Известные люди

Book Description Childhood for Mat Hoffman was a high-flying, hazardous, nonstop search for the next big rush. At age eleven he experimented with his bike on a plywood ramp and discovered his true calling -- BMX freestyle. By age fourteen, he had earned national notoriety for his skill, passion, and daring on a bike. In the two decades since, his ingenuity and talent have taken him around the world and helped him shatter records while redefining the sport of BMX. His fearlessness has earned him the respect of his peers, and he has the battle scars to prove it -- he's suffered more than fifty broken bones and more concussions than he can remember. In The Ride of My Life , Hoffman reveals the ups and downs of his own life and the story of the sport he helped define.

Book Description1927. Other volumes in this set include ISBN number(s): 0766171876. Volume 1 of 2. The facts as they have been left to us by Erasmus, and which Mr. Mangan has here gathered together in compact form, give us an Erasmus far different from this imagined one. In presenting this study of the life and activities of Erasmus to the public, the author realizes that it differs in many respects from the conventional biography of him to which we have become accustomed. This has been less a matter of intent than a direct consequence of the plan which Mangan followed throughout the work: of having him speak for himself always, rather than attempting to interpret his at times so kaleidoscopic mind.

Book DescriptionWe remember George Washington as an austere figure standing in a rowboat crossing the icy Delaware River, and we tend to forget that he was ever a reluctant leader. It is even harder to imagine him wallowing in sentiment or advising teenagers on love and marriage. Yet despite his legendary stature, Washington did display raw emotion, seldom in public but often in the privacy of his diary. Paul M. Zall uses Washington?s own words to restore him as an uncommon man subject to commonhuman weakness. From an early age, Washington was determined to earn the respect of both peers and followers. No orator, he sought to secure his place in history through meticulously kept records. His words reveal how he forged his character on the frontier of his youth, tested it in the Revolution, and cemented it in the nation?s founding. Combining Washington?s personal diaries, journals, letters, and other sources, Washington on Washington offers a fresh perspective on one...

Book DescriptionA small classic of travel writing and an indelible portrait of a young man coming of age during the Great Depression. In 1933, Clarence Jonk, full of youthful naivete and an urge for adventure, decided to build a houseboat from scrap materials and float it the length of the Mississippi River. In the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and Henry David Thoreau, Jonk recounts a first-person tale of high adventure complete with wry and lyrical observations on life, love, and nature that capture the beauty and harshness of existence along the Mississippi River. Hoping to live rent free on a St. Paul lake in hard times, Jonk, a carefree college student and would-be poet, cobbled together his own houseboat from empty oil drums, scraplumber, and two old Model T engines. Then, evicted by the local authorities, Jonk hauled his rudderless craft through city traffic to the Mississippi and boldly set out from Minneapolis bound for New Orleans in the chill month of...

Book DescriptionIn the early 1950's, in Los Angeles, at 6 AM, John West, vice-president of the National Broadcasting Company in charge of west coast, gets a phone call from New York City on the NBC tie line. The caller is General David Sarnoff, chairman of the Board of RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, NBC's parent company. Awakened from sleep, Mr. West groggily says "Hello" "John, this is General Sarnoff." Mr. West swiftly clears the cobwebs. "Good morning, General, it's always good to hear from you." "John, you're acquainted with my nephew Richard Baer, aren't you?" "Yes, General, I am. He's a fine young man. I think very highly of him." "Last night I spoke with his mother, my sister. She's upset. The reason she's upset is that Richard has been out of work for four months and he has no prospects, so it looks like his life is going nowhere." "General, I'm surprised and sorry to hear that." "John, I...

Book DescriptionA chronicle of war infused with uncommon cheer, Dog Tags Yapping: The World War II Letters of a Combat GI is a young man?s education in life and death and a narrative of war told completely in letters. During World War II, thousands of high school graduates were drafted into the army to be trained in colleges as engineers or other technicians, but instead were assigned to fighting units and joined the great assault in Europe after D Day. One of those reprogrammed combat infantrymen was Morton Elevitch from Duluth, Minnesota. Elevitch?s cartoons, drawings, and extremely unconventional letters home?rescued from box-in-the-basement oblivion after a more than fifty-year dormancy?recover the story of one rerouted GI ina voice that is compelling and new. Embellished with a boyish flair, the quirky and playful documents collected here impart a distinctly personal and uncalculated record of war, family, and coming of age. "It?s much easier to...

Amazon.comIf the only time you think you've seen a transsexual is on the Jerry Springer show, Noelle Howey's thoughtful, funny memoir of her suburban childhood with a cross-dressing dad may leave you wondering where all the fireworks are. The first half of Dress Codes is like anyone's story of parental neglect. "I had a dad possibly like yours," Howey explains, "sullen, sporadically hostile, frequently vacant." It was her loving mother who eventually confided her father's secret when Howey was 15,by which time it came as a relief that the remoteness, the drinking, the mood swings were not the young Noelle's fault, but the result of her father's constantly stifled "yearning for angora." Although the early chapters are interesting, Dress Codes really takes off at the halfway point, when her father realized he was not a heterosexual male transvestite, but a woman. His sexual transition, and the family's awkward adjustment to it--including the author's inability in high...

Book DescriptionAttorney Abraham Lincoln never before had to defend a case like this one. A visitor to Springfield vanishes. Then two brothers are accused of his brutal murder by their younger brother. The good citizens of Springfield seem set on a double hanging. It is up to Lincoln to save the brothers from the gallows. Abraham Lincoln for the Defense is based on an actual murder trial that so intrigued Lincoln that he was still writing about it five years later. Resolution of the case solved one mystery, but it created a greater question that, to this day, remains unanswered. The novel introduces the reader to Lincoln while he is a young attorney developing into the man who will become the great emancipator, a martyred president, and one of the most beloved figures in American history. Standing alone between the Trailor brothers and the hangman?s noose is Abraham Lincoln, for the defense.

Book DescriptionBill Jason Priest is credited with developing and defining the Dallas County Community College District. His career in higher education began in California before he came to Texas in 1965. Over the next fifteen years Priest transformed the junior college program into a seven-campus district, performing major roles in the evolution of nursing education, televised courses, vocational education, and noncredit courses. After his retirement in 1981, he continued to serve as chancellor emeritusuntil 2003. Drawing from archives and numerous interviews with Priest and his personal and professional associates, Kathleen Krebbs Whitson presents the life of a giant in Texas education.

Book DescriptionA TALE OF TWO BROTHERS: The Story Of The Wright Brothers is a book that captures the human drama of the Wright brothers' lives. The author views the relationship of these two famous men through the lens of human dynamics. This focus findsthe Wright family structure unique for the historical period in which the brothers were raised. Milton Wright, their father, was an ordained minister who was firmly committed to his ministry and the defense of his church's original constitution. But evenin his frequent absences to serve the western congregations, he continued to stimulate his children's imaginations through his many descriptive letters. He taught his children to read and write before they attended public school. Susan Koerner Wright assumed the maternal duties of a nineteenth century woman, plus the total management of their growing family during her husband's frequent absences. Because of her own mechanical abilities, she nurtured her sons' intuitive skills and...

Book DescriptionThis fascinating book explores the life of the extraordinary woman who became the pioneer in the photographic world.