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Book Sounds Like Titanic  A Memoir

Download or read book Sounds Like Titanic A Memoir written by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician—or so she thinks. When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group “performs,” the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake. Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Hindman writes with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender, especially when it comes to the difficulties young women face in a world that views them as silly, shallow, and stupid. As the story swells to a crescendo, it gives voice to the anxieties and illusions of a generation of women, and reveals the failed promises of a nation that takes comfort in false realities.

Book Sounds Like Titanic

Download or read book Sounds Like Titanic written by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician—or so she thinks. When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group “performs,” the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake. Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Hindman writes with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender, especially when it comes to the difficulties young women face in a world that views them as silly, shallow, and stupid. As the story swells to a crescendo, it gives voice to the anxieties and illusions of a generation of women, and reveals the failed promises of a nation that takes comfort in false realities.

Book Titanic Survivor

Download or read book Titanic Survivor written by Violet Jessop and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violet Jessop's life is an inspiring story of survival. Born in 1887 in Argentina, the eldest child of Irish immigrants, at the age of 21 she became the breadwinner for her widowed mother and five siblings when she commenced a career as a stewardess and nurse on some of the most famous ocean going vessels of the day. Throughout her 40 year time at sea she survived an unbelievable series of events including the sinking of the TITANIC. “One awful moment of empty, misty blackness enveloped us in its loneliness, then an unforgettable, agonizing cry went up from 1500 despairing throats, a long wail and then silence and our tiny craft tossing about at the mercy of the ice field.” For most people one sinking would be enough. But four years later Violet, now a nurse with the British Red Cross, was on board the World War I hospital ship BRITANNIC when it struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Aegean. To her, this disaster was even more horrifying-- “Just as life seeming nothing but a whirling, choking ache, I rose to the light of day, my nose barely above the little lapping waves. I opened my eyes on an indescribable scene of slaughter, which made me shut them again to keep it out." By the end of her story we have a met a woman who could handle whatever life threw at her with determination and good humor. She knew that only by her own strength of character would she survive. But Titanic Survivor is much more. A unique autobiography for those who want to know how it really felt, a story that could be told only by a Titanic Survivor.

Book Spy Handler

    Book Details:
  • Author : Victor Cherkashin
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2008-08-05
  • ISBN : 0786724404
  • Pages : 370 pages

Download or read book Spy Handler written by Victor Cherkashin and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor Cherkashin's incredible career in the KGB spanned thirty-eight years, from Stalin's death in 1953 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In this riveting memoir, Cherkashin provides a remarkable insider's view of the KGB's prolonged conflict with the United States, from his recruitment through his rising career in counterintelligence to his prime spot as the KGB's number- two man at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Victor Cherkashin's story will shed stark new light on the KGB's inner workings over four decades and reveal new details about its major cases. Cherkashin's story is rich in episode and drama. He took part in some of the highest-profile Cold War cases, including tracking down U.S. and British spies around the world. He was posted to stations in the U.S., Australia, India, and Lebanon and traveled the globe for operations in England, Europe, and the Middle East. But it was in 1985, known as "the Year of the Spy," that Cherkashin scored two of the biggest coups of the Cold War. In April of that year, he recruited disgruntled CIA officer Aldrich Ames, becoming his principal handler. Refuting and clarifying other published versions, Cherkashin will offer the most complete account on how and why Ames turned against his country. Cherkashin will also reveal new details about Robert Hanssen's recruitment and later exposure, as only he can. And he will address whether there is an undiscovered KGB spy-another Hanssen or Ames-still at large. Spy Handler will be a major addition to Cold War history, told by one of its key participants.

Book Tinderbox

    Book Details:
  • Author : Megan Dunn
  • Publisher : Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
  • Release : 2024-08-13
  • ISBN : 1776953940
  • Pages : 149 pages

Download or read book Tinderbox written by Megan Dunn and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2024-08-13 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Megan Dunn had lost the plot—in her life and in her art. Her attempt to write a fictional tribute to Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t going well. Her employer, the bookseller Borders, was going bust. Her marriage was failing. Her prospects were narrowing. The world wasn’t quite against her – but it wasn’t with her either. Riffing on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel about the end of reading, Tinderbox is one of the most interesting books in decades about literary culture and its place in the world. More than that, it’s about how every one of us fits into that bigger picture – and the struggle to make sense of life in the twenty-first century. Ironically enough for a book about failures in art, Tinderbox itself is a fantastic achievement: a wonderfully crafted and beautifully written work of non-fiction that is by turns brilliantly funny and achingly sad. Tinderbox is one of the most successful books about failure you will ever read. Praise for Tinderbox: ‘Megan Dunn’s writing is utterly modern, sharp, unsentimental and beautiful; she tells a gripping story laced with humour and pathos. She is a writer to watch.’ - Michèle Roberts ‘Megan Dunn possesses a rare combination of assets – a highly original voice, great subject matter, enormous insight and serious literary ambition. Plus, she’s funny. Her work leaps off the page and makes the reader want more.’ - Kate Pullinger “It’s already one of my favourite New Zealand books.” – Hera Lindsay Bird, The Spinoff “Megan Dunn is a comic genius.” – Susanna Andrew, Metro “A wonderful, restless, formally daring first book” – James Cook, Review 31 Praise for Things I Learned at Art School: “It is, quite simply, a work of brilliance. It is an intelligent, sharp, and incisive body of work.” – Lana Lopesi, Metro “Dunn has an extraordinary facility with tone, an ability to be consistently funny while telling sad stories.” – David McCooey, Sydney Review of Books. “A rich, rewarding, funny and poignant memoir.” – Sally Blundell, Academy of New Zealand Literature “Dunn takes the reader on a digressive, funny and unflinching journey through late-20th-century New Zealand.” – Paula Morris, New Zealand Listener “As Megan Dunn makes clear in her wise, witty and wonderful memoir, the seeds of a creative life will bloom in the most unexpected of places.” – Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side

Book Luck and Circumstance

Download or read book Luck and Circumstance written by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed director of such films as Brideshead Revisited shares the story of his youth and career, providing coverage of such topics as his childhood as the son of star Geraldine Fitzgerald, his relationships with Hollywood elite and the allegations that Orson Welles was his real father.

Book Becoming Eve

Download or read book Becoming Eve written by Abby Stein and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?

Book The Glittering Hour

    Book Details:
  • Author : Iona Grey
  • Publisher : Thomas Dunne Books
  • Release : 2019-12-10
  • ISBN : 1466874694
  • Pages : 400 pages

Download or read book The Glittering Hour written by Iona Grey and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author Iona Grey's next unforgettable historical about true love found and lost and the secrets we keep from one another Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing. Her life is a whirl of parties and drinking, pursued by the press and staying on just the right side of scandal, all while running from the life her parents would choose for her. Lawrence Weston is a penniless painter who stumbles into Selina's orbit one night and can never let her go even while knowing someone of her stature could never end up with someone of his. Except Selina falls hard for Lawrence, envisioning a life of true happiness. But when tragedy strikes, Selina finds herself choosing what's safe over what's right. Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, Iona Grey's The Glittering Hour is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss. "An absorbing tale of love, loss, and the ties that bind... A sweeping historical saga that captures the desires and dilemmas of the heart." — Booklist

Book Even This I Get to Experience

Download or read book Even This I Get to Experience written by Norman Lear and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary creator of iconic television programs All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear remade our television culture, while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic, and social involvement. Sharing the wealth of Lear's ninety years, this is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led.

Book The Titanic Disaster Hearings

Download or read book The Titanic Disaster Hearings written by William Alden Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-03 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merely a day afterTitanicsurvivors arrived in port in New York City, a United States Senate committee began an investigation into the wreck of the great "unsinkable" ship. For the first time in book form, here is the dramatic testimony of crew and passengers from all walks of life, as they recall the sights and sounds of the night of April 14, 1912.From the manners of the day to the conduct fo those boarding the lifeboats, from acts of kindness to palpable greed, here is an unforgettable portrait of human nature in the face of theTitanictragedy, in the words of the men and women who survived....J. Bruce Ismay,British officer of the White Star Line, who hopped into a lifeboat to save himself and never looked back to see her go down....Second officerCharles Lightoller'sharrowing plunge as the sinking ship's force of suction pulled him under water....On-duty lookoutFrederick Fleet'sadmission that the iceberg might have been avoided if the crew had been equipped with binoculars....PassengerDaisy Minahan,who recalled the refusal of an officer in her lifeboat to aid those adrift in the frigid waters...and many more witnesses to one of the most shattering events of our century. Illustrated with historical photographs, TheTitanic Disaster Hearingsis a vital piece of the puzzle that has sparked worldwide fascination.

Book A Night to Remember

    Book Details:
  • Author : Walter Lord
  • Publisher : Macmillan
  • Release : 2005-01-07
  • ISBN : 9780805077643
  • Pages : 212 pages

Download or read book A Night to Remember written by Walter Lord and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-01-07 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title.

Book The Big Book of Bisexual Trials and Errors

Download or read book The Big Book of Bisexual Trials and Errors written by Elizabeth Beier and published by Northwest Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial} Elizabeth Beier chronicles true-life romantic tales as she breaks up with a long-term boyfriend and navigates a brave new world: dating women. Beier tackles the complexities of sexuality and self image with a conversational and immediate art style and stories anyone who’s ever struggled with dating can relate to.

Book Shadow of the Titanic

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrew Wilson
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2012-03-06
  • ISBN : 145167158X
  • Pages : 402 pages

Download or read book Shadow of the Titanic written by Andrew Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the icy waters of the North Atlantic reverberated with the desperate screams of more than 1,500 men, women, and children—passengers of the once majestic liner Titanic. Then, as the ship sank to the ocean floor and the passengers slowly died from hypothermia, an even more awful silence settled over the sea. The sights and sounds of that night would haunt each of the vessel’s 705 survivors for the rest of their days. Although we think we know the story of Titanic—the famously luxurious and supposedly unsinkable ship that struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America—very little has been written about what happened to the survivors after the tragedy. How did they cope in the aftermath of this horrific event? How did they come to remember that night, a disaster that has been likened to the destruction of a small town? Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, and diaries as well as interviews with survivors’ family members, award-winning journalist and author Andrew Wilson reveals how some used their experience to propel themselves on to fame, while others were so racked with guilt they spent the rest of their lives under the Titanic’s shadow. Some reputations were destroyed, and some survivors were so psychologically damaged that they took their own lives in the years that followed. Andrew Wilson brings to life the colorful voices of many of those who lived to tell the tale, from famous survivors like Madeleine Astor (who became a bride, a widow, an heiress, and a mother all within a year), Lady Duff Gordon, and White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, to lesser known second- and third-class passengers such as the Navratil brothers—who were traveling under assumed names because they were being abducted by their father. Today, one hundred years after that fateful voyage, Shadow of the Titanic adds an important new dimension to our understanding of this enduringly fascinating story.

Book How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J  Bruce Ismay

Download or read book How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay written by Frances Wilson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Books have been written, films made, we have raised the Titanic and watched her go down again on numerous occasions, but out of the wreckage Frances Wilson spins a new epic: when the ship hit the iceberg on 14 April 1912 and a thousand men prepared to die, J Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. Accused of cowardice, Ismay became, according to one headline, 'The Most Talked-of Man in the World'. The first victim of a press hate campaign, his reputation never recovered and while other survivors were piecing together their accounts, Ismay never spoke of his beloved ship again. With the help of that great narrator of the sea, Joseph Conrad, whose Lord Jim so uncannily predicted Ismay's fate - and whose manuscript of the story of a man who impulsively betrays a code of honour and lives on under the strain of intolerable guilt went down with the Titanic - Frances Wilson explores the reasons behind Ismay's jump, his desperate need to make sense of the horror of it all, and to find a way of living with lost honour. For those who survived the Titanic the world was never the same again. But as Wilson superbly demonstrates, we all have our own Titanics, and we all need to find ways of surviving them.

Book Stress Test

Download or read book Stress Test written by Timothy F. Geithner and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Washington Post Bestseller Los Angeles Times Bestseller Stress Test is the story of Tim Geithner’s education in financial crises. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from boom to bust to rescue to recovery. In a candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, he takes readers behind the scenes of the crisis, explaining the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions he made to repair a broken financial system and prevent the collapse of the Main Street economy. This is the inside story of how a small group of policy makers—in a thick fog of uncertainty, with unimaginably high stakes—helped avoid a second depression but lost the American people doing it. Stress Test is also a valuable guide to how governments can better manage financial crises, because this one won’t be the last. Stress Test reveals a side of Secretary Geithner the public has never seen, starting with his childhood as an American abroad. He recounts his early days as a young Treasury official helping to fight the international financial crises of the 1990s, then describes what he saw, what he did, and what he missed at the New York Fed before the Wall Street boom went bust. He takes readers inside the room as the crisis began, intensified, and burned out of control, discussing the most controversial episodes of his tenures at the New York Fed and the Treasury, including the rescue of Bear Stearns; the harrowing weekend when Lehman Brothers failed; the searing crucible of the AIG rescue as well as the furor over the firm’s lavish bonuses; the battles inside the Obama administration over his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan to end the crisis; and the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in more than seventy years. Secretary Geithner also describes the aftershocks of the crisis, including the administration’s efforts to address high unemployment, a series of brutal political battles over deficits and debt, and the drama over Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss. Secretary Geithner is not a politician, but he has things to say about politics—the silliness, the nastiness, the toll it took on his family. But in the end, Stress Test is a hopeful story about public service. In this revealing memoir, Tim Geithner explains how America withstood the ultimate stress test of its political and financial systems.

Book Unsinkable

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel Allen Butler
  • Publisher : Frontline Books
  • Release : 2012-01-02
  • ISBN : 1848326416
  • Pages : 305 pages

Download or read book Unsinkable written by Daniel Allen Butler and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2012-01-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first modern work to give a comprehensive picture of the RMS Titanic and the people intertwined with her fate, from disaster to recovery. Drawn from primary sources and contemporary accounts and updated to coincide with the April 2012 anniversary, this new heart-rending narrative allows readers to come to their own conclusions about this legendary vessel. Daniel Allen Butler spend more than 30 years researching the work, delving into the lives of every principal participant. In addition to examining the roles played by individual, he also looks into the problems of equipment and errors in technical data that resulted in the deaths of 1502 people. Rather than focussing on the night of the tragedy alone, he also investigates the events leading up to and following the fateful night.

Book A Monk Swimming

Download or read book A Monk Swimming written by Malachy McCourt and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this darkly humorous New York Times–bestselling memoir, the Irish American writer and actor shares charming stories from his first decade in the US. Malachy McCourt left behind a childhood of poverty and painful memories of his father and mother in Limerick, Ireland, when he followed his brother, Frank, to America in 1952. In A Monk Swimming, McCourt recounts the decade that followed. With not much else to his name other than his sharp wit and knack for storytelling, McCourt was unsure what he would do after arriving in New York City. He worked as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks, became the first celebrity bartender in a Manhattan saloon, performed on stage with the Irish Players, and told tales to Jack Paar on The Tonight Show. Although McCourt gained success, money, women, and, eventually, children of his own, he still carried memories of the past with him. So, he fled again. He found himself in the Manhattan Detention Complex, otherwise known as the Tombs. He was arrested several times: poolside in Beverly Hills, in Zurich with gold-smugglers, and again in Calcutta with sex workers. McCourt’s journey also took him to Paris, Rome, and even Limerick again, until finally he was forced to grapple with his past. Praise for A Monk Swimming “[A] funny, oddly winning book.” —The New York Times “A rollicking good read that, as the Irish say, would make a dead man laugh.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Malachy McCourt, who has habitually regurgitated English in glorious colors to his fellow Irishmen and New Yorkers, here makes his vivid, whimsical, raucous, murderous joy and voice available to the rest of us in tales of riot and glory which build on the story of the McCourts’ early life so dazzlingly told in Angela’s Ashes by his brother Frank.” —Thomas Keneally, author of the international bestseller Schindler’s List