Showing results for "Sky" in Biographies & Memoirs

For years, Emma Carey was a regular young adult who would wake up and go about their day on autopilot, someone who would look at a sunset and feel unaffected, someone who was living, but not really alive. That is, until something happened that enabled her to really see life for the gift it is. Emma was in a skydiving accident that made her a paraplegic. This book is not just about Emma's fall from the sky and how she learned to walk without ever regaining feeling in her legs but also about the beliefs and ideas that helped her survive.

Frank Luke, Jr., was an unlikely pilot. In the Great War, when fliers were still "knights of the air", Luke was an ungallant loner, a kid from Arizona who collected tarantulas, shot buzzards, and boxed miners. But during two torrid weeks in September 1918, he was the deadliest man on the Western Front. In only 10 missions, he destroyed 14 heavily defended German balloons and four airplanes, a rampage unequalled even by the dreaded von Richtofen, and the second highest American tally of the entire war.

When Sky and her older sister Avril were taken into care, the social workers knew this was a case like no other. Raised by unhinged parents who hoarded compulsively, creating horrific conditions no child should live in, the two girls arrived at foster carer Louise's home, neglected, malnourished and indoctrinated. Louise had to draw on all of her experience as one of Britain's leading foster carers to rehabilitate and change the course of their lives.

Of all the books about 9/11 one has been missing until now - a panoramic narrative from the men and women caught up in the unprecedented human drama of that terrible day. The Only Plane in the Sky is nothing less than the first comprehensive oral history of 9/11, deftly woven and told in the voices of ordinary people grappling with extraordinary events. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents and new and archived interviews from nearly 500 people, historian Garrett Graff skillfully tells the story of the day as it was lived.

Boarding an airplane strikes at least a small sense of fear into most people. Even though we all have heard that the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of perishing in a plane crash, it still doesn't feel that way. Airplane crashes might be rare, but they do happen, and they’re usually fatal. David Soucie insists that most of these deaths could be prevented. He’s worked as a pilot, a mechanic, an FAA inspector, and an aviation executive. He’s seen death up close and personal - deaths of colleagues and friends that might have been prevented if he had approved certain safety measures in the aircrafts they were handling.

Patient 11 is an investigative story from the award-winning Sky News StoryCast strand.A daring escape from NHS psychiatric care pits inpatient, Alexis Quinn, against some of the most powerful institutions in the State. Young mother and former GB youth swimmer, Alexis, agrees to enter NHS England psychiatric care following a family tragedy. She could never imagine that her three-day admission will turn into a three-year ordeal. Then undiagnosed with autism, and often the subject of 24-hour surveillance as well as long periods in solitary confinement, Alexis descends to the darkest reaches of ...

Many dream of dropping everything and just traveling around the world. It's a common dream, but few imagine embarking on that journey by bicycle. Exposed to the elements, legs burning, all your possessions strapped to you and your bicycle - it doesn't paint a relaxing picture, but this is just what Pierre-Yves Tremblay did.

World-famous competitive skydiver and coach Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld presents proven tools and techniques for success and explains how they can be used in everyday life. Dan survived a plane crash from which 16 of the 22 people on board were killed. He was left critically injured and woke up from a six-week-long coma with a broken neck, broken skull, severe head trauma, a collapsed lung, and other serious internal injuries. Against all odds, Dan recovered and went on to become one of the greatest competitive skydiver in the world.

In 1931, Douglas Bader was the golden boy of the RAF. Excelling in everything he did, he represented the Royal Air Force in aerobatics displays, played rugby for Harlequins, and was tipped to be the next England fly half. But one afternoon in December, all his ambitions came to an abrupt end when he crashed his plane doing a particularly difficult and illegal aerobatic trick. His injuries were so bad that surgeons were forced to amputate both his legs. Douglas Bader did not fly again until the outbreak of the Second World War. The rest of his story is the stuff of legend.

She was 17 years old on a Christmas Eve flight 40 years ago to join her father for Christmas when the unimaginable happened. The Lockheed L-188A Electra, on the way from Lima to Pucallpa, flew directly into a thunderstorm. A strike of lightning left the plane incinerated and Juliane Diller (Koepcke) still strapped to her plane seat falling through the night air two miles above the Earth. Her survival is unexplainable and considered a modern-day miracle. Her mother was among the 91 dead and Juliane the sole survivor.

A nominee for the National Book Award, Ivan Doig's brilliant memoir shares the experiences and culture that shaped his early years and made him fall in love with the West. From his childhood in a family of homesteaders through the death of his mother and his move to Montana to herd sheep, Doig shows his intimate connection with the American West.

'All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why’. Rick Stein's childhood in 1950s rural Oxfordshire and North Cornwall was idyllic. His parents were charming and gregarious, their five children much-loved and given freedom typical of the time. As he grew older, the holidays were filled with loud and lively parties in his parents' Cornish barn. But ever-present was the unpredicatible mood of his bipolar father, with Rick frequently the focus of his anger and sadness. When Rick was 18 his father killed himself.

On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives—and change his own forever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy.

Nurse, author and Director of Born at the Right Time, Rachel Wright talks to fellow parents of people with disabilities and others in their community. With the power of story telling, laughter, swearing and useful information they create solace in knowing the warts and all truth of this off piste version of parenting. Whether a well seasoned parent, newbie, one of many practitioners supporting families or simply someone wanting to peak over the fence - you’re welcome to listen in. We are better together, whatever Skies We’re Under.

As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. Later in life, in war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she travelled to Somalia – "the most dangerous place on earth."

David Morgan, RAF officer and poet, relives his experiences during the Falklands War in this vivid memoir. On secondment to the Royal Navy when the Argentine invasion of the Falklands began, and personally credited with shooting down two Argentine Skyhawks as well as enemy helicopters, Morgan was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Here he recounts his involvement in the first British airstrike against Argentine positions around Port Stanley and describes being first on the scene when enemy jets bombed the landing ships Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad.

In the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities.

On 12th September 2018, British Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested at Tehran Airport by Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Convicted of espionage in a shadowy trial presided over by Iran’s most notorious judge, Dr Moore-Gilbert was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin and Qarchak prisons for 804 days, this is the full and gripping account of her harrowing ordeal.

Larger-than-life football personality Micah Richards delivers the most entertaining sports book of the year. From experiencing the Manchester City revolution first-hand and achieving success with the likes of Mario Balotelli, Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero to becoming a popular TV pundit for Sky Sports, BBC Sport and Match of the Day, Micah Richards has seen it all–and laughed about most of it. In The Game, Micah reflects on how he got to where he is today and on the many wins and losses along the way.

Join hosts Shelly Price and Stephanie Hubka as they take a weekly look at the facts, details, and surprises behind some of the disasters that occur at 35,000 feet.