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  American Legends of the Sky

  Editors Charles River

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  The lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright are quintessential American stories. Growing up in America’s heartland, the boys lived very ordinary lives with 5 other siblings and worked in printing jobs and repair jobs that involved tinkering with tools and bicycles. But at the end of the 20th century, one of the brothers’ passions became an obsession, especially for Wilbur. In December 1903, the brothers had done enough scientific work with concepts like lift to help their aeronautical designs, and they had the technical know-how to work with engines. On December 17, the brothers took turns making history’s first successful powered flights.  
  In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first to make a nonstop Transatlantic solo flight, forever earning him fame and the moniker "Lucky Lindy". Two years later, Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane, and her uncanny resemblance to Lindbergh earned her the nickname "Lady Lindy". Together they became America's most famous aviators, and their stories were inextricably interwoven by their lives, careers, and ill-fated destinies. 
  By the mid-1930s, Amelia Earhart had set a multitude of altitude and distance records, but she wanted to attempt a circumnavigation of the world. After an ill-fated first attempt, Earhart and Fred Noonan set off on another attempt, creating one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Earhart and Noonan were to land on Howland Island, 1700 miles southwest of Hawaii, but radio transmissions ceased between the plane and authorities on the ground the morning of July 2, 1937. Earhart and Noonan had disappeared, never to be seen again, despite one of the nation’s largest and costliest manhunts to date. Unfortunately, the speculation over exactly what happened to Earhart and the mystery of her disappearance have come to overshadow and obscure her many accomplishments.

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  Narrative of My Captivity Among...

  Fanny Kelly

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  "I was a member of a small company of emigrants, who were attacked by an overwhelming force of hostile Sioux, which resulted in the death of a large proportion of the party, in my own capture, and a horrible captivity of five months' duration. Of my thrilling adventures and experience during this season of terror and privation, I propose to give a plain, unvarnished narrative, hoping the reader will be more interested in facts concerning the habits, manners, and customs of the Indians, and their treatment of prisoners."

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  Dispatches from the Couch - A...

  Stacey Hettes

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  "Hettes' writing verges on the poetic as she describes the heartbreaking fear that her suffering is permanent . . . the memoir includes moments of humor and hope, and it is inspiring to chart Hettes' journey from despair to a degree in "self-studies." A moving recollection filled with wisdom and unabashed emotion." - Kirkus Reviews  
  "This is a book for everyone who toys with walling themselves off to live with loneliness." - Betsy Teter, founder of Hub City Press 
  "It's easy enough to label child sexual abuse as horrific, but the acts themselves are only part of the problem. Hettes reveals the crushing, long-term consequences of sexual violation and our culture's collective failure to address it." - Sheri Reynolds, NYT bestselling author of The Rapture of Cannan 
  Stacey is living exactly the right life before she hits the psychological equivalent of a patch of black ice. 
  As Professor Hettes, her classes focus as much on neuroscience's beauty and wonder as its facts and theories. Fellow faculty members see her as a fair but outspoken leader on a campus steeped in the blended patriarchies of academia and southern gentility. 
  At an emotionally charged forum on sexual violence, she takes a stand against a colleague's reckless verbal assault, outing herself as a sexual abuse survivor in the process. Professor Hettes must continue her work even as Stacey finds herself resubmerged in the sights, sounds, and smells of her memories with Mr. Jay, a Pentecostal church deacon. 
  With exceptional candor, Dispatches from the Couch invites readers to take a seat beside her in the office of her new therapist, Piper. This debut memoir reveals the laborious, complex, but promising work of revisiting the past in order to extract its remnants of shame and loneliness from the present.

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  Becoming - from chaos to...

  Tracie Bork

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  By age 25, Tracie Bork is a rising scientist and half of a power couple who throws lavish faculty parties. But beneath the perfect surface lurks the chaos she’s tried to control since childhood—and alarming physical symptoms she’d rather dismiss. Each year, she works more fiendishly than the one before as the complications to her health compound and become more mysterious until finally, she hits a wall, body, mind, and soul.  In a series of honest inquiries and reflections, Bork chronicles her journey as a patient, academic, former military brat, and woman in search of faith. She explores the inexplicable connection between early trauma and a damaged nervous system—which incites a cascade of drug and food reactions that bring her to the brink of death—and the cost of using control to feel safe in the world that’s let her down. One part coming-of-age story and another part medical thriller, the stories in Becoming unfold everywhere from Kodiak, Alaska, to Kyoto, Japan, and ultimately reveal the healing that’s possible if we can quiet our analytical mind and open up to divine assistance. This memoir will baffle, educate, and validate anyone struggling with a mysterious illness or chronic high stress, inspiring them to face their fears, let go of the coping strategies that hold them back, and live spiritually awakened.

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  NHOJ - A Memoir That Started...

  John Lazenby

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  As a journalist and author, John Lazenby has spent more than forty years chronicling the tales of others. But for much of his life he closely guarded his own compelling story – a long and challenging struggle with childhood dyslexia, unable to read or write at a time when neurodiversity was rarely considered or recognised. Sent away to boarding school at the age of seven, John's future pivoted on the life-changing intervention of a teacher who finally understood the boy whom no one else could teach.
  In this warm and poignant memoir, John traces his misadventures through the unforgiving education system of the 1960s, when illiteracy was viewed as a character defect that could be rectified by stern discipline and regular beatings, and takes us on an evocative visit to the not-so-distant past, introducing the kind and eccentric family who never gave up on him – and the array of teachers who did.
  We follow the intrepid progress of a boy who could write only one word – his name, spelled backwards – to a man who finally found his true calling after a series of setbacks and false starts, only to make the late discovery that he had travelled through life unaware of a second neurodiversity, hiding in plain sight. Heart-warming, hilarious, raw and shocking, NHOJ is a tribute to overcoming challenges, ignoring barriers and holding on to hope in a world that initially seems to have no place for you.

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  The Bomb Doctor - A Scientist's...

  Selene Yeager, Kirk Yeager

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  This is not CSI. What you encounter as a true bomb detective—or "Bomb Doctor," as some in the FBI call me—are fields of twisted metal containing soot-covered fragments intermingled with human remains. You have carnage and chaos. As you wade into that sea of wailing sirens and screaming survivors awash with the stench of diesel fuel and decaying bodies, your job is to ferret out forensic clues in a type of macabre scavenger hunt to ultimately reconstruct the scene and the explosive device and determine what happened and what the bomb looked like before it was torn asunder. 
   
   
   
  The scavenger hunt can take months—or, in the case of the infamous Collar Bomber, seven painstaking years. The work is worth every second and every horrific image that etches itself into your brain because it helps prevent new horrors. Not all, obviously. We are not superheroes. But unlike shooters, who often just "snap" or seem to act out in random ways, bombers almost always have a story—one that follows an arc. 
   
   
   
  In The Bomb Doctor, my goal is to explain that arc, explode myths, reconstruct reality, and build an understanding of the reason and means behind the mayhem, as well as pull back the curtain on the investigative process that brings bombers to justice.

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