Other books that might interest you

• 

  Sporting Blood - Tales from the...

  Carlos Acevedo, Thomas Hauser

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "This book may cement [Acevedo's] status as one of today's best boxing journalists." —Kirkus Reviews 
   
   
   
  Boxing has one of the richest literary traditions in sports. From A. J. Liebling to Donald McRae, the sweet science has consistently inspired great writing. The work of Carlos Acevedo stands firmly in that distinguished tradition. 
   
   
   
  In this expanded edition of Sporting Blood, Acevedo adds two new masterful essays—one about the murder of Stanley Ketchel, the other about the gangland slaying of Battling Siki—to those that made his debut collection an instant classic. Other highlights include a moving meditation on Muhammad Ali; a penetrating look at the enigmatic Charles "Sonny" Liston; and a vivid profile of Mike Tyson, which brilliantly conjures the Boy King's late 1980s reign of terror. Acevedo also offers many other unforgettable tales from boxing's dark side, featuring Jack Johnson, Joe Frazier, Roberto Duran, Aaron Pryor, Jake LaMotta, and more. 
   
   
   
  Sporting Blood is a poetic throwback, a singular book that evokes journalism's golden age and places Acevedo among the best sportswriters of his generation.

  Show book

• 

  Independence Day - What I...

  Steve Lopez

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "Steve Lopez is insightful, ingenious, and often hilarious as he navigates one of life's biggest questions." --Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Dark Hours 
  Four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez explores the meaning of work and how it defines us in this captivating book that combines memoir, investigatory interviews, and practical application. 
  Grappling with his own decision of whether to retire, Lopez uses his reporter skills not only to look inward but also to interview experts and peers to collect a variety of perspectives as he examines the true nature of a person’s time, identity, and ultimate life satisfaction. 
  In Independence Day, Lopez talks to those who have chosen to extend their working life to its (il)logical extreme--people like Mel Brooks, still working at 94--those who have happily retired and reinvented themselves outside of the constraints of work, and those who would like to retire but can't because of financial constraints. He also turns to professionals on the matter, like two aging scientists, a geriatric specialist, and a psychiatrist, to understand the research-based reasons to retire. 
  With his trademark poignancy, wisdom, and humor, Lopez establishes a useful polemic for himself and others in planning ahead, as he also evaluates questions of identity, financial limitations, and ultimately what to do with your life when the obituary pages are no longer filled with strangers.

  Show book

• 

  Little Big Man: An Autobiography

  Stanley J. Browne

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The one where mum and Elvis lived unhappily ever after in our little Stoke Newington Victorian townhouse.
  
  In this honest and gripping memoir, actor Stanley J. Browne reflects on a childhood and adolescence torn apart by his mother's mental disorder.
  
  Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born to a Jamaican mother in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
  
  Stanley adopts the mantle of 'man of the house' as he is forced to scavenge for food and miss school, with his two sisters, to care for his baby brother. His life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system and Stanley must face the reality of being separated from his siblings.
  
  An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender's institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around.
  
  Set against a backdrop of 1970s poverty, racism and hardship, Little Big Man is a powerful story of generational trauma and one man's determination to heal the wounds of the past. Most of all, it is a book about the universal desire for love, belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery.

  Show book

• 

  Quiet Night Think - Poems & Essays

  Gillian Sze

  • 0
  • 16
  • 0

  “One function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time,” writes Wallace Stevens. In Quiet Night Think, award-winning poet Gillian Sze expresses her own definition.
  		 
  During the remarkable period of early parenthood, Sze’s new maternal role urges her to contemplate her own origins, both familial and artistic. Comprised of six personal essays, poems, and a concluding long poem, Quiet Night Think takes its title from a direct translation of an eighth-century Chinese poem by Li Bai, the subject of the opening essay. Sze’s memory of reading Li Bai’s poem as a child marks the beginning of an unshakable encounter with poetry. What follows is an intimate anatomization of her particular entanglement with languages and cultures.
  		 
  In her most generically diverse book yet, Sze moves between poetry and prose, mother and writer, the lyrical and the autobiographical, all the while inviting readers to meditate with her on questions of emergence and transformation: What are you trying to be? Where does a word break off? What calls to us throughout the night?

  Show book

• 

  A Responsibility - From their...

  Henry Harland

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Henry Harland.

  Show book

• 

  Vsevelod Garshin - A Short Story...

  Vsevelod Garshin

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire. 
   
  After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.  
   
  Wars between and on behalf of Empires were a regular feature of the decades then.  Garshin volunteered to serve in the Russian army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.  
   
  He began as a private in the Balkans campaign and was wounded in action.  By the end of the war, in 1878, he had been promoted to officer rank.  
   
  By now Garshin, having previously published some articles and reviews in newspapers, wished to devote himself to a literary career.  The decision made he resigned his army commission. 
   
  His time as a soldier provided rich experiences for his early stories. His first ‘Four Days’ was related as the interior monologue of a wounded soldier left for dead on the battlefield for four days, face to face with the corpse of a Turkish soldier he had killed, gained him early admiration as an author of note.  
   
  He wrote perhaps only 20 stories, but their influence was immense, although in these more modern times he is barely remembered and lives in the more prolific shadows of others.  His characters are superbly worked into stories that come alive in the intensity and reality of his prose.   
   
  Garshin’s most well-known story is ‘The Red Flower’, also known as ‘Scarlet Blossom’ and is easily amongst the first rank of stories dealing with mental health issues. 
    
  Despite early literary success, he himself experienced periodical bouts of mental illness.   
   
  In one such bout Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading into his apartment building.  Although not immediately fatal, Vsevolod Garshin died as a result of his injuries in a St Petersburg hospital on 5th April 1888.  He was 33. 
  1 - Vesvelod Garshin - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - A Red Flower by Vsevolod Garshin 
  3 - A Very Short Romance by Vsevolod Garshin 
  4 - Officer and Soldier-Servant by Vsevolod Garshin 
  5 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin 
  6 - Coward by Vsevolod Garshin

  Show book