Jody and her family have begun their trip sailing around the world researching dolphins but an unexpected traveller and a storm make it a difficult beginning.
A captivating memoir of a biracial boy growing up in Washington, D.C., abandoned by his birth parents, and lovingly raised by a woman with deep emotional scars from her upbringing in the segregated South. The unforgettable memoir Black Sheep opens with a middle-aged Ray Studevent returning to Washington, D.C., to his “momma,” Lemell Studevent. She didn’t give birth to him, but she is the woman who raised him. She is the woman who stood by him through thick and thin. She is the woman who saved his life. But now in her late 80s, Lemell is lost to her Alzheimer’s disease. On most days, she has no idea who she is, no recollection of the remarkable life she has lived. Every once in a while, she remembers small fragments of people, places, and things but she doesn’t know how all of these pieces fit together. At night, she is often haunted by nightmares of growing up in the segregated South, of evil men with blue eyes peering through slits in their hooded robes. Frightened by Ray, this stranger, this white man with his piercing blue eyes, she threatens to shoot him. Trying not to get swept up in his own buried, decades-old feelings of abandonment, Ray knows he must work to regain her trust as he thinks back to how far they both have come. Ray Studevent grew up between two worlds. Born to a white, heroin-addicted mother and a black, violent, alcoholic father, the odds were stacked against him from day one. When his parents abandoned him at the age of five, after living in a world no child should experience, he was saved from the foster-care system by his father’s uncle Calvin, who offered him stability and a loving home. When Calvin tragically died two years later, it was up to his widow Lemell to raise Ray. But this was no easy task. Lemell grew up in the brutality of segregated Mississippi, emotionally scarred and justifiably resenting white people. Now, she must confront these demons as she raises a mixed-race child—white on the outside, black on the inside—on the eastern side of the Anacostia River, the blackest part of the blackest city in America. This is a time of heightened racial tension, not long after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the D.C. race riots. There are guidelines if you are black, different rules if you are white, but only mixed messages for mixed-race children who must fight for acceptance as they struggle to find their identity. As Dr. My Haley, the widow of Roots author Alex Haley, wrote in the Foreword for Black Sheep, “Ray’s pathway to manhood came not through the people who taught him what to do, but through the woman who taught him how to be, even as she learned for herself how to be.” At a time when we are all reexamining the complex issues of race, identity, disenfranchisement, and belonging, this compelling true story shows us what is possible when we trust our hearts and follow the path of love.
UPDATED WITH A NEW CHAPTER ON THE 2024 ELECTION A GUARDIAN AND DAILY TELEGRAPH POLITICS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'BRILLIANT' ANDREW MARR 'MAJESTIC' GUARDIAN 'ESSENTIAL' JON SOPEL 'A CRACKING READ' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A SHARP INSIDER ACCOUNT' NEW STATESMAN The full inside story of fourteen years of Tory rule, from coalition to self-destruction. In 2010 David Cameron's Conservative Party came into power with a promise of stability. Fourteen years and five prime ministers later, the Tories have been swept away, divided and decimated. What went wrong? From the ashes of a financial crisis to a break from the EU to a global pandemic, prime ministers have changed dramatically while the Tories remained in power. Merciless rebellions and the swift ousting of leaders enabled this, but the same ruthlessness ultimately brought about their downfall. Blue Murder links stories of betrayal in Cameron's coalition, the travails of May, the sagas of Johnson, the Truss implosion and the Sunak spiral. Through his unique access and unmissable inside stories, Ben Riley-Smith's thrilling account is essential for anyone wondering how the Tories carved out the political opportunity of a generation and then tore themselves apart. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS THE RIGHT TO RULE.
If you could see the world around you entirely as A mathematical equation, would it be a superpower or a curse?Fifteen year old Mbele lives in a squatter's village called Broobrishanto, high atop the Brooklyn Bridge, not too far in the future. When he falls from the bridge into the poisonous East River he is marked for life with blue tinted skin that gets darker when he sweats. With the blue skin come strange visions that blind him to the world we see and replace it with math.When one of his visions drives him to defy the leader of the bridge's notorious Booted Ones gang, Mbele has one choice – RUN! If it weren't bad enough that he stands out in a crowd and gets lost in algorithmic visions, he's also looking after his four year old, loud-mouth sister Skye. Desperate to protect his sister, rid himself of visions, and find a way home, he searches the streets of New York City for the one person he believes can help him. Along the way he befriends a charming con artist, a girl who creates new skins for people, and a mentor who is not quite what he seems. Together, they discover a much more dangerous threat than the gang he ran away from – an enemy that lives “in the blue.”
Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research is the follow-up to Ben Spatz's 2015 book What a Body Can Do, charting a course through more than twenty years of embodied, artistic, and scholarly research. Emerging from the confluence of theory and practice, this book combines full-length critical essays with a kaleidoscopic selection of fragments from journal entries, performance texts, and other unpublished materials to offer a series of entry points organized by seven keywords: city, song, movement, theater, sex, document, politics. Brimming with thoughtful and sometimes provocative takes on embodiment, technology, decoloniality, the university, and the politics of knowledge, the work shared here models the integration of artistic and embodied research with critical thought, opening new avenues for transformative action and experimentation. Invaluable to scholars and practitioners working through and beyond performance, Blue Sky Body is both an unconventional introduction to embodied research and a methodological intervention at the edges of contemporary theory.
From the World Cup-winning days of Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters to highly acclaimed modern-day heroes such as Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe, West Ham United supporters have always had the greatest affection for homegrown Hammers. Since the 1960s, talents such as Trevor Brooking, Tony Cottee, Paul Ince and Rio Ferdinand (who has twice hit the headlines as the world's most expensive defender following his move to Leeds and Manchester United) have been nurtured and brought through the club's ranks, ensuring the Hammers can rightly lay claim to having one of the country's most fruitful youth policies. In this revised and fully updated paperback edition, Claret and Blue Blood brings together all these characters and others for the very first time, including new chapters on Anton Ferdinand, Stephen Bywater and Kevin Horlock. Using exclusive new interviews, the authors present biographical pieces that collectively tell the story of West Ham United's evolution over the last half-century. Focusing on each player's roots, development and personal achievements, Claret and Blue Blood is a unique book that features key characters, candid conversations, successes, failures and controversies as it explores the very essence of West Ham United.
‘An excitable, high-octane account’ – Independent In October 2022, Elon Musk marched through Twitter’s front doors after buying the digital giant for $44 billion. His takeover came with the promise of fundamental change, but nothing could prepare the company for the chaos to come – brutal mass firings, an exodus of advertisers and ‘blue-tick’ celebrities and a vicious battle for control. With unique access to Twitter insiders and Musk’s confidants, this is the astonishing story from all sides. Why did Elon overhaul Twitter’s blue-tick system, and how did it lead to the near-collapse of the company’s revenue? Will Twitter – now X – survive? How has the constant negative press coverage affected Elon? With a wealth of hidden details, Breaking Twitter gives ringside seats to one of the most dramatic and compelling business stories of our time. ‘Mezrich’s books are the sort of engrossing reads you pick up in the airport then find the blockbuster film on the plane’ – Evening Standard
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