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Failure Is an Option: An Attempted Memoir

by H. Jon Benjamin

H. Jon Benjamin--the lead voice behind Archer and Bob's Burgers--helps us all feel a little better about our own failures by sharing his own in a hilarious memoir-ish chronicle of failure.Most people would consider H. Jon Benjamin a comedy show business success. But he'd like to remind everyone that as great as success can be, failure is also an option. And maybe the best option. In this book, he tells stories from his own life, from his early days ("wherein I'm unable to deliver a sizzling fajita") to his romantic life ("how I failed to quantify a threesome") to family ("wherein a trip to P.F. Chang's fractures a family") to career ("how I failed at launching a kid's show"). As Jon himself says, breaking down one's natural ability to succeed is not an easy task, but also not an insurmountable one. Society as we know it is, sadly, failure averse. But more acceptance of failure, as Jon sees it, will go a long way to making this world a different place . . . a kinder, gentler place, where gardens are overgrown and most people stay home with their pets. A vision of failure, but also a vision of freedom.With stories, examples of artistic and literary failure, and a powerful can't-do attitude, Failure Is an Option is the book the world doesn't need right now but will get regardless.

Failing Up: A Professor's Odyssey of Flunking, Determination, and Hope

by Barbara Hong

This book was recognized as one of only 2% of books reviewed to earn a Kirkus STAR—the most prestigious designation in the book industry in awarding books of exceptional merit. <p><p>When people first meet Barbara Hong, they often conclude that her life must have always been enriched. They assume she had loving, successful parents and all the support she needed to reach her goals. Nothing could be further from the truth. <p><p>Hong’s path to an Ivy League university and beyond started in a filthy tenement in Singapore where she lived with an abusive father and an illiterate mother. Even as a child of six, she worked in her sweatshop home to help with extra money, which her father often wasted on alcohol. As she endured his drinking and abuse, she feared that the pain she internalized could shatter her. But instead of falling apart, Hong managed to escape her misery, thanks to a teacher who believed in her. Once she knew she wasn’t the brainless “cabbage head” her mother called her, she began excelling as a student, eventually finding the courage to leave her home and discover her true calling as a knowledge seeker, educator, and an advocate. <p><p>Hong’s inspirational journey from a sweatshop home upbringing to an influential dean and professor movingly illustrates the true strength of the human spirit and the power of teachers.

Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning

by Leslie Odom Jr.

Leslie Odom Jr., burst on the scene in 2015, originating the role of Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical phenomenon Hamilton. Since then, he has performed for sold-out audiences, sung for the Obamas at the White House, and won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. But before he landed the role of a lifetime in one of the biggest musicals of all time, Odom put in years of hard work as a singer and an actor.With personal stories from his life, Odom asks the questions that will help you unlock your true potential and achieve your goals even when they seem impossible. What work did you put in today that will help you improve tomorrow? How do you surround yourself with people who will care about your dreams as much as you do? How do you know when to play it safe and when to risk it all for something bigger and better?These stories will inspire you, motivate you, and empower you for the greatness that lies ahead, whether you’re graduating from college, starting a new job, or just looking to live each day to the fullest.

Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way

by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Having been in national and state government, and taught at a couple universities, Townsend speaks regularly on political and religious issues. Here she reminds readers of the role religion has played throughout US history in social justice and compares it to the political activities of churches today. She does not provide an index. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

by Noam Chomsky

THE WORLD'S FOREMOST CRITIC OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY EXPOSES THE HOLLOW PROMISES OF DEMOCRACY IN U-S. ACTIONS ABRoAD -AND AT HOME THE UNITED STATES HAS REPEATEDLY asserted its right to intervene militarily against "failed states" around the globe. In this muchanticipated follow-up to his international bestseller Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky turns the tables, showing how the United States itself shares features with other failed states and therefore is increasingly a danger to its own people and the world. Failed states, Chomsky writes, are those that are unable or unwilling "to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction" and "regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law." Though they may have democratic forms, Chomsky notes, failed states suffer from a serious "democratic deficit" that deprives their democratic institutions of real substance. Exploring the latest developments in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Chomsky reveals Washington's plans to further militarize the planet greatly increasing the risks of nuclear war; assesses the dangerous consequences of the occupation of Iraq, which has fueled global outrage at the United States; documents Washington's self-exemption from international norms, including the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, the foundations of contemporary international law, and the Kyoto Protocol; and examines how the U.S. electoral system is designed to eliminate genuine political alternatives, impeding any meaningful democracy.

Fail Until You Don't: Fight Grind Repeat

by Bobby Bones

#1 New York Times BestsellerThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bare Bones, host of the marquee morning program “The Bobby Bones Show,” comedian and dedicated philanthropist delivers an inspirational and humorous collection of stories about his biggest misses in life and how he turned them into lessons and wins. Bobby Bones is the youngest inductee ever into the National Radio Hall of Fame alongside legends Dick Clark, Larry King, and Howard Stern. As "the most powerful man in country music" (Forbes), he has reached the peak of his profession and achieved his childhood dreams. Each weekday morning, more than five million fans tune in to his radio show. But as Bobby reveals, a lot of what made him able to achieve his goals were mistakes, awkward moments, and embarrassing situations—lemons that he turned into lemonade through hard work and humility. In this eye-opening book, he’ll include ideas and motivations for finding success even when seemingly surrounded by impossible odds or tough failures. He also includes anecdotes from some of his famous friends—Andy Roddick, Chris Stapleton, Charlamagne Tha God, Charles Esten, Brooklyn Decker, Walker Hayes and Asa Hutchinson—who open up about their own missteps. Bobby’s mantra is Fight. Grind. Repeat. A man who refuses to give up, he sees failure as something to learn from—and the recollections in this funny, smart book, full of Bobby’s brand of self-effacing humor, show how he’s become such a beloved goofball.

FAIL

by Chuck Klosterman

Originally collected in Eating the Dinosaur and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture, this essay is about Ted Kaczynski.

Fahim Speaks

by Fahim Fazli Michael Moffett

Fahim Fazli is a man of two worlds: Afghanistan, the country of his birth, and America, the nation he adopted and learned to love. He's also a man who escaped oppression, found his dream profession, and then paid it forward by returning to Afghanistan as an interpreter with the US. Marines. When Fahim speaks, the story he tells is harrowing, fascinating, and inspiring. Born and raised in Kabul, Fahim saw his country and family torn apart by revolution and civil war. Dodging Afghan authorities and informers with his father and brother, Fahim made his way across the border to Pakistan and then to America. After reuniting with his mother, sisters, and one brother, he moved to California with dreams of an acting career. After fifteen turbulent years that included two unsuccessful arranged marriages to Afghan brides, he finally qualified for membership in the Screen Actors Guild--and found true American love. Though Fahim's California life was happy and rewarding, he kept thinking about the battlefields of Afghanistan. Haunted by a desire to serve his adopted country, he became a combat linguist. While other interpreters opted for safe assignments, Fahim chose one of the most dangerous: working with the Leathernecks in embattled Helmand Province, where his outgoing personality and deep cultural understanding made him a favorite of both marines and local Afghans--and a pariah to the Taliban, who put a price on his head. Fahim Speaks is an inspiring story of perseverance and patriotism--and of the special love that one man developed for his adopted country.

Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World

by Signe Pike

Burdened by the woes of a workaday life, the end of any good news, and the loss of her formidable father, Signe Pike, a 20-something editor at Penguin in New York, found herself needing something – anything – to believe in again. Her disenchantment made her long for the magical stories of her youth – the faeries that had enchanted her as a child. Her voyage of discovery takes her all over the world, tracking evidence and folklore of 'little people'. Travelling to Mexico, Ireland and Scotland, she learns of the rich variety of tales about these creatures, and what they say about the cultures from which they originate. Laced with research as well as local legend, her own family history, and a healthy dose of scepticism, Pike's Faery Tale is a memoir of the search for a long-buried spark of wonder, and something to believe in. Faery Tale is for anyone who has dared to believe in magic and who knows there is a world beyond the one that meets the eye.

Faery Tale

by Signe Pike

In search of something to believe in once more, Signe Pike left behind a career in Manhattan to undertake a magical journey - literally. In a sweeping tour of Mexico, England, Ireland, Scotland and beyond, she takes readers to dark glens and abandoned forests, ancient sacred sites and local pubs, seeking people who might still believe in the elusive beings we call faeries. As Pike attempts to connect with the spirit world - and reconnect with her sense of wonder and purpose - she comes to view both herself and the world around her in a profoundly new light. Captivating, full of heart and unabashedly whimsical, Faery Tale is more than a memoir - it's the story of rekindling that spark of belief that makes even the most sceptical among us feel like a child again.

The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston, from Robert Frost to Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath,

by Peter Davison

"A beautiful and richly instructive book, a worthy and welcome sequel to Eileen Simpson's Poets in Their Youth."Louis S. AuchinclossAn intimately perceptive account, by a poet who knew them all, of the brilliant circle of poets who lived and worked in Boston through the half-decade beginning in 1955. That was the year Peter Davison, coming to Boston as a book editor. was swept up in a world -- in a tumult -- of poetry. He rediscovered his father's old friend Robert Frost. He briefly squired Sylvia Plath. He came to know Robert Lowell (whose poems and private disasters dominated the period) and Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Richard Wilbur. Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, and others who, closely bound together in friendship or rivalry or both, defined the shape of American poetry at mid-century Through their eves as well as his own, and often in their words, Davison presents a sharply fresh vision of the shift from confidence to a troubled questioning that overtook America -- a transformation that was, in a sense, foreshadowed in the sensibilities, in the writings, sometimes in the lives, of some of our finest poets.

Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History

by Corbett Joan Otoole

Uncovering stories about disability history and life, OToole shares her firsthand account of some of the most dramatic events in Disability History, and gives voice to those too often yet left out. From the 504 Sit-in and the founding of the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, to the Disability Forum at the International Woman's Conference in Beijing; through dancing, sports, queer disability organizing and being a disabled parent, OToole explores her own and the disability community's power and privilege with humor, insight and honest observations.<P><P> "Corbett Joan OToole's Fading Scars: My Queer Disabled History is like a song-an anthem, a lullaby, a ballad, a love lyric and a chant all at once. This book of essays chronicles one person's life, but also the 40 years that disability rights and disability justice shaped American history. Its first-person accounts of historical events, fierce focus on disabled identities, and consistently accessible language and structure make it unusual-perhaps even unique-among disability memoirs. Bursting with ideas, stories, and arguments, Fading Scars is a book in which experience accrues into knowledge and emerges through the written word as wisdom. Fading Scars combines razor-sharp organization with passages of lyrical beauty. It establishes a new standard, perhaps even the beginning of a new aesthetic, for disability writing." - Margaret Price, author of Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life.<P> "Illuminating disability history with clear and funny stories, this book builds a home where those of us who have lived on the sidelines can seek shelter." - Naomi Ortiz, Writer, Artist and Disability Justice Activist<P> "Fading Scars is a must read for those interested in disability community, activism, and scholarship." - Kim Nielsen, author of A Disability History of the United States (ReVisioning American History)

Fading Into The Limelight: The Autobiography

by Peter Sallis

The autobiography of Peter Sallis, the brilliant actor best known for his roles as the voice of Wallace and as Clegg in Last of the Summer WineFor more than 30 years, Peter Sallis has played Clegg in 'Last of the Summer Wine', the world's longest-running sitcom. With his dry, cynical wit and cautious nature, Clegg has been taken to the hearts of the nation. Now the man behind this creation, and the voice of Wallace in Wallace & Gromit, is telling his story. From his early days in the RAF in the Second World War, through an extraordinary theatrical career that saw him perform alongside the likes of Joan Collins, John Gielgud and Orson Welles, to the fame that came to him late in his career, Peter Sallis has a wonderful, heartwarming story to tell.Packed with brilliant stories and amusing anecdotes, this is a memoir that will appeal to Peter Sallis's millions of fans, as he looks back over his career with a warm glow of nostalgia.

Fading Into The Limelight: The Autobiography

by Peter Sallis

The autobiography of Peter Sallis, the brilliant actor best known for his roles as the voice of Wallace and as Clegg in Last of the Summer WineFor more than 30 years, Peter Sallis has played Clegg in 'Last of the Summer Wine', the world's longest-running sitcom. With his dry, cynical wit and cautious nature, Clegg has been taken to the hearts of the nation. Now the man behind this creation, and the voice of Wallace in Wallace & Gromit, is telling his story. From his early days in the RAF in the Second World War, through an extraordinary theatrical career that saw him perform alongside the likes of Joan Collins, John Gielgud and Orson Welles, to the fame that came to him late in his career, Peter Sallis has a wonderful, heartwarming story to tell.Packed with brilliant stories and amusing anecdotes, this is a memoir that will appeal to Peter Sallis's millions of fans, as he looks back over his career with a warm glow of nostalgia.

Fading Echoes

by Mike Sielski

Now in paperback-a true story of hometown heroes. In a state that prides itself on hard-hitting gridiron epics, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was home to the greatest high school football rivalry: the Central Bucks West, captained by senior fullback/linebacker Bryan Buckley, versus the Central Bucks East, led by senior lineman Colby Umbrell. Bryan and Colby would meet each other as opponents on the game field, but their dreams and devotion to their country led each of them to the conflict in the Middle East-Colby as an Army Ranger, and Bryan as a Marine. Only one would make it back to Doylestown. And nothing about them, their families, or their hometown's connection to football would ever be the same

Fade: My Journeys In Multiracial America

by Elliott Lewis

"Are you black?" "Is your father a white man?" "Are you really black or white?" "You are some kind of black, aren't you?" Questions like these have confused, intrigued, and vexed the author as he grew up as a light-skinned, biracial young man. The only son of 2 biracial parents, the author has had to sort through a myriad of conflicting emotions, ideas, and society's views of him to find out who he really is. Echoed by many racially mixed people around the country, Lewis sees himself as biracial, neither blank nor white, but just himself. He shows how race isn't necessarily tied to skin color or tone and shows how one's identity is shaped by the culture and parental attitudes that are present as a person grows. He challenges us to see that there is a world of people in the middle so that it's not just black and white anymore.

Facundo

by Domingo F. Sarmiento

Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century. .

The Faculty of Dreams: Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

by Sara Stridsberg

In April 1988, Valerie Solanas - the writer, radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol - was discovered dead in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco. She was only 52; alone, penniless and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings.In The Faculty of Dreams, Sara Stridsberg revisits the hotel room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood, where she was repeatedly raped by her father and beaten by her alcoholic grandfather, and the mental hospitals where she was interned.Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminisces and rantings, Stridsberg reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, articulating the thoughts and fears that she struggled to express in life and giving a powerful, heartbreaking voice to the writer of the infamous SCUM Manifesto.

The Facts of Life and Other Lessons My Father Taught Me

by Lisa Whelchel

As Blair Warner on The Facts of Life, Lisa Whelchel matured from a snobby prep schooler to a responsible adult. Now the actress recounts the journey she's made in real life, from a shy, small-town girl in Texas to the glamorous life of fame and fortune in Hollywood -- and finally to suburban life as a pastor's wife and homeschooling mother of three. Poignant autobiographical stories reveal the developing trust in God that has enabled Lisa to grow in grace through seasons of pressure, pain, and prosperity.

The Facts Of Life and Other Dirty Jokes: and Other Dirty Jokes

by Willie Nelson

For more than 50 years, Willie Nelson has taken the stuff of his life -- the good and the bad -- and made it a permanent part of our musical heritage and kept us company through the good and the bad of our own lives. Born in 1933, Willie Nelson is one of the most popular, prolific, and influential songwriters and singers in the history of Amer. music. Long before he became famous as a performer, he was a songwriter, keeping his young family afloat by writing songs that other people turned into hits. So it's fitting that he has finally set down in his own words a book that does justice to his gifts as a storyteller. Here, Nelson reflects on what has mattered to him in life and what hasn't. Also tells some great dirty jokes. The result is a book as wise and hilarious as its author. B&W photos.

"Facts As I Remember Them": An Autobiography of Rufe LeFors

by Rufe Lefores John Allen Peterson

LeFors wanted to get the facts—as he remembered them—straight. With his sharp eye for texture and detail and keen ear for language and timing, he created a narrative that wonderfully captures the flavor of his life and exciting times.

Facts and Inventions

by James Boswell Paul Tankard

James Boswell (1740-1795), best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was also a lawyer, journalist, diarist, and an insightful chronicler of a pivotal epoch in Western history. This fascinating collection, edited by Paul Tankard, presents a generous and varied selection of Boswell's journalistic writings, most of which have not been published since the eighteenth century. It offers a new angle on the history of journalism, an idiosyncratic view of literature, politics, and public life in late eighteenth-century Britain, and an original perspective on a complex and engaging literary personality.

Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence

by James R. Clapper Trey Brown

The former Director of National Intelligence's candid and compelling account of the intelligence community's successes--and failures--in facing some of the greatest threats to America <P><P>When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth United States director of national intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence adviser for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the U.S. intelligence community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. <P>In Facts and Fears, Clapper traces his career through the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. <P>Finally, it was living through Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and seeing how the foundations of American democracy were--and continue to be--undermined by a foreign power that led him to break with his instincts honed through more than five decades in the intelligence profession to share his inside experience. <P>Clapper considers such controversial questions as, Is intelligence ethical? Is it moral to intercept communications or to photograph closed societies from orbit? What are the limits of what we should be allowed to do? What protections should we give to the private citizens of the world, not to mention our fellow Americans? Are there times when intelligence officers can lose credibility as unbiased reporters of hard truths by inserting themselves into policy decisions? <P>Facts and Fears offers a privileged look inside the U.S. intelligence community and, with the frankness and professionalism for which James Clapper is known, addresses some of the most difficult challenges in our nation's history. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>

Facts and Fancies: Essays Written Mostly for Fun

by Paul Taylor

Witty and whimsical writings about the dance of life by the legendary choreographer. This wonderful new book by one of the preeminent dancers and choreographers consists of a range of pieces of fact and fiction that run from thoughts on friendliness and country living to animosity and city life. Taylor&’s first book since his autobiography (Private Domain, 1995, Alfred A. Knopf) is a romp through his playful mind, with chapter titles such as: Why I Make Dances, The Redheaded Spiritualist, Martha Close Up, Clytemnestra, How to Tell Ballet from Modern, and In the Marcel Proust Suite of L&’Hotel Continental. &“No other dancer ever looked like Paul Taylor, that strapping, elastic, goofy hunk of a guy, and no one else&’s dance works look like his either—not the deep, dark ones or the zany ones or the uplifting ones. His vocabulary, his tone are unique and unmistakable. The same thing is true, it turns out, about his writing. His style is utterly his own, and like all real style it isn&’t a calculated voice but a reflection of the way his quirky mind works.&” —From the foreword by Robert Gottlieb &“Taylor has not cultivated one writing persona, but has unleashed a raft of voices in a raft of forms: travesty, comedy, fiction, essay, satire, allegory, poetry, fable, epistle. While many of these selections are humorous, as anyone familiar with Taylor&’s choreography knows, even in the sunniest of his dances, there are often threatening clouds on the horizon. And the canny Taylor recognizes when to swap his Janus masks for maximum emotional wallop.&” —From the introduction by Suzanne Carbonneau

The Facts (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

The Facts is the unconventional autobiography of a writer who has reshaped our idea of fiction—a work of compelling candor and inventiveness, instructive particularly in its revelation of the interplay between life and art. Philip Roth concentrates on five episodes from his life: his secure city childhood in the thirties and forties; his education in American life at a conventional college; his passionate entanglement, as an ambitious young man, with the angriest person he ever met (the "girl of my dreams" Roth calls her); his clash, as a fledgling writer, with a Jewish establishment outraged by Goodbye, Columbus; and his discovery, in the excesses of the sixties, of an unmined side to his talent that led him to write Portnoy's Complaint. The book concludes surprisingly—in true Rothian fashion—with a sustained assault by the novelist against his proficiencies as an autobiographer.

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