Other books that might interest you

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  Memory Man: The Life and...

  Jason O'Toole, Jimmy Magee

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  Jimmy Magee, whose extraordinary memory for sports trivia has led to his being dubbed the Memory Man, has the distinction of being the longest-serving sports commentator in the English-speaking world. He started his career in 1956, the year that Ronnie Delany won the 1,500 metres gold medal at Melbourne. He has covered every Olympic Games since 1972 (the London 2012 games were his eleventh!) and every soccer World Cup since 1974. He achieved worldwide notice in Munich in 1972 when he managed to breach security in the Olympic village to cover the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes. This incredible scoop was picked up by CBS in the United States and then by every television station around the world.
  Jimmy Magee has been present at the most iconic sporting moments in both world and Irish sport and gives his unique insight into these major sporting moments. He tells how he played five-a-side football with Gert Müller, how he almost came to blows with Nigel Benn, and why he thinks Katie Taylor is Ireland's greatest contemporary sportsperson.
  But what is perhaps the most striking aspect of such an accomplished career is how Jimmy managed to find the strength to keep up his cheerful persona on air as he endured immeasurable sorrow in his personal life. His beloved wife, Marie, died unexpectedly in 1989 and his son Paul, himself a footballer and sports broadcaster, tragically lost his battle with motor neuron disease in 2008 at the early age of fifty-one.
  Full of anecdotes, humour and poignancy, Memory Man tells all these things and more. This is a frank, open and honest book by one of Ireland's most beloved national treasures.

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  The Other Madisons - The Lost...

  Bettye Kearse

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  In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse—a descendant of an enslaved cookand, according to oral tradition, President James Madison—shares her familystory and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences oftelling the whole truth.For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) haverecited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would nothave known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, andhalf-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Kearse became the eighth-generation griotte for herfamily. Its credo—“Always remember, you’re a Madison. You come from Africanslaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her it echoedwith abuses of slavery, including rape and incest.Confronting those abuses, Kearse embarked on a journey of discovery—of herancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked,recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slaveholdingfortress in Ghana, below a federal building in New York City, and under a brickwalkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Kearse tried to confirm theinformation her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn.Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical corrective, The OtherMadisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in searchof the whole story.

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  The Humbugs of the World - An...

  P. T. Barnum

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  P. T. Barnum, best-known for his own use of hoaxes in his popular Barnum & Bailey Circus, found that the use of hoaxes was acceptable when the audience was getting the entertainment they paid for. When it came to religious hoaxes, fraud, and swindling, Barnum was avidly against it. He even went so far as to offer $500 to any medium who could prove that they actually could reach the dead. In this exposé of humbugs and the scams they perpetuate, he goes after religious quacks, witches and sorcerers, and other forms of frauds in all walks of life. He discusses some of the most notable scams of the time and reveals the perpetrators as humbugs. In addition to scams, he also discusses business affairs and his own opinions of the current events of his time.

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  I Blame Dennis Hopper - And...

  Illeana Douglas

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  In 1969 Illeana Douglas's parents saw the film Easy Rider and were transformed. Taking Dennis Hopper's words "That's what it's all about man" to heart, they abandoned their comfortable upper-middle-class life and gave Illeana a childhood filled with hippies, goats, free spirits, and free love. Illeana writes, "Since it was all out of my control, I began to think of my life as a movie, with a Dennis Hopper-like father at the center of it." 
   
   
   
  I Blame Dennis Hopper is a rollicking, funny, at times tender exploration of the way movies can change our lives. With crackling humor and a full heart, Douglas describes how a good Liza Minnelli impression helped her land her first gig and how Rudy Valley taught her the meaning of being a show biz trouper. From her first experience being on set with her grandfather and mentor—two-time Academy Award–winning actor Melvyn Douglas—to the moment she was discovered by Martin Scorsese, to starring in movies alongside Robert DeNiro, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke, to becoming an award-winning writer, director, and producer in her own right, I Blame Dennis Hopper is an irresistible love letter to movies and filmmaking.

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  A Modern Plutarch - Comparisons...

  Robert Lloyd George

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  Inspired by the Ancient Greek biographer, this volume offers comparative assessments of important leaders from American and British history. One of the most significant and enduring texts of Ancient Greece is Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. In it, the “Father of Biography” paired off the most notable and influential figures of the classical world, placing their lives and legacies next to each other, allowing the comparisons and juxtapositions to reveal new truths about these famous men. He compared Demosthenes with Cicero, Alexander the Great with Julius Caesar; the result was an intellectual masterpiece still referred to by historians today. In A Modern Plutarch, Robert Lloyd George applies this model of biography to the most influential statesmen and stateswomen of American and British history. Lloyd George compares figures such as Edmund Burke, a prophet of modern conservatism, and Thomas Paine, a champion for the common man. He juxtaposes Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, two of the greatest wartime leaders of the past 200 years, and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the first divisive, the latter popular. In doing so, he draws parallels between their lives and philosophies, while revealing the traits that made them unique. An essential primer on leadership and an inspiring account of exceptional lives, A Modern Plutarch offers remarkable insight into some of the greatest minds of the modern era.

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  Molly Brown from Hannibal...

  Ken Marks, Lisa Marks

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  The real story of the “unsinkable” Titanic survivor and her early life in the Midwest. 
   
  In the film version of the life of the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” she is rescued from the Colorado River and raised in the Rocky Mountains, but the actual Margaret Tobin Brown was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. Her formative years took place in the town’s Gilded Age; the railroad brought in lumber barons, and as the wealth of Hannibal grew, so too did the dreams of young Margaret, who would go on to fight for women’s rights, help build a cathedral, and more.  
   
  Even though her future career as a philanthropist and socialite would span continents and she would become most famous for surviving the sinking of the Titanic, Molly Brown was always proud to be from Hannibal, and this is the true story of her life in the Midwestern town.

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