Other books that might interest you

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  Riding Rockets - The Outrageous...

  Mike Mullane

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  On February 1, 1978, the first group of space shuttle astronauts, twenty-nine men and six women, were introduced to the world. Among them would be history makers, including the first American woman and the first African American in space. This assembly of astronauts would carry NASA through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle program. Four would die on Challenger. USAF Colonel Mike Mullane was a member of this astronaut class, and Riding Rockets is his story -- told with a candor never before seen in an astronaut's memoir. Mullane strips the heroic veneer from the astronaut corps and paints them as they are -- human. His tales of arrested development among military flyboys working with feminist pioneers and post-doc scientists are sometimes bawdy, often hilarious, and always entertaining.  Mullane vividly portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience -- from telling a female technician which urine-collection condom size is a fit; to walking along a Florida beach in a last, tearful goodbye with a spouse; to a wild, intoxicating, terrifying ride into space; to hearing "Taps" played over a friend's grave. Mullane is brutally honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling would precipitate the Challenger disaster. Riding Rockets is a story of life in all its fateful uncertainty, of the impact of a family tragedy on a nine-year-old boy, of the revelatory effect of a machine called Sputnik, and of the life-steering powers of lust, love, and marriage. It is a story of the human experience that will resonate long after the call of "Wheel stop."

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  Please Protect Us

  Toni Maguire, Ryan Fisher, Phil...

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  From No.1 bestselling author Toni Maguire comes a new true story of shame, silence, abuse, and survival.Ryan and Phil had always been inseparable. Twins born thirty-five minutes apart, Ryan was the protective one, constantly looking out for his younger brother. They can't remember how old they were when the abuse started, but they can remember their uncle very clearly.A frequent visitor to their home in Lincoln, he lavished their family with expensive treats. School holidays and weekends were spent visiting him, when he would often take the two little boys aside to play the games he liked.Trapped with him, day after day, year after year, the abuse continued until Ryan and Phil turned sixteen. After a showdown with Ryan when he was finally big enough, their uncle never approached them again.Nearly twenty years after the abuse ended, Ryan and his wife decided to foster troubled children, making their home a safe place filled with love for those in desperate need of it. Ryan and Phil suffered for years at the hands of their uncle, but throughout it all their bond held them together.Contains mature themes.

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  Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths...

  Nicholas Corder

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  The criminal cases vividly described by Nicholas Corder in this gripping book take the reader on a journey into the dark secret side of Cumbria's long history. The hills, villages and market towns of this famous landscape have been the setting for a series of horrific, bloody, sometimes bizarre incidents over the centuries. From crimes of brutal premeditation to crimes born of passion or despair, the whole range of human weakness and wickedness is represented here. Swindlers, conmen, smugglers, pirates, child killers, deserters, fraudsters, robbers and common murderers people these pages, along with their victims. There are descriptions of public executions and instances of extraordinary domestic cruelty and malice that ended in death. Unforgettable local cases are reconstructed—the extraordinary career of the imposter John Hatfield, the Whitehaven raid of John Paul Jones, the unsolved murder of poor Lucy Sands, and many more. Nicholas Corder's chronicle of Cumbria's hidden history will be compelling reading for anyone who is interested in the sinister side of human nature.

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  Moral Letters Vol I

  Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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  Among the personalities of the early Roman Empire there are few who offer to the readers of to-day such dramatic interest as does Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the author of the Epistles which are translated in this volume. ... In these letters, it is impossible to ignore the advance from a somewhat stiff and Ciceronian point of view into the attractive and debatable land of what one may fairly call modern ideas. The style of the Epistles is bold, and so is the thought. (from the Introduction)

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  Atlantis - A Journey in Search...

  Carlo Piano, Renzo Piano

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  The renowned architect and his son sail from Genoa in search of Atlantis in this “intimate and insightful chronicle of exploration and revelation” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). 
   
  Renowned architect Renzo Piano—whose credits include the New Whitney Museum, the Pompidou Center,the New York Times Building, and others—and his son Carlo, a well-regarded journalist, set sail from Genoa one late summer day. They went looking for the lost city of Atlantis, which, according to legend, was built to harbor a perfect society. They sails across the Pacific, along the banks of the Thames and the Seine, reaching as far as Athens, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and Osaka Bay. 
   
  Embarking not only on a life-changing journey but also on series of conversations that are humorous, irreverent, erudite, and always entertaining, Renzo and Carlo seek out the perfect city. Along the way, they reflect on their own relationship, on fathers and sons, on the idea of travel itself, and perhaps most notably on architecture, space, and the secret life of forms.

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  Dark History of Hollywood -...

  Kieron Connolly

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  This recording has been digitally produced, by DeepZen Limited, using a synthesized version of an audiobook narrator’s voice under license. DeepZen uses Emotive Speech Technology to create digital narrations that offer a similar listening experience to human narration. 
  'Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.' – Marilyn Monroe It is now over 100 years since Hollywood became the centre of American cinema and, while it has always presented itself as a place of glamour and home to the beautiful and talented, from its very creation there was a darker side to Tinseltown. Film-makers didn’t just move to southern California for its sunny weather, they went West to evade the patent laws restricting the use of movie cameras. From its earliest days, Hollywood, the home of fantasy, created a hothouse of excess – too much money, too much adulation, too much expectation and too much ego. Some actors would trade sex in the, often vain, hope of career advancement, mobsters muscled in on the unions and extorted the studios, while the accountants appear to be among Hollywood’s most creative people, managing to ensure that even the Star Wars films haven’t yet shown a profit. But while stars have always been indulged, once their moment in the limelight has passed, their fall can be cruel. From the setting up of the studios by the movie moguls to the corporations that run them today, from drug addictions to McCarthy-era witch-hunts to the Mob, Dark History of Hollywood is the story of sex and excess, murder and suicide, ambition and betrayal, and how money can make almost everyone compromise. Intensively researched and superbly entertaining, Dark History of Hollywood reveals that the stories behind the silver screen are at least as gripping as many of those on it.

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