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The Yards Between Us: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Football
by R. K. RussellIn 2019, Russell, or "Russ," as his friends and family call him, broke the mold when he came out as bisexual and reclaimed his life and his identity as an athlete in an essay and exclusive interview for ESPN. Now, in his powerful memoir, The Yards Between Us, he shares his full story and explores his love of football, his attraction to both men and women, the devastating challenge of keeping his sexuality secret, the tension between his private and public lives, and the importance of crashing through barriers. Russell dips back in time to Buffalo, New York, the tragic loss of his stepfather, his early life as a shy kid struggling with the expectations on a Black boy, his move to conservative Dallas, the pull between his quiet nature and his athletic ability, and an uncertain adolescence in which his love for the game meant he had to hide things about himself. From being bullied to fighting back, his first kiss and middle school love, his first moment understanding his own physical talent, the moment he truly fell in love with football after his mom brought him to his first NFL game, college at Purdue, being drafted by his hometown team, and then on to seasons with he Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, The Yards Between Us traces the highs and lows of Russell's life and career. Over time, the secret of his sexuality weighed heavier and heavier. Finally, he had a deep understanding that it was time to make a change. In Los Angeles, Russell fell in love, and it was the final push he needed to stand up for all the different parts of who he is--a professional athlete, a writer, a son, a friend, a lover, a bisexual Black man. In the years since his coming out, Russell has become an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights by working with the NFL, HRC (Human Rights Campaign), and GLAAD. R. K. Russell's memoir shows us the power, the love, and the life-changing force of embracing who you are--and fighting to make space so others can do the same. R. K. RUSSELL is a former professional football player in the NFL, a social justice advocate, a published poet, an essayist, and an artist. A decorated defensive end who has played for the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he has sacked Hall of Famers and gone up against the fiercest competitors at the height of their game. Since coming out, he has written about his experience as a Black queer man in sports for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and Out magazine, among others. He was included in the prestigious Out100 List in 2019. He lives in Los Angeles.
Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter
by Stephanie Pearl-McpheeAn obsessed knitter who can't seem to put the needles down, author Stephanie Pearl-McPhee reveals the tangled and sometimes maniacal path of her knitting triumphs and disasters in this sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but all true story. Stephanie talks about the importance and method of stash, how to set reasonable goals for yourself for knitting, what happens when your family doesn't want you to knit, and the many pitfalls that might befall a knitter.
The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting
by Clara Parkes“In this charming series of linked essays,” the renowned knitter and author explores the meaning and importance of knitting in her life (Vogue Knitting).In The Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parkes offers reflections and stories from a lifetime of knitting through twenty-two captivating, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny essays. Recounting tales of childhood and adulthood, family, friends, adventure, privacy, disappointment, love, and celebration, Parkes hits upon the universal truths that drive knitters to create. With surprising insight and wry humor, she draws clever parallels between life’s twists and turns what knitters see on their needles. Stockinette, ribbing, cables, even the humble yarn over can instantly evoke places, times, people, conversations, all those poignant moments that we’ve tucked away in our memory banks. Over time, those stitches form a map of our lives (From the preface).
Yarns (World Of Cruising Ser.)
by Tristan Jones&“A pleasure . . . a brilliant collection of yarns about [a British mariner&’s] life, his sailing adventures, and his thoughts about man and the sea.&” —Lloyd's List In Yarns, legendary sailor and adventurer Tristan Jones tells stories of his remarkable life at sea. Along with tales of the beautiful cruises he has made around the world and the memorable people he has met along the way, Jones has advice for his readers on everything from captaining a boat to engaging with locals in remote locations. He proposes his own theory for the mystery of the ghost ship Mary Celeste. Other yarns include a story of a troubled steamship, his accounts of an unlikely salvage operation in Ibiza, a strange rendezvous on the coast of Africa, and his chance encounter with a renowned American sailor. Jones even shares what prompted him to begin writing in the first place—a turn of fortune that sailing and reading fans have lauded him for ever since. &“The characters and capers, including a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery, pour deliciously from the pen of this legendary adventurer.&” —Cruising World
Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography
by Barry Rubin Judith Colp RubinYasir Arafat stands as one of the most resilient, recognizable and controversial political figures of modern times. The object of unrelenting suspicion, steady admiration and endless speculation, Arafat has occupied the center stage of Middle East politics for almost four decades. Yasir Arafat is the most comprehensive political biography of this remarkable man. Forged in a tumultuous era of competing traditionalism, radicalism, Arab nationalism, and Islamist forces, the Palestinian movement was almost entirely Arafat's creation, and he became its leader at an early age. Arafat took it through a dizzying series of crises and defeats, often of his own making, yet also ensured that it survived, grew, and gained influence. Disavowing terrorism repeatedly, he also practiced it constantly. Arafat's elusive behavior ensured that radical regimes saw in him a comrade in arms, while moderates backed him as a potential partner in peace. After years of devotion to armed struggle, Arafat made a dramatic agreement with Israel that let him return to his claimed homeland and transformed him into a legitimized ruler. Yet at the moment of decision at the Camp David summit and afterward, when he could have achieved peace and a Palestinian state, he sacrificed the prize he had supposedly sought for the struggle he could not live without. Richly populated with the main events and dominant leaders of the Middle East, this detailed and analytical account by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin follows Arafat as he moves to Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and finally to Palestinian-ruled soil. It shows him as he rewrites his origins, experiments with guerrilla war, develops a doctrine of terrorism, fights endless diplomatic battles, and builds a movement, constantly juggling states, factions, and world leaders. Whole generations and a half-dozen U.S. presidents have come and gone over the long course of Arafat's career. But Arafat has outlasted them all, spanning entire eras, with three constants always present: he has always survived, he has constantly seemed imperiled, and he has never achieved his goals. While there has been no substitute for Arafat, the authors conclude, Arafat has been no substitute for a leader who could make peace.
Yasmeena's Choice: A True Story of War, Rape, Courage and Survival
by Jean SassonThis is the true story of Yasmeena, a bright and beautiful young Lebanese woman who was imprisoned in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Yasmeena's shocking journey is a tale of the madness of war, of the sexual brutality unleashed by chaos, and of one woman's courage to stand in danger's way to aid her fellow sufferers. This is an explicit, graphic, and honest book. It is for mature audiences only.Jean Sasson has spent her career sharing the personal stories of courageous Middle Eastern women. PRINCESS: Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia was an international bestseller. It has become a classic, taught in colleges and high schools and devoured by anyone who aspires to understand the Middle East.Yasmeena was quite literally an innocent abroad. She was a college educated, English-speaking flight attendant graced with an unusual amount of confidence. She was also a virgin, a conservative Muslim daughter and sister.When Yasmeena's flight out of Kuwait was delayed, it was because Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait. Iraqi soldiers threw her into a woman's prison where the guards committed ghastly sexual attacks and tortured the women.After Yasmeena was brutalized by the captain of the prison, she thought she was the most unfortunate woman on earth. But that was before she befriended Lana, whose rapist took glee in inflicting hurt. Yasmeena used her position as the captain's favorite to protect her friend, though she also was forced into a wrenching decision.As Americans and other allies march into Kuwait, the Iraqis flee and Yasmeena escapes. Eventually she finds a safe harbor where Sasson interviews her and records every horrific experience.Sasson has wanted to write this story for many years. But she knew that the sexual explicitness and violence would make it difficult to publish. A year ago, Yasmeena's story and the choices she was forced to make invaded Sasson's dreams. She realized that now was the right time to share the story. And so here it is, Sasson's testament to an articulate, angry, brave young woman who not only survived but who was eager to share her story with the world.
Yasuke: The true story of the legendary African Samurai
by Thomas Lockley Geoffrey GirardWARRIOR. SAMURAI. LEGEND.The remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai, and his astonishing journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.The man who came to be known as Yasuke arrived in Japan in the 16th century, an indentured mercenary arriving upon one of the Portuguese ships carrying a new language, a new religion and an introduction to the slave trade. Curiously tall, bald, massively built and black skinned, he was known as a steadfast bodyguard of immense strength and stature, and swiftly captured the interest, and thence the trust, of the most powerful family in all of Japan. Two years later, he vanished.Yasuke is the story of a legend that still captures the imagination of people across the world. It brings to life a little known side of Japan - a gripping narrative about an extraordinary figure in a fascinating time and place.
Yavarum Sodara (All Men are Brothers)
by Krishyna Kripalani R. VenkatarajuluMahatma Gandhi, father of nation of India sacrificed his life for his country. This book is a selection from Gandhiji’s Writings.
Yaya's Story: The Quest for Well-Being in the World
by Paul StollerYaya’s Story is a book about Yaya Harouna, a Songhay trader originally from Niger who found a path to America. It is also a book about Paul Stoller--its author--an American anthropologist who found his own path to Africa. Separated by ethnicity, language, profession, and culture, these two men’s lives couldn’t be more different. But when they were both threatened by a grave illness--cancer--those differences evaporated, and the two were brought to profound existential convergence, a deep camaraderie in the face of the most harrowing of circumstances. Yaya’s Story is that story. Harouna and Stoller would meet in Harlem, at a bustling African market where Harouna built a life as an African art trader and Stoller was conducting research. Moving from Belayara in Niger to Silver Spring, Maryland, and from the Peace Corps to fieldwork to New York, Stoller recounts their separate lives and how the threat posed by cancer brought them a new, profound, and shared sense of meaning. Combining memoir, ethnography, and philosophy through a series of interconnected narratives, he tells a story of remarkable friendship and the quest for well-being. It’s a story of difference and unity, of illness and health, a lyrical reflection on human resiliency and the shoulders we lean on.
Yayoi Kusama (Lives of the Artists)
by Robert Shore'I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland' Yayoi KusamaNonagenarian Japanese artist is simultaneously one of the most famous and most mysterious artists on the planet. A wild child of the 1950s and 1960s, she emerged out of the international Fluxus movement to launch naked happenings in New York and went on to become a doyenne of that city's counter-cultural scene. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and by 1977 had checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital which has remained her home to this day. But, though she was removed from the world, she was definitely not in retirement. Her love and belief in the polka dot has given birth to some of the most surprising and inspiring installations and paintings of the last four decades - and made her exhibitions the most visited of any single living artist.
Yayoi Kusama (Lives of the Artists)
by Robert Shore'I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland' Yayoi KusamaNonagenarian Japanese artist is simultaneously one of the most famous and most mysterious artists on the planet. A wild child of the 1950s and 1960s, she emerged out of the international Fluxus movement to launch naked happenings in New York and went on to become a doyenne of that city's counter-cultural scene. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and by 1977 had checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital which has remained her home to this day. But, though she was removed from the world, she was definitely not in retirement. Her love and belief in the polka dot has given birth to some of the most surprising and inspiring installations and paintings of the last four decades - and made her exhibitions the most visited of any single living artist.
Yé-Yé Girls of '60s French Pop
by Lio Jean-Emmanuel DeluxeThis delightfully illustrated exploration into '60s French pop, and the women who built it, reveals yé-yé music's hip sensuality, humor, style and wit. We hear from and about Françoise Hardy, France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, Sylvie Vartan and dozens of other modern Lolitas, and the recklessly naughty Serge Gainsbourg. Modern-day yé-yé avatar Lio has written the book's Foreword.
Yeager: An Autobiography
by Chuck Yeager Leo JanosGeneral Chuck Yeager, the greatest test pilot of them all -- the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound... The World War II flying ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop-driven P-51 Mustang... The hero who defined a certain quality that all hotshot fly-boys of the postwar era aimed to achieve: the right stuff. Now Chuck Yeager tells his whole incredible life story with the same "wide-open, full throttle" approach that has marked his astonishing career. What it was really like engaging in do-or-die dogfights over Nazi Europe. How after being shot over occupied France, Yeager somehow managed to escape. The amazing behind-the-scenes story of smashing the sound barrier despite cracked ribs from a riding accident days before. The entire story is here, in Yeager's own words, and in wonderful insights from his wife and those friends and colleagues who have known him best. It is the personal and public story of a man who settled for nothing less than excellence, a one-of-a-kind portrait of a true American hero.
Yeah, But Where Are You Really From?: A story of overcoming the odds
by Marguerite Penrose'An engrossing, urgent, and entertaining read. I couldn't put it down' Roddy Doyle______Marguerite Penrose's is an extraordinary story of making a great life from complicated beginnings. Marguerite was born in a Dublin mother-and-baby home in 1974, the daughter of an Irish mother and a Zambian father. Severe scoliosis indicated a future of difficult medical procedures. She was a little girl who needed a break. And she got it at three when she was fostered - and later adopted - by a young couple, Mick and Noeline, and acquired a mam, dad, sister, Ciara, and loving extended family. Growing up, Marguerite's appearance was occasionally remarked on by strangers, but it wasn't until her teens that she understood that her skin colour was a provocation for some. The progressive city that she knew was revealed to have an unpleasant undercurrent. So, she became an expert in shaping her life around anything that marked her out as 'different'.Marguerite's story is one of facing some big questions - Who am I? How do I live in world made for people with bodies different to mine? Why does anyone care about my skin colour? - with intelligence, humour, courage and common-sense. She writes about coming to terms with the circumstances of her birth and, like so many in her position, looking for answers. About navigating the world as an active woman with a disability. About what it means to be both Irish and Black, particularly at a moment when the conversation is becoming mainstream in Ireland and she is thinking about it in new ways herself. Mostly, she writes about embracing life in a spirit of openness and positivity.Yeah, But Where Are You Really From? is a captivating, wise and inspiring memoir by a truly remarkable woman.___________'Beautiful, moving, tender and informative' SINÉAD MORIARTY'Wonderful' MIRIAM O'CALLAGHAN
Yeah, Nah!: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are
by William McInnesHave you ever bunged it on?Behaved like a drongo?Added mayo to a story?Lost your Reg Grundies?Join bestselling storyteller William McInnes as he offers his own take on our colourful and colloquial way with words. From the simpler times of childhood to today's testing (and unprecedented!) times, or when we're wasting time, enjoying sporting times or hitting the big time, Australians have a turn of phrase for every situation. Our love of plain speaking communicates the essence of the thing to our mates, to those in the know - and to those who should know better.Part memoir, part manifesto, this warm, witty, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny collection will have you thinking about what you say, how you say it and what that really says about us as a nation. Praise for the writing of William McInnes'Warm and engaging . . . feels a little bit like home' Daily Telegraph'If there is a quintessence of Australia at its best, William McInnes has distilled it' The Age'Warm, nostalgic, funny and undeniably Australian' Sydney Morning Herald
Yeah, No. Not Happening.: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F*ck It All—and How You Can Too
by Karen KarboThe author of the acclaimed, bestselling In Praise of Difficult Women delivers a hilarious feminist manifesto that encourages us to reject “self-improvement” and instead learn to appreciate and flaunt our complex, and flawed, human selves.Why are we so obsessed with being our so-called best selves? Because our modern culture force feeds women lies designed to heighten their insecurities: “You can do it all—crush it at work, at home, in the bedroom, at PTA and at Pilates—and because you can, you should. We can show you how!” Karen Karbo has had enough. She’s taking a stand against the cultural and societal pressures, marketing, and media influences that push us to spend endless time, energy and money trying to “fix” ourselves—a race that has no finish line and only further increases our send of self-dissatisfaction and loathing. “Yeah, no, not happening,” is her battle cry. In this wickedly smart and entertaining book, Karbo explores how “self-improvery” evolved from the provenance of men to women. Recast as “consumers” in the 1920s, women, it turned out, could be seduced into buying anything that might improve not just their lives, but their sense of self-worth. Today, we smirk at Mad Men-era ads targeting 1950s housewives—even while savvy marketers, aided and abetted by social media “influencers,” peddle skin care “systems,” skinny tea, and regimens that promise to deliver endless happiness. We’re not simply seduced into dropping precious disposable income on empty promises; the underlying message is that we can’t possibly know what’s good for us, what we want, or who we should be. Calling BS, Karbo blows the lid off of this age-old trend and asks women to start embracing their awesomely imperfect selves.There is no one more dangerous than a woman who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. Yeah, No, Not Happening is a call to arms to build a posse of dangerous women who swear off self-improvement and its peddlers. A welcome corrective to our inner-critic, Karbo’s manifesto will help women restore their sanity and reclaim their self-worth.
YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!: The Beatles, Beatlemania, and the Music that Changed the World
by Bob SpitzIt starts in the housing projects and school playgrounds of Liverpool, where four boys would discover themselves--and a new form of music called rock 'n roll. It takes us from the famous first meeting between John and Paul, to the clubs of Liverpool and Germany when George and Ringo join the band, down Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, to America and the height of the Beatles' success--when they were still teenagers. In Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, Spitz recreates the thrills, tears and magic of his New York Times bestselling adult biography, but in a style and format that's accesible for young readers. This book includes photos, sidebars and graphic elements. It's a book about teens who changed the world.
A Year Ago; Eye-Witness’s Narrative Of The War From March 20th To July 18th, 1915 [Illustrated Edition]
by Major-General Ernest D. Swinton Captain Alan Ian Percy Duke of NorthumberlandIncludes The First World War On The Western Front 1914-1915 Illustrations Pack with 101 maps, plans, and photos.Major-General Ernest Swinton had already had a long and illustrious career in the British Army before the advent of the First World War in 1914. Appointed as the official war correspondent by the war Minister Lord Kitchener in 1914, his reporting home was the only way for the British people to follow the war as journalists were at that time banned at the front. In these dispatches from the front Swinton told the public of the bloody fighting in Flanders and the heroic efforts of the Allies to stop the German Juggernaut. So even handed and realistic they were brought together in a series of books under the pseudonym "Eyewitness" for further publication. Swinton was not a "château" general by any means and visited the front with dangerous regularity write of the fighting with real authority, often including anecdotes of the ordinary soldiers that he interviewed. The miserable conditions and bloody siege warfare of the trenches left a lasting impression on him and he looked to a scientific solution to the muddy stalemate of the Western Front. He would gain lasting fame as the architect of the "tank" project that was to revolutionize warfare in the First World War and for many years thereafter.
A Year and a Day: An Experiment in Essays
by Phillip LopateA compelling celebration of the power of the essay, this collection of 47 writings offers a glimpse into the mind of a modern-day Montaigne as he reflects on the miscellany of daily life—movies and art, friends and family—over the course of a single year.The essay is the most pluckily pedestrian and blithely transgressive of literary genres, the one that is most at large and in need, picking through the accumulated disjecta of daily life and personal and social history to take what it needs and remake it as it sees fit. It is, at its lively best, quite indifferent to the claims of style, fashion, theory, and respectability, provoking and inspiring through the pleasure of surprise. In 2016, Philip Lopate, who has been writing essays and thinking about the essay for decades now, turned his attention to one of the essay's offshoots, the blog, a form by that time already thick, as he knew, with virtual dust. Lopate committed to writing a weekly blog about, really, whatever over the course of a year, a quicker pace of delivery than he'd ever undertaken and one that carried the risk of all too regularly falling short. What emerged was A Year and a Day, a collection of forty-seven essays best characterized as a single essay a year in the making, a virtuosic (if never showy) demonstration of the essay's range and reach, meandering, looping back, pressing reset, forging on. Lopate's topics along the way include family, James Baldwin, a trip to China, Agnes Martin, Abbas Kiarostami, the resistible rise of Donald Trump, death, desire, and the tribulations, small and large, of daily life. What results is at once a self-portrait, a picture of the times, and a splendid new elaboration of what the essay can be.
A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story
by Isabel GilliesA real-life romantic comedy about getting dumped and getting over itIsabel Gillies, the New York Times bestselling author of Happens Every Day, has written another irresistibly moving and funny memoir: A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story. When our story opens, it's a dark and slushy winter in New York City, where Isabel is arriving by airplane from Ohio, two toddlers in tow, to move in with her parents; her husband has left her for another woman. In subsequent scene after hilarious scene, Isabel shares her valiant, misguided, and bumbling attempts to understand her own part in the disintegration of her marriage and to feel strong and loveable. And, one by one, she begins to cross items off a staggering single mom to-do list that includes: change last name, get bank account, get work, have breakdowns only in front of best friend and not in front of children, find rare preschool slot for son midyear in Manhattan, get along with three generations of family in tight quarters, find a man who can plant one great and romantic kiss, accept self, accept love, be happy. She cries, she dates, she (and her mother and father and children) get the flu, and then, just when she least expects it, Isabel falls in love.With humility and a refreshing sense of humor, Isabel stumbles many times but also laughs, forgives, discovers new treasures from old friends, marries again, and more than that, finds good love itself within and around her.e and War and Hell Is Other Parents: And Other Tales of Maternal Combustion"With the same self-effacing prose found in her debut, Gillies describes her journey from the pain of lost love to the land of the living with humor and compassion ... Readers who enjoyed the author's earlier memoir--and books like it--will find her saga engrossing and heartfelt ... Readers will cheer along with the author, whose heart overflows in the conclusion of this enduring story of life after love."--Kirkus Reviews"Isabel Gillies gives us a story of unexpected romance, unfolding the story of her journey from divorce heartbreak and single motherhood to new love and family with genuine intimacy and humor."--Julie Metz, author of the New York Times bestseller Perfection
A Year at Hartlebury, Or, The Election
by Benjamin Disraeli Sarah DisraeliThe revelation that a long forgotten novel first published anonymously in 1834 is the work of Benjamin Disraeli and his sister Sarah is an exciting literary event. Newly discovered letters between brother and sister prove without doubt that it was written jointly by them. We do not have to look far for the reason for their secrecy. The vividly described election which forms the centrepiece of the story is clearly based on Disraeli's recent experiences as an unsuccessful candidate in two elections at High Wycombe. His political career had a long way to go and the last thing he wanted was to jeopardize it by revealing his motives in the past or his hopes for the future. The hero, Aubrey Bohun, has, like Disraeli, recently returned from mysterious travels in the East, but unlike him has his own castle and an income of £30,000 a year. Bohun obviously contains an element of wish fulfilment and allows the authors to incorporate in the novel elements of wish fulfilment and allows the authors to incorporate in the novel elements of a popular genre known in its day as 'silver fork' fiction – revelations of high life. Although there is much of this and of melodrama too, there is also some splendid social irony. Michael Foot says 'the volume is quite fit to takes its place in the true Disraeli canon and contains many gems which add fresh gleams to the portrait of Disraeli himself.' Two appendixes explain the literary detection that proved the book's authorship and the parallels between the politics of Aubrey Bohun and Disraeli.
A Year at the Chateau: As seen on the hit Channel 4 show
by Dick Strawbridge Angel StrawbridgeTHE ENTERTAINING AND HEARTWARMING SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.Like many couples, Dick and Angel had long dreamed of living in France, but where others might settle for a modest bolthole in the French countryside, the Strawbridges fell in love with a 19th-century fairytale château, complete with 45 rooms, seven outbuildings, 12 acres of land and its own moat.Throwing caution to the wind, Dick and Angel swapped their two-bedroom flat in East London for an abandoned and derelict castle in the heart of the Loire valley and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime with their two young children Arthur and Dorothy.Sharing their full journey for the first time, A Year at the Château follows Dick and Angel from when they first moved to France in the depths of winter and found bedrooms infested with flies, turrets inhabited by bats, the wind rattling through cracked windows, and just one working toilet, which flushed into the moat, through to the monumental efforts that went into readying the château for their unforgettable wedding and their incredibly special first Christmas.Along the way we'll read glorious descriptions of rural life in France, with charming characters, delicious food and wonderful seasonal produce, together with the extraordinary list of renovations and restorations Dick and Angel completed, many of which were never shown on TV.As warm and entertaining as their much-loved show, A Year at the Château is a truly irresistible story of adventure and heart, epic ambitions and a huge amount of hard graft.
A Year at the Chateau: As seen on the hit Channel 4 show
by Dick Strawbridge Angel StrawbridgeTHE ENTERTAINING AND HEARTWARMING SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.Like many couples, Dick and Angel had long dreamed of living in France, but where others might settle for a modest bolthole in the French countryside, the Strawbridges fell in love with a 19th-century fairytale château, complete with 45 rooms, seven outbuildings, 12 acres of land and its own moat.Throwing caution to the wind, Dick and Angel swapped their two-bedroom flat in East London for an abandoned and derelict castle in the heart of the Loire valley and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime with their two young children Arthur and Dorothy.Sharing their full journey for the first time, A Year at the Château follows Dick and Angel from when they first moved to France in the depths of winter and found bedrooms infested with flies, turrets inhabited by bats, the wind rattling through cracked windows, and just one working toilet, which flushed into the moat, through to the monumental efforts that went into readying the château for their unforgettable wedding and their incredibly special first Christmas.Along the way we'll read glorious descriptions of rural life in France, with charming characters, delicious food and wonderful seasonal produce, together with the extraordinary list of renovations and restorations Dick and Angel completed, many of which were never shown on TV.As warm and entertaining as their much-loved show, A Year at the Château is a truly irresistible story of adventure and heart, epic ambitions and a huge amount of hard graft.
The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans
by Ned SubletteWith a style the Los Angeles Times calls as "vivid and fast-moving as the music he loves," Ned Sublette's powerful new book drives the reader through the potholed, sinking streets of the United States's least-typical city.In this eagerly awaited follow-up to The World That Made New Orleans, Sublette's award-winning history of the Crescent City's colonial years, he traces an arc of his own experience, from the white supremacy of segregated 1950s Louisiana through the funky year of 2004–2005--the last year New Orleans was whole. By turns irreverent, joyous, darkly comic, passionate, and polemical, The Year Before the Flood juxtaposes the city's crowded calendar of parties, festivals, and parades with the murderousness of its poverty and its legacy of racism. Along the way, Sublette opens up windows of American history that illuminate the present: the trajectory of Mardi Gras from pre–Civil War days, the falsification of Southern history in movies, the city's importance to early rock and roll, the complicated story of its housing projects, the uniqueness of its hip-hop scene, and the celebratory magnificence of the participatory parades known as second lines. With a grand, unforgettable cast of musicians and barkeeps, scholars and thugs, vibrating with the sheer excitement of New Orleans, The Year Before the Flood is an affirmation of the power of the city's culture and a heartbreaking tale of loss that definitively establishes Ned Sublette as a great American writer for the 21st century.
A Year in Mississippi
by Charline R. McCord and Judy H. TuckerWith contributions by Walter Biggins, Patti Carr Black, Lottie Brent Boggan, Donald H. Butts, Bob Carskadon, Rebecca Lauck Cleary, David Creel, Sylvia Nettles Dickson, Pat Flynn, Chris Gilmer, Peggy Gilmer-Piasecki, Carolyn Haines, Ann Tyrone Hebert, C. C. Henley, Alice Jackson, Donald M. Kartiganer, Janice Marie Kraft, Francis X. Kuhn, Bill Luckett, Johnnie Mae Maberry, Debbie Campbell Matthews, Charline R. McCord, Jo McDivitt, Cheri Thornton McHugh, Thomas McIntyre, Margaret McMullan, Willie Morris, Julia Reed, Ronnie Riggs, Sid Salter, David Sheffield, Mary Sue Slagle, Seetha Srinivasan, Brenda Trigg, Judy H. Tucker, Cynthia Walker, Lawrence “Larry” Wells, Jacqueline Freeman Wheelock, Malcolm White, Diane Williams, and Richard Wiman A Year in Mississippi presents a collection of forty essays, ten per season, celebrating significant events and traditions throughout the state. Writers showcase the background, history, and emotions of these events and traditions with special meaning. Each event shines in the spotlight, observed not only to ascertain its impact, but also to discover why it succeeds, how it contributes to and shapes a unique culture, and how it functions to bind people together. Well-known contributors and essays of special interest in the collection include Willie Morris’s “The Glory of the Game,” Julia Reed’s “Green Day,” Lawrence “Larry” Wells’s “Always on My Mind—A Blues and Civil Rights Tour of the Mississippi Delta,” Donald M. Kartiganer’s “Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1974-2016,” Margaret McMullan’s “Christmas in the Pass,” Sid Salter’s “The Neshoba County Fair: Porches, Politicians, and Pie,” Patti Carr Black’s “Whiskey Christmases,” Carolyn Haines’s “Camp Meeting,” David Sheffield’s “The Blessing of the Fleet” and Seetha Srinivasan’s “Diwali: Hindu Festival of Lights.”