Showing results by publisher "Highbridge Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

When Ronald Reagan chose C. Everett Koop to be Surgeon General of the United States in 1981, liberal politicians, women's groups, and even the public health community opposed the nomination because of his conservative social views and strong anti-abortion beliefs. By the time he left office in...

Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry. Yet few of his numerous biographies and song guides take him as a historical subject worthy of scholarly study. In contrast, On Elton John approaches the artist seriously and analytically, while still couched in a highly accessible style.

A mother is supposed to be loving, protective, caring, and kind. She's supposed to nurture and guide her children from infancy into childhood and adolescence. The very thought of murdering a child—much less their own child—is not only bizarre but perhaps the most disturbing thought a parent could have! Exploring the ultimate betrayal of a mother's duty, Killer Moms: True Stories recounts thirty-one harrowing tales of motherhood gone wrong.

In the annals of legendary Wild West desperadoes, Belle Starr is remembered to this day as the Bandit Queen. Shortly after her murder in 1889, a highly romanticized, sensational book titled Bella Starr . . . The Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James was published—the first in a series of high-profile portraits to brand Starr as a villain. Now, celebrated author Michael Wallis parses over a century of mythmaking to reveal the woman behind the renegade legend.

Pete Forcelli was a highly respected federal agent in New York City, where he made an impact on violent crime by successfully targeting some of the city's most violent street gangs by using federal racketeering and continuing criminal enterprise statutes in conjunction with federal prosecutors. In early 2007, he was promoted to a supervisory position in Phoenix and quickly discovered that federal prosecutors were not charging criminals for violating federal firearms laws, even in instances where they knew guns were being trafficked to ultra-violent drug cartels.

The two-time Emmy-award-winning Camerota retraces her steps down an often gritty path toward her dream of becoming a journalist. At times heartbreaking and pulse-pounding, Combat Love is an inspiration for anyone who's ever searched for that elusive place called home.

In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of a particle collider; she's presented news on the color of dinosaur eggs, ice worms that live on mountaintop glaciers, and signs of life on Venus. In this, her debut book, she delivers a wholly original collection of powerful, emotionally raw, and unforgettable personal essays that probe the places where science touches our lives most intimately.

In 1989, Brad Schaeffer was working as an artist when his trader brother invited him to visit the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Schaeffer promptly quit his job and became a clerk in that most iconic arena of raw capitalism. During the next six years, Schaeffer rose from clerk to trader, making markets on Eurodollar options in Chicago and heating oil options in New York. In that time, jammed literally shoulder-to-shoulder, he screamed, flailed his arms, hurled expletives, and pushed and shoved his way through his day.

His story is unprecedented in the world of golf. Born to a family of migrant laborers, Calvin Peete dropped out of school in the eighth grade, went to work picking crops, first swung a golf club at the age of twenty-three-and rose to the top of the PGA. In Calvin Peete: Golf's Forgotten Star, Gordon Hobson tells for the first time Peete's incredible story. Calvin Peete's story is inspiring, but it also reveals the struggles many Black golfers endured even after the Caucasian—only clause was removed from the PGA's bylaws.

Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (1928-2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work.

Dr. Willie H. Clemons's inspiring book, This Is My Story: This Is My Song: One Man's Journey To Turning Oppositions Into Opportunities And Fulfilling His Unique Gifts, shares his personal experiences and insights on growing up in Alabama. Along the way, the author weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of his journey to fulfilling his childhood dreams of a life of service.

This is not CSI. What you encounter as a true bomb detective-or "Bomb Doctor," as some in the FBI call me-are fields of twisted metal containing soot-covered fragments intermingled with human remains. You have carnage and chaos. As you wade into that sea of wailing sirens and screaming survivors awash with the stench of diesel fuel and decaying bodies, your job is to ferret out forensic clues in a type of macabre scavenger hunt to ultimately reconstruct the scene and the explosive device and determine what happened and what the bomb looked like before it was torn asunder.

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret.

Veteran character actor Nick Searcy takes you through his wide-ranging career, from both sides of the camera as an actor and director, to guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh, managing a professional wrestler, costarring in the hit show Justified—and somehow continuing to work in Hollywood even after he went to Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

In The Good Sport, Kevin White takes an unflinching look at the current state of intercollegiate sports, including the tumultuous changes brought on by the Supreme Court's landmark decision on name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. Drawing on his decades of leadership, White examines the chaos, challenges, and opportunities of this new era—and why he believes the future of college sports hangs in the balance.

Engineering Hitler's Downfall features numerous inventions such as the decoding machines developed at Bletchley Park; the hand-held mine detectors that cleared pathways through enemy minefields, firstly at the Battle of el Alamein but also in most subsequent actions; the newly-located factories and tanks that enabled the Russians to repulse the German invasion; the escort carriers and long range aircraft that enabled U-boats to be attacked in the mid-Atlantic; and the 4000 plus Bailey bridges that allowed narrow ravines and rivers as wide as the Rhine to be crossed.

Legendary treasures. Mythical robberies. Lost riches. Buried plunder and fabulous wealth. Hidden dangers. Ancient curses and deathbed jinxes. Captivating tales of lost fortunes, hidden caches, the eternal allure of wealth, and the heartbreak of mysterious curses!

What would you do if you ran the world? If you knew you couldn't fail? Maybe it's time to stop wondering and start putting it into practice. Shelly Rachanow's daily words of encouragement will give you inspiration, hope, and words of courage to help you discover confidence in yourself. Your acts, both big and small, matter. Learn about a teenage girl and CNN hero, kids in Zimbabwe saving their part of the planet, and a busy mom who is not too busy to work every day to help impoverished families live better lives.

In February 1946, when twenty-year-old Malcolm Little was sentenced to eight to ten years in a maximum-security prison, he was a petty criminal and street hustler in Boston. By the time he was paroled in August 1952, he had transformed into a voracious reader, joined the Black Muslims, and was poised to become Malcolm X, one of the most prominent and important intellectuals of the civil rights era. While scholars and commentators have exhaustively detailed, analyzed, and debated Malcolm X's post-prison life, they have not explored these six and a half transformative years in any depth.

Set against a dramatic backdrop of war, spies, and nuclear bombs, An Atomic Love Story unveils a vivid new view of a tumultuous era and one of its most important figures. In the early decades of the twentieth century, three highly ambitious women found their way to the West Coast, where each was destined to collide with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist whose work in creating the atomic bomb would forever impact modern history.