A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles


John McPhee - 1968
    His inimitable style reveals the intricate details of his characters lives.

The Next Next Level: A Story of Rap, Friendship, and Almost Giving Up


Leon Neyfakh - 2015
    Journalist Leon Neyfakh has been something more than a fan of Juiceboxxx’s since he was a teenager, when he booked a show for the artist in a church basement in his hometown of Oak Park, Illinois. Juiceboxxx went on to the tireless, lonely, possibly hopeless pursuit of success on his own terms—no club was too dank, no futon too grubby, if it helped him get to the next, next level. And, for years, Neyfakh remained haunted from afar: was art really worth all the sacrifices? If it was, how did you know you’d made it? And what was the difference, anyway, between a person like Juiceboxxx—who devoted his life to being an artist—and a person like Neyfakh, who elected instead to pursue a stable career and a comfortable, middle-class existence? Much more than a brilliant portrait of a charismatic musician always on the verge of something big, The Next Next Level is a wholly contemporary story of art, obsession, fame, ambition, and friendship—as well as viral videos, rap-rock, and the particulars of life on the margins of culture.

Man and Ball: My Autobiography


Stephen Ferris - 2015
    It was, however, preferable to his day job of paving driveways, and that day in 2005 saw the start of an incredible journey for Ferris, Ulster and Ireland rugby. A Celtic League title in his very first senior season with Ulster. A Grand Slam in 2009, followed by a sensational Lions breakthrough. A starring role in Ireland's greatest World Cup win, over Australia in 2011, when Ferris famously picked up Will Genia and carried him ten yards. And leading Ulster from nowhere to the Heineken Cup final.Stephen Ferris had an incredible rugby career, tragically ended by ankle injuries so severe they will never properly heal. He is an inspiration to the population of Ulster, an emblem of the sport that serves as such a positive expression of its culture and identity, and earned the respect and admiration of fans across Ireland for his strength, pace, skill and courage. Fearless, funny and full of an incredible array of stories from behind the scenes of Ulster, Ireland and the Lions, this is the must-have rugby book of the year.

At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing


George Kimball - 2011
    From back-alley gyms and smoke-filled arenas to star-studded casinos and exotic locales, they have chronicled unforgettable stories about determination and dissipation, great champions and punch-drunk has-beens, colorful entourages and outrageous promoters, and, inevitably along the way, have written incisively about race, class, and spectacle in America. Like baseball, boxing has a vivid culture and language all its own, one that has proven irresistible to career sportswriters and literary essayists alike.This gritty and glittering anthology gathers a century of the very best writing about the fights. Here are Jack London on the immortal Jack Johnson; H. L. Mencken and Irvin S. Cobb on Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier, the first “Fight of the Century” that captivated the world in the 1920s; Richard Wright on Joe Louis’s historic first-round knockout of Max Schmeling; A. J. Liebling’s brilliantly comic portrait of a manager who really identifies with his fighter; Jimmy Cannon on Archie Moore, the greatest fighter of the 1950s; James Baldwin and Gay Talese on Floyd Patterson’s epic tilt with Sonny Liston; George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; Norman Mailer on the Rumble in the Jungle; Mark Kram on the Thrilla in Manila; Pete Hamill on legendary trainer and manager Cus D’Amato; Mark Kriegel on Oscar De la Hoya; and David Remnick and Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson. National Book Award–winning novelist Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) offers a foreword.

Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter


June Skinner Sawyers - 2006
    Consisting of more than fifty articles, essays, interviews, record and movie reviews, poems, and book excerpts-many of them rare and hard to find-Read the Beatles is an unprecedented compilation that follows the arc of the Fab Four's iconic and idiosyncratic career, from their early days in Liverpool through their tragic and triumphant histories after the group's split. The book also includes original essays from noted musicians and journalists about the Beatles' lasting influence and why they still matter today.

Jack Ma: Biography Of A Self Made Billionaire


R.G. Knight - 2018
    Today, the 53-year-old's e-commerce company is valued at $519 billion, although Ma didn't start achieving career success until his 30s. He says: "In life, it's not how much we achieved, it's how much we've gone through the tough days and mistakes". This book covers the entirety of Jack Ma’s life, the challenges he faced and his struggles - how he braved all odds and swam against the tide to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world today. It will give you a detailed insight into his early life, how he struggled with his education and business, how he handled pessimists and critics and how he learned to use the power of good company, sheer will and grit to achieve his dream. The well-structured book focuses on Jack Ma and his complete story, starting from his childhood. Unlike other boring biographies, it is interesting and engaging to read. The book captures the life of Jack well - his struggles, failures, strategy and thought process. Particularly, how Jack connected the dots in life and what we can learn from him. It's a perfect gift for your son, daughter or anyone who needs a dose of inspiration/motivation. The book contains valuable lessons from Jack Ma's life.

Original Spin: Misadventures in Cricket


Vic Marks - 2019
    Apart from Richards, 'all of us were eighteen years old, though Botham seemed to have lived a bit longer - or at least more vigorously - than the rest.'In this irresistible memoir of a life lived in cricket, Vic Marks returns to the heady days when Richards and Botham were young men yet to unleash their talents on the world stage while he and Roebuck looked on in awe. After the high-octane dramas of Somerset, playing for England was almost an anti-climax for Marks, who became an unlikely all-rounder in the mercurial side of the 1980s. Moving from the dressing room to the press box, with trenchant observations about the modern game along the way, Original Spin is a charmingly wry, shrewdly observed account of a golden age in cricket.

Meat Rack Boy


Michael Tarraga - 2019
    She left him there the day he was born, with his twin brother. She also abandoned their two year old sister. This is a story of what happened next and how a child without a family can be exploited, abused and sold. Michael was continually anally raped for half a crown, sold out by Bob and Ivy Woods who he had to call Mum and Dad. Michael is now 70 years old and dying from COPD. Keen for his story to be told before he leaves this world - so that he and others can one day get peace and justice, but more importantly that this kind of horrific sexual abuse, happens to no other child. "I don’t want money, I want my story to be told. I need my story to be told before I die. " Michael Tarraga. All the proceeds of the book will be spent on helping other survivors like Michael, finally have a chance to tell their story and get it heard.

Becoming Reverend: A diary


Matt Woodcock - 2016
    Obviously. Matt Woodcock's frank, funny real-life diaries reveal what it was like for him to train as a vicar while struggling against all odds to become a father. In them he lays bare his joys and struggles as he attempts to reconcile his calling as a vicar with his life as a party-loving journalist, footie-freak and incorrigible extrovert. Becoming Reverend is a compelling and original account of how faith can work in the midst of a messy life, combining family, fertility, faith and friendship with the story of a divine - but unlikely - calling.

Confessions of An Essex Girl


Becci Fox - 2012
    Events in this book are so shameless that I've had to change all the names, but everything that happens is real.' Becci Fox is an Essex girl through and through. She just wants to be comfortable and spoilt, taken out to nice places and showered with presents. And she is. She lives in the grounds of her parents' manor house, drives a Mercedes SLK and had a boob job when she was nineteen. She's ambitious, working hard during the day as a bridal buyer. And at night she plays hard, clubbing at Sugar Hut and Faces, mixing with celebrities and soap stars. She knows how to handle the footballers who buy you Cristal champagne and make you feel like the most special person in the room (only they've got five other girls on speed dial). But when she falls for a sexy racing driver, is she finally out of her league? Becci shares six dramatic months in her life as she and her friends have fun, fall in love, handle heartache and betrayal, and even plan a big fat Essex wedding.

The Royal W.E. Unique Glimpses of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor


Victoria Martinez - 2011
    The truth is: politics and innuendo clouded that story from the very beginning, with the result that few people really understand who The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were and what forces propelled them to their infamous fate. The Royal W.E. examines the individual and intertwined lives of Wallis and Edward – or “W.E.” as they referred to themselves – and provides readers with unique glimpses of the real people, as opposed to the sensationalized characters, that were The Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through careful study of more than 75 years of rhetoric and scholarship, Victoria Martínez takes on the most controversial charges lodged against the couple (Was Wallis a hermaphrodite? Were the Duke and Duchess Nazi sympathizers?) with candor and evenhandedness. In analyzing the early lives of Wallis and the ex-king and their later relationships with other members of the Royal Family, her approach is to deal with all parties as human beings, whose true faults – though significant – were far less sinister than history has led us to believe. Ms. Martínez also addresses the ever-popular subject of the Duchess’s jewels, including new research on the famous 1946 Ednam Lodge jewel heist to dispel the long-held rumors that the Duke and Duchess committed jewel theft and insurance fraud. The subjects in this book are not always mainstream, well-known, or even consistent with “popular” opinion, and the objective is not to make anyone “like” the couple. Instead, readers will find refreshingly honest and accurate portrayals of W.E. that will help them understand the real people behind the myth and hype. “Prejudice and preconception are difficult things to set aside, particularly after so many years of negative stories and sordid rumor, but I think readers here will discover an alternative and convincing look at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I am sure they would approve and perhaps, just perhaps, the future may be a little bit kinder to Edward and Wallis because of the efforts of people like Ms. Martínez.” -Greg King, author of The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson

Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography


University Press Biographies - 2017
    The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere


Hank Stuever - 2004
    Elsewhere might be revealed in the tract-house adventures of a home-décor reality show, at a discount funeral home in a strip mall, or in the story of an armed man named Honey Bear in the hunt for his beloved but now missing sleeper sofa which he left in a store unit. Off Ramp shows us America through the humorous gaze of Hank Stuever, who finds beauty in the midst of the most unlikely and invisible lives and places.

Where the Soul Hungers: One Doctor’s Journey from Atheism to Faith


Samuel Morris Brown - 2021
    Brown was an atheist from an early age and proud of it. Yet, by his own account, God became an undeniable presence in his life. Now a faithful Latter-day Saint, this practicing research physician narrates some of the waypoints on his journey into believing and belonging. Some are dramatic—his wife’s cancer diagnosis or working in a hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic—while many are simple yet profound: being mistaken for a homeless person while a student at Harvard, growing to like little children and opera, and learning to bake cookies for others. With gentle, self-critical humor and a generous regard for those who have accompanied him on his way, Brown’s book is an offer to walk with you a while on your own journey of faith.

Why Romney Lost


David Frum - 2012
    David Frum urges a Republican party that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible - a party that can meet the challenges of the Obama years and lead a diverse America to a new age of freedom and prosperity.