Book picks similar to
Golden Afternoon by M.M. Kaye


biography
india
nonfiction
non-fiction

The Dark Side Part 2 - Real Life Accounts of an NHS Paramedic - The Traumatic, the Tragic and the Tearful


Andy Thompson - 2014
    In the style of his first book, Andy recalls each event from the detailed documentation recorded at the time, each account written in a way that puts the reader right there next to him so that you live the events in real-time, hear the dialogue between paramedics, patient, their loved ones and other healthcare professionals as it would have been, and share in Andy’s thought processes during each of the ten very different situations he encounters.The term ‘The Dark Side’ describes the frontline emergency aspect of the Ambulance Service, since paramedics frequently experience sombre situations. In ‘The Dark Side, Part 2’ you will share in some truly traumatic, tragic and tearful events involving a seemingly vibrant, healthy young patient, a prison inmate, the victims of an horrific car crash, heart attacks, a frightening epileptic fit, the alarming effects of an allergic reaction, and what can happen when under-strain doctors prescribe the wrong medication. But there’s still room for lighthearted moments and a taste of the sometimes dark humour that allows paramedics to continually deal with events most of us would find too horrific. The detail in the descriptions of the care given to each patient on-scene by Andy and his colleagues will have you marvelling at the ability of these healthcare professionals to work at such speed of thought, buying enough time to deliver a patient into the specialist hands of hospital care and often full recovery. Of course there are inevitably also those times when tears of hope turn to tears of despair for loved ones. You cannot feel that pain until it happens to you, but this book will bring you mighty close to it at times.

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan


Robert Kanigel - 1991
    Hardy, in the years before World War I. Through their eyes the reader is taken on a journey through numbers theory. Ramanujan would regularly telescope 12 steps of logic into two - the effect is said to be like Dr Watson in the train of some argument by Sherlock Holmes. The language of symbols and infinitely large (and small) regions of mathematics should be rendered with clarity for the general reader.

The Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World


Jocko Weyland - 2002
    In The Answer Is Never, skating journalist Jocko Weyland tells the rambunctious story of a rebellious sport that began as a wintertime surfing substitute on the streets of Southern California beach towns more than forty years ago and has evolved over the decades to become a fixture of urban youth culture around the world. Merging the historical development of the sport with passages about his own skating adventures in such wide-ranging places as Hawaii, Germany, and Cameroon, Weyland gives a fully realized portrait of a subculture whose love of free-flowing creativity and a distinctive antiauthoritarian worldview has inspired major trends in fashion, music, art, and film. Along the way, Weyland interweaves the stories of skating pioneers like Gregg Weaver and the Dogtown Z-Boys and living legends like Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk. He also charts the course of innovations in deck, truck, and wheel design to show how the changing boards changed the sport itself, enabling new tricks as skaters moved from the freestyle techniques that dominated the early days to the extreme street-skating style of today. Vivid and vibrant, The Answer Is Never is a fascinating book as radical and unique as the sport it chronicles.

No Compromise


Melody Green - 1989
    Who better to tell Keith Green's story than the woman who shared his life and mission?his wife, Melody. At the time Keith and two of their children were killed in a tragic plane crash, Melody was pregnant and had a one?year?old child at home. She inherited Keith's musical legacy of published and unpublished songs and his private journals, which she has put together in this extremely personal biography of Keith.

The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters


Charlotte Mosley - 2007
    As editor Charlotte Mosley notes, not since the Brontës have the members of a single family written so much about themselves, or have been so written about. The Mitfords offers an unparalleled look at these privileged sisters: Nancy, the scalding wit who transformed her family life into bestselling novels; Pamela, who craved nothing more than a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed with her husband, Oswald Mosley, during World War II; Unity, a suicide, torn by her worship of Hitler and her loyalty to home; Jessica, the runaway Communist and fighter for social change; and Deborah, the genial socialite who found herself Duchess of Devonshire. Spanning the twentieth century, the magically vivid letters of the legendary Mitford sisters constitute not just a superb social and historical chronicle; they also provide an intimate portrait of the stormy but enduring relationships between six beautiful, gifted and radically different women who wrote to one another to confide, commiserate, tease, rage and gossip -- and above all, to amuse.

Naked and Marooned: One Man. One Island.


Ed Stafford - 2014
    Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for sixty days equipped with nothing—no food, water, or even clothing—except the video cameras he would use to document his time. Detailing Stafford’s jaw-dropping sojourn on the island of Olourua, Naked and Marooned is a tale of unparalleled adventure and of one man’s will to push himself to the outer limits—and survive.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life


Jane Sherron De Hart - 2018
    At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs--her Jewish background. Tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to "repair the world," with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter's feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at seventeen, graduated from high school). From Ruth's days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn's James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia Law Schools (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing her job; founding the Women's Rights Law Reporter, writing the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school's first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women's rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with men. Her years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs--aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court . . . A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond.

My Sister Milly


Gemma Dowler - 2017
    . . 'My name is Gemma Dowler. On 21 March 2002, a serial killer named Levi Bellfield stole my sister and sent our family to Hell...'Everyone thinks they know the story of Milly Dowler.Haunting headlines about the missing schoolgirl splashed across front pages. The family's worst fears realised when her body was found months later. The years of waiting for the truth, only to learn that the killer, known to the police, lived just yards from where Milly had vanished. The parents subjected to horrific psychological torture at a trial orchestrated by the murderer. And the shocking revelation of what journalists would do for a story - criminal acts that brought down a national newspaper.But these bare facts hide the true story. In My Sister Milly, Gemma Dowler shares the heartbreaking account of Milly's disappearance, the suspicions that fell on the family, the fatal errors made by the police, and the media's obsession that focused relentlessly on every personal, intimate and emotional aspect of the Dowlers' lives. It is the story of two stolen childhoods - Milly's and Gemma's - and about the love that kept the family together as they struggled with terrible darkness and injustice.However, this book is a story of hope and recovery. It's taken fifteen years of pain for the family to find their voice. The family has worked hard and has received intensive therapy to recover from the trauma of Milly's murder. Their story shows that whatever suffering you endure in life, there is always hope, and there is always love. Now, for the first time, Gemma tells their story and that of the real Milly. Above all, in this book the family want to bring back to life their incredible daughter and sister. Now, finally, the truth about Milly Dowler can never be denied.

Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, World War II, and the Long Journey Home


Gary W. Moore - 2006
    Before that could happen, though, WWII intervened. Gene's story, a surprising paean to the power and humanity of a game, is told here by his son, a first-time author who exhibits the confidence and pacing of a pro. His gripping material certainly helps: after several years overseas in the Navy's touring baseball team, Gene was brought back to Louisiana and assigned to guard secret German POWs, whose U-boat was captured just days before the storming of Normandy. There, Gene teaches his German captives how to play baseball, with a number of unintended and life-altering consequences. When Gene's finally able to return home to Sesser, Ill., he's "on crutches, depressed and embarrassed," holing up in the local bar and prompting one bartender to lament, "he's become one of us, when we were hoping he would make us like him." Gene's journey from promise to despair and back again, set against a long war and an even longer post-war recovery, retains every bit of its vitality and relevance, a 20th-century epic that demonstrates how, sometimes, letting go of a dream is the only way to discover one's great fortune.

Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea


Richard Henry Dana Jr. - 1840
    written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834.While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles, which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway) and being something of a non-conformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and after returning he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.

The Colditz Story


P.R. Reid - 1952
    It was to this impregnable fortress that the Germans sent all those prisoners who persisted in escaping from other camps, such as Stalag Luft III (of THE GREAT ESCAPE FAME). Once within the walls of Colditz, the Germans reasoned, escape was impossible. And yet during the four-year period when the castle was used as a prison over 300 men escaped, 31 of whom managed to complete the hazardous journey home through Germany. Prisoners from 10 different countries formed a truly international escape academy. Skeleton keys were made, German passes forged, maps drafted, and all manner of tools and machinery constructed out of whatever the prisoners had to hand. The ingenuity of the escape artists knew no bounds: they tried everything from tunnelling, to hiding in rubbish sacks, disguising themselves as German officers, and leaping acrobatically from the castle walls.

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art


Carl Hoffman - 2014
    Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found. Soon after his disappearance, rumors surfaced that he'd been killed and ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat—a native tribe of warriors whose complex culture was built around sacred, reciprocal violence, head hunting, and ritual cannibalism. The Dutch government and the Rockefeller family denied the story, and Michael's death was officially ruled a drowning. Yet doubts lingered. Sensational rumors and stories circulated, fueling speculation and intrigue for decades. The real story has long waited to be told—until now.Retracing Rockefeller's steps, award-winning journalist Carl Hoffman traveled to the jungles of New Guinea, immersing himself in a world of headhunters and cannibals, secret spirits and customs, and getting to know generations of Asmat. Through exhaustive archival research, he uncovered never-before-seen original documents and located witnesses willing to speak publically after fifty years.In Savage Harvest he finally solves this decades-old mystery and illuminates a culture transformed by years of colonial rule, whose people continue to be shaped by ancient customs and lore. Combining history, art, colonialism, adventure, and ethnography, Savage Harvest is a mesmerizing whodunit, and a fascinating portrait of the clash between two civilizations that resulted in the death of one of America's richest and most powerful scions.

Reagan: The Life


H.W. Brands - 2015
    W. Brands comes the definitive biography of a visionary and transformative president In his magisterial new biography, H. W. Brands brilliantly establishes Ronald Reagan as one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century, a true peer to Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan conveys with sweep and vigor how the confident force of Reagan’s personality and the unwavering nature of his beliefs enabled him to engineer a conservative revolution in American politics and play a crucial role in ending communism in the Soviet Union. Reagan shut down the age of liberalism, Brands shows, and ushered in the age of Reagan, whose defining principles are still powerfully felt today.     Reagan follows young Ronald Reagan as his ambition for ever larger stages compelled him to leave behind small-town Illinois to become first a radio announcer and then that quintessential public figure of modern America, a movie star. When his acting career stalled, his reinvention as the voice of The General Electric Theater on television made him an unlikely spokesman for corporate America. Then began Reagan’s improbable political ascension, starting in the 1960s, when he was first elected governor of California, and culminating in his election in 1980 as president of the United States.     Employing archival sources not available to previous biographers and drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving members of Reagan’s administration, Brands has crafted a richly detailed and fascinating narrative of the presidential years. He offers new insights into Reagan’s remote management style and fractious West Wing staff, his deft handling of public sentiment to transform the tax code, and his deeply misunderstood relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on which nothing less than the fate of the world turned.      Reagan is a storytelling triumph, an irresistible portrait of an underestimated politician whose pragmatic leadership and steadfast vision transformed the nation.

The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents


Ronald Kessler - 2014
    What the nation’s leaders are really like and what goes on behind the scenes remains hidden. Secret Service agents have a front row seat on their private lives and those of their wives and children.    Crammed with new, headline-making revelations, THE FIRST FAMILY DETAIL: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents by Ronald Kessler tells that eye-opening, uncensored story.   Since publication of his New York Times bestselling book In the President’s Secret Service, award-winning investigative reporter Ronald Kessler has continued to penetrate the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service, breaking the story that Secret Service agents who were to protect President Obama hired prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia and revealing that the Secret Service allowed a third uninvited guest to crash a White House state dinner.   Now Kessler presents far bigger and more consequential stories about our nation’s leaders and the agency sworn to protect them. Kessler widens his scope to include presidential candidates, former presidents after they leave the White House, and the presidents’ relationships to their first ladies and children.   From observing Vice President Joe Biden’s reckless behavior that jeopardizes the country’s safety, to escorting Bill Clinton’s mistress at Chappaqua, to overhearing First Lady Michelle Obama’s admonitions to the president, to witnessing President Nixon’s friends bring him a nude stripper, to seeing their own agency take risks that could result in an assassination, Secret Service agents know a secret world that Ronald Kessler exposes in breathtaking detail.  THE FIRST FAMILY DETAIL reveals: · Vice President Joe Biden regularly orders the Secret Service to keep his military aide with the nuclear football a mile behind his motorcade, potentially leaving the country unable to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack. · Secret Service agents discovered that former president Bill Clinton has a blond mistress. Within minutes of Hillary Clinton’s leaving, the woman—codenamed Energizer by agents—shows up to be with Bill every day while the likely future presidential candidate is away. · The Secret Service covered up the fact that President Ronald Reagan’s White House staff overruled the Secret Service to let unscreened spectators get close to Reagan as he left the Washington Hilton, allowing him to be shot by John W. Hinckley Jr.   · Secret Service agents have been dismayed to overhear Michelle Obama push her husband to be more aggressive in attacking Republicans and to side with blacks in racial controversies.  · Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan diverted agents from protecting President Obama and his family at the White House and ordered them instead to protect his assistant at her home and illegally retrieve confidential records as a favor to her.   · Because Hillary Clinton is so nasty to agents, being assigned to her protective detail is considered a form of punishment and the worst assignment in the Secret Service.   · Secret Service agents were ordered to ignore security rules and allow the SUV carrying actor Bradley Cooper to drive unscreened into a secure restricted area when President Obama was about to deliver his speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner.   · Vice President Joe Biden spends millions of taxpayer dollars flying to and from his home in Delaware on Air Force Two. His office tried to cover up the costs of the personal trips.  · Because the Secret Service refused to provide enough magnetometers at his campaign events, Mitt Romney regularly left himself open to assassination by giving speeches to unscreened crowds.   · Vice President Joe Biden swims nude at the vice president’s residence in Washington and at his home in Delaware, offending female agents.

Moab Is My Washpot


Stephen Fry - 1997
    He wound up starring as Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde, costarring in A Civil Action, and writing funny, distinguished novels. This irresistible book, the best-written celebrity memoir of 1999, concentrates on Fry's first two tumultuous decades, but beware! A Fry sentence can lead anywhere, from a ringing defense of beating schoolchildren to a thoughtful comparison of male and female naughty parts. Fry's deepest regrets seem to be the elusiveness of a particular boy's love and the fact that, despite his keen ear for music, Fry's singing voice can make listeners "claw out their inner ears, electrocute their genitals, put on a Jim Reeves record, throw themselves cackling hysterically onto the path of moving buses... anything, anything to take away the pain." A chance mention of Fry's time-travel book about thwarting Hitler, Making History (a finalist for the 1998 Sidewise Award for Best Alternative History), leads to the startling real-life revelation that Fry's own Jewish uncle may have loaned a young, shivering Hitler the coat off his back. Fry's life is full of school and jailhouse blues overcome by jaunty wit, à la Wilde. The title, from Psalm 108:9, refers to King David's triumph over the Philistines. Fry triumphs similarly, and with more style. --Tim Appelo