Other books that might interest you

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  The Boys Life of Mark Twain

  Albert Bigelow Paine

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  Albert Bigelow Paine was Samuel Langhorne Clemens' (Mark Twain's) biographer. He lived with Twain, collecting ideas and material for a biography, for a few years before Twain's death in 1910. Six years later Paine published this "story of a man who made the world laugh and love him".For those who have read or listened to Mark Twain's works, Paine's work is an invaluable resource to better understand Twain, the stories behind his stories and his life with those he loved and with whom he worked. (Summary by John Greenman)

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  Red Army Tank Commander - At War...

  Vasiliy Bryukhov

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  A vivid firsthand account of armored warfare by a WWII Soviet tank commander.   What was it like to command a T-34 tank on the Eastern Front during the Second World War? How were tank operations organized and carried out, what was the actual experience of combat, and what were the qualities that made the difference between success and failure? And what were the chances of survival?   Vasiliy Pavlovich Bryukhov’s vivid, detailed, and gripping memoir of his wartime service gives a fascinating and authentic insight into these questions. It also provides an accurate, unsentimental record of the day-to-day life of a tankman whose unit fought in the forefront of the Red Army throughout the conflict across the western Soviet Union and into eastern Europe. His first-hand eyewitness account is a memorable personal story that provides a powerful insight into the reality of tank warfare seventy-five years ago.

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  Autobiography of a Face

  Lucy Grealy

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  "I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.

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  Going the Distance - The Making...

  Joe Barr

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  In 2012, Joe Barr almost died from altitude sickness on the 11,000-ft Wolf Creek Pass in a Race Across America attempt. The infamous 3,200-mile race is non-stop ultracycling at its most extreme. In 2014, Joe returned and received the coveted Finisher's medal, and in 2019, at the age of 60, he went back again and won his category.
  This story of extreme perseverance begins on a yellow Raleigh Chopper on the streets of Co. Derry, where Joe, trying to escape the harsh everyday reality of the Troubles as a young Catholic boy in an all- Protestant school, went on long bicycle rides into the countryside, dreaming of one day taking part in cycling's grand tours.
  When his baby son was diagnosed with cancer, Joe got on the bike with a different purpose and won his first 1,300-mile endurance race. This is a story of unimaginable grit, and of what it takes to keep going when failure seems inevitable.

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  Sovok - The Memoirs of a Liar?

  Kevin McKinney

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  Witness first-hand the transition from Soviet Union to liberated Russia and its return to a regime of tyranny and injustice from the perspective of a foreigner who lived through it. McKinney describes his interactions for over twenty years with dissidents, billionaires, artists, cosmonauts, mob bosses, presidents, prosecutors, and prime ministers, while constantly breaking laws and bending rules, as mostly every character in the book also does. He introduces some of the most dangerous, loyal, and hospitable people, and often they're one in the same person. 
  Described by one literary critic as "Jack Kerouac, narrating the adventures of Thomas Pynchon's character, Tyrone Slothrop, only in Russia," Sovok takes you on a front-row view of the transition from Soviet Union to liberated Russia and then how it went back to today's tyranny. 
  If a movie plot, it would be a blend of Grand Hotel Budapest, Wolf of Wall Street, Bonfire of the Vanities, Snatch, Eastern Promises, and Everything is Illuminated. By declaring himself a liar, the author prods the reader to question everyone and everything. Through personal stories, one of Sovok's central themes is that a network of loyal and moral friends can circumvent the strictest government regulations and defeat criminal syndicates. Sovok falls into one or a dozen categories of book. The one category it is not is ordinary. 
  "Everything is so realistic that is seems invented," - Italy 
  "The impression is incredible. I feel like I'm in reading science fiction, yet I am one of the characters. Events are described not as I knew them, but completely differently. It's as if the author saw them from a different angle, and that the author's angle is truer than the distorted view I saw them from. This is the best thing I've read in many years." - Ukraine 
  "I am totally, completely, absolutely and entirely fascinated. The things you write about are so well familiar to me. I love it." - Russia

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  I Love You More Than You Know -...

  Jonathan Ames

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  “Utterly delightful” essays from the creator of the HBO’s Bored to Death reveal intimate details of his life as a famously neurotic New York writer (Brendan Halpin, Los Angeles Times).   Jonathan Ames has drawn comparisons across the literary spectrum, from David Sedaris to F. Scott Fitzgerald to P.G. Wodehouse, and his books, as well as his abilities as a performer, have made him a favorite on the Late Show with David Letterman. Whether he’s chasing deranged cockroaches around his apartment, kissing a beautiful actress on the set of an avant-garde film, finding himself stuck perilously on top of a fence in the middle of the night in Memphis, or provoking fights with huge German men, Jonathan Ames has an uncanny knack for getting himself into outlandish situations.   In I Love You More Than You Know, Ames once again turns his own adventures, neuroses, joys, heartaches, and insights into profound and hilarious tales. Alive with love and tenderness for his son, his parents, his great-aunt—and even strangers in bars—Ames looks beneath the surface of our world to find the beauty in the perverse, the sweetness in loneliness, and the humor in pain in essays that are “both poignant and silly—an irresistible mix” (John Dicker, Philadelphia Weekly).

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