Download or read book True Stories We Made Up written by Michael Johnson and published by Lck Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "True Stories - We Made Up" is a collection of short stories based on the lives of three authors: Michael Johnson, David Brett Beebe II, and Chris Johnson. There are mention of bears, the mark of the beast, superheroes, and maybe even a few miracles. They fill in the cracks of their memories with braggadocio and folklore; essentially turning themselves into the legends they grew to be. Not only will you get to see how their young minds thought, you'll also be transported back to your own childhood while reading about experiences many of us share growing up. Plus, you'll realize how cocky Chris was as a child.

Download or read book The Truth about Stories written by Thomas King and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2003 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

Download or read book Back to Moscow written by Guillermo Erades and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Martin came to Moscow at the turn of the millennium hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he found a city turned on its head, where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends, Martin spends less and less time on his studies, choosing to learn about the Mysterious Russian Soul from the city's unhinged nightlife scene"--

Download or read book True Stories written by Garrick Beck and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part memoir, part eyewitness history, part storytelling, this book takes you on a rollicksome ride through a generation of experiences. True Stories traces the evolution of a New World Culture from the Beatnik 1950s through the passions and protests and psychedelics of the 1960s, and onward into environmental and cross-cultural arts and political movements which today are thriving around the world. Told with humor and peppered with the authors philosophy, these stories take the reader to party with author Jack Kerouac, protest with the saintly Dorothy Day, and drop acid with Merry Prankster Ken Kesey. The history recounted here uncovers the origins of The Oregon Country Faire, the Rainbow Gatherings and the infamous Vortex Festival. The tales thread their way through the intimacies of Americas West Coast communes, caustic anti-Vietnam War protests, the beauty of creating community gardens in vacant city lots, and the untold tale of what really brought down the Soviet Union.

Download or read book Money written by Jacob Goldstein and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs. Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century. At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin. One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad. Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today.

Download or read book We Made Uranium written by Leila Sales and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Item #176: A fire drill. No, not an exercise in which occupants of a building practice leaving the building safely. A drill which safely emits a bit of fire, the approximate shape and size of a drill bit. Item #74: Enter a lecture class in street clothes. Receive loud phone call. Shout “I NEED TO GO, THE CITY NEEDS ME!” Remove street clothes to reveal superhero apparel. Run out for the good of the land. Item #293: Hypnotizing a chicken seems easy, but if the Wikipedia article on the practice is to be believed, debate on the optimal method is heated. Do some trials on a real chicken and submit a report . . . for science of course. Item #234: A walking, working, people-powered but preferably wind-powered Strandbeest. Item #188: Fattest cat. Points per pound. The University of Chicago’s annual Scavenger Hunt (or “Scav”) is one of the most storied college traditions in America. Every year, teams of hundreds of competitors scramble over four days to complete roughly 350 challenges. The tasks range from moments of silliness to 1,000-mile road trips, and they call on participants to fully embrace the absurd. For students it is a rite of passage, and for the surrounding community it is a chance to glimpse the lighter side of a notoriously serious university. We Made Uranium! shares the stories behind Scav, told by participants and judges from the hunt’s more than thirty-year history. The twenty-three essays range from the shockingly successful (a genuine, if minuscule, nuclear reaction created in a dorm room) to the endearing failures (it’s hard to build a carwash for a train), and all the chicken hypnotisms and permanent tattoos in between. Taken together, they show how a scavenger hunt once meant for blowing off steam before finals has grown into one of the most outrageous annual traditions at any university. The tales told here are absurd, uplifting, hilarious, and thought-provoking—and they are all one hundred percent true.

Download or read book True Stories Well Told written by Lee Gutkind and published by Fourth Chapter Books. This book was released on 2014-07-06 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creative nonfiction is the literary equivalent of jazz: it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, voices, and techniques—some newly invented, and others as old as writing itself. This collection of 20 gripping, beautifully-written nonfiction narratives is as diverse as the genre Creative Nonfiction magazine has helped popularize. Contributions by Phillip Lopate, Brenda Miller, Carolyn Forche, Toi Derricotte, Lauren Slater and others draw inspiration from everything from healthcare to history, and from monarch butterflies to motherhood. Their stories shed light on how we live.

Download or read book The Moth Presents All These Wonders written by Catherine Burns and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wonderful." —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Celebrating the 20th anniversary of storytelling phenomenon The Moth, 45 unforgettable true stories about risk, courage, and facing the unknown, drawn from the best ever told on their stages Carefully selected by the creative minds at The Moth, and adapted to the page to preserve the raw energy of live storytelling, All These Wonders features voices both familiar and new. Alongside Meg Wolitzer, John Turturro, and Tig Notaro, readers will encounter: an astronomer gazing at the surface of Pluto for the first time, an Afghan refugee learning how much her father sacrificed to save their family, a hip-hop star coming to terms with being a “one-hit wonder,” a young female spy risking everything as part of Churchill’s “secret army” during World War II, and more. High-school student and neuroscientist alike, the storytellers share their ventures into uncharted territory—and how their lives were changed indelibly by what they discovered there. With passion, and humor, they encourage us all to be more open, vulnerable, and alive.

Download or read book Silent River written by C. M. Weaver and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Stories We Are written by William Randall and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From time to time we all tend to wonder what sort of “story” our life might comprise: what it means, where it is going, and whether it hangs together as a whole. In The Stories We Are, William Lowell Randall explores the links between literature and life and speculates on the range of storytelling styles through which people compose their lives. In doing so, he draws on a variety of fields, including psychology, psychotherapy, theology, philosophy, feminist theory, and literary theory. Using categories like plot, character, point of view, and style, Randall plays with the possibility that we each make sense of the events of our lives to the extent that we weave them into our own unfolding novel, as simultaneously its author, narrator, main character, and reader. In the process, he offers us a unique perspective on features of our day-to-day world such as secrecy, self-deception, gossip, prejudice, intimacy, maturity, and the proverbial “art of living.” First published in 1995, this second edition of The Stories We Are includes a new preface and afterword by the author that offer insight into his argument and evolution as a scholar, as well as an illuminating foreword by Ruthellen Josselson.

Download or read book The Idea written by Erik Bork and published by Overfall Presss. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multiple Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Erik Bork (HBO's BAND OF BROTHERS) presents the seven fundamental characteristics of a great story in any medium. Writers tend to jump into the writing too quickly, without knowing they have a flawed central idea. This book is all about ensuring that doesn't happen!

Download or read book Epiphany written by Elise Ballard and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shares inspirational true stories about life-changing moments as experienced by everyday people and such nationally recognized individuals as television host Dr. Mehmet Oz, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and renowned speaker Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Download or read book Building Character with True Stories from Nature written by Barbara A. Lewis and published by Free Spirit Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This flexible resource combines character education with analogies to powerful stories from nature. The heart of each of the book’s twenty-five lessons is an engaging story, written to kids, describing a particular animal or plant and its distinctive qualities. Busy classroom teachers will like this book’s accessibility and flexibility. Kids can read a story individually or in groups, or follow along as the teacher reads it aloud. Accompanying each story, teachers will find several activities—most of them quick, easy, and requiring few supplies—that further investigate animals or plants and the connections between their qualities and human behaviors. Every lesson examines several main character traits, providing starting points and sample questions for discussing and exploring analogies between events in nature and human acts of character. Features include a chart cross-referencing lessons to specific character traits and a list of further resources. Digital content contains all of the book’s reproducible forms, including a color photo of each plant and animal, plus a complete bonus lesson.

Download or read book The Man Who Walked Away written by Maud Casey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a trance-like state, Albert walks-from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia-all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images. Loosely based on the case history of Albert Dadas, a psychiatric patient in the hospital of St. André in Bordeaux in the nineteenth century, The Man Who Walked Away imagines Albert's wanderings and the anguish that caused him to seek treatment with a doctor who would create a diagnosis for him, a narrative for his pain. In a time when mental health diagnosis is still as much art as science, Maud Casey takes us back to its tentative beginnings and offers us an intimate relationship between one doctor and his patient as, together, they attempt to reassemble a lost life. Through Albert she gives us a portrait of a man untethered from place and time who, in spite of himself, kept setting out, again and again, in search of wonder and astonishment.

Download or read book Wired for Story written by Lisa Cron and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide reveals how writers can utilize cognitive storytelling strategies to craft stories that ignite readers’ brains and captivate them through each plot element. Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper. The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest. Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.

Download or read book The Language of the Night written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, on fantasy and science fiction, on writing, and on the future of literary science fiction. “We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks to the language of the night.” —Ursula K. Le Guin Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator. The book and each thematic section are brilliantly introduced and contextualized by Susan Wood, a professor at the University of British Columbia and a literary editor and feminist activist during the 1960s and ’70s. A fascinating, intimate look into the exceptional mind of Le Guin whose insights remain as relevant and resonant today as when they were first published.

Download or read book Front of the Class written by Brad Cohen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-11-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie Event available on streaming platforms. Front of the Class is now in e-book format for the first time and includes a new epilogue. As a child with Tourette syndrome, Brad Cohen was ridiculed, beaten, mocked, and shunned. Children, teachers, and even family members found it difficult to be around him. As a teen, he was viewed by many as purposefully misbehaving, even though he had little power over the twitches and noises he produced, especially under stress. Even today, Brad is sometimes ejected from movie theaters and restaurants. But Brad Cohen's story is not one of self-pity. His unwavering determination and fiercely positive attitude conquered the difficulties he faced in school, in college, and while job hunting. Brad never stopped striving, and after twenty-four interviews, he landed his dream job: teaching grade school and nurturing all of his students as a positive, encouraging role model. Front of the Class tells his inspirational story.