Adventure Biography

In this age of lunchtime lifts, wrinkle-erasing injections, furrow fillers, and lip plumpers, there’s no question that anyone who aims to look younger easily can. But Lauren Kessler wants something more than to follow the cosmetic path to youthfulness. She wants to live with energy, stamina, vitality, resilience, and health for a very, very long time. Her goal: to reverse her biological age from the inside out.

Recipient of the MacArthur “genius” fellowship and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, Lansky recounts his efforts to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish-language books before they pass out of existence. Outwitting History follows Lansky’s far-flung travels and features the engaging men and women he meets along the way.

Long before his finest hour as Britain's wartime leader, Winston Churchill emerged on the world stage as a brazen foreign correspondent, covering wars of empire in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and South Africa. In those far-flung corners of the world, reporting from the front lines between 1895 and 1900, Churchill mastered his celebrated command of language and formed strong opinions about war.

Liberty, my wisecracking horse, our old friends Cam, Tommy, Freedom, and I are off to meet some super-brave soldiers in the year 1775. Yep, that’s right. We’ll be visiting with the underdog heroes who fought for American independence, against all odds - and won! But not before eight very real years of danger and uncertainty. Be a part of Rush Revere’s crew as we rush, rush, rush into a time when British rule had become a royal pain, and rebellion was in the air.

Peter Brandt, a litigator at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), has been at the forefront of some of the toughest cases of animal abuse in the last 10 years - including supervising a team of lawyers working to protect the interests of farm animals. In this revelatory and often surprisingly funny memoir-cum-manifesto, Brandt describes his growing awareness of the extent of the cruelty of animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (a.k.a. factory farms) and the manifold harms to human health, local communities, and the environment for those who live near them.

Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations. CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

With the utterance of a single line - "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" - a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure - defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement.

Douglas Gibson, one of Canada's premier editors and storytellers, brings new stories about Robertson Davies, Jack Hodgins, W.O. Mitchell, Alistair MacLeod, and Alice Munro, and adds lively portraits of Al Purdy, Marshall McLuhan, Margaret Laurence, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Margaret Atwood, Wayne Johnston, Linwood Barclay, Michael Ondaatje, and many, many others. Whether fly fishing in Haida Gwaii or sailing off Labrador, Douglas Gibson is a first-rate ambassador for Canada and the power of great stories.

The true story of one family's struggle and triumph creating a self-sufficient life in the wilderness. Join the Horn family on the adventure of a lifetime. Learn how a couple from the city moved to the wilderness with three small boys and carved out a life in the middle of nowhere that has endured for nearly 50 years. Impossible Beyond This Point is a compelling must-listen for anyone interested in (or contemplating) getting away from it all.

A witty, candid story of a daring young man who made his way to the heights of American journalism and public life, from a New Hampshire weekly through his foreign correspondent years in Europe, to the apex of his career at the Washington Post, whose Watergate coverage gave journalism its finest hours.

When John and Jean Silverwood, both experienced sailors, decided to give their four children a taste of life on the high seas, they hoped the trip would offer important learning experiences - not only about the natural world but about the beauty of human life stripped down to its essence, far from civilization. But the adventure that awaited them would surpass anything they could have imagined.

Eileen Kramer has lived the most extraordinary life. Born just after Australia entered World War I, she embraced creativity and adventure from an early age. She danced and painted murals in Karachi; worked as an artist's model in Paris and London; met Ella Fitzgerald and Groucho Marx; and learned the twist from Louis Armstrong. In September 2013, aged ninety-nine, Eileen returned to Australia. Now, at 108, she is still dancing.

Mark Thompson, world-renowned radio personality heard every morning for 25 years on the nationally syndicated Mark and Brian Show originating from KLOS Radio, the rock of Southern California, delivers the story of a lifetime. More than his personal memoir, this book offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the morning drive, the celebrities, the studio politics, the passionate fans, the incredible live music, and the ingenious comedy bits that pumped life into two and a half decades of entertainment every weekday morning to generations of listeners all over the country.

"You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." It did not, however, get the ship's twenty-five crew members, all of whom survived an eight-hundred-mile voyage across sea, land, and ice to South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island.

When you delete your adjectives, who are you? Most people limit themselves to their labels. They embrace barriers based on the box that society puts them in. But your adjectives aren’t your destiny. In Delete the Adjective: A Soldier’s Adventures in Ranger School, Lisa Jaster proves your merit should always trump your labels. Lisa didn’t confine herself to the adjectives of “middle-aged” or “female.” Instead, she became one of the first three women to graduate from the United States Army Ranger program. For those six months in the program, her adjectives didn’t matter.

Henry Avery of Devon pillaged a fortune from a Mughal ship off the coast of India and then vanished into thin air—and into legend. More ballads, plays, biographies and books were written about Avery’s adventures than any other pirate. His contemporaries crowned him "the pirate king" for pulling off the richest heist in pirate history and escaping with his head intact (unlike Blackbeard and his infamous Flying Gang). Avery was now the most wanted criminal on earth. To the authorities, Avery was the enemy of all mankind. To the people he was a hero.

This audiobook is the sunny and inspiring tale of someone who refuses to be defeated by the adversities in his life. Scarred by a childhood of abuse, by injury and trauma as a Sergeant in the U.S. Marines and by a totally fortuitous hit-and-run accident, he finally takes his life into his own hands and moves to the 'Big Island' of Hawaii which has a reputation for offering a healing lifestyle.

As far back as stories go, pioneers have reached for the skies. In the last two hundred years, they have mastered the air and made the modern world possible. Today they are bringing outer space within our reach. They're inventors and toymakers, amateurs and adventurers, visionaries, dreamers and, yes, crackpots....

Being a rabbi and flight attendant seems paradoxical. They are so different. NOT TRUE. In both cases you are serving people, only in different ways. Rabbis don’t only stand on pulpits, and flight attendants do more than serve drinks. This book will open your eyes to what really goes on. It might be a source of inspiration for you to consider either one of these professions as as lifetime career. I’ve been blessed, I had both!