coach Meyer had barely emerged from surgery when his doctors informed him that he also had terminal cancer. In the blink of an eye, this prototypical 24/7 workaholic coach—who arrived at the gym most mornings before 6 a.m.—found himself forced to reexamine his priorities at the age of sixty-three. A model of reserve, Coach Meyer had sacrificed much of his emotional life to his program. His wife, Carmen, felt disconnected because of his habitual reticence, while his three children—all now well into adulthood—had long had to compete with basketball for his attention.With sensitivity and skill, Olney shows how Coach Meyer mined his physical ordeal for the spiritual strength to transform his life. In the months that followed his accident and diagnosis, he reached out to family, friends, and former players in a way he had never been able to do before, making the most of this one last opportunity to tell those close to him how he felt about them—and in turn he received an outpouring of affirmation that confirmed how deeply he had affected others. Sustained throughout an often painful recovery by his love of basketball, he would return to the court once more—with a newfound appreciation for the game’s place in his life. The inspirational story of a life renewed by unimaginable hardship, How Lucky You Can Be proves that it’s never too late to start making changes—and reminds us that fortune can smile upon us even in our most trying hours.

    There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America. We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four). We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.” Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.”

    There are dramatic accounts of fighting for lives on death rows, freeing dissidents and taking on tyrants, armed only with a unique mind and a passion for justice - on display whenever he boomeranged back to Australia to conduct Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals.His is an amazing life story of David and Goliath battles - riveting, laugh-out-loud tales filled with romance and danger, featuring a cast of characters ranging from General Pinochet to Pee-Wee Herman; from Malcolm Turnbull to Mike Tyson; from Nigella Lawson to Kathy Lette and Julian Assange. Throughout his exploits - recounted here with irreverent humour and dashes of true wisdom - Geoffrey Robertson has remained determinedly independent and his own man. He has also, in respect of human rights, changed the way we think.

    A year later, he heard that the man had been murdered – and what was more, the killer was black.At first the murder seemed a twist on the old Deep South race crimes. But then more news rolled in. Maybe it was a dispute over money, or most intriguingly, over sex. Could the infamous racist actually have been secretly gay, with a thing for black men? Did Safran have the last footage of him alive? Could this be the story of a lifetime? Seizing his Truman Capote moment, he jumped on a plane to cover the trial.Over six months, Safran got deeper and deeper into the South, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder – white separatists, black campaigners, lawyers, investigators, neighbours, even the killer himself. And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime, and the world, seemed.Murder in Mississippi is a brilliantly innovative true-crime story. Taking us places only he can, Safran paints an engrossing, revealing portrait of a dead man, his murderer, the place they lived and the process of trying to find out the truth about anything.

    In A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess she describes the age-old cycles of a farming year and the constant challenges the family faces, from being cut off in winter to tending their flock on some of Yorkshire's highest, bleakest moors - land so inaccessible that in places it can only be reached on foot. Writing with her trademark warmth and humour, Amanda takes us into her life as nine-year-old Miles gets his first flock, Reuben takes up the flugelhorn and she gives birth to a new baby girl. She is touched by the epic two-day journey of a mother sheep determined to find her lamb and gives a new home to an ageing and neglected horse. Meanwhile Clive is almost arrested on a midnight stakeout to catch a sheep-worrying dog and becomes the object of affection for a randy young bull. Funny, poignant and charming, A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess is a must for anyone interested in the countryside and those who farm it.

    And, of course, there's her mother - whether she's writing another ingratiating letter to the Queen or referring to Tom Jones as 'Thumb Jone'.But Zaiba's story is also one of anxiety and seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Growing up she is constantly torn between two identities: 'British' and 'Muslim'. Alienated at school and confused at home, the racism she encounters as a child mirrors the horrors she experiences at the hands of Bangladeshi interrogators as a journalist years later.Five years after the 7/7 attacks galvanized debates about Muslim-British identity, We Are A Muslim, Please is a stirring and enchanting memoir. We see, through Zaiba's childhood eyes, the poignancy of growing up in a world whose prejudices, contradictions and ambiguities are at once distressing and utterly captivating.

    Beckwourth would go on to become one of the most remarkable mountain men to have ever lived. In 1824 Beckwourth left Missouri to head to the Rocky Mountains to work for William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He would never turn back. In his fascinating life, spent in the mountains and plains of the West, he lived as a trapper, hunter, guide, horse thief and Indian fighter. What is particularly fascinating about Beckwourth’s book is his insight into the culture of the Native Americans, as for many years, this son of a slave and a slave owner, lived with the Crow Nation, trapping, hunting, marrying two of their women and raiding alongside them. It is even stated that he rose to the position of Chief of the Crow Nation. First published in 1856, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth is a unique account of life in pioneer America in the early-nineteenth century. "This is a book of great importance to an understanding of the mountains, plains, and Great Basin West." California Historical Quarterly "It remains what it always has been since its first appearance in 1856—a rousing adventure story in which Jim Beckwourth plays the leading role." San Francisco Chronicle James Beckwourth was the only African American in the West to have his life story published. He was credited with the discovery of Beckwourth Pass which aided pioneers in reaching their destination in the West. He died in 1866.

    . . I guarantee 254 pages of pure pleasure." -- Ann Landers"Strikingly honest . . . [Buchwald] grew up in orphanages and foster homes and never knew his mother who, shortly after he was born, entered a mental hospital and spent the rest of her life there . . . . But instead of becoming a sociopath, Buchwald became a professional funnyman and a national figure whose columns skewer pretense and politicians . . . . Score one for humor as a means of survival." -- The Washington Post Book World"

    She has no allies, no liberty as a Muslim woman and no access to an embassy. As the war on terror rages around her, Latifa is at war with her culture and customs. Imprisoned, abused and violated, her efforts to escape Iraq fail and her impending forced marriage could end in her death by the ancient custom of honor killing. She has to get out. When the US military occupies Kurdistan, she has a chance to break free.

    After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas produced the definitive biography of the man behind the legend--the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but became the genius who produced unmatched works of animation. Complete with a rare collection of photographs, Bob Thomas' biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of Walt Disney.