. . a compelling memoir. Breezy and unpretentious, The Sanest Guy in the Room is a delightful collection of memories, insider information and after-dinner anecdotes' The Times'Brilliant stories and wonderful behind-the-scenes glimpses of a life and career in show-business . . . It's bloody brilliant . . . Read it!' Michael BallDon Black is the songwriter's songwriter, a composer's dream collaborator, and the man behind some of the twentieth century's greatest musical numbers.Black made his first foray into the glittering world of showbiz as a stand-up, before realising his error and focusing on his lifelong passion instead - music. Shirley Bassey, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini and Barbra Streisand are just some of the artists Black has worked with over the years - not to mention his frequent collaborator, West End legend Andrew Lloyd Webber - in what can only be described as a remarkable musical career. Yet, never one to court fame, Black has always remained what Mark Steyn coined as 'the sanest guy in the room'.Interwoven with the stories behind songs such as 'Diamonds are Forever' and 'Born Free' are vignettes of Black's life with his beloved wife Shirley, who died in March 2018, after almost sixty years of marriage. Black writes movingly about how the enormity of his grief changed his life, and how the dark days are slowly turning into dark moments.The Sanest Guy in the Room is a rich and delightful paean to a life lived through song. It reveals the essence of Black's craft, looks at those who have inspired him and allows us to understand what made those icons tick. It is also a poignant tribute to Shirley, his biggest inspiration. Told with wit, warmth and great humour, this is Don Black's astonishing musical journey and an insight into a life behind the lyrics.

    Feared, loathed, and admired in equal measure, early on he drew the wrath of many fans, who literally wore their emotions on their sleeve, donning tee-shirts that read: I hate warm beer, cold women, and Darrell Waltrip. As the decade progressed, he won over their hearts and was voted NASCAR's most popular driver in 1989 and 1990-and his popularity has continued to soar ever since. Waltrip retired in 2000, tied for third all-time with eighty-four career victories, and immediately began attracting new fans with his folksy style as a color commentator for FOX Sports' NASCAR coverage. Now, with that same inimitable charm, he shares his memories of his life in racing. It's the tale of a man who lived his dream every time he stepped into a race car, and whose dreams got better every time he climbed out in Victory Lane. But it's also the story of NASCAR, as Waltrip serves as a bridge between its earlier days and its explosion into one of the world's most popular sports. Having raced against immortals like Richard Petty and David Pearson, modern-day legends Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, and rising stars Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Waltrip provides a knowing look at the evolution of the sport and its greatest drivers and personalities.

    Twelve-year-old David Karmi, a master of the art, is about to be put to the ultimate test.War has consumed the world and David finds himself in the middle of a human slaughter on a planetary scale. Whole towns are vaporized. Cities obliterated in firestorms. More than fifty million people will die—twelve million either gassed, shot, hanged, worked to death or subjected to biological experiments. And now David’s luck has finally run out. Having already endured one horrifying deportation, he and his family are rounded up for the second time and forced onto a train that will bring them all to the very heart of the Nazi extermination machine.Separated from his parents and siblings, the teenager is hurled into a nightmare of death camps, forced marches, sickness, violence and depravity. On his own, through the torturous months that follow, David endures Auschwitz, Dachau, and the Warsaw ghetto. Though he’s just a kid, David will try to stay alive by his wits and instincts, taking terrifying chances, making split-second decisions, and learning the tricks and techniques of survival. But time is running out. His only hope is that the Nazis will be defeated and the American soldiers will free him—and his family—before it’s too late. “[Karmi’s debut forgoes] the despair employed by Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, instead echoing the optimism of Anne Frank…Eminently readable and largely remarkable.”—Kirkus Reviews"‘Some people have a knack for survival, for getting out of jams.’ Karmi is one of those, and he faces the ultimate test as a young teen in Nazi-occupied Europe as he and his family are deported to Auschwitz."—Publishers Weekly"Survivor’s Game reads not so much like a memoir but a novel, replete with tension, drama, and twists and turns. Recommended."—Midwest Book Review"This is a story we all need to know…the cost of forgetting is too high."—New York Times best-selling author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

    And, should you ever get to hold one, you will find the human heart to be rubbery and shockingly light.'What Could Possibly Go Wrong? is a report from the front line of emergency medicine, the first ever account of what it is like to work as an air ambulance doctor. Whether describing cutting through a patient's breastbone to plug a stab wound or barrel rolling a light aircraft at 5,000 feet, Tony Bleetman captures the sheer adrenaline of racing through the sky to save lives. You will learn how to land a helicopter on the side of a mountain, what it means to encounter death every day, and how to perform a tracheotomy in real life (clue: it doesn’t involve a ball-point pen).Funny, shocking and moving, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? is a glimpse at a world where the wrong decision can mean the difference between life and death.Originally published as You Can't Park There: The Highs and Lows of an Air Ambulance Doctor.

    This authoritative biography is based on a wealth of previously unpublished material (including 2 poems) gathered by the author in more than 200 interviews & extensive research in the UK & USA. With 25 b/w illustrations.

    This book gives a glimpse into what inspired the man who captivated so many viewers.LifeCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a lesser known or sometimes forgotten life is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to literature and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly to see our newest books.

    Born in the North London suburbs, his parents, Harold and Connie, both teachers, first met as teenage Communists in the 1930s Jewish East End. The family home was filled with stories of relatives in London, the United States and France and of those who had disappeared in Europe.Unlike the children around them, Rosen and his brother Brian grew up dreaming of a socialist revolution; Party meetings were held in the front room, summers were for communist camping holidays, till it all changed after a trip to East Germany, when in 1957 his parents decided to leave “the Party.” Michael followed his own journey of radical self-discovery: running away to the Aldermaston March to ban the bomb, writing and performing in experimental political theatre, getting arrested during the 1968 movements.

    Ranulph followed his father's path into the Royal Scots Greys. After that came the SAS, from which he was dismissed for blowing up an American film set at the idyllic Cotswold village of Castle Combs, then two vicious years as a volunteer fighting communist insurgents in Oman. Then began the series of expeditions for which Fiennes is best known and which caused The Guinness Book of Records to hail him in 1984 as 'the world's greatest living explorer.' Up the White Nile in a hovercraft, parachuting onto Europe's highest glacier, forcing his way up 4,000 miles of terrifying rivers in northern Canada and Alaska, overland to the North Pole and to the ends of the earth, across the world's axis-the Transglobe Expedition-which took ten years from conception to completion. He writes here too about his attempt to reach the North Pole without dogs or motorised equipment, beating the world record by 300 miles, his determination to find the lost city of Urbar in the Arabian desert and, finally, his extraordinary journey across the Antarctic Continent via the South Pole. Living Dangerously is a remarkable testament from a remarkable man.

    Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West.Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life.Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor.Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure.Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.

    Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters unknown to prior biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and dozens of newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to Life as few writers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalusia; his residencies in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent interaction with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and the composer Manuel de Falla; and, finally, Stainton shows how Lorca's marginal political activity during the Spanish Civil War still cost him his life.Throughout, Stainton meticulously but unobtrusively relates the oeuvre to the life. Her biography is quickly becoming the standard one-volume work on the poet.

    Billy Martin was one of the great managers of the past 30 years--a legendary Yankee famous for his Billyball style of aggressive baseball. Photos.

    The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to unprecedented use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms. An enthralling story of creative genius, filled with illicit passion and betrayal, "Lives Like Loaded Guns" is sure to cause a stir among Dickinson's many devoted readers and scholars.

    Sentenced to life without parole by the state of California, Hartman was soon considered a potent force by the system’s most brutal convicts. To the hellish chaos of a maximum-security prison he brought his own limitless propensity for violence—he often spent months at a time in solitary confinement, “the Hole.”After years in the cold embrace of the state prison system, Hartman discovered a vocation for writing; he also met, through a chance phone call, the woman he would marry and have a child by. With poignancy and self awareness, Hartman chronicles the anarchy and brutish moral code that rules in some of the world’s most infamous prisons, where physical punishment is the only form of control. Over time, Hartman evolves into a sentient being; follows his newly discovered spiritual and literary inclinations; and learns to deal with his demanding responsibilities as a family man. The final chapter describes his development of the Honor Program, which helps motivated prisoners escape the ravages of incarceration.Mother California is the story of a man who did not succumb to the darkness of the only world left to him. It offers definite proof that there is no such thing as a life beyond redemption.

    Yet they lived by the green in the village of Stanford in the Vale, where everything you needed was within walking distance and the sound of motorcars was rarely heard. Then reaching her teens, Pam realised how few opportunities she had. At fifteen she started working for the civil service. Pam knew she had to reach out for more, and sought it first in the WRAF. But it was some time before she discovered the unique talent that would make her one of Britain's best-loved comics. Containing Pam's much-loved combination of humour and poignancy, The Necessary Aptitude is a beautifully written memoir of growing up in the country in post-war Berkshire.

    He was a celebrity during the height of America’s Gilded Age. In this book, you will read about his friendship with Mark Twain, his furious competition with his former employer Thomas Edison, his uneasy relationship with billionaire J.P. Morgan, and his rivalry with Albert Einstein. During his lifetime, Tesla revolutionized the field of electrical engineering with his most famous invention: the induction motor. But that wasn’t all he contributed to the world of technology. His coils, turbines, robotic boats, and mysterious “death ray” continue to beguile the imagination and inspire the inventors of the 21st century. But who was Tesla really? This book will take you from his early childhood in Croatia, where he experienced strange optical visions and “luminous phenomenon” that gave him near super-human powers of memory and visualization, to the “War of the Currents”, Thomas Edison’s bizarre campaign to ruin Tesla’s reputation. From trying to fight the Spanish American War with robots, to electrifying the skies of the Colorado desert, and to starting an earthquake in the middle of New York city, learn how Nikola Tesla shaped the world we live in today.