Download or read book Yosemite Harrowing Ascent of Half Dome Adventures with the Parkers Easyread Large Edition written by Mike Graf and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is James Parker reporting. Yosemite is amazing! The rock walls here are thousands of feet high. The Parkers hit the trail once again, this time in Yosemite, one of the country's most popular parks. Ten-year-old twins James and Morgan take in the beauty of the sequoia trees and attempt an ascent of the cables. Will they make it to the top of the infamous Half Dome? Harrowing Ascent of Half Dome is the third book in the Adventures with the Parkers series for kids. Each book explores a popular national park and is packed with adventure as well as interesting facts about nature, outdoor safety, and much more.
Download or read book The Mockingbird Next Door written by Marja Mills and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the best loved novels of the twentieth century. But for the last fifty years, the novel’s celebrated author, Harper Lee, has said almost nothing on the record. Journalists have trekked to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, has lived with her sister, Alice, for decades, trying and failing to get an interview with the author. But in 2001, the Lee sisters opened their door to Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills. It was the beginning of a long conversation—and a great friendship. In 2004, with the Lees’ blessing, Mills moved into the house next door to the sisters. She spent the next eighteen months there, sharing coffee at McDonalds and trips to the Laundromat with Nelle, feeding the ducks and going out for catfish supper with the sisters, and exploring all over lower Alabama with the Lees’ inner circle of friends. Nelle shared her love of history, literature, and the Southern way of life with Mills, as well as her keen sense of how journalism should be practiced. As the sisters decided to let Mills tell their story, Nelle helped make sure she was getting the story—and the South—right. Alice, the keeper of the Lee family history, shared the stories of their family. The Mockingbird Next Door is the story of Mills’s friendship with the Lee sisters. It is a testament to the great intelligence, sharp wit, and tremendous storytelling power of these two women, especially that of Nelle. Mills was given a rare opportunity to know Nelle Harper Lee, to be part of the Lees’ life in Alabama, and to hear them reflect on their upbringing, their corner of the Deep South, how To Kill a Mockingbird affected their lives, and why Nelle Harper Lee chose to never write another novel.
Download or read book The Animals A Novel written by Christian Kiefer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-03-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon and the San Francisco Chronicle Longlisted for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere (Foreign Authors) “[A] galloping great read... [a] genuine work of art.” —Porter Shreve, San Francisco Chronicle, front-page review Bill Reed manages a wildlife sanctuary in rural Idaho, caring for injured animals unable to survive in the wild —raptors, a wolf, and his beloved bear, Majer, among them. He hopes to marry the local vet and live out a quiet life, until a childhood friend is released from prison and threatens to reveal Bill’s darkest secrets. Suddenly forced to confront his criminal past, Bill battles fiercely to preserve both the shelter and his hard-won new identity. Alternating between the past and the present, The Animals builds powerfully toward the revelation of Bill’s defining betrayal—and the drastic lengths he’ll go to in order to escape the consequences.
Download or read book A Hundred Pieces of Me written by Lucy Dillon and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lovely." --Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and One Plus One From the bestselling author of Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts comes a delightful, compulsively readable novel about second chances and the magic of letting go... Reeling from her recent divorce, Gina Bellamy suddenly finds herself figuring out how to live on her own. Determined to make a fresh start—with her beloved rescue greyhound by her side—Gina knows drastic measures are in order. First up: throwing away all her possessions except for the one hundred things that mean the most to her. But what items are worth saving? Letters from the only man she’s ever loved? A keepsake of the father she never knew? Or a blue glass vase that perfectly captures the light? As she lets go of the past, Gina begins to come to terms with what has happened in her life and discovers that seizing the day is sometimes the only thing to do. And when one decides to do just that...magic happens. Includes an Author Q & A
Download or read book Sky Burial written by Xinran and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2002 Xinran’s Good Women of China became an international bestseller, revealing startling new truths about Chinese life to the West. Now she returns with an epic story of love, friendship, courage and sacrifice set in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Based on a true story, Xinran’s extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, Shu Wen learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died while serving in Tibet. Determined to find out what happened to him, she courageously sets off to join his regiment. But to her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people happily welcoming their Chinese “liberators” as she expected, she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan guerrillas. It seems that her husband may have died as a result of this clash of cultures, this disastrous misunderstanding. But before she can know his fate, she is taken hostage and embarks on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside — a journey that will last twenty years and lead her to a deep appreciation of Tibet in all its beauty and brutality. Sadly, when she finally discovers the truth about her husband, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond recognition. . .
Download or read book Faking It The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music written by Hugh Barker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musicians strive to "keep it real"; listeners condemn "fakes"; but does great music really need to be authentic? By investigating this obsession in the last century, this title rethinks what makes popular music work.
Download or read book A Garden of Marvels written by Ruth Kassinger and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today’s extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab. In Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger recounted with grace and humor her journey from brown thumb to green, sharing lessons she learned from building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis. In A Garden of Marvels, she extends the story. Frustrated by plants that fail to thrive, she sets out to understand the basics of botany in order to become a better gardener. She retraces the progress of the first botanists who banished myths and misunderstandings and discovered that flowers have sex, leaves eat air, roots choose their food, and hormones make morning glories climb fence posts. She also visits modern gardens, farms, and labs to discover the science behind extraordinary plants like one-ton pumpkins, a truly black petunia, a biofuel grass that grows twelve feet tall, and the world's only photosynthesizing animal. Transferring her insights to her own garden, she nurtures a "cocktail" tree that bears five kinds of fruit, cures a Buddha's Hand plant with beneficial fungi, and gets a tree to text her when it's thirsty. Intertwining personal anecdote, accessible science, and untold history, the ever-engaging author takes us on an eye-opening journey into her garden—and yours.
Download or read book A Sudden Light written by Garth Stein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the million-copy bestselling The Art of Racing in the Raincomes the breathtaking and long-awaited new novel. This novel centres on four generations of a once terribly wealthy and influential timber family who have fallen from grace; a mysterious yet majestic mansion, crumbling slowy into the bluff overlooking Puget Sound in Seattle; a love affair so powerful it reaches across the planes of existence; and a young man who simply wants his parents to once again experience the moment they fell in love, hoping that if can feel that emotion again, maybe they won't get divorced after all.
Download or read book The Age of Missing Information written by Bill McKibben and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Highly personal and original . . . McKibben goes beyond Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message.” ——The New York Times Imagine watching an entire day’s worth of television on every single channel. Acclaimed environmental writer and culture critic Bill McKibben subjected himself to this sensory overload in an experiment to verify whether we are truly better informed than previous generations. Bombarded with newscasts and fluff pieces, game shows and talk shows, ads and infomercials, televangelist pleas and Brady Bunch episodes, McKibben processed twenty-four hours of programming on all ninety-three Fairfax, Virginia, cable stations. Then, as a counterpoint, he spent a day atop a quiet and remote mountain in the Adirondacks, exploring the unmediated man and making small yet vital discoveries about himself and the world around him. As relevant now as it was when originally written in 1992–and with new material from the author on the impact of the Internet age–this witty and astute book is certain to change the way you look at television and perceive media as a whole. “By turns humorous, wise, and troubling . . . a penetrating critique of technological society.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer “Masterful . . . a unique, bizarre portrait of our life and times.” –Los Angeles Times “Do yourself a favor: Put down the remote and pick up this book.” –Houston Chronicle
Download or read book Dancing in the Streets written by Barbara Ehrenreich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2007-12-26 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy In the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead."—Terry Eagleton, The Nation
Download or read book The Hidden Life of Wolves written by Jim Dutcher and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A photographic tribute to the authors' work as wolf caregivers and advocates documents their efforts with the Sawtooth Pack in Idaho and features a passionate argument for reintroducing and protecting wild wolves.
Download or read book The Witness Wore Red written by Rebecca Musser and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You've watched Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, the top 5 true-crime docuseries on Netflix. Now discover the revealing memoir of one woman featured in the series who was forced into polygamous marriage and her brave struggle to protect others from the same fate. Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the "dangerous" outside world. Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, she received a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs. Always seeking to be an obedient Priesthood girl, in her teens she became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet: 85-year-old Rulon Jeffs, Warren's father. Finally sickened by the abuse she suffered and saw around her, she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family. The church, however, had a way of pulling her back in-and by 2007, Rebecca had no choice but to take the witness stand against the new prophet of the FLDS in order to protect her little sisters and other young girls from being forced to marry at shockingly young ages. The following year, Rebecca and the rest of the world watched as a team of Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a stronghold of the FLDS. Rebecca's subsequent testimony would reveal the horrific secrets taking place behind closed doors of the temple, sending their leaders to prison for years, and Warren Jeffs for life. The Witness Wore Red is a gripping account of one woman's struggle to escape the perverse embrace of religious fanaticism and sexual slavery, and a courageous story of hope and transformation.
Download or read book Winter written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes winter in a remote valley of inhabitants, the last valley in Montana without electricity.
Download or read book Life by the Cup written by Zhena Muzyka and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published under title: Life by the cup: ingredients for a purpose-filled life of bottomless happiness and limitless success by Atria in 2014.
Download or read book The Animal Dialogues written by Craig Childs and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2007-12-12 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the finest nature writers at work in America today-a lyrical, dramatic, illuminating tour of the hidden domain of wild animals. Whether recalling the experience of being chased through the Grand Canyon by a bighorn sheep, swimming with sharks off the coast of British Columbia, watching a peregrine falcon perform acrobatic stunts at 200 miles per hour, or engaging in a tense face-off with a mountain lion near a desert waterhole, Craig Childs captures the moment so vividly that he puts the reader in his boots. Each of the forty brief, compelling narratives in The Animal Dialogs focuses on the author's own encounter with a particular species and is replete with astonishing facts about the species' behavior, habitat, breeding, and lifespan. But the glory of each essay lies in Childs's ability to portray the sometimes brutal beauty of the wilderness, to capture the individual essence of wild creatures, to transport the reader beyond the human realm and deep inside the animal kingdom
Download or read book Responsibility in the Army written by A. Codrington and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tipping Sacred Cows written by Betsy Chasse and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tip over your sacred cows of belief, dump your personal prejudices and biases, and begin to rebuild a spiritual lifestyle that really works. Wife, mother, and award-winning producer of the sleeper hit What the Bleep Do We Know!? Betsy Chasse thought she had it all figured out...until she realized she didn’t. She didn’t know anything about happiness, love, spirituality, or herself...nothing, nada, zilch. In a book that’s anything but quiet, Chasse takes readers on a playful romp through the muddy fields of life and spirituality. Witty, yet unflinching, Chasse exposes her own experience tipping sacred cows and dissects the fragile beliefs we all hold so dear. Because the truth is, we each have a choice to believe the stories we tell ourselves or create new ones. A candid, no-nonsense confession, Chasse’s story gives readers the freedom to break free from their old patterns and gleefully frolic through fields, cow tipping at will and in the process, create a new reality for themselves.
