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Love All the People (New Edition): Letters, Lyrics, Routines
by Bill HicksBill Hicks was arguably the most influential stand-up comedian of the last 30 years. He was funny, out of hand, impossible to ignore and genuinely disturbing. His work has inspired Michael Moore, Mark Thomas and Robert Newman among others. The trade paperback published in February 2003 was the first collected work and included major stand-up routines, diary, notebook and letters extracts, plus his final writings, most previously unpublished. This smaller format paperback has extra material discovered subsequently.
Cathedral: An Illness and a Healing
by Bill Henderson“This is the story about an aging man who builds a holy place in his backyard. It involves bugs, lousy weather, cancer and spiritual waverings.”<P><P> Thus begins Bill Henderson’s Cathedral: An Illness and a Healing, a memoir about cancer and construction.<P> On the face of it Cathedral is most akin to Henderson’s Tower: Faith, Vertigo and Amateur Construction (FSG), a Thoreau-esque chronicle of building a tall structure on the grounds of his hilltop property in Maine. But Cathedral is more overtly a spiritual memoir like his Simple Gifts: One Man’s Search for Grace (S&S), a tribute to the pleasures of singing hymns.<P> Like all his books, Cathedral is equal parts wisdom, self-deprecation, laughs, aching honesty, and inspiration. And, like his cathedral itself, it is lovingly constructed.
Simple Gifts: One Man's Search for Grace
by Bill HendersonIf there is one simple phrase that lies at the heart of this moving tribute to the pleasures of singing hymns, it is this: "Only joy." Bill Henderson, a tough man with a gentle vision, found community and religious grace as a middle-aged man while lifting his voice in church. In a book that will inspire readers to share his passion, he writes of his love of traditional hymns and how he sought to learn about their origins. This is a much-needed book about the songs of our lives and will be warmly welcomed by thoughtful people of many faiths, especially those who reject the narrow orthodoxies of religious fundamentalism. For Bill Henderson, the researching of his favorite hymns became more than fact-finding. As the author went about his research, he learned that he had cancer. Someone slipped a note into his typewriter: "Only Joy," it read. He adopted that phrase as a motto for writing and for life. While Simple Gifts is partly a memoir, it is a work not about one man's health but about his pursuit of godliness. That the joy of congregational song aided Henderson in his recovery he has no doubt, but he offers a wider vision, one that is truly life-enhancing. Bill Henderson grew up attending a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia with his quietly religious family. He left his faith as he became a teenager and didn't rediscover it until many decades later. What brought him back to church was the sheer pleasure he found in singing old familiar hymns with others. Some of these hymns moved him to tears, and so he decided to immerse himself in the history of Christian music. With three themes under consideration -- Songs of Simplicity, of Wonder, and of Love -- the author begins with a look back at plain chant; the songs of Martin Luther, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and others; and the emergence of modern church music. "Simple Gifts," the great Shaker hymn, opens the Songs of Simplicity section, which includes "In the Garden" as well as many Christmas carols like "O Holy Night" and Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter. "The amazing story behind "Amazing Grace" leads into the Songs of Wonder chapter. Also appreciated here are "Be Thou My Vision" and "How Great Thou Art." With the Prayer of St. Francis as a pretext, Henderson discusses Songs of Love: "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace," "There Is a Balm in Gilead," and "Abide With Me." Henderson believes that many of these old hymns are in danger of being forgotten as "modern" churches have adopted rock-based music or watered-down, politically correct verses. More important, he meditates on the hymns' values as he tries to understand his own relationship with God, even as they inspired him through his bout with a life-threatening illness. While this book celebrates mainstream Protestant hymns, it is by no means sectarian. It is about songs of the heart, songs that move us, the songs of our lives. It is about joy.
Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood
by Bill Hayes"We're born in blood. Our family histories are contained in it, our bodies nourished by it daily. Five quarts run through each of us, along some sixty thousand miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries."-from Five Quarts. In the national bestseller Sleep Demons, Bill Hayes took us on a trailblazing trip through the night country of insomnia. Now he is our guide on a whirlwind journey through history, literature, mythology, and science by means of the great red river that runs five quarts strong through our bodies. Profusely illustrated, the journey stretches from ancient Rome, where gladiators drank the blood of vanquished foes to gain strength and courage, to modern-day laboratories, where high-tech machines test blood for diseases and dedicated scientists search for elusive cures. Along the way, there will be world-changing triumphs: William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's advances in making the invisible world visible in the early days of the microscope; Dr. Paul Ehrlich's Nobel-Prize-winning work in immunology; Dr. Jay Levy's codiscovery of the virus that causes AIDS. Yet there will also be ignorance and tragedy: the widespread practice of bloodletting via incision and the use of leeches, which harmed more than it healed; the introduction of hemophilia into the genetic pool of nineteenth-century European royalty thanks to the dynastic ambitions of Queen Victoria; the alleged spread of contaminated blood through a phlebotomist's negligence in modern-day California. This is also a personal voyage, in which Hayes recounts the impact of the vital fluid in his daily life, from growing up in a household of five sisters and their monthly cycles, to coming out as a gay man during the explosive early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, to his enduring partnership with an HIV-positive man. As much a biography of blood as it is a memoir of how this rich substance has shaped one man's life, Five Quarts is by turns whimsical and provocative, informative and moving. It will get under your skin.
Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir
by Bill Hayes“A lovely weave of memory and science, great characters and compassionate humor” from the author of Sweat: A History of Exercise (Anne Lamott).We often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.”An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.“This intimate and beautifully written book brings scientific research alive in a heartfelt and deeply personal narrative.” —The Guardian“Memoir, history, and science come together and apart again in a book that reads very much like a dream.” —Out magazine
The Anatomist
by Bill Hayes"Hayes’s history of the illustrated medical text “Gray’s Anatomy” coincides with the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Fascinated by the fact that little was known about the famous book’s genesis, Hayes combed through nineteenth-century letters and medical-school records, learning that, besides Henry Gray, the brilliant scholar and surgeon who wrote the text, another anatomist was crucial to the book’s popularity: Henry Vandyke Carter, who provided its painstaking drawings. Hayes moves nimbly between the dour streets of Victorian London, where Gray and Carter trained at St. George’s Hospital, and the sunnier classrooms of a West Coast university filled with athletic physical therapists in training, where he enrolls in anatomy classes and discovers that “when done well, dissection is very pleasing aesthetically. ” -The New Yorker "All laud and honor to Hayes. . . . In perusing the body's 650 muscles and 206 bones, he has made the case that we are, as the psalmist wrote, "fearfully and wonderfully made" and that dissection has an aesthetic all its own. The act of carving open a body becomes, in this context, a perverse act of love, a desecration that consecrates "the extraordinary, the inner architecture of the human form. " -The Washington Post "How do you write a book about someone about whom next to nothing is known? For most writers, the answer would be move on to the next subject. But Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills. The author of previous books on insomnia and blood, he is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer. “The Anatomist,” his appealing new book about the man behind Gray’s Anatomy, combines his search for the remaining traces of Henry Gray with a memoir of his own experience as a dissection student and a scalpel’s-eye tour of the body. " -The New York Times "Some of [Hayes's] most memorable writing describes the dissection classes he attended in San Francisco. We are treated to a selection of fascinating anatomical snippets about, for example, how to trace evidence of the sealed hole in the fetal heart through which the mother's blood enters; or how to find the kidney in a cadaver; or that blood flowing out of the heart is first used to feed the heart itself; or, best of all, a structural analysis of how the Queen manages to deliver such a uniquely restrained wave. " -Nature: The International Weekly Journal of Science The classic medical text known asGray’s Anatomyis one of the most famous books ever written. Now, on the 150th anniversary of its publication, acclaimed science writer and master of narrative nonfiction Bill Hayes has written the fascinating, never-before-told true story of how this seminal volume came to be. A blend of history, science, culture, and Hayes’s own personal experiences, The Anatomist is this author’s most accomplished and affecting work to date. With passion and wit, Hayes explores the significance ofGray’s Anatomyand explains why it came to symbolize a turning point in medical history. But he does much, much more. Uncovering a treasure trove of forgotten letters and diaries, he illuminates the astonishing relationship between the fiercely gifted young anatomist Henry Gray and his younger collaborator H. V. Carter, whose exquisite anatomical illustrations are masterpieces of art and close observation. Tracing the triumphs and tragedies of these two extraordinary men, Hayes brings an equally extraordinary era–the mid-1800s–unforgettably to life. But the journey Hayes takes us on is not only outward but inward–through the blood and tissue and organs of the human body–forThe A
Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square
by Bill HaslamTwo-term governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam reveals how faith--too often divisive and contentious--can be a redemptive and unifying presence in the public square.As a former mayor and governor, Bill Haslam has long been at the center of politics and policy on local, state, and federal levels. And he has consistently been guided by his faith, which influenced his actions on issues ranging from capital punishment to pardons, health care to abortion, welfare to free college tuition. Yet the place of faith in public life has been hotly debated since our nation's founding, and the relationship of church and state remains contentious to this day--and for good reason. Too often, Bill Haslam argues, Christians end up shaping their faith to fit their politics rather than forming their politics to their faith. They seem to forget their calling is to be used by God in service of others rather than to use God to reach their own desires and ends.Faithful Presence calls for a different way. Drawing upon his years of public service, Haslam casts a remarkable vision for the redemptive role of faith in politics while examining some of the most complex issues of our time, including:partisanship in our divided era;the most essential character trait for a public servant;how we cannot escape "legislating morality";the answer to perpetual outrage; andhow to think about the separation of church and state.For Christians ready to be salt and light, as well as for those of a different faith or no faith at all, Faithful Presence argues that faith can be a redemptive, healing presence in the public square--as it must be, if our nation is to flourish.
Riding with the Blue Moth
by Bill HancockAfter the death of his son, Will, in the 2001 airplane crash, bicycling was the method by which Hancock distracted himself from his grief. But the journey from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast became a pilgrimage even if Hancock didn't realize it. On his two-wheel trip, he battled searing heat and humidity, curious dogs, unforgiving motorists and the occasional speed bump. Hancock's thoughts returned to common themes: memories of his son Will and the blue moth of grief and depression.
Duke: The Musical Life of Duke Ellington
by Bill GutmanEdward Kennedy &“Duke&” Ellington was one of jazz&’s greatest innovators. Join Bill Gutman as he explores the fascinating life of this legend from his birth at the turn of the century to his death at the age of seventy‑five. Interviewing Duke&’s friends, fans, and fellow musicians, Gutman documents the progress of a man who dedicated his life to crafting the ever‑changing sound of jazz. Gutman plunges into the history of jazz from its origin in the honky‑tonk sounds of the Ragtime Era to the forms that are widely enjoyed today. Jazz has evolved through the years to become one of the most popular forms of music, with Duke Ellington as chief composer, artist, and perfomer. Gutman&’s account of Ellington&’s life as it parallels the history of jazz provides a fascinating history for both jazz veterans and those new to the art form.
Lance Armstrong
by Bill GutmanBACK ON THE BIKE LANCE ARMSTRONG is the premier cyclist in sports history. But the road to victory has not been smooth, which makes his story all the more compelling. In 1991 he was the National Amateur Cycling Champion, and a professional career seemed guaranteed. But a grim diagnosis of cancer in 1996 threatened to cut the career -- and his life -- short. With the help of family, friends, and a dedicated team of doctors, Lance began the hard work not only to beat the disease, but to get back on the bike. By the summer of 1999 Lance was not only back, he was leading the pack to his first Tour de France win. And he hasn't stopped winning since that sweet victory. Here's the story of Lance Armstrong, from his first ride, to his most recent race, and all the twists and turns in between!
Marion Jones
by Bill GutmanRace for the record! At the Sydney Games, Marion Jones strove to become the first person ever to win five gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics, making headlines for simply believeing she could do it. Driven to succeed at a very early age, Marion won multiple titiles at the Junior National Championships and set a junior record in the 200 meters. A multisport athlete, she helped lead the University of North Carolina women's basketball team to a national championship during her freshman year and also competed in track and field, until an injury forced her to reevaluate her priorities. Refocused on her track career, Marion quickly became the woman to beat, racking up an impressive thirty-five wims of the thiry-six events she entred in 1998. And after another injury sidelined her hopes of winning four gold medal at the 1999 World Championships, marion fought back in the 2000 season and is once again dominating the field. Get the full story of this amazing runner's race for the record, from her childhood dreams of gold medals to her tough choice between two sports and her determined drive to become the fastest woman in the world.
Grigs!: A Beauuutiful Life
by Bill GrigsbyIt has, most definitely, been A Beauuutiful Life for Bill Grigsby, a Kansas City icon and Grand Master of Ceremony. No one can paint a more illustrious image of Midwestern sports and its famous and not-so-famous participants than the man affectionately known as Grigs. From humble beginnings during the Depression through his war years as a code breaker to his development as a colorful broadcaster in Major League Baseball and the National Football League, Bill Grigsby is the supreme storyteller who crosses the generational timeline. He was there when Mickey Mantle took his first professional swing, when a brash entrepreneur by the name of Charlie Finley bought the AA's, and when a reserved dreamer named Lamar Hunt came to Kansas City. Along the way his path has crossed with a virtual Who's Who of several Halls of Fame: George Brett, Lenny Dawson, Tom Watson, Whitey Herzog, Joe Montana, Dan Devine, Dick the Bruiser, Phog Allen, Marcus Allen, George Toma, Roy Williams, Hank Stram, and even Baby Doe, the women's world champion midget wrestler from South Africa. Even Grigs himself is in two Halls-the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Grigs has had not one single full-time job during his life, but more than 40, from fertilizer salesman to federal deputy to big-league broadcaster. His loyalty and longevity, though, are legend. He was there for the beginning of the Kansas City Sportshow, now more than a half-century old, and the Kansas City Chiefs, who came to town in the 1960s. To this day he remains a vital part of both organizations. No one, in fact, has longer tenure as an NFL broadcaster than Grigs, who first began to imagine himself as a sportscaster during the 1930s in Lawrence, Kansas. Bill Grigsby grew up in a desperate time, but it forged a man who, along with Fran, his wife of more than 50 years, created a beautiful family and A Beauuutiful Life.
Miles to Millions: One Aviator's Amazing True Story
by Bill GrenierWhen he became a commercial pilot at age nineteen, Bill Grenier never imagined that one day he’d be captain of the largest commercial plane the world had seen, flying the highest profile routes of a proud national carrier. Even less could he have imagined, at age nineteen and with barely a penny to his name, that he’d one day be a wealthy man. But he would ultimately control an empire worth nearly a billion dollars. With liberal doses of wit and humour, Miles to Millions shows what a little luck, lots of perseverance, and an appetite for adventure can do. From boarding house to boardroom, from cradle to cockpit, Grenier offers a fascinating story of success both as a commercial pilot and as a businessman. Filled with anecdotes you’d never expect from a single career – from acting as repo man taking planes for payment to saving hundreds of passengers in a stricken 747 with a collapsed co-pilot – Miles to Millions is a high-flier of a story bound to entertain both aviation experts and enthusiasts alike.
Boltzmann's Tomb
by Bill GreenA selection of the Scientific American book clubRecommended by MSNBC, Los Angeles Times, & American Association for the Advancement of Science's SB&F magazine"This wonderful scientific memoir captures the romance and beauty of research in precise poetic prose that is as gorgeous and evocative as anything written by Rilke, painted by Seurat, or played by Casals." -Mary Doria Russell, author of Doc and The Sparrow"A radiant love letter to science from a scientist with a poet's soul . . . Green is an exquisite writer, and his fierce focus and mastery of style are reminiscent of the biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas." -Kirkus ReviewsIn Boltzmann's Tomb, Bill Green interweaves the story of his own lifelong evolution as a scientist, and his work in the Antarctic, with a travelogue that is a personal and universal history of science. Like Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder-this book serves as a marvelous introduction to the great figures of science. Along with lyrical meditations on the tragic life of Galileo, the wildly eccentric Tycho Brahe, and the visionary Sir Isaac Newton, Green's ruminations return throughout to the lesser-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann. Using Boltzmann's theories of randomness and entropy as a larger metaphor for the unpredictable paths that our lives take, Green shows us that science, like art, is a lived adventure. Bill Green is a geochemist and professor emeritus at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is also the author of Water, Ice & Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes which received the American Museum of Natural History's John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was excerpted in The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.
War Paint
by Bill GoshenThe men who served with in the 1st Infantry Division with F company, 52nd Infantry, (LRP) later redesignated as Company I, 75th Infantry (Ranger) --engaged in some of the fiercest, bloodiest fighting during the Vietnam War, suffering a greater relative aggregate of casualties that any other LRRP/LRP/ Ranger company. Their base was Lai Khe, within hailing distance of the Vietcong central headquarters, a mile inside Cambodia, with its vast stockpiles of weapons and thousands of transient VC and NVA soldiers. Recondo-qualified Bill Goshen was there, and has written the first account of these battle-hardened soldiers. As the eyes and ears of the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry, these hunter/killer teams of only six men instered deep inside enemy territory had to survive by their wits, or suffer the deadly consequences. Goshen himself barely escaped with his life in a virtual suicide mission that destroyed half his team. His gripping narrative recaptures the raw courage and sacrifice of American soldiers fighting a savage war of survival: men of all colors, from all walks of life, warriors bonded by triumph and tragedy, by life and death. They served proudly in Vietnam, and their stories need to be told.
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature
by Bill GoldsteinA Lambda Literary Awards FinalistNamed one of the best books of 2017 by NPR's Book ConciergeA revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernismThe World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting, as Ulysses is published in February and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India, Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished—and published to acclaim—“The Waste Land."As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.
Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security
by Bill GertzBetrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security by Bill Gertz
Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11
by Bill GertzBook about our intelligence failures and waste
Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy from Brooklyn Got Mixed Up with the Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell About It)
by Bill GermanIt's every rock 'n' roll fan's dream - to hang out with the band they love. But for Bill German it wasn't just a dream - it was a job. When 16 year old Bill German, up late in his pj's, put the finishing touches to the first issue of his Rolling Stones fanzine Beggars Banquet, little did he know he'd embarked on a rock odyssey that would take him from his tiny bedroom in Brooklyn into the inner sanctum of the greatest rock band in the world. Shyly pushing his crudely mimeographed newsletter into the hands of band members as they bundled into limos, personally delivering every issue to their New York office, little did he suspect the Stones were actually reading it. Yet they were - it was the only way they could keep tabs on each other - and suddenly the teenager found himself drawn into a heady world of after show parties, impromptu jam sessions, world tours, drug smuggling and late night heart-to-hearts. And there - between stops at Clapton's pad and the White House - he found a band profoundly uncertain of its future and constantly on the verge of break-up. Bill's memoir is a touching, naive, raucous, bittersweet journey from adolescence to mid-life crisis, but also the story of a band in transition. The 1980s saw the death of founder Stone Ian Stewart; the strains and rivalries of their burgeoning solo careers; and, with the launch of Steel Wheels in 1989, The Rolling Stones' final apotheosis from devil may care enfants terribles, to mature stadium rockers. Bill German saw it all and in Under Their Thumb he describes how he, Mick, Keith, Ron, Bill and Charlie finally came of age. And how a nice boy from Brooklyn played with fire and lived to tell the tale. www. BeggarsBanquetOnline. com
Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America
by Bill GeistBefore there was "tourism" and souvenir ashtrays became "kitsch," the Lake of the Ozarks was a Shangri-La for middle-class Midwestern families on vacation, complete with man-made beaches, Hillbilly Mini Golf, and feathered rubber tomahawks. <P><P> It was there that author Bill Geist spent summers in the Sixties during his school and college years working at Arrowhead Lodge-a small resort owned by his bombastic uncle-in all areas of the operation, from cesspool attendant to bellhop. What may have seemed just a summer job became, upon reflection, a transformative era where a cast of eccentric, small-town characters and experiences shaped (some might suggest "slightly twisted") Bill into the man he is today. <P><P>He realized it was this time in his life that had a direct influence on his sensibilities, his humor, his writing, and ultimately a career searching the world for other such untamed creatures for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and CBS News. <P><P>In LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Emmy Award-winning CBS Sunday Morning Correspondent Bill Geist reflects on his coming of age in the American Heartland and traces his evolution as a man and a writer. He shares laugh-out-loud anecdotes and tongue-in-cheek observations guaranteed to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for "the good ol' days." <P><P>Written with Geistian wit and warmth, LAKE OF THE OZARKS takes readers back to a bygone era, and demonstrates how you can find inspiration in the most unexpected places. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Source Code: My Beginnings
by Bill GatesThe origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education. Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It&’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It&’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world. Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it&’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.
Source Code: My Beginnings
by Bill GatesNamed one of the Most Anticipated Releases of 2025 by The New York Times, The Times, Financial Times and BBC. <p> The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age. The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education. <p> Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world. Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life. <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood
by Bill GastonFrom Giller-nominated, award-winning Bill Gaston, a tender, wry, and unforgettable memoir about alcohol, fishing, and all the things fathers and sons won't say to each otherSons clash with fathers, sons find reasons to rebel. And, fairly or unfairly, sons judge fathers when they take to drinking.But Bill Gaston and his father could always fish together. When they were shoulder-to-shoulder, joined in rapt fascination with the world under their hull, they had what all fathers and sons wish for. Even if it was temporary, even if much of it would be forgotten along with the empties.Returning to the past in his old fishing boat, revisiting the remote marina where they lived on board and learned to mooch for salmon, Bill unravels his father's relationship with his father, it too a story marked by heavy drinking, though one that took a much darker turn. Learning family secrets his father took to the grave, Gaston comes to understand his own story anew, realizing that the man his younger self had been so eager to judge was in fact someone both nobler and more vulnerable than he had guessed. Warm, insightful, and often funny, Just Let Me Look at You captures every father's inexpressible tenderness, and the ways in which the words for love often come too late for all of us.
It's More Than The Music: Life Lessons on Friends, Faith, and What Matters Most
by Bill GaitherWhen Bill Gaither assembled a group of all-time great Christian singers to record a song for the Gaither Vocal Band's 1991 album, Homecoming, he knew that the occasion would be special. Soon, however, he realized that something extraordinary was happening. Moved by joy, these accomplished and devout musicians transcended the limits of rhythm and harmony to create something more than the music -- a pure, undiluted expression of their love for God and each other. In It's More Than the Music, gospel music's most beloved artist and songwriter tells the inspiring story of the Homecoming video series and more. He tells how, as a college student, his efforts to become a gospel singer met with frustration. And he recalls his days as a high-school English teacher, when his dream would not die and his faith in God gave him the strength to keep trying.
A Heart to Serve: The Passion to Bring Health, Hope, and Healing
by Bill FristFormer Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist shares his unique experience as a heart transplant surgeon and U.S. senator inspiring people to make a difference wherever they are and whatever position they are in by helping others, risking failure, challenging the status quo, and above all, having a heart to serve. One of the brightest and most forward-thinking senators, Frist tackles controversial issues to offer feasible solutions. His simple philosophy for peace, for example, is service. "People don't usually go to war against someone who helped save their children," Frist writes. "While the world often sees America's tougher side ... when people see America's more compassionate, humanitarian side, the barriers come down, and peace becomes a viable possibility." With heartfelt love for family and country, warmhearted humor, and a doctor's comforting tones, Frist writes openly about the values and experiences that shaped his life, and challenges and inspires everyone to find a place where they, too, can make a difference.