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  Rowboat in a Hurricane - My...

  Julie Angus

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  An intrepid scientist and her fiancé—National Geographic's 2007 Adventurers of the Year—observe the changing ocean while rowing across the Atlantic.   In 2005-06, Julie Angus and her fiancé Colin rowed 10,000 kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean—from Lisbon to Costa Rica—making Angus the first woman in the world to travel from mainland to mainland in a rowboat. The 145-day journey gave Angus, a trained biologist, a unique perspective on the ocean. The slow-moving boat became an ecosystem unto itself, attracting barnacles, dorado fish, trigger fish, turtles, sharks, whales, birds, and more, which she was able to observe and document.   Angus also saw unmistakable signs of the ocean’s devastation, with far more plastic bottles, wrappers, toys, and bags than sharks or other once-common sea life. Four cyclones, including two hurricanes, hammered the small boat so intensely that Angus and her companion weren't sure they would survive. Rowboat in a Hurricane records this amazing journey in meticulous, dramatic detail, in the process offering a personal record of an awe-inspiring ecosystem, its fascinating denizens, and the mounting threats to its existence.

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  Dragged Off - Refusing to Give...

  Dr David Dao

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  Dr. David Dao was dragged off United Express Flight 3411 on April 9, 2017 after refusing to give up his seat. In the tradition of contemporary immigrant stories comes a personal narrative of the many small but significant acts of racial discrimination faced on the way to the American Dream.The unseen effects of discrimination. The United Airlines scandal of 2017 garnered over a million views on YouTube. A result of an overbooking overlook, security officials forcibly removed Dr. Dao after refusing to give up his seat. He awoke in the hospital to a concussion, a broken nose, several broken teeth, and worldwide attention. Things aren't always fair for an immigrant, but according to Dr. Dao, you can prevail if you firmly advocate for yourself.A response to a lifetime of oppressive acts. Why was Dr. Dao so adamant on his right to a seat? His entire life had led to that moment. A Vietnamese refugee, he fled his home country during the fall of Saigon. He was stranded in the Indian Ocean, immigrated to the United States, enrolled in medical school for a second time, built a practice, and started a family—all the while battling the effects of discrimination and what he had to embrace as a result. This is his story.

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  This Could Be Home : Raffles...

  Pico Iyer

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  No hotel is as inseparably linked to its city than Raffles Hotel, writes Pico Iyer, arguably the world’s greatest travel writer alive.Drawing upon numerous stays in Raffles over 35 years and the fast-ascending city all around it, Iyer—a lifelong global soul—reflects on the “Grand Old Lady’s” literary legacy and its mark on writers everywhere. In the process, he finds new ways of considering not just yesterday, but tomorrow. How have Singapore and its white-stucco monument evolved to meet the needs of a shifting world?In this compact volume, Iyer pulls back the curtains on a personal, thoughtful and surprising look at places we too often take for granted.

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  A Cultivated Life - A Year in a...

  Joy Sterling

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  What makes a wine distinctive is the goUt du terroir, or the taste of the land—plus the personality and passion of the wine maker who lovingly adds his own liqueur de dosage or secret ingredient to each bottle. Here is a vintner’s month-by-month account of one vintage at the Iron Horse vineyard located in the hills of Sonoma County in California. Author and wife of Iron Horse’s wine-maker, Joy Sterling, fascinates with her account of the commitment involved in producing a premium wine.

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  Mozart - A Life

  Paul Johnson

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  As he' s done in Napoleon, Churchill, Jesus, and Darwin, acclaimed historian and author Paul Johnson here offers a concise, illuminating biography of Mozart. Johnson' s focus is on the music-- Mozart' s wondrous output of composition and his uncanny gift for instrumentation.Liszt once said that Mozart composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime. Mozart' s gift and skill with instruments was also remarkable as he mastered all of them except the harp. For example, no sooner had the clarinet been invented and introduced than Mozart began playing and composing for it.

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  After Visiting Friends - A Son's...

  Michael Hainey

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  Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family-and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood.Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died "after visiting friends," the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity-and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know-and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother.A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After Visiting Friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists.

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