by James D. Watson (2001)
By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work. - Back cover.
David Leach
"This book will appeal to those who know much or a little or nothing about the relatively young outdoor sport of adventure racing. It examines the nature of adventure, risk and responsibility through a tragic story which is sensitively and subtly told from both personal and political perspectives. It combines a smooth and effortless narrative and strong characterisation underpinned by a gripping documentary style which is both accessible and engaging." --TBC website.
Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr
Phil Stephenson wrote his Civil War Memoirs late in 1865, when he was twenty, full of hate and pain, and wandering the streets of St. Louis, back home but unwelcome. Thirty years later he revised and expanded these memories with the longer view of a fifty-year-old. He kept the smells of the battle field, the cries of the wounded and dying, the agonies of the surgeon's table, yet he did his best to interpret for himself and for others these war experiences, "so fresh they stand out from the rest of my life as though photographed in letters of fire." Passionate in his honesty, Phil spares no man - priest or commanding general or slave holder or himself. "Truth in history is sacred and these things must be said.". Phil tells the story of the Army of Tennessee as known by a sixteen-year-old private who survives to become a veteran infantryman and artilleryman. Fighting with the 13th Arkansas and the 5th Company, Washington Artillery, Phil Stephenson saw the war in the west from Belmont to Peachtree Creek to Spanish Fort. He knew the crack of Pat Cleburne's voice and sat squirming in a parlor under the penetrating eyes of Gen. Hardee. He saw Leonidas Polk killed, shared a blanket with a sleeping Gen. Breckinridge, and stared into the commanding eyes of Joseph Johnston. His pages yield stories of drunks and heroes, kind nurses and cruel sergeants, the brilliant and the blundering. . The significance of Phil's story is not his depiction of grand events. It is the details of the war within the war, having to go house to house begging for a blanket, creating "jumble lia" as his New Orleans battery mates look on condescendingly, freezing in an open railcar and watching fellow passengers lose their hold and fall to their deaths. Phil sits on the piazza with the master and shares bread in a cabin with a slave. A dying South comes alive once again. Phil Stephenson is a charming, compelling story teller whose narrative rewards aficionados and students of the Civil War.
Claudia O'Keefe
Alice Walker tells a mother's tale of reunion between her daughters: one trapped by tragedy in the dirt-poor South, the other making it big in the city. In an engrossing short story, Marilyn French movingly depicts two young women growing apart in an alcoholic, dysfunctional family. Joy Fielding shapes a humorous but sharp-edged story of the consequences when half-sisters meet for the very first time on a TV talk show. Ann Beattie tells of a pair of friends, as close as sisters, locked in a smothering embrace. In a bittersweet tale, Fae Myenne Ng writes of growing up in a culture that considers a family with only girl children "failed." Recalling her grandmother and great-aunt, Olivia Goldsmith unfolds a dark memoir of sisterhood gone terrifyingly awry. Cristina Garcia relates a poignant account of sisters separated for thirty years, one trapped in Cuba, the other escaped to Miami, reunited at long last. And Rita Dove retells one of the classic fairy tales of sisters, Beauty and the Beast, from the disparate viewpoints of all the women involved.
John All and John Balzar
From the publisher: John All has survived encounters with black mamba snakes, run-ins with wild jungle animals, and a brush with death in an icy tomb. No one knows the outer limits of our changing planet quite like him. In May 2014, the mountaineer and scientist John All plunged into a crevasse in the Himalayas, a fall that all but killed him. He recorded a series of dramatic videos as he struggled to climb seven stories back up to the surface with a severely dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding, a battered face covered in blood, and fifteen broken bones--including six cracked vertebrae. The videos became a viral sensation, an urgent and gripping dispatch from one of the least-known extremes of the planet. Yet this climb for his life is only the latest of John All's adventures in some of Earth's most hostile climates. He has also been chased by a wild hyena, scaled Everest, and narrowly missed being hit by an avalanche, all in pursuit of his true calling: the study of how we can master the challenge of our world's changing climate. Icefall is a thrilling adventure story and a report from the extremes of the planet, taking you to collapsing Andean glaciers, hidden jungles in Honduras, and the highest points on Earth. In this gripping account, our changing climate is not a matter of politics; it's a matter of life and death and the human will to survive and thrive in the face of it.