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Pride and Persistence: Stories of Queer Activism (Do You Know My Name? #4)
By Mary Fairhurst Breen. 2023
The activists between these pages have stood up for the queer community, whether on their own behalf or in support…
of people they love. Some made a difference by confronting injustice; others dared to be fully themselves.See It, Dream It, Do It: How 25 people just like you found their dream jobs
By Colleen Nelson, Kathie MacIsaac. 2023
From award-winning author Colleen Nelson, and literacy advocate Kathie MacIsaac, twenty-five profiles present a plethora of jobs, and people, making…
it easier than ever for young people to see their dreams and to live their dreams!Terry & Me: The Inside Story of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope
By Bill Vigars. 2023
There has never been a Canadian quite like Terry Fox and there’s never been a story quite like The Marathon…
of Hope.A twenty-two-year-old cancer survivor and amputee, Terry set out from St. John’s, Newfoundland in April 1980, aiming to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. His first months on the road in Atlantic Canada and Quebec were not only physically taxing—he ran the equivalent of a marathon a day—but frustrating as Canadians were slow to recognize and support his endeavor.That all changed when he met a young man named Bill Vigars, who on behalf of the Canadian Cancer Society led a campaign to ensure that every person in Canada knew the story of this outstanding young man. Vigars was by Fox’s side through all the highs and lows until the tragic end of his journey in Thunder Bay. A recurrence of his cancer cut short Terry’s dream and, soon, his life. Now, for the first time, Vigars tells the inside story of the Marathon of Hope—the logistical nightmares, boardroom battles, and moments of pure magic—while giving us a fresh, insightful portrait of one of the greatest Canadians who ever lived.Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist
By Dustin Galer. 2023
The story of a mid-century working-class housewife whose extraordinary physical transformation empowered her to become a dynamic social activist who…
fueled a movement to create a more inclusive future for people with disabilities.Brought to you by Penguin. The incredible, Sunday Times bestselling follow-up to one of the most talked about books of…
the decade, The Salt Path . Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 miles homeless along The Salt Path, the windswept and wild English coastline now feels like their home. And despite Moth's terminal diagnosis, against all medical odds, he seems revitalized in nature - outside, they discover that anything is possible. Now, life beyond The Salt Path awaits. As they return to four walls, the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything: A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful but neglected farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows becomes their new path. Along the way, Raynor and Moth learn more about the land that envelopes them, find friends both new and old, and, of course, embark on another windswept adventure when the opportunity arises. The Wild Silence is a luminous story of hope triumphing over despair, of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and of lifelong love prevailing over everything. © Raynor Winn 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020How to build a car: The autobiography of the world's greatest formula 1 designer
By Adrian Newey. 2017
'Adrian has a unique gift for understanding drivers and racing cars. He is ultra competitive but never forgets to have…
fun. An immensely likeable man.' Damon Hill The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved. A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrian's thoughts naturally emerged in shape and form – he began sketching his own car designs at the age of 12 and took a welding course in his school summer holidays. From his early career in IndyCar racing and on to his unparalleled success in Formula One, we learn in comprehensive, engaging and highly entertaining detail how a car actually works. Adrian has designed for the likes of Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, always with a shark-like purity of purpose: to make the car go faster. And while his career has been marked by unbelievable triumphs, there have also been deep tragedies; most notably Ayrton Senna's death during his time at Williams in 1994. Beautifully illustrated with never-before-seen drawings, How to Build a Car encapsulates, through Adrian's remarkable life story, precisely what makes Formula One so thrilling – its potential for the total synchronicity of man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency and speedConflicted scars: An average player's journey to the nhl
By Justin Davis. 2022
An indispensable guide to parents of hockey hopefuls At a time of great change in hockey, Justin Davis exposes the…
dark underbelly of the journey from the minors to the big leagues Hockey culture: it's a commonly used phrase inside the game, glorifying sacrifice, toughness, loyalty, and a sense of identity. Justin Davis viewed this culture as something he was lucky enough to experience. After all, he'd won a Memorial Cup after leading the tournament in scoring, and he'd been drafted by the Washington Capitals. "In my mind," he says, "I was the normal one." Unfortunately, after stepping outside the game, he began to recognize the racism, sexual abuse and bullying that was so deeply ingrained in the sport. And then, as his own children grew into teenagers, the curtain was pulled back, the memories came rushing forward, and he was horrified: "Why was I naked in a bus bathroom for four hours with seven teammates? What happened to my brain, and why can't I remember the simplest things? How did I end up living in a basement where the strangers upstairs were clearly engaged in domestic abuse?" As it navigates the sport's darkest corridors, Conflicted Scars shares the story of the common Canadian player and offers a guide for parents who need to know how and why a typical teenager with NHL dreams, from a small town, now lives anxiously, introvertedly, and battling emotional detachmentLandlines
By Raynor Winn. 2022
Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SALT PATH AND T HE WILD SILENCE…
The latest memoir from global bestselling author Raynor Winn Some people live to walk. Raynor and Moth walk to live . . . Raynor Winn knows that her husband Moth's health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will he - can he? - set out with her on another healing walk? The Cape Wrath Trail is over two hundred miles of gruelling terrain through Scotland's remotest mountains and lochs. But the lure of the wilderness and the beguiling beauty of the awaiting glens draw them northwards. Being one with nature saved them in their darkest hour and their hope is that it can work its magic again. As they set out on their incredible thousand-mile journey back to the familiar shores of the South-west Coast Path, Raynor and Moth map the landscape of an island nation facing an uncertain path ahead. In Landlines , she records in luminous prose the strangers and friends, wilderness and wildlife they encounter on the way - it's a journey that begins in fear but can only end in hope. © Raynor Winn 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
By Jessica J. Lee. 2024
INSTANT TORONTO STAR BESTSELLERThe prize-winning and bestselling author of Two Trees Make a Forest turns to the lives of plants…
entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared futureA seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere?The themes in these fourteen essays become invigorating and intimate in Lee’s hands, centering on the lives of plants like seaweed, tangelos, and soy, and their entanglement with our human worlds. Lee explores the rich backstory of cherry trees in Berlin; a tea plant that grows in the Himalayan foothills just southwest of China; the world of algae and wakame, and the journeys they’ve made to reach us.Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being "out of place"—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Lee looks at these plant species in their own context, even when we find them outside of it.Dispersals draws a gorgeous, sprawling map of the diaspora of flora. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.Out of Darkness: Rumana Monzur's Journey through Betrayal, Tyranny and Abuse
By Denise Chong. 2024
From the bestselling author of The Concubine’s Children and The Girl in the Picture, a gripping story of a domestic…
assault that shocked the world, of the exercise of power and political influence, and of the Bangladeshi woman whose irrepressible spirit found light in sudden darkness.From the outside, Rumana seemed an unlikely victim of domestic abuse: married to a man of her own choosing and progressing in her career as a professor of international relations at Dhaka University. But in 2011, on return from graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, her husband attacked and blinded her in front of their young daughter. As Rumana's horrifying story garnered international headlines, and connections brought her to Vancouver in an attempt—ultimately futile—to restore her sight, her plight underscored the fact that there are no typical victims of intimate-partner violence. Denise Chong goes behind the headlines to reveal the devolution of a love story into a tale of tyranny behind closed doors, and the pursuit of justice that proved all the more elusive during the rise of social media. Out of Darkness tells a globe-spanning narrative of loyalty, perseverance and a woman’s determination to face the future and rebuild a life with meaning.Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder
By Salman Rushdie. 2024
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult: a Memoir
By Michelle Dowd. 2023
A moving, heartbreaking, and inspiring true story of the author&’s escape from an apocalyptic cult—and the deep understanding of the…
natural world that helped her find freedom. My family prepared me for the end of the world, but I know how to survive on what the earth yields. Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest, born into an ultra-religious cult—the Field, as members called it—run by her grandfather, who believed that his chosen followers must prepare themselves to survive doomsday. Bound by the group&’s patriarchal rules and literal interpretation of the Bible, Michelle and her siblings lived a life of deprivation, isolated from Outsiders and starved for both love and food. She was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold; she learned to trust animals more than humans; and most important, she learned how to survive by foraging for what she needed. And as Michelle got older, she realized she had the strength to break free. Focus on what will sustain, not satiate you, she would tell herself. Use everything. Waste nothing. Get to know the intricacies of the land like the intricacies of your body. And so she did. With haunting and stark language, and illustrations of edible plants and their uses opening each chapter, Forager is a fierce and empowering coming-of-age story and a timely meditation on the ways in which harnessing nature&’s gifts can lead to our freedom.Life Writing, Representation and Identity: Global Perspectives
By Mukul Chaturvedi. 2024
This book focuses on varied forms of self-referential storytelling or life writing and its emergence as a democratic and inclusive…
genre, both globally and in India, and its intersections with history, fiction, memory, truth and identity. The book examines the practice of life writing and its scope for accommodating diverse voices, distinct identities, collaborations and non-hierarchical connections as it gives voice to oral, silenced and marginalized communities. It explores forms like auto/biographical fiction, digital storytelling, graphic memoirs, and testimonies of migration and exile, among others. The eclectic collection of essays in this volume draws attention towards the transformative possibilities of life writing as it engages with issues of resistance, recuperation, re-inscribing individual and collective memories, histories, and promotes an understanding of multicultural others. Focusing on the multiple ways in which the production, circulation, and consumption of life writing has helped to reimagine and redefine individual and collective identities in different cultural and geopolitical contexts, the collection breaks new ground by initiating a cross-cultural perspective in life writing studies. The book aims to encourage critical engagement with a vastly growing body of literature that has seen a publishing and translation boom in contemporary times, both globally and in India. With life writing emerging as a robust area of research, this edited collection provides a much-needed impetus to critically engage with issues of self-representation, memory and identity in recent times. This volume will serve as a significant and rich resource for university students, researchers, and academics of literature, comparative studies, cultural studies, history, indigenous studies and digital and media studies.Datsun Angel: A true-story adventure inside the savage heart of 1980s Australia
By Anna Broinowski. 2024
'Hilarious, terrifying and fun - much like the 80s, only smarter.' ANNA FUNDER'Fiercely funny. This is a road trip of…
danger, love and hope. Brilliant!' JULIA ZEMIRO'Witty, brave, honest and wise. Mad Max meets 1980s feminism, fuelled by undergraduate outrage and hedonism.' CATHERINE LUMBYDatson Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the savage heart of 1980s Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED . . .At seventeen, Anna Broinowski is precocious, naive and convinced she knows how the world works. But O-Week at Sydney University changes that. She's suddenly in a hyper-masculine caste system, where future captains of industry terrorise freshers and invade dorms in naked, screaming packs. Nothing is what she thought it'd be . . . until Anna finds her people. New dreams are made. Playing violin, auditioning for NIDA, losing her virginity. Then Peisley, a gentle giant, talks of a hitchhiking trip up north. And, after agreeing on three rules - never split up, remain platonic, accept every lift that gets them closer to Darwin - Anna decides to go.Hitchhiking the highways leads her into a dystopian dustbowl on society's hard edges, where outsiders must adapt or perish, and women teeter on an existential knife edge. In this flyblown asylum, love and danger collide with the toxic misogyny in the guts of the Australian soul. Anna will learn that the line between victim and survivor can be as cruel as luck and as random as a shiny blue Datson on a red dirt road.Based on her battered travel diary, Datsun Angel is a savage, darkly funny memoir of sex, drugs and violence-fuelled adventure through the brutal 1980s Australian outback. It is a feminist On the Road, told through a #MeToo filter.We all grow up with rules. Do this, be this, don't be that. Qin Qin was all about the rules:…
do your homework, be good, don't rock the boat. She was the model daughter, model student and model minority.But doing everything right? It made her lost and miserable. So she decided to take a spectacular risk and change everything.At 23, Qin Qin was an unhappy overachiever working for a prestigious law firm. So she quit. She didn't know what else was out there, but she wanted to find out. She changed paths, changed countries, changed her entire view of what the world could be, and who she could be - with some primal screaming and tree-hugging along the way.In the process, she discovered the person she truly was, not who she thought she should be.Model Minority Gone Rogue is a funny, sad, exhilarating and thought-provoking true story about what happens when you want to live life on your own terms, even when those terms go against everything you've ever known. It's a story of what happens when you choose love over fear and honour your authentic self: life can be bigger and brighter than anything you had ever imagined.'Qin Qin is a living example of the adage: screw things up, thoughtfully. With every chapter of her story, she illuminates an alternative model to the corrosive stories we've taken on and been told about what we should be, rather than who we could be. Read this and feel yourself untangle and unknot.' BENJAMIN LAW, author, journalist and broadcaster'Model Minority Gone Rogue is about finding yourself against the expectations your parents, society and gender set out for you and courageously venturing into uncharted terrain ... It is illuminating, generous and full of gutsy hard-won wisdom.' ALICE PUNG, bestselling author of Unpolished Gem'I wish this book had existed when I was growing up. It will shock you, move you and educate you. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the experience of being an Australian of Chinese heritage.' SUE-LIN WONG, award-winning The Economist correspondent and The Prince podcast host'Bold and frequently surprising, Qin Qin brings the same challenge to her readers as she has for her hard-won identity: grow, love and question everything! Model Minority Gone Rogue is a book for anyone who has ever screamed on the inside, with powerful and unyielding observations on sex, race, the body and feminism.' CADANCE BELL, author and TV producer, writer and director'Sassy, sad, funny, unvarnished.' CANBERRA TIMESUgly: The Australian bestseller
By Robert Hoge. 2013
The unique and inspiring story of a boy born with the odds against him and the family whose love and…
support helped him overcome incredible hardships.Robert Hoge was born with a giant tumour on his forehead, severely distorted facial features and legs that were twisted and useless. His mother refused to look at her son, let alone bring him home. But home he went, to a life that, against the odds, was filled with joy, optimism and boyhood naughtiness.Home for the Hoges was a bayside suburb of Brisbane. Robert's parents, Mary and Vince, knew that his life would be difficult, but they were determined to give him a typical Australian childhood. So along with the regular, gruelling and often dangerous operations that made medical history and gradually improved Robert's life, there were bad haircuts, visits to the local pool, school camps and dreams of summer sports.Ugly is Robert's account of that life, from the time of his birth to the arrival of his own daughter. It is a story of how the love and support of his family helped him to overcome incredible hardships. It is also the story of an extraordinary person living an ordinary life, which is perhaps his greatest achievement of all.'There is much to be learned from this ugly man whose spirit is truly beautiful' - Saturday Age'This is an incredible life story that will no doubt attract much publicity and discussion about beauty, ugliness and how we value ourselves' - Australian Bookseller + Publisher'If Robert Hoge reckons he belongs to the Ugly Club, then "ugly" must mean humour and courage, love and decency' - William McInnes'[A] frank, wry and funny memoir...' - Sunday Age'This fabulous easy-to-read tale is a treasure for anyone who has ever given their looks a second thought. Ugly offers a bracing perspective on life, love and the real definition of beauty. - Good ReadingAuthor BiographyRobert Hoge has worked as a journalist, a speechwriter, a science communicator for the CSIRO and a political advisor to the former Queensland Premier and Deputy Premier. He has had numerous short stories, articles, interviews and other works published in Australia and overseas. He also enjoys photography, and is interested in disability advocacy and social engagement. While he never went far with his professional lawn bowls career, Robert did carry the Olympic torch in 2000. He is married and lives in Brisbane. He has an eleven-year-old daughter who thinks his Olympic torch would make a really great cricket bat.Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
By Jessica J. Lee. 2024
INSTANT TORONTO STAR BESTSELLERThe prize-winning and bestselling author of Two Trees Make a Forest turns to the lives of plants…
entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared futureA seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere?The themes in these fourteen essays become invigorating and intimate in Lee&’s hands, centering on the lives of plants like seaweed, tangelos, and soy, and their entanglement with our human worlds. Lee explores the rich backstory of cherry trees in Berlin; a tea plant that grows in the Himalayan foothills just southwest of China; the world of algae and wakame, and the journeys they&’ve made to reach us.Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being &“out of place&”—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Lee looks at these plant species in their own context, even when we find them outside of it.Dispersals draws a gorgeous, sprawling map of the diaspora of flora. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.August Wilson: A Life
By Patti Hartigan. 2023
The first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the late 20th century, by…
a theater critic who knew him.August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey&’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson&’s death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn&’t research his plays but wrote from &“the blood&’s memory,&” a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors. She interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh (where nine of the plays take place) to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color.Julius Caesar
By Philip Freeman. 2008
A fascinating, comprehensive biography of the cunning Roman conqueror Julius Caesar.More than two thousand years after his death, Julius Caesar…
remains one of the great figures of history. He shaped Rome for generations, and his name became a synonym for &“emperor&”—not only in Rome but as far away as Germany and Russia. He is best known as the general who defeated the Gauls and doubled the size of Rome&’s territories. But, as Philip Freeman describes in this fascinating new biography, Caesar was also a brilliant orator, an accomplished writer, a skilled politician, and much more. Julius Caesar was a complex man, both hero and villain. He possessed great courage, ambition, honor, and vanity. Born into a noble family that had long been in decline, he advanced his career cunningly, beginning as a priest and eventually becoming Rome&’s leading general. He made alliances with his rivals and then discarded them when it suited him. He was a spokesman for the ordinary people of Rome, who rallied around him time and again, but he profited enormously from his conquests and lived opulently. Eventually he was murdered in one of the most famous assassinations in history. Caesar&’s contemporaries included some of Rome&’s most famous figures, from the generals Marius, Sulla, and Pompey to the orator and legislator Cicero as well as the young politicians Mark Antony and Octavius (later Caesar Augustus). Caesar&’s legendary romance with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra still fascinates us today. In this splendid biography, Freeman presents Caesar in all his dimensions and contradictions. With remarkable clarity and brevity, Freeman shows how Caesar dominated a newly powerful Rome and shaped its destiny. This book will captivate readers discovering Caesar and ancient Rome for the first time as well as those who have a deep interest in the classical world.The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches
By Bill James, Rob Neyer. 2004
Preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer compile information on pitches and their origins, nearly two…
thousand pitchers, and more in this comprehensive guide.Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them—they&’re the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information…until now. Bill James and Rob Neyer spent over a decade compiling the centerpiece of this book, the Pitcher Census, which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. Their guide also includes a dictionary describing virtually every known pitch, biographies of great pitchers who have been overlooked, and top ten lists for fastballs, spitballs, and everything in between. James and Neyer also weigh in on the debate over pitcher abuse and durability, offer a formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner, and reveal James&’s Pitcher Codes. Learn about the origins and development of baseball&’s most important pitches and more knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed! Baseball&’s action always starts with the pitchers. Begin to understand them and join in on entertaining debates while having a great deal of fun with the history of the game that captivates so many with this one-of-a-kind guide.