By the time the zebra was skinned, darkness was fast approaching, so we selected a suitable tree in which to pass the night. Under it we built a goodly fire, made some tea, and roasted a couple of quails which I had shot early in the day and which proved simply delicious. We then betook ourselves to the branches -- at least, Mahina and I did; Moota was afraid of nothing, and said he would sleep on the ground. He was not so full of courage later on, however, for about midnight a great rhino passed our way, winded us and snorted so loudly that Moota scrambled in abject terror up our tree.

The Connecticut is New England's longest and most significant river. Author Jim Bissland, moving from Long Island Sound to the New Hampshire hinterlands, explores the river's cities and towns, gathering colorful anecdotes along his serendipitous journey and bringing to life the river's dramatic history and people.

" "A woman was sitting on the witness stand, and the lawyer asked her, 'Did you, or did you not, on the night of June 23rd have sex with a hippie on the back of a motorcycle in a peach orchard?' She thought for a few minutes, then said, 'What was that date again?'" -- from the book Lawyers have long been known as master storytellers, and those from Kentucky are certainly no exception. Veteran oral historian and folklorist Lynwood Montell has collected tales from dozens of lawyers and judges from throughout the Bluegrass State, ranging from the story about the tough Jackson County judge who fined himself for being late to court to unwelcome dogs in the courtroom. Recorded just as they have been told for generations, these stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad or frightening, sometimes raw and harrowing, but always remarkable. Far more than collection of lawyer jokes, Tales from Kentucky Lawyers recounts the most insightful, entertaining, and occasionally heartbreaking stories ever told by and about Kentucky lawyers and their clients, covering the spectrum from arson to homicide, domestic disagreements to sexual abuse, and everything in between. Tales from Kentucky Lawyers is a valuable resource for folklorists as well as an entertaining and vivid account of the often-surprising legal world.

Danny Wallace was bored. Just to see what would happen, he placed a whimsical ad in a local London paper. It said, simply, "Join Me." Within a month, he was receiving letters and emails from teachers, mechanics, sales reps, vicars, schoolchildren and pensioners-all pledging allegiance to his cause. But no one knew what his cause was. Soon he was proclaimed Leader. Increasingly obsessed and possibly power-crazed, Danny risked losing his sanity and his loyal girlfriend. But who could deny the attraction of a global following of devoted joinees? A book about dreams, ambition, and the responsibility that comes with power, Join Me is the true story of a man who created a cult by accident, and is proof that whilst some men were born to lead, others really haven't got a clue.

The pastor of Christmas Church, a Palestinian Lutheran congregation, Mitri Raheb here presents a powerful collection of compelling personal stories of desperation and hope in the midst of lethal conflict, bringing the Palestinian/Israeli conflict up close and personal. Raheb's lifelong commitment to his people has kept him in the legendary birthplace of Christianity, even as Bethlehem has become a flashpoint in the world's most volatile and hate-filled conflict. His passionate personal testimony lifts up the stray gesture toward friendship, the brave attempts to rebuild life and livelihood in a destroyed land, and the unquenchable desire for justice and peace.

In early November 1913, not quite 19 months after the loss of the Titanic in midatlantic, an autumn gale descended on the Great Lakes. "Gales of November" - like the one that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald in the 1970s - are a fact of life for Great Lakes mariners, but this one was anything but ordinary. Meteorologists now believe that a blast of cold polar air met a warm, moist air mass entrained in a low-pressure cell moving up from the Gulf of Mexico through the U.S. heartland, and the result was a violent weather "bomb" and the worst recorded storm in Great Lakes history. The storm lasted four days, with sustained winds as high as 75 miles per hour, freezing temperatures, white-out blizzard conditions, and mountainous seas.;Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weather bureau (forerunner of the U.S. Weather Bureau) issued storm warnings on Friday morning, November 7, the warnings contained no hint of anything more than 50-mile-per-hour winds for Friday and Saturday. Most ships were making their final trips of the season; their captains knew that as autumn turned to winter the weather would only get worse, and then the lakes would freeze. Across the Great Lakes, hundreds of ships left port that weekend, heading directly into the jaws of what became a survival storm. On the ocean, with sea room, a well-found ship can often survive by running off before a storm until it blows out. On the Great Lakes there is never sufficient sea room. In the driving snow, ship masters could only guess where the treacherous shores lay. Ships iced up and became topheavy; some turned turtle. By Monday evening 19 ships had sunk, another two dozen were driven ashore, and at least 238 sailors had lost their lives.;The city of Cleveland, buried under 22 inches of snow that drifted up to second-story eaves, and facing shortages of milk, bread, and meat, was confronting the worst natural disaster in its history. White Hurricane recreates the four-day storm with narrative intensity and factual depth. To make sense of this big, sprawling, multifaceted story, author David Brown develops it chronologically and focuses on the most exciting human dramas. One or two ships in each of the four hardest hit lakes - Superior, Huron, Michigan, and Erie - carry the narrative, while other disasters are reported more briefly as they occur.;The featured ships are those that left in the newspaper archives and other original and secondary sources the richest, most exciting, most mysterious, and most humanly moving stories. The destructive impacts ashore - especially the privations in Cleveland - weave another narrative strand. The U.S. Weather Bureau and the U.S. Coast Guard owe their existence in part to the Storm of 1913. Like Isaac's Storm and The Heart of the Sea, White Hurricane is both thrilling narrative and scrupulous history. This is the book that carries The Perfect Storm to the heart of America, and David Brown, a Great Lakes mariner and writer and the author of The Last Log of the Titanic, is the ideal guide.

Joshua Piven explores and explains incredible stories of good and bad luck, revealing how we think of luck, and what factors affect it.

As the Middle East peace process disintegrates and the second Palestinian Intifada begins, Wendy Pearlman, a young Jewish woman from the American Midwest travels to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a quest to talk to ordinary Palestinians. A remarkable narrative emerges from her conversations with doctors, artists, school kids, and families who have lost loved ones or watched their homes destroyed. Their stories, ranging from the humorous to the tragic, paint a profile of the Palestinians that is as honest as it is uncommon in the Western media: that of ordinary people who simply want to live ordinary lives. As Pearlman writes, "the personal stories and heartfelt reflections that I encountered did not expose a hatred of Jews or a yearning to push Israelis into the sea. Rather, they painted a portrait of a people who longed for precisely that which had inspired the first Israelis: the chance to be citizens in a country of their own."

Meet M. Dylan Raskin -- "MDR" to friends. At 22, he's the opposite of hip: a working-class college dropout who lives with his mother in Queens -- "Flushing-Stinking-Queens," to be precise. It's not that he doesn't like New York, exactly, it's just that lately he's felt more and more at odds with everything -- his family, his generation, his hometown, even himself. One day he gets fed up and decides to take his freedom on the road, setting off for Chicago in a quixotic attempt to turn his life around. Little New York Bastard is the story of an outsider for the ages, a mixed-up kid who knows what he wants in life but has no idea how to get it. Raskin's anger is palpable and his wounds are unabashedly raw, and readers will appreciate the immediacy and honesty of his story. Equal parts road story, coming-of-age memoir, and existential manifesto -- this debut is in the tradition of cult classics like Youth in Revolt and The Fuck Up.

This book is about a man who was falsely accused of a sex crime. This book is based on a true story.

Heart of a Soldier is the extraordinary story of war, love and comradeship, danger and heroism, told by a Pulitzer Prize winner who is one of our finest writers.

When Rick Rescorla got home from Vietnam, he tried to put combat and death behind him, but he never could entirely. From the day he joined the British Army to fight a colonial war in Rhodesia, where he met American Special Forces' officer Dan Hill who would become his best friend, to the day he fell in love with Susan, everything in his remarkable life was preparing him for an act of generosity that would transcend all that went before.

Heart of a Soldier is a story of bravery under fire, of loyalty to one's comrades, of the miracle of finding happiness late in life. Everything about Rick's life came together on September 11. In charge of security for Morgan Stanley, he successfully got all its 2,700 men and women out of the south tower of the World Trade Center. Then, thinking perhaps of soldiers he'd held as they died, as well as the woman he loved, he went back one last time to search for stragglers.

Wayne Padgett was a colorful, charming, and generous man. He was also one of Oklahoma's most elusive bootleggers and career criminals. From the 1960s into the 1980s, he operated out of Tulsa as a high-ranking member of the outfit known as the Dixie Mafia. In "Oklahoma Tough," poet Ron Padgett tells the inside story of his notorious father and of how he earned his reputation as a Robin Hood "King of the Bootleggers."

"Oklahoma Tough" is also a history of the distinctive mid-twentieth-century Oklahoma milieu that made Wayne Padgett's life story possible. Ron Padgett brings this vanished world to life with candid and sometimes comic descriptions of criminal life. Particularly insightful and entertaining are interviews in which former bootleggers, family members, friends, and enemies speak openly about their lives.

Daniel A. Kelin II preserves the qualities of oral storytelling in fifty stories recorded from eighteen storytellers on eight islands and atolls. This lively collection includes something for everyone: origin stories, tales of mejenkwaad and other demons, tricksters, disobedient children, wronged husbands, foolish suitors, and reunited families - all relaying the importance of traditional Marshallese values and customs. Profiles of the storytellers, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide enrich the collection.

Whether it's the joy-filled decision to welcome a child into your arms or the difficult decision to give your child another home-adoption is making the choice to love unselfishly and unconditionally. Loved by Choice offers a clear and uplifting look at adoption through true stories told from virtually every perspective. Birth parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, adopted children, families working out an overseas adoption, and those creating interracial families are among those who share their joys and difficulties. The collection is a tender celebration of adoption, led by those who understand it best. "Heartwarming and inspirational. By translating true stories from different perspectives, Horner and Martindale intensely convey to the reader the emotions that these people have felt-emotions ranging from desperation to elation, from abandonment to fulfillment. Loved by Choice is not only educational, it's an emotional read that, for maybe the first time, discusses in-depth the impact that adoption has on families and communities." Bill Owens, Governor of Colorado "Loved by Choice is a perfect example of God's adoption of us as his children and how the choice of love is extended to women in unplanned pregnancies. It is a powerful review of how God uses lives to save lives."Carol Everett, president of The Heidi Group "The reader, at the end of this book, has learned a great deal about the process of adoption, but that pales in comparison with the impact of the stories on the heart itself. And that's the real reason we should all read the book: to understand for the very first time what it really means to be Loved by Choice." Joe Wheeler, Ph. D., editor/compiler of the Heart to Heartseries of anthologies

Mark Mathabane first came to prominence with the publication of Kaffir Boy, which became a New York Times bestseller. His story of growing up in South Africa was one of the most riveting accounts of life under apartheid. Mathabane's newest book, Miriam's Song, is the story of Mark's sister, who was left behind in South Africa. It is the gripping tale of a woman -- representative of an entire generation -- who came of age amid the violence and rebellion of the 1980s and finally saw the destruction of apartheid and the birth of a new, democratic South Africa.

Mathabane writes in Miriam's voice based on stories she told him, but he has re-created her unforgettable experience as only someone who also lived through it could. The immediacy of the hardships that brother and sister endured -- from daily school beatings to overwhelming poverty -- is balanced by the beauty of their childhood observations and the true affection that they have for each other.

Nominated for the 2017 Hillman Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights AwardWith this Dickensian tale from America's heartland, New York Times writer and columnist Dan Barry tells the harrowing yet uplifting story of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability, and the heroic efforts of those who helped them to find justice and reclaim their lives.In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disability and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than thirty years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse--until state social workers, local journalists, and one tenacious labor lawyer helped these men achieve freedom.Drawing on exhaustive interviews, Dan Barry dives deeply into the lives of the men, recording their memories of suffering, loneliness and fleeting joy, as well as the undying hope they maintained despite their traumatic circumstances. Barry explores how a small Iowa town remained oblivious to the plight of these men, analyzes the many causes for such profound and chronic negligence, and lays out the impact of the men's dramatic court case, which has spurred advocates--including President Obama--to push for just pay and improved working conditions for people living with disabilities.A luminous work of social justice, told with compassion and compelling detail, The Boys in the Bunkhouse is more than just inspired storytelling. It is a clarion call for a vigilance that ensures inclusion and dignity for all.

A Doctor, A Lawyer, and an Accountant tell You Everything You Need To Know About What Men Want.

If you're like most women, you're in the dark about what men really think about love. This enormously helpful book takes you into the heart and mind of the single professional male to show you not only what but how he thinks about dating and being in love, about what turns him on, and what sends him running in the other direction.

True stories of exciting escapes and rescues have always been popular. This encyclopaedia presents escapes and rescues from the earliest times to the late-1990s in an A-Z format. Roger Howard describes the events themselves, the reasons why they were successful, and what motivated the escapees. Some of the escapes described are simple but ingenious, such as that of Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and political philosopher. In 1619 Grotius had been condemned to life imprisonment, but he escaped in 1621 concealed in a small chest less than four feet in length. The entries relate to topics as varied as Colditz, John McVicar, the Russian Revolution, Stalin, and the Titanic. Also covered are instances of people who evaded capture altogether and escapees who, like Lord Lucan, have "disappeared".

Heard the one about the airline that has introduced 'corpse cupboards' on new planes to cope with the number of people who die in the air? Heard the story about the First Class air hostess who got fired for sitting on the face of a passenger during a long haul flight? Heard about the amount of knickers and false teeth that are left behind in the body of the plane? Heard how pissed-off stewards put laxatives in your drinks? Heard about the pilot who ran out of runway? Heard of the disabled passengers who miraculously walk again? No? Then you haven't read Air Babylon. Do you know the best place to have sex on a plane? Do you know how to dress for an upgrade? Do you know that one drink in the air equals three on the ground? Do you know who is checking you in? Who is checking you out? Do you know exactly what happens to your luggage once it leaves your sight? Is it secure? Are you safe? Do you really know anything about the business that you entrust your life to several times a year? Air Babylon is a trawl through the highs, the lows, and the rapid descents of the travel industry. It catalogues the births, the deaths, the drunken brawls, the sexual antics, and the debauchery behind the scenes of the ultimate service industry - where the world is divided into those who wear the uniform and those who don't...

Strung together like a handful of Mardi Gras beads thrown from a passing float, Labordeis tales reveal the bright and beautiful as well as the dim and gaudy sides of the city. Southern Living.Offering innovative insights into such New Orleans mainstays as Carnival, Sports, and The Quarter, Laborde provides a look at aspects of Crescent City living usually reserved for residents. These essays include an Orleanian ode entitled, In Praise of the Potato Poor Boy and several explorations and explanations of Mr. Bingle, the only symbol of Christmas that is unique to New Orleans. These eighty-one vignettes originally appeared in Labordeis Streetcar column, which currently runs in New Orleans Magazine, a publication that the author also edits.

An assemblage of the lives and stories of several homeless people. There's Valentine from Cameroon whose grandfather taught him how to catch mermaids; Pinky who was eight in the 1976 riots; Gert the horse thief who never attends a meeting but whose stories make a big impression on the group; Virginia the actress with the narrow bed; Patrick the cartoonist who is forced to eat live birds; Fresew the Ethiopian chemist; Steven the ex-boxer who can change the colour of a cow; Robert who explains how to remove tattoos with condensed milk; and Sipho the much-loved poet who lives in a drain under the city and who goes missing. This title is full of stories of struggle and triumph.

In this landmark guide to the spiritual journey, respected Zen teacher and psychotherapist John Tarrant brings together ancient Eastern traditions and the Western passion for the soul. Using real-life stories, Zen tales, and Greek myths, The Light Inside the Dark shows how our darkest experiences can be the gates to wisdom and joy. Tarrant leads us through the inevitable descents of our journey--from the everyday world of work and family into the treasure cave of the interior life--from which we return with greater love of life's vivid, common gifts. Written with empathy and a poet's skill, The Light Inside the Dark is the freshest and most challenging work on the soul to he published in years.