Download or read book The King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories written by Donald Katz and published by AtRandom. This book was released on 2001-04-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories collects journalist Donald Katz's most fascinating profiles of people whose lives tell us something about business, adventure, sports, politics, culture, and in a brilliant, ancillary way, ourselves. Katz's opening story and the title piece of the book offers a hilarious yet appropriately reverential look at 72-year old Reg Mellor, unparalleled "ferret legging" champion of Yorkshire and the world. Other characters who populate this book include fitness guru Jack LaLanne, legendary entrepreneur Paul Hawken, and master political cartoonist and inspired troublemaker Bill Mauldin. While this collection contains portraits that are varied in scene and tone, their depictions of obsession, delusion, perseverance, creativity, and good-heartedness-the list could go on and on-remain a constant. Each of these stories conveys a sense of the strangeness, wonder, and oddity of life-a theme that provides a gravitational center to this multifarious selection drawn from twenty years of an award-winning non-fiction story-teller's body of work.
Download or read book The Valley of the Fallen written by Donald Katz and published by AtRandom. This book was released on 2001-10-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few writers can match journalist Donald Katz’s ability to make an exotic locale familiar or transform an ordinary place into something peculiar if not completely weird. The Valley of the Fallen and Other Places gathers a pastiche of stories from around the world, each of which subtly underlines the relationship between geography and politics. Locations, counties, regions of the world emerge as characters in Katz’s panoramic cast–as fully drawn as the unusual people that occupy them–so that one realizes of each particular account, that this could only happen in a place like this. The setting for each of these pieces–whether home or abroad–provides a resonant backdrop for Katz’s startling perceptions and cultural acumen. He paints a portrait of Spain in which people are dying of political repression and vividly depicts Italy in the throes of a postwar capitalist hangover. Katz describes Arkansas, its history of racial strife notwithstanding, as an “American cultural ark” where respect for old-fashioned gumption and the tolerance for human eccentricity have fostered a renaissance of spirit. He captures the poignant ruin of political ideals gone amuck in the image of columns of Ethiopian children being herded through the night at gunpoint, undergoing political re-education. Katz’s observations of the Sinai, where “beliefs, convictions, even hunches become howling zeal,” contrast with Santa Fe’s “philosophical cogitating and quality-of-life improvement projects” in a New Age mecca that breeds tamer but equally fervent faiths. The cumulative effect of reading this eclectic collection is one of wonder about the mysterious and dazzling world in which we live, and the way our lives are shaped by our place in it.
Download or read book The Moment written by Steve Fiffer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They are as diverse as America. Young and old. Of color and white. Urban and rural. Immigrants and native born. They are students and teachers. Athletes and artists. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, farmers, architects, novelists, and more. Names familiar and unfamiliar. Superheroes, figuratively—and in one case, real! They have founded major corporations and grassroots organizations or struck out on their own. But as diverse a lot as they may be, the people who tell their stories on these pages share one thing in common. Each is committed to fighting inequality and injustice. Each, too, can pinpoint a moment when they were moved to action, when it became impossible to sit on the sidelines and just watch: when the teacher uttered racial slurs, when no one in the college club looked like they did, when the city was on the brink of disaster, when the authorities came for their undocumented mother, when they discovered their ancestors enslaved people, when the cop stopped them in their own driveway, when there was no fresh food in their community, when their right to vote was threatened. In The Moment, New York Times bestselling author Steve Fiffer presents an oral history from today's social justice activists—many of them still under thirty years old—that is pitch perfect for these dissonant times. First-person accounts, that will inspire us to act, offer a blueprint for making change and, perhaps, most importantly, give us hope for the future.
Download or read book Out of the Noosphere written by Editors of Outside magazine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-10-27 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected from the pages of the popular magazine for outdoor enthusiasts, here is a wonderful tour of the natural world and an incisive overview of the people and animals who inhabit it. Published to coincide with Outdoor magazine's 15th anniversary.
Download or read book Uncle John s Great Big Bathroom Reader written by Bathroom Readers' Institute and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Uncle John’s all-time biggest sellers, Great Big is overflowing with everything our fans have come to expect: urban legends, forgotten history, myth-conceptions, business blunders, strange lawsuits, weird politics, amazing origins, dumb crooks, celebrity gossip, brain teasers, short facts, and more! Divided by length into short, medium, and long articles, Great Big is sure to be a hit with readers of all ages. A few standouts from these 460 pages: * The first computer programmers * Weird medical conditions * Brits Vs. Americans: a word quiz * Strange tourist attractions * The origin of the White House * The world’s second-dumbest outlaw * The Tonight Show story * The forgotten hero of flagpole sitting * Why popcorn pops And much, much more!
Download or read book Book Review Index written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 1520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vols. 8-10 of the 1965-1984 master cumulation constitute a title index.
Download or read book American Book Publishing Record written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 2744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The All True Gold Seeking Adventures of Hitty O Donnell written by Paul McPhie and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-10-10 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based in part on real journals, the novel traces an epic overland journey in 1862 by train, steamboat, wagon, river raft, and horseback to the thriving gold fields of Barkerville in British Columbia's Cariboo region. Packed with exciting incident, the tale is told by the wryly reflective Hitty who comes of age amid a memorable gallery of rogues and dreamers and against the magnificent landscape and lurking perils of mid-nineteenth century North America
Download or read book Library Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 1324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Professor in the Cage written by Jonathan Gottschall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An English professor begins training in the sport of mixed martial arts and explores the science and history behind the violence of men When a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym moves in across the street from his office, Jonathan Gottschall sees a challenge, and an opportunity. Pushing forty, out of shape, and disenchanted with his job as an adjunct English professor, part of him yearns to cross the street and join up. The other part is terrified. Gottschall eventually works up his nerve, and starts training for a real cage fight. He’s fighting not only as a personal test but also to answer questions that have intrigued him for years: Why do men fight? And why do so many seemingly decent people like to watch? In The Professor in the Cage, Gottschall’s unlikely journey from the college classroom to the fighting cage drives an important new investigation into the science and history of violence. Mixed martial arts is a full-contact hybrid sport in which fighters punch, choke, and kick each other into submission. MMA requires intense strength, endurance, and skill; the fights are bloody, brutal, and dangerous. Yet throughout the last decade, cage fighting has evolved from a small-time fringe spectacle banned in many states to the fastest-growing spectator sport in America. But the surging popularity of MMA, far from being new, is just one more example of our species’ insatiable interest not just in violence but in the rituals that keep violence contained. From duels to football to the roughhousing of children, humans are masters of what Gottschall calls the monkey dance: a dizzying variety of rule-bound contests that establish hierarchies while minimizing risk and social disorder. In short, Gottschall entered the cage to learn about the violence in men, but learned instead how men keep violence in check. Gottschall endures extremes of pain, occasional humiliation, and the incredulity of his wife to take us into the heart of fighting culture—culminating, after almost two years of grueling training, in his own cage fight. Gottschall’s unsparing personal journey crystallizes in his epiphany, and ours, that taming male violence through ritualized combat has been a hidden key to the success of the human race. Without the restraining codes of the monkey dance, the world would be a much more chaotic and dangerous place.
Download or read book Canadian Periodical Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 1546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Publishers Weekly written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Big Store written by Donald R. Katz and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1988 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1972, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the quintessential American success story. It accounted for over one percent of the gross national product. Suddenly, it found itself in a downward spiral. Award-winning journalist Donald Katz was given unrestricted access to Sears's records and executives to write this revealing account of the downfall and resurrection of an American icon.
Download or read book Heart of a Soldier written by James B. Stewart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart comes the extraordinary story of American hero Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley security director and a veteran of Vietnam and the British colonial wars in Rhodesia, who lost his life on September 11. When Rick Rescorla got home from Vietnam, he tried to put combat and death behind him, but he never could entirely. From the day he joined the British Army to fight a colonial war in Rhodesia, where he met American Special Forces’ officer Dan Hill who would become his best friend, to the day he fell in love with Susan, everything in his remarkable life was preparing him for an act of generosity that would transcend all that went before. Heart of a Soldier is a story of bravery under fire, of loyalty to one’s comrades, of the miracle of finding happiness late in life. Everything about Rick’s life came together on September 11. In charge of security for Morgan Stanley, he successfully got all its 2,700 men and women out of the south tower of the World Trade Center. Then, thinking perhaps of soldiers he’d held as they died, as well as the woman he loved, he went back one last time to search for stragglers. Heart of a Soldier is a story that inspires, offers hope, and helps heal even the deepest wounds.
Download or read book Home Fires written by Donald R. Katz and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling, masterful account of one American family's passage through the turbulent landscape of the postwar era, 1945-1990, illuminating the interplay between private life and the profound cultural changes of the times.
Download or read book Just Do it written by Donald R. Katz and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1994 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning author penetrates Nike--a company of the future, a dream machine that seeks to redefine culture through the power of sports--to provide this portrait of Phil Knight, who pioneered the company from a two-man operation into a four billion-dollar corporation.
Download or read book Black Swan Green written by David Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
