Download or read book Memoirs of a Longshot written by W. Cothran Campbell and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2007-02-20 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teenage drinking diverted Cot Campbell onto the perilous slope of alcoholism. This invidious enemy stymied the talents of young Campbell, who lurched from job to job and from jail to jail. Finally disgusted by his personal failures, Cot grasped the aid of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thereafter, he forged a rising career curve with passion, imagination, and integrity, taking his cherished wife and family along on the ride. Campbell founded one of the South's leading advertising agencies, then found a way to turn his love of horse racing into a sporting career, and his success completed a remarkable transformation. Memoirs of a Longshot is a sprightly telling of that unique tale. It is indeed the story of a "Riproarious Life." Praise for Cot Campbell's "Memoirs of a Longshot" "Leave it to a world-class storyteller like Cot Campbell to weave the vague, stumbling beginnings of a lad on a Tennessee horse farm with the raucous highs and desperate lows of big-time horse racing. Sprinkle the tale with such characters as Featherlip Trabue, Rhumba Pete and a one-armed barber named Baker Lane, and come out the other end with an indelible memoir of a life lived in grand and gracious style." Jay Hovdey, Daily Racing Form "Cot Campbell and I have had a strong working relationship for more than a decade. Reading Memoirs of a Longshot gave me a front row seat in the movie of his life all the highs and lows and everything in between. This book is so much more than one man's autobiography, it's an entertaining "how to" manual for an unusual life. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the history of a man I have counted as my friend for many years." Todd Pletcher, North America's Leading Trainer for 3 years Cot Campbell ́s love of horses is matched by his love for writing. He knows the low side and the high side of life, and in "Memoirs", he doesn ́t spare himself. From membership in AA to the winner ́s circle in the Triple Crown and the Breeders Cup, from prep school brat to Saratoga, he has run the gamut, and you can run it with him in this, his third book. Furman Bisher, Senior Columnist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Cot Campbell's Dogwood Stable has been a mainstay in the world of horse racing for many years. The rollicking tale of how this came to be, and the personal travails overcome to make it so, is at times harrowing and sad, but ultimately uplifting and joyous. Ed Bowen, President Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation Other Books by Cot Campbell: Lightning in a Jar A how-to guide for owning racehorses based on many of the author's own experiences. Rascals & Racehorses Runyonesque stories about racing interspersed with some of the author's candid tales. For more information on Cot Campbell, click here

Download or read book Long Shot written by Mike Piazza and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve-time All-Star catcher describes the inspiration he gleaned from his self-made father, his early career with the Dodgers, his memorable 2000 World Series with the Mets, and the controversies that have marked his career.

Download or read book Long Shot written by Azad Cudi and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kurdish journalist who volunteered as a sniper in the fight against ISIS reveals his story in a “gripping memoir . . . elegantly told” (Publishers Weekly). In 2002, at age nineteen, Azad was conscripted into Iran’s army and forced to fight his own people. Refusing to go to war against his fellow Kurds, he deserted and smuggled himself to the United Kingdom, where he was granted asylum, became a citizen, and learned English. But in 2014, having returned to the Middle East as a social worker in the wake of the Syrian civil war, Azad found he would have to pick up a weapon once again. After twenty-one days of intensive training as a sniper, Azad became one of seventeen volunteer marksmen deployed by the Kurdish army when ISIS besieged the city of Kobani in Rojava, the newly autonomous region of the Kurds. Here, he tells the inside story of the Kurdish forces’ bloody street battles against the Islamic State. Vastly outnumbered, the Kurds would have to kill the jihadis one by one, and Azad takes us on a harrowing journey to reveal the sniper unit’s essential role in ISIS’s eventual defeat. Weaving the brutal events of war with personal and political reflection, he meditates on the incalculable price of victory—the permanent effects of war on the body and mind; the devastating death of six of his closest comrades; the loss of hundreds of volunteers in battle. But as Azad explains, these sacrifices saved not only a city but a people and their land. “A propulsive memoir that captures the grim reality of small-scale conflict and reveals the fragmented politics of the Middle East today” (Kirkus Reviews), Long Shot tells how, against all odds, a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive.

Download or read book Called A Longshot s Story written by Rev. Dr. Gordon Postill and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This delayed coming-of-age story intimately recounts Gordon Postill’s life from 1970–1980, a decade that pivotally shapes how the rest of his life will unfold. Initially a story of failure, self-loathing, addiction, and deceit, it’s ultimately a story of grace, faith, hope, and transformation. After a three-year debauched romp of sensual delights, he flunks out of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1970, and over the next several years becomes increasingly dispirited, feeling irreversibly mired in existential despair, promiscuous sex, ignominy, and jobs ranging from nickel miner to security guard. But in October 1976, he receives an astonishing call to ministry. Jaw-dropping serendipity subsequently enables this long-time non-churchgoer to enter seminary eleven months later as a candidate for the ordained ministry. Trusting his call to ministry, even in times of immense self-doubt and debilitating anxiety, sets in motion an unexpected restorative process. A wide array of blessings along with his significant personal growth wondrously culminate with this longshot’s ordination by the United Church of Canada in May 1980. After thirty-five years of fulfilling ministry, primarily as a hospice chaplain, he retires in November 2015 to care for his beloved wife, Robin, diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Personal, transparent, and engaging, Called! A Longshot’s Story will inspire and warm hearts, evocatively prompting readers to truthfully examine their lives through their own spiritual lenses, and hence might come to realize some additional faith and hope, courage and clarity, gratitude and generosity which had previously eluded them. Game on!

Download or read book Long Shot written by Mike Lupica and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pedro, an avid basketball player, decides to run for class president, challenging a teammate who is also one of the most popular boys in school.

Download or read book Long Shot written by Chris Paul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2030-12-31 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Download or read book Long Shot written by Craig Hodges and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-01-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, the Chicago Bulls basketball star details his life on the court as an athlete and off the court as an activist. As a member of the 1992 world-champion Chicago Bulls, a dashiki-clad Hodges delivered a handwritten letter to President George H. W. Bush demanding that he do more to address racism and economic inequality. Hodges was also a vocal union activist, initiated a boycott against Nike, and spoke out forcefully against police brutality in the wake of the Rodney King beating. But his outspokenness cost him dearly. In the prime of his career, after ten NBA seasons, Hodges was blackballed from the NBA for using his platform as a professional athlete to stand up for justice. In this powerful, passionate, and captivating memoir, Hodges shares the stories—including encounters with Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King, Jim Brown, R. Kelly, Michael Jordan, and others—from his lifelong fight for equality for Black Americans. Praise for Long Shot “A skillfully told, affecting memoir of sports and social activism.” —Kirkus Reviews “Hodges has told his compelling life story with fiery passion, looping around a cast of characters stretching from Jordan, Magic Johnson and Phil Jackson back to Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, before returning to the present.” —Guardian “Craig Hodges is someone I looked up to as a child & now as an adult . . . I read Long Shot in like two hours, I couldn’t stop turning pages. There are so many hooks in it.” —Jesse Williams, actor, producer, director, activist “A beautifully written, brutally honest book. If you loved the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, if you love black history, or if you are fascinated by the politics of sports, I highly recommend this book. Simply put: Craig Hodges’ life is incredible and Long Shot is invaluable.” —AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature

Download or read book Slow Getting Up written by Nate Jackson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football League As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the NFL's workweek. Fast-paced, lyrical, dirty, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

Download or read book Plenty Ladylike written by Claire McCaskill and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The senator from Missouri shares her “straightforward, plainspoken, and at once deeply personal and thoroughly political” (Publishers Weekly) story of embracing her ambition, surviving sexism, making a family, losing a husband, outsmarting her enemies—and finding joy along the way. Claire McCaskill grew up in a political family, but not at a time that welcomed women with big plans. She earned a law degree and paid her way through school by working as a waitress. By 1982 Claire had set her sights on the Missouri House of Representatives. That door was slammed in her face, but Claire always kept pushing—first as a prosecutor of arsonists and rapists and then all the way to the door of a cabal of Missouri politicians, who had secret meetings to block her legislation. In this candid, lively, and forthright memoir, Senator McCaskill describes her uphill battle to become who she is today, from her failed first marriage to a Kansas City car dealer—the father of her three children—to her current marriage to a Missouri businessman whom she describes as “a life partner.” She depicts her ups and downs with the Clintons, her long-shot reelection as senator after secretly helping to nominate a right-wing extremist as her opponent, and the fun of joining the growing bipartisan sisterhood in the Senate. Unconventional, unsparing in its honesty, full of sharp humor and practical wisdom, and rousing in its defense of female ambition, “Plenty Ladylike is a powerful, unapologetic primer on the successful exercise of real power and what it takes to get it, keep it, and use it. This is a brilliant memoir that nearly explodes with encouragement for women on how to achieve their dreams” (Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of Lean In).

Download or read book My Life As a Long Shot written by Vivien Goodman Malloy and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vivien Goodman Malloy's life as a "long shot" began years before her life as a horsewoman and horse breeder-in fact, her long-shot die was cast before she was born. It begins in 1909, in Spain, with the surprise birth of her mother, an unexpected and premature twin of a baby brother who doesn't live. Maria Consuelo Candida Francisca Catarina de Siena Robato y Mañach­­- "Nena"-does. She grows up in Cuba, falls in love, and marries Rafaele "Lello" Matacena, learning she is pregnant while he is back in Naples tending to his disapproving Italian family. Lello never returns. Nena gives birth to Vivien and three years later marries Andrew Goodman, heir to the Bergdorf Goodman department store. Little Vivien Matacena becomes Vivien Goodman, trading her abuelita's home in Havana for a penthouse above the family store in Manhattan. A Cinderella story of sorts, but life is more complicated, and this is just the start of twists and turns, triumphs and tragedies that make up Vivien Goodman Malloy's My Life as a Long Shot: From Cuba to Rye.

Download or read book SEAL Team Six written by Howard E. Wasdin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling book that takes you inside SEAL Team Six – the covert squad that killed Osama Bin Laden SEAL Team Six is a secret unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and counterinsurgency. In this dramatic, behind-the-scenes chronicle, Howard Wasdin takes readers deep inside the world of Navy SEALS and Special Forces snipers, beginning with the grueling selection process of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S)—the toughest and longest military training in the world. After graduating, Wasdin faced new challenges. First there was combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team Two. Then the Green Course: the selection process to join the legendary SEAL Team Six, with a curriculum that included practiced land warfare to unarmed combat. More than learning how to pick a lock, they learned how to blow the door off its hinges. Finally as a member of SEAL Team Six he graduated from the most storied and challenging sniper program in the country: The Marine's Scout Sniper School. Eventually, of the 18 snipers in SEAL Team Six, Wasdin became the best—which meant one of the best snipers on the planet. Less than half a year after sniper school, he was fighting for his life. The mission: capture or kill Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. From rooftops, helicopters and alleys, Wasdin hunted Aidid and killed his men whenever possible. But everything went quickly to hell when his small band of soldiers found themselves fighting for their lives, cut off from help, and desperately trying to rescue downed comrades during a routine mission. The Battle of Mogadishu, as it become known, left 18 American soldiers dead and 73 wounded. Howard Wasdin had both of his legs nearly blown off while engaging the enemy. His dramatic combat tales combined with inside details of becoming one of the world's deadliest snipers make this one of the most explosive military memoirs in years.

Download or read book Bad Tourist written by Suzanne Roberts and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself. Throughout her travels Roberts tries hard not to be a bad tourist, but owing to her cultural blind spots, things don’t always go as planned. Fearlessly confessional, shamelessly funny, and wholly unapologetic, Roberts offers a refreshingly honest account of the joys and absurdities of confronting new landscapes and cultures, as well as new versions of herself. Raw, bawdy, and self-effacing, Bad Tourist is a journey packed with delights and surprises—both of the greater world and of the mysterious workings of the heart.

Download or read book Memoirs of A Professional Cad written by George Sanders and published by Dean Street Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What might we dare to expect from an actor's autobiography, even one from a star as personable as George Sanders? In the case of Memoirs of a Professional Cad, we possibly get more than we deserve. George Sanders undoubtedly led a colourful, glamorous and even action-packed life, spanning the peak years of Hollywood's golden age. But the greatest joy of his memoirs is how funny they are, and how penetrating their author's wit. Endlessly quotable, every chapter shows that the sardonic charm and intelligence he lent to the silver screen were not merely implied. George's early childhood was spent in Tsarist Russia, before he was obliged to flee with his family to England on the eve of the Russian Revolution. He survived two English boarding schools before seeking adventure in Chile and Argentina where he sold cigarettes and kept a pet ostrich in his apartment. We can only be grateful that George was eventually asked to leave South America following a duel of honour (very nearly to the death), and was forced to take up acting for a living instead. Memoirs of A Professional Cad has much to say about Hollywood and the stars George Sanders worked with and befriended, not to mention the irrespressible Tsa Tsa Gabor who became his wife. But at heart it is less a conventional autobiography, and more a Machiavellian guide to life, and the art of living, from a man who knew a thing or two on the subject. So we are invited to share George's thought-provoking views on women, friendship, the pros and cons of therapy, ageing, possessions, and the necessity of contrasts ( Sanders' maxim: 'the more extreme the contrast, the fuller the life'). Previously out of print for many decades, Memoirs of A Professional Cad stands today as one of the classic Hollywood memoirs, from one of its most original, enduring and inimitable stars. This edition also features a new afterword by George Sanders' niece, Ulla Watson. 'Even when asking a hatcheck girl for his coat, he conveyed the impression of a malevolent cat fastidiously licking its chops over the prospect of a particularly toothsome mouse.' Salon

Download or read book A Long Retreat written by Andrew Krivak and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gorgeously written memoir, A Long Retreat, tells the story of one man's search for his religious calling-a search that led him to the Dominican Republic and Central Europe, to Moscow and the South Bronx, and finally into married life with a woman whose search for God coincided with his own. In 1990 Andrew Krivak-poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics-entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the Gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood. For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires-for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love-against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer. The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest. Unlike those stories, it has an happy ending-one in which we can recognize ourselves.

Download or read book It s Not About the Hair written by Debra Jarvis and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An oncology chaplain shares stories from her own battle with breast cancer in this frank, often hilarious memoir reminiscent of the works of Nora Ephron For more than two decades, author Debra Jarvis has counseled cancer patients in her work as a chaplain, working with them from the point of diagnosis through their treatment and recovery. Then, in an ironic twist, she herself was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer. It’s Not About the Hair is Jarvis’ warm and wise account of her own journey as a cancer patient, having already guided so many others through the same battle. With humor, candor, and an indomitable spirit, Jarvis opens a rare window into the interwoven world of medical technology and procedure, human vulnerability and strength, and the spiritual issues that converge in the experience of living through illness and living through life.

Download or read book Crash and Burn written by Artie Lange and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this follow-up to his memoir Too fat to fish, the comedian and radio personality focuses on his drug addiction and life-threatening depression with an unflinching eye and his signature wit. A veteran comedian and radio personality, Lange was addicted to heroin and prescription drugs. He details his very public meltdown, and explains how he turned his life and career around.

Download or read book Dreams from My Father written by Barack Obama and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman