Seconds to Snap: One Explosive Day. A Family Destroyed. My Descent into Anorexia.


Tina McGuff - 2015
    In those few, short seconds, a black hole opened up in my life and I fell right in." Tina McGuff’s life was perfect – or so she thought. Living in Dundee with her devoted parents and three younger sisters, she was a happy, healthy, and confident 13-year-old. But all that changed in one horrifying act of revenge, and Tina’s world collapsed overnight. Terrified, lost, and confused, she turned to the one thing she thought she could control—food. And so began the biggest fight of her life. Tina’s life-or-death struggle with anorexia is told with devastating honesty in this extraordinary account of a girl at war with herself. Through her years in and out of psychiatric wards, Tina takes us to some of the darkest places of the mind. But in the end her courage, conviction, and sheer determination win out. It took Tina seconds to snap and a lifetime to recover—but today, as a passionate campaigner for mental health, she is living proof that there is always a reason to hope that one day, things will get better.

The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan


Kenneth Tynan - 2001
    For over three decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, Tynan was at the hot center of the theater and film worlds. He knew everybody, and everybody wanted to know him. His diaries-so resplendent with griefs and gossip-bear superb witness to the fame he courted and the price he paid for it.

Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD's First "Hip-Hop Cop"


Derrick Parker - 2000
     Always straddling the fence between "po-po" and NYPD outsider, Derrick threatened police tradition to try to get the cases solved. He was the first detective to interview an informant offering a detailed account of Biggie Smalls's murder. He protected one of the only surviving eyewitnesses to the Jam Master Jay murder and knows the identity of the killers as well as the motivation behind the shooting. "Notorious C.O.P. "reveals hip-hop crimes that never made the paper--like the robbing of Foxy Brown and the first Hot 97 shooting--and answers some lingering questions about murders that have remained unsolved. The book that both the NYPD and the hip-hop community don't want you to read, "Notorious C.O.P. "is the first insider look at the real links between crime and hip-hop and the inefficiencies that have left some of the most widely publicized murders in entertainment history unsolved.

Stumbling Into Infinity: An Ordinary Man in the Sphere of Enlightenment


Michael Fischman - 2009
    It is a compelling narrative that blends remarkable experiences with an inner struggle and search for meaning.

The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers


Mungo MacCallum - 2012
    Their time at the top has ranged from eight days for Frank Forde to eighteen years for Bob Menzies. But whatever the length of their term, each Prime Minister has a story worth sharing. Edmund Barton united the bickering states in a federation; Billy Hughes forced US President Woodrow Wilson to take notice of Australia. The unlucky Jimmy Scullin took office days before Wall Street crashed into the Great Depression, while John Curtin faced the ultimate challenge of wartime leadership. John Gorton, Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating each shook up their parties’ policies so vigorously that none lasted much longer than a single term in office. With characteristic wit and expert knowledge, Mungo MacCallum brings the nation’s leaders to vivid life. The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely tells the tale of the many men and one woman who’ve had a crack at running the country. It is a wonderfully entertaining education.

How Women Decide: What’s True, What’s Not, and What Strategies Spark the Best Choices


Therese Huston - 2016
    Most of this aims at greater success, but very little focuses on a key set of skills that ensures such success — making the wisest, strongest decisions. Every day, in every part of our lives, we face an increasing number of choices. Our futures depend not just on the results, but on how well we handle making these hard choices and the serious scrutiny that comes with them. But is a woman’s experience issuing a tough call any different from a man’s? Absolutely. From start to finish. Men and women approach decisions differently, though not necessarily in the ways we have been led to believe. Stress? It actually makes women more focused. Confidence? A healthy dose of self-questioning leads to much stronger decisions. And despite popular misconceptions, women are just as decisive as men — though they may pay a price for it. So why, then, does a real gap arise after the decision is made? Why are we quick to question a woman’s decisions but inclined to accept a man’s? And why is a man’s reputation as a smart decision-maker cemented after one big call, but a woman is expected to prove herself again and again?How Women Decide delivers lively, engaging stories of real women and their experiences, as well as expert, accessible analysis of what the science has to say. Cognitive psychologist Therese Huston breaks open the myths and opens up the conversation about how we can best shape our habits, perceptions, and strategies, not just to make the most of our own opportunities, but to reshape the culture and bring out the best decisions — regardless of who’s making them.

Billy Brown, I'll Tell Your Mother


Bill Brown - 2011
    And, for the right price, he would deliver it direct to your door in an old carriage pram.With energy and insight, Billy Brown paints a vivid and lively picture of Britain emerging from the ruins of the war, the hunger for opportunity, the growing pace of modernisation and the pride and optimism that held communities together. Londoners were intent on getting themselves back on their feet, and it provided the perfect opportunity for a boy with ambition and a lively imagination.Born in Brixton, south London, in 1942, Billy Brown was a lovable scamp with a nose for mischief. Left to his own devices while both his parents went out to work, if there was trouble to be had Billy would be in the thick of it. Ignoring the shaking of fists from his neighbours, his mother's scoldings and the regular thwack of the cane on his bottom at school, Billy wheeled and dealed, charmed Woolies' Girls, planned coronation celebrations, ran circles around circus performers and persuaded villains to work on his terms.

Letters from Amelia


Jean L. Backus - 2016
    Inside were more than 100 revealing letters the legendary pilot wrote to her beloved mother. The first was a four-year-old's thank-you note. The last, three short lines, was written just prior to her final 1937 flight when she vanished into a Pacific mist of conjecture. Fitted together, they portray the evolution to adulthood of a warm, sensible, fun-loving tomboy who would become the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo. Amid these captivating letters, Jean L. Backus skillfully weaves accounts of Earhart and her family's joys and squabbles from an aristocratic mother who was the first woman to scale Pike's Peak to husband George Putnam who made her a media sensation, secured financing for her flights, and led her to reject any "medieval code of faithfulness." Written under all conditions - in school, on trains, at the White House - the engrossing messages show devotion, wisdom, and a hilarious talent for playing with the English language, as well as a rare ability to stand apart from her own legend. Letters from Amelia is an apt testimony to the totality of an extraordinary person.

The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon


Thomas Starzl - 1992
    and a PhD.  While he was a student, and later during his surgical internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he began the series of animal experiments that led eventually to the world’s first transplantation of the human liver in 1963.Throughout his career, first at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Pittsburgh, he has aroused both worldwide admiration and controversy.  His technical innovations and medical genius have revolutionized the field, but Starzl has not hesitated to address the moral and ethical issues raised by transplantation.  In this book he clearly states his position on many hotly debated issues including brain death, randomized trials for experimental drugs, the costs of transplant operations, and the system for selecting organ recipients from among scores of desperately ill patients.There are many heroes in the story of transplantation, and many “puzzle people,” the patients who, as one journalist suggested, might one day be made entirely of various transplanted parts.  They are old and young, obscure and world famous.  Some have been taken into the hearts of America, like Stormie Jones, the brave and beautiful child from Texas.  Every patient who receives someone else’s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle.  “It was not just the acquisition of a new part,” he writes.  “The rest of the body had to change in many ways before the gift could be accepted.  It was necessary for the mind to see the world in a different way.”  The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people.  “Some were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.”

Queen Victoria


Richard Rivington Holmes - 2015
    "Her Majesty most graciously consented to supply notes on her childhood and youth, and at the same time to correct matters of fact, especially in reference to the period before her accession to the throne, and, more generally, throughout the volume.I am, therefore, enabled to present, for the first time, an accurate account of the childhood and youth of Queen Victoria."Richard Rivington Holmes

Minefields: A life in the news game - the bestselling memoir of Australia's legendary foreign correspondent


Hugh Riminton - 2017
    It is proof that, 'if you go looking for trouble, you'll probably find it'. Over nearly 40 years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Hugh Riminton has been shot at, blown up, threatened with deportation and thrown in jail. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, witnessed massacres in Africa, wars and conflicts on four continents, and every kind of natural disaster. It has been an extraordinary life. From a small-town teenager with a drinking problem, cleaning rat cages for a living, to a multi-award-winning international journalist reporting to an audience of 300 million people, Hugh has been a frontline witness to our times. From genocide in Africa to the Indian Ocean tsunami, from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to slave-trading in Sudan, Hugh has seen the best and worst of human behaviour. In Australia, he has covered political dramas, witnessed the Port Arthur Massacre and the Thredbo disaster and broke a major national scandal. His work helped force half-a-dozen government inquiries.Entertaining, deeply personal and quietly wise, MINEFIELDS is a compelling exploration of a foreign correspondent's life. 'His story is a triumph' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Alice to Prague


Tanya Heaslip - 2019
    Dismissing concerns from family and friends that her safety and career were at risk, she arrived with no teaching experience whatsoever, to work at a high school in a town she'd never heard of, where the winters are frigid and plunge to sub-zero temperatures.During her childhood on an isolated cattle station in Central Australia, Tanya had always dreamed of adventure and romance in Europe but the Czech Republic was not the stuff of her dreams. On arrival, however, she falls headlong into misadventures that change her life forever.This land of castles, history and culture opened up to her and she to it. In love with Prague and her people, particularly with the charismatic Karel, who takes her into his home, his family and as far as he can into his heart, Tanya learns about lives very different to hers.Alice to Prague is a bittersweet story of a search for identity, belonging and love, set in a time, a place and with a man that fill Tanya's life with contradictions.

Metallica: Back to the Front


Matt Taylor - 2016
    Thirty years later, this six-time platinum album is considered to be the high-water mark of Metallica’s incredible career, with songs like “Battery,” “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” and the title track, “Master of Puppets,” still a staple of their sell-out live shows. Sadly, this hugely successful period for Metallica was marred by a tragedy that shook the band to its foundation: the death of bassist Cliff Burton in a tour bus accident on September 27, 1986.  For the first time, Metallica: Back to the Front tells the fully authorized story of the creation of the Master of Puppets album and the subsequent tour. Featuring new and exclusive interviews with band members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett, this is the definitive account of the most venerated period of Metallica’s history, from the incredible highs of touring in support of Ozzy Osbourne to the lows of losing a key member of the band and crucial part of the Metallica sound. Metallica: Back to the Front will also feature interviews with other important figures in the band’s history, including managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch, Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin, Anthrax band members Scott Ian and Charlie Benante, and many, many more. Filled with hundreds of never-before-seen images from the band’s personal archives, this deluxe volume will combine an in-depth narrative with stunning visuals, taking fans further into this defining period of the band’s career than ever before. Released to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the Master of Puppets album and tour, Metallica: Back to the Front is created with the full cooperation and support of the band. The result is a treasure trove of stories, anecdotes, and never-before-seen photographs that legions of Metallica fans will cherish for generations to come.

The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future


John Gerzema - 2013
    This marks a burgeoning global trend away from the winner-takes-all, masculine approach to getting things done. Drawing from interviews at innovative organizations in eighteen nations and at Fortune 500 boardrooms, the authors reveal how men and women alike are recognizing significant value in traits commonly associated with women, such as nurturing, cooperation, communication, and sharing. "The Athena Doctrine" shows why femininity is the operating system of 21st century prosperity: Leadership: values traditionally associated with women create more effective leadership and organizational strategies in today's society.Career management and self-improvement traits associated with women--flexibility, empathy, and honesty--underpin career mobility and personal fulfillment.Change management: feminine traits help us adapt seamlessly and effectively to today's changes.Brought to life through real world portraits of women and men who lead Fortune 1000 businesses, new ventures, government and nonprofit agencies, and community groups--and backed by rigorous data--"s"ocial theorist John Gerzema and author Michael D'Antonio show how traditionally feminine traits are ascending and bringing success to people and organizations around the world. By nurturing, listening, collaborating and sharing, women and men are solving problems, finding profits, and redefining success in every realm.

The Woman Who Wasn't There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception


Robin Gaby Fisher - 2012
     It was a tale of loss and recovery, of courage and sorrow, of horror and inspiration. Tania Head’s astonishing account of her experience on September 11, 2001—from crawling through the carnage and chaos to escaping the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby of the burning south tower to losing her fiancé in the collapsed north tower—transformed her into one of the great victims and heroes of that tragic day. Tania selflessly took on the responsibility of giving a voice and a direction to the burgeoning World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, helping save the “Survivor Stairway” and leading tours at Ground Zero, including taking then-governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and former mayor Giuliani on the inaugural tour of the WTC site. She even used her own assets to fund charitable events to help survivors heal. But there was something very wrong with Tania’s story—a terrible secret that would break the hearts and challenge the faith of all those she claimed to champion. Told with the unique insider perspective and authority of Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr., a filmmaker shooting a documentary on the efforts of the Survivors’ Network, and previously one of Tania’s closest friends, The Woman Who Wasn’t There is the story of one of the most audacious and bewildering quests for acclaim in recent memory—one that poses fascinating questions about the essence of morality and the human need for connection at any cost.