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Walking a Golden Mile
by William Regal Neil ChanlderThe bare-fisted brawler from Blackpool, England tells his story of fortune and fumbling on the road to the WWE's higher ranks.Since joining the WWE in 2000 as a goodwill ambassador from Great Britain, William Regal has established himself as an up-and-coming Superstar. He took the wrestling world by storm defeating many of the WWE's best wrestlers to win both the European and Intercontinental championships--although he's probably best known for getting back in WWE owner's Vince McMahon's good graces by kissing his naked backside on national television. While fans may still chuckle at Regal's humiliation, his in-ring success is no laughing matter. In this no-holds-barred look at his life, Regal for the first time talks about how he has dragged himself out of a life of poverty and adversity on the street of Blackpool, England and battled his own inner-demons to reach the top of the WWE's roster. He also discusses how he has overcome his recent life-threatening medical condition to return to triumphantly to the WWE.to admit when I know so many kids watch me on TV every week, but it's true. I detested it. My first school was a Catholic school, St Joseph's Convent, even though I'm not a Catholic. Mum leaving when I was so young didn't help matters, but I would never have been able to handle being preached at by those nuns in any case. I never liked being told that I'd go to hell if I didn't do what some nun told me to. Just about the only highlight I remember from school was being taken on a trip to Chester Zoo when I was eight. My best friend was a lad called Andrew who had this curly thick white hair. He began pulling faces at a gorilla who retaliated by throwing a big pile of shite at him, hitting him square in the face. All you could see of Andrew were his eyes, peering through this steaming mask. The nuns were running around, shouting and screaming. It was like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. If that was the only thing I can remember from school, you can imagine how mind-numbing I found the place. Then when I was nine I went to the middle school -- and was soon faced with another confusing situation. My mum had run off with this bloke and my dad ended up marrying his wife. It got pretty complicated. I've a half-brother who's my mum and step-dad's kid, and a step-sister. My dad had custody of me and I'd go to stay with my mum in the school holidays, but I didn't like going. She lived in Bristol, a hundred miles away. When I was there I never saw much of my brother, who was always out with his friends. I didn't really know him, though we do keep in touch today. He's nice enough. But most of the time I didn't want to be there because I wanted to stay at home with my dad, granddad and the close family who lived nearby: my uncles, aunties and cousins -- especially my cousin Graham. He's older than me, but we spent so much time together growing up that he's more like a brother to me than anything else. But my dad was always the one I looked up to. To this day he's the nicest man I've ever met -- and I'm not just saying that because he is my dad. He is the kindest person. I've never heard him swear or even say a bad word about anybody. He's a real hard worker, too. You never saw my dad without a pair of overalls on. He would come home covered in cement and has always worked hard for his living. He doesn't need to work these days but he still does. He still gets up early every morning and never stops all day. If he didn't work he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Lately he has had problems both with his leg and with his arm but nothing stops him. I've seen him shovelling stuff with one hand. If he gave it up now he'd have no financial worries but that is who he is -- a grafter. But what it meant for me when I was growing up was that dad was often out at work. That meant I spent a lot of time with his father, my granddad. Granddad's name was William Matthews, known as Bill, and he was probably the biggest influence in my life. In his younger days he was a bit of a rogue, well known for fighting and drinking. He'd do ...
Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows
by Ravi Zacharias R. S. SawyerRavi Zacharias was born in India and has literally moved from the East to the West and the West to the East and repeated the cycle again and again to answer skeptics’ questions about whether God is alive, who Jesus is, what is truth, and whether we can really find absolutes. Ravi has spoken of his own journey only in bits and pieces in his other books and talks. It is a journey that has led him beyond his family and culture into a revelation that replaced pantheism with monotheism, and into a relationship with a God the vast majority of his people do not worship. From this new understanding birthed in him by the founder of Christianity, Ravi has gone forward to teach as one of our generation’s great apologists. A life lived in Christ is the greatest argument of all for the living God. Ravi urges the reader to look at the lives that have turned the hearts of people into movements for Christ. In the first three centuries of the church, the Apostles and followers like Polycarp and Tertullian and Origen demonstrated with their lives the truth of the resurrected Christ. A whole line of witnesses from every generation succeeded these who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, with names like Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, and Wesley leading the procession. But history begins on an individual level. Ravi shows readers his life, in its successes and failures, in its existence in the East and in the West, and in his attempts to bring the truth of Christ to those in any culture who don’t know him. The Hebrew poet has said that a life rich in experiences is a life from which others can learn. This book is about Ravi’s journey, from meaninglessness to the abundant joy of Christ, from East to West and back again, in the all-consuming passion of letting the world know about true freedom, and in whom that freedom is found.
Walking in My Joy: In These Streets
by Jenifer LewisA new offering from the author of the hugely successful Mother of Black Hollywood.Walking in My Joy is a collection of electric stories by the one and only, super hilarious Jenifer Lewis. Her commentary on what’s happening in the world today, told through her outrageous real-life adventures, will have you laughing out loud, while her insightful messages touch your soul.A self-described “traveling fool and nature freak,” Jenifer takes readers with her all over the world, from Cape Town to Bali; Washington, DC, to the Serengeti; Mongolia to St. Petersburg; and Argentina to Antarctica to demonstrate how she walks in her joy by seeking pleasure in everyday encounters. Every step of the way you’ll be doubled over with laughter as she faints at the Obamas’ holiday party; awakens to a swollen face and has to go to the hospital during the height of the Covid pandemic; an alien visitation; a successful takedown of a conman; as well as meeting a handsome Maasai warrior and being chased by a Cape buffalo.An actress, activist, and mental health advocate, Jenifer Lewis imparts ways to love yourself that will allow you to deflect negative energy and keep people who may come to take your joy in check. She stresses the importance of fully living to your greatest ambitions and taking the time to admire the world’s natural gifts. She also encourages embracing each other’s uniqueness as a way of finding societal healing. Walking in My Joy is a riveting and enthralling journey.
Walking in the Shade
by Doris LessingThe second volume of Doris Lessing's extraordinary autobiography covers the years 1949-62, from her arrival in war-weary London with her son, Peter, and the manuscript for her first novel, The Grass is Singing, under her arm to the publication of her most famous work of fiction, The Golden Notebook. She describes how communism dominated the intellectual life of the 1950s and how she, like nearly all communists, became disillusioned with extreme and rhetorical politics and left communism behind. Evoking the bohemian days of a young writer and single mother, Lessing speaks openly about her writing process, her friends and lovers, her involvement in the theater, and her political activities. Walking in the Shade is an invaluable social history as well as Doris Lessing's Sentimental Education.
Walking on Air: The Aerial Adventures of Phoebe Omlie (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
by Janann ShermanAviation pioneer Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie (1902–1975) was once one of the most famous women in America. In the 1930s, her words and photographs were splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the nation. The press labeled her “second only to Amelia Earhart among America's women pilots,” and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt named her among the “eleven women whose achievements make it safe to say that the world is progressing.” Omlie began her career in the early 1920s when aviation was unregulated and open to those daring enough to take it on, male or female. She earned the first commercial pilot's license issued to a woman and became a successful air racer. During the New Deal, she became the first woman to hold an executive position in federal aeronautics. In Walking on Air, author Janann Sherman presents a thorough and entertaining biography of Omlie. In 1920, the Des Moines, Iowa, native bought herself a Curtiss JN-4D airplane and began learning how to fly and perform stunts with her future husband, pilot Vernon Omlie. She danced the Charleston on the top wing, hung by her teeth below the plane, and performed parachute jumps in the Phoebe Fairgrave Flying Circus. Using interviews, contemporary newspaper articles, archived radio transcripts, and other archival materials, Sherman creates a complex portrait of a daring aviator struggling for recognition in the early days of flight and a detailed examination of how American flying changed over the twentieth century.
Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos
by Lyssa ChapmanAn empowering memoir that can inspire others to break the cycle of abuse and forge happiness out of extreme adversity.The ninth child of bounty hunter Duane Chapman, made famous on the A&E show Dog the Bounty Hunter, Lyssa Chapman has overcome an upbringing that can only be called tragic. In her piercing memoir, she shares the details of her harrowing childhood and her journey to faith, and offers compassionate guidance, advice, and hope to those who might feel overwhelmed in their own circumstances. As a child, Baby Lyssa&’s parents divorced and left her neglected. Things only got worse from there. Walking on Eggshells reveals Lyssa&’s nightmare passage from mental and physical abuse to removal from school and confinement at home, flight from protective services, and teen pregnancy. Despite it all, and against incredible odds, Lyssa found her faith. She also found her way out of the spiral of bad decisions to build a healthy relationship with her parents and forge a rewarding, positive life with God. An astonishing true story of one young woman&’s trek from poverty and abuse to fulfillment and stardom, Walking on Eggshells is heartrending, powerful, and inspiring.
Walking on Water: A Novel (The Walk Series #5)
by Richard Paul EvansWith this New York Times bestseller, the beloved Walk series ends as Alan Christoffersen reaches his destination and the beginning of a new life: “Definitely a journey worth taking” (Booklist).After the death of his beloved wife, after the loss of his advertising business to his once-trusted partner, after bankruptcy forced him from his home, Alan Christoffersen embarked on a daring cross-country journey—a walk across America, from Seattle to Key West, with only the pack on his back. Through it all he learned life-changing lessons about love, forgiveness, and most of all, hope. Now Alan must again return west to face yet another crisis, one that threatens to upend his world just as he had begun to heal from so much loss, leaving him unsure of whether he can reach the end his journey. It will take the love of a new friend, and the wisdom of an old friend, to help him to finally leave the past behind and find the strength and hope to live again. Walking on Water is a beautiful story of one man’s search for a new beginning, of “humorous moments, heartwarming moments, moments of self-discovery, and moments of profound wisdom” (Deseret Morning News).
Walking on Water: A Voyage Around Britain and Through Life
by Geoff HoltThe danger in refusing to accept your disability whilst searching for a cure is that it may somehow propagate a notion that walking is good, and being in a wheelchair is bad. Even the term 'cure' implies remedying a bad situation. Of course most disabled people would prefer not to be disabled at all - me too - but so long as we are afforded equal rights, we are not discriminated against, and we can work and live in an accessible environment, then who has the right to say we would be better off walking?
Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution
by Derrick JensenRemember the days of longing for the hands on the classroom clock to move faster? Most of us would say we love to learn, but we hated school. Why is that? What happens to creativity and individuality as we pass through the educational system?Walking on Water is a startling and provocative look at teaching, writing, creativity, and life by a writer increasingly recognized for his passionate and articulate critique of modern civilization. This time Derrick Jensen brings us into his classroom--whether college or maximum security prison--where he teaches writing. He reveals how schools perpetuate the great illusion that happiness lies outside of ourselves and that learning to please and submit to those in power makes us into lifelong clock-watchers. As a writing teacher Jensen guides his students out of the confines of traditional education to find their own voices, freedom, and creativity.Jensen's great gift as a teacher and writer is to bring us fully alive at the same moment he is making us confront our losses and count our defeats. It is at the center of Walking on Water, a book that is not only a hard-hitting and sometimes scathing critique of our current educational system and not only a hands-on method for learning how to write, but, like Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a lesson on how to connect to the core of our creative selves, to the miracle of waking up and arriving breathless (but with dry feet) on the far shore.
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. One Step at a Time.
by Ed StaffordFrom the star of Discovery Channel's Naked and Marooned comes a a riveting, adventurous account of one man’s history-making journey along the entire length of the Amazon#151;and through the most bio-diverse habitat on Earth Fans of Turn Right at Machu Piccu and readers of Jon Krakauer and Bill Bryson and will revel in Ed Stafford's extraordinary prose and lush descriptions In April 2008, Ed Stafford set off to become the first man ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon. He started on the Pacific coast of Peru, crossed the Andes Mountain range to find the official source of the river. His journey lead on through parts of Colombia and right across Brazil; all while outwitting dangerous animals, machete wielding indigenous people as well as negotiating injuries, weather and his own fears and doubts. Yet, Stafford was undeterred. On his grueling 860-day, 4,000-plus mile journey, Stafford witnessed the devastation of deforestation firsthand, the pressure on tribes due to loss of habitats as well as nature in its true-raw form. Jaw-dropping from start to finish, Walking the Amazon is the unforgettable and gripping story of an unprecedented adventure. Walking the Amazon is also available as a Spanish edition entitled Caminado El Amazonas.
Walking the Appalachian Trail
by Larry LuxenbergA fascinating portrait of the community of people—and one cat—who&’ve traveled the trail end to end, by the founder of the Appalachian Trail Museum. Countless hikers have walked stretches of the two-thousand-plus-mile Appalachian Trail, but only a small, deeply dedicated group has completed the trek all the way through from Georgia to Maine. This book explores the history of the trail through colorful profiles of those who are a part of this unique community and reveals the customs and culture that have evolved around them over the years. From the sore muscles to the moments of solitude in nature, from the retired postmaster who parachuted onto the top of Springer Mountain to begin his journey to the woman who set out in tennis shoes because she couldn&’t find women&’s hiking boots in her size, Walking the Appalachian Trail explores questions of who these end-to-enders are, what drives them, what risks they face, and what rewards to body and soul they gain from this extraordinary walk. Includes color photographs
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
by Bruce FeilerOne part adventure story, one part archaeological detective work, one part spiritual exploration, Walking The Bible vividly recounts an inspiring personal odyssey -- by foot, jeep, rowboat, and camel -- through the greatest stories ever told. Feeling a desire to reconnect to the Bible, award-winning author Bruce Feiler set out on a perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. Traveling over three continents, through five countries, and four war zones, Feiler is the first person to complete such a historic expedition. He crosses the Red Sea, climbs Mt. Sinai, and interviews bedouin and pilgrims alike, as he attempts to answer the question: Is the Bible just an abstraction, or is it a living, breathing entity? Both a pulse-pounding adventure and an uplifting spiritual quest, Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible is a stunning and elevating work of courage, scholarship, and heart that revisits the inscrutable desert landscape where the world's great religions were born -- and uncovers fresh answers to the most profound questions of the human spirit.
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
by Bruce Feiler"The process of gathering these images reminded me of the Bible's effortless ability to reinvent itself for each generation and each new way of searching." -Bruce Feiler Its stories may be the best known in the world, but its locations have long been a mystery. Where did Noah's ark land? Where did Moses receive the Ten Commandments? Where are the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Now, in Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey, New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler offers an unprecedented heart-stirring adventure through the landscape of some of history's most storied events. Featuring Bruce Feiler's own photography as well as his selections from professional collections, Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey brings together breathtaking vistas, intimate portraits, and fascinating panoramas, providing firsthand access to the inscrutable land where three of the world's great religions were born-and finally puts a face on the stories that have long inspired the human spirit. Over several years, Feiler traveled nearly ten thousand miles through the deserts of the Middle East, which led first to his runaway national bestseller Walking the Bible. This new illustrated book follows his route, offering a thrilling photographic voyage through the actual places of some of the Bible's most memorable events-from the heights of Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark landed, to the desert outpost in Turkey, where Abraham first heard the words of God, to the summit where Moses overlooked the Promised Land. Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey chronicles a landscape that nurtured the relationship between humans and the divine, breathing new meaning into stories that have been a timeless source of inspiration.
Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the Amazon
by Gomercindo RodriguesA close associate of Chico Mendes, Gomercindo Rodrigues witnessed the struggle between Brazil's rubber tappers and local ranchers--a struggle that led to the murder of Mendes. Rodrigues's memoir of his years with Mendes has never before been translated into English from the Portuguese. Now, Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes makes this important work available to new audiences, capturing the events and trends that shaped the lives of both men and the fragile system of public security and justice within which they lived and worked. In a rare primary account of the celebrated labor organizer, Rodrigues chronicles Mendes's innovative proposals as the Amazon faced wholesale deforestation. As a labor unionist and an environmentalist, Mendes believed that rain forests could be preserved without ruining the lives of workers, and that destroying forests to make way for cattle pastures threatened humanity in the long run. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes also brings to light the unexplained and uninvestigated events surrounding Mendes's murder. Although many historians have written about the plantation systems of nineteenth-century Brazil, few eyewitnesses have captured the rich rural history of the twentieth century with such an intricate knowledge of history and folklore as Rodrigues.
Walking the Himalayas: An Adventure of Survival and Endurance
by Levison WoodWINNER OF THE 2016 EDWARD STANFORD ADVENTURE TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD'Levison Wood has breathed new life into adventure travel.' Michael Palin'Levison Wood is a great adventurer and a wonderful storyteller.' Sir Ranulph Fiennes'Britain's best-loved adventurer... he looks like a man who will stare danger in the face and soak up a lot of pain without complaint.' The TimesFollowing in in the footsteps of the great explorers, WALKING THE HIMALAYAS is Levison Wood's enthralling account of crossing the Himalayas on foot. His journey of discovery along the path of the ancient trade route of the Silk Road to the forgotten kingdom of Bhutan led him beyond the safety of the tourist trail. There lies the real world of the Himalayas, where ex-paratrooper Levison Wood encountered natural disasters, extremists, nomadic goat herders, shamans (and the Dalai Lama) in his 1,700-mile trek across the roof of the world. WALKING THE HIMALAYAS is a tale of courage, stamina and the kindness of strangers that will appeal to the adventurer in us all.
Walking the Himalayas: An Adventure of Survival and Endurance
by Levison WoodLevison Wood's most challenging expedition yet begins along the Silk Road route of Afghanistan and travels through five countries. Following in the footsteps of the great explorers, Levison walks the entire length of the Himalayas in an adventure of survival and endurance. A personal story of discovery, Levison forges strong bonds with local guides, porters, mountain men, soldiers, farmers, smugglers and shepherds. By travelling on foot, and following the same footpaths that locals use, he uncovers stories that might otherwise remain hidden. Along the way he also reveals the history of the Himalayas and two millennia of exploration, and examines a continent in crisis in the 21st century.Packed with action and emotion, more than anything Walking the Himalayas is a story of personal adventure and striving beyond the limits of convention.(P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton
Walking the Night Road: Coming of Age in Grief
by Alexandra ButlerThe house looked as if she'd brushed it over with a hurried hand. Things were open—drawers, cans, and closets. A pile of newspapers fanned out across the floor by the front door, and still I did not wonder. She must have dropped them as she ran, I thought. My mother was often late. But had I stopped to look, I would have seen the fear in the way the house had settled—a footstool that lay on its side, several books that had fallen from their shelves. When you count back, you can see a story from the end. I like that—the seemingly natural narrative that forms this way. With the end in my hand, the story becomes mine. I can have it all make sense, or I can lose my mind like she lost hers—like I lost her. But I can have my story. Walking the Night Road speaks to the experience of caring for a loved one with a terminal illness and the difficulties of encountering death. Alexandra Butler, daughter of the Pulitzer Prize–winning gerontologist Robert N. Butler and respected social worker and psychotherapist Myrna Lewis, composes a lyrical yet unsparing portrait of caring for her mother during her sudden, quick decline from brain cancer. Her rich account shares the strains of caregiving on both the provider and the person receiving care and recognizes the personal and professional sacrifices caregivers must make to fulfill the role. More than a memoir of dying and grief, Butler's account also tests many of the theories her parents pioneered in their work on healthy aging. Authors of such seminal works as Love and Sex After Sixty, Butler's parents were forced to rethink many of the tenets they lived by while Myrna was incapacitated, and Butler's father found himself relying heavily on his daughter to provide his wife's care. Butler's poignant and unflinching story is therefore a rare examination of the intimate aspects of aging and death experienced by practitioners who suddenly find themselves in the difficult position of the clients they once treated.
Walking the Road to Freedom: A Story about Sojourner Truth
by Jeri Chase FerrisTraces the life of the Black woman orator who spoke out against slavery throughout New England and the Midwest.
Walking the Woods and the Water
by Nick Hunt"Nick Hunt has written a glorious book, rich with insight and wit, about walking his way both across and into contemporary Europe. . . . So many memorable encounters with people and places! A book about gifts, modernity, endurance and landscape, it represents a fine addition to the literature of the leg."--Robert Macfarlane, award-winning travel writer, author of The Wild Places and The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot"This moving and profoundly honest book sometimes brings a sense of unlimited freedom, sometimes joy, sometimes an extraordinary, dream-like dislocation: always accompanied by a dazzling sharpness of hearing and vision. I see now how that youthful walk informed so much of Paddy's style. Before setting out Hunt was going to write to Paddy. The letter was never written, and by the time he set off, Paddy was dead. How touched and fascinated he would have been to read this book."--Artemis Cooper, biographer of Patrick Leigh Fermor and co-editor of The Broken RoadIn 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor set out to chance and charm his way across Europe, "like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar." The books he later wrote about this walk, including Between the Woods and the Water, are a half-remembered, half-reimagined journey through cultures now extinct and landscapes irrevocably altered by the traumas of the twentieth century.Nick Hunt dreamed of following in Fermor's footsteps. Eighty years later he began his own "great trudge"--on foot all the way to Istanbul. He walked across eight countries, following two major rivers and crossing three mountain ranges. With only Fermor's books to guide him, he trekked some 2,500 miles from Holland to Turkey.Why? For an old-fashioned adventure. To discover for himself what remained of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, the unknown, the deeper currents of myth that still flow beneath Europe's surface. This is a story worthy of Fermor's own.Nick Hunt is a travel writer, freelance journalist, fiction writer, and storyteller whose articles have appeared in the Economist, the Guardian, and other publications. He is also co-editor of The Dark Mountain.
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher'What's so impressive about Justin Butcher's book is the interweaving of his personal face-to-face experiences in Israel and Palestine against the backdrop of the social and political realities there. This book displays an empathy that is unusual in discussions of that tangled and tragic situation - the kind of empathy that will be essential in arriving at any decent solution to it.' BRIAN ENO 2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.'This is a gripping and intelligent book that everybody should read.' PATRICK COCKBURN, Middle East correspondent, The Independent
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.
Walking to Vermont
by Christopher S. WrenA distinguished former foreign correspondent embraces retirement by setting out alone on foot for nearly four hundred miles, and explores a side of America nearly as exotic as the locales from which he once filed. Traveling with an unwieldy pack and a keen curiosity, Christopher Wren bids farewell to the New York Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan and saunters up Broadway, through Harlem, the Bronx, and the affluent New York suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties. As his trek takes him into the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and along a bucolic riverbank in New Hampshire, the strenuous challenges become as much emotional as physical. Wren loses his way in a suburban thicket of million-dollar mansions, dodges speeding motorists, seeks serenity at a convent, shivers through a rainy night among Shaker ruins, camps in a stranger's backyard, panhandles cookies and water from a good samaritan, absorbs the lore of the Appalachian and Long Trails, sweats up and down mountains, and lands in a hospital emergency room. Struggling under the weight of a fifty-pound pack, he gripes, "We might grow less addicted to stuff if everything we bought had to be carried on our backs." He hangs out with fellow wanderers named Old Rabbit, Flash, Gatorman, Stray Dog, and Buzzard, and learns gratitude from the anonymous charity of trail angels. His rite of passage into retirement, with its heat and dust and blisters galore, evokes vivid reminiscences of earlier risks taken, sometimes at gunpoint, during his years spent reporting from Russia, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. He loses track of time, waking with the sun, stopping to eat when hunger gnaws, and camping under starry skies that transform the nights of solitude. For all the self-inflicted hardship, he reports, "In fact, I felt pretty good." Wren has woven an intensely personal story that is candid and often downright hilarious. As Vermont turns from a destination into a state of mind, he concludes, "I had stumbled upon the secret of how utterly irrelevant chronological age is." This book, from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Cat Who Covered the World, will delight not just hikers, walkers, and other lovers of the outdoors, but also anyone who contemplates retirement, wonders about foreign correspondents, or relishes a lively, off-beat adventure, even when it unfolds close to home.
Walking with Abel
by Anna BadkhenAn intrepid journalist joins the planet's largest group of nomads on an annual migration that, like them, has endured for centuries. Anna Badkhen has forged a career chronicling life in extremis around the world, from war-torn Afghanistan to the border regions of the American Southwest. In Walking with Abel, she embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys--nomadic herders in Mali's Sahel grasslands--as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna. It's a cycle that connects the Fulani to their past even as their present is increasingly under threat--from Islamic militants, climate change, and the ever-encroaching urbanization that lures away their young. The Fulani, though, are no strangers to uncertainty--brilliantly resourceful and resilient, they've contended with famines, droughts, and wars for centuries. Dubbed "Anna Ba" by the nomads, who embrace her as one of theirs, Badkhen narrates the Fulani's journeys and her own with compassion and keen observation, transporting us from the Neolithic Sahara crisscrossed by rivers and abundant with wildlife to obelisk forests where the Fulani's Stone Age ancestors painted tributes to cattle. As they cross the Sahel, the savanna belt that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, they accompany themselves with Fulani music they download to their cell phones and tales of herders and hustlers, griots and holy men, infused with the myths the Fulani tell themselves to ground their past, make sense of their identity, and safeguard their--our--future.
Walking with Beth: Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend
by Merilyn SimondsMerilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she&’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who&’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women&’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day.