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Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran
by Andy TaylorWild Boy is the explosive first inside account of the rise and fall of Duran Duran. The band rose to conquer the globe with a string of unforgettable hits such as "Rio," "Hungry Like the Wolf," and "The Reflex." With Simon Le Bon as their frontman, they were the defining pop act of the 1980s, but Andy Taylor, the enigmatic lead guitarist, is widely acknowledged to have been their musical driving force.Then, at the very height of their achievement in 1985, Duran Duran imploded. Now Andy shares the story of what went wrong. With searing honesty, he charts every moment of Duran Duran's roller-coaster rise from their early days as club musicians through to international superstardom. He captures the glamour and excitement of the band's epic video shoots and the opulence of their world tours.He reveals the truth about the allegations of drug abuse and wild hedonism that dogged Duran Duran. Packed with more than twenty-five years worth of rock 'n' roll anecdotes, Andy tells of his time in the band The Power Station, and explains why Duran Duran reformed with its original line-up in 2003. But Wild Boy is also a moving story on a human level, as Andy describes how the pressures of fame took a terrible personal toll on him and his family. Moving from hilarious to harrowing at the turn of a page, WILD BOY is a must-read for anyone who lived through the 1980s, or who cares about music.
Wild Boy: My Life with Duran Duran
by Andy TaylorThe first member of Duran Duran to write his memoirs tells the full story of the excesses, glamour and excitement they lived through in the 1980s.When 19-year-old Andy Taylor returned from his band's tour of military bases in Germany and saw an advert in Melody Maker in April 1980 asking for a 'live wire guitarist' to audition in Birmingham, he saw his chance. Even he could not have predicted what happened next. The group, Duran Duran, released their first single, 'Planet Earth', ten months later and soon became the biggest band since the Beatles. Emerging in the post-punk era, Duran headed the New Romantic movement and with their stunning videos and style consciousness, they set the trend for the consumerist 1980s. Popular with everyone from rockers to Princess Diana, they had a string of massive worldwide hits such as 'Rio', 'The Reflex' and 'A View to a Kill'. They won Grammys and an Ivor Novello award among many other things.By Live Aid, in 1985, they were at their very pinnacle of success - and then the band began to fall apart. At the centre of it all, giving the group its musical pulse, was lead guitarist Andy Taylor. In this revealing and raw memoir, Taylor recalls the highs and lows of an unbelievable period where the squeaky clean facade hid the truth of wild partying as five young men took just about every opportunity that was offered to them.Andy Taylor's story is of an era when MTV was new, the media allowed superstars to get away with lots and rock stars knew how to party like there was no tomorrow. Wild Boy is a book that millions of fans of Duran Duran around the world will want to read to know the full story of what really happened.
Wild Boy: My Life with Duran Duran
by Andy TaylorThe first member of Duran Duran to write his memoirs tells the full story of the excesses, glamour and excitement they lived through in the 1980s.When 19-year-old Andy Taylor returned from his band's tour of military bases in Germany and saw an advert in Melody Maker in April 1980 asking for a 'live wire guitarist' to audition in Birmingham, he saw his chance. Even he could not have predicted what happened next. The group, Duran Duran, released their first single, 'Planet Earth', ten months later and soon became the biggest band since the Beatles. Emerging in the post-punk era, Duran headed the New Romantic movement and with their stunning videos and style consciousness, they set the trend for the consumerist 1980s. Popular with everyone from rockers to Princess Diana, they had a string of massive worldwide hits such as 'Rio', 'The Reflex' and 'A View to a Kill'. They won Grammys and an Ivor Novello award among many other things.By Live Aid, in 1985, they were at their very pinnacle of success - and then the band began to fall apart. At the centre of it all, giving the group its musical pulse, was lead guitarist Andy Taylor. In this revealing and raw memoir, Taylor recalls the highs and lows of an unbelievable period where the squeaky clean facade hid the truth of wild partying as five young men took just about every opportunity that was offered to them.Andy Taylor's story is of an era when MTV was new, the media allowed superstars to get away with lots and rock stars knew how to party like there was no tomorrow. Wild Boy is a book that millions of fans of Duran Duran around the world will want to read to know the full story of what really happened.
Wild Card Quilt: The Ecology of Home (The\world As Home Ser.)
by Janisse RayThis account of rediscovering her Georgia home and its landscapes is “another must-read book” by the author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Tulsa World).Seventeen years after she’d left “for good,” Janisse Ray pointed her truck away from Montana and back to the small southern town where she was born. Wild Card Quilt is the story, by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and ambitious, of the adventures of returning home. For Ray, a naturalist and an American Book Award–winning author, it is a story of linking the ecology of people with the ecology of place—of recovering lost traditions as she works to restore the fractured ecosystem of her native South. Her story is filled with syrup boils, quilt making, alligator trapping, and the wonderful characters of a place where generations still succeed each other on the land. But her town is also in need of repair, physical and otherwise. This memoir recounts Ray’s journey as she works to save her local school, sets up a writing group at the local hardware store—and struggles with whether she can be an adult in a childhood place.“Alive with good imagery and colorful characters.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“This is nature writing at its best . . . Her book will make you long for home.” —St. Petersburg Times
Wild Child: Coming Home to Nature
by Patrick Barkham&“Quiet but compelling arguments about the importance of kids getting out more and connecting to nature . . . A book that deserves to flourish.&” —The Guardian From climbing trees and making dens, to building sandcastles and pond-dipping, many of the activities we associate with a happy childhood take place outdoors. And yet, the reality for many contemporary children is very different. The studies tell us that we are raising a generation who are so alienated from nature that they can&’t identify the commonest birds or plants, they don&’t know where their food comes from, they are shuttled between home, school and the shops and spend very little time in green spaces—let alone roaming free. In this timely and personal book, celebrated nature writer Patrick Barkham draws on his own experience as a parent and a forest school volunteer to explore the relationship between children and nature. Unfolding over the course of a year of snowsuits, muddy wellies, and sunhats, Wild Child is both an intimate story of children finding their place in the natural world and a celebration of the delight we can all find in even modest patches of green. &“Entrancing . . . If ever there was a book to fuel the ecological interest of future generations, this is it.&”—Isabella Tree, author of Wilding &“Barkham takes us through a year giving his children an education in wildness. He encourages them that a physical relationship with wildlife is of the utmost importance . . . His memoir reveals the abundance of wildlife that can be explored in our own back gardens.&” —The Herald
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge
by John GimletteGuyana, Suriname, and French Guiana are among the least-known places in South America: nine hundred miles of muddy coastline giving way to a forest so dense that even today there are virtually no roads through it; a string of rickety coastal towns situated between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers, where living is so difficult that as many Guianese live abroad as in their homelands; an interior of watery, green anarchy where border disputes are often based on ancient Elizabethan maps, where flora and fauna are still being discovered, where thousands of rivers remain mostly impassable. And under the lens of John Gimlette--brilliantly offbeat, irreverent, and canny--these three small countries are among the most wildly intriguing places on earth. On an expedition that will last three months, he takes us deep into a remarkable world of swamp and jungle, from the hideouts of runaway slaves to the vegetation-strangled remnants of penal colonies and forts, from "Little Paris" to a settlement built around a satellite launch pad. He recounts the complicated, often surprisingly bloody, history of the region--including the infamous 1978 cult suicide at Jonestown--and introduces us to its inhabitants: from the world's largest ants to fluorescent purple frogs to head-crushing jaguars; from indigenous tribes who still live by sorcery to descendants of African slaves, Dutch conquerors, Hmong refugees, Irish adventurers, and Scottish outlaws; from high-tech pirates to hapless pioneers for whom this stunning, strangely beautiful world ("a sort of X-rated Garden of Eden") has become home by choice or by force. In Wild Coast, John Gimlette guides us through a fabulously entertaining, eye-opening--and sometimes jaw-dropping--journey.
Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature
by Kathleen Dean MooreIn an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This book is the record of her experiences. It's a stunning collection of carefully observed accounts of her life--tracking otters on the beach, cooking breakfast in the desert, canoeing in a snow squall, wading among migrating salmon in the dark--but it is also a profound meditation on the healing power of nature. To learn more about the author, visit her website at www.riverwalking.com.
Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic
by Mel Ziegler Patricia ZieglerIn the tradition of Pour Your Heart Into It and How Starbucks Saved My Life, a surprising and inspiring memoir from the founders of Banana Republic.With $1,500 and no business experience, Mel and Patricia Ziegler turned a wild idea into a company that would become the international retail colossus Banana Republic. Re-imagining military surplus as safari and expedition wear, the former journalist and artist created a world that captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to the creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone. In a book that&’s honest, funny, and charming, Mel and Patricia tell in alternating voices how they upended business conventions and survived on their wits and imagination. Many retail and fashion merchants still consider Banana Republic&’s early heyday to be one of the most remarkable stories in fashion and business history. The couple detail how, as &“professional amateurs,&” they developed the wildly original merchandise and marketing innovations that broke all retail records and produced what has been acclaimed by industry professionals to be &“the best catalogue of all time.&” A love story wrapped in a business adventure, Wild Company is a soulful, inspiring tale for readers determined to create their own destiny with a passion for life and work and fun.
Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision
by William Lee AdamsA memoir of glitz, glamour, geopolitics, and the power of pop music, following a misunderstood queer biracial kid from small-town Georgia who became the world's foremost Eurovision Song Contest blogger.As a boy, William Lee Adams spent his days taking care of his quadriplegic brother, while worrying about his undiagnosed bipolar Vietnamese mother, and steering clear of his openly racist and homophobic father. Too shy and anxious to even speak until he was six years old, it seemed unlikely William would ever leave small-town Georgia. He passed the time alone in his room, studying maps and reading encyclopedias, dreaming of distant places where he might one day feel free.In time, William discovered that learning was both a refuge and a ticket out. So even as he struggled to understand and to get others to accept both his sexuality and his biracial identity, William focused on his schoolwork, his extracurricular activities, and building community with the students and teachers who embraced him for who he truly was. Though his scholarship to Harvard parachuted him into a whole new world, he still carried a lifetime of secrets and unanswered questions that would haunt him no matter how far he traveled.Years later, as a journalist in London, William discovered the Eurovision Song Contest—an annual competition known for its extravagant performers and cutthroat politics. Initially just a fan, he started blogging about the contest, ultimately becoming the most sought-after expert on the subject. From Albania, Finland, and Ukraine, to Israel, Sweden, and Russia, William was soon jetting across the Continent to meet divas, drag queens, and aspiring singers, who welcomed him to their beautiful, if dysfunctional, family of choice.An uplifting memoir about glitz, glamour, geopolitics, and finding your people, no matter how far you must travel, Wild Dances celebrates the power of pop music to help us heal and forgive.
Wild Ducks Flying Backward
by Tom RobbinsKnown for his meaty seriocomic novels, Tom Robbins's shorter work has appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper's, from Playboy to the New York Times. Collected here for the first time in paperback, the essays, articles, observations--and even some untypical country-music lyrics--offer a rare overview of the eclectic sensibility of an American original. Whether rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso's Guernica, lamenting the angst-ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls "the genius waitress," Tom Robbins's briefer writings exhibit the five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty eroticism, a mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language. Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are brand-new short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an offbeat assessment of our divided nation. herever you open Wild Ducks Flying Backward, you'll encounter the serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self-described "romantic Zen hedonist" and "stray dog in the banquet halls of culture. "
Wild Flowers and How They Grew
by Barbara OaksThis is a story of a circle of friendships in Huron, SD at the turn of the century (1900-1990). The friendship that blossomed and changed as friends grew up, changed, married, had children, new friends came into their circle, left and in later year later these friends passed away. It shows how history and friendships weave themselves together, and how anyone who has a friend can understand the emotions this book imparts.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur“Exquisite and harrowing.” —New York Times Book Review“This electrifying, gorgeously written memoir will hold you captive until the last word.” —People NAMED A BEST FALL BOOK BY People * Refinery29 * Entertainment Weekly * BuzzFeed * NPR’s On Point * Town & Country * Real Simple * New York Post * Palm Beach Post * Toronto Star * Orange Country Register * Bustle * Bookish * BookPage * Kirkus* BBC Culture* Debutiful A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity. On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me. Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms. Wild Game is a brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us.
Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk
by Xun LuA brilliant new translation of the short improvisational fiction and memoirs of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature.This captivating translation assembles two volumes by Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature and one of East Asia’s most important thinkers at the turn of the twentieth century. Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk represent a pinnacle of achievement alongside Lu Xun’s famed short stories.In Wild Grass, a collection of twenty-three experimental pieces, surreal scenes come alive through haunting language and vivid imagery. These are landscapes populated by ghosts, talking animals, and sentient plants, where a protagonist might come face-to-face with their own corpse. By depicting the common struggle of real and imagined creatures to survive in an inhospitable world, Lu Xun asks the deceptively simple question, “What does it mean to be human?”Alongside Wild Grass is Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk, a memoir in eight essays capturing the literary master’s formative years and featuring a motley cast of dislocated characters—children, servants, outcasts, the dead and the dying. Giving voice to vulnerable subjects and depicting their hopes and despair as they negotiate an unforgiving existence, Morning Blossoms affirms the value of all beings and elucidates a central predicament of the human condition: feeling without a home in the world.Beautifully translated and introduced by Eileen J. Cheng, these lyrical texts blur the line between autobiography and literary fiction. Together the two collections provide a new window into Lu Xun’s mind and his quest to find beauty and meaning in a cruel and unjust world.
Wild Green Oranges: An Autobiographical Novel
by Bob BaldockBob Baldock spent five months in the Sierra Maestra of Cuba in1958 with Fidel Castro's combat unit, Movimiento 26 de Julio. While there, he was the only U.S. citizen from the mainland to see action in combat with Fidel's unit. Essentially autobiographical, Wild Green Oranges is a novel based on those experiences.
Wild Heart: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris
by Suzanne RodriguezBorn in 1876, Natalie Barney-beautiful, charismatic, brilliant and wealthy-was expected to marry well and lead the conventional life of a privileged society woman. But Natalie had no interest in marriage and made no secret of the fact that she was attracted to women. Brought up by a talented and rebellious mother-the painter Alice Barney-Natalie cultivated an interest in poetry and the arts. When she moved to Paris in the early 1900s, she plunged into the city's literary scene, opening a famed Left Bank literary salon and engaging in a string of scandalous affairs with courtesan Liane de Pougy, poet Renee Vivien, and painter Romaine Brooks, among others. For the rest of her long and controversial life Natalie Barney was revered by writers for her generous, eccentric spirit and reviled by high society for her sexual appetite. In the end, she served as an inspiration and came to know many of the greatest names of 20th century arts and letters-including Proust, Colette, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Truman Capote.A dazzling literary biography, Wild Heart: A Life is a story of a woman who has been an icon to many. Set against the backdrop of two different societies-Victorian America and Belle Epoque Europe—Wild Heart: A Life beautifully captures the richness of their lore.
Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs
by David Cruise Alison GriffithsIn 1950, Velma Johnston was a secretary at an insurance company in Reno, Nevada. Twenty years later, she had become a national hero, responsible for spurring Congress into passing legislation that protected wild horses, a feat that cemented her renown as "Wild Horse Annie. " This stirring biography is the first to tell the story of Johnston's life and her extraordinary dedication to the mustangs that represent the spirit of the West. Veteran writers David Cruise and Alison Griffiths paint a vivid portrait of this intrepid woman, who survived a cruelly disfiguring bout with polio as a child and channeled her energy and intellect into her career and marriage -- until she encountered a truck of injured, half-dead horses on her way to work in 1950. Those horses, destined for a pet food rendering plant, launched Johnston into a decades-long campaign against ranchers and the U. S. Bureau of Land Management to stop the roundup and slaughter of mustangs. At a time when animal rights was barely a cause and women were still expected to stay at home, Johnston embarked on dangerous vigilante missions to free captured horses and document roundups, and began a highly organized one-woman campaign to raise public awareness of their plight, all while continuing to work and maintain a household. Johnston's courage, determination, and innovative tactics -- she initiated a children's letter-writing campaign that flooded Congress with more mail than it had received on any issue except the Vietnam War -- pitted her against ranchers and powerful politicians, but eventually won her support and admiration around the world, including the friendship of celebrated children's author Marguerite Henry, who fictionalized her story in a children's novel. In this absorbing and carefully researched biography, Cruise and Griffiths depict the ups and downs of a remarkable woman's life and mission, reveal her lasting legacy, and capture the romance and magic of the wild horses that inspired her.
Wild Horse Annie: Friend of the Mustangs
by Tracey Fern"Wild Horse Annie" was the nickname of Velma Bronn Johnston (1912–77), who loved mustangs all her life. When she saw mustangs being rounded up and killed to make room for ranchers' livestock, she knew she had to speak up. In 1950, she began writing letters to local newspapers and politicians, defending the horses' right to roam free. Many people told Annie to hush up, but they couldn't stop her. She soon became a voice for mustangs throughout the state of Nevada, speaking on their behalf at town halls and meetings.But Annie was only one person, and she wanted to do more. So she got children to speak up, too, by having them write letters to Washington, D.C., officials to ask them to save the mustangs. Finally, with the help of her young “pencil brigade,” Annie persuaded Congress to pass nationwide laws protecting wild horses and burros on public land nationwide.Readers will find inspiration in author Tracey Fern and artist Steven Salerno's portrait of an early animal-rights advocate, who spoke up for what she believed in, and empowered a generation of children to be a voice for the voiceless.
Wild Horses of the Summer Sun: A Memoir Of Iceland
by Tory BilskiA wondrous story of adventure and friendship featuring a group of women who ride Icelandic horses. "Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us."—Virgina Woolf Each June, Tory Bilski meets up with fellow women travelers in Reykjavik where they head to northern Iceland, near the Greenland Sea. They escape their ordinary lives to live an extraordinary one at a horse farm perched at the edge of the world. If only for a short while. When they first came to Thingeryar, these women were strangers to one another. The only thing they had in common was their passion for Icelandic horses. However, over the years, their relationships with each other deepens, growing older together and keeping each other young. Combining the self-discovery Eat, Pray, Love, the sense of place of Under the Tuscan Sun, and the danger of Wild, Wild Horses of the Summer Sun revels in Tory's quest for the "wild" inside her. These women leave behind the usual troubles at home: affairs, sick parents, troubled teenagers, financial worries—and embrace their desire for adventure. Buoyed by their friendships with each other and their growing attachments and bonds with the otherworldly horses they ride, the warmth of Tingeryar's midnight sun carries these women through the rest of the year's trials and travails. Filled with adventure and fresh humor, as well as an incredible portrait of Iceland and its remarkable equines, Wild Horses of the Summer Sun will enthrall and delight not just horse lovers, but those of us who yearn for a little more wild in everyday life.
Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land
by Dan O'BrienFor more than forty years the prairies of South Dakota have been Dan O’Brien’s home. Working as a writer and an endangered-species biologist, he became convinced that returning grass-fed, free-roaming buffalo to the grasslands of the northern plains would return natural balance to the region and reestablish the undulating prairie lost through poor land management and overzealous farming. In 1998 he bought his first buffalo and began the task of converting a little cattle ranch into an ethically run buffalo ranch. Wild Idea is a book about how good food choices can influence federal policies and the integrity of our food system, and about the dignity and strength of a legendary American animal. It is also a book about people: the daughter coming to womanhood in a hard landscape, the friend and ranch hand who suffers great tragedy, the venture capitalist who sees hope and opportunity in a struggling buffalo business, and the husband and wife behind the ranch who struggle daily, wondering if what they are doing will ever be enough to make a difference. At its center, Wild Idea is about a family and the people and animals that surround them—all trying to build a healthy life in a big, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous land.
Wild Irish Roses: Tales of Brigits, Kathleens, and Warrior Queens
by Trina RobbinsForget the myth of the sweet Irish colleen. Real Irish women were no cream-puff debs. From the ancient warrior queens Marrigan, Macha, and Badbh to the labor-movement maven Mother Jones, Irish women have backbones of steel. Wild Irish Roses is a fascinating look at wild Irish women throughout history; serious information imparted in Trina Robbins' trademark style, with verve and humor. The women in Wild Irish Roses are not always nice girls or even good girls, but they are women who know how to get things done, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom. These are women who preserved and handed down the old stories. They are women who fought in revolutions with either gun or pen, wrote books, starred in books others wrote, and stormed heaven itself. <P><P>Author Trina Robbins is an impeccable researcher whose knack for telling stories brings each of these wild Irish roses to life, including: Maeve and six other warrior queens, Grania and Deirdre, who ran away from kings for the love of younger men, Five women who turned themselves into birds to get the job done right, Saint Brigit and the saintly Kathleen O'Shea, Cultural revivalist Maude Gonne and friends, Irish-American beauty roses, including Scarlett O'Hara, and pirates and warriors in their own right, such as Mother Jones and Anne Bonny. It's a book that is sure to entertain, inform, and inspire readers of every background to find the Irish rose in themselves-to discover what they want and have the courage to go out and get it. A list of books and web addresses for further reading and the index are included.
Wild Island: A Year in the Hebrides
by Jane SmithThis memoir of a year on a virtually uninhabited Scottish island, including illustrations of flora and fauna, is &“the next best thing to being there&” (Scotland on Sunday).Wild Island depicts a year in the life of Oronsay, a remote Scottish island that is farmed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and follows artist Jane Smith as she attempts to portray the interactions of wildlife, farm animals, and a small number of human inhabitants. A humorous, first-hand, personal view of island life, both human and otherwise, the book is illustrated with Smith&’s vibrant and acutely observed sketches, paintings, and prints. She invites us into her world as she delves into such questions as: What does it feel like to sit in a bog all day? Where are a bird's knees? And why do I always wind up covered in acrylic paint? Musing on encounters with creatures from otters to oil beetles, conservation management, and the tides, winds, and ferries that affect each journey to and from the island, Smith offers a beautiful portrait of a special place—and shares the ridiculous things that happen when living on a remote island, cut off from the rest of the world.
Wild Life
by Simon KingEven as a very young child, Simon King was passionate about the natural world. Being savaged by a rabid cheetah, charged at by rhinos and elephants and defecated upon by a long list of birds and other animals may sound like hell to some. But these, along with countless other experiences alongside all things furry, scaly, slimy and feathery have provided him with an enormously rich bank of tales to relive and retell. With his professional life starting aged ten, acting in a television drama called The Fox, (for which he looked after an orphaned fox for two years at home), through projects such as Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Diary to name just a few, Simon King has traveled to every continent and lived in extreme conditions from remote desert to Arctic and Antarctic wilderness. With characteristic honesty and charm, Simon King weaves his animal stories amongst encounters with extraordinary people, and astonishing places to give us a memoir that will delight readers.
Wild Life
by Simon KingEven as a very young child, Simon King was passionate about the natural world. Being savaged by a rabid cheetah, charged at by rhinos and elephants and defecated upon by a long list of birds and other animals may sound like hell to some. But these, along with countless other experiences alongside all things furry, scaly, slimy and feathery have provided him with an enormously rich bank of tales to relive and retell. With his professional life starting aged ten, acting in a television drama called The Fox, (for which he looked after an orphaned fox for two years at home), through projects such as Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Diary to name just a few, Simon King has traveled to every continent and lived in extreme conditions from remote desert to Arctic and Antarctic wilderness. With characteristic honesty and charm, Simon King weaves his animal stories amongst encounters with extraordinary people, and astonishing places to give us a memoir that will delight readers.
Wild Life
by Simon KingEven as a very young child, Simon King was passionate about the natural world. Expressed in a variety of ways, from keeping faintly rotting animal parts in his underwear drawer (as a 10-year-old), to making several hundred films about wildlife, his enduring interest in all things wild and free has been a way of, rather than a part of his life. Being savaged by a rabid cheetah, charged at by rhinos and elephants and defecated upon by a long list of birds and other animals may sound like hell to some. But these, along with countless other experiences alongside all things furry, scaly, slimy and feathery have provided him with an enormously rich bank of tales to relive and retell. With his professional life starting aged ten, acting in a television drama called The Fox, (for which he looked after an orphaned fox for two years at home), through projects such as Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Diary to name just a few, Simon King has travelled to every continent and lived in extreme conditions from remote desert to Arctic and Antarctic wilderness. With characteristic honesty and charm, Simon King weaves his animal stories amongst encounters with extraordinary people (from the San Bushmen to David Attenborough) and astonishing places to give us a memoir that will delight readers.(P)2009 Hodder & Stoughton
Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs
by Keena RobertsDon't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight meets Mean Girls in this funny, insightful fish-out-of-water memoir about a young girl coming of age half in a "baboon camp" in Botswana, half in a ritzy Philadelphia suburb.Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents were studying. She could wield a spear as easily as a pencil, and it wasn't unusual to be chased by lions or elephants on any given day. But for the months of the year when her family lived in the United States, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the far more treacherous landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy.Most girls Keena's age didn't spend their days changing truck tires, baking their own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They also didn't carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena's parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players. In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.