Book picks similar to
Astronomer By Chance by Bernard Lovell


biography
physics
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Rescued By Ghosts: A True Inspirational Survivor Story of Child Abuse, Bullying, a Radical Ultra-Fundamentalist Religion, Ghosts, and Supernatural Events (My Ghosts Book 1)


Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. - 2020
    at a chair in the church?  I was born and raised in a radical, abusive, fear-controlling, ultra-fundamentalist religious family.  This is my true inspirational story of how I survived abuse and neglect as a child and then escaped the church by seeking truth and freedom against all odds.  Most people never escape religions with cultish control because the brainwashing is virtually impossible to break... ... So how did these ghosts rescue me from this control? This church had many cult elements and produced Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, plus Jonestown, Guyana cult leader & mass murderer Jim Jones and controlled thousands of people with fear. Written in story form to inspire you, make you laugh, cry, and think. Why was the tiny child required to warn bullies three times?  Like the book “Educated A Memoir” meets Ghosts and the Supernatural. You will love this true story because everyone loves to see the hero win! Get it now.

Final Approach - Northwest Airlines Flight 650, Tragedy and Triumph


Lyle Prouse - 2011
    He was fired by his airline, stripped of his FAA licenses, tried, convicted, and sent to Federal prison. This was a first. It had never occurred before. Lyle Prouse came from a WWII housing project in Kansas and an alcoholic family where both parents died as a result of alcoholism. He rose through the ranks of the United States Marine Corps from private to captain, from an infantryman to a fighter pilot. He made his way to the pinnacle of commercial aviation, airline captain...then lost it all. Today he is a recovering alcoholic with nearly twenty-two years sobriety. This story describes his rise from the ashes of complete destruction from which he was never to fly again. It is full of miracles which defy all manner of odds. In a long and arduous journey, he eventually regained his FAA licenses. He never fought his termination; he considered it fair and appropriate. Miraculously, after nearly four years, the President/CEO of his airline personally reinstated him to full flight status in spite of all the adverse publicity and embarrassment. In effect, the President/CEO gambled his own career by taking such a risk on a convicted felon and publicly acknowledged alcoholic pilot. In another stunning event, the judge who tried, sentenced, and sent him to prison watched his journey and reappeared eight years after the trial. He became the driving force behind a Presidential pardon although he'd never supported a petition for pardon in all his years on the bench. Lyle retired honorably as a 747 captain for the airline he'd so horribly embarrassed and disgraced. He lives with his wife of nearly forty-nine years and has five grandchildren. He continues to work with all the major airlines in their alcohol programs. He is also active in his Native American community, and he provides hope to those struggling with the disease of alcoholism, no matter who they are or where they are.

Secrets and Lies: The truth behind the headlines


Sam Faiers - 2015
    In Secrets and Lies, Sam gives us the truth about life in the spotlight.Finally turning her back on all the TOWIE jealousies and dramas, Sam lays bare her fellow cast members and describes what really goes on behind the scenes. She also reveals all on her dramatic on-off relationship with Joey Essex: the engagements and bust-ups, that infamous 'slap', what really happened when Joey was in I'm a Celebrity, and their doomed rekindled romance.For the first time she talks about her eating issues, as well as her success as a businesswoman, her excitement and sister Billie's pregnancy and the birth of baby Nelly, and her wish to settle down herself. Funny, charming, telling it like it is, Secrets and Lies is essential reading for fans of Sam and TOWIE.

Scatterling of Africa: My Early Years


Johnny Clegg - 2021
    Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment. The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed. Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.

As the Smoke Clears: The inspirational true story of surviving Greece’s deadly wildfires, overcoming devastating loss, and discovering a path to renewal


Zoe Holohan - 2021
    

Extreme Cosmos: A Guided Tour of the Fastest, Brightest, Hottest, Heaviest,Oldest, and Most Amazing Aspects of Our Universe


Bryan Gaensler - 2011
    The universe is all about extremes, and in this engaging and thought-provoking book, astronomer Bryan Gaensler gives a whirlwind tour of the galaxies, with an emphasis on its fastest, hottest, heaviest, brightest, oldest, densest, and even loudest elements. From supernova explosions a billion times brighter than the sun to an asteroid the size of a beach ball, Extreme Cosmos offers a fascinating, fresh, and informed perspective of the remarkable richness of the universe, and the incredible physics that modern astronomy has revealed.

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman -- Summary, Review & Analysis


Save Time Summaries - 2013
    Do not buy this summary & analysis if you are looking for a full copy of this fascinating book, which can be found back on the Amazon search page.Instead, we have already read Orange Is the New Black and pulled out some of the key points, story lines and insights to give you a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter summary & review. In doing so, unfortunately we do not have the space to include all of the many important ideas and anecdotes found in Orange Is the New Black. To get it all, you should first order the full book. Packaged together in an engaging and easily digestible format, this concise summary & analysis works best as an unofficial guide or companion to read alongside the book. ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: MY YEAR IN A WOMEN’S PRISON by PIPER KERMAN -- SUMMARY, REVIEW & ANALYSIS As a naive 24-year-old looking for adventure, Piper Kerman got into a romantic relationship with a woman 10 years her senior who was running a heroin smuggling operation. For a short time, being the girlfriend of an older woman who was a drug smuggler seemed exciting and risqué to Piper. Puppy-like, she followed her girlfriend around the world and played the role of the "kept woman" in all sorts of exotic locales: Bali, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Although Nora didn't ask anything illegal of Piper in the beginning, the day came when Nora asked Piper to carry a suitcase full of cash into Brussels. Piper agreed to help. Several years later, when Piper was living in New York City, working as an art director and dating her future husband Larry, federal agents knocked on her door. In this summary, you will discover:•The prison work system, where inmates are often paid about as much for their labor as people who work in factories in developing nations. •Most of her new neighbors in Prison Dorm B were African-American; spending time with them helped Piper to recognize and overcome some of her more subtle racial prejudices.•Sometimes inmates would flirt with male officers; other times, male officers would give unwelcome and uninvited sexual attention to the women.•Most federal prisoners, both at the time of Piper's incarceration and today, are non-violent drug offenders.•Piper finally admitted fault and revealed a sense of remorse for her actions when she described herself as a party to the drug addictions of some of her incarcerated friends.You will get all this and much more!FROM START-TO-FINISH IN JUST 30 MINUTES!Here's your chapter-by-chapter guide to Piper Kerman's Orange Is the New Black that you can download right now!

Leah Remini: My Escape from Scientology


Johnny Dodd - 2016
    Ron Hubbard—begins in Brooklyn's working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood, where she was introduced to the religion by her mom. More than three decades later, Leah summoned the courage to leave the church—something few celebrities at her level of fame have ever done before and almost none have ever talked about. This People Spotlight Story explores Leah Remini and her escape from Scientology.

Loose Balls: Easy Money, Hard Fouls, Cheap Laughs, & True Love in the NBA


Jayson Williams - 2000
    From revelations about the meanest, softest, and smelliest players in the league, to Williams’s early days as a “young man with a lot of money and not a lot of sense,” to his strong and powerful views on race, privilege, and giving back, Loose Balls is a basketball book unlike any other.No inspirational pieties or chest-thumping boasting here—instead, Jayson Williams gives us the real insider tales of refs, groupies, coaches, entourages, and all the superstars, bench warmers, journeymen, clowns, and other performers in the rarefied circus that is professional basketball.From the Trade Paperback edition.

An Appalachian Childhood


Deany Brady - 2012
    Deany Brady tells the story of her colorful childhood in the 1930s and 40s with freshness, humor, wit, and intelligence. She is a master storyteller, following in the vigorous oral tradition of her parents and her grandmother, who told vivid family stories all through her childhood. Following the arc of her young life, Brady beautifully captures her own growth from a daydreaming child, creating mansions out of moss and sticks, and gazing at the famous people in the newspapers covering the walls, to a girl in love with language and writing, whose greatest happiness is to read all of Gone with the Wind to her mother by the wash stream one magical summer. Unusual in her Appalachian community, the young Deany yearns not only to complete her high school education but to find a way to better her own life and that of her family’s, by moving to the big city of Atlanta and hoping to gain a college education. Even as Deany’s life grows more intricate and challenging, and even as she makes her own mistakes in her urge to escape the constraints of Appalachia, she holds onto her dream of a life filled with knowledge, happiness and beauty.An Appalachian Childhood is the first half of a two-part memoir. It covers Deany Brady’s first twenty-two years. The second half, Higher than Yonder Mountain, is forthcoming. This second volume follows her grown-up life’s arc from Georgia to Miami Beach, to Park Avenue in New York, and ultimately to her life as a writer in California.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming


Mike Brown - 2010
    Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that riled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him into the public eye. The debate culminated in the demotion of Pluto from real planet to the newly coined category of “dwarf” planet. Suddenly Brown was receiving hate mail from schoolchildren and being bombarded by TV reporters—all because of the discovery he had spent years searching for and a lifetime dreaming about.Filled with both humor and drama, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is Mike Brown’s engaging first-person account of the most tumultuous year in modern astronomy—which he inadvertently caused. As it guides readers through important scientific concepts and inspires us to think more deeply about our place in the cosmos, it is also an entertaining and enlightening personal story: While Brown sought to expand our understanding of the vast nature of space, his own life was changed in the most immediate, human ways by love, birth, and death. A heartfelt and personal perspective on the demotion of everyone’s favorite farflung planet, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is the book for anyone, young or old, who has ever dreamed of exploring the universe—and who among us hasn’t?

Letters From An Astrophysicist


Neil deGrasse Tyson - 2019
    Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of one hundred letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator.Tyson’s 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Now, revealing Tyson’s most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson’s quest to understand our place in the cosmos.

Preserving Patients: Anecdotes of a Junior Doctor


Tom Parsons - 2017
    From being the saviour of a man’s anus to being mistaken for the milkman, Tom describes the complexity and absurdity of today’s medical practice with humour and aplomb. Tom is a junior doctor working in the National Health Service. Tom Parsons is a pseudonym. * Amazon/Kindle/Fiction/Medical, March 2018

Hollywood Celebrities: Where Are They Now?


Ron Ebner - 2013
    Here in this book Ron Ebner—author of The Winds of Hell, Nova, Plague World, and two short story collections—has collected a voluminous amount of information about current actors and former actors, including:Disney favorites Annette Funicello, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine, Hayley Mills and Kevin Corcoran, as well as Mouseketeers Sharon Baird, Lonnie Burr, Cubby O’Brien and Karen Pendleton; Lauren Chapin and Elinor Donahue of “Father Knows Best”; Johnny Crawford of “The Rifleman”; Shelley Fabares of “The Donna Reed Show”; Little Rascal “Spanky” McFarland; Beverly Washburn; Cynthia Pepper; Native American actors Chief Dan George and Will Sampson; the frisky star of the original Nancy Drew movies, Bonita Granville; Al “Grandpa” Lewis; Fess Parker; John Amos…and many others.Read through these pages and find out what’s happening with about 100 of your favorite Hollywood celebrities.

Waiting to Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, Alt-Country's Brilliant Wreck


Thomas O'Keefe - 2018
    Lumped into the burgeoning alt-country movement, the band soon landed a major label deal and recorded an instant classic: Strangers Almanac. That's when tour manager Thomas O'Keefe met the young musician.For the next three years, Thomas was at Ryan's side: on the tour bus, in the hotels, backstage at the venues. Whiskeytown built a reputation for being, as the Detroit Free Press put it, "half band, half soap opera," and Thomas discovered that young Ryan was equal parts songwriting prodigy and drunken buffoon. Ninety percent of the time, Thomas could talk Ryan into doing the right thing. Five percent of the time, he could cover up whatever idiotic thing Ryan had done. But the final five percent? Whiskeytown was screwed.Twenty-plus years later, accounts of Ryan's legendary antics are still passed around in music circles. But only three people on the planet witnessed every Whiskeytown show from the release of Strangers Almanac to the band's eventual breakup: Ryan, fiddle player Caitlin Cary, and Thomas O'Keefe.