Book picks similar to
Beyond Happiness: The Intimate Memoirs of Billy Lee Belle by Peter McGehee
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Maybe I Should Just Shut Up and Go Away!: The Last No-Holds-Barred Literary Gasp--Part Memoir and Part Commentary--Of a 42-Year Veteran Talk Radio (A)Right-Wing Nut Job or (B)Libertarian Icon
Neal Boortz - 2012
In his memoir, Maybe I Should Just Shut Up And Go Away, he looks back across the decades and shares the often-hilarious reality of what happens behind the scenes when you re a talk radio icon. Longtime friend with national radio greats Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, he tells how those relationships began in the hot seat of competition. Tributes are included from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Home Depot Founder Bernie Marcus and 2012 presidential nominee Herman Cain. Though early predictions by those who knew him in his youth cast Boortz as a sure prospect to become a preacher, he took a different route to educating the masses. Longtime listeners are certain to become enthusiastic readers as Boortz finally tips his hat to more than four decades of teeing up controversy, political education and general entertainment for audiences across the country to enjoy and tells all they ve been wanting to know but couldn t get anyone to share until now."
Strap Hanger: A Memoir of a Special Forces Soldier
Don Valentine - 2015
It covers the twenty-one years Don spent in the US Army, including six years in Airborne infantry rifle companies, ten years in special forces and five years in military intelligence. His story covers four combat tours, three in Vietnam and one in Laos and stretches from the old “brown boot” army to the new all volunteer army. The story is told in the manner you would hear it if you were sitting with the author having a cup of coffee or a cold beer and chatting about the “good” old days. This memoir covers the following assignments: Basic Combat Training | E Co. 325th AIR, 82d Airborne Division | K Co. 511th AIR, 11th Airborne Division | B Co. 505th AIR, 82d Airborne Division | E Company, 325th, 82d Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C., October 1960 | Training Co., 7th Special Forces Group Ft. Bragg, NC | A Company, 5th Special Forces Group [Sept - Dec 1961] | 1st Special Forces Group, Okinawa | B Co. 5th Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | A Co. 3rd Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | D Co., 1st Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | 46th Special Forces Company [Augmented] 1967 Thailand | 1st Special Forces Group, Okinawa | Super Spook Training, Ft. Holabird, MD | The Bird Cage, Ft. Belvoir, VA | 525th Military Intelligence Group, Vietnam | Counterintelligence Special Agent Course Ft. Huachuca, AZ | Defense Against Methods of Entry Course Ft. Huachuca, AZ | 801st MI Det., 5th SFG [Abn], Ft Bragg, NC June 1971-Dec 1973 | Defense Language Institute Monterey, CA | 500th Military Intelligence Group Camp Zama, Japan | Retirement 1 March 1976 Ft. Bragg, NC Some Readers Comments: “I just got through reading all of your army experiences and enjoyed it very much., Clarence J.” “Don I enjoyed reading about your adventures and about those early Army days! I was reading the parts about “Super Spook!” lol And I was thinking to myself, Hum? “ I think I've met some people like them!” I like your particular writing style. “ Dave H. “I was researching Ft Holabird when I came across part of your memoirs. Great reading...my ass is supposed to be house-husbanding & taking care of the dogs & cats while my wife is attending nursing classes...well I guess spending the afternoon reading your memoirs are worth an ass-chewing.”, Daniel M. “Ran across a couple of your chapters years ago, but for some reason never found your website until this week. Love it, you really capture the esprit de corps serving in SF was all about.”, H.C.S. “My wife’s in Reno visiting her mother. I’m supposed to be working on an exam for the State. Instead, I’m too caught up in your story. Thanks for all that you did.” Jim. F. “Top; I just finished reading your story and I had to tell you that I think that you are a very good writer. Your style of writing kept me attentive from the first paragraph.”, Bob W. “Kudos to you for Strap Hanger, and for saying it in common language of the common soldier. I called my style a barrack philosopher style, but never equaled your style of common language in a clear and concise manner. Enjoyed your writing. Congratulations on a job well done.”, Ron A.
What the Stones Remember: A Life Rediscovered
Patrick Lane - 2004
He spent the first year of his sobriety close to home, tending his garden, where he cast his mind back over his life, searching for the memories he'd tried to drown in vodka. Lane has gardened for as long as he can remember, and his garden's life has become inseparable from his own. A new bloom on a plant, a skirmish among the birds, the way a tree bends in the wind, and the slow, measured change of seasons invariably bring to his mind an episode from his eventful past. What the Stones Remember is the emerging chronicle of Lane's attempt to face those memories, as well as his new self--to rediscover his life. In this powerful and beautifully written book, Lane offers readers an unflinching and unsentimental account of coming to one's senses in the presence of nature.
Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir
Terry Galloway - 2009
No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants
Kevin Patterson - 2007
Throughout each piece the passion of those engaged in rebuilding this shattered country shines through, a glimmer of optimism and determination so rare in multinational military actions–and so particularly Canadian.In Outside the Wire, award-winning author Kevin Patterson and co-editor Jane Warren have rediscovered the valour and horror of sacrifice in this, the definitive account of the modern Canadian experience of war.
Sea Legs: One Family's Year on the Ocean
Guy Grieve - 2013
Sick of the weather, perennial colds and their increasingly routine lifestyle, they’d all been getting restless. Finally, Guy and Juliet broke in spectacular style – they re-mortgaged their house and bought a yacht. Her name was Forever.The plan? To pick up Forever from her mooring in the Leeward Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, and sail around the West Indies before crossing the Atlantic back to Scotland. This was despite the fact that Guy, skipper of the expedition, had almost no sailing experience.Travelling around the lush tropical islands of the Caribbean and up the waterways of America, the family had countless sublime moments as they discovered the freedoms of sailing – anchoring in deserted bays, night passages under star-studded skies, and entering New York by water, greeted by the Statue of Liberty. But there were also testing times as they grappled with seasickness and bad weather, coping with young children at sea and learning to run a large, complex boat. Far from being the idyllic escape they’d envisaged, the journey forced Guy and Juliet to draw on reserves of courage and endurance they never knew they had.Wry, funny and buccaneering, this is a compelling tale of bravery and endeavour, out on the open sea.
The Stonewall Reader
New York Public Library - 2019
Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
A Perfect Nightmare: My Glittering Marriage and How It Almost Cost Me My Life
Karen Gosbee - 2020
It's also a compelling story of a womanlearning to navigate pain, mental illness, and trauma, until finallybecoming an advocate for her own strength and healing.” –ELIZABETH RENZETTI, author of Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and GirlsKaren Gosbee had it all: a successful husband, three beautiful children, the homes, the cars, the jewelry, the A-list invitations. Herlife looked perfect and as her husband, George, liked to say,appearances are everything. But at the height of his success as an ownerof a major American sports franchise, cracks appeared in George'scarefully constructed façade.Karen could not ignore his increasingly erratic and self-destructive behavior, which spiraled from affairs and hard-drinkingto prostitutes and drug abuse. Nor could she escape his abuse asemotional bullying escalated into dangerous beatings.A Perfect Nightmare is the story of a woman's awakening to the realities of her failing marriage and her desperate struggle - one thatwould end in headlines and tragedy - to bring herself and her childrento safety.
King of The Road: True Tales from a Legendary Ice Road Trucker
Alex Debogorski - 2010
Alex Debogorski shares tales of his adventures, and misadventures, in the north, and explains, in his own entertaining voice, how he got to where he is today—a working-class hero, bona fide celebrity, and the improbable star of a smash-hit television show. Debogorski is a natural storyteller who knows how to spin tales about his colourful life growing up in the backwoods. Whether he's recounting tales about his hair-raising confrontations with bears, calculating the strength of newly formed ice, divulging the secrets of providing security in a barroom full of combative, drunken miners, or saving the life of another trucker, he keeps readers wanting more. King of the Road gives fans of Ice Road Truckers a deep look inside the life and times of the show's biggest rising star.
Everybody's Talking About Jamie
Tom MacRae - 2017
Time to make your dreams come true.
Gore Vidal: A Biography
Fred Kaplan - 1999
50 illustrations throughout.
As the Smoke Clears: The inspirational true story of surviving Greece’s deadly wildfires, overcoming devastating loss, and discovering a path to renewal
Zoe Holohan - 2021
Photobooth: A Biography
Meags Fitzgerald - 2014
In the last decade these machines have started to rapidly disappear, causing an eclectic group of individuals from around the world to come together and respond. Illustrator, writer and long-time photobooth lover, Meags Fitzgerald has chronicled this movement and the photobooth's fortuitous history in a graphic novel. Having traveled in North America, Europe and Australia, she's constructed a biography of the booth through the eyes of technicians, owners, collectors, artists and fanatics. Fitzgerald explores her own struggle with her relationship to these fleeting machines, while looking to the future.
Indian Ernie: Perspectives on Policing and Leadership
Ernie Louttit - 2013
Indian Ernie, as he came to be known on the streets, here details an era of challenge, prejudice, and also tremendous change in urban policing. Drawing from his childhood, army career, and service as a veteran patrol officer, Louttit shares stories of criminals and victims, the night shift, avoiding politics, but most of all, the realities of the marginalized and disenfranchised.Louttit spent his entire career (including as a Sergeant) patrolling the streets of Saskatoon's west side, an area until recently beset by poverty, and terrible social conditions. Here, he struggled to bring justice to communities where the lines between criminal and victim often blurred. Though Louttit's story is characterized by conflict, danger, and violence, he argues that empathy and love for the community you serve are the greatest tools in any officer's hands, especially when policing society's less fortunate.While his story is based on his experiences in Saskatoon, it is equally applicable to the challenges faced in any community where marginalized people live. It is an exciting, passionate, easy to read, and highly accessible story aimed at a broad audience.
You Suck, Sir
Paul Bae - 2014
Based on his popular blog of the same name, this is a "Best Of..." collection. Ranging from outrageously funny to touchingly poignant, these collected vignettes into the lives of high school students are an inspiring peek into the connection one teacher has with his students.