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Gone in October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac by John Clellon Holmes
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Come and Gone
Joe Parkin - 2010
He joins the elite Coors Lite road team as a key member, but the adjustment to domestic racing, with small crowds, inexperienced teammates, and poorly promoted events, proves difficult. Disillusioned, Joe is ready to hang up his cleats when he is offered a contract with a pro mountain bike team. The freshness of mountain biking proves to be an elixir: Joe's career blossoms and he rediscovers his love of the sport. Come and Gone will instantly appeal to all readers of A Dog in a Hat, while winning a new audience held spellbound by this rare, frank, and intimate sports memoir.
Miles Davis: The Playboy Interview
Miles Davis - 2012
It covered jazz, of course, but it also included Davis’s ruminations on race, politics and culture. Fascinated, Hef sent the writer—future Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Alex Haley, an unknown at the time—back to glean even more opinion and insight from Davis. The resulting exchange, published in the September 1962 issue, became the first official Playboy Interview and kicked off a remarkable run of public inquisition that continues today—and that has featured just about every cultural titan of the last half century.To celebrate the Interview’s 50th anniversary, the editors of Playboy have culled 50 of its most (in)famous Interviews and will publish them over the course of 50 weekdays (from September 4, 2012 to November 12, 2012) via Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform. Here is that first Interview with Miles Davis.
John Giles A Football Man
John Giles - 2010
He also describes his enduring friendship with the ‘kid from across Dublin’s Tolka Park’, Eamon Dunphy, and his career on RTÉ2’s football panel, where Giles’ intelligent and insightful analysis have made him an even more well-loved and respected national figure.
Heroes, Villains & Velodromes: Chris Hoy & Britain's Track Cycling Revolution
Richard Moore - 2008
How does he do it? And why? What drives him to put his body through the physical and mental hurdles to become the best in the world? This is also the story of an extraordinary year in the life of an extraordinary sportsman, one which started with his best-ever world championships in Mallorca—where, for the first time in his career, he became a double world champion—continued with his attempt on the world kilometer record in La Paz, Bolivia, went on to Japan where he spent three months riding the crazy keirin circuit, before returning to training at the world-class Manchester velodrome in the buildup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.By shadowing Hoy through a season with the British track cycling team, author Richard Moore has gained an unembellished insight into the mind of a world champion. He has also attained unprecedented levels of access to the key members of the all-conquering British team (which smashed all records and dominated the 2007 world championships) and support staff, including top coaches, world-renowned psychiatrists, doctors (where the subject of drug abuse is an ever-present shadow), and the pivotal characters behind the scenes. Combining his forensic knowledge of the cycling world with his acclaimed skills as a tenacious investigative journalist, Moore captures the mood of the British team and explores an area of professional sport that has rarely been seen before.
Abraham Lincoln: Frontier Crusader For American Liberty
Michael Crawley - 2016
His profound and poetic speeches are famous around the world, evidence of the greatness of American’s most beloved leader. But did you know that the sixteenth president of the United States was also a backwoods hillbilly from America’s western frontier, with a Kentucky accent so thick you could cut it? Or that he liked wrestling matches, dirty jokes, and had a reputation for telling hilarious, R-rated stories that weren’t suitable for mixed company? From his childhood working as a virtual slave for an abusive father, to sailing a river raft to New Orleans, to the Illinois General Assembly, Congress, and the White House, the story of Abraham Lincoln’s life is the story of America. He mourned the deaths of almost everyone he loved, endured marriage to a wife whose mental health issues made her a domestic abuser, and lost more elections than he won. But Abraham Lincoln believed in one thing above all: that everyone deserved a fair shot at the American dream. Why did John Wilkes Booth really shoot Abraham Lincoln? The truth is as shocking now as it was in 1865.
Tour de Force: My history-making Tour de France
Mark Cavendish - 2021
"That was perhaps the last race of my career..."'Deep down, Mark Cavendish thought he was finished. After illness, setbacks and clinical depression, the once fastest man in the world had been written off by most. And at the age of 36, even he believed his explosive cycling career would fade out with a whimper. The Manxman hadn't won a single Grand Tour stage in Italy, Spain or France since 2016.But then came his incredible resurrection at the 2021 Tour de France. Included on the Deceuninck Quick-Step team at the very last minute, only after Sam Bennett suffered an injury, Mark set about rewriting history. He claimed back the green jersey he first wore in 2011, and his four stage victories finally saw him matching Belgian legend Eddy Merckx's all-time record of 34 Tour de France stage wins. Cycling greats are never content, and Cav's dogged determination and inner strength had earned him the record that few believed he could ever achieve. This is his own intimate account of that race, right from the saddle of the miracle tour.
APJ Abdul Kalam (Amar Chitra Katha)
Tripti Nainwal - 2018
A man who brought his own brand of excellence and humility to everything he touched. A teacher, a writer, a poet, a visionary, a world-renowned scientist and the 11th President of India.Read about his life in Amar Chitra Katha's APJ Abdul Kalam - When Dreams Take Flight
Clara Brown: The Rags to Riches Story of a Freed Slave
Julie McDonald - 2016
After being freed at the age of 57, she begins a tireless search for her only remaining family member, her daughter Eliza Jane. What Clara accomplishes in her 28 years of freedom will simply astound you! I first wrote about Clara Brown in my book Unbreakable Dolls, Too. This single story eBook is the expanded version, with much more information and 9 photos.
Wrestling With Madness: John E. Du Pont and the Foxcatcher Farm Murder
Tim Huddleston - 2013
Part of one of the most prominent and richest families in America: The du Pont Family. Then, strangely, he started losing his mind. This is what is known: du Pont was a fan of amateur sports and established a wrestling facility at his Foxcatcher Farm. He befriended several Olympic champions--including Dave Schultz, who he murdered. It was a never a question of if he did it; the question is why. What turns an otherwise sane man into a psychotic killer? This page-turning true crime story will take you into the mind of a man who had everything and let it all fall away due to madness and paranoia.
Behind The Door: the Real Story of Loretta Young
Edward J Funk - 2015
Then, in 2012, Linda Lewis, Loretta Young’s daughter-in-law, called, urging me to finally bring this book to full life. I’ll be forever grateful to Loretta Young, a guarded woman by nature, who finally decided to tell a very personal story. In doing so, she enlisted the help of her three sisters and life-long friends. These people have all passed on, but their voices remain vividly in the present.Excerpts pertaining to Loretta’s relationship with Clark GableGable arrived at Loretta’s train compartment uninvited. She recalled,” I allowed him in as I would have any member of the crew, thinking he was there for a visit. He had other intentions. Very persistent intentions. He wasn’t rough, but I kept saying no, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Loretta received a phone call from Ria Gable a few weeks later. Loretta recalled, "I was in Mama's room and I picked up the phone. Mrs. Gable said, 'This is very presumptuous of me, but you may or may not know that there are rumors flying around town about you and my husband.'”In 1998, when Loretta was eighty-five, she was watching television with Edward Funk. There was the mention of date-rape on the news, and she asked him what exactly did that mean. He explained to the best of his ability. The following day, Loretta called her daughter-in-law, Linda and said. “I know now that there was a word for what happened to me with Clark.”Clark Gable arrived on the set of THE CRUSADES. Loretta recalled, “He waited until I was through and then offered to take me home. We went for a drive up in the Hollywood Hills. He didn’t say much, but it was apparent that he was agitated. With the long silences, I felt very uncomfortable and finally felt the pressure to say something. I blurted out, ‘Would it make any difference if I told you that I wasn’t pregnant?’ He turned and looked at me and then asked, ‘Well, are you or aren’t you?’ I felt like such a fool. I didn’t know why I had said that except that I had tried to think of something to say he wanted to hear, my inherent need to please taken to an illogical length. I had to tell him that I was pregnant. His look toward me was one of total exasperation, and very little was said as he drove me home.” There would be some phone calls in the interim, but it would be more than a year before Loretta would see Clark Gable again. Loretta’s sister, Sally, "I remember taking an odd route to get there (the house in Westwood where Loretta and the baby were in hiding). My mother didn't approve that I was going at all because of all the secrecy, but I was dying to see the baby. She was very big by the time I did. I just loved her looks and kept saying, ‘Oh Loretta, I hope I have a baby that looks just like this.' In response to my enthusiasm about Judy, Loretta referred to Gable’s visit earlier in the week, the first time he had seen his daughter, and said, 'Yes, and do you know after all that has gone on, all that we've gone through, instead of having any interest in his daughter, he tried to knock me down on the bed! Can you imagine, Sally? That bastard! Who the hell does he think he is?' And I thought, 'With all that's happened, she thinks he's a bastard. He didn't understand that Loretta was a human being that had suffered very much.”Loretta acted like she couldn’t have been more flattered that MGM’s two biggest male stars (Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy) would come to see her (on the set of UNGUARDED HOUR). Under her smile she thought differently. She reflected, “I thought how different these two men were.
Pearl: You are Cleared to Land
Deanna Edens - 2018
To be more precise many of these stories are hers—authentic memories written by an amazing woman. Pearl Bragg Laska Chamberlain was the first woman to fly her own plane from the Lower 48 up the Alaska Highway to Alaska. She worked as a flight instructor, bush pilot, cryptographer for the Pentagon, flew in five Powder Puff Derbies, and was also a WASP trainee and famous “99er.” Pearl was a member of the UFO’s (United Flying Octogenarians), and the mayor of Fairbanks actually declared a “Pearl Laska Chamberlain Day.” Pretty impressive, eh? I am very excited to bring you this fabulous collection of “Braggin’ Rights” stories that begin in the early 1900s on Chestnut Mountain in Summers County, West Virginia. Tales about bootleggin’ and learning to fly in the Appalachians are followed by adventures to exotic places. Narratives about living in the polar region and escapades of an aviatrix are accompanied by heartfelt memories of real-life victories and the sorrows of a lifetime. So settle down into the cockpit, buckle your seatbelt and get ready for an astonishing and amazing flight.
Who'd be a copper?: Thirty years a frontline British cop
Jonathan Nicholas - 2015
Who’d be a copper? follows Jonathan Nicholas in his transition from a long-haired world traveller to becoming one of ‘Thatcher’s army’ on the picket lines of the 1984 miner’s dispute and beyond. His first years in the police were often chaotic and difficult, and he was very nearly sacked for not prosecuting enough people. Working at the sharp end of inner-city policing for the entire thirty years, Jonathan saw how politics interfered with the job; from the massaging of crime figures to personal petty squabbles with senior officers. His last ten years were the oddest, from being the best cop in the force to repeatedly being told that he faced dismissal. This astonishing true story comes from deep in the heart of British inner-city policing and is a revealing insight into what life is really like for a police officer, amid increasing budget cuts, bizarre Home Office ideas and stifling political correctness. “I can write what I like, even if it brings the police service into disrepute, because I don’t work for them anymore!” says Jonathan Nicholas. Who’d be a copper? is a unique insight into modern policing that will appeal to fans of autobiographies, plus those interested in seeing what really happens behind the scenes of the UK police."I HAVE BOUGHT YOUR BOOK." TW, Sir Thomas Winsor, WS HMCIC"A WEALTH OF ANECDOTES. FASCINATING." John Donoghue, author of 'Police, Crime & 999'"AN ILLUMINATING ACCOUNT OF LIFE AS A FRONT LINE OFFICER IN BRITAIN'S POLICE, A SERVICE OFTEN STRETCHED FOR RESOURCES BUT MIRED IN RED TAPE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS." Pat Condell, author of 'Freedom is My Religion'
CIA Super Pilot Spills The Beans: Flying Helicopters in Laos for Air America
Bill Collier - 2017
Captain Collier teamed up with his best Vietnam helicopter pilot buddy, Gary, and the two rascals shared enough true adventure to make any novel seem lame. Flying combat in mountainous and weather-hostile Laos was some of the most challenging ever experienced by any pilot, any time, any war. Making fabulous money and having airline benefits allowed them to live an exotic lifestyle, to travel the world on their monthly R&Rs, and to chase and capture more than a few stewardesses from several different airlines.War correspondent Anne Darling described the helicopter pilots for AIR AMERICA as "CIA Super Pilots" Captain Bill Collier was one of those "Super Pilots." This is his story.
Green Ink: Memoirs of a Fighter Pilot
H. Denny Wisely - 2018
He found himself in the navy while growing up during Vietnam. He was the first to shoot down two enemy airplanes and flew 350 combat missions during three deployments aboard USS Kitty Hawk. The ledger he kept will bring you right there with him as he recounts many of those more than exciting missions including being shot down near Hanoi. He flew F4 Phantom to 85,000 feet during operational test flights at the McDonnell-Douglas factor in St Louis. Later at VX-4 in Pt Mugu, California he tested the F 14 Tomcat and flew the MiG 21 from Area 51. He went on to command a Fighter Squadron from USS Midway home-ported in Japan and then went on to be Flight Leader and Commanding Officer of the Blue Angels. He went on to Command the aircraft carrier John F Kennedy.
Imposter: On booze, crippling self-doubt and coming out the other side
Matt Chisholm - 2021