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A brilliant, kaleidoscopic narrative of Oklahoma City—a great American story of civics, basketball, and destiny, from award-winning journalist Sam Anderson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Chicago Tribune • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • Deadspin Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous “Land Run” in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsized ambitions, and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress. Nowhere was this dynamic better realized than in the drama of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team’s 2012-13 season, when the Thunder’s brilliant general manager, Sam Presti, ignited a firestorm by trading future superstar James Harden just days before the first game. Presti’s all-in gamble on “the Process”—the patient, methodical management style that dictated the trade as the team’s best hope for long-term greatness—kicked off a pivotal year in the city’s history, one that would include pitched battles over urban planning, a series of cataclysmic tornadoes, and the frenzied hope that an NBA championship might finally deliver the glory of which the city had always dreamed. Boom Town announces the arrival of an exciting literary voice. Sam Anderson, former book critic for New York magazine and now a staff writer at the New York Times magazine, unfolds an idiosyncratic mix of American history, sports reporting, urban studies, gonzo memoir, and much more to tell the strange but compelling story of an American city whose unique mix of geography and history make it a fascinating microcosm of the democratic experiment. Filled with characters ranging from NBA superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook; to Flaming Lips oddball frontman Wayne Coyne; to legendary Great Plains meteorologist Gary England; to Stanley Draper, Oklahoma City's would-be Robert Moses; to civil rights activist Clara Luper; to the citizens and public servants who survived the notorious 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, Boom Town offers a remarkable look at the urban tapestry woven from control and chaos, sports and civics.
Presents a collection of poems pointing out the variety of intellectual strengths and personality traits possessed by children with Asperger syndrom and high-functioning autism.
Once upon a time, Prince Charming fell in love with Sleeping Beauty's lawyer... Mysterious, handsome wizard Aethelstan Blackstone hires beautiful, hardworking attorney Nora Barr to get a restraining order to protect Sleeping Beauty from her evil stepmother. But if Sleeping Beauty is supposed to be his soul mate, then how come he's becoming bewitched by Nora? And when Nora finds herself baby-sitting a clueless maiden from the Middle Ages, avoiding a very wicked witch, and falling hard for a man whose magic she doesn't believe in , she begins to think that love itself is only a fairy tale. . . Welcome to a fairy tale world — where the road to happily ever after is a bumpy one! Praise for Wickedly Charming: "In this smart, witty tale Grayson. . . offers clever spins on classic legends and lore while adding unique twists all her own." — Booklist "Utterly charming, indeed! A delightful mix of fun and fantasy." — Kasey Michaels, USA Today bestselling author of How to Wed a Baran "Magical and sweet...I was charmed." — Susan Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Burning Up
Author and Bible teacher Kelly Needham reveals how we've been fooled into chasing meaning in all the wrong places, identifies the source of our hunger for the extraordinary, and shows us the steps we can take today to build a purpose-filled reality without turning our lives upside-down. Many of us are exhausted from dreaming big and chasing the extraordinary lives we long for, but when we try embracing the everyday and find meaning in the mundane, we fear we're settling for a boring life. Are we missing something? Kelly Needham has been the keynote speaker, the person folding T-shirts backstage, and the mom dealing with the ups and downs of daily life. By sharing her experiences with both the extraordinary and the humdrum--and wrestling with feelings of disappointment along the way--Needham helps readers discover for themselves the truth that changes everything: we weren't made to do something, but to know Someone. And it's that Someone who can infuse our lives with infinite purpose and meaning. In Purposefooled she explains why we feel like we were made for more and shows us the freeing answer to our longings, the ways modern technology affects our desires and dreams--and how to live free from its pressures and pitfalls, how familiar Bible stories reveal that being a world-changer is more accessible and simpler than we think, why we need to reclaim our imaginations from culture and steward them with eternity in mind, and what it looks like to live a deeply meaningful life today instead of wearing ourselves out trying to reach the next big thing.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “As sweet and funny and sad and true and heartfelt a memoir as one could find.” —from the foreword by Augusten Burroughs Ever since he was young, John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother, Augusten Burroughs, in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” It was not until he was forty that he was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way he saw himself—and the world. A born storyteller, Robison has written a moving, darkly funny memoir about a life that has taken him from developing exploding guitars for KISS to building a family of his own. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien yet always deeply human.
"Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction, in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe"--Dust jacket flap.
