I hated working for him and I hated being around him. I hated it when he walked through the front door at home. And we feared him from the moment he pulled up in front of the house in his car.” So writes conservative firebrand and popular radio host Larry Elder. For ten years Elder and his father did not talk to each other. When they finally did, the conversation went on for eight hours—eight hours that took Elder on his father’s journey from the Jim Crow South, to service in the Marine Corps, to starting a business in Southern California. Elder emerged not just reconciled with his dad, but admiring him, and realizing that he had never fully known him or understood him.  Heartfelt, beautifully written, compulsively readable, A Lot Like Me—originally published as Dear Father, Dear Son—is both a powerfully affecting memoir and a personal, provocative slice of American history.

    Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary. Split into four sections—"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences—in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond—that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected. Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.

    The result is a radical interrogation of work, leisure, and capitalism. Described by The New York Times as a writer who "advances from all sides, like a chess player," Biss brings her approach to the lived experience of capitalism. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, across bars and laundromats and universities, she asks, of both herself and her class, "In what have we invested?"

    Here, Stevenson shares about the turmoil of his early life, the rejection and pain faced in his initial attempts to launch his music career, the grief experienced during his mother’s long battle with cancer, the stress and burnout of his days working as a paramedic, and how an unexpected lightning storm gave him a front-row seat to a miracle that would turn his life around. When the dark clouds roll in, Stevenson has learned to listen to that still, small voice he hears—the voice of a trustworthy God who holds on to him even during the fiercest storms.

    it was a dark place to be. No Direction Home tells the story of the series of events that landed Greg there, what it was like, and how he adventurously escaped. It starts on the first day of middle school in an upscale neighborhood in Long Island, New York. Greg was labeled the biggest piece of shit in sixth grade because of a few unfortunate circumstances, and there seemed to be no hope for redemption. Then one day everything changed, but it was a bit too late. Greg was on a crusade for vengeance.What ensues is a chain reaction of escapades, filled with theft, drug addiction, prostitution, suspension, and eventually, permanent relocation to residential rehabs across the country. Still, nothing could calm him down. He was a bit too off the hinges by then for rehabilitation, and after a scuffle with anti-Semitic cohorts at an inpatient rehab and a daring escape with a girl "too good to be true," he's scooped up and transferred to Hidden Lake Academy, a fucked up place tucked in the obscurity of the Appalachian Mountains. From that point on, all bets are off and there is one mission, and one mission only: get out. His attempted escape morphs into a chaotic tale of homelessness, bad crowds, rancid romance, and bravery in all the wrong places, but one thing is for sure... Greg will never be the same. The question is, will he ever find his way home?

    will leave true crime readers with more to ponder than they bargained for' - The HeraldBefore David Wilson became the UK's pre-eminent criminologist, he was just a young boy growing up in the Scottish town of Carluke. When he was a child, the brutal murder of a young woman rocked this small community, but very quickly a man was arrested for the crime, convicted and put behind bars. For most, life slowly carried on - case closed. But there were whispers in the town that the wrong man was imprisoned. Over the years, these whispers grew louder, to the point that any time David would visit, he'd be asked in hushed tones, 'What are you going to do about the Carluke Case?'Carluke believed the real killer had evaded justice. A murderer was still on the loose.Forty years later, it's time for David to return home, and find out the truth.

    This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.

    Jesse walked out of prison a free man and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Never, that is, until 1949 when he came out of hiding after almost 60 years to claim his inheritance. In the course of proving his identity to a court Jesse told some amazing stories of his time when he was an outlaw but his biggest revelation of all was that his good friend Billy the Kid was still alive. Jesse led a young lawyer to an old man named not William H. Bonney but William H. Roberts who after some consideration finally agreed to come forward and reveal himself as Billy the Kid only if he would help him obtain a pardon from the Governor before his death so he could die a free man. You see, Billy the Kid was still wanted for murder and was condemned to hang. To come forward and reveal himself was to risk being arrested and put to death. This was a risk that William H. Roberts was willing to take. He sat down with the young lawyer and told his story. That story is the one true autobiography of Billy the Kid and told only one time, to one man. This is his story.

    Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

    secretary of stateA Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.” The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II.  The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse.  The United States, which historically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions.  In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left.  Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times.  Written  by someone who has not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past.

    But despite Mandela’s mission of reconciliation, rampant inequality remains; race relations are uneasy, violence is endemic and many in the ANC appear to have lost sight of the liberation ideals. With the election in 2009 of Jacob Zuma, a charismatic populist embroiled in scandal, uncertainty over the trajectory of the nation has only intensified. South Africa now stands at a crossroads, and award-winning journalist Alec Russell draws on his deep knowledge of the country to tell us how it got there and to give us a compelling account, revised and updated for this edition, of the journey from Mandela to Zuma.

    This book extracts the essence of this Indian philosophy and provides a wealth of timeless rituals to effect positive change.Prajna offers rituals and routines for the entire day, from the moment you wake up and need the energy and positive mindset to help you start the morning, to night-time practices that allow you to wind down, relax and get the most benefit from the healing power of sleep. In between there are numerous breathing exercises, mindfulness techniques, yoga stretches and simple recipes to enjoy, all to help you destress and reset, bringing you back to yourself and to lasting peace and happiness.

    Traversing the country, he encounters a pompous Western businessman swindling his way to millions, a local vendor with a flair for painting nudes, and long ago legends of a western circus. Sensitively written and expertly researched, Greetings from Myanmar: Exploring the Price of Progress in One of the Last Countries on Earth to Open for Business is the story of a flourishing nation still very much in limbo and an answer to the hard questions that arise when tourism not only charts, but shapes a place as well.

    Collection of 5 short stories – The Little Princess, No Place for Nathan, Daddy’s Boy, The Wild Child and Scarlett’s Secret – previously available as individual e-shorts.A collection of inspiring and moving real life short stories from foster carer and New York Times bestselling author Casey Watson.Darby, whose parents keep her locked in her bedroom, and who arrives pale and terrified one Christmas Eve.Nathan, who lives with his cruel, violent father, and no longer knows who he is.Paulie, just five, who’s been rejected by his mother, and accused of a sickening crime.Connor, who, at only eight years of age, is delivered to the Watsons in a secure prison van.Scarlett, who, along with her twin sister, Jade, carries the weight of a devastating secret.

    It is high time for humanity to grow up and to transcend itself by embracing transhumanism.Transhumanism offers the most inclusive ideology for all ethnicities and races, the religious and the atheists, conservatives and liberals, the young and the old regardless of socioeconomic status, gender identity, or any other individual qualities. This book expounds on contemporary views and practical advice from more than 70 transhumanists.Astronaut Neil Armstrong said on the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Transhumanism is the next logical step in the evolution of humankind, and it is the existential solution to the long-term survival of the human race.