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My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide
by Jessica SternAn investigation into the nature of violence, terror, and trauma through conversations with a notorious war criminal by Jessica Stern, one of the world's foremost experts on terrorism.Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held a series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes during the Bosnian War and who became an inspiration for white nationalists. Though Stern was used to interviewing terrorists in the field in an effort to understand their hidden motives, the conversations she had with Karadzic would profoundly alter her understanding of the mechanics of fear, the motivations of violence, and the psychology of those who perpetrate mass atrocities at a state level and who—like the terrorists she had previously studied—target noncombatants, in violation of ethical norms and international law.How do leaders persuade ordinary people to kill their neighbors? What is the “ecosystem” that creates and nurtures genocidal leaders? Could anything about their personal histories, personalities, or exposure to historical trauma shed light on the formation of a war criminal’s identity in opposition to a targeted Other?In My War Criminal, Jessica Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, a brilliant and often shockingly charming psychiatrist and poet who spent twelve years in hiding, disguising himself as an energy healer, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader—and what can happen when you spend many, many hours with that person.
My War Gone By, I Miss It So
by Anthony LoydA “beautiful and disturbing” account of the Bosnian conflict by a war correspondent grappling with heroin addiction and a family legacy of military heroism (The Wall Street Journal). In an earlier era, Anthony Loyd imagines, he would have fought fascism in Spain. Instead, the twenty-six-year-old scion of a distinguished military family left England in 1993 to experience the conflict in Bosnia as a reporter. While he found his time serving in the British army during the Gulf War disappointingly uneventful, Loyd would spend the next three years documenting one of the most callous and chaotic clashes ever fought on European soil. Plunged into the midst of the struggle among the Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims, Loyd saw humanity at its extremes, witnessing tragedy daily in city streets and mountain villages. Shocking and violent, yet lyrical and ultimately redemptive, Loyd’s memoir is an uncompromising feat of reportage, and one man’s on-the-ground look at Yugoslavia’s brutal dissolution. But Loyd’s personal war didn’t end after he emerged from the trenches. Addicted to the adrenaline of armed combat, he returned home to continue his own longstanding battle against drug addiction. “Battlefield reportage does not get more up close, gruesome, and personal. . . . The fear and confusion of battle are so vivid that in places, they rise like acrid smoke from the page.” —The New York Times “Loyd’s strongest writing is in his descriptions of carnage—of the sound and smell of shellfire; of the sexual release of blasting away with an automatic machine gun. . . . This is pure war reporting, free from the usual journalistic constraints that often give a false significance to suffering.” —Salon.com “First-rate war correspondence . . . [in] the great tradition of Hemingway, Caputo, and Michael Herr.” —The Boston Globe
My War Memoirs
by Dr Edvard BenešThe Czechoslovak minister of foreign affairs tells a detailed story of the revolutionary movement of the Czechs that led to the building of the new state, in the government of which he and President Masaryk have become the leaders.“THIS book contains a record of my wartime experiences. Life moves so rapidly that the approach of new political events is apt to make us forget the old ones too easily. Much of what I saw and heard during the war deserves to be remembered, and that is why I have decided to wait no longer, but to tell the story of our revolutionary movement now. This book will be supplemented by later works on the Peace Conference and on our post-war foreign policy, for my work during the war and subsequently as Czechoslovak Foreign Minister forms an inseparable whole.”-Introduction
My War at Home
by Masuda SultanBorn in Kandahar in 1978, Sultan fled to the United States at age five with her family. Raised in Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens, Sultan saw her life change when she was married by arrangement at the young age of seventeen to a virtual stranger fourteen years her senior -- a marriage she struggled to maintain and then hastily fought, eventually (after three years) being granted a divorce. This very divorce would become one of the first in her close-knit Afgan community, where the subject is considered rare and taboo. Sultan went on to graduate from college summa cum laude with a degree in economics, and in July 2001, she returned to Kandahar, to explore her family roots and find herself. There she met her relatives and surveyed the conservative provincial town where she was born. on return visit to afganistan, she discovered the tragic death of her relatives at the hands of American troops and began to seek answers. My War at Homeis her memoir of self-discovery, family tradition, and life as a Muslim and feminist with political ideals. It speaks to the younger generation of Muslims in America as they struggle to resolve the ever-present inner conflict about what it means to be an American and a Muslim, while also examining the Muslim-American identity at both personal and political levels.
My Warren Buffett Bible: A Short and Simple Guide to Rational Investing: 292 Quotes From the World's Most Successful Investor
by Robert L. BlochCompiled by the son of the cofounder of H&R Block, a collection of business quotes and advice from the most successful investor of the twentieth century, Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is widely considered the most successful investor of the twentieth century. Since the early 1950s, Buffett has proved himself to be an astute investor, and he turned Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling small textile business into the fifth-largest public company in the world, valued at nearly $350 billion. Buffett is well known for his simple but invaluable principles regarding investing and finances, and countless businessmen and people looking to be smarter with their money and their investments have turned to Buffett for his advice. One of those people is Robert Bloch, son of the cofounder of the tax preparation company H&R Block. My Warren Buffett Bible contains nearly three hundred quotes that Bloch has personally found to be indispensable to financial success. With the written blessing of Buffett himself, Bloch has selected the best of Buffett, wisdom that will guide you to becoming the most disciplined and rational long-term investor you can be.
My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson
by Alfred HabeggerEmily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson's growth-a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production. Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars,My Wars Are Laid Away in Booksbrings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson's own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson's story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father's political isolation after the Whig Party's collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice. The definitive treatment of Dickinson's life and times, and of her poetic development,My Wars Are Laid Away in Booksshows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography. From the Hardcover edition.
My Watery Self
by Stephen SpotteIn MY WATERY SELF: AN AQUATIC MEMOIR, author/scientist Stephen Spotte traces a fascinating trail through a life that began in West Virgina coal camps, drifted through reckless bohemian times of countercultural indulgence in Beach Haven, New Jersey, and led to a career as a highly-respected marine biologist. Together, these stories form a view not just of one man's life, but that of a generation that often refused to take a direct path to the workplace, insisting instead on a winding unveiling of true self-realization, to achieve previously-unimagined outcomes. For Spotte, the key was water: His years of beach living led to a self-initiated study of literature and the sea. He eventually returned to college and received his training as a marine biologist, and discovered, through his singular voice, a wet and occasionally very weird perspective on the world. His writing is engrossing throughout, the stories he shares--such as his stint as curator of the New York Aquarium at Coney Island at the tail end of the hippie era--are compelling and thoroughly enjoyable as he elevates the people and situations he encounters to mythical levels, blending empirical observation with literary prose.
My Way
by Moana HopeMoana Hope is one of fourteen children. No fan of dolls or dresses, footy has always been her passion, and she would spend hours playing kick-to-kick with her dad and brothers at the local park. When her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Moana cared for him until his death four years later.Footy and cricket provided an escape from the demands of domestic life, and she made state and national teams for both sports. She also began to explore her Maori heritage, getting tattoos that represented the dearest people in her life.But as women's football became more popular, being good at the game wasn't enough—players started being pressured about the way they looked. Moana refused to grow her hair or cover her tatts, and for the first time in her life felt sidelined by the game. But later, inspired by a women's exhibition game, she realised what she was missing and returned with gusto to the game she loved.As a powerful full-forward who can thrill crowds by taking big marks and kicking spectacular goals, Moana was signed by Collingwood as one of its two marquee players for the inaugural AFL Women's competition in 2017.A high-flying athlete who is grounded by remarkable selflessness, Moana Hope is an inspiration for women and girls everywhere.My Way is her story.
My Way: An Autobiography
by David Dalton Paul AnkaA teen idol of the 1950s who virtually invented the singer/songwriter/heartthrob combination that still tops pop music today, Paul Anka rocketed to fame with a slew of hits-from "Diana" to "Put Your Head on my Shoulder"-that earned him a place touring with the major stars of his era, including Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. He wrote Holly's last hit, and just missed joining the rocker on his final, fatal plane flight. Anka also stepped in front of the camera in the teen beach-party movie era, scoring the movies and romancing their starlets, including Annette Funicello. When the British invasion made his fans swoon for a new style of music-and musician - Anka made sure he wasn't conquered. A rapier-canny businessman and image-builder who took his career into his own hands-just as he had from the very beginning, swiping his mother's car at fourteen to drive himself, underage, to his first gigs in Quebec-Anka toured the world until he could return home in triumph. A charter member of the Rat Pack, he wrote the theme music for The Tonight Show as well as his friend Frank Sinatra's anthem "My Way". By the 1970s, a multi-decade string of pop chart-toppers, including "Puppy Love" and "(You're) Having My Baby", cemented his status as an icon. My Way is bursting with rich, rollicking stories of the business and the people in Anka's life: Elizabeth Taylor, Dodi Fayed, Tom Jones, Michael Jackson, Adnan Khashoggi, Little Richard, Brooke Shields, Johnny Roselli, Sammy Davis, Jr. , Brigitte Bardot, Barnum & Bailey Circus acrobats, and many more. Anka is forthcoming, funny and smart as a whip about the business he's been in for almost six decades. My Way moves from New York to Vegas, from the casino stage to backstages all over the world. It's the most entertaining autobiography of the year.
My Way: An Autobiography
by David Dalton Paul AnkaA teen idol of the 1950s who virtually invented the singer/songwriter/heartthrob combination that still tops pop music today, Paul Anka rocketed to fame with a slew of hits-from "Diana" to "Put Your Head on my Shoulder"-that earned him a place touring with the major stars of his era, including Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. He wrote Holly's last hit, and just missed joining the rocker on his final, fatal plane flight. Anka also stepped in front of the camera in the teen beach-party movie era, scoring the movies and romancing their starlets, including Annette Funicello.When the British invasion made his fans swoon for a new style of music-and musician--Anka made sure he wasn't conquered. A rapier-canny businessman and image-builder who took his career into his own hands-just as he had from the very beginning, swiping his mother's car at fourteen to drive himself, underage, to his first gigs in Quebec-Anka toured the world until he could return home in triumph. A charter member of the Rat Pack, he wrote the theme music for The Tonight Show as well as his friend Frank Sinatra's anthem "My Way". By the 1970s, a multi-decade string of pop chart-toppers, including "Puppy Love" and "(You're) Having My Baby", cemented his status as an icon.My Way is bursting with rich, rollicking stories of the business and the people in Anka's life: Elizabeth Taylor, Dodi Fayed, Tom Jones, Michael Jackson, Adnan Khashoggi, Little Richard, Brooke Shields, Johnny Roselli, Sammy Davis, Jr., Brigitte Bardot, Barnum & Bailey Circus acrobats, and many more. Anka is forthcoming, funny and smart as a whip about the business he's been in for almost six decades. My Way moves from New York to Vegas, from the casino stage to backstages all over the world. It's the most entertaining autobiography of the year.
My Week with Marilyn
by Colin ClarkIn 1956 twenty-three-year-old Colin Clark began work as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that united Sir Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe. The blonde bombshell and the legendary actor were ill suited from the start. Monroe, on honeymoon with her new husband, the celebrated playwright Arthur Miller, was insecure, often late, and heavily medicated on pills. Olivier, obsessively punctual, had no patience for Monroe and the production became chaotic. Clark was perceptive in his assessment of what seemed to be going wrong in Monroe's life: too many hangers-on, intense insecurity, and too many pills. Before long, Monroe and Clark spent an innocent week together in the English countryside and Clark became her confidant and ally.
My Whispering Angels: The Incredible True Story Of A Life Transformed By Angels
by Francesca Brown Niall BourkeMy Whispering Angels is the extraordinary story of an ordinary Irish wife and mother blessed with an incredible gift.Francesca faced the dawn of the new millennium debilitated by ill-health and despair, without any hope or faith in her future. This was until the loving angels and spirits that she remembered watching over her as a young girl returned to save her in adulthood. We are taken on a wondrous journey of self-discovery as Francesca describes how her angels helped her to recover from her illness and led her to a profound spiritual healing. The angels taught her how to use her gift to help others and to use her insight to guide them to lives enriched with hope and purpose.She describes some of the spirits that aid her in her healing work, such as the beautiful child spirit of Joanna, and relates the messages the angels deliver to her through meditations ? messages of hope that relate to the challenges the world faces today.Francesca?s remarkable story is a testament to the transformations that can occur if you open your eyes and your heart to hope.
My Whispering Angels: The incredible true story of a life transformed by Angels
by Francesca Brown Niall BourkeMy Whispering Angels is the extraordinary story of an ordinary Irish wife and mother blessed with an incredible gift.Francesca faced the dawn of the new millennium debilitated by ill-health and despair, without any hope or faith in her future. This was until the loving angels and spirits that she remembered watching over her as a young girl returned to save her in adulthood. We are taken on a wondrous journey of self-discovery as Francesca describes how her angels helped her to recover from her illness and led her to a profound spiritual healing. The angels taught her how to use her gift to help others and to use her insight to guide them to lives enriched with hope and purpose.She describes some of the spirits that aid her in her healing work, such as the beautiful child spirit of Joanna, and relates the messages the angels deliver to her through meditations – messages of hope that relate to the challenges the world faces today.Francesca’s remarkable story is a testament to the transformations that can occur if you open your eyes and your heart to hope.
My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me: A Memoir
by Jason B. RosenthalThe widower of children’s book author Amy Krause Rosenthal shares a “gut-wrenching, honest, and uplifting memoir” of love, loss, and new beginnings (Booklist).In 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column titled ”You May Want to Marry My Husband.” It appeared ten days before her death from ovarian cancer. In a heartbreaking play on a personal ad, she encouraged her husband to find happiness after her demise.In My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, Jason describes what came next: his commitment to respecting Amy’s wish, even as he struggled with her loss. Surveying his life before, with, and after Amy, Jason contemplates love, the pain of watching a loved one suffer, and what it means for him and their three children to heal.My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me is the poignant, unreserved, and inspiring story of a great love, the aftermath of a marriage ended too soon, and how a surviving partner eventually found a new perspective on life’s joys in the wake of tremendous loss.
My Wife Wants You to Know I'm Happily Married (American Lives)
by Joey FranklinModern manhood is confusing and complicated, but Joey Franklin, a thirtysomething father of three, is determined to make the best of it. In My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married, he offers frank, self-deprecating meditations on everything from male-pattern baldness and the balm of blues harmonica to grand theft auto and the staying power of first kisses. He riffs on cockroaches, hockey, romance novels, Boy Scout hikes, and the challenge of parenting a child through high-stakes Texas T-ball. With honesty and wit, Franklin explores what it takes to raise three boys, succeed in a relationship, and survive as a modern man. My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married is an uplifting rumination on learning from the past and living for the present, a hopeful take on being a man without being a menace to society. Access free teaching resources.
My Wilderness: An Alaskan Adventure
by Claudia McgeheeMcGehee's lyrical nonfiction story recounts the 1918-1919 winter spent on Alaska's Fox Island from the point of view of nine-year-old Rocky, son of the painter Rockwell Kent. Vivid scratchboard-style illustrations echo the rugged subject matter with enchantment as Rocky explores the wilderness and becomes accustomed to island life.
My Wonderful Life with Diabetes: An Inspiring and Empowering Story of Living Healthy Living Active, and Living Well with Diabetes
by Rick Mystrom"You are about to meet a man who never let diabetes prevent him from accomplishing everything he wanted in life: good health, success in business, community service, family, and politics. Rick Mystrom knew that understanding his disease was crucial to his health. He has become one of the most knowledgeable persons living with diabetes in my extensive practice and frequently serves as a role model and authoritative resource for others." Jeanne R. Bonar MD, FACP, FACE Endocrinology, Internal Medicine "It is the patient, not the doctor, who manages diabetes. Rick Mystrom is the gold medal winner for controlling his diabetes. He has become so skilled that he can predict and adjust his insulin level just by looking at the meal he is going to eat. His results: no complications from his long history of the disease. He is the expert. I am the learner." Thomas Nighswander MD MPH
My Wonderful World Of Slapstick
by Charles Samuels Buster KeatonOver half century ago the society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained to Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, that Joe Keaton, a vaudeville actor, was brutally mistreating his five-year old son. At each afternoon and evening performance the child, billed as "The Human Mop", was slammed on the floor, hurled into the wings, and sometimes banged into bass drums. Unable to find a bruise or scratch on the lad, Mayor Van Wyck refused to ban the act. The "Human Mop" bounced on to worldwide fame as Buster Keaton, one of this century's greatest comedians.In this intimate autobiography Buster Keaton tells his whole personal and professional story, beginning with his colourful and exciting childhood as the undentable tot in the "Three Keatons" whose proudest boast was having the rowdiest, roughest act in vaudeville. Buster has played with all the great ones, from George M. Cohen and Bojangles Robinson and Al Jolson to Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, during his sixty years as a star in vaudeville, silent and talking pictures, night clubs and television.Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle got him into the movies and taught him how to throw a custard pie. Buster could not even keep slapstick out of his eleven months as a draftee in our World War I army. He came out to help create the Golden Age of Comedy with his friends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops. Marital troubles and alcoholism once got Buster down, but could not keep him down.MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK was written with the collaboration of Charles Samuels, co-author of His Eye Is On the Sparrow, Ethel Waters' best-selling autobiography. Buster Keaton's Life Story will enchant and thrill all those who enjoy looking past the glitter and the grease paint into a magnificent performer's mind and heart.
My Word is My Bond: A Memoir
by Roger Moore“Like his James Bond movies . . . Moore’s autobiography . . . [has] a lead character who doesn’t take himself too seriously . . . full of humor.” —New York Post One of the most recognizable big-screen stars of the twentieth century, Sir Roger Moore played the role of James Bond longer than any other actor. Beginning with the classic Live and Let Die, running through Moonraker and A View to a Kill, Moore brought his finely honed wit and wry charm to one of Hollywood’s most beloved and long-lasting characters. Still, James Bond was only one in a lifetime of roles stretching back to Hollywood’s studio era, and encompassing stardom in theater and television on both sides of the Atlantic. From The Saint to Maverick, Warner Brothers to MGM, Hollywood to London to locations the world over, Roger Moore’s story is one of the last of the classic Hollywood lives as yet untold.Until now. From the dying days of the studio system and the birth of television, to the quips of Noël Coward and David Niven, to the bedroom scenes and outtakes from the Bond movies, Moore has seen and heard it all. Nothing is left out—especially the naughty bits. The “special effects” by which James Bond unzipped a dress with a magnet; the spectacular risks in The Spy Who Loved Me’s opening scene—the stories in My Word is My Bond are priceless.Moore hobnobbed with the glamorous and powerful, counting Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Seymour, and Cary Grant among his contemporaries and friends. As much as it is Moore’s own exceptional story, My Word is My Bond is a treasure trove of Hollywood history.“Charming.” —Kirkus Reviews
My World
by Peter SaganIn My World, Peter Sagan, one of cycling's greatest riders of all time, gives bike racing fans a glimpse behind the scenes of his cycling life, revealing the full extent of his dedication to competition and determination to win. With four Tour de France points jersey victories, three road race world championships, the 2018 Paris-Roubaix, and multiple spring classics among Sagan’s palmares, the world of cycling agrees that this intense yet fun-loving rider is among the most dominant and fun-to-watch riders of his generation. Inside My World, Sagan discusses his relationship with fellow riders, his heroes, and how he copes with the expectation of success. He also shares technical details about his preparation, dissects the art of the sprint, and analyzes the tactics that play out during a fiercely competitive stage or race.
My World Of Islands
by Leslie ThomasLeslie Thomas's odyssey is a vivid, personal account of the most fascinating islands at the furthest reaches of the globe: to islands as distant and diverse as Saint-Pierre et Miquelon off Newfoundland and Great Barrier Island off New Zealand, and to places more familiar by name, including Nantucket, Fair Isle, Tahiti, and Capri, this journey voyages to the world's smaller places.Descriptive, evocative and liberally sprinkled with anecdotes, the book weaves together a tapestry of impressions. Beachcombing for local legends, geography, colonial history and maritime lore, Thomas's search for the mystique of these islands gives the reader a unique insight into an extraordinary and beautiful world of islands.'My World of Islands reads as a paean to a past age... a reminder that the entire world has not yet been reduced to Frejus or Marbella' Times Literary Supplement
My World in Motion
by Jo WhileyJo Whiley is someone millions of us recognise but very few of us know. Jo's a mother, sister, DJ, wife and music-industry insider who throughout her career - and in an age of fleeting celebrity - has earned the respect of her peers and fans by simply being herself and for her constant enthusiasm, be it for established rock 'n roll royalty or emerging talent. For Jo Whiley, it's all about the music.My World in Motion offers a unique opportunity to get to know the real Jo Whiley. From her musical epiphany (being carried over the crowd at a Clash concert) to when she became friends with John Peel at Glastonbury (over some very short shorts - his not hers) and interviewed Bono (surviving a power-cut on vodka). My World in Motion is an honest, funny, self-deprecating account of Jo's professional coming of age, and what it means to be a private person in a very public world.
My World: Challenges, Changes and Chasing My Dreams
by Ami CharlizeHey guys - it’s me, Ami Charlize. For years I've been sharing my life online - the good and bad bits - but what you've seen only scratches the surface of the rollercoaster that's got me to where I am today. And it's been anything but smooth, trust me. From the tricky friendships and relationships I've navigated to the huge, life-changing decisions I've made, in this book I'm ready to take you behind the scenes and reveal it all: the ups, the downs and everything in between.Along the way, I'll also be sharing the life lessons I've learned that will help you chase your own dreams, whatever those might be. So, whether you're wondering how to bounce back from a setback, wanting to find people who better understand you or are ready to start out on your own, I hope you're ready to start shaping your world.I can't wait to get started together.Love,Ami x
My Wrexham Story: The Inspirational Autobiography From The Beloved Football Hero
by Paul MullinThe memoir from Wrexham's star player, Paul Mullin - as seen in Welcome to Wrexham, a Disney+ documentary series by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.In July 2021, shortly after being named League Two's Player of the Season and Golden Boot, Paul Mullin sent shockwaves through the EFL by taking a downwards move to National League team, Wrexham AFC. Since then, 'Super Paul Mullin' has helped transform the Wrexham team, scoring goal after goal, helping secure promotion, and capturing the imaginations of football fans across the world in the process.Here for the first time, Mullin tells his own story: his roots in Liverpool, the highs and lows of English football's promotion race, lessons learnt from his young son's Autism diagnosis, and what happens when Hollywood comes knocking at your door.
My Year Before the Mast
by Annette Brock DavisIn 1933, a young Canadian woman rejected the expectations of society and her upper-class family and became a crew member aboard one of the last great four-masted sailing vessels that still plied the ocean.It was not an easy task. Young Annette had to fight pressures from her family, rejection from schools of navigation, and doubts from ship owners. When she finally found a berth as an apprentice seaman, she faced hostility from officers and crew, who grumbled that she should be home "raising babies." In the end, however, Annette won their respect, taking in sails, standing night watches, hauling and coiling ropes all the tasks the men were doing, with no concession to a girl’s lesser strength.My Year Before the Mast tells the story of Annette Brock Davis’s life on the sea as the first female crew member of a commercial sailing line. Her courage and determination to break into a closed male world are central to this book, but we cannot ignore the fact that, while this is a book about a woman’s struggle, it is also a book about the sea. Davis brings to life an era long gone, and introduces an incredible cast of characters the crew, officers, and passengers, each with his own foibles, humour, generosity, and flashes of meanness. But through it all, Annette emerges as the most remarkable character of them all.