Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who made one of the most significant medical discoveries of the twenty-first century, a discovery that challenges the existence of America’s favorite sport and puts Omalu in the crosshairs of football’s most powerful corporation: the NFL. Jeanne Marie Laskas first met the young forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu in 2009, while reporting a story for GQ that would go on to inspire the movie Concussion. Omalu told her about a day in September 2002, when, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, he picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he’d never intended. Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria. The body on the slab in front of him belonged to a fifty-year-old named Mike Webster, aka “Iron Mike,” a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the greatest ever to play the game. After retiring in 1990, Webster had suffered a dizzyingly steep decline. Toward the end of his life, he was living out of his van, tasering himself to relieve his chronic pain, and fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue. How did this happen?, Omalu asked himself. How did a young man like Mike Webster end up like this? The search for answers would change Omalu’s life forever and put him in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful corporations in America: the National Football League. What Omalu discovered in Webster’s brain—proof that Iron Mike’s mental deterioration was no accident but a disease caused by blows to the head that could affect everyone playing the game—was the one truth the NFL wanted to ignore.   Taut, gripping, and gorgeously told, Concussion is the stirring story of one unlikely man’s decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar colossus, and to tell the world the truth.  Advance praise for Concussion “A gripping medical mystery and a dazzling portrait of the young scientist no one wanted to listen to . . . a fabulous, essential read.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks“The story of Dr. Bennet Omalu’s battle against the NFL is classic David and Goliath stuff, and Jeanne Marie Laskas—one of my favorite writers on earth—makes it as exciting as any great courtroom or gridiron drama. A riveting, powerful human tale—and a master class on how to tell a story.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit   “Bennet Omalu forced football to reckon with head trauma. The NFL doesn’t want you to hear his story, but Jeanne Marie Laskas makes it unforgettable. This book is gripping, eye-opening, and full of heart.”—Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones

    “One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes’s mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother’s past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. A mystery to her friends and family, Paula was clearly a strong, self-invented woman; glamorous, no-nonsense, and frequently out of place in their quaint English village. In awe of Paula’s larger-than-life personality, Brockes never asked why her mother emigrated to England or why she never returned to South Africa; never questioned the source of her mother’s strange fears or tremendous strengths. Looking to unearth the truth after Paula’s death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land—and the life—her mother fled from years before. Brockes soon learns that Paula’s father was a drunk megalomaniac who terrorized Paula and her seven half-siblings for years. After finally mustering the courage to take her father to court, Paula is horrified to see the malevolent man vindicated of all charges. As Brockes discovers, this crushing defeat left Paula with a choice: take her own life, or promise herself never to be intimidated or unhappy again. Ultimately she chooses life and happiness by booking one-way passage to London—but not before shooting her father five times, and failing to kill him. Smuggling the fateful gun through English customs would be Paula’s first triumph in her new life.She Left Me the Gun carries Brockes to South Africa to meet her seven aunts and uncles, weighing their stories against her mother’s silences. Brockes learns of the violent pathologies and racial propaganda in which her grandfather was inculcated, sees the mine shafts and train yards where he worked as an itinerant mechanic, and finds in buried government archives the court records proving his murder conviction years before he first married. Brockes also learns of the turncoat stepmother who may have perjured herself to save her husband, dooming Paula and her siblings to the machinations of their hated father. Most of all, She Left Me the Gun reveals how Paula reinvented herself to lead a full, happy life. As she follows her mother’s footsteps back to South Africa, Brockes begins to find the wellsprings of her mother’s strength, the tremendous endurance which allowed Paula to hide secrets from even her closest friends and family. But as the search through cherished letters and buried documents deepens, Brockes realizes with horror that her mother’s great success as a parent was concealing her terrible past—and that unearthing these secrets threatens to undo her mother’s work. A beguiling and unforgettable journey across generations and continents, She Left Me the Gun chronicles Brockes’s efforts to walk the knife-edge between understanding her mother’s unspeakable traumas and embracing the happiness she chose for her daughter.

    It is a story, too, of political intrigue; of a revolutionary movement struggling first to defeat and then to seduce a powerful and callous enemy, of the battle between unity and discord, and the dogged rise to power of a quiet, clever, diligent but unpopular man who seemed to take little joy in power but have much need for it. By the time he retires in 2009, Thabo Mbeki will have ruled South Africa, in effect, for the full fifteen years of its post-apartheid democracy: the first five as Nelson Mandela's 'prime minister' and the next ten as Mandela's successor. No African leader since the uhuru generation of Nkrumah and Nyerere has been as influential. The author's long-awaited biography is a profound psycho-political examination of this brilliant but deeply-flawed leader, who has attempted to forge an identity for himself as the symbol of modern Africa in the long shadow of Mandela. It is also a gripping journey into the turbulent history and troubled contemporary soul of the country; one that tries to make sense of the violence of the past and confusion of the present. As Mbeki battles, in the current day, with demons ranging from AIDS to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and finds his legacy challenged by the ever-growing candidacy of his would-be successor Jacob Zuma, The Dream Deferred tracks us back along the path that brought him here, and helps us understand the meaning of South Africa, post-apartheid and post-Mandela.

    Intrigued, the young Australian journalisted went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in the jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder.This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents. Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members. It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation. Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night. In San Pedro, cocaine--"Bolivian marching powder"--makes life bearable. Even the prison cat is addicted.Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell. This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture.

    Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of parliament, recounts how Mandela's successor Thabo Mbeki repressed debate within the party, imposed his AIDS denialism on government, refused to criticize Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe and stopped an investigation of a multi-billion-dollar arms deal that was tainted by allegations of high-level graft. Feinstein shows how this infamous deal epitomises all that is rotten at the heart of the ANC. Investigating the payment of up to $200 million worth of bribes, he reveals a web of concealment and corruption involving senior politicians and officials, and figures at the very highest level of South African politics.With an insider's account of the events surrounding the contentious trial of South Africa's colourful President, Jacob Zuma, and the ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe, After the Party has been acclaimed as the most important book on South Africa since the end of apartheid.

    David writes from life experience as he has lived more lives than most people ever will, and he did it all over the globe. David is an accomplished Glass artist, Tattoo artist, Five Diploma Harley Davidson Motorcycle Mechanic, Producer, Director and an award winning Writer and Actor. David is a member of the most famous and notorious motorcycle club in the world. David was the Technical Advisor on the hit TV series Sons of Anarchy from the inception to the completion of the series. David was also a series regular on the show, reaching that position after being hired as the technical advisor, then becoming a day player actor, then a recurring character then moving to series regular. All of these things had to be earned, as they were not for sale at any price. Becoming A Son is not about them. It’s about David getting to those spots. It’s about overcoming great odds and coming out alive. David left home at fifteen years old and hit the streets. This is David’s journey of discovery and redemption spanning a course of forty years. From the beaches of Hawaii and California, to the forest of the great Northwest, to years in Amsterdam, San Francisco, New York City, Miami then back to California. David hit some highs and survived severe lows, living years on the streets, in and out of jail only to take his life back, and then squeeze every bit out of it that life has to offer. Becoming A Son is a journey of epic proportion. It’s about realizing your dreams and then against the odds achieving them. Adventuring across the globe David learned many lessons by reaching out and trying everything, making many mistakes and paying the price for it and living through it. Now he wrote about it. David has been writing and getting published for over 14 years. He wrote for the Motorcycle magazine ‘The Horse’ then had his own column in the National Hot Rod Magazine ‘Ol Skool Rodz’ for eight years. He co-wrote Episode ten in season four of SOA which Time magazine awarded an honorable mention to as best of the season. David also won the 2013 Readers Choice Buzz focus award for Best Wildcard Actor. Like great authors before him Labrava takes the reader into some dark places most people would never dare to go. Becoming A Son is a modern day story of living on the street and redemption, it is one man’s journey into the darkness of himself crossing the planet and transcending all levels and then coming back again full circle. It is an inspiration for anyone who is chasing their dreams and making them their reality. Becoming A Son will come to be known as an instant classic.

    But a courageous and visionary young woman-Katharine Kuh-defied the odds and opened a gallery in Chicago, where she exhibited such relatively unknown artists as Fernand L ger, Paul Klee, Joan Mir, Ansel Adams, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Calder, to name but a few. Not only did Kuh survive these rocky early years but most of the artists became increasingly famous. In 1954, the Art Institute of Chicago named her its first curator of modern painting and sculpture. Kuh's prestigious position at the museum led to friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Mies van der Rohe, and Edward Hopper. In writing her memoir, she hoped to offer intimate portraits of these luminaries and contribute to a fuller understanding of their achievements. Her book also reveals how and why America became a major force in the world of contemporary art.After Katharine Kuh's death, Avis Berman-noted art historian and Kuh's close friend and literary executor-selected, edited, and completed her writings for this book.

    You are wasting your time.In a world of fake news, deep-fakes, manipulated feeds of information and divisive social-media agendas, it's easy to believe that our time is the most challenging in human history. It's just not true.It is a time of extraordinary opportunity. But only if you have the right mindset. Fear of the future breeds inaction and leads to strategic paralysis. We put off decisions until we can have certainty. We look for signals. We wait. And while we do that, the world moves on around us.Problem-solvers thrive in chaotic and uncertain times because they act to change their future. Winners recognise that in a world of growing uncertainty, you need to resort to actions on things you can control.And the only things over which you have absolute control are your attitude and your mindset. These, in turn, determine the actions you will take and that will define your future.A robust mindset is the one common characteristic Bruce Whitfield has identified in two decades of interrogating how South Africa's billionaires and start-up mavericks think differently. They are not naive Pollyannas. They don't ignore risk or hope that problems will go away. They constantly measure, manage, consider and weigh up opportunities in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty and find ways around obstacles.If, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller suggests, the stories we tell affect economic outcomes, then we need to tell different stories amidst the noise and haste of a rapidly evolving world.

    What’s it like to work in a morgue? This book describes, first hand, coping with mutilated or decomposed bodies and the carnage of large-scale disasters like the Bali bombings. Equally as traumatic, the suicides, accidental drownings, car accidents and murders. But forensic counsellors do much more, witnessing autopsies, attending crime scenes and coronial enquiries. It’s all in a day’s work. Find out what it’s like behind the scenes. Those working at the morgue come face to face with death on a daily basis, and forensic counsellors like John have to find the compassion and kindness to ease the grief of those left behind.

    They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

    Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn't go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio 1's commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners. What was to be done? In the middle of this crisis, Radio 1 bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a gripping and often hilarious portrait a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.

    At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells the riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter—who made rookie mistakes like getting into a martial-arts battle with a senior editor—to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.

    A young, highly intelligent man named Christian Longo, on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for killing his entire family, has recently been captured in Mexico, where he'd taken on a new identity -- Michael Finkel of the New York Times.The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, comes another bit of troubling news: a note, written by the paper's editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified parts of an investigative article and has been fired. This unlikely confluence sets the stage for a bizarre and intense relationship. After Longo's arrest, the only journalist the accused murderer will speak with is the real Michael Finkel. And as the months until Longo's trial tick away, the two men talk for dozens of hours on the telephone, meet in the jailhouse visiting room, and exchange nearly a thousand pages of handwritten letters.With Longo insisting he can prove his innocence, Finkel strives to uncover what really happened to Longo's family, and his quest becomes less a reporting job than a psychological cat-and-mouse game -- sometimes redemptively honest, other times slyly manipulative. Finkel's pursuit pays off only at the end, when Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally says what he wouldn't even admit in court -- the whole, true story. Or so it seems.

    His presidency has been pored over minute by minute by historians. They lived their lives in the public eye and under a microscope that magnified all of their flaws, all of their scandals, all of their tragedies. Now Steven Levingston, nonfiction editor at the Washington Post, presents a devastating story in unprecedented detail, about a child John and Jackie Kennedy loved and lost.On August 7, 1963, heavily pregnant Jackie Kennedy collapsed, marking the beginning of a harrowing day and a half. The doctors and family went into full emergency mode, including a helicopter ride to a hospital, a scramble by the President to join her from the White House, and a C-section to deliver a baby boy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, five and a half weeks early with a severe respiratory ailment. The baby was so frail he was immediately baptized.Over the next thirty nine hours the nation watched and waited. The vigil was spread across the front pages of the newspapers; the country watched the life of Patrick unfold on the evening news. Within the Kennedy family, the drama was transforming the president and his marriage. Both he and Jackie, long known for their cool exteriors, were brought together by a shared sadness and love as they never had been. Although baby Patrick succumbed after 39 hours, his father was born anew through the tragedy.The Kennedy Baby is a vivid drama of a national tragedy and private trauma for the Kennedy family, taking readers through the lead up to the birth, the ordeal in the hospital, and JFK’s personal growth through his hardship and the progress toward a changed marriage – a breakthrough all the more acute in light of the tragedy that loomed only months away.

    Possessed of a youthful, romantic view of the world, he set off for adventure in Asia and a job teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. But he got more than he ever bargained for when an ill-advised stunt led to a drugsmuggling arrest and a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Brother One Cell is Cullen�s memoir of that time�the harrowing and unusual story of a good kid forced to grow up in very unusual circumstances. One of only a handful of foreign inmates, Cullen shared a cell block with human-traffickers, jewel smugglers, murderers, and thieves. Fortunately for him, the strict Confucian social mores that dominated the prison made it almost a safe place, different from the brutal, lawless setting most would imagine. In the relative calm of this environment Cullen would learn invaluable life lessons and come out of the experience a wise and grounded adult. With its gritty descriptions of life behind the concrete walls, colorful depictions of his fellow inmates, and acute insights about Korean society, Brother One Cell is part gritty prison story, part cautionary tale, and part insightful travelogue into the places most people never see.