Collects thirty-eight articles describing how innocent men and women have been coerced into confessing to crimes they did not commit, revealing the questionable methods police officers use to get confessions from suspects.
It's one man's story from childhood to his mid-fifties and counting. He never went looking for adventures or answers to life but because of timing, coincidences, synchronicities, (call it what you will) that started early and have never ended, he has been blessed with a lifetime of stories and then some. He spent his first twenty years in small town Iowa before the U.S. Army decided that they had a need for him. It was February of 1968 and it proved to be a bad time to be entering the military. After a year in Vietnam he came home intact but a changed young man. He packed up a van and headed west with everything he owned. (Except for the baseball cards that his parents had already thrown away. Damn!) After joining Vietnam Veterans Against the War (John Kerry was their president) he went to D.C. and threw his medals away on the Capitol steps with a thousand or so other vets who realized that as a country, we could make mistakes and this time we had. He was thrown in jail in Denver with 78 other vets for simply trying to march, as an organization, in the Veteran's Day Parade. It was a tough time for people to stand up to their government but he felt it was important and so did many people. Those actions changed the direction of our country. "Maybe something like this" the author suggests, "is needed again today". After some bad relationships, he hit the road for 2 1/2 years without an address to call his own. He spent two fairy tale winters in Mexico and Guatemala where he explored caves, found untouched ceynotes, met many characters as well as great friends, and all the while, he compiled stories. It was then that he began journaling and has never stopped nearly 30 years later and neither have the stories. He had the most vivid dream of his life, which magically, eventually led him to his lovely bride. They have now shared the past quarter of a century together including kids, and grandkids. It's all there along with the lessons and confessions.
Remember when you were young and you emulated your sporting heroes in the streets or school playground? Remember the days when you were going to win the 100m sprint/ The World Cup? Wimbledon? 'Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player is a short story about our dreams and our disappointments, our failures and our triumphs. It's about a man of a certain age who lived those fantasies when he was young and never quite moved on as he grew up. It's a story of how he becomes sporting zero to hero and back again set against the backdrop of Wimbledon in 2013 when Andy Murray was the first British player to win there in decades. Unsurprisingly, Andy makes surprise appearances throughout the book.The must-go-to guide book for all of us who have never quite managed to succeed on the tennis court: or indeed anywhere else in life.
“Somewhere between Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth and Amy Schumer’s stand-up exists Kim Addonizio’s style of storytelling . . . at once biting and vulnerable, nostalgic without ever veering off into sentimentality.” —Refinery29 “Always vital, clever, and seductive, Addonizio is a secular Anne Lamott, a spiritual aunt to Lena Dunham.” —Booklist A dazzling, edgy, laugh-out-loud memoir from the award-winning poet and novelist that reflects on writing, drinking, dating, and more Kim Addonizio is used to being exposed. As a writer of provocative poems and stories, she has encountered success along with snark: one critic dismissed her as “Charles Bukowski in a sundress.” (“Why not Walt Whitman in a sparkly tutu?” she muses.) Now, in this utterly original memoir in essays, she opens up to chronicle the joys and indignities in the life of a writer wandering through middle age. Addonizio vividly captures moments of inspiration at the writing desk (or bed) and adventures on the road—from a champagne-and-vodka-fueled one-night stand at a writing conference to sparsely attended readings at remote Midwestern colleges. Her crackling, unfiltered wit brings colorful life to pieces like “What Writers Do All Day,” “How to Fall for a Younger Man,” and “Necrophilia” (that is, sexual attraction to men who are dead inside). And she turns a tender yet still comic eye to her family: her father, who sparked her love of poetry; her mother, a former tennis champion who struggled through Parkinson’s at the end of her life; and her daughter, who at a young age chanced upon some erotica she had written for Penthouse. At once intimate and outrageous, Addonizio’s memoir radiates all the wit and heartbreak and ever-sexy grittiness that her fans have come to love—and that new readers will not soon forget.
Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games. "This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times
Sleeping with Ward Cleaver is the funny yet poignant story of a woman at a crossroads in life, who years earlier married a man who swept her off her feet, but now finds that her Mr. Right has evolved into Mr. Always Right, and the only sweeping going on in her life involves a broom and a dustpan. As her dreams collide with reality and the one that got away shows up trying to worm his way back into her heart, she must decide if her once charmed marriage is salvageable, and if so, how she's going to go about saving it. What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books: "A fun, sassy read! A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a chocolate cupcake…you just want more." --Meg Cabot, NY Times bestselling author of Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble and more, on Sleeping with Ward Cleaver "As Sweet as a song and sharp as a beak, Bite Me really soars as a memoir about family--children and husbands, feathers and fur--and our capacity to keep loving though life may occasionally bite." --Wade Rouse, bestselling author of At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream "With a strong yet delightfully vulnerable voice, food critic Abbie Jennings embarks on a soulful journey where her love for banana cream pie and disdain for ill-fitting Spanx clash in hilarious and heartbreaking ways. As her body balloons and her personal life crumbles, Abbie must face the pain and secret fears she's held inside for far too long. I cheered for her the entire way." --Beth Hoffman, NY Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt on Slim to None "Jenny Gardiner has done it again--this fun, fast-paced book is a great summer read." --Sarah Pekkanen, NY Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Me, on Slim to None Keywords: women’s fiction, romantic comedy, humor, contemporary romance, modern fairy tale, new adult, second chances, romance, love, chick lit, chicklit, wedding, marriage, self-discovery, family issues
Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
Phil Factor is a legend in his own runtime. Scurrilous, absurd, confessional and scathing by turns, Confessions of an IT Manager targets the idiocy, incompetence and overreach of the IT management industry from vantage point all the way up and down the greasy pole. Phil Factor (real name witheld to protest the guilty) has over 20 years experience in the IT industry, specializing in database-intensive applications. For withering insight into the human weaknesses and farcical levels of ineptitude that bring IT projects to their knees, plus occasional escapes into burnished pastiche and cock-a-leg doggerel there is no funnier, more illuminating commentary on the IT crowd.