Category: Biographies & Memoirs

The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA’s Challenger Disaster by Kevin Cook
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 44 MB
Overview: The untold story of a national trauma—NASA’s Challenger explosion—and what really happened to America’s Teacher in Space, illuminating the tragic cost of humanity setting its sight on the stars

You’ve seen the pictures. You think you know what happened. You do not.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after blasting off from Cape Canaveral. Christa McAuliffe, America’s “Teacher in Space,” was instantly killed, along with the other six members of the mission. Right? Wrong.

Thirty-five years after NASA’s revitalization program literally went up in smoke, Kevin Cook uncovers the untold story of the disastrous order to launch on an ice-cold Florida day. For the first time, he takes readers inside the shuttle for those agonizing two minutes and forty-five seconds after the fire, which, yes, some of the astronauts survived.

But this is more than a simple corrective to a now-dimming memory. Centering on McAuliffe, a charmingly ordinary civilian on the cusp of history, The Burning Blue animates the mission’s colorful cast of characters, which featured the second female astronaut (who was also the first Jewish astronaut), the second Black one, and the first Asian-American and Buddhist in space. Drawing intimate portraits of the people wearing the spacesuits and detailing how they earned the right to suit up, Cook makes readers temporarily forget the tragedy toward which the tale is hurtling. Infused with drama, immediacy, and compelling characters, The Burning Blue reveals the human price paid for politics and capital-P Progress on that ill-fated, unforgettable morning.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/H6mwAGv

https://ouo.io/730cEFo

https://ouo.io/ohV9oc

Everything is Perfect: A Memoir by Kate Nason
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 408 KB
Overview: Seven years into her second marriage, Kate Nason discovered her husband was cheating on her. Then, the unimaginable happened. She woke to the news that one of her husband’s “other women” was at the center of a national scandal. The press surrounded her home, clamoring for details, and quickly transformed Kate’s private heartbreak into public humiliation.
Nason’s memoir uncovers the little-known side of a well-known story, unveiling a cautionary tale about the ways we deceive ourselves when we allow ourselves to be deceived by those we love. Everything Is Perfect is an intimate reveal of infidelity, gaslighting, and the silent wife at the press conference. Nason explores the roles women inhabit throughout their lives, how they carry trauma, and the lengths they’ll go to protect their children and save themselves. It’s a fierce and often funny self-reckoning, a meditation on learning to trust one’s intuition, and a case study of how one woman undid a bad “I do.”
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/0Uat8a

Mirror:
https://ouo.io/Voaev4W

De afterparty by Ivo Niehe
Requirements: ePUB Reader / 51.5 MB
Overview: Een unieke blik achter de schermen bij het werk van een van de bekendste gezichten van de Nederlandse televisie, met foto’s uit zijn rijke privéarchief

Ivo Niehe, een van de bekendste presentatoren van de afgelopen decennia, is in zijn rijke televisiearchief gedoken en laat ons meekijken. In zijn programma’s kwamen vele nationaal en internationaal bekende gasten voorbij zoals Prince, Grace Jones, Mies Bouwman, Julio Iglesias, Audrey Hepburn, John Bercow (Mr. Speaker) en Roald Dahl. Nu blikt hij terug, en nodigt hij zijn bijzonderste gasten nog één keer uit, voor een exclusieve afterparty.

Achter de ontmoetingen met de bekende mensen die in het programma kwamen, zitten vaak memorabele verhalen. In De afterparty maakt Ivo je deelgenoot van de grappige, verrassende en ontroerende momenten die hij met zijn gasten meemaakte, maar die niet op televisie te zien waren.
Genre: Biografieën & Waargebeurd

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/NUJJtz
https://ouo.io/c1FkYv

Peter Jackson (Great Filmmakers) by Wil Mara
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 3.9 MB
Overview: Chronicles the life and career of the award-winning director of the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/XuKDCK

Mirror:

https://ouo.io/jy1ihI

Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage – The Definitive Edition: 50 Years After “The Wild Bunch” from the Writer Who Knew Him Best by Garner Simmons
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 916 KB
Overview: It all began in the summer of 1973, when the author–then a young man fresh out of film school–traveled to Mexico in pursuit of the man behind a list of motion picture masterpieces that include “Ride the High Country”, “Major Dundee”, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”, “Straw Dogs”, “Junior Bonner”, “The Getaway”, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”, and the classic western epic that revolutionalized the face of global cinema, “The Wild Bunch”. Simmons’ seminal 1982 biography of Sam Peckinpah, published by the University of Texas Press and updated in the 1998 Limelight Editions release, is central to this current edition. With more than 100 pages of additional material and photos from the author’s private collection providing even greater in-depth analysis of the director’s films, this edition looks back on “The Wild Bunch” five decades after its theatrical release to gauge its lasting impact on filmmakers who have followed in Peckinpah’s footsteps. Beyond the creative analysis in this new edition, Simmons shares with the reader his personal reflections of the man, the myth, and the legend he came to know as mentor and friend. More than mere biography, more than a mere recitation of events in the life of extraordinary filmmaking talent, this book provides a deep understanding of Hollywood’s movie-making process. As such, it serves as both inspiration and cautionary tale. One cannot presume to have an appreciation of American Film without reading what the author shares within these covers.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/FYTuxo

Mirror:

https://ouo.io/5PmIiU3

No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi by Gary D. Rhodes (Author), Bill Kaffenberger
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 15.2 MB
Overview: “Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have added the final chapter to Bela Lugosi’s career, combining fascinating unknown details of his film and stage activities with post-WWII film history. Superbly researched and written as an engrossing story of an actor’s struggle against professional decline. A must-read!” – Robert Cremer, author of Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape (Henry Regnery, 1976) “Gary Rhodes represents that elusive Gold Standard in narrative research into the full depth and breadth of Bela Lugosi’s complicated career. Rhodes’ devotion to the banishment of myth, and to its replacement with frank and humanizing truth, has provided a wealth of historical storytelling that, in turn, renders the actor’s known body of work all the more fascinating and comprehensible. Just when I catch myself believing I know all there is to be known about Lugosi – along comes Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger with a fresh brace of revelations. The process advances immeasurably in No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi.” – Michael H. Price, coauthor of the Forgotten Horrors series “In No Traveler Returns, Bela Lugosi scholar extraordinaire Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger provide a fascinating time travel journey back to the late 1940s/early 1950s, when Lugosi – largely out of favor in Hollywood – embarked on a Gypsy-like existence of vaudeville, summer stock, and magic shows. While many historians have considered this era a limbo in Lugosi’s career, with precious few facts unearthed, Rhodes and Kaffenberger take the reader along for a wide-eyed ride as Bela performs in a nightclub so notorious that armed guards keep watch on the roof, dresses as Dracula in a magic show where he and a gorilla (a man in a suit) play football with the guillotined head of a woman (a dummy), and races from one stock engagement to another without ever missing a cue. Never in his American career was Bela so busy, and never did his light shine so brightly as he valiantly troupes to support his family, dominate age and illness, and please his audiences. It’s a fastidiously researched education in the show business world of the time – and a stirring tribute to the charm, brilliance and inexhaustible professionalism of the star who was Dracula.” – Gregory William Mank, author of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration (McFarland, 2009)
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/4dR7Ql

Mirror:

https://ouo.io/T165L5

A Mile at a Time: A Father and Son’s Inspiring Alzheimer’s Journey of Love, Adventure, and Hope by Mark “Mace” Macy (Author), Travis Macy (Author), Patrick Regan (Author)
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 36.3 MB
Overview: In October 2018, Mark “Mace” Macy, sixty-four years old, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Mace had spent thirty years competing in Colorado and around the world in ultra-endurance competitions and is one of the few people who have finished all eight Eco-Challenge events. Once diagnosed, Mace feared losing endurance, strength, and independence.

Mace’s son Travis, also a professional endurance athlete, also struggled to see his father battling the disease. In 2019 they decided to participate in World’s Toughest Race—a seven-day, grueling 400-mile marathon of trekking, climbing, biking, and paddling through the jungle—for one final race together.

Weaving excerpts from Mace’s passionate personal journals alongside a first-person narrative by Travis, A Mile at a Time tells the story of this incredible journey and what both father and son learned along the way.

A powerful story about living—and thriving—with a disease that impacts nearly six million Americans. This timely, and deeply moving father-son adventure sheds light on the hard truths of this disease while giving readers hope of all that still can be achieved.

Read less
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/M01xYLd

Mirror:

https://ouo.io/zKJyR9

Mr Asia: The Last Man Standing: Inside Australasia’s Most Notorious Drug Syndicate by James Diamond, Jim Shepherd
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 0.36MB
Overview: Do not think for one instant that a life of crime is glamorous and exciting. It is not. It is a life of degradation, dishonesty, misery, violence, and loss of liberty.

It has been more than 30 years since the Mr Asia drug syndicate came apart, when the handless, toothless body of Martin Johnstone was found dumped in a quarry in England. The members of the syndicate were responsible for a string of dead bodies all over the world and the importation of hundreds of kilograms of heroin and marijuana into Australia, New Zealand and Britain – and they made tens of millions of dollars doing it.

In this never before heard story from the only surviving member of the syndicate, James Shepherd tells of Mr Asia’s rise and fall in gritty, horrifying detail. This is not the flashy, glamourised account put forward in Underbelly, but raw, unadulterated truth.

James Shepherd was named by the 1983 Stewart Royal Commission as second in charge of the Mr Asia Drug Syndicate, and was given a 25 year sentence for his role. The long years spent in jail contemplating the murder and misery caused by the syndicate convinced him that the full story needed to be told – as a warning to others, if nothing else. The result is something unique – as fascinating as it is horrifying. It’s the real insiders account of the multi-million dollar, kill-or-be-killed world of our most notorious international drug syndicate.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/mlvo895

https://ouo.io/AedNgp

Lalechka: An Amazing Holocaust Survivor Rescue Story by Amira Keidar
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 484 KB
Overview: An astonishing manifestation of loyalty and courage. The real story of a little girl born into the chaos of war and holocaust.

It’s a warm and muggy Saturday night in August of 1942. The Nazis are liquidating the ghetto of Shedlitz, an industrial town east of Warsaw, Poland. Zippa, a 27-year-old Jewish woman, finds temporary shelter in a small attic, together with her baby daughter and a hundred frightened Jews. When the Nazi noose is tightened around her neck, Zippa asks her husband Jacob, a Jewish policeman in the ghetto, to save their little girl from certain death. The young father manages to smuggle his wife and daughter to the gentile part of town, where Zippa’s childhood girlfriends Sophia and Irena reside.

This is the real story of one Jewish family confronted by the terror of Nazi rule. The book follows Lalechka, the little girl born into the chaos of war and holocaust and forced to struggle with the reversals of fortune that led her each time into foreign and terrifying regions. But, beyond that, it is the story of the true friendship of three girls in early 20th Century Poland, a friendship that won’t cower before government dictates. An astonishing manifestation of loyalty and courage.

This is Amira Keidar’s first novel, based on the journal written by the young mother during the annihilation of the ghetto, as well as on interviews with key figures in the story, rare documents and authentic letters.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/YW2V2E

https://ouo.io/HACqgZ8

Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite by Dean King
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 76.3 MB
Overview: The dramatic and uplifting story of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir’s journey to become the man who saved Yosemite—from the author of the bestselling Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival.

In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life.

Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is consumed by grief, Johnson, a champion of society’s most pressing debates via the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement.

Beautifully rendered, deeply researched, and inspiring, Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the toweringly complex environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs

Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/jI2csi

https://ouo.io/ibD4nnh