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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General
Terry Prone once thought plastic surgery was for the vain, the
self-regarding and the rich. She thought herself the person least
likely to submit to the plastic surgeon's scalpel. But this was
before a traumatic car crash in which the steering wheel caved in
her cheekbones, broke her jaw and smashed her teeth. In the days
and weeks that followed, she began to understand how radically her
appearance had changed. She then embarked on a journey of physical
- and emotional - reconstruction that gradually became an
addiction. Liposuction. Tooth implants. An arm-lift. Two face-lifts
and a brow-lift. Diamond eye surgery. Foot surgery. She found she
could not stop. Mirror Mirror tells the dramatic story of Terry
Prone's experience of plastic surgery on both sides of the Atlantic
and reveals the truth about each procedure: discomforts, costs,
failures and (mostly) successes. Charged with her remarkable
candour, it is an astonishing story of courage and personal
reinvention - and a hilarious exploration of the wilder shores of
plastic surgery.
Peter Jewell and Juliet Clutton-Brock had a shared passion for
animals and Africa, and as brilliant young zoologists in the 1960s
they were pioneers of the new movements in ecology, archaeozoology
and animal conservation. This fascinating account of their
extraordinary lives follows them as they travel, and live, in and
out of Africa accompanied by their three daughters and a medley of
pets, including dogs, cats, tortoises, chameleons and a chimpanzee.
This book provides new and exciting interpretations of Helen
Keller's unparalleled life as "the most famous American woman in
the world" during her time, celebrating the 141st anniversary of
her birth. Helen Keller: A Life in American History explores
Keller's life, career as a lobbyist, and experiences as a
deaf-blind woman within the context of her relationship with
teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy and overarching social
history. The book tells the dual story of a pair struggling with
respective disabilities and financial hardship and the oppressive
societal expectations set for women during Keller's lifetime. This
narrative is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Helen Keller's
role in the development of support services specifically related to
the deaf-blind, as delineated as different from the blind. Readers
will learn about Keller's challenges and choices as well as how her
public image often eclipsed her personal desires to live
independently. Keller's deaf-blindness and hard-earned but limited
speech did not define her as a human being as she explored the
world of ideas and wove those ideas into her writing, lobbying for
funds for the American Federation for the Blind and working with
disabled activists and supporters to bring about practical help
during times of tremendous societal change. Presents
well-researched, factual material in an easy-to-understand writing
style about a complex, iconic American woman, Helen Keller, who
inspired generations of people worldwide because of her lifelong
quest for knowledge and her ability to communicate ideas despite
being deaf-blind Humanizes and demonstrates the diversity of the
deaf-blind community, which has historically been the smallest
minority in the United States at less than 1% of the population
Positions Keller in the panorama of American history, economics,
politics, and popular culture, challenging the existing narrative
created by her teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy
Re-envisions Keller within the world of ideas where she experienced
and expressed individuality through dialogs constructed from her
writings and the work of those who informed her thinking Includes
10 images that provide an intimate look into Keller's personal and
public life
'Extraordinary . . . a profound and beautiful book . . . a moving
meditation on grief and loss, but also a sparky celebration of joy,
wonder and the miracle of love . . . Witty, wise, beautifully
structured and written in clear, singing prose' - Sunday Times
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction Eighteen
months before Kathryn Schulz's beloved father died, she met the
woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories
of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our
lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening
disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of
war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to
falling in love. Three very different American families form the
heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz's father, a
charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee; the one that made
her partner, an equally brilliant farmer's daughter and devout
Christian; and the one she herself makes through marriage. But
Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of
conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global
catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and
loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is
part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is
simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and
suffering - a world that always demands both our gratitude and our
grief. A staff writer at the New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer
Prize, Kathryn Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, erudition,
and wit about our finite yet infinitely complicated lives. Crafted
with the emotional clarity of C. S. Lewis and the intellectual
force of Susan Sontag, Lost & Found is an uncommon book about
common experiences. 'An extraordinary gift of a book, a tender,
searching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be
human. I wept at it, laughed with it, was entirely fascinated by
it. I emerged feeling a little as if the world around me had been
made anew.' - Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk
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This story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, Flush,
enchants right from the opening pages. Although Flush has
adventures of his own with bullying dogs, horrid maids, and
robbers, he also provides the reader with a glimpse into Browning's
life. Introduction by Trekkie Ritchie.
The book contains stories on various subjects, starting with the
contemplations of passengers in an airplane during a fictitious
flight on various situations in their life, through the memories
captured by ZS during his study and work, as well as stories based
on pub talks and on the imagination of the author.
A rich fund of anecdotes drawn from the authora s time as an
airline pilot and manager which spanned a forty year career,
starting in the 1960s. Roughly tracing the authora s career, each
story paints a different picture, be it be of a pilot, his faults
and foibles, an experience the author had, a management problem and
more. The backdrop is aviation but many of these stories could just
as easily be transposed to a different setting. Most, but not all,
have a strong flavour of humour and/or irony running through them.
In todaya s world of political correctness and in a society
otherwise constrained by litigious lawyers and an overbearing press
many of these [mostly amusing] stories almost defy belief. Such has
the world, and the world of aviation, moved on, few of the present
crop of young pilots flying today would believe what went on behind
closed doors. And neither would the rest of us!
The third volume of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield
covers the eight months she spent in Italy and the South of France
between the English summers of 1919 and 1920. It was a time of
intense personal reassessment and distress. Mansfield's
relationship with her husband John Middleton Murry was bitterly
tested, and most of the letters in this present volume chart that
rich and enduring partner'ship through its severest trial. This was
a time, too, when Mansfield came to terms with the closing off of
possibilities that her illness entailed. Without flamboyance or
fuss, she felt it necessary to discard earlier loyalties and even
friendships, as she sought for a spiritual standpoint that might
turn her illness to less negative ends. As she put it, 'One must be
... continually giving & receiving, and shedding &
renewing, & examining & trying to place'. For all the
grimness of this period of her life, Mansfield's letters still
offer the joie de vivre and wit, self-perception and lively
frankness that make her correspondence such rewarding reading - an
invaluable record of a `modern' woman and her time.
The True Story Behind the Powerful Film ALL SAINTS
Newly ordained, Michael Spurlock's first assignment is to pastor All Saints, a struggling church with twenty-five devoted members and a mortgage well beyond its means. The best option may be to close the church rather than watch it wither any further. But when All Saints hesitantly risks welcoming a community of Karen refugees from Burma--former farmers scrambling for a fresh start in America--Michael feels they may be called to an improbable new mission.
Michael must choose between closing the church and selling the property--or listening to a still, small voice challenging the people of All Saints to risk it all and provide much-needed hope to their new community. Together, they risk everything to plant seeds for a future that might just save them all.
Discover the true story that inspired the film while also diving deeper into the background of the Karen people, the church, and how a community of believers rally to reach out to those in need, yet receive far more than they dared imagine.
The Reverend Michael Spurlock served All Saints Episcopal Church in Smyrna, Tennessee, for three years. He is currently on the clergy staff at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City. Michael, his wife, Aimee, and their two children live in New York City..
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