Volleyball was the topic of conversation at breakfast and dinner table, but badminton player Pullela Gopichand was P.V. Sindhu's hero. At a time when Saina Nehwal was a rising star, eight-year-old Sindhu would travel over 40 kilometres from her home in a railway colony in Secunderabad, every day, to get to Gopichand's academy and train. Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P.V. Sindhu is the fascinating story of the junior player who went on to be the first Indian to win an Olympic silver medal for badminton.
"The Shuttle" deals with themes of intermarriages between wealthy American heiresses and impoverished British nobles. It is about wealthy American heiresses who could not make the best societal marriages because their family fortune came from new rather than old money. To solve this issue, they travelled to England. They married poor but Aristocratic husbands who needed money to finance their neglected estates.
‘. . . being a player from India defines who I am. When I play, it’s for my parents, my coach, and my country.’ Meet Saina Nehwal—India’s star badminton player and World Number 4, Padma Shri and Khel Ratna awardee, the girl who brought laurels to India by winning an Olympic medal at the age of twenty-two. In this fascinating memoir, she talks about her childhood and growing–up years; her relationship with the most important people in her life; the ups and downs of her celebrated career, from district level wins to the Olympics; and the sacrifices needed to succeed in any sport. She also reveals little-known facts and offers a peek into her many avatars—daughter, sister, student, and the regular girl behind the badminton prodigy. Find out what a typical day in Saina’s life is like—rigorous training, a strict diet, and no parties or sleepovers. But it’s not all work and no play; Saina loves to shop, eat ice cream (post wins only), and play games on her iPad! With candid photographs and badminton tips from the pro herself, this book showcases the making of a badminton champ—in her own words.
Get a full retrospective of all 134 flights, every mission, of the space shuttle program. This superbly designed and lavishly illustrated reissue of the best-selling hardcover book marks a special moment in history: the final mission of the space shuttle. Noted space and science author Piers Bizony's retrospective covers the entire space shuttle program that began in 1981 and ended in 2011. Every space shuttle mission is detailed, including all flights of the Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour spacecraft. The book also covers the development and design of the orbiter, as well as the technical specifications of the vehicle and details of its major assemblies and subassemblies. A full double-gatefold provides a large-scale technical drawing of the space shuttle. If you never got to watch the countdown clock in person during a space shuttle launch, The Space Shuttle is your chance to relive the history of America's first low Earth orbital spacecraft.
Badminton has become a popular sport in India thanks to Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand, Saina Nehwal, P V Sindhu, Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa, Kidambi Srikanth, and a few others. Each of them has a riveting story. The author has tried to weave all their stories into a fascinating canvas. This book is about how Indian badminton emerged as a global powerhouse in over a decade; what’s gone into the making of several world champions; who all played pivotal roles, and much more. It also reflects on the current shortcomings that could slow down the rise of the sport and how they could be addressed. Anyone keen on learning the secrets of peak performance from Indian champions and their coaches; how to bounce back stronger from setbacks; how and how not to lead a team, will find this book appealing. I hope people learn a lot about the history of Indian badminton from this book, Jwala Gutta, Indian Doubles Champion
With echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Yejidé's novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it. Longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction “Yejidé’s writing captures both real news and spiritual truths with the deftness and capacious imagination of her writing foremothers: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and N.K. Jemisin . . . Creatures of Passage is that rare novel that dispenses ancestral wisdom and literary virtuosity in equal measure.” —Washington Post Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash—reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw—has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the “River Man.” When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys’s door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most. Morowa Yejidé’s deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim itself.
'But the return is not always easy, especially when the world has moved on without you, when the people who were rooting for you have now found other heroes to support.' When Pullela Gopichand had to undergo a risky arthroscopic surgery, chances of his full recovery were not great. His return to the badminton court seemed a far-fetched dream. The odds were stacked against him. Then, in 1998, he won the bronze in the Commonwealth Games. His biggest win was yet to come. In 2001, Pullela became the second Indian to win the All England Championship. This is the story we know. From not being able to walk to winning the most prestigious title in badminton, this is Pullela the player. But his success hasn’t stopped at just him. The Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy, set up in 2008, boasts of a host of World No. 1s including Saina Nehwal and Srikanth Kidambi and World Badminton Champion PV Sindhu. What is it about his teachings that propels players right to the top? In his official autobiography, we meet Pullela the coach. Through his own voice, as well as those of his students, mother, and wife, we get a look at the mind that revolutionised the game. We are shown not only what it takes to get to the top, but also, and more importantly, how to stay there. With the principles of his play laid bare, we are invited to apply them to our own everyday lives. In doing so, we ask questions, take accountability for our actions and perhaps find the answer to the greatest question of all—what does it take to become a champion?
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR, PEOPLE, AND O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS’ TOP BOOK OF 2020 NATIONAL BESTSELLER “As good as The Friend, if not better.” —The New York Times “Impossible to put down . . . leavened with wit and tenderness.” —People “I was dazed by the novel’s grace.” —The New Yorker The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend brings her singular voice to a story about the meaning of life and death, and the value of companionship A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own. In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.
Written by a young human rights worker, "Silence on the Mountain" is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala's 36-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people.
