Showing results for "press" in Biographies & Memoirs

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up," Charles T. Munger advises in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Originally published in 2005, this compendium of 11 talks, delivered by the legendary Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman between 1986 and 2007, has become a touchstone for a generation of investors and entrepreneurs seeking to absorb the enduring wit and wisdom of one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.

From one of Fine Homebuilding's best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years.

Returning to the turbulent days of a nation divided, best-selling author and acclaimed historian James Robertson explores 70 fascinating figures who shaped America during Reconstruction and beyond. Relentless politicians, intrepid fighters, cunning innovators - the times called for bold moves, and this resilient generation would not disappoint.

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. He was wrong: tragedy, poverty and violence marked his adolescent years. An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts how Henderson eventually managed to find an escape route through the military, which led to an academic career at Yale and Cambridge

A stirring true story of the journalists who dared to oppose Hitler - and the campaign waged against them. After serving in the First World War, Adolf Hitler encountered a serious obstacle to his plotting for power when the Munich Post, drawing on sources within the Nazi Party, began tracking the corruption and dark dreams of his inner circle. With leaked documents from Hitler's political rivals, who were shocked by his violent rhetoric and fearing the worst, the Post battled Hitler for ownership of the truth.

A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. Shocking, electric, unforgettable, this is the extraordinary memoir from Costa Novel-Award winner and Sunday Times best-selling author Maggie O'Farrell. It is a book to make you question yourself. What would you do if your life was in danger, and what would you stand to lose?   

Simon McLean takes the listener on an often hilarious, sometimes scary, always fascinating journey through the ranks of the Scottish police: from his spell as a rookie constable in the hills and lochs of Argyll; through his career in Rothesay; and to his ultimate goal: The Serious Crime Squad in Glasgow. Once there, listeners are taken into the squad room and ride along as terrorists are pursued, murderers brought to book and armed fugitives confronted; always peeking behind the veil of professionalism and order portrayed to the public.

I love stories. I have mostly told other people's, but now, in telling my own, I realise how all our stories are connected by that great leveller of acclaim, loss, fortitude and fortune: being human. When I look at my life from the alleged halfway point, some patterns are revealed: one, that the story does not necessarily begin or end where it should; two, happy endings are overrated. And three, happy endings are almost never the end. This book is memoir-ish. A tell-most. Largely because there's a lot I don't remember, and a lot that's not worth talking about.

This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) to life for a new generation by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own Meditations and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the Augustan History and other ancient texts.

After an astonishing 45-year journey through the labyrinthine confines of every single UK prison, John Hilton, now 94, who holds the dubious title of being one of the longest-serving criminals in UK history, is finally breaking his silence. In his compelling autobiography, he offers a gripping and unfiltered account of his tumultuous life, from his tragic beginnings in the aftermath of World War II to his descent into a life of crime.

Unfinished Business was an idea conceived between Paul Ferris and writing partner Reg McKay. When Reg passed away in 2009, Paul got on with his life. A film The Wee Man was based on one of his books and released in 2013. Three years later, a new alliance was formed between Paul and true crime writers Stuart Wheatman and Steve Wraith, and the idea was reimagined. Paul wanted to pay tribute to Reg while revisiting the notion that he still had things he wanted to say.

With a career spanning 10 years inside the walls of Britain's most infamous prisons–Manchester’s Strangeways and London’s Wormwood Scrubs–John Sutton has experienced it all.

Delve into the minds of real people whose actions may shock and stun you, but whose stories have the power to challenge your assumptions and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I Don't Talk to Dead Bodies shines a powerful, emotional, and surprisingly moving spotlight on the fascinating life of a forensic psychiatrist and the people she works with. It goes beyond the sensationalist headlines to show you just what happens in a world where mental illness occasionally makes good people do bad things.

On a snowy winter evening in 1982, 21-year-old Mary Brown accepted a ride from a handsome stranger in the resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado. The trip ended with her brutally beaten and raped. Mary survived, but her predator's violence had only just begun. After 10 years in prison, Tom Luther was released a far more vicious criminal. Soon, from the Rockies to West Virginia, like Ted Bundy, Luther enticed a chain of women into his murderous trap.

Hailed as the definitive portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame's impressive two-volume biography has been masterfully abridged and revised. Based on deep research in unpublished sources as well as newly digitized sources, this work reveals how Lincoln's character and personality were the North's secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variables that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity and a fully individuated man whose influence remains unrivaled in the history of American public life.

Eighteen-year-old Marine recruit William V. Taylor, Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real but entirely surreal nightmare. Now, after more than 50 years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit—and often horrific—detail.

Throughout the history of the WWF, there have been times of prosperity and times of hardship, cycles that shape the ethos of the company by forcing changes to its infrastructure and on-screen direction. The one constant throughout three decades of change is Vincent Kennedy McMahon, the stalwart puppet-master who captains the ship. Unflinching, thick-skinned, and domineering, McMahon has ultimately outlasted all of his competition and come out on top of every wrestling war he has waged. In 1995, he very nearly lost.

What happens when a man of today's overconnected world sets off alone across the Pacific at the age of 71? Christian Williams, a veteran sailor and writer, planned a 6,000-mile voyage as a test of his own seamanship and endurance, and to fulfill a lifelong goal. But he found his focus quickly turning from the surrounding sea to all of us. Is anyone the same person when no one else is there? Do we dare to find out?

Wave Woman is the untold story of an adventurer whose zest for life and learning kept her alive for 98 years. Betty Pembroke Heldreich Winstedt was the granddaughter of Mormon pioneers who, after spending an active and athletic childhood in Salt Lake City, moved to Santa Monica with her family and enrolled at USC to study dental hygiene. Betty went on to elope with a man she hardly knew, and to have two daughters.