But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him "The Fittest (Real) Man in America."In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.

    Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic."

    His more famous stage name, Flea, and his wild ride as the renowned bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers was in a far and distant future. Little Michael from Oz moved with his very conservative, very normal family to Westchester, New York, where life as he knew it was soon turned upside down. His parents split up and he and his sister moved into the home of his mother's free-wheeling, jazz musician boyfriend, Walt--trading in rules, stability, and barbecues for bohemian values, wildness, and Sunday afternoon jazz parties where booze, weed, and music flowed in equal measure. Michael was frightened by the lack of order in his new reality and his volatile new stepfather, but found his salvation in the world of passionate musicians the Walt exposed him to. There began his life-long journey to channel all the frustration, loneliness, love, and joy he felt into incredible rhythm.When Michael's family moved to Los Angeles in 1972, his home situation was rockier than ever. He sought out a sense of belonging elsewhere, spending most of his days partying, playing basketball, and committing petty crimes. At Fairfax High School, he met another social outcast, Anthony Kiedis, who quickly became his soul brother, the yin to his yang, his partner in mischief. Michael joined some bands, fell in love with performing, and honed his skills. But it wasn't until the night when Anthony, excited after catching a Grandmaster Flash concert, suggested they start their own band that he is handed the magic key to the cosmic kingdom.Acid for the Children is as raw, entertaining and wildly unpredictable as its author. It's both a tenderly evocative coming of age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity.

    The book follows Michelle in exploring her past and takes the reader with her on her journey to receiving and accepting her diagnosis. Instead of rehashing widely available Asperger's information, Michelle focuses on discussing the thoughts, feelings and ideas that go along with being an Aspie, giving us a rare peek into what it really feels like to be a person on the spectrum. A must read for all those who enjoy deep personal stories or have a loved one on the spectrum that they wish to understand better.

    This is the hilarious and touching real-life diary she kept during that fateful year - with characters like her evil friend Bethany, Bethany's besotted boyfriend, and the boys from the grammar school up the road (who have code names like Haddock and Battered Sausage).My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary evokes a vanished time when Charles and Di are still together, the Berlin wall is up, Kylie is expected to disappear from the charts at any moment and it's £1 for a Snakebite and Black in the Vaults pub. My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary will appeal to anyone who's lived through the 1980s. But it will also strike a chord with anyone who's ever been a confused, lonely teenager who clashes with their mother, takes themselves VERY seriously and has no idea how hilarious they are.

    But there comes a point in her preteen years - maybe it's the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once - when Cupcake's story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark, deeply disturbing journey through hell.Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. At just 16 she stumbled into the terrifying world of the gangsta, dealing drugs, hustling and only just surviving a drive-by shooting. Ironically, it was Cupcake's rapid descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine addiction that finally saved her. After one four-day crack binge she woke up behind a dumpster. Half-dressed and half-dead, she finally realized she had to change her life or die on the streets - another trash-can addict, another sad statistic.Astonishingly, Cupcake turned her life around and this is her brutally frank, startlingly funny story. Unlike any memoir you will ever read, A Piece of Cake is a redemptive, gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contemporary urban life and survived it. It is also the most genuinely affecting rollercoaster ride through hell and back that you will ever take.

    If the problem is physical, she takes the child to a doctor. But if the problem is a misunderstanding of her child's mind, where does she turn for help? This is Ben's story. He was a happy, healthy boy -- a mother's dream come true. Yet by the age of three, Ben's development was significantly delayed: He couldn't make sense of the simplest phrases, and he still hadn't started talking. When Karen Foli finally took her son, Ben, to a speech and hearing clinic, she was told that he was "probably retarded and perhaps autistic." But Karen knew that Ben was highly perceptive, even frustrated by his inability to communicate. Trusting her "mother's intuition," Karen set out on a journey to learn the truth about her son's condition....and what she found was APD. A person with auditory processing disorder receives jumbled and distorted sounds. But the ability to hear is usually normal. Even though it affects millions of Americans, APD can be difficult to diagnose and challenging to treat. Through years of research, and personal interviews, Karen Foli learned everything she needed to know about APD in order to help her son achieve the greatest gift of all: communication. Like Sound Through Water is her story -- winning, inspiring, and true.

    While she wondered about her biological parents, she kept her curiosity in check, until a series of small health problems raised concerns about her genetic heritage and its consequences for her two children's lives and her own.Though Spence-Chapin Family Service, the agency that handled her adoption, could not reveal the name of her birth mother, it was able to provide details that lead to a shocking truth. Caroline's birth mother and her family were related to a friend. The woman who gave her life was none other than Carole "Cookie" Cole, the daughter of iconic crooner and pianist Nat King Cole.Drawing on details provided by the agency and her own investigative skills, Caroline embarked on a life-changing journey of discovery that stretched from coast to coast, forged through e-mail, phone calls, and post cards. The constancy, volume, and intimacy of her steady correspondence with Cookie filled the days and distance between them. Through brief yet poignant messages squeezed onto three-inch open-faced squares, mother and daughter revealed themselves, sharing secrets, taking risks, and ultimately building a bond like no other.A heartfelt, inspiring tribute to both Caroline's adoptive parents and her biological mother, Postcards from Cookie illuminates the enduring power of love to shape and guide our lives.

    an instant classic of the genre." --Dwight Garner, New York Times - A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 - A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 by Kirkus MIT psychologist and bestselling author of Reclaiming Conversation and Alone Together, Sherry Turkle's intimate memoir of love and workFor decades, Sherry Turkle has shown how we remake ourselves in the mirror of our machines. Here, she illuminates our present search for authentic connection in a time of uncharted challenges. Turkle has spent a career composing an intimate ethnography of our digital world; now, marked by insight, humility, and compassion, we have her own.In this vivid and poignant narrative, Turkle ties together her coming-of-age and her pathbreaking research on technology, empathy, and ethics. Growing up in postwar Brooklyn, Turkle searched for clues to her identity in a house filled with mysteries. She mastered the codes that governed her mother's secretive life. She learned never to ask about her absent scientist father--and never to use his name, her name. Before empathy became a way to find connection, it was her strategy for survival.Turkle's intellect and curiosity brought her to worlds on the threshold of change. She learned friendship at a Harvard-Radcliffe on the cusp of coeducation during the antiwar movement, she mourned the loss of her mother in Paris as students returned from the 1968 barricades, and she followed her ambition while fighting for her place as a woman and a humanist at MIT. There, Turkle found turbulent love and chronicled the wonders of the new computer culture, even as she warned of its threat to our most essential human connections. The Empathy Diaries captures all this in rich detail--and offers a master class in finding meaning through a life's work.

    His journals reveal an artist who loved music, who knew the history of rock, and who was determined to define his place in that history. Here is a mesmerizing, incomparable portrait of the most influential musician of his time.

    Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”   In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive.   You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts.   This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.

    This autobiography gives a fascinating and detailed insight into the workings of a great fashion house, while revealing the private man behind the high-profile establishment.

    In his pithy essays, author Ido Kedar, a brilliant sixteen year old with autism, challenges what he believes are misconceptions in many theories that dominate autism treatment today while he simultaneously chronicles his personal growth in his struggles to overcome his limitations.Ido spent the first half of his life locked internally, in silence, trapped in a remedial educational system that presumed he lacked the most basic comprehension, and unable to show the world that he understood everything. But at the age of seven, Ido was finally able to show that he had an intact mind and could understand. This led to the quest to find a system of communication that he could use despite his impaired motor control. Through the use of a letter board, and now an iPad, Ido has triumphed communicatively, enabling him to flourish in a regular high school in all general education classes.But Ido has a larger goal. He does not want to be seen as an isolated autistic exception with miraculously advanced cognitive and communication abilities. He wants people to see that thousands of other severely autistic individuals have the same capacity, but remain trapped and locked-in, as he was, unable to show their true capacities. These individuals desperately need new theories and new methods to help them break free too. Of importance to neuro-researchers, educators, psychologists, doctors, parents, friends, family and people with autism, Ido in Autismland will change our collective understanding of severe autism.PRAISE FOR Ido in Autismland "There are doubtless many Idos in this world, unable to speak, yet possessing good intellectual ability and, most certainly, a rich emotional life. And yet, precisely because they cannot communicate, nonverbal individuals with autism are nearly always consigned to the junk heap of mental deficiency, branded as incapable of understanding language or even having feelings... We need to help change things for this terribly neglected group... Reading Ido's book is a good beginning." - Portia Iversen, Co-founder, Cure Autism Now and the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange Gene Bank. Author of Strange Son"Ido is a brilliant communicator. His words bring us inside the world of autism. His gift of writing enlightens, inspires, educates. Every person who loves or works with someone with autism - educator, therapist, karent, grandparent, neighbor - should read Ido in Autismland." - Elaine Hall, Author of Now I See the Moon, co-author of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism. Featured in Autism: The Musical"Ido's book touches any heart, not only because it is well written, but because it reveals a mind that has learned how to speak to the world through spelling every word on a letter board and keyboard. His book is indeed a great gift to the world. Thank you, Ido." - Soma Mukhopadhyay, Executive Director of Education, HALO, Author of Understanding Autism through Rapid Prompting Method

    Now, more than ever, Melissa's message is needed by others, and her promise to all who journey with her is that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.Who would ever guess that Melissa Bernstein, happily-married mother of 6, creator of over 5,000 toys which have sold over a billion dollars, begins many days the same way far too many others do, wondering if she'll make it to tomorrow? Melissa shows us that when darkness descends, and it seems there's no escape, there actually is a way out, there actually is hope, and there actually is a path that can lead to meaning and purpose.Melissa takes us on her path through depression, revealing how her "lifelines" transformed despair into a beacon of hope. Filled with prose, gorgeous photography, and many of Melissa's verses that express her struggles and breakthroughs, LifeLines is committed to helping others who are "stuck" develop a plan for themselves to survive and thrive.A book of struggle and salvation, connection and community, LifeLines is a framework for people seeking to understand their emotional lives and to develop their own path to self-discovery and inner transformation.

    . . colorful descriptions make this a fun read." -Los Angeles Times "One of the best sports books of the year." -Booklist Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey with the pros-until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback. He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, an AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At the age of thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro-hockey, facing 100-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises, and battle-worn teammates. From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. When the season is over, Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.