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By Steve Gleason, Jeff Duncan. 2024
From NFL player Steve Gleason, a powerful, inspiring memoir of love, heartbreak, resilience, family, and remarkable triumph in the face…
of ALSIn 2011, three years after leaving the NFL, Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease that takes away the ability to move, talk, and breathe. Doctors gave him three years to live. He was thirty-three years old. As Steve says, he is now ten years past his expiration date.His memoir is the chronicle of a remarkable life, one filled with optimism and joy, despite the trauma and pain and despair he has experienced. Writing using eye-tracking technology, Gleason covers his pre-ALS life through the highs and lows of his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints, where he made one of the most memorable plays in Saints history, leading to a victory in the first post-Katrina home game, uplifting the city, making him a hero, and reflected in a nine-foot bronze statue outside the Superdome. Then came his heartbreaking diagnosis. Gleason lost all muscle function, he now uses Stephen Hawking-like technology to communicate, and breathes with the help of a ventilator. This book captures Gleason and his wife Michel&’s unmatched resilience as they reinvent their lives, refuse to succumb to despair, and face his disease realistically and existentially.This unsparing portrait argues that a person's true strength does not reside solely in one&’s body but also in the ability to face unfathomable adversity and still be able to love and treasure life.The Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year 2023Fully updated paperback…
edition, with two new chaptersBeth Mead is one of the world's most talented footballers - Golden Boot winner and Player of the Tournament at the UEFA Euro 2022, England Player of the Year 2021-22, Arsenal Player of the Season 2021-22, and nominee for the 2022 Ballon d'Or. But long before this, Beth was just an ordinary kid from Hinderwell, North Yorkshire who wanted to play football. Now, Beth shares the challenges that shaped her, what she faced on the journey to the top, and the life events that made her stronger - from being dropped from the England squad and receiving devastating family news, to finding her best form under the guidance of Jonas Eidevall and Sarina Wiegman. Filled with positive lessons and an exclusive account of England's triumphant Euros campaign, Beth offers readers of all ages a heartfelt, behind-the-scenes look into her remarkable journey to glory. Empowering, inspirational and honest, this is Beth's story.This paperback edition has been fully updated to include the details of the 2022-23 season, Beth's ACL injury and her recovery, her thoughts on the 2023 Women's World Cup, as well as overcoming devastating personal challenges and how this has made her even stronger.By Boel Westin. 2024
An in-depth, perceptive account of the unconventional life of the Moomins&’ beloved creator, now available in the United States Tove…
Jansson achieved fame as the creator of the Moomins, beloved by generations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the Moomins were only part of the prodigious creative output of this Finnish-Swedish writer and artist. Jansson&’s work also includes short stories and five novels for adults, as well as paintings, murals, and book illustrations. In this acclaimed biography, Boel Westin relies on numerous conversations with Jansson and unprecedented access to her journals, letters, and personal archives to present an engrossing and comprehensive review of the life and world of Scandinavia&’s best-loved author. As Westin&’s meticulous research makes clear, Jansson&’s artistic and literary works reflected what was most important to her: the love of family and nature and the desire to pursue her art. Guided by her personal motto, &“Love and work,&” Jansson seized both with uncompromising joy. And while her romantic relationships with men proved unfulfilling, she found those with women—especially with her longtime partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä—both grounding and inspiring. Westin weaves together the many threads of Jansson&’s rich, complex life: an education interrupted to help her family; the bleak war years and her emergence as a painter; the decades of Moominmania across books, newspaper comic strips, merchandise, and adaptations; her later fictions, including her popular The Summer Book; and her time with Pietilä on the solitary island of Klovharu. Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words offers fans and admirers around the world the most complete portrait of the writer Philip Pullman described as &“a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.&”By Gerald Sorin. 2024
Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer" offers a fresh and original perspective on the…
life and works of Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1976. Author Gerald Sorin emphasizes Bellow's Jewish identity as fundamental to his being and the content and meaning of his fiction. Bellow's work from the 1940s to 2000, when he wrote his last novel at the age of 84, centers on the command in Deuteronomy to "Choose life" as distinct from nihilistic withdrawal and the defense of meaninglessness.Although Bellow disdained the label of "American Jewish Writer," Sorin conjectures that he was an outstanding representative of the classification. Bellow and the characters in his fiction not only choose life but also explore what it means to live a good life, however difficult that may be to define, and regardless of how much harder it is to achieve. For Sorin, Bellow realized that at least two obstacles stood in the way: the imperfection of the world and the frailty of the human pursuer.Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer" provides a new and insightful narrative of the life and works of Saul Bellow. By using Bellow's deeply internalized Jewishness and his remarkable imagination and creativity as a lens, Sorin examines how he captured the shifting atmosphere of postwar American culture.By John D. Loftin, Benjamin E. Frey. 2024
According to Cherokee tradition, the place of creation is Kituwah, located at the center of the world and home to…
the most sacred and oldest of all beloved, or mother, towns. Just by entering Kituwah, or indeed any village site, Cherokees reexperience the creation of the world, when the water beetle first surfaced with a piece of mud that later became the island on which they lived. People of Kituwah is a comprehensive account of the spiritual worldview and lifeways of the Eastern Cherokee people, from the creation of the world to today. Building on vast primary and secondary materials, native and non-native, this book provides a window into not only what the Cherokees perceive and understand—their notions of space and time, marriage and love, death and the afterlife, healing and traditional medicine, and rites and ceremonies—but also how their religious life evolved both before and after the calamitous coming of colonialism. Through the collaborative efforts of John D. Loftin and Benjamin E. Frey, this book offers an in-depth understanding of Cherokee culture and society.By Allan Weisbecker. 2001
In 1996, Allan Weisbecker sold his home and his possessions, loaded his dog and surfboards into his truck, and set…
off in search of his long-time surfing companion, Patrick, who had vanished into the depths of Central America. In this rollicking memoir of his quest from Mexico to Costa Rica to unravel the circumstances of Patrick's disappearance, Weisbecker intimately describes the people he befriended, the bandits he evaded, the waves he caught and lost en route to finding his friend. In Search of Captain Zero is, according to Outside magazine, "A subtly affecting tale of friendship and duty. [It] deserves a spot on the microbus dashboard as a hell of a cautionary tale about finding paradise and smoking it away."In Search of Captain Zero: A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road is a Booksense 76 Top Ten selection for September/October.By Eve LaPlante. 2012
The acclaimed and &“meticulously researched&” (People) biography that actor Laura Dern—who plays Marmee in the Little Women film adaptation—calls &“a…
beautiful book of letters between Louisa and her mother…a massive influence. You feel it as like a cord of the film.&”Marmee & Louisa, hailed by NPR as one of the best books of 2012, paints an exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of Louisa May Alcott and her mother, the real “Marmee.” Award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante mines the Alcotts’ intimate diaries and other private papers, some recently discovered in a family attic and others thought to have been destroyed, to revive this remarkable daughter and mother. Abigail May Alcott—long dismissed as a quiet, self-effacing background figure—comes to life as a gifted writer and thinker. A politically active feminist firebrand, she fought for universal civil rights, an end to slavery, and women’s suffrage. This gorgeously written story of two extraordinary women is guaranteed to transform our view and deepen our understanding of one of America’s most beloved authors.By Livia Manera Sambuy. 2022
As she builds her own life anew, an Italian writer embarks on an all-consuming search for the true story of…
the mysterious princess H. H. Amrit Kaur of Mandi.On a sweltering day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself at a museum in Mumbai, enthralled by a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess. What she reads in the picture’s caption will change her life forever. This alluring Punjabi royal had supposedly sold her jewels in occupied wartime Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year. Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unreported? Almost against her will, Manera becomes drawn into the mystery of Amrit Kaur. Delving into the history of the British Raj, its durbars and society balls and jubilees, she shows us the precipitous decline of India’s royal caste through the lives of extraordinary figures such as Amrit’s father, the larger-than-life Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala; the Jewish banker Albert Kahn; and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich—all while pursuing the elusive Amrit Kaur’s story. When she meets with the princess’s eighty-year-old daughter, Manera’s search takes on a new dimension, as she strives to reintroduce an orphan to a mother who disappeared in 1933, leaving behind two children, her raja husband, and a legacy of activism in India’s nascent women’s civil rights movement. In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of a woman seeking personal freedom against the backdrop of a world in upheaval.By Cat Marnell. 2017
From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a &“vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic&”…
(The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that&’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a &“doctor shopper&” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell&’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors&’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell &“treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist&” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can&’t say no. Combining &“all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer&’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity&” (Harper&’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.By Ronda Rousey. 2024
From New York Times bestselling author and trailblazing athlete Ronda Rousey, an unfiltered chronicle of loss, resilience and finding meaning…
in life's journey. From the moment she burst onto the MMA scene, Ronda Rousey was unbeatable. She repeatedly strung together back-to-back flawless victories, racking up a collection of records and forever changing the face of sports as the UFC's first female champion. A superstar in her sport, she transcended athletics, appearing in blockbuster films and becoming a role model for women everywhere. Then, on November 15, 2015, it all came crashing down. In OUR FIGHT, Rousey explores the greatest challenge of her life and, ultimately, how she rebuilt her life into something better in the aftermath. She recounts how she replaced her pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of happiness and found an opportunity in disguise amongst the wreckage. Following Rousey's relatable journey, OUR FIGHT is a courageous narrative of career changes, marriage, motherhood, and facing your fearsBy Salman Rushdie. 2024
"Il était essentiel que j'écrive ce livre : une manière d'accueillir ce qui est arrivé, et de répondre à la…
violence par l'art." Pour la première fois, Salman Rushdie s'exprime sans concession sur l'attaque au couteau dont il a été victime le 12 août 2022 aux États-Unis, plus de trente ans après la fatwa prononcée contre lui. Le romancier lève le voile sur la longue et douloureuse traversée pour se reconstruire après un acte d'une telle violence ; jusqu'au miracle d'une seconde chance. "Le Couteau" se lit aussi comme une réflexion puissante, intime et finalement porteuse d'espoir sur la vie, l'amour et le pouvoir de la littérature. C'est également une ode à la création artistique comme espace de liberté absolue. Clément Bresson met tout son talent au service de la plume limpide et directe de Salman Rushdie, qui témoigne ici de l'attentat dont il a été victime. Couverture : d'après photos © Nenov / MirageC / Getty ImagesThe Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year 2023Fully updated paperback…
edition, with two new chaptersBeth Mead is one of the world's most talented footballers - Golden Boot winner and Player of the Tournament at the UEFA Euro 2022, England Player of the Year 2021-22, Arsenal Player of the Season 2021-22, and nominee for the 2022 Ballon d'Or. But long before this, Beth was just an ordinary kid from Hinderwell, North Yorkshire who wanted to play football. Now, Beth shares the challenges that shaped her, what she faced on the journey to the top, and the life events that made her stronger - from being dropped from the England squad and receiving devastating family news, to finding her best form under the guidance of Jonas Eidevall and Sarina Wiegman. Filled with positive lessons and an exclusive account of England's triumphant Euros campaign, Beth offers readers of all ages a heartfelt, behind-the-scenes look into her remarkable journey to glory. Empowering, inspirational and honest, this is Beth's story.This paperback edition has been fully updated to include the details of the 2022-23 season, Beth's ACL injury and her recovery, her thoughts on the 2023 Women's World Cup, as well as overcoming devastating personal challenges and how this has made her even stronger.By Benjamin Moser. 2019
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEFinalist for the Lambda Literary AwardFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed one of…
the Best Books of the Year by: O Magazine, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Seattle TimesThe definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private faceNo writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own. Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.By Jennifer Sey. 2008
Updated With a New Introduction“I am grateful to Jennifer Sey for sharing such an honest account of her experiences as…
an elite gymnast. She has eloquently and fairly exposed a dark side to our sport that parents have long needed to be made aware of.”—Dominique Moceanu, Olympic Gold Medal Winning GymnastFanciful dreams of becoming the next Nadia Comaneci led Jennifer Sey to become a gymnast at the age of six. Her early success propelled her family to sacrifice everything to help her become, by age 11, one of America’s elite. But as she set her sights higher and higher, Jennifer began to change, setting her needs, her health, and her well-being aside in the name of winning. And the adults in her life refused to notice her downward spiral.Now, Sey reveals the tarnish beneath her gold medals. A powerful portrait of intensity and drive, eating disorders and stage parents, abusive coaches and manipulative businessmen, Chalked Up is the story of a young girl whose dreams would become subsumed by the adults around her.By Sir Laurens Van Der Post. 1982
Yet Being Someone Other is the most revealing book that Laurens van der Post wrote about his extraordinary and eventful…
life, and the most far-reaching; it is a distillation of the experiences that have moved him at the deepest level of the imagination and made him the exceptional person and writer he was.By Harry Redknapp. 2019
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'The beautiful game has taught me a lot, but I’ve had quite a life outside of football…
too. This book is full of my best stories – kickabouts with jumpers for goalposts with Bobby Moore, mine and Sandra’s disastrous honeymoon to Torquay in a dodgy car and my funniest ‘Mr Pastry’ moments – as well as my thoughts on the important things in life. I’m finally sharing what I’ve learned on and off the pitch: from growing up poor in Poplar to the heights of the Premiership and even lying in a coffin with a load of rats on national television. It’s everything I know about true team spirit, hard work, tough times, why family are so important and why everyone deserves respect no matter whether they’re royal or sleeping rough – and, of course, the real joy of a jam roly-poly.'By Rick Glanvill. 1996
Ian Wright is one of the English game's great football heroes. He is an England international and the leading marksman…
and trophy-winner for Arsenal. Yet he also regularly collects yellow cards, and is rarely out of the headlines.From humble beginnings to the heights of international stardom, this is the story of the rise of a boy from South London who has as many enemies as he has friends; of a role model who never forgot his roots; of a superstar, hungry for success, but almost denied the chance to play professional football by blatant discrimination and his own hot-headedness.By Will Cohu. 2012
In 1966 Will Cohu's grandparents moved to Bramble Carr, a remote cottage on the Yorkshire moors. The summers and winters…
he spent there were full of freedom and light; only after childhood ended was he aware of the price the adults had paid for life in this most romantic of settings.Navigating family tensions and the trials of growing up, Will describes the close-knit community of North Yorkshire and his family's place within it: the shepherd probing the head-high snowdrifts for his flock; the pub landlord obsessed with military uniforms; the village doctor lost in his love for the purple moorland; Will's glamorous RAF parents; and, at the centre of the story, his beloved but enigmatic grandparents.The Wolf Pit is an enquiring love letter from Will Cohu to his family, and to a changing rural England that is passionate, frightening and funny.By Jon Henderson. 2013
‘Stanley Matthews taught us the way football should be played’ Pelé'I couldn't believe he was just a man. He was…
the best player in the world' Bobby Charlton'He told me that he used to play for just twenty pounds a week. Today he would be worth all the money in the Bank of England' Gianfranco ZolaStanley Matthews is one of the most famous footballers ever to play the beautiful game. Nicknamed ‘The Wizard of Dribble’ for his deadly skills, he made fools of defenders around the world. He played 84 matches for England in a career that spanned an extraordinary 33 years and such was his popularity that attendance for his club teams, Stoke City and Blackpool, more than doubled when he played. He was a global superstar decades before Beckham, Ronaldo or Messi, yet what do we really know about this legendary man?This first full and objective biography looks beyond the public face of the ‘first gentleman of soccer’ to explore a life not without controversy. This was a player who clashed with his managers, who felt undervalued in the age of the maximum wage – leading to a charge of blackmarketeering – and who was criticised for his showmanship and perceived lack of team spirit. There were private dramas too – an unhappy first marriage that produced two beloved children, and a second, to the love of his life, a Czech with a dark secret even Matthews never knew and which acclaimed biographer Jon Henderson reveals for the first time.Recreating the magic on the pitch and analyzing the key moments that made Matthews great, this is a meticulously researched story of a national hero and a fascinating insight into English football in the 20th century.By Colin Shindler. 2009
Before the Thai millions and Abu Dhabi billions, Manchester City was always a club that attracted fierce controversy.July 1965: Manchester…
City are on the scrapheap, managerless and languishing in Second Division mediocrity. Desperate to reverse the club's fortunes, the board turns to Joe Mercer, a respected football veteran hungry for a final chance to achieve management glory. Yet age and ill health are against Joe: he needs an assistant, and volatile, ambitious coaching genius Malcolm Allison is his man. Recently sacked from managing Plymouth, Malcolm is out to prove that his innovative tactics can breathe new life into the staid English game. City is the perfect opportunity to show off his talents - especially since Joe promises him the manager's job in two years' time . . .July 1970: City rule supreme, having just won their fifth trophy in as many seasons. The Mercer-Allison partnership is the most successful management team in the club's history. But, unwilling to let go of his success, Joe breaks his word and refuses to step aside. In order to fulfil his self-proclaimed destiny as the greatest manager in English football, an embittered Malcolm engineers a boardroom takeover that risks everything he and Joe have worked for.Based on real events, Colin Shindler's novel explores the clash of personalities that led to the spectacular rise and fall of Manchester City's 'Golden Age'. Malcolm and Joe's story is a cautionary tale of how ambition and betrayal brought down two men who had the world at their feet and of how two of the greatest management partners in British football history became the worst of friends.