In 1991, Crash Barry moved to Maine's most remote inhabited island to work as a sternman aboard a lobster boat. On Matinicus, twenty miles out to sea, population fifty, the ferry visited nine times a year and airplanes only landed when there was no fog, rain, snow, sleet or darkness. Tough Island is a gritty memoir and guided tour of a unique society inhabited by resourceful individuals and scoundrels.Stories of danger and drugs, sex and violence, death and sorrow, all unfold in a landscape of breathtaking beauty.
Being stranded on a desert island is a relatively common theme in tales. However, this book teaches readers what to do if they are ever actually in such a situation. Informative text and real life stories demonstrate how to survive being trapped on an island in the middle of the ocean.
When a family takes a boating trip, the last thing they expect is to be shipwrecked on an island-especially an island with weird, otherworldly plants and animals. Now, what started out as a bad vacation turns into a terrible one as Lyle, Karen, and their two kids, Janie and Reese, must find a way off the island while they dodge its strange and dangerous inhabitants. Is the island alive? Is it from another world? In this rousing, Swiss-Family-Robinson tale with a twist, the answers to these questions could save them... or spell their doom.
William Wall is the first international winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. In this collection of interconnected stories, the beautiful and ravaging forces of sea and land collide with the forces of human nature, through isolation and family, love and loss, madness and revelation. The stories follow the lives of two sisters and the people who come and go in their lives, much like the tides. Dominated by the tragic loss of a third sister at a young age, their family spirals out of control. We witness three stages of the sisters' lives, each taking place on an island—in southwest Ireland, southern England, and the Bay of Naples. Beautifully and sparsely written, the stories deeply evoke landscape and character, and are suffused with a keen eye for detail and metaphor.
From Sathasivam to Sangakkara, Murali to Malinga, Sri Lanka can lay claim to some of the world's most remarkable cricketers - larger-than-life characters who thumbed convention and played the game their own way. More so than anywhere else in the world, Sri Lankan cricket has an identity. This is the land of pint-sized swashbuckling batsman, on-the-fly innovators and contorted, cryptic spinners. On the field of play, Victorian ideals of the past collide with madcap tropical hedonism to create something dizzying. Cricket is Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka is cricket. We all know the story of the '96 World Cup: how a team of unfancied amateurs rose from obscurity to the top the world, doing so with such swagger that they changed the way the game was played. Yet the lore of Sri Lankan cricket stretches back much further. In the early days, matches between colonists and locals imbued cricket with a nationalistic drive. Ashes-bound ships stopping over in Colombo brought the world's biggest stars, from Bligh and Bradman to Grace and Grimmet. More recently, Sri Lanka has had to face the triumphs and tragedies that come when cash flows freely into the gentleman's game. An Island's Eleven tells this story for the first time, focusing on the characters and moments that have shaped the game forever.
It's a tough time to be a scientist: universities are shuttering science departments, federal funding agencies are facing flat budgets, and many newspapers have dropped their science sections altogether. But according to Marc Kuchner, this antiscience climate doesn't have to equal a career death knell-it just means scientists have to be savvier about promoting their work and themselves. In Marketing for Scientists, he provides clear, detailed advice about how to land a good job, win funding, and shape the public debate. As an astrophysicist at NASA, Kuchner knows that "marketing" can seem like a superficial distraction, whether your daily work is searching for new planets or seeking a cure for cancer. In fact, he argues, it's a critical component of the modern scientific endeavor, not only advancing personal careers but also society's knowledge. Kuchner approaches marketing as a science in itself. He translates theories about human interaction and sense of self into methods for building relationships-one of the most critical skills in any profession. And he explains how to brand yourself effectively-how to get articles published, give compelling presentations, use social media like Facebook and Twitter, and impress potential employers and funders. Like any good scientist, Kuchner bases his conclusions on years of study and experimentation. In Marketing for Scientists, he distills the strategies needed to keep pace in a Web 2.0 world.
This new Rough Guide is devoted to pop music, the tacky, catchy yet enduring music we grew up listening to when we should have been listening to something more profound. We celebrate the hits, the singers, the impresarios and the songs which have made up the soundtrack to our lives. So come along pop pickers, put on your blue suede shoes (or your tartan trousers or puffball skirt, it's your call) and take a stroll down Electric Avenue. Not aarf! Features include: bull; The Stars A celebration of those performers, from Robbie Williams to Andy Williams (and Madonna to Mungo Jerry), who have had us singing along or, in the case of Dean Friedman and Kajagoogoo, left us wondering what the world is coming to.
A masterwork of travel literature and of history: voyaging from Cuba to Jamaica, Puerto Rico to Trinidad, Haiti to Barbados, and islands in between, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of each society, its culture and politics, connecting this region’s common heritage to its fierce grip on the world’s imagination. From the moment Columbus gazed out from the Santa María's deck in 1492 at what he mistook for an island off Asia, the Caribbean has been subjected to the misunderstandings and fantasies of outsiders. Running roughshod over the place, they have viewed these islands and their inhabitants as exotic allure to be consumed or conquered. The Caribbean stood at the center of the transatlantic slave trade for more than three hundred years, with societies shaped by mass migrations and forced labor. But its people, scattered across a vast archipelago and separated by the languages of their colonizers, have nonetheless together helped make the modern world—its politics, religion, economics, music, and culture. Jelly-Schapiro gives a sweeping account of how these islands’ inhabitants have searched and fought for better lives. With wit and erudition, he chronicles this “place where globalization began,” and introduces us to its forty million people who continue to decisively shape our world.
Far off the coast of California looms a harsh rock known as the island of San Nicholas. Dolphins flash in the blue waters around it, sea otter play in the vast kep beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother, constantly guard against the Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. More than this, it is an adventure of the spirit that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down. Karana's quiet courage, her Indian self-reliance and acceptance of fate, transform what to many would have been a devastating ordeal into an uplifting experience. From loneliness and terror come strength and serenity in this Newbery Medal-winning classic.
Dusty MacMorgan and his pal Westy O'Davis are fishing along South Florida's Ten Thousand Island coast when they make a most unusual catch-a naked woman. And no sooner do they get her on board than a nearby trawler explodes. Even more remarkable is the story the waterborne beauty tells upon awakening. She is a member of a hard-core women's group secreted on a local key. And when Mac and Westy escort the lady home, they discover a tropical feminist utopia. But behind the fa ade lies a deadly secret that will make them wish they'd thrown their alluring catch back...
