Showing results for "Kyle" in Biographies & Memoirs

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions.

Joanne Phillips’ ordeal began aged 13 when she was gang-raped in her bedroom by local boys. Following the trauma, she dropped out of school, was befriended by an older man and was forced into prostitution aged 16. Over the next six years, she was raped by over 500 men, starved, beaten, and transported around the country to brothels. Forced to have sex with men from all walks of life including lawyers, stockbrokers, doctors, a parish councillor, Joanne was even made to have sex with her former school headteacher—who didn’t recognise her.

1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Schoolteacher Olivia Dare Christian was murdered in her Hampton, Virginia, apartment in 1981. Her killer left few clues and the murder went unsolved. Three decades later, in 2011, next-generation detective Randy Mayer re-opened Olivia's dusty cold case file and began unraveling the mystery. Mayer located a reluctant witness who was a teenager back in 1981. She recalled a suspicious man lurking outside Olivia's apartment the morning of the murder and provided a detailed description of the man.

"I am a doctor." Every year, thousands of medical school graduates utter these four simple words. But as you will hear in Playing God, earning an MD is just the first step to becoming a real physician. In this thrilling and moving memoir, Dr. Anthony Youn reveals that the true metamorphosis from student to doctor occurs not in medical school but in the formative years of residency training and early practice. Here, you will take a journey through the world of surgery, hospitals, and the practice of medicine unlike any that you have traveled before.

By captivating millions during his six-year, 50-country tenure as The New York Times' "Frugal Traveler", Seth Kugel has become one of our most internationally beloved travel writers. While his famously unassuming journeys around the globe have forged a signature philosophy of whimsy and practicality, they have also revealed the seemingly infinite booby traps of on-the-grid tourism. In a book with widespread cultural reverberations, Kugel takes the modern travel industry to task, determined to reignite humanity's age-old sense of adventure. 

Under the Trestle is the true story of the most compelling murder case in Virginia history. In 1980, Gina Renee Hall, a Radford University freshman, went to a Virginia Tech nightclub on a Saturday night. She was never seen again. Her abandoned car was found parked beneath a railroad trestle bridging the New River, with blood in the trunk. The investigation led police to a secluded cabin on Claytor Lake, where there was evidence of a violent attack. Former Virginia Tech football player Stephen Epperly was charged with murder, despite the fact that Gina's body was never found.

One publicly imploded marriage. Two car accidents. Eight surgeries. And now, a miracle of hard work and storied talent: five Masters wins. Once hailed as "the greatest closer in history" before he fell further than any beloved athlete in America's memory, Tiger swung at the world's wildest expectations and beat the skeptics with his April 2019 championship. Roaring Back traces his road to Augusta and the improbable, phenomenal comeback of one of the greatest golfers in history.

Nicknamed "The Squirrel" for his elusiveness, Thrasher was a daredevil pilot who made millions flying marijuana and cocaine from South America into the US in the '70s and '80s. With his beautiful Portuguese-born wife, Olga, he lived in a mountain estate near Virginia's New River Valley. He owned oceanfront homes and yachts in Florida, spent weekends in the Caribbean, and laundered money in Las Vegas, where he partied with Frank Sinatra's entourage.

James Dommek, Jr., an Alaska Native writer and musician, sheds new light on a real-life mystery that pits Native American folklore against the US justice system. In the vast Alaskan Arctic, legend has it there once lived a mythic tribe—Iñukuns—that only existed in rumors and whispers. This changed forever when an actor-turned-fugitive, Teddy Kyle Smith, had an encounter that brought Iñukuns from myth to reality. Smith was an aspiring actor with a promising career until it all came quickly crashing down with a gunshot, a manhunt, bloodshed, and other frightful events.

Tom Watson began to put on weight in his early 20s, having developed an appetite for fast food and cheap beer while studying at the University of Hull. As time progressed - and his penchant for anything sweet, fatty or fizzy persisted - he found himself adjusting his belt, loosening his collar and upsizing his wardrobe to XXL. He continued to pile on the pounds when he entered the world of politics as MP for West Bromwich East (despite short-lived flirtations with fad diets and fitness classes). By December 2014, his bathroom scales had tipped to 22 stone.

Using experiences gleaned from the upheavals in Kyle's own life, alongside the stories of people he has met and helped on his show, and told with his trademark candour, I'm Only Being Honest is a forthright and controversial look at modern British life that will outrage some, anger others, appease many, but will doubtless set the debates raging.

Shifting into High Gear charts the course of Kyle Bryant's transformation as he journeys on a recumbent tricycle across the United States in the throes of Friedreich's ataxia, a life-shortening and disabling disease. Full of humor and reflection, it's a heroic journey of a man driven to reframe the language of disease through action and service.

Well-known as the winner of the third series of The Great British Bake Off and runner up of Strictly Come Dancing with his same-sex dance partner Johannes Radebe, John Whaite's personal story is a complicated narrative of contradictions, highs and lows, told with tenderness, joy, insight and wit, but also unflinching honesty.

The first full-length biography of the Civil War surgeon who, over the course of the war’s bloodiest battles - from Antietam to Gettysburg - redefined military medicine.

Jonathan Letterman was an outpost medical officer serving in Indian country in the years before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized combat medicine over the course of four major battles - Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg - that produced unprecedented numbers of casualties.

When most people think of the celebrated greatness that is Coach Dan Gable, they think of an almost mythic intensity toward wrestling. Gable breathes and bleeds the sport and faithfully applies lessons learned from both on and off the mat. Expanding upon Gable's first collection of stories, A Wrestling Life 2 goes a little deeper into the mindset and life events that have shaped the man, the wrestler, and the coach.

Caleb Wilde, author of the acclaimed memoir Confessions of a Funeral Director, was a skeptic. The baffling stories people told him—deathbed visions of long-dead parents, visits from the other side—must be hallucinations or wishful thinking, he thought. But the more stories he heard, and the more he learned about non-Western understandings of body and spirit, the less sure he was.

As a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet, touching down in the cities he imagined as a child. He experiences our metropolises in short layover visits that repeat over weeks, months or even years, giving him a unique perspective on the urbanisation of the world. In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never left.

Jim Morris is no stranger to big dreams. Since he was five years old, he passionately yearned to play baseball in the major leagues. However, despite all his hard work and determination, a series of unfortunate events and injuries scuttled his career before he was 25. Doctors told him he would never play again. Then at age 35 - after a string of highly implausible events and at an age when most players are retiring - Morris found himself on the mound as a relief pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

One of the most important figures in the Scots revival of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is Billy Kay. Through radio, television, plays, creative writing and especially his hugely influential book Scots The Mither Tongue, Kay’s work helped change people’s negative perception of Scots and paved the way for its acceptance as a key element in Scottish cultural identity.