Western Biography

Soren West discovered the woods as both adventure and refuge from a difficult home life as a 12-year-old. After 44 years as a trial attorney, he and his golden retriever, Theo, set out on the Appalachian Trail. Soren loses 30 pounds, has a tooth reset, and his shoulder repaired. But he also meets wild people, unscalable rocks, and night-time frights on this "life-changing adventure," all the way with Theo!

Most of us, young or old, have dreams of grand things, but it is the rare souls that sees their dreams standing before them, taller than the Statue of Liberty, with enough raw power to launch men to the moon. Wernher von Braun was such a dreamer. From a young age, he knew that rockets and space travel would be the driving force in his life; however, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime had different plans for this young man, as he would lead Germany’s development of the V-2 rocket, which at that time was one of the most advanced weapons known to man. After World War II had ravaged most of ...

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

Orlando is the extraordinary biography of a young nobleman in the court of Elizabeth I who transforms into a woman and lives for over three centuries. In his youth, Orlando is a passionate lover and poet. He dotes on the Queen, serves King James faithfully, falls deeply in love with a Russian princess, and becomes an ambassador to Constantinople, but at his heart all Orlando ever wants to be is a great writer (and living at the same time as Marlowe, Donne, and Shakespeare, this is no easy thing). But while living in Constantinople, one evening Orlando is transformed into woman.

Ian Purkayastha is New York City's leading truffle importer and boasts a devoted clientele of top chefs nationwide, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Chang, Sean Brock, and David Bouley. But before he was purveying the world's most expensive fungus to the country's most esteemed chefs, Ian was just a food-obsessed teenager in rural Arkansas - a misfit with a peculiar fascination for rare and exotic ingredients. The son of an Indian immigrant father and a Texan mother, Ian learned to forage for wild mushrooms from an uncle in the Ozark hills.

Due to horrible physical deformities, he spent much of his life as a fairground freak. He was hounded, persecuted, and starving, until his fortune changed and he was rescued, housed, and fed by the distinguished surgeon, Frederick Treves. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and un-romanticized facts of his life.

In Rising, Wood reflects on the 70 days she spent on Everest and on the pivotal experiences and influences that brought her to that staggeringly beautiful and austere corner of the world. Beyond the physical hardships, she faced personal challenges as an outlier in the male bastion of Himalayan climbing. These were compounded by the vexing presence of her past mentor and lover with his new girlfriend on the American team climbing on the same side of the mountain.

This audiobook follows the saga of more than 100 influential men and women who together wove the story of early Western frontier America. The engaging account of their lives forms a unique tapestry of human experience.

G. K. Chesterton was a journalist, playwright, poet, biographer, novelist, essayist, literary commentator, editor, orator, artist, and theologian. Orthodoxy is his great apologia for the Christian faith, which was prompted by a serious attack in 1903 against Christianity by well-known newspaper editor Robert Blatchford.

On a sultry August morning in 1970, the battered body of a young woman was hoisted from a dry well just outside Hogansville, Georgia. Author and investigator Clay Bryant was there, witnessing the macabre scene. Then fifteen, Bryant was tagging along with his father, Buddy Bryant, Hogansville chief of police. The victim, Gwendolyn Moore, had been in a violent marriage. That was no secret. But her husband had connections to a political machine that held sway over the Troup County Sheriff's Office overseeing the case. To the dismay and bafflement of many, no charges were brought.

Back by popular demand, former Nevada State trooper Steve Raabe shares this companion collection of stories concerning his career patrolling, investigating, and administering some of the most desolate and dangerous highways in the vast American West. Honest and hilarious, Patrolling the Heart of the Silver State includes heart-hammering scenes—a fatal shootout, a revenge bombing, deadly car crashes—while also providing fresh insights into law enforcement practices such as accident reconstruction, speed detection with radar and airplanes, seatbelt laws, and LEO hiring practices.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

From two veteran historians comes an intelligent and spirited history of Charles II's dissolute life and surprising legacy. To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces surrounded by friends, courtiers, and literally hundreds of servants and soldiers. Gossip radiated throughout the kingdom.

I feared for their lives and their ears. Our local weekly newspaper showed pictures of them dangling from ropes hanging in woven baskets off the embankment of a mountain in order to tap sticks of dynamite into the holes they drilled in the granite cliff faces they blasted away. One could hear that awful, loud dynamite blasting all the way in town. But the booming had been even worse for the ears of the railroad workers who detonated the charges for the grading and tunneling, especially the Chinese who were given these most dangerous jobs.

Embark on a journey unlike any other—a journey of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and the search for true freedom. Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Elsen, also known as Brother Sun, begins his story with a childhood steeped in curiosity and wonder, guided by enlightened parents who planted the seeds of a life filled with purpose.

The separation from his mother at an early age appears to have left a permanent scar on young Isaac Newton that followed him through the rest of his life. He never married or had any children and had but a few close friends. He would work frantically for days on end, seemingly without food or rest, resting only when the creative spirit left him. However, the work of this ponderous man would have a profound effect on the world as we know it today.

In this gripping memoir of a young man, a wolf, and their parallel lives and ultimate collision, Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote, windswept Sun Ranch in Southwest Montana. The Sun's 20,000 acres of rangeland occupy a still-wild corner of Southwest Montana - a high valley surrounded by mountain ranges and steep creeks with portentous names like Grizzly, Dead Man, and Bad Luck.

For decades, Trooper Steve Raabe patrolled some of the most desolate and dangerous highways in America. Alone in the remote Nevada desert, miles from any backup, Raabe was forced to contend with murderers, thieves, perverts, dope peddlers, and the occasional runaway train. While often tragic and terrifying, Raabe's true tales also abound with his signature wit and playful good cheer. Policing can be a deadly serious business, but for Raabe it also entailed buying a prisoner an ice cream cone on a hot summer day, as you'll discover in Patrolling the Heart of the West.

In these moving and revealing personal stories, 18 Obama staffers bring us deep inside the presidency, offering intimate accounts of how they made it to the White House, what they witnessed, and what they accomplished there. In each one we see the human face of government, staffers devoting themselves to the issues that have defined their lives.