Other books that might interest you

• 

  Always a Little Further - A...

  Alastair Borthwick

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Alastair Borthwick's classic tale of camping, hiking and climbing tells of the freedom and fellowship enjoyed by climbers in Scotland in the 1930s. His beautiful, vivid descriptions of the landscape are only rivalled by his colourfully drawn, highly entertaining cast of characters, all of whom are passionate about the outdoors and their place within it. Borthwick takes his reader - via road, campsite and bothy - from Arrochar to Glencoe; from the Cuillin to Lairig Ghru. Encounters with tramps, tinkers and hawkers, and of hitching to Ben Nevis in a lorry full of dead sheep, are all described in Borthwick's light-hearted style. He weaves a hilarious tale, aided by the eccentric folk he meets, and this light-hearted read continues to delight, decades after it was first published. Always A Little Further is essential reading for any climber, or indeed anyone, who longs to be transported from the mundane day to day to the wilds of Scotland.

  Show book

• 

  Fifty-Nine in '84 - Old Hoss...

  Edward Achorn

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Fifty-nine in ’84 is award–winning journalist Edward Achorn’s riveting history of late nineteenth century baseball and the era’s most legendary pitcher. 
   
  In 1884, Providence Grays pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine games—more than anyone in major-league history ever had before, or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series. 
   
  Fifty-nine in ’84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil War—a brutal, bloody sport played barehanded, the profession of uneducated, hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win. 
   
  Wonderfully entertaining, Fifty-nine in ’84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating, little-known era of the national pastime. 
   
  “A beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time.” —Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian  
   
  “First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Steven Ambrose wrote. . . . Achorn's description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive.” —Boston Globe

  Show book

• 

  Summits and Secrets - The Kurt...

  Kurt Diemberger

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  'A book grows rather like a snow crystal. One doesn't write it from start to finish but, in greater or less degree, all at the same time … that is why my book is not in chronological order; for everything is of the present, held in the moment when thought captures it.'
  Kurt Diemberger's Summits and Secrets is a mountaineering autobiography like no other. Writing anecdotally, Diemberger provides an abstract look into his life and climbing career that is both fascinating and awe-inspiring to navigate.
  Known for surviving the 1986 K2 disaster – an account described in harrowing detail in his award-winning book The Endless Knot – Diemberger provides a captivating insight into his earlier climbs in Summits and Secrets. From climbing his first peak in the Tyrol mountains of Austria, to the epoch-making first ascent of Broad Peak with Hermann Buhl in 1957, and then summiting Dhaulagiri in 1960, where he became one of only two people to have made first ascents of two mountains over 8,000 metres, Diemberger recounts his experiences with wit, honesty and an infectious enthusiasm:
  'Every climber knows the thrill … the unique inexplicable tension, which the regular shapes of the mountain world awake in him: huge pyramids, enormous rectangular slabs, piled-up triangles of rock, white circles, immense squares – the thrill of simplicity of shape and outline and the excitement of mastering them, to an unbelievable extent, by his own efforts, his own power … '
  Summits and Secrets is a must-read for those wanting an insight into the life and achievements of one of the toughest high-altitude climbers the world has ever known.

  Show book

• 

  Game Set and Match - The Tennis...

  Herbert Warren Wind

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The leading players and outstanding matches of two thrilling decades in tennis history From Rod Laver’s amateur Grand Slam in 1962 to the first US Open held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, legendary sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind captures the grace and drama of modern tennis in this brilliant collection drawn from the pages of the New Yorker.   The era’s biggest names, including Margaret Court, Chris Evert, John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, and Pancho Gonzales, thrill the crowds of Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and Forest Hills, and America’s Davis Cup team battles patriotic linesmen and frenzied fans in an epic showdown against the Romanians in Bucharest. In “Mrs. King versus Mr. Riggs,” Wind paints a witty and evocative portrait of Billy Jean King’s historic beatdown of Bobby Riggs, and in “Forest Hills and the Final Between Connors and Borg,” he vividly recounts one of the wildest and woolliest tournaments in the sport’s history.   Rendered with the same authority and eloquence that led the New York Times to declare Wind the dean of American golf writers, these dispatches from center court testify to the celebrated journalist’s passion and versatility.  

  Show book

• 

  Like There's No Tomorrow -...

  Frances Ward

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Christians often find it difficult to talk or preach or engage with the possibility of climate catastrophe and an uninhabitable earth, for the questions are enormous. Faith in God needs to engage with the reality of the tragic loss of creation through anthropogenic impact.
  
   
  If we're living in the end times, then how should we live? Wracked with grief, anxiety and guilt, with foreboding deep as death? How is it possible to live hopefully, even as we face realistically the inevitability of the radical impact of an unpredictable climate, rising sea levels, the collapse of biodiversity? How do we remain faithful to God and loving to our neighbour, particularly if our neighbours are exiles and immigrants because their homes are no longer inhabitable? What do we tell our children and grandchildren, so they don't grow up completely overwhelmed by anxiety, such that mental illness levels continue to soar?
  
   
  Frances Ward attempts to think through some of these questions; to continue to have faith, hope, and love in response to God. It is a Christian response to eco-anxiety, a theological and contemplative reflection to sustain a fierce hope that hopes against hope. It is a deep lament that provokes a fierce hope to enable humanity to live life to the full, like there's no tomorrow.

  Show book

• 

  A Voyage for Madmen

  Peter Nichols

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.

  Show book