Hard America

“A poignant, heartbreaking and powerful story, a chance for each of us to find a way to level up, contribute and do things we never thought possible.” —Seth Godin (Author, The Song of Significance, and delighted Cruzbike rider) When she was nine years old, her gym teacher gave a fitting nickname to a slow and uncoordinated little girl: jelly bean. In this candid and uplifting memoir, ultra athlete Maria Parker chronicles her swanlike transformation from unathletic jelly bean to elite endurance cyclist. Parker also examines the connection between the unchosen suffering of losing her ...

Ecuador, 1969: An American expatriate, Fay Fern, sits in the corner of a restaurant, she and her young son, Wright, turned away from the television where Vincent Kahn becomes the first man to walk on the moon. Years earlier, Fay and Vincent meet at a pilots’ bar in the Mojave Desert. Both seemed poised for reinvention - the married test pilot, Vincent, as an astronaut; the spurned child of privilege, Fay, as an activist. Their casual affair ends quickly, but its consequences linger.

From the age of seven Ryan Richmond dreamed about going to Space. Now Ryan Richmond has $3 billion to play with, he is in his forties; and still wants to go to space. His only enemy; the U.S. Government who doesn't have its own space program-and wants his new spaceship; AMERICA ONE. He sold his first company at 19 and employed the remnants of the Russian Space Program; a couple of the best Russian space brains in the world.

“First contact is an intriguing hook…” Kirkus Reviews In 2045, radio waves surge from the M13 nebula. Amid impeachment threats, President Rex Horn funds a project to decipher them. Darien and Carly, students at NM State, believe ESP is the key to decoding the message, and they locate traces of the elusive phenomenon in twins–including monkeys, dogs, and people, all born in Alamogordo. They also discover Darien possesses ESP, though he was born in the jungles of Panama. Convinced he has a twin still living there, they conduct a search for him. In an isolated village, they discover ...

Throughout history, from antiquity to the present, service in the armed forces of one's country has provided an almost endless source of material to entertain and even enlighten listeners. Military life has usually been a unique and peculiar experience for most civilians exposed to it. Originally published in 1888, Hard Tack and Coffee is the fascinating account of the everyday life of a footsoldier in the U.S. Army of 100 years ago.

In 1949, Aloysius Archer arrives in the dusty Southern town of Poca City. He has nothing but a handful of dollars, the clothes he’s wearing and an appointment with his new parole officer. After his wartime experiences in Italy and a prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, Archer is looking for a fresh start and a peaceful life. On his first night of freedom, Archer meets local business tycoon Hank Pittleman, who promises Archer handsome compensation to work as his debt collector.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America's 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future. In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the United States Senate. To her surprise, her former rival for the Democratic Party nomination, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his administration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four extraordinary and historic years that followed.

G.C. "Red" Jones' classic memoir of growing up in rural eastern Kentucky during the Depression is a story of courage, persistence, and eventual triumph. His priceless and detailed recollections of hardscrabble farming, of the impact of Prohibition on an individualistic people, of the community-destroying mine wars of "Bloody Harlan", and of the drastic dislocations brought by World War II are essential to understanding this seminal era in Appalachian history.

The world thought he was dead...Living in the underbelly of New York City, James Stone has mastered the art of anonymity. A forgotten fugitive, Stone lives a quiet life as bodyguard to Luca O'Driscoll, the son of a powerful crime syndicate boss. But when disaster strikes, and Luca is taken hostage by an unknown foe with a score to settle against Stone's employer, James finds himself thrust into a deadly game of survival. As old wounds reopen, and secrets threaten to unravel, Stone has one final chance to find Luca before the world learns the truth, and his status atop the Most Wanted list ...

Available once again for a new generation of audiences, the second volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of this legendary sports star and global activist’s lifelong dream.

This collection of stories focuses on the thoughts, passions, hardships, and tragedies of often overlooked Americans: the average working people who toil in the margins of society. Readers may recognize many of the characters in these tales, whose storylines play out in every corner of the country.

In the ever-evolving world of business, decisions often require a blend of experience, innovation, and a sharp eye for detail. How to Succeed in Business While Trying Really Hard offers readers an unparalleled window into the mindsets of three unique thinkers. Drawing from the depths of wisdom accumulated from a lifetime in corporate America and entrepreneurship, two seasoned professionals share their insights on a gamut of questions posed weekly by a freshly minted graduate, working in technology sales after majoring in journalism. Each week's query dives into essential topics, unraveling ...

What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? draws on the voices of individual working people to tell the stories left out of standard histories of that era, and helps us imagine how to address our own failed economy, and how to imagine and build movements challenging it that do not themselves replicate racism and patriarchy.

In Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100 Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Robert L. Wilkins tells the story of how his curiosity about why there wasn't a national museum dedicated to African American history and culture became an obsession - eventually leading him to quit his job as an attorney when his wife was seven months pregnant with their second child, and make it his mission to help the museum become a reality.

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the "arsenal of democracy" - the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II, thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity followed, memorably punctuated by riots, strikes, burning rivers, and oil embargoes. A vibrant, quintessentially American character bloomed in the region's cities, suburbs, and backwaters.

Vincent Kahn is an astronaut in training, living with his wife in the desert. He will go on to be the first man to walk on the moon. Fay Fern is 19 years old and working in a dive bar, having rejected her parents' wealth and conservatism. She will go on to become a violent activist and one of the FBI's most wanted. The pair's brief but intense love affair will have repercussions that echo through the American century, intersecting with the race to space, the rage against the Vietnam war and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic.

“…could come straight from today’s headlines.” Kirkus Reviews As NatGov was poised to arrest Dr. Dar Lumbre for performing illegal genetic experiments, he vanished like a will-o'-the-wisp. Fifty years later, Dr. Lumbre’s followers proclaim his imminent return as a unifying force between science, religion, and politics. Geneticists Crane and Annie are drawn into the fracas by the failure of DL-666, the synthetic heart tissue developed by Dr. Lumbre before his disappearance. While attempting to solve the problem, they wish for the enigmatic doctor’s return. If he reappears, will ...

Americans are taught that justice means fairness. They expect it from our legal system. “Equal Justice Under Law” is prominently inscribed on the Supreme Court. Yet, law and justice in America are not necessarily the same thing. And they are certainly not applied in equal ways.

Shadows of the Multiverse: Quantum Whispers 🌌 The boundaries of science, secrecy, and the cosmos are about to collide. In the cutting-edge labs of Q-Tech, Nolan Reyes, a brilliant quantum AI engineer, stands at the forefront of humanity’s next great leap. Tasked with perfecting Argus, a revolutionary artificial intelligence capable of tapping into the power of parallel dimensions, Nolan’s work promises to redefine what’s possible. But his discoveries reveal something far more chilling: anomalies in Argus’s data streams—signals that suggest Earth is not alone. 🚨 As global ...

Jack Whittaker was a construction businessman in Putnam County, WV; he was known as the winner of a lottery jackpot of $315 Millions USD in the Powerball in 2002. It shows that he was a millionaire already with a net worth of $17 M even before winning; in a word, a millionaire won a huge lottery. He must be the luckiest guy on Earth, right? Wrong! Strangely, a series of unfortunate events happened to him for no apparent reason after winning. First of all, a boy named Jesse Tribble, who was the boyfriend of Whittaker's granddaughter Brandi Bragg, was found dead from drug overdose in ...