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Light Years
by Caroline WoodwardIn 2007, Caroline Woodward was itching for a change. With an established career in book-selling and promotion, four books of her own and having raised a son with her husband, Jeff, she yearned for adventure and to re-ignite her passion for writing. Jeff was tired of piecing together low-paying part-time jobs and, with Caroline's encouragement, applied for a position as a relief lightkeeper on a remote North Pacific island. They endured lonely months of living apart, but the way of life rejuvenated Jeff and inspired Caroline to contemplate serious shifts in order to accompany him. When a permanent position for a lighthouse keeper became available, Caroline quit her job and joined Jeff on the lights. Caroline soon learned that the lighthouse-keeping life does not consist of long, empty hours in which to write. The reality is hard physical labour, long stretches of isolation and the constant threat of de-staffing. Beginning with a 3:30 a.m. weather report, the days are filled with maintaining the light station buildings, sea sampling, radio communication, beach cleanup, wildlife encounters and everything in between. As for dangerous rescue missions or dramatic shipwrecks--that kind of excitement is rare. "So far the only life I know I've saved is my own," she says, with her trademark dry wit. Yet Caroline is exhilarated by the scenic coastline with its drizzle and fog, seabirds and whales, and finds time to grow a garden and, as anticipated, write. Told with eloquent introspection and an eye for detail, Light Years is the personal account of a lighthouse keeper in twenty-first century British Columbia--an account that details Caroline's endurance of extreme climatic, interpersonal and medical challenges, as well as the practical and psychological aspects of living a happy, healthy, useful and creative life in isolation.
Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness
by Thomas Jefferson Eric PetersenWere Thomas Jefferson alive to read this book, he would recognize every sentence, every elegant turn of phrase, every lofty, beautifully expressed idea. Indeed, every word in the book is his. In an astonishing feat of editing, Eric S. Petersen has culled the entirety of Thomas Jefferson's published works to fashion thirty-four original essays on themes ranging from patriotism and liberty to hope, humility, and gratitude. The result is a lucid, inspiring distillation of the wisdom of one of America's greatest political thinkers.From his personal motto--"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God"--to his resounding discourse on "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson defined the essential truth of the American spirit. In the essays that Petersen has crafted from letters, speeches, and public documents, Jefferson's unique moral philosophy and vision shine through. Among the hundreds of magnificent sentences gathered in this volume, here are Jefferson's pronouncements onGratitude: "I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations--to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances, to be open and generous."Religion: "A concern purely between our God and our consciences."America's national character: "It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty with resolution and contrivance."Public debt: "We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves."War: "I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind."In stately measured cadences, these thirty-four essays provide timeless guidance on leading a spiritually fulfilling life. Light and Liberty is a triumphant work of supreme eloquence, as uplifting today as when Jefferson first set these immortal sentences on paper.From the Hardcover edition.
Light and Shade
by Brad TolinskiMore than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and commercial success. The band's notorious exploits have been chronicled in bestselling books such as Stephen Davis's Hammer of the Gods. Yet none of the individual members of the band has penned a memoir or cooperated to any degree with the press or a biographer. Iconic guitarist and Led Zeppelin founder, Jimmy Page, is both the band's most reticent member and the one who most fascinates its huge fanbase. For the first time and in his own words, he opens up to journalist Brad Tolinski, exploring in-depth his remarkable life and musical journey.
Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy's Son: Updated Edition
by Mark ColvinLight and Shadow is the incredible story of a father waging a secret war against communism during the Cold War, while his son comes of age as a journalist and embarks on the risky career of a foreign correspondent. Mark covered local and global events for the ABC for more than four decades, reporting on wars, royal weddings and everything in between. In the midst of all this he discovered that his father was an MI6 spy. Mark was witness to some of the most significant international events, including the Iranian hostage crisis, the buildup to the first Gulf War in Iraq and the direct aftermath of the shocking genocide in Rwanda. But when he contracted a life-threatening illness while working in the field, his world changed forever. Mark Colvin's engrossing memoir takes you inside the coverage of major news events and navigates the complexity of his father's double life. Light and Shadow was published seven months before Mark's death, and he had the pleasure of seeing it become a bestseller. Award-winning ABC journalist Tony Jones pays tribute to his friend in an afterword.
Light for a Cold Land: Lawren Harris's Life and Work
by Peter LariseyLawren Stewart Harris’ artistic career began in the first decade of our century. Well known for the nationalist-inspired landscapes that he painted between 1908 and 1932, Harris turned resolutely in 1934 to the painting of abstractions. He continued to create works that reflected his own modernist and mystical developments until the end of his life. Canadians praise Harris’ landscapes and admire him as a planner of innovative and heroic-sounding sketching trips into the North. He is also recognized as the chief organizer of the Group of Seven. A long list of younger artists he considered creative greatly benefited from Harris’ encouragement and often generous, practical help; many of them have been interviewed for this book. In the lives of some Canadians harris still functions as a gurulike guide – a role he was quite content to take on during his own lifetime – because of the spiritual content of his art and aesthetic writings and the example of his optimistic, vigorous and apparently untroubled life. But Harris’ was not an untroubled life, and Light for a Cold Land examines his personal crises and difficulties, some of which caused important changes in his art. The book also uncovers the painting styles, artistic tensions and cultural dynamics of the German milieu in which Harris received his only formal art education. His student years in Berlin profoundly influenced not only his art but also his artistic politics and his philosophy. It is ironic that in the art of this most articulate of Canadian nationalist painters, there are extensive German influences. Light for a Cold Land is the first art-historical study of Lawren Harris that attempts to explore his life and all aspects of his career. It is based on extensive work in archives, libraries, public art galleries and private collections in Canada, as well as research in Germany and interviews with members of Harris’ family and many of his friends, acquaintances, colleagues and critics.
Light from Heaven
by Christmas Carol KauffmanJoseph Armstrong's father showed more concern for his farms and horses than he did for his wife and children. Work was first. Mishaps were dealt with harshly. Praise was a foreign language. The family suffered cruel scorn, rejection, and deprivation. All the while, Bennet Armstrong hypocritically portrayed himself to others as flawlessly pious. The Armstrong home was a potential hotbed for bitterness and emotional desolation. Thankfully, a devout mother bridged the gap, loving her children, praying fervently for their safety and salvation. Annie Armstrong's prayers were heard. Joseph came to trust his kind heavenly Father who helped him love and forgive and rise above his circumstance to a life of purpose and peace. This story, sometimes heartrending sometimes heartening points to the one true hope for all man's miseries, Jesus Christ, the true Light From Heaven.
Light in Bandaged Places: Healing in the Wake of Young Betrayal
by Liz KinchenLight in Bandaged Places shows us the harm done when an older man in a position of power convinces a child that sex with him is alright because he loves her. This poignant story takes us through the long-term wounding of such abuse—and the multifaceted path of healing.As a lonely girl coming of age in the 1970s, Liz has every reason to believe her 8th-grade teacher is in love with her. Because the sex isn&’t physically violent and is wrapped in a message of love, she learns to exchange sex for attention. It feels like love, after all. But years later, as an adult, emotional closeness eludes Liz. Even after marrying a sensitive, caring man, she is walled off. Struggling through confusing years, she believes something is deeply wrong with her. Healing begins when an unexpected event takes Liz back to those formative years, and she sees for the first time that what happened to her was not love but trauma. As she begins to understand how her relationship with her former teacher destroyed her innocence and self-worth, she begins a spiritual and psychological journey that sets her free.Now a meditation teacher and Buddhist practitioner, Liz offers her story in hope of helping others along their own paths of discovery and healing.
Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us
by Heino Falcke Jörg RömerAn astrophysicist chronicles his quest to photograph a black hole and reflects on its spiritual ramifications in this international-bestselling memoir.On April 10, 2019, award-winning astrophysicist Heino Falcke presented the first image ever captured of a black hole at an international press conference—a turning point in astronomy that Science magazine called the scientific breakthrough of the year. That photo was captured with the unthinkable commitment of an intercontinental team of astronomers who transformed the world into a global telescope. While this image achieved Falcke’s goal in making a black hole “visible” for the first time, he recognizes that the photo itself asks more questions for humanity than it answers.Light in the Darkness takes us on Falcke’s extraordinary journey to the darkest corners of the universe. From the first humans looking up at the night sky to modern astrophysics, from the study of black holes to the still-unsolved mysteries of the universe, Falcke asks, in even the greatest triumphs of science, is there room for doubts, faith, and a God? A plea for curiosity and humility, Light in the Darkness sees one of the great minds shaping the world today as he ponders the big, pressing questions that present themselves when we look up at the stars.
Light of the Feather: A Teacher's Journey into Native American Classrooms and Culture
by Mick FedulloChronicles Fedullo's unique journey into the heart of contemporary Native America, describing how one white man crossed the cultural divide to discover, among his Native American students, old and new values, the determination of the human spirit, and, ultimately, himself.
Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis
by Gabrielle SelzThe first in-depth biography of Sam Francis, the legendary American abstract painter who broke all the rules in his personal and artistic life.Light on Fire is the first comprehensive biography of Sam Francis, one of the most important American abstract artists of the twentieth century. Based on Gabrielle Selz’s unprecedented access to Francis’s files, as well as private correspondence and hundreds of interviews, this book traces the extraordinary and ultimately tragic journey of a complex and charismatic artist who first learned to paint as a former air-corps pilot encased for three years in a full-body cast. While still a young man, Francis saw his color-saturated paintings fetch the highest prices of any living artist. His restless desire resulted in five marriages and homes on three continents; his entrepreneurial spirit led to founding a museum, a publishing company, a reforestation program and several nonprofits. Light on Fire captures the art, life, personality, and talent of a man whom the art historian and museum director William C. Agee described as a rare artist participating in the "visionary reconstruction of art history," defying creative boundaries among the likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. With settings from World War II San Francisco to postwar Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, Selz crafts an intimate portrait of a man who sought to resolve in art the contradictions he couldn’t resolve in life.
Light on Lucrezia (Lucrezia Borgia #2)
by Jean PlaidySome said she was an elegant seductress. Others swore she was an incestuous murderess. It didn't matter what they called her. She was the most dangerous and sought-after woman in all of Rome. She was Lucrezia Borgia. Born into Rome's notorious Borgia family, young Lucrezia led a life colored by violence and betrayal. Now, married for the second time at just eighteen, she hopes for happiness with her handsome husband, Alfonso. But faced with brutal murder, she's soon torn between her love for her husband and her devotion to her brother Cesare. And in the days when the Borgias ruled Italy, no one was safe from the long arm of their power. Even Lucrezia. In this compelling story of a beautiful woman caught up in a tortuous web of fear and love, Jean Plaidy sheds light on the much maligned Lucrezia and vividly brings her to life.
Light-Horse Harry Lee: The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary Hero - The Tragic Life of Robert E. Lee's Father
by Ryan Cole"Light-Horse Harry blazes across the pages of Ryan Cole's narrative like a meteor—and his final crash is as destructive. Cole tells his story with care, sympathy, and where necessary, sternness. This book is a great, and sometimes harrowing read." —Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review and author of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington Who was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee? Gallant Revolutionary War hero. Quintessential Virginia cavalryman. George Washington’s trusted subordinate and immortal eulogist. Robert E. Lee’s beloved father. Founding father who shepherded the Constitution through the Virginia Ratifying Convention. But Light-Horse Harry Lee was also a con man. A beachcomber. Imprisoned for debt. Caught up in sordid squabbles over squalid land deals. Maimed for life by an angry political mob. Light-Horse Harry Lee’s life was tragic, glorious, and dramatic, but perhaps because of its sad, ignominious conclusion historians have rarely given him his due—until now. Now historian Ryan Cole presents this soldier and statesman of the founding generation with all the vim and vigor that typified Lee himself. Scouring hundreds of contemporary documents and reading his way into Lee’s life, political philosophy, and character, Cole gives us the most intimate picture to date of this greatly awed but hugely talented man whose influence has reverberated from the founding of the United States to the present day.
Lighter Than Air: The Life and Times of Wing Commander N.F. Usborne RN, Pioneer of Naval Aviation
by Guy WarnerNeville Florian Usborne entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1897. In the years between him joining up and the outbreak of the First World War, he engaged in a huge number of enterprises and endeavours. Praise and respect garnered in accordance with his achievements all helped to establish his reputation in later years as an 'irreplaceable' pioneer and a leading light of early British airship design. His fertile imagination and enterprising spirit fused to form a dynamic personality, able in wartime to draw up countless schemes in an effort to outwit the enemy. His chief task during the Great War was to dream up new tactics and designs to combat the Zeppelin menace, perceived as one of the most damaging threats of the entire conflict. He was also deeply involved in the design of the very successful SS and Coastal Class airships; indeed, during 1915 he was actually appointed Inspector Commander of Airships at the Admiralty. Unfortunately, his illustrious career was destined to be cut short in 1916 when he was killed testing a prototype of one of his own designs. This new biography seeks to shine a light on an overlooked pioneer of early aviation and it does so in entertaining and reverential style. The importance of Usborne the pioneer is made plain; as one of his contemporaries commented upon his death No one can talk of the early days of British airship design without mention of his name and work. A personality was lost on that February day which was irreplaceable.
Lightfoot
by Nicholas JenningsThe definitive, full-access story of the life and songs of Canada's legendary troubadourGordon Lightfoot’s name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness. His music defined the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and ‘70s, topped charts and sold millions. He is unquestionably Canada’s greatest songwriter, and an international star who has performed on the world’s biggest stages. While Lightfoot’s songs are well known, the man behind them is elusive. He’s never allowed his life to be chronicled in a book—until now.Biographer Nick Jennings has had unprecedented access to the notoriously reticent musician. Lightfoot takes us deep inside the artist’s world, from his idyllic childhood in Orillia, the wild sixties, and his canoe trips into Canada’s North to his heady times atop the music world. Jennings explores the toll that success took on his personal life—including his troubled relationships, his battle with alcohol and his near-death experiences—and the extraordinary drive and tenacity that pulled him through it all.Rich in voices from fellow musicians, close friends, Lightfoot’s family and the singer’s own reminiscences, the biography tells the stories behind some of his best-known love songs, including “Beautiful” and “Song for a Winter’s Night,” as well as the infidelity and divorce that resulted in classics like “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind.” Kris Kristofferson has called Lightfoot’s songs “some of the most beautiful and lasting music of our time.” Lightfoot is an unforgettable portrait of a treasured singer-songwriter, an artist whose work has been covered by everyone from Joni Mitchell, Barbra Streisand and Nico to Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Gord Downie. Revealing and insightful, Lightfoot is both an inspiring story of redemption and an exhilarating read.
Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain
by Roy Jr. MorrisIn the very last paragraph of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the title character gloomily reckons that it's time "to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest." Tom Sawyer's Aunt Sally is trying to "sivilize" him, and Huck Finn can't stand it--he's been there before. It's a decision Huck's creator already had made, albeit for somewhat different reasons, a quarter of a century earlier. He wasn't even Mark Twain then, but as Huck might have said, "That ain't no matter." With the Civil War spreading across his native Missouri, twenty-five-year-old Samuel Clemens, suddenly out of work as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, gladly accepted his brother Orion's offer to join him in Nevada Territory, far from the crimsoned battlefields of war. A rollicking, hilarious stagecoach journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains was just the beginning of a nearly six-year-long odyssey that took Samuel Clemens from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hawaii, with lengthy stopovers in Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco. By the time it was over, he would find himself reborn as Mark Twain, America's best-loved, most influential writer. The "trouble," as he famously promised, had begun. With a pitch-perfect blend of appreciative humor and critical authority, acclaimed literary biographer Roy Morris, Jr., sheds new light on this crucial but still largely unexamined period in Mark Twain's life. Morris carefully sorts fact from fiction--never an easy task when dealing with Twain--to tell the story of a young genius finding his voice in the ramshackle mining camps, boomtowns, and newspaper offices of the wild and woolly West, while the Civil War rages half a continent away. With the frequent help of Twain's own words, Morris follows his subject on a winding journey of selfdiscovery filled with high adventure and low comedy, as Clemens/Twain dodges Indians and gunfighters, receives marriage advice from Brigham Young, burns down a mountain with a frying pan, gets claim-jumped by rival miners, narrowly avoids fighting a duel, hikes across the floor of an active volcano, becomes one of the first white men to try the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing, and writes his first great literary success, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Lighting Out for the Territory is a fascinating, even inspiring, account of how an unemployed riverboat pilot, would-be Confederate guerrilla, failed prospector, neophyte newspaper reporter, and parttime San Francisco aesthete reinvented himself as America's most famous and beloved writer. It's a good story, and mostly true--with some stretchers thrown in for good measure.
Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex
by Susan ShapiroIn the critically acclaimed Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Manhattan journalist Susan Shapiro revisited five self-destructive romances. In her hilarious, illuminating new memoir, Lighting Up, she rejects five self-destructive substances. This difficult quest for clean living starts with Shapiro's shocking revelation that, at forty, her lengthiest, most emotionally satisfying relationship has been with cigarettes. A two-pack-a-day smoker since the age of thirteen, Susan Shapiro quickly discovers that it's impossible to be a writer, a nonsmoker, sane, and slender in the same year. The last time she tried to quit, she gained twenty-three pounds, couldn't concentrate on work, and wanted to kill herself and her husband, Aaron, a TV comedy writer who hates her penchant for puffing away. Yet just as she's about to choose her vice over her marriage vows, she stumbles upon a secret weapon. Dr. Winters, "the James Bond of psychotherapy," is a brilliant but unorthodox addiction specialist, a former chain-smoker himself. Working his weird magic on her psyche, he unravels the roots of her twenty-seven-year compulsion, the same dangerous dependency that has haunted her doctor father, her grandfather, and a pair of eccentric aunts from opposite sides of the family, along with Freud and nearly one in four Americans. Dr. Winters teaches her how to embrace suffering, then proclaims that her months of panic, depression, insecurity, vulnerability, and wild mood swings win her the award for "the worst nicotine withdrawal in the history of the world." Shapiro finally does kick the habit--while losing weight and finding career and connubial bliss--only to discover that the second she's let go of her long-term crutch, she's already replaced it with another fixation. After banishing cigarettes, alcohol, dope, gum, and bread from her day-to-day existence, she conquers all her demons and survives deprivation overload. But relying religiously on Dr. Winters, she soon realizes that the only obsession she has left to quit is him. Never has the battle to stem substance abuse been captured with such wit, sophisticated insight, and candor. Lighting Up is so compulsively readable, it's addictive.
Lighting the Fuse
by Lucy LewisImagine standing over a bomb - you need to make a choice. Remember, your life depends on it.In this extraordinary memoir, Lucy Lewis reveals the hidden world of bomb disposal training and how she came to be the UK's first female bomb disposal expert. From joining Sandhurst to rushing to her first bomb disposal call-out, Lucy's story is full of high stakes and tense situations that for most of us, are beyond comprehension. Lucy's story however is also a deeply inspirational one - joining the military in the 1980s just as women were taking on more dangerous roles, Lucy's every move was watched and scrutinised. This didn't hold her back however, and this is how she broke through the ceiling, fought against sexism and achieved something no woman had ever done before. Lighting the Fuse is an eye-opening memoir, that reveals the hidden world of being a woman in the military and how a young woman with an ordinary background, made history - not just once, but twice.
Lighting the Fuse
by Lucy LewisImagine standing over a bomb - you need to make a choice. Remember, your life depends on it.In this extraordinary memoir, Lucy Lewis reveals the hidden world of bomb disposal training and how she came to be the UK's first female bomb disposal expert. From joining Sandhurst to rushing to her first bomb disposal call-out, Lucy's story is full of high stakes and tense situations that for most of us, are beyond comprehension. Lucy's story however is also a deeply inspirational one - joining the military in the 1980s just as women were taking on more dangerous roles, Lucy's every move was watched and scrutinised. This didn't hold her back however, and this is how she broke through the ceiling, fought against sexism and achieved something no woman had ever done before. Lighting the Fuse is an eye-opening memoir, that reveals the hidden world of being a woman in the military and how a young woman with an ordinary background, made history - not just once, but twice.
Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues
by Alan GovenarBased on scores of interviews with the artist's relatives, friends, lovers, producers, accompanists, managers, and fans, this brilliant biography reveals a man of many layers and contradictions. Following the journey of a musician who left his family's poor cotton farm at age eight carrying only a guitar, the book chronicles his life on the open road playing blues music and doing odd jobs. It debunks the myths surrounding his meetings with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander, his time on a chain gang, his relationships with women, and his lifelong appetite for gambling and drinking. This volume also discusses his hard-to-read personality; whether playing for black audiences in Houston's Third Ward, for white crowds at the Matrix in San Francisco, or in the concert halls of Europe, Sam Hopkins was a musician who poured out his feelings in his songs and knew how to endear himself to his audience--yet it was hard to tell if he was truly sincere, and he appeared to trust no one. Finally, this book moves beyond exploring his personal life and details his entire musical career, from his first recording session in 1946--when he was dubbed Lightnin'--to his appearance on the national charts and his rediscovery by Mack McCormick and Sam Charters in 1959, when his popularity had begun to wane and a second career emerged, playing to white audiences rather than black ones. Overall, this narrative tells the story of an important blues musician who became immensely successful by singing with a searing emotive power about his country roots and the injustices that informed the civil rights era.
Lightning
by Linda Coverdale Jean EchenozDrawn from the life of Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of his time,Lightning is a captivating tale of one man's curious fascination with the marvels of science.Hailed by the Washington Post as "the most distinctive voice of his generation," Echenoz traces the notable career of Gregor, a precocious young engineer from Eastern Europe, who travels across the Atlantic at the age of twenty-eight to work alongside Thomas Edison, with whom he later holds a long-lasting rivalry. After his discovery of alternating current, Gregor quickly begins to astound the world with his other brilliant inventions, including everything from radio, radar, and wireless communication to cellular technology, remote control, and the electron microscope.Echenoz gradually reveals the eccentric inner world of a solitary man who holdsa rare gift for imagining devices well before they come into existence. Gregor is a recluse--an odd and enigmatic intellect who avoids women and instead prefers spending hours a day courting pigeons in Central Park.Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Echenoz once again demonstrateshis astonishing abilities as a prose stylist as he vividly captures the life of an isolated genius. A beautifully crafted portrait of a man who prefers the company of lightning in the Colorado desert to that of other human beings, Lightning is a dazzling new work from one of the world's leading contemporary authors.
Lightning Can Strike Twice: My Life as a Fury
by Tommy FuryIn his first book professional boxer and social media star, Tommy Fury, reveals what life is like juggling his many identities: boxing champion, TV star, mental health advocate, and father, and navigating the most difficult period of his life in August 2024."Since writing this book, some things have changed for me. In the last couple of weeks, I have felt like my voice has been taken away from me. I am really proud of my book and I wanted to give it as current an ending as it is possible. We were able to delay the first print run because I do have something to add and where better than here, a place where I can speak freely and feel safe."When Tommy Fury realised as a young boy that he wanted to become a boxer, the odds were stacked against him. His father was sent to prison when Tommy was only nine, casting his family life into chaos. He couldn't afford a bus ticket to the gym to train, so he'd have to walk three hours instead. When he got there, everyone wanted to fight him - guys much older than him and twice his size - to say they could beat a Fury. In Lightning Can Strike Twice, Tommy Fury opens up about his incredible story - defying pressure and triumphing regardless of the weight of expectation on his shoulders - and the many sides to his life. He shares unfiltered stories about his experience on Love Island, candid insight into his life with Molly-Mae and as a father to their daughter Bambi, and a glimpse behind the scenes of what life is like as part of the UK's most popular family - including never-before-seen personal photos.Tommy Fury wasn't supposed to succeed. How could another champion come out of the family that had already produced Tyson Fury? In this open, honest memoir, Tommy shows that lightning can strike twice and that there's more to being a Fury than knowing how to fight.
Lightning Can Strike Twice: My Life as a Fury
by Tommy FuryIn his first book professional boxer and social media star, Tommy Fury, reveals what life is like juggling his many identities: boxing champion, TV star, mental health advocate, and father, and navigating the most difficult period of his life in August 2024."Since writing this book, some things have changed for me. In the last couple of weeks, I have felt like my voice has been taken away from me. I am really proud of my book and I wanted to give it as current an ending as it is possible. We were able to delay the first print run because I do have something to add and where better than here, a place where I can speak freely and feel safe."When Tommy Fury realised as a young boy that he wanted to become a boxer, the odds were stacked against him. His father was sent to prison when Tommy was only nine, casting his family life into chaos. He couldn't afford a bus ticket to the gym to train, so he'd have to walk three hours instead. When he got there, everyone wanted to fight him - guys much older than him and twice his size - to say they could beat a Fury. In Lightning Can Strike Twice, Tommy Fury opens up about his incredible story - defying pressure and triumphing regardless of the weight of expectation on his shoulders - and the many sides to his life. He shares unfiltered stories about his experience on Love Island, candid insight into his life with Molly-Mae and as a father to their daughter Bambi, and a glimpse behind the scenes of what life is like as part of the UK's most popular family - including never-before-seen personal photos.Tommy Fury wasn't supposed to succeed. How could another champion come out of the family that had already produced Tyson Fury? In this open, honest memoir, Tommy shows that lightning can strike twice and that there's more to being a Fury than knowing how to fight.
Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival
by Tom ClavinAn American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive.On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story.Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser’s journey into hell began.Moser and his courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured the most horrific conditions during their imprisonment... until the day the orders were issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan would save them.The page-turning momentum of Lightning Down is like that of a thriller, but the stories of imprisoned and brutalized airmen are true and told in unforgettable detail, led by the distinctly American voice of Joe Moser, who prays every day to be reunited with his family.Lightning Down is a can’t-put-it-down inspiring saga of brave men confronting great evil and great odds against survival.
Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
by Katherine E. StandeferLightning Flowers weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible — &“utterly spectacular.&” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises) What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator. In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots. From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.
Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse
by Kenneth SilvermanIn this brilliantly conceived and written biography, Pulitzer Prize winning Kenneth Silverman gives us the long and amazing life of the man eulogized by the New York Herald in 1872 as perhaps the most illustrious American of his age. Silverman presents Samuel Morse in all his complexity. There is the gifted and prolific painter (more than three hundred portraits and larger historical canvases) and pioneer photographer, who gave the first lectures on art in America, became the first Professor of Fine Arts at an American college (New York University), and founded the National Academy of Design. There is the republican idealist, prominent in antebellum politics, who ran for Congress and for mayor of New York. But most important, there is the inventor of the American electromagnetic telegraph, which earned Morse the name Lightning Man and brought him the fame he sought. In these pages, we witness the evolution of the great invention from its inception as an idea to its introduction to the world--an event that astonished Morse's contemporaries and was considered the supreme expression of the country's inventive genius. We see how it transformed commerce, journalism, transportation, military affairs, diplomacy, and the very shape of daily life, ushering in the modern era of communication. But we discover as well that Morse viewed his existence as accursed rather than illustrious, his every achievement seeming to end in loss and defeat: his most ambitious canvases went unsold; his beloved republic imploded into civil war, making it unlivable for him; and the commercial success of the telegraph engulfed him in lawsuits challenging the originality and ownership of his invention. Lightning Man is the first biography of Samuel F. B. Morse in sixty years. It is a revelation of the life of a fascinating and profoundly troubled American genius.