Other books that might interest you

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  Survivors in Mexico

  Rebecca West

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  A travelogue and historical exploration of Mexico from one of the twentieth century’s greatest travel writers Dame Rebecca West travels through Mexico and explores its people, history, religion, and culture in her unfinished work Survivors in Mexico, carefully stitched together by Bernard Schweizer in this posthumously published edition. West tackles the country’s broad historical legacy—the Spanish conquest and Mexican revolution, the muralist movement, race relations, and contemporary life—and delves into the personal, intimate lives of key figures such as Hernán Cortés, Montezuma, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. Conceived as a companion to West’s masterful classic Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, this book showcases the complexity of West’s character, addresses the paradoxes inherent in her work, and allows for a mature understanding of her ideology. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Rebecca West featuring rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, at the University of Tulsa.

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  Being a Ballerina - The Power...

  Gavin Larsen

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  Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer's continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist.Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of.Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted—but full of enormously rewarding moments.An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen's memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

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  Unblinded - One Man's Courageous...

  Traci Medford-Rosow, Kevin Coughlin

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  The USA Today–bestselling biography of a man who lost his sight as an adult and regained it twenty years later without any medical intervention.Unblinded is the true story of New Yorker Kevin Coughlin, who became blind at age thirty-six due to a rare genetic disorder known as Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. Twenty years later, without medical intervention, Kevin’s sight miraculously started to return. He is the only known person in the world who has experienced a spontaneous, non-medically assisted, regeneration of the optic nerve. Unblinded follows Kevin’s descent into darkness, and his unexplained reemergence to sight.Praise for Unblinded “A remarkable story of sudden blindness, new vision, and sight regained. It offers great insight into the nature of reality—that which we perceive and that which we create for ourselves.”—Isaac Lidsky, New York Times–bestselling author of Eyes Wide Open“Its pages take us, at once, on a remarkable true adventure and into the heart and mind of a most extraordinary individual. A beautifully written and inspiring tale, and a reminder to us all about what really matters.”—Robert Kurson, New York Times–bestselling author of Rocket Men “Unblinded provides honest, profound insight into the emotional trauma that occurs when vision is lost and the path forward in life cannot be seen.”—Lissa Poincenot, National Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy Advocate“A fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of what went on during those years of darkness and how Kevin Coughlin, after battling alcoholism, loneliness, prejudice, and perhaps most of all himself, emerges as a man of wisdom and sight.”—Ann Campanella, award-winning and bestselling author of Motherhood: Lost and Found

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  Already Too Late - a boyhood memoir

  Carl MacDougall

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  In post-war Glasgow a primary school class was set a composition topic: a memorable family event. Each child completed the assignment – all, that is, but one. 
  Why didn't you write about your family?
  Please, miss. I didn't, I didn't know what to write.
  But now, he does.
  
  In Already, Too Late, Carl MacDougall, one of Scotland's most accomplished and celebrated literary writers, presents a memoir of extraordinary authenticity and honesty.
  
  This memoir takes us through MacDougall's upbringing, both in and out of care on the west coast of Scotland, Fife, and industrial Glasgow, during the first decade of his life.
  
  Within this world, now teetering on the brink of our collective memory, sits a single-parent household of German descent; money is tight, trauma roams free and tragedy comes calling again and again.
  
  Through a powerful mosaic of stories, MacDougall strips away all rose-tinted sentimentality to create a vivid account of heart-break, dissociation and loss.
  
  Already, Too Late is the early life of an outsider looking in, a changeling child, displaced, alone, and – in his own grandmother's words – 'no right'. Because for some, even the very beginning is already too late.

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  Bird Dream - Adventures at the...

  Matt Higgins

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  Human flight is one of the last great challenges on Earth. Not like how the Wright brothers flew, but how we fly in our dreams. This is the goal of the Wingsuit Landing Project: to soar through the sky at speeds up to one hundred miles per hour and to land without the aid of a parachute. This project is the creation of thirty-seven-year-old Jeb Corliss, Jr., a Southern Californian who seeks to emulate a mode of flight more like a flying squirrel than bird or plane.Journalist Matt Higgins gained intimate access to Corliss, who, after years of BASE jumping and skydiving, set out to be the first person to be dropped 2,400 feet and land solely with the aid of a wingsuit. But somewhere in the UK, forty-two-year-old Gary Connery was plotting to beat Corliss at his own game. Along with an international group of wingsuit devotees, Corliss and Connery race to leap into the unknown as the world's foremost wingsuit pilots. This race will nearly cost one of the competitors his life.A riveting, adrenaline-fueled narrative about a group of unforgettable characters who risk everything to achieve man's age-old dream of flying, Bird Dream takes listeners to the cutting edge of this new frontier-as well as the strange science and fearless history that have led us to this remarkable point in the human experience.

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  The Solace of Open Spaces - Essays

  Gretel Ehrlich

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  These transcendent, lyrical essays on the West announced Gretel Ehrlich as a major American writer—“Wyoming has found its Whitman” (Annie Dillard). Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life.   Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves.   Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning,” Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us (Newsday).    

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