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Sally Ride: America's first woman in space
By Lynn Sherr. 2014
Journalist examines the life of Sally Ride (1951-2012), the first American woman astronaut to go to space. Details Ride's childhood…
and early life in California, her selection as an astronaut, and post-mission endeavors to encourage girls' interest in science fields. Discusses Ride's private life and relationships. 2014
No one wins alone
By Mark Messier, Jimmy Roberts. 2021
For the first time, the legendary Hall of Fame hockey player and six-time Stanley Cup champion tells the impressive story…
of his life and career, and shares the lessons he's learned about leadership. Mark Messier is one of the most accomplished athletes and dynamic leaders in the history of professional sports. He won the Stanley Cup five times with the Edmonton Oilers during their dynasty years, and once more with the New York Rangers, ending the team's fifty-four-year championship drought. He is second on the all-time career lists for playoff points, and third for regular season games played and for regular season points. Notably, he is the only player to have captained two different NHL franchises to championships. The amazing records are there for anyone to see, but few people know the real Mark Messier. This is his story. Messier reveals the astonishing journey he took to making NHL history, and the leadership philosophy he learned along the way. He recounts never-before-told tales from his childhood as the son of a hockey player, coach, and special education teacher; his years as a teammate and friend of Wayne Gretzky; and his evolution from a brash eighteen-year-old rookie to a distinctive captain and champion. Though bruising on the ice, he led teams with a deep understanding of what inspires and motivates people. He shares the advice he got from the inspirational leaders who had the greatest influence on him, and the lessons he gleaned from the pivotal successes—and sometimes failures—of his career. More than a book about hockey, No One Wins Alone demonstrates what it means to build a life, achieve dreams, and support the people around you. "My real wish," Messier says, "is to inspire people to reach their full potential."
Gary Jobson: an American sailing story
By Gary Jobson, Cynthia Goss. 2011
Autobiography of sailor and sports journalist Jobson relates his promotion of yacht racing, particularly the America's Cup. Discusses his childhood…
love of the water, his time at SUNY Maritime College, and the innovations he introduced to the sport. Describes his 2003 diagnosis of lymphoma and subsequent treatments and remission. 2011
The floor of heaven: a true tale of the last frontier and the Yukon gold rush
By Howard Blum. 2011
Chronicles the discovery of gold in 1890s Alaska and the Canadian Klondike through the lives of three of the participants:…
cowboy-turned-Pinkerton-detective Charlie Siringo; George Carmack, who lived with a local tribe and became rich from mining; and con man Jefferson "Soapy" Smith. 2011
The last Viking: the life of Roald Amundsen (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)
By Stephen R. Bown, Stephen Bown. 2012
Author of Madness, Betrayal, and the Lash (DB 72284) and Scurvy (DB 59013) profiles the life of Norwegian adventurer Roald…
Amundsen (1872-1928). Examines Amundsen's explorations and navigation of the Northwest and Northeast Passages and details his trips to the North and South Poles. 2012
Mountains of the mind: adventures in reaching the summit (Landscapes)
By Robert Macfarlane. 2004
Author of The Wild Places (DB 69068) examines the sport of mountain climbing from its earliest days in the late…
1700s to the early 2000s. Discusses the dangerous draw for explorers like George Mallory, whose attempt to summit Everest led to his death in 1924. Includes Macfarlane's personal experiences. 2003
Before the Lights Go Out: A Season Inside a Game on the Brink
By Sean Fitz-Gerald. 2019
A love letter to a sport that's losing itself, from one of Canada's best sports writers.Canadian hockey is approaching a…
state of crisis. It's become more expensive, more exclusive, and effectively off-limits to huge swaths of the potential sports-loving population. Youth registration numbers are stagnant; efforts to appeal to new Canadians are often grim at best; the game, increasingly, does not resemble the country of which it's for so long been an integral part. These signs worried Sean Fitz-Gerald. As a lifelong hockey fan and father of a young mixed-race son falling headlong in love with the game, he wanted to get to the roots of these issues. His entry point: a season with the Peterborough Petes, a storied OHL team far from its former glory in a once-emblematic Canadian city that is finding itself on the wrong side of the country's changing demographics. Fitz-Gerald profiles the players, coaches and front office staff, a mix of world-class talents with NHL aspirations and Peterborough natives happy with more modest dreams. Through their experiences, their widely varied motivations and expectations, we get a rich, colourful understanding of who ends up playing hockey in Canada and why. Fitz-Gerald interweaves the action of the season with portraits of public figures who've shaped and been shaped by the game: authors who captured its spirit, politicians who exploited it, and broadcasters who try to embody and sell it. He finds his way into community meetings full of angry season ticket holders, as well as into sterile boardrooms full of the sport's institutional brain trust, unable to break away from the inertia of tradition and hopelessly at war with itself. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald's warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it's not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?
No baggage: a minimalist tale of love & wandering
By Clara Bensen. 2016
Woman chronicles a three-week trip through Europe and Turkey with a man she had met on a dating site only…
a few weeks earlier. They traveled with no luggage and no set agenda or reservations. Discusses their adventures, the philosophy of minimalism, and the development of their relationship. 2016
438 days: an extraordinary true story of survival at sea
By Jonathan Franklin. 2015
Author of 33 Men (DB 73380) recounts the journey of Salvador Alvarenga and Ezequiel Córdoba, lost at sea off the…
coast of Mexico during a storm in 2012. Describes conditions aboard their small fishing vessel, shark attacks, Córdoba's death, and Alvarenga's eventual return to land in 2014. Strong language. 2015
Lives in ruins: archaeologists and the seductive lure of human rubble
By Marilyn Johnson. 2014
Examination of those who choose a career in the field of archaeology--the study of the material remains of culture. Discusses…
the ways in which people are drawn into the field--such as a love of Indiana Jones--challenges archaeologists face in the twenty-first century, and day-to-day lives of practitioners. 2014
Tells the story of British WW I veteran James Howard "Billy" Williams, who found his calling working with logging elephants…
in Burma. When WW II broke out, Williams used his strong bond with the animals to lead the Elephant Company, which was instrumental in defeating the Japanese who invaded Burma. 2014
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American trailblazer
By Robin Varnum. 2014
Considers the life of influential Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1559), who traversed over 2,500 miles across the…
American southwest and was later governor of the Río de la Plata province in South America. Some violence. 2014
Bushmaster: Raymond Ditmars and the hunt for the world's largest viper
By Dan Eatherley. 2015
Natural-history documentarian details the life of herpetologist and reptile curator at the Bronx Zoo Raymond Ditmars (1876-1942). Describes Ditmars's early…
interest in snakes and reptiles, work he contributed to the creation of antivenin, educational films he created in the 1910s and 1920s, and obsession with the bushmaster viper. 2015
The mountain: my time on Everest
By David Roberts, Ed Viesturs. 2013
Viesturs, an American mountaineer, recounts historical expeditions to the summit of Mount Everest and describes the dangerous allure of the…
world's most famous mountain. Includes attempts made by George Mallory, Sir Edmund Hillary, Scott Fischer, Rob Hall, and his own seven successful climbs of the earth's highest peak. 2013
Award-winning journalist explores the enduring mystery of Michael Rockefeller's 1961 disappearance in New Guinea while on a quest for aboriginal…
art. Retracing Rockefeller's steps, Hoffman offers a reconstruction of the fate that befell the heir of one of America's richest families. 2014
Citizen explorer: the life of Zebulon Pike
By Jared Orsi. 2014
Biography of American brigadier general and explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1779-1813), who embarked on a series of legendary expeditions seeking…
the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, and who discovered the mountain later named after him--Pike's Peak. 2014
The lost cyclist: the epic tale of an American adventurer and his mysterious disappearance
By David Herlihy, David V Herlihy. 2011
Recounts the ill-fated trek of Pittsburgh bookkeeper Frank Lenz, who set out in 1892 to bicycle across the world but…
disappeared two years later in Turkey. Describes the effort to find Lenz, led by William Sachtleben--who had earlier cycled around the world himself. 2010
The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend
By Adam Shoalts. 2021
NATIONAL BESTSELLERSpellbinding adventure from Canada's most beloved modern-day explorer.Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A…
century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres.In the early 1900s, this isolated little settlement was the scene of an extraordinary haunting by large creatures none could identify. Strange tracks were found in the woods. Unearthly cries were heard in the night. Sled dogs went missing. Children reported being stalked by a terrifying grinning animal. Families slept with cabin doors barred and axes and guns at their bedsides.Tales of things that "go bump in the night" are part of the folklore of the wilderness, told and retold around countless campfires down through the ages. Most are easily dismissed by skeptics. But what happened at Traverspine a hundred years ago was different. The eye-witness accounts were detailed, and those who reported them included no less than three medical doctors and a wildlife biologist.Something really did emerge from the wilderness to haunt the little settlement of Traverspine. Adam Shoalts, decorated modern-day explorer and an expert on wilderness folklore, picks up the trail from a century ago and sets off into the Labrador wild to investigate the tale. It is a spine-tingling adventure, straight from a land steeped in legends and lore, where Vikings wandered a thousand years ago and wolves and bears still roam free.In delving into the dark corners of Canada's wild, The Whisper on the Night Wind combines folklore, history, and adventure into a fascinating saga of exploration.
Storm kings: the untold history of America's first tornado chasers
By Lee Sandlin. 2013
Examines the origins of meteorology and the study of tornadoes in the United States. Profiles early investigators of tornado activity,…
including Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and James Espy (1785-1860). Chronicles the creation and growth of national weather bureaus. 2013
Orr: my story
By Bobby Orr. 2013
Autobiography of hockey great Bobby Orr (born 1948), who played with the Boston Bruins from 1966 to 1976, then retired…
after two seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks. Orr highlights his idyllic Canadian childhood, time in the minor leagues, professional success, and the injuries that ended his career. 2013