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Staying Married is the Hardest Part: A Memoir of Passion, Secrets, and Sacrifice
by Bonnie ComfortFor fans of Lori Gottlieb&’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a contemporary memoir by a psychologist whose sexual conflict with her screenwriter husband threatens to destroy her marriage.Can a loving relationship endure career setbacks, infidelities, and mismatched sexual desires? This is the question psychologist Bonnie Comfort grapples with as she navigates her unpredictable thirty-year marriage to Hollywood screenwriter Bob, while she provides marital therapy to others. Bob is affectionate, brilliant, and hilarious—but his sexual desires are incompatible with Bonnie's. Despite her misgivings, she indulges his kinks, which often include photographing her in lingerie. Their Hollywood life is exciting, but eventually Bob's growing career frustrations lead to his complete sexual shutdown. Tensions rise, and Bob suggests Bonnie have discreet affairs and not tell him. She does just that—but when she confesses her infidelities five years later, his sexual demands become more extreme. When she complies, Bonnie feels shame; when she refuses, as she increasingly does, their fights threaten to tear their marriage apart. Bonnie understands the rhythm of disconnection and repair that is common in love relationships. With honesty and vulnerability, she recounts the highs and lows of her own marriage which sadly ends with Bob's death. As she grieves, Bonnie reflects on her role in their marital struggles and offers profound insights from personal and professional experience. Her story lays bare the complexities of love, the ongoing challenges women face in intimate relationships, and how even difficult marriages can find a way to thrive.
Staying Power: A Year In My Life
by Phil TaylorPhil 'The Power' Taylor is the uncontested king of darts, his sixteen world championship titles between 1990 and 2013 far outclassing anything else the game has seen.He started out as a protégé of Eric Bristow, the Crafty Cockney, having wandered into his Burslem pub with a set of darts his wife had given him for his birthday. At that time Taylor was earning £52 a week working in a ceramics factory and hardly played. But jaws dropped and pint mugs tipped over as this newcomer suddenly unleashed a gift for flight that had soon eclipsed even the Crafty Cockney himself, and amassed Phil a haul of over 200 professional tournament victories.Staying Power is a year in the life of a legend, twice nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, a man who made darts look a doddle to British pub-goers everywhere and set his seal on the game as the bloke to beat. A year of triumph and disaster, in which Taylor crashed out of the world championship in the second round to young outsider Michael Smith and fell asleep at home on Christmas day, exhausted from the strain of constant winning. A year when he played arguably the greatest ever game of darts, in the Grand Slam semi-final against recent world champion Adrian Lewis the two slugging it out to the wire. A year in which Taylor rocked Australia, fêted like royalty. A year of spats and hecklers, clashes on stage and off, of head-to-heads with the Dutch superstar Michael van Gerwen.But most of all this is a year in which Phil Taylor, one of sport's greatest champions, has looked hard at his life in his determination to stay in power.
Staying Power: A Year In My Life
by Phil TaylorPhil 'The Power' Taylor is the uncontested king of darts, his sixteen world championship titles between 1990 and 2013 far outclassing anything else the game has seen. He started out as a protégé of Eric Bristow, the Crafty Cockney, having wandered into his Burslem pub with a set of darts his wife had given him for his birthday. At that time Taylor was earning £52 a week working in a ceramics factory and hardly played. But jaws dropped and pint mugs tipped over as this newcomer suddenly unleashed a gift for flight that had soon eclipsed even the Crafty Cockney himself, and amassed Phil a haul of over 200 professional tournament victories. Staying Power is a year in the life of a legend, twice nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, a man who made darts look a doddle to British pub-goers everywhere and set his seal on the game as the bloke to beat. A year of triumph and disaster, in which Taylor crashed out of the world championship in the second round to young outsider Michael Smith and fell asleep at home on Christmas day, exhausted from the strain of constant winning. A year when he played arguably the greatest ever game of darts, in the Grand Slam semi-final against recent world champion Adrian Lewis the two slugging it out to the wire. A year in which Taylor rocked Australia, fêted like royalty. A year of spats and hecklers, clashes on stage and off, of head-to-heads with the Dutch superstar Michael van Gerwen. But most of all this is a year in which Phil Taylor, one of sport's greatest champions, has looked hard at his life in his determination to stay in power.
Staying Strong
by Demi LovatoDemi Lovato wakes up each morning and affirms her commitment to herself-to her health, her happiness, her being. Those commitments are the bedrock of her recovery and her work helping other young people dealing with the issues she lives with every single day. Demi is a platinum-selling recording artist whose latest album-DEMI-is already a smash hit. She's about to embark on her second season as a judge on X-Factor, and just launched The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program. And she is an outspoken advocate for young people everywhere. Demi is also a young woman finding her way in the world. She has dealt deftly with her struggles in the face of public scrutiny, and she has always relied, not just on friends and family, but daily affirmations of her self-worth and value. Affirmations that steady her days and strengthen her resolve. Those affirmations have grown into STAYING STRONG, a powerful 365-day collection of Demi's most powerful, honest, and hopeful insights. Each day will provide the readers with a quote, a personal reflection and a goal. These are Demi's words. Words she lives by and shares with the people she loves and total strangers alike. They are a powerful testament to a young woman standing up and fighting back.(P)2013 Macmillan Audio
Staying Strong: 365 Days A Year
by Demi LovatoDemi Lovato wakes up each morning and affirms her commitment to herself-to her health, her happiness, her being. Those commitments are the bedrock of her recovery and her work helping other young people dealing with the issues she lives with every single day. Demi is a platinum-selling recording artist whose latest album-DEMI-is already a smash hit. She's about to embark on her second season as a judge on X-Factor, and just launched The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program. And she is an outspoken advocate for young people everywhere. Demi is also a young woman finding her way in the world. She has dealt deftly with her struggles in the face of public scrutiny, and she has always relied, not just on friends and family, but daily affirmations of her self-worth and value. Affirmations that steady her days and strengthen her resolve. Those affirmations have grown into STAYING STRONG, a powerful 365-day collection of Demi's most powerful, honest, and hopeful insights. Each day will provide the readers with a quote, a personal reflection and a goal. These are Demi's words. Words she lives by and shares with the people she loves and total strangers alike. They are a powerful testament to a young woman standing up and fighting back.
Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year
by Demi LovatoDemi Lovato wakes up each morning and affirms her commitment to herself―to her health, her happiness, her being. Those commitments are the bedrock of her recovery and her work helping other young people dealing with the issues she lives with every single day. Demi is a platinum-selling recording artist whose latest album―DEMI―is already a smash hit. She's about to embark on her second season as a judge on X-Factor, and just launched The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program. And she is an outspoken advocate for young people everywhere. Demi is also a young woman finding her way in the world. She has dealt deftly with her struggles in the face of public scrutiny, and she has always relied, not just on friends and family, but daily affirmations of her self-worth and value. Affirmations that steady her days and strengthen her resolve. Those affirmations have grown into STAYING STRONG, a powerful 365-day collection of Demi's most powerful, honest, and hopeful insights. Each day will provide the readers with a quote, a personal reflection and a goal. These are Demi's words. Words she lives by and shares with the people she loves and total strangers alike. They are a powerful testament to a young woman standing up and fighting back.
Staying True
by Jenny SanfordIn this candid and compelling memoir, the first lady of South Carolina reveals the private ordeal behind her very public betrayal-and offers inspiration for anyone struggling to keep faith during life’s most trying times. She’s been a successful investment banker, a mother of four, and the campaign manager for one of American politics’ rising stars-her husband, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, once widely hailed as a possible candidate for president in 2012. Yet to most Americans, Jenny Sanford is best known for the one role she refused to play-that of conventional political spouse standing silently by while her husband went before the media and confessed his infidelity. Instead, she stayed true-to herself, to her faith, and to her highest ideals of parenthood and public service. She chose to let Mark Sanford deal with the embarrassment and political fallout from his own actions while focusing her own efforts privately on raising their children to be men of character, even in the face of the lies their father has told. InStaying True, Jenny Sanford recalls her shock and anguish upon discovering that her husband was having an affair with a woman in Argentina, and the further pain when she learned-just a day ahead of most Americans-that he had not ended the affair when she believed he had. She reveals the source of her determination to be honest and forthright instead of the victim in the tabloid passion play that gripped the nation in June 2009. But her story neither begins nor ends with Mark Sanford’s astounding fall from grace. Writing with uncommon candor from a deep well of spiritual strength, Sanford shares personal stories and life lessons from before and after she stepped into the public realm. She recounts the many stresses-as well as the myriad joys-that she experienced on a daily basis while living in the governmental spotlight. (Just try keeping four young boys out of mischief in the governor’s mansion!) And she describes the many ways that the seductions of power can drive apart even the most committed couples. At every step along her journey, Jenny Sanford has made choices: She gave up her career, moved far from her home state of Illinois, even changed her religious practices. Every choice was a glad concession to harmonious married life and, in some cases, to the support of her husband’s political aspirations. But the one thing she never gave up was her sense of self, her inner moral compass. Her remarkable poise and decency make her a role model for men and women alike. Her story will empower anyone who has fought to maintain independence and integrity-within a marriage or elsewhere in life. From the Hardcover edition.
Staying Tuned
by Daniel Schorr"In May 1999 Kevin Klose, president of National Public Radio, invited me to a meeting of the NPR board and surprised me with a bronze plaque, emblazoned 'Lifetime Achievement Award.' I responded that, ever the copy-reader, I wished to amend the wording to, 'Lifetime Achievement So Far...'" Thus Daniel Schorr, octogenarian, newsman, and last of the legendary Edward R. Murrow news team still active in journalism, let it be known that after six decades of reporting, digging out information, and finding himself the controversial subject of some stories, he is still fully engaged in the world-watching that has made him one of America's most honored journalists. He is both a national and an international eyewitness. At home, he has covered and analyzed major events from the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s to the Clinton impeachment hearings of the 1990s. As CBS's chief Watergate correspondent, he won three Emmys® for his coverage of that scandal -- during which he found himself on Nixon's "enemies" list. Abroad, he opened the CBS bureau in Moscow in 1955, arranged an unprecedented television interview with Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev, and was on hand for every major European event from the founding of NATO to the building of the Berlin Wall. At home and overseas his no-holds-barred approach to covering the news landed him in trouble with the authorities. He may be one of the only journalists investigated by both the KGB and the FBI. In the 1970s, Schorr's revelations of CIA and FBI misdeeds brought him into a confrontation with Congress. Refusing to name his sources before the House Ethics Committee, he was threatened with jail for contempt -- a threat that was not carried out. He also came into confrontation with CBS, his employer, leading to his resignation. A multimedia journalist, Schorr has worked in newspapers, radio, and television. Today, he runs around less, but is still probing. In Staying Tuned, he reflects on the role of the media in our society, expressing concerns about television's assault on reality. As to how life has changed for him, Schorr says: "In my days as an investigative reporter, my motto was, 'Find out what they're hiding and tell those who need to know.' In my more sedentary days, the motto changed to, 'The people know a lot. Tell them what to make of it.'"
Staying in the Game: The Remarkable Story of Doc Seaman
by Sydney SharpePeter C. Newman called him "the Totem of the Titans." From a small Prairie town, Daryl K. "Doc" Seaman became an icon of Canadian business and hockey. He is one of the last of a breed of postwar entrepreneurs and sportsmen who forged modern Canada, striking deals on a handshake and always keeping their word.After flying 82 combat missions during the Second World War, Doc Seaman worked in the oil industry with his brothers, turning a small Alberta drilling business into a global giant, Bow Valley Industries. Later, he led a group that brought the Atlanta Flames to Calgary. Still a Flames co-owner, he helped reshape Hockey Canada and restore Canada’s glory in international hockey.Doc Seaman’s life is a remarkable saga of courage, resolve, generosity, and success. It ultimately leaves us not only with a deep appreciation of one iconic Canadian but also with a wider understanding of our country.
Staying on Track
by Nigel MansellAfter finishing as runner-up three times in the drivers' world championship, in 1992 Mansell finally secured the title. It was the crowning achievement of a hugely successful career, in which he won 31 Grand Prix, a record for a British driver that stood until Lewis Hamilton overhauled him in 2014. Always an aggressive driver, his exciting style meant he was hailed as a hero by his millions of fans in the UK and around the world. Out of the car, he was outspoken and charismatic, which merely served to enhance his reputation. Now, 20 years after he retired from F1, Mansell looks back on a stellar career in which he battled against many legends of the sport, from Lauda through the Senna and Prost years and on to Schumacher. He provides vivid insights into what it was like to race against those greats in an era when the risks to drivers were enormous. He explains what motivated him to get to the top, and takes the reader behind the scenes to give an unrivalled insight into the sport and the key moments of his career. Still closely involved in Formula One, Mansell assesses how F1 has changed, and gives his authoritative verdict on the sport, the cars and the drivers. It is an unmissable account from one of Britain's greatest sporting heroes.
Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food
by Raymond SokolovFour decades of memories from a gastronome who witnessed the food revolution from the (well-provisioned) trenches--a delicious tour through contemporary food history. When Raymond Sokolov became food editor of The New York Times in 1971, he began a long, memorable career as restaurant critic, food historian, and author. Here he traces the food scene he reported on in America and abroad, from his pathbreaking dispatches on nouvelle cuisine chefs like Paul Bocuse and Michel Guérard in France to the rise of contemporary American food stars like Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz, and the fruitful collision of science and cooking in the kitchens of El Bulli in Spain, the Fat Duck outside London, and Copenhagen's gnarly Noma. Sokolov invites readers to join him as a privileged observer of the most transformative period in the history of cuisine with this personal narrative of the sensual education of an accidental gourmet. We dine out with him at temples of haute cuisine like New York's Lutèce but also at a pioneering outpost of Sichuan food in a gas station in New Jersey, at a raunchy Texas chili cookoff, and at a backwoods barbecue shack in Alabama, as well as at three-star restaurants from Paris to Las Vegas. Steal the Menu is, above all, an entertaining and engaging account of a tumultuous period of globalizing food ideas and frontier-crossing ingredients that produced the unprecedentedly rich and diverse way of eating we enjoy today.
Stealing Buddha's Dinner
by Nguyen Bich MinhBeginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha's Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen's desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food - Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies. More exotic-seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mainstream America become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a "real" American. Stealing Buddha's Dinner is also a portrayal of a diverse family: Nguyen's hardworking, hard-partying father; pretty sister; wise and nurturing grandmother; and Rosa, her Latina stepmother. And there is the mystery of Nguyen's birth mother, unveiled movingly over the course of the book. Nostalgic and candid, Stealing Buddha's Dinner is a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for. "Her typical and not-so-typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor. " - USA Today"Beautifully written. . . [Nguyen] is fearless in asserting the specificities of memories culled from early childhood and is, herself, an appealing character on the page. . . A writer to watch. " - Chicago Tribune"Perfectly pitched and prodigiously detailed. " - The Boston Globe
Stealing Faith
by Leora Skolkin-SmithAllegra Gordon knew there was much she could learn from Faith Hale. From the moment she met the esteemed writer and feminist icon on the campus of New York's Abigail Stone College, Allegra understood that Faith would be a force in her life, one that would wrench the best work from her and encourage her to lay her soul bare. The relationship that evolved would simultaneously be the most liberating and most shattering Allegra ever encountered. And it would change both women in profound ways. From political rallies in the early seventies to soaring tributes at the turn of the twenty-first century, from confidences betrayed to liberties taken to freedoms denied, from a cottage in Maine to stone buildings in Manhattan to a farmhouse in Vermont, here is a story of women's lives unfurled and of a friendship at once impossible and eternal.
Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America
by Philip Dray"Dray captures the genius and ingenuity of Franklin's scientific thinking and then does something even more fascinating: He shows how science shaped his diplomacy, politics, and Enlightenment philosophy." -Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Today we think of Benjamin Franklin as a founder of American independence who also dabbled in science.
Stealing Green Mangoes: Two Brothers, Two Fates, One Indian Childhood
by Sunil Dutta“The poignant memoir of two brothers raised under the dark shadow of Indian Partition” before one becomes a Los Angeles cop and the other a terrorist (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)Sunil Dutta is a twenty-year veteran of the LAPD. He was also a biologist and a translator of classic Indian poetry. But before that, he was a refugee of the genocidal violence that followed the Partition of India. While Sunil eventually escaped to a new life, his brother Raju took a different path. Raju was arrested, fled the law, and became a fugitive. Then he became a terrorist. Later in life, facing Stage IV lung cancer, Sunil tried to understand how he and his brother found themselves on such radically different paths. In Stealing Green Mangoes, Dutta takes us from his childhood home in Rajasthan to the streets of southeastern Los Angeles, attempting to uncover what it was that tore him and Raju apart.A memoir with sweeping, spiritual ambitions, Stealing Green Mangoes asks probing questions about surviving trauma, crossing borders, and how we become who we are.
Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard
by Marion MeadeBased on the true story of tragic love in twelfth-century France, this &“garrulous, bustling&” novel offers &“the grand old tale, updated for feminist focus&” (Kirkus Reviews). In twelfth century France, two of Europe&’s greatest minds met and fell in love. It was a love forbidden by the world around them and eventually they were torn apart from each other. But the spark of it remained smoldering inside the lovers until their death and beyond. Heloise and her tutor, Peter Abelard, share a devotion passionate in its depth and beautiful in its thoughtfulness. They marry, and Heloise bears a son whom she names Astrolabe. However, all of this must be done in secret, for Abelard is forbidden to wed by the church, which considers him a cleric. When the truth of their relationship is exposed, they are separated and punished both in body and soul. Marion Meade weaves history and fiction together in Stealing Heaven, an epic story of one of history&’s most tragic love affairs. With facts pulled from Heloise&’s actual love letters, Meade creates a poetic and sensual tapestry of France in the twelfth century. Heloise and Abelard lived beyond their punishment in quiet contemplation of life and God—Abelard as a monk and Heloise as a nun and the founder of a convent. Her story is one of a brilliant woman, trapped within the confines of her society. But it is also the story of an inspiring love that has lived on throughout history.
Stealing History
by Gerald SternIn what could be boldly called a new genre, Gerald Stern reflects with wit, pathos, rage, and tenderness, on 85 years of life. In 70 short, intermingling pieces that constitute a kind of diary of a mind, Stern moves nimbly between the past and the present, the personal and the philosophical. Creating the immediacy of dailiness, he writes with entertaining engagement about what he's reading, be it Spinoza, Maimonides, John Cage, Etheridge Knight, James Schuyler, or Lucille Clifton, and then he seamlessly turns to memories of his student years in Europe on the GI Bill, or his political and social action. Unexpected anecdotes abound. He hilariously recounts the evening Bill Murray bit his arm and tells about singing together with Paul McCartney. Interwoven with his formidable recollections are passionate discussions of lifelong obsessions: his conflicted identity as a secular Jew opposed to Israel's Palestinian policy; the idea of neighbors in various forms - from the women of Gee's Bend who together made beautiful quilts to the inhabitants of Jedwabne, who on a single day in 1941 slaughtered 300 Jews; and issues of justice.
Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson
by Barry DenenbergJackie Robinson was a great athlete, but his destiny went far beyond the baseball diamond. As the first black man to play in the all-white baseball leagues, he was a symbol of courage, hope, and unity for all black and white Americans.
Stealing Lincoln's Body
by Thomas J. CraughwellOn the night of the presidential election in 1876, a gang of counterfeiters out of Chicago attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. The custodian of the tomb was so shaken by the incident that he willingly dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the president's corpse. In a lively and dramatic narrative, Thomas J. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context. He takes us through the planning and execution of the crime and the outcome of the investigation. He describes the reactions of Mary Todd Lincoln and Robert Todd Lincoln to the theft―and the peculiar silence of a nation. He follows the unlikely tale of what happened to Lincoln's remains after the attempted robbery, and details the plan devised by the Lincoln Guard of Honor to prevent a similar abominable recurrence. Along the way, Craughwell offers entertaining sidelights on the rise of counterfeiting in America and the establishment of the Secret Service to combat it; the prevalence of grave robberies; the art of nineteenth-century embalming; and the emergence among Irish immigrants of an ambitious middle class―and a criminal underclass. This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens who honored their native son by keeping a valuable, burdensome secret for decades offers a riveting glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America, and underscores that truth really is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools (Scholastic Focus)
by Dan SaSuWeh Jones"Stealing Little Moon is both a moving family saga and an expertly told true story that all Americans should know." —Steve Sheinkin, New York Times bestselling author of Bomb and UndefeatedScholastic Focus is the premier home of thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and thoughtfully designed works of narrative nonfiction aimed at middle grade and young adult readers. These books help readers learn about the world in which they live and develop their critical thinking skills so that they may become dynamic citizens who are able to analyze and understand our past, participate in essential discussions about our present, and work to grow and build our future.Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight was four years old when armed federal agents showed up at her home and took her from her family. Under the authority of the government, she was sent away to a boarding school specifically created to strip her of her Ponca culture and teach her the ways of white society. Little Moon was one of thousands of Indigenous children forced to attend these schools across America and give up everything they'd ever known: family, friends, toys, clothing, food, customs, even their language. She would be the first of four generations of her family who would go to the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School.Dan SaSuWeh Jones chronicles his family's time at Chilocco--starting with his grandmother Little Moon's arrival when the school first opened and ending with him working on the maintenance crew when the school shut down nearly one hundred years later. Together with the voices of students from other schools, both those who died and those who survived, Dan brings to light the lasting legacy of the boarding school era.Part American history, part family history, Stealing Little Moon is a powerful look at the miseducation and the mistreatment of Indigenous kids, while celebrating their strength, resiliency, and courage--and the ultimate failure of the United States government to erase them.
Stealing Manhattan: The Untold Story of America's Billion Dollar Gem Heist Masterminds
by Burl Barer Punch StanimirovicThe true crime story of a family of altruistic jewel thieves and four decades of daring capers and sweet escapes, including a 1992 New York mega-heist.Punch Stanimirovic insists: “My father, known as Mr. Stan, is the greatest gentleman thief who ever lived—a true genius.”Punch was raised to be an exceptional diamond thief. He could work magic on a safe that would have sent Mandrake the Magician back to the novelty store, and Dr. Strange back to medical school. He and his family risked it all to make the patriarch, Mr. Stan, proud.Punch’s pop culture sensibilities, his father’s proven skills, and his mother’s artistic input merged to create cinema-style capers—elaborately planned and executed, including a spectacular 1992 New York mega-heist of over one billion dollars in diamonds, gold, and precious gems—and they got away with it.Many of the crew members went on to invest in real estate, helping to “build the New York skyline”, while others moved to Europe and became the Pink Panthers.They had one rule: No One Gets Hurt. From daring heists to the ultimate escape, discover the true story of Punch, his extraordinary crew, and his high-society family . . .Edgar Award winner and New York Times–bestselling author Burl Barer brings to light the remarkable story of four decades and two generations of America’s First Family of kind and generous “altruistic outlaws” in Stealing Manhattan: The Untold Story of America’s Billion Dollar Gem Heist Masterminds.Praise for Stealing Manhattan“Barer has that all-important knack for seeking and finding hidden truth. In Stealing Manhattan, those who pulled off this caper were professionals who knew how to keep their mouths shut. And lucky for us, some of these mouths have recently opened to Barer . . . now the world can know the truth. You will not want to miss this “gem” of a book!” —Kevin Sullivan, author of The Bundy Murders: The Yearly Journal
Stealing Water
by Tim Ecott'A simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking portrait of a poor white family life in the twilight of apartheid' Richard E. Grant'Funny, never self-pitying and a pleasure to read' Guardian'Both haunting and funny. [Ecott] writes with compassion and honesty to give us a truly memorable account of an extraordinary upbringing' Fergal KeaneTim Ecott's family swapped Northern Ireland for apartheid Johannesburg in the 1970s. But just six months after arriving the family was bankrupt and evicted from their home, and most of their possessions had been confiscated by the bailiffs. Whilst friends and relatives imagined they were living enviable lives in the sun, the reality was that the family was cast adrift. Forced to survive on their wits, they entered a twilight world where their true friends were prostitutes, thieves and renegades. 'Unputdownable - never sentimental, extremely honest and with a positively Dickensian cast of characters' Emma Thompson
Stealth Fighter: A Year in the Life of an F-117 Pilot
by William B. O'ConnorAn engaging look into the culture of those who fly high-tech fighters and bombers and one pilot’s personal account of his career in the cockpit. The F-117 Stealth Nighthawk was a truly groundbreaking aircraft when introduced in the early 1980s. The strange shape of the jet, all flat panels and angles, rendered the aircraft nearly invisible to radar. This highly classified program wasn’t acknowledged publicly by the U.S. Air Force until 1988. The Nighthawk was retired in 2008 after twenty-five years of service, including bombing missions over Panama, Iraq during both Gulf Wars, and Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war. Brad O’Connor flew the Nighthawk during the NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo in 1999. His first-person experience puts the reader in the cockpit of this revolutionary combat aircraft. From his F-117 assignment through training, deployment, mission planning, and combat flights, O’Connor relates the day-to-day life of a pilot in the world’s first stealth fighter.
Steamboats in Dakota Territory: Transforming the Northern Plains (Transportation)
by Tracy PotterSteamboats transformed the Missouri Valley. Enterprising men like Joseph La Barge and Grant Marsh braved financial and mortal danger to reap fantastic profits from trade in furs and buffalo robes. But steamboats also brought smallpox, soldiers and settlers to the lands of Native Americans. Although they began as agents of commerce, steamboats came to represent confinement and war to Sitting Bull and his people. Railroads made Yankton, Bismarck and Fargo rise as ports for a few years and then drove steamboats out of business, ending an era filled with colorful characters and dramatic moments. Author Tracy Potter takes an in-depth look at the boats, trade and cultural and military relations between the United States and the native inhabitants of Dakota Territory.