Other books that might interest you

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  Racing with Rich Energy - How a...

  Elizabeth Blackstock, Alanis King

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  Formula One has long maintained a glitzy aura that masks dark and strange goings-on in the background. But with the 2019 season came a force louder than Formula One could dream of muffling: William Storey, the founder of British energy drink startup Rich Energy. 
   
   
   
  Storey became a multimillion-dollar sponsor of the Haas Formula One team a year after records showed Rich Energy having a mere $770 in the bank. He equated his doubters to moon-landing truthers and publicly mocked both the Haas team and the entities winning legal disputes against him. But where were actual cans of Rich Energy, and did the supposed sponsorship funds exist? 
   
   
   
  In the six months between Storey's first race as a Formula One sponsor and his very public exit, he stole the spotlight with a loud mouth and an active Twitter account. Haas team boss Guenther Steiner once described the Rich Energy news cycle as: "I'm getting sick of answering these stupid fucking questions on a race weekend. I've never seen any fucking thing like this." No one else had, either. This book uncovers the complete, bizarre story.

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  Brave New Music - The Martyn...

  Gary West

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  Martyn Bennett was an artist ahead of his time. Piper, violinist, composer, producer, DJ – his radical blend of tradition and technology created an audacious new sound that was uniquely his own. 
  Steeped in the folk cultures of Scotland, yet inspired too by deep-rooted traditions from far beyond, his music ignored boundaries and celebrated cultural difference wherever he found it. Although classically trained, he was drawn to the gritty excitement of the urban dance club scene, and his fusion of folk, classical, jazz and hard-edged electronica was championed by the likes of Peter Gabriel and the folklorist Hamish Henderson who labelled it 'brave new music'.
  This biography traces his story through personal struggles and artistic triumphs, and offers an assessment of his place in the pantheon of major Scottish artists. It is a story of resilience as well as innovation: twice diagnosed with unrelated cancers, his professional career lasted little more than a decade, and he fought serious illness for half of it. He died in January 2005, aged 33. Yet his art continues to inspire: where he led, others have followed, and his music still wins awards and fills concert halls at major international festivals two decades after his death.

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  Mob Adjacent - A Family Memoir

  Jeffrey Gentile, Jr. Michael...

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  The true story of "Mob Adjacent: A Family Memoir" follows an ordinary family's extraordinary life under the protection of the infamous Chicago Outfit. Take an acid trip down memory lane with brothers Jeffrey and Michael Gentile, Jr. as they discover a parallel world hidden behind a suburban facade. For them, "The Wonder Years" collides with "The Sopranos." Hoodlums and gangsters filter in and out of their lives and home and easily as the milkman and the mailman. In their world, the guy who robs the bakery is as respected as the guy who bakes the bread. Blame it on the company they keep. Their father grew up among the next generation of post-Capone Chicago mobsters and kept them as trusted friends and honorary uncles to his children for the rest of his life. Mike Gentile, Sr. wasn’t IN the mob, but he was NEAR it – mob adjacent. "Mob Adjacent: A Family Memoir" presents a who’s who of Chicago crime bosses – Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Sam Giancana, Joe Lombardo, and an assortment of hoodlums, gangsters, bone breakers, loan sharks, and second-story guys, with celebrity cameo appearances by Frank Sinatra, Leo Durocher, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Joan Collins, Liza Minnelli, and Elizabeth Taylor. For the Gentile brothers, living mob adjacent delivers benefits and teaches lessons. Grab a front- row seat to as much real-life mob drama as a Martin Scorsese/Francis Ford Coppola movie marathon. 
  “A fascinating book…a fascinating read. Mob Adjacent will open your eyes.” – Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune 
  “You cannot put it down. You want a Netflix series, this is it.” -- Roe Conn, WGN Radio 
  “These stories by the Gentile brothers deserve the full cinematic treatment. Mob Adjacent is the real deal.” – Gino Cafarelli, Filmmaker, Author, Actor

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  Conversations with Birds

  Priyanka Kumar

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  "Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into myself." 
   
   
   
  So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape—and in the cosmos—by way of watching birds. 
   
   
   
  Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life. Kumar's perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. For Kumar, birds "become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world." At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar's reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that "seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us."

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  The Sociopaths Puppet - A...

  Arianna Griffith

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  "By the time I got to know Paige Summer's reality, I had become one of his 31 known victims. A number of incidents happened in those years I lived with him, that were constant indicators that there was something seriously wrong about that person." 
  The Sociopath’s Puppet tells the heart-wrenching memoir of Arianna's struggle when she finds herself stuck in a terrible relationship after leaving a 10-year alcoholic & abusive marriage. At first, Paige seemed to be the one person she had longed for, but as the situation unfolds, she realizes how she had been unwittingly trapped and entangled in his web. He, bit by bit, strips her of everything in her life. Not only does she learn that Paige was not who he portrayed himself to be, but also a diagnosed Sociopath and a serial criminal. 
  A cautionary narrative of manipulation, deception, physical abuse, theft, arrests, drugs, mental hospitals, guns, and death. 
  And HE'S STILL OUT THERE! 

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  Never Better - My Life in Our Times

  Tommie Gorman

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  'Money is handy for doing messages' was a phrase the young Tommie Gorman heard from his father, growing up in Sligo in the 1960s. Struggle was never far away but their household had a surplus of love and warmth. From modest beginnings as a local reporter at the Western Journal, where his deadlines were dependent on the bus schedule, Tommie landed at RTÉ, taking up the post of North-West correspondent in 1980. Over the next four decades he became a familiar presence in Irish homes, known for his coverage of Europe and Northern Ireland, as well as his unforgettable interviews with controversial figures including Gerry Adams, Roy Keane, Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster. While revelling in his life as a journalist, he was also coping with the cancer diagnosis he received in 1994 and seeking ways to access life-saving treatments for patients who shared his rare form of the disease. 
   
  In this insightful and generous book, Tommie takes readers behind the scenes and shares some of his memories from Sligo to Stormont, via Brussels and Sweden, as he recounts forty extraordinary years of Irish history from his front-row seat and looks at what may lie ahead for the island.

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