Download or read book TRAVEL STORIES of WONDER and CHANGE written by Bay Area Travel Writers and published by Bay Area Travel Writers. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel stories from the members of Bay Area Travel Writers

Download or read book Far and Away written by Andrew Solomon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics’ Circle Award—and one of the most original thinkers of our time—“Andrew Solomon’s magisterial Far and Away collects a quarter-century of soul-shaking essays” (Vanity Fair). Far and Away chronicles Andrew Solomon’s writings about places undergoing seismic shifts—political, cultural, and spiritual. From his stint on the barricades in Moscow in 1991, when he joined artists in resisting the coup whose failure ended the Soviet Union, his 2002 account of the rebirth of culture in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban, his insightful appraisal of a Myanmar seeped in contradictions as it slowly, fitfully pushes toward freedom, and many other stories of profound upheaval, this book provides a unique window onto the very idea of social change. With his signature brilliance and compassion, Solomon demonstrates both how history is altered by individuals, and how personal identities are altered when governments alter. A journalist and essayist of remarkable perception and prescience, Solomon captures the essence of these cultures. Ranging across seven continents and twenty-five years, these “meaty dispatches…are brilliant geopolitical travelogues that also comprise a very personal and reflective resume of the National Book Award winner’s globe-trotting adventures” (Elle). Far and Away takes a magnificent journey into the heart of extraordinarily diverse experiences: “You will not only know the world better after having seen it through Solomon’s eyes, you will also care about it more” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Download or read book The Wonder Switch written by Harris III, and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerful, generous and unforgettable book." - Seth Godin "A wondrous lens on healing ourselves and our world in this strangest and hardest of times." - Krista Tippett We are all born with the wonder switch in the "on" position, but somewhere along the way, our wonder is crushed. And that's when we begin to live out of a self-limiting mindset that shuts down our sense of possibility and purpose. Yet reclaiming your wonder--and with it, your life--is within reach. In The Wonder Switch, join world-renowned storyteller and professional illusionist Harris III in a journey to bring you back to the magic you fear you've lost--not the sleight of hand he performs across world stages, but real magic: love, hope, joy, belonging, meaning, and purpose. One of wonder's greatest powers is that it changes the stories we tell ourselves, writes Harris. With the help of his power-packed Transformation Map, you'll gain the tools you need to switch from the old story that leaves you unfulfilled to the new story that will make you a healthier, happier, all-around better human being. In this book, you'll discover: The surprising science behind the stories we tell ourselves and how they shape our lives Practices for "righting" your story from a broken narrative to a restored narrative The secret to breaking out of a Limiting Mindset and developing a Wonder Mindset Practices for moving from complacency to curiosity Why worry is a misuse of your imagination, and how to kick the habit

Download or read book The Wonder of Us written by Kim Culbertson and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Wonder of Us is an epic journey of love and friendship, forgiveness and possibility." -Jennifer Nivens, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places Riya and Abby are:Best friends.Complete opposites.Living on different continents.Currently mad at each other.About to travel around Europe. Riya moved to Berlin, Germany, with her family for junior year, while Abby stayed behind in their small California town. They thought it would be easy to keep up their friendship-it's only a year and they've been best friends since preschool. But instead, they ended up fighting and not being there for the other. So Riya proposes an epic adventure to fix their friendship. Two weeks, six countries, unimaginable fun. But two small catches: They haven't talked in weeks. They've both been keeping secrets. Can Riya and Abby find their way back to each other among lush countrysides and dazzling cities, or does growing up mean growing apart?

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Download or read book All the Wonder that Would Be written by Stephen Webb and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-03 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been argued that science fiction (SF) gives a kind of weather forecast – not the telling of a fortune but rather the rough feeling of what the future might be like. The intention in this book is to consider some of these bygone forecasts made by SF and to use this as a prism through which to view current developments in science and technology. In each of the ten main chapters - dealing in turn with antigravity, space travel, aliens, time travel, the nature of reality, invisibility, robots, means of transportation, augmentation of the human body, and, last but not least, mad scientists - common assumptions once made by the SF community about how the future would turn out are compared with our modern understanding of various scientific phenomena and, in some cases, with the industrial scaling of computational and technological breakthroughs. A further intention is to explain how the predictions and expectations of SF were rooted in the scientific orthodoxy of their day, and use this to explore how our scientific understanding of various topics has developed over time, as well as to demonstrate how the ideas popularized in SF subsequently influenced working scientists. Since gaining a BSc in physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester, Stephen Webb has worked in a variety of universities in the UK. He is a regular contributor to the Yearbook of Astronomy series and has published an undergraduate textbook on distance determination in astronomy and cosmology as well as several popular science books.

Download or read book Wonder written by R. J. Palacio and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Millions of people have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face—who shows us that kindness brings us together no matter how far apart we are. Read the book that inspired the Choose Kind movement, a major motion picture, and the critically acclaimed graphic novel White Bird. And don't miss R.J. Palacio's highly anticipated new novel, Pony, available now! I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Beginning from Auggie’s point of view and expanding to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others, the perspectives converge to form a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance. In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope. R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel “a meditation on kindness” —indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.

Download or read book Vagabonding written by Rolf Potts and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2002-12-24 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • With a new foreword by Tim Ferriss • “Vagabonding easily remains in my top-10 list of life-changing books. Why? Because one incredible trip, especially a long-term trip, can change your life forever. And Vagabonding teaches you how to travel (and think), not just for one trip, but for the rest of your life.”—Tim Ferriss, from the foreword There’s nothing like vagabonding: taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. In this one-of-a-kind handbook, veteran travel writer Rolf Potts explains how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel. Now completely revised and updated, Vagabonding is an accessible and inspiring guide to • financing your travel time • determining your destination • adjusting to life on the road • working and volunteering overseas • handling travel adversity • re-assimilating back into ordinary life Updated for our ever-changing world, Vagabonding is an indispensable guide for the modern traveler.

Download or read book The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise written by Dan Gemeinhart and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sometimes a story comes along that just plain makes you want to hug the world. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise is Dan Gemeinhart’s finest book yet — and that’s saying something. Your heart needs this joyful miracle of a book." — Katherine Applegate, acclaimed author of The One and Only Ivan and Wishtree Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished—the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box—she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it. Along the way, they'll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there's Gladys... Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all...but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after.”

Download or read book Wonder and Science written by Mary Baine Campbell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early modern period, western Europe was transformed by the proliferation of new worlds—geographic worlds found in the voyages of discovery and conceptual and celestial worlds opened by natural philosophy, or science. The response to incredible overseas encounters and to the profound technological, religious, economic, and intellectual changes occurring in Europe was one of nearly overwhelming wonder, expressed in a rich variety of texts. In the need to manage this wonder, to harness this imaginative overabundance, Mary Baine Campbell finds both the sensational beauty of early scientific works and the beginnings of the divergence of the sciences—particularly geography, astronomy, and anthropology—from the writing of fiction. Campbell's learned and brilliantly perceptive new book analyzes a cross section of texts in which worlds were made and unmade; these texts include cosmographies, colonial reports, works of natural philosophy and natural history, fantastic voyages, exotic fictions, and confessions. Among the authors she discusses are André Thevet, Thomas Hariot, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn. Campbell's emphasis is on developments in England and France, but she considers works in languages other than English or French which were well known in the polyglot book culture of the time. With over thirty well-chosen illustrations, Wonder and Science enhances our understanding of the culture of early modern Europe, the history of science, and the development of literary forms, including the novel and ethnography.

Download or read book Astounding Wonder written by John Cheng and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When physicist Robert Goddard, whose career was inspired by H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," the response was electric. Newspaper headlines across the country announced, "Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon," while people from around the world, including two World War I pilots, volunteered as pioneers in space exploration. Though premature (Goddard's rocket, alas, was only imagined), the episode demonstrated not only science's general popularity but also its intersection with interwar popular and commercial culture. In that intersection, the stories that inspired Goddard and others became a recognizable genre: science fiction. Astounding Wonder explores science fiction's emergence in the era's "pulps," colorful magazines that shouted from the newsstands, attracting an extraordinarily loyal and active audience. Pulps invited readers not only to read science fiction but also to participate in it, joining writers and editors in celebrating a collective wonder for and investment in the potential of science. But in conjuring fantastic machines, travel across time and space, unexplored worlds, and alien foes, science fiction offered more than rousing adventure and romance. It also assuaged contemporary concerns about nation, gender, race, authority, ability, and progress—about the place of ordinary individuals within modern science and society—in the process freeing readers to debate scientific theories and implications separate from such concerns. Readers similarly sought to establish their worth and place outside the pulps. Organizing clubs and conventions and producing their own magazines, some expanded science fiction's community and created a fan subculture separate from the professional pulp industry. Others formed societies to launch and experiment with rockets. From debating relativity and the use of slang in the future to printing purple fanzines and calculating the speed of spaceships, fans' enthusiastic industry revealed the tensions between popular science and modern science. Even as it inspired readers' imagination and activities, science fiction's participatory ethos sparked debates about amateurs and professionals that divided the worlds of science fiction in the 1930s and after.

Download or read book Time and Time Again written by Ben Elton and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you had one chance to change history...Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you kill? In Time and Time Again, international best-selling author Ben Elton takes readers on a thrilling journey through early 20th-Century Europe. It's the first of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be. Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history. Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century? And, if so, could another single bullet save it?

Download or read book World of Wonders written by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A poet celebrates the wonders of nature in a collection of essays that could almost serve as a coming-of-age memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy. Praise for World of Wonders Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of 2020 An Esquire Best Book of 2020 A Publishers Weekly “Big Indie Book of Fall 2020” A BuzzFeed Best Book of Fall 2020 “Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPR “A timely story about love, identity and belonging.” —New York Times Book Review “A truly wonderous essay collection.” —Roxane Gay, The Audacity

Download or read book Marco Polo Didn t Go There written by Rolf Potts and published by Travelers' Tales. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is a collection of rollicking travel tales from a young writer USA Today has called “Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” For the past ten years, Rolf Potts has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far fringes of five continents for such prestigious publications as National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, and The New York Times Magazine. This book documents his boldest, funniest, and most revealing journeys—from getting stranded without water in the Libyan desert, to crashing the set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in Thailand, to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is more than just an entertaining journey into fascinating corners of the world. The book is a unique window into travel writing, with each chapter containing a “commentary track”—endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. Offbeat and insightful, this book is an engrossing read for students of travel writing as well as armchair wanderers.

Download or read book Wonder Year written by Julie Frieder and published by LifeTree Media. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn how to pack up the family for a life-changing, long-term journey filled with education and adventure. If you’ve ever dreamed about an epic family adventure and heading out on the road for a few months or more, Wonder Year is for you. Part inspiration and part how-to, this book demystifies the seemingly outrageous prospect of embarking on a long-term family trip and using the world as a classroom for your kids—a trailblazing approach known as worldschooling. Packed with practical information, Wonder Year offers invaluable guidance to help transform your dream into a well-planned reality for your family. Woven throughout the book are evocative travelogues and photos from families sharing worldschooling experiences. Paddling a wild and scenic Oregon river, stargazing in New Mexico, and visiting World War II sites in France are just a few of the colorful stories that will no doubt stir you to envision your own journey. This book will show you how to: Explore funding options for long-term family travel—be it a summer, semester, year, or more Choose where to go and navigate the logistics of getting there Discover alternative education methods for teaching your kids on the road Travel responsibly and sustainably Identify ways to earn income while traveling Stay healthy and safe along the way Tap into a global community of worldschoolers and family adventurers You’ll learn that extended family travel is more attractive and attainable than ever before, and remote living and learning are not actually remote at all. Wonder Year will help you slow down, simplify, and wonder at all the world has to offer.

Download or read book MARK TWAIN 12 Novels 195 Short Stories Autobiography 10 Travel Books 160 Essays Speeches Illustrated written by Mark Twain and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2024-01-17 with total page 7915 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Gilded Age The Prince and the Pauper A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court The American Claimant Tom Sawyer Abroad Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Pudd'nhead Wilson Tom Sawyer, Detective A Horse's Tale The Mysterious Stranger Novelettes A Double Barrelled Detective Story Those Extraordinary Twins The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut The Stolen White Elephant The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven Short Story Collections The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance Sketches New and Old Merry Tales The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches Alonzo Fitz, and Other Stories Mark Twain's Library of Humor Other Stories Essays, Satires & Articles How to Tell a Story, and Other Essays What Is Man? And Other Essays Editorial Wild Oats Letters from the Earth Concerning the Jews To My Missionary Critics Christian Science Queen Victoria's Jubilee Essays on Paul Bourget Essays on Copyrights Other Essays Travel Books The Innocents Abroad A Tramp Abroad Roughing It Old Times on the Mississippi Life on the Mississippi Following the Equator Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion Down the Rhône The Lost Napoleon Mark Twain's Notebook The Complete Speeches The Complete Letters Autobiography Biographies Mark Twain: A Biography by Albert Bigelow Paine The Boys' Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine My Mark Twain by William Dean Howells Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.

Download or read book Long Way Down written by Jason Reynolds and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.