The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

Review “Suspenseful. . . . Rollicking. . . . Reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller. . . . The Lost City of Z is at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd. Mr. Grann treats us to a harrowing reconstruction of Fawcett’s forays into the Amazonian jungle, as well as an evocative rendering of the vanished age of exploration.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Breathtaking. . . . Grann brings Fawcett’s remarkable story to a beautifully written, perfectly paced fruition. . . . Any writer who can breathe life into letters written by scientists in the early 1900s deserves more than a hat tip.” — The Los Angeles Times “Brilliant. . . . Impressively researched and skillfully crafted. . . . Grann makes abundantly clear in this fascinating, epic story of exploration and obsession, [that] the lethal attraction of the Amazon mystery remains strong.” — The Boston Globe “A smart biographical page-turner.” — USA Today “Grann escapes death and tracks down Z, giving the reader the kind of Indiana Jones kicks best experienced vicariously.” — Details “A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure.” —John Grisham, internationally acclaimed #1 bestselling author “Thoroughly researched, vividly told. . . . Grann recounts Fawcett’s expeditions with all the pace of a white-knuckle adventure story. . . . A thrill ride from start to finish.” — The Washington Post “The story of Z goes to the heart of the central questions of our age. In the battle between man and a hostile environment, who wins? A fascinating and brilliant book.” —Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Talking to Strangers “A spellbinding tale that produces fresh surprises around each turn. . . . An amazing story.” — Dallas Morning News “A fascinating yarn that touches on science, history, and some truly obsessive personalities.” — Entertainment Weekly “There is something about Fawcett’s spirit and self-assurance that captivates. . . . To read The Lost City of Z is to feel grateful that Grann himself bothered to set out for the Amazon in search of the bones of an explorer whose body was long ago reclaimed by the jungle.” — Christian Science Monitor “In a hyperconnected and exhaustively charted world, here is a revelation about wildness and the mad desire to plunge into it. . . . Unfathomably riveting. . . . Grann wildly delivers the goods.” — GQ “A blockbuster tale of adventure.” — New York Observer “Marvelous. . . . [Grann] combines a colorful narrative of Fawcett’s early life, military career, jungle treks, theories and even conversations with a biography of an extraordinary man and an overview of the last great and highly competitive age of exploration.” — Bloomberg News “A blood-stirring reading experience.” — The Denver Post “A deeply satisfying revelation. . . . What could be better—obsession, mystery, deadly insects, shrunken heads, suppurating wounds, hostile tribesmen—all for us to savor in our homes, safely before the fire.” —Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile and The Devil in the White City “What makes Mr. Grann’s telling of the story so captivating is that he decides not simply to go off in search of yet more relics of our absent hero—but to go off himself in search of the city that Fawcett was looking for so heroically when he suddenly went AWOL.” —Simon Winchester, The Wall Street Journal “Fast-paced adventure. . . . Grann delights us with the lure of obsession under a canopy of trees.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer “Absorbing and fair-minded. . . . In restoring a life that history has swallowed from general view, and vindicating a crackpot theory, Mr. Grann has also exposed the toll that explorers often took on those who loved or depended on them.” —Richard B. Woodward, The New York Times “An engrossing book, whose protagonist could outmarch Lara Croft and out-think Indiana Jones. . . . It’s almost enough to make you reach for a backpack.” — The Daily Telegraph (London) “A riveting adventure-mystery in the tradition of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World , said to be inspired by Fawcett.” — The Toronto Star “Perfect for armchair travelers and readers with fond childhood memories of books recounting tales of adventure in the dark wild. . . . What [Grann] found should help change how we think about the Amazon. . . . Read it, shiver with delight and thank your lucky stars you’re never going to get as close to a candirú as Fawcett and Grann did. (Look it up on Wikipedia, if you dare.)” — Richmond Times-Dispatch “Thrilling. . . . What a story. . . . The beauty is that as incredible as it is, it’s true.” — Daily News “Outstanding. . . . A powerful narrative, stiff lipped and Victorian at the center, trippy at the edges, as if one of those stern men of Conrad had found himself trapped in a novel by García Márquez.” —Rich Cohen, The New York Times Book Review “Did Grann find the lost city? . . . It’s worth reading every page of this marvelous book to find out.” — Houston Chronicle “Grann is no hard-as-nails explorer, and his self-deprecating personal narrative . . . serves as a comic counterpoint to the superhuman exploits of Fawcett. Grann may not be able to hack the wilderness very well, but as a storyteller he’s first-rate.” —Outside “Grann has an extraordinary sense of pacing, and his scenes of forest adventure are dispatched in passages of swift, arresting simplicity. . . . A splendid, suspenseful book.” — Bookforum “With this riveting work, David Grann emerges on our national landscape as a major new talent. His superb writing style, his skills as a reporter, his masterful use of historical and scientific documents, and his stunning storytelling ability are on full display here, producing an endlessly absorbing tale about a magical subject that captivates from start to finish. This is a terrific book.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-wiining author “A thrilling yarn. . . . What [Grann] finds is what makes The Lost City of Z so gratifying, and in the end he, and we along with him, find ourselves stunned by what Percy Fawcett discovered.” — The Oregonian “Grann paints a vivid picture of the final days of trail-blazing, Earth-bound grand exploration, before airplanes and radios began stripping the mystery from the unknown parts of the world.” — The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) “Meticulously researched and spellbinding. . . . Reads like a cross between an Indiana Jones adventure and a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. . . . Gripping.” — The Ottawa Citizen “Irresistible. . . . At once a biography of Fawcett, a history of the era of exploration, a science book on the nature and ethnography of the Amazon and a thrilling armchair adventure. . . . [It] has everything to fire the imagination: Romance, nostalgia, bravery, monomania, hardship, adventure, science, tragedy, mystery.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel “ The Lost City of Z is meticulously researched, riveting and horrifying, guided by a core mystery that seems unimaginable and an author driven into the depths of the jungle by his daring to imagine it.” — Philadelphia City Paper “Absorbing. . . . A wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration.” — The Sunday Times (London) “Tantalizing. . . . Grann gives us a glimpse of the vanished age of exploration [as well as] a suspenseful, often very funny account of his own trek as a complete amateur into the ‘green hell’ of the Amazon. . . . Immensely entertaining.” — The Gazette (Montreal) “Thankfully, for those of us who secretly live and breath for the swashbuckling adventure tale, every now and then a book comes along that renews our faith in the epic quest narrative, its ability to inform and enlighten even as it feeds our most primal need for dramatic amusement. [The Lost City of Z] succeeds tremendously in these pursuits.” — The Globe and Mail (Canada) About the Author DAVID GRANN is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON was a finalist for The National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of THE WHITE DARKNESS and the collection THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. Grann's storytelling has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1WE SHALL RETURNOn a cold January day in 1925, a tall, distinguished gentleman hurried across the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, toward the S.S. Vauban, a five-hundred-and-eleven-foot ocean liner bound for Rio de Janeiro. He was fifty-seven years old, and stood over six feet, his long arms corded with muscles. Although his hair was thinning and his mustache was flecked with white, he was so fit that he could walk for days with little, if any, rest or nourishment. His nose was crooked like a boxer's, and there was something ferocious about his appearance, especially his eyes. They were set close together and peered out from under thick tufts of hair. No one, not even his family, seemed to agree on their color-some thought they were blue, others gray. Yet virtually everyone who encountered him was struck by their intensity: some called them "the eyes of a visionary." He had frequently been photographed in riding boots and wearing a Stetson, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, but even in a suit and a tie, and without his customary wild beard, he could be recognized by the crowds on the pier. He was Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his name was known throughout the world. He was the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. For nearly two decades, stories of his adventures had captivated the public's imagination: how he had survived in the South American wilderness without contact with the outside world; how he was ambushed by hostile tribesmen, many of whom had never before seen a white man; how he battled piranha, electric eels, jaguars, crocodiles, vampire bats, and anacondas, including one that almost crushed him; and how he emerged with maps of regions from which no previous expedition had returned. He was renowned as the "David Livingstone of the Amazon," and was believed to have such unrivaled powers of endurance that a few colleagues even claimed he was immune to death. An American explorer described him as "a man of indomitable will, infinite resource, fearless"; another said that he could "outwalk and outhike and outexplore anybody else." The London Geographical Journal, the pre-eminent publication in its field, observed in 1953 that "Fawcett marked the end of an age. One might almost call him the last of the individualist explorers. The day of the aeroplane, the radio, the organized and heavily financed modern expedition had not arrived. With him, it was the heroic story of a man against the forest." In 1916, the Royal Geographical Society had awarded him, with the blessing of King George V, a gold medal "for his contributions to the mapping of South America." And every few years, when he emerged from the jungle, spidery thin and bedraggled, dozens of scientists and luminaries would pack into the Society's hall to hear him speak. Among them was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was said to have drawn on Fawcett's experiences for his 1912 book The Lost World, in which explorers "disappear into the unknown" of South America and find, on a remote plateau, a land where dinosaurs have escaped extinction. As Fawcett made his way to the gangplank that day in January, he eerily resembled one of the book's protagonists, Lord John Roxton:Something there was of Napoleon III, something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman._._._._He has a gentle voice and a quiet manner, but behind his twinkling blue eyes there lurks a capacity for furious wrath and implacable resolution, the more dangerous because they are held in leash. None of Fawcett's previous expeditions compared with what he was about to do, and he could barely conceal his impatience, as he fell into line with the other passengers boarding the S.S. Vauban. The ship, advertised as "the finest in the world," was part of the Lamport & Holt elite "V" class. The Germans had sunk several of the company's ocean liners during the First World War, but this one had survived, with its black, salt-streaked hull and elegant white decks and striped funnel billowing smoke into the sky. Model T Fords shepherded passengers to the dock, where longshoremen helped cart luggage into the ship's hold. Many of the male passengers wore silk ties and bowler hats; women had on fur coats and feathered caps, as if they were attending a society event, which, in some ways, they were-the passenger lists of luxury ocean liners were chronicled in gossip columns and scoured by young girls searching for eligible bachelors. Fawcett pushed forward with his gear. His trunks were loaded with guns, canned food, powdered milk, flares, and handcrafted machetes. He also carried a kit of surveying instruments: a sextant and a chronometer for determining latitude and longitude, an aneroid for measuring atmospheric pressure, and a glycerin compass that could fit in his pocket. Fawcett had chosen each item based on years of experience; even the clothes he had packed were made of lightweight, tear-proof gabardine. He had seen men die from the most innocuous seeming oversight-a torn net, a boot that was too tight. Fawcett was setting out into the Amazon, a wilderness nearly the size of the continental United States, to make what he called "the great discovery of the century"-a lost civilization. By then, most of the world had been explored, its veil of enchantment lifted, but the Amazon remained as mysterious as the dark side of the moon. As Sir John Scott Keltie, the former secretary of the Royal Geographical Society and one of the world's most acclaimed geographers at the time, noted, "What is there no one knows." Ever since Francisco de Orellana and his army of Spanish conquistadores descended the Amazon River, in 1542, perhaps no place on the planet had so ignited the imagination-or lured men to their death. Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican friar who accompanied Orellana, described woman warriors in the jungle who resembled the mythical Greek Amazons. Half a century later, Sir Walter Raleigh spoke of Indians with "their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts"-a legend that Shakespeare wove into Othello: Of the Cannibals that each other eat,The Anthropophagi and men whose headsDo grow beneath their shoulders.What was true about the region-serpents as long as trees, rodents the size of pigs-was sufficiently beyond belief that no embellishment seemed too fanciful. And the most entrancing vision of all was of El Dorado. Raleigh claimed that the kingdom, which the conquistadores had heard about from Indians, was so plentiful in gold that its inhabitants ground the metal into powder and blew it "thorow hollow canes upon their naked bodies untill they be al shining from the foote to the head." Yet each expedition that had tried to find El Dorado ended in disaster. Carvajal, whose party had been searching for the kingdom, wrote in his diary, "We reached a [state of] privation so great that we were eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes, cooked with certain herbs, with the result that so great was our weakness that we could not remain standing." Some four thousand men died during that expedition alone, of starvation and disease, and at the hands of Indians defending their territory with arrows dipped in poison. Other El Dorado parties resorted to cannibalism. Many explorers went mad. In 1561, Lope de Aguirre led his men on a murderous rampage, screaming, "Does God think that, because it is raining, I am not going to_._._._destroy the world?" Aguirre even stabbed his own child, whispering, "Commend thyself to God, my daughter, for I am about to kill thee." Before the Spanish crown sent forces to stop him, Aguirre warned in a letter, "I swear to you, King, on my word as a Christian, that if a hundred thousand men came, none would escape. For the reports are false: there is nothing on that river but despair." Aguirre's companions finally rose up and killed him; his body was quartered, and Spanish authorities displayed the head of the "Wrath of God" in a steel cage. Still, for three centuries, expeditions continued to search, until, after a toll of death and suffering worthy of Joseph Conrad, most archeologists had concluded that El Dorado was no more than a delusion.Fawcett, however, was certain that the Amazon contained a fabulous kingdom, and he was not another soldier of fortune or a crackpot. A man of science, he had spent years gathering evidence to prove his case-digging up artifacts, studying petroglyphs, and interviewing tribes. And after fierce battles with skeptics Fawcett had received funding from the most respected scientific institutions, including the Royal Geographical Society, the American Geographical Society, and the Museum of the American Indian. Newspapers were proclaiming that Fawcett would soon startle the world. The Atlanta Constitution declared, "It is perhaps the most hazardous and certainly the most spectacular adventure of the kind ever undertaken by a reputable scientist with the backing of conservative scientific bodies." Fawcett had concluded that an ancient, highly cultured people still existed in the Brazilian Amazon and that their civilization was so old and sophisticated it would forever alter the Western view of the Americas. He had christened this lost world the City of Z. "The central place I call 'Z'-our main objective-is in a valley_._._._about ten miles wide, and the city is on an eminence in the middle of it, approached by a barreled roadway of stone," Fawcett had stated earlier. "The houses are low and windowless, and there is a pyramidal temple." Reporters on the dock in Hoboken, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, shouted questions, hoping to learn the location of Z. In the wake of the technological horrors of the Great War, and amid the spread of urbanization and industrialization, few events so captivated the world. One newspaper exulted, "Not since the days when Ponce de Le—n crossed the unknown Florida in search of the Waters of Perpetual Youth_._._._has a more alluring adventure been planned." Fawcett welcomed "the fuss," as he described it in a letter to a friend, but he was careful about how he responded. He knew that his main rival, Alexander Hamilton Rice, a multimillionaire American doctor who commanded vast resources, was already entering the jungle with an unprecedented array of equipment. The prospect of Dr. Rice finding Z terrified Fawcett. Several years earlier, Fawcett had watched as a colleague from the Royal Geographical Society, Robert Falcon Scott, had set out to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole, only to discover, shortly before he froze to death, that his Norwegian rival, Roald Amundsen, had beaten him by thirty-three days. In a recent letter to the Royal Geographical Society, Fawcett wrote, "I cannot say all I know, or even be precise as to locality, for these things leak out, and there can be nothing so bitter to the pioneer as to find the crown of his work anticipated." He was also afraid that if he released details of his route, and others attempted to find Z or rescue him, it would result in countless deaths. An expedition of fourteen hundred armed men had previously vanished in the same region. A news bulletin telegraphed around the globe declared, "Fawcett Expedition_._._._to Penetrate Land Whence None Returned." And Fawcett, who was resolved to reach the most inaccessible areas, did not intend, like other explorers, to go by boat; rather, he planned to hack straight through the jungle on foot. The Royal Geographical Society had warned that Fawcett "is about the only living geographer who could successfully attempt" such an expedition and that "it would be hopeless for any people to follow in his footsteps." Before he left England, Fawcett confided to his younger son, Brian, "If with all my experience we can't make it, there's not much hope for others." As reporters clamored around him, Fawcett explained that only a small expedition would have any chance of survival. It would be able to live off the land, and not pose a threat to hostile Indians. The expedition, he had stated, "will be no pampered exploration party, with an army of bearers, guides and cargo animals. Such top-heavy expeditions get nowhere; they linger on the fringe of civilization and bask in publicity. Where the real wilds start, bearers are not to be had anyway, for fear of the savages. Animals cannot be taken because of lack of pasture and the attack of insects and bats. There are no guides, for no one knows the country. It is a matter of cutting equipment to the absolute minimum, carrying it all oneself, and trusting that one will be able to exist by making friends with the various tribes one meets." He now added, "We will have to suffer every form of exposure._._._._We will have to achieve a nervous and mental resistance, as well as physical, as men under these conditions are often broken by their minds succumbing before their bodies." Fawcett had chosen only two people to go with him: his twenty-one-year-old son, Jack, and Jack's best friend, Raleigh Rimell. Although they had never been on an expedition, Fawcett believed that they were ideal for the mission: tough, loyal, and, because they were so close, unlikely, after months of isolation and suffering, "to harass and persecute each other"-or, as was common on such expeditions, to mutiny. Jack was, as his brother Brian put it, "the reflection of his father": tall, frighteningly fit, and ascetic. Neither he nor his father smoked cigarettes or drank. Brian noted that Jack's "six feet three inches were sheer bone and muscle, and the three chief agents of bodily degeneration-alcohol, tobacco and loose living-were revolting to him." Colonel Fawcett, who followed a strict Victorian code, put it slightly differently: "He is_._._._absolutely virgin in mind and body." Jack, who had wanted to accompany his father on an expedition since he was a boy, had spent years preparing-lifting weights, maintaining a rigid diet, studying Portuguese, and learning how to navigate by the stars. Still, he had suffered little real deprivation, and his face, with its luminescent skin, crisp mustache, and slick brown hair, betrayed none of the hardness of his father's. With his stylish clothes, he looked more like a movie star, which is what he hoped to become upon his triumphant return. Raleigh, though smaller than Jack, was still nearly six feet tall and muscular. (A "fine physique," Fawcett told the R.G.S.) His father had been a surgeon in the Royal Navy and had died of cancer in 1917, when Raleigh was fifteen. Dark-haired, with a pronounced widow's peak and a riverboat gambler's mustache, Raleigh had a jocular, mischievous nature. "He was a born clown," said Brian Fawcett, the "perfect counterpart of the serious Jack." The two boys had been virtually inseparable since they roamed the Devonshire countryside around Seaton, England, where they grew up, riding bicycles and shooting rifles in the air. In a letter to one of Fawcett's confidants, Jack wrote, "Now we have Raleigh Rimell on board who is every bit as keen as I am._._._._He is the only intimate friend I have ever had. I knew him before I was seven years old and we have been more or less together ever since. He is absolutely honest and decent in every sense of the word and we know each other inside out." Read more

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir

From Booklist New Yorker cartoonist and prolific author Chast (What I Hate from A to Z, 2011) writes a bravely honest memoir of watching her parents decline, become too frail to stay in the Brooklyn apartment they called home for five decades, suffer dementia and physical depletion, and die in their nineties in a hospice-care facility. Unlike many recent parent-focused cartoon memoirs, such as Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? (2012) and Nicole J. George’s Calling Dr. Laura (2012), in which the story is as much about the cartoonist’s current work and family life as it is about his or her parents, Chast keeps her narrative tightly focused on her mother and father and her own problematic—though not uncommon—guilt-provoking relationships with them. Chast’s hallmark quirky sketches are complemented by annotated photos from her own and her parents’ childhoods. Occasionally, her hand-printed text will take up more than a full page, but it’s neatly wound into accompanying panels or episodes. An unflinching look at the struggles facing adult children of aging parents. --Francisca Goldsmith Review "By turns grim and absurd, deeply poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Ms. Chast reminds us how deftly the graphic novel can capture ordinary crises in ordinary American lives." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "A tour de force of dark humor and illuminating pathos about her parents’ final years as only this quirky genius of pen and ink could construe them." - Elle "An achievement of dark humor that rings utterly true." - Washington Post "One of the major books of 2014 . . . Moving and bracingly candid . . . This is, in its original and unexpected way, one of the great autobiographical memoirs of our time." - Buffalo News "Better than any book I know, this extraordinarily honest, searing and hilarious graphic memoir captures (and helps relieve) the unbelievable stress that results when the tables turn and grown children are left taking care of their parents. . . [A] remarkable, poignant memoir." - San Francisco Chronicle "Very, very, very funny, in a way that a straight-out memoir about the death of one’s elderly parents probably would not be . . . Ambitious, raw and personal as anything she has produced." - New York Times "Devastatingly good . . . Anyone who has had Chast’s experience will devour this book and cling to it for truth, humor, understanding, and the futile wish that it could all be different." - St. Louis Post Dispatch "Gut-wrenching and laugh-aloud funny. I want to recommend it to everyone I know who has elderly parents, or might have them someday." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Joins Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, William Trevor's The Old Boys, and Kingsley Amis's Ending Up in the competition for the funniest book about old age I've ever read. It is also heartbreaking." - Barnes & Noble Review "Chast tackles those intimate and difficult changes with just the same humor and honesty as everything else. Readers who are starting to transition from children to caretakers of their own parents will find comfort in Chast’s work, and almost anyone can appreciate the pleas to talk about something more pleasant with your family." - Paste, 10 Comics to Help You Escape (or Appreciate) Your Family this Holiday Season "Revelatory… So many have faced (or will face) the situation that the author details, but no one could render it like she does. A top-notch graphic memoir that adds a whole new dimension to readers’ appreciation of Chast and her work." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) " The book is a literary masterpiece. It’s so profound and emotional about death and family, it’s just mind-blowing." - Amanda Peet, Vogue's "Required Reading" "Chast is at the top of her candid form, delivering often funny, trenchant, and frequently painful revelations -- about human behavior, about herself -- on every page." - David Small, author of Stitches "Never has the abyss of dread and grief been plumbed to such incandescently hilarious effect. The lines between laughter and hysteria, despair and rage, love and guilt, are quavery indeed, and no one draws them more honestly, more . . . unscrimpingly, than Roz Chast." - Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home "Roz Chast squeezes more existential pain out of baffled people in cheap clothing sitting around on living-room sofas with antimacassar doilies in crummy apartments than Dostoevsky got out of all of Russia’s dark despair. This is a great book in the annals of human suffering, cleverly disguised as fun." - Bruce McCall, author of Bruce McCall's Zany Afternoons About the Author Roz Chast grew up in Brooklyn. Her cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker in 1978. Since then, she has published more than one thousand cartoons in the magazine. She has written and illustrated many books, including What I Hate: From A to Z , and the collections of her own cartoons The Party After You Left and Theories of Everything . She is the editor of The Best American Comics 2016 and the illustrator of Calvin Trillin's No Fair! No Fair! and Daniel Menaker's The African Svelte , all published in Fall 2016. Read more

Our Day In The Sun

Rick Steves Germany 2018

About the Author Since 1973, Rick Steves has spent about four months a year exploring Europe. His mission: to empower Americans to have European trips that are fun, affordable, and culturally broadening. Rick produces a best-selling guidebook series, a public television series, and a public radio show, and organizes small-group tours that take over 20,000 travelers to Europe annually. He does all of this with the help of a hardworking, well-traveled staff of 100 at Rick Steves' Europe in Edmonds, Washington, near Seattle. When not on the road, Rick is active in his church and with advocacy groups focused on economic justice, drug policy reform, and ending hunger. To recharge, Rick plays piano, relaxes at his family cabin in the Cascade Mountains, and spends time with his partner Trish, son Andy, and daughter Jackie.Connect with Rick:facebook.com/RickStevestwitter: @RickStevesinstagram: ricksteveseurope

Bettyville: A Memoir

Amazon.com Review The Amazon Spotlight Pick for March 2015: When George Hodgman left Manhattan for Paris to visit his aging mother, he didn’t realize it would be the beginning of an unintended, and indeterminate tenure as a caregiver. Did I mention that it’s Paris, Missouri? They say you can’t go home again, and in Hodgman’s case, you can understand why he wouldn’t want to—Paris hadn’t proven to be the most hospitable place for someone coming to terms with their sexuality. This was compounded by the fact that Hodgman’s parents didn’t approve of who he “turned out to be,” which was as specific as they were willing to get on the matter. Any gaps in their understanding were filled with an insidious silence that kept this otherwise loving family at arm’s length. I haven’t forgotten what this book is called and, no doubt, you will fall in love with the impossible and endearing woman that is its namesake. But at its heart, Bettyville serves as a poignant cautionary tale about the dangers of leaving difficult things unsaid, and in these pages, Hodgman practices what he preaches. –Erin Kodicek Review Nautilus Book Awards Gold WinnerPraise for Bettyville “A remarkable, laugh-out-loud book . . . Rarely has the subject of elder care produced such droll human comedy, or a heroine quite on the mettlesome order of Betty Baker Hodgman. For as much as the book works on several levels (as a meditation on belonging, as a story of growing up gay and the psychic cost of silence, as metaphor for recovery), it is the strong-willed Betty who shines through.” — The New York Times “A lovely memoir . . .You won’t finish this tale dry-eyed.” —People , Book of the Week “A gorgeously constructed memoir . . . Hodgman creates an unforgettable portrait of his mother, Betty—a strong-willed nonagenarian struggling against the slow-motion breakdown of her mind and body. He evokes her with wit and tenderness.” —The New York Times Book Review “Without a doubt my favorite book of the year. Wise, witty, and heartbreaking . . . a surprisingly profound and hilarious look at aging, mothers and sons, fathers and sons, growing up gay and small-town life in America.” —Nathan Lane, “Who Read What: Books of the Year 2015,” The Wall Street Journal “A humorous, bittersweet account of Hodgman’s caring for his aging, irascible mother.” — Vanity Fair “Hodgman has written what will be seen, even years from now, as the quintessential book on taking care. . . . His desire to empathize, his focus on goodness, his search for hope allow him to find the beauty in the hour of now.” —Chicago Tribune “An intimate, heartfelt portrait of a mother and son, each at the crossroads of life . . . Hodgman’s sharp wit carries the book ever forward.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “A superb memoir . . . Hodgman is by turns wry, laugh-out-loud funny, self-deprecating, insecure to the point of near suicide, and an attentive caregiver despite occasional, understandable resentments. . . . I have read several hundred American memoirs; I would place Bettyville in the top five.” —Steve Weinberg, Kansas City Star “In his tender, sardonic, and fearless account of life with Betty—who has never acknowledged that her son is gay—Hodgman delivers an epic unfolding of his lifelong search for acceptance and love.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Hodgman paints a witty and poignant portrait of a son and his mother reconciling their differences and learning, among other things, how to cook, come to grips with caretaking, understand unspoken sexuality, and treat each other with patience, love, and self-respect. Surely we all have a beautifully complex and hilarious (if not semi-dysfunctional) relationships with our mothers, but none of us are likely to commemorate it with the skill and humor of Hodgman.” —Los Angeles Magazine “An exquisitely written memoir about the complicated but deeply genuine love a son feels for his courageous, headstrong, vulnerable mother in the twilight of her life. George Hodgman is stunningly clear-eyed and yet so darned big-hearted. Bettyville is just wonderful.” —Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle “The idea of a cultured gay man leaving New York City to care for his aging mother in Paris, Missouri, is already funny, and George Hodgman reaps that humor with great charm. But then he plunges deep, examining the warm yet fraught relationship between mother and son with profound insight and understanding. This book looks outside, too, offering a moving lament for small-town America. Hodgman tenderly evokes the time before family farms and small businesses were replaced by meth labs and Walmarts. Yet he’s not sentimental about that lost world—he knew its cruelties firsthand. As George and his mother come to terms with one another at the end of her days, the book begins to shimmer with something much more rare than love: a boundless, transcendent, and simple kindness. Bettyville is a beautiful book about the strange plenitude that comes from finally letting go of everything.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home “ Bettyville is a beautifully crafted memoir, rich with humor and wisdom. George Hodgman has created an unforgettable book about mothers and sons, and about the challenges that come with growing older and growing up.” —Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club “This is a superior memoir, written in a witty and episodic style, yet at times it’s heartbreaking . . . filled with a lifetime’s worth of reflection and story after fascinating story.” — Library Journal (starred review) “Hodgman writes with wit and empathy about all the loss he’s confronted with. Betty’s poor health is mirrored by the failure of towns like Paris, whose farms and lumberyards are now Walmarts and meth labs. Coming out in the age of AIDS, he lost the people he was close to when he had nowhere else to turn. . . . That doesn’t mean Bettyville is without humor—far from it. Paris eccentrics (one woman shampoos her hair in the soda fountain) compete with Hodgman’s colleagues in the office of Vanity Fair . . . . This is a portrait of a woman in decline, but still very much alive and committed to getting the lion’s share of mini-Snickers at every opportunity. When things are left unsaid between parents and children, it leaves a hurt that can never be completely repaired, but love and dedication can make those scarred places into works of art. Bettyville is one such masterpiece.” — BookPage “The book is instantly engaging, as Hodgman has a wry sense of humor, one he uses to keep others at a distance. Yet the book is also devastatingly touching. Betty is one tough cookie, and she is crumbling. Hodgman as a young man came out around the same time AIDS did, complicating his already complicated feelings immeasurably. There’s a lot for Hodgman to handle, yet he does, despite the urge to give in to his own sadness and his own former drug addiction. A tender, resolute look at a place, literal and figurative, baby boomers might find themselves.” —Booklist “ Bettyville is a gorgeous memoir. I was completely engaged, not just because of George Hodgman’s great ear and his sense of timing, but because he delivers Betty to us in such a manner that she steps off the page . I felt transported to a better place, to a time period and a web of relationships with which we can all identify,  no matter where we grew up. Beyond the humor and the pathos, the quotidian and the bizarre, there remain profound lessons about life and love that I will carry away.” —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone “George Hodgman achieves something stunning with this book—by paying such deep, loving attention to his mother’s (admittedly colorful) life, he offers us the chance to pay close attention to our own strange and beautiful Bettyvilles, which in the end is all we can ask of any art. This bejeweled pillbox is rich and funny and heartwrenching and might just you cure you of your ills; if those ills include loneliness or feeling like you don’t belong—you are not alone.” —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City “One of the great benefits of reading memoir is that it offers the reader more people to love. I love Betty, and I love George Hodgman, whose beautiful book this is. Read Bettyville . Laugh, weep, and be grateful.” —Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life “ Bettyville reminded me of some Homeric legend, complete with treacherous chimeras and ravenous gorgons, except that it is told with such grace, wit, and spirited generosity that you hardly sense you are on a fragile bark, adrift on a perilous sea. This story of a sensitive Midwestern boy coming to terms with his homosexuality, his drug addiction, his clueless parents, his all-out war with shame, is nothing short of epic. It begins as a simple trip home from fast-track Manhattan to Paris, Missouri, to care for a failing mother, but by the time we are through, we have descended to an underworld, witnessed a plague, traveled all nine circles of hell, and emerged exhilarated by the grit and valor of our remarkable guide. It is, in every sense, a tale about the power of love.” —Marie Arana, author of American Chica “With great tenderness, honesty, and a searing, sardonic humor, George Hodgman has written a love letter to his mother, at once a penance and a tribute.  In doing so, he has given us Betty, a character for the ages. This is a beautiful, illuminating book.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion “When I read the first few pages of Bettyville , I immediately connected. The detail is poetry and, yes, George Hodgman tells a story that is all our stories if we grow up different, struggling not to hurt those we treasure. But what I will most remember is the human struggle of Betty—the woman at the window, the woman at the piano, the woman whose desire to help others represents the best of small-town America. The silence she was taught and the complications of our parents’ journeys to be there for us, as best they could, is what I will take away from Bettyville , where she will always reside. Hers is the quiet love that outlasts the distances and lets us survive.” —Richard Blanco, United States inaugural poet, author of The Prince of los Cucuyos: A Miami Childhood About the Author GEORGE HODGMAN is a veteran magazine and book editor who has worked at Simon & Schuster, Vanity Fair , and Talk magazine. His writing has appeared in Entertainment Weekly , Interview , W , and Harper’s Bazaar , among other publications. He lives in New York City and Paris, Missouri. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. This book is dedicated, first and foremost, to my best friends, my parents: George A. and Betty Baker Hodgman. Every word about them is written with love. If only one knew what to remember or pretend to remember. Make a decision and what you want from the lost things will present itself. You can take it down like a can from a shelf. —Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights 1 Missouri is a state of stolen names, bestowed to bring the world a little closer: Versailles, Rome, Cairo, New London, Athens, Carthage, Alexandria, Lebanon, Cuba, Japan, Santa Fe, Cleveland, Canton, California, Caledonia, New Caledonia, Mexico, Louisiana. Paris, our home. Then there are the funny-named places. Licking is a favorite, along with Fair Play, Strain, Elmo, Peculiar, Shook, Lone Jack, Butts, Lupus, Moody, Clover, Polo, Shake Rag, and the T towns that always end my list—Turtle, Tightwad, Tulip, and Tea. When I cannot sleep, I try to see how many I can still name, an old game played with my parents when I was a kid looking out the car window at the rolling brown waters of the Mississippi. . . . Something has awakened me, though inside there is only the sound of the air conditioner and outside it is pitch black and quiet, but for the trains. The clock says 2:30, give or take. I won’t go back to sleep. Where am I? Not in my apartment; there are no sirens, horns, or streaks of neon shining through the blinds. This is not Manhattan, not Chelsea, not West Twenty-third Street. I am home, in Paris, Missouri, population 1,246 and falling. Living here, I say to myself, for just a few more days or weeks. For now. Until Carol, the good-hearted farm woman who helps watch out for Betty, recovers from surgery on her rotator cuff. Or until my mother can be admitted to an assisted living facility. Until there is rain, or Betty’s spirits mend, or I get a regular job again. Until something happens here on Sherwood Road, and my mother is gone, and I must close up shop. I hear Betty’s voice from the hall: “Who turned up the air-conditioning so high? He’s trying to freeze me out.” And here she is, all ninety years of her, curlers in disarray, chuckling a bit to herself for no reason, peeking into our guest room where I have been mostly not sleeping. It is the last place in America with shag carpet. In it, I have discovered what I believe to be a toenail from high school. On the spare bed, there is a quilt with stars and crescent moons, figures of girls and boys joining hands along the borders, and the embroidered signatures of long-gone farm women, including my great-aunt Mabel’s. I am installed here, along with the Christmas wrappings, the desk of Betty’s uncle Oscar, and the bed I slept in with my grandmother as a boy, listening to Mammy’s snores and the sound of the furnace startled into service. My grandmother’s home in the village of Madison, ten or so miles west of us, where my mother grew up, was nicknamed the House of Many Chimneys. In the garden by the back door there were pink roses, which my grandmother, half blind and old, fretted over constantly, nicking her fingers on the thorns. The hallway light is on. Betty has been in the kitchen, cadging a snack as she does in the middle of the night after being awakened by the need for the bathroom or dreams that make her cry out. Something—her dreams, her thoughts, her memories—hounds my mother at night. A light sleeper, she toddles around in her thick white socks, clearing her throat loudly, veering slightly from side to side, turning on the coffee, which will be cold by morning, checking to see if everything is in her own odd idea of order. After she has gone to bed, I try to light the path she takes to the kitchen in the dark, leaving on the lamp in my father’s office, along with one in the foyer, to provide a trail to guide her through the hall. “Are you awake?” my mother asks. “I am now,” I say. Betty, who I recently discovered sorting through the contents of my suitcase, turns on the overhead light in my room, wrinkles her brow, and peers in like a camp counselor on an inspection tour, as if she suspects I might be entertaining someone who has paddled in from across the lake. She must keep an eye out. I am a schemer. There are things going on behind her back, plans afoot, she fears. She has no intention of cooperating with any of them. When the phone rings, she listens to every word, not sure if she can trust me with her independence. I don’t blame her. I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors. I am a care inflictor. She’s not easy to corral. Her will remains at blast-force strength. “It’s a hot day, but I’m going to that sale,” she murmured last week in her sleep as outside the temperature soared past a hundred and, in her dream, she jabbed her finger up to place a bid. She is testier with me than anyone, sometimes slapping the air if I come too close. There are days I cannot please her. Carol, who has worked in nursing homes, says that old people who are failing get the angriest with those they are most attached to, the people who make them realize they are no longer themselves. But Betty’s crankiness is an act, I think, a way to conceal her embarrassment at having to ask anything of anyone. When I do something for her, she looks away. Accustomed to fending for herself, she hates all this. . . . “I was worried,” Betty says. “You said last night you couldn’t sleep. I was worried you wouldn’t sleep tonight.” She stares at me. “No, I’m sleeping. I’m asleep. Right now I’m talking in my sleep.” “You’re in bed in your clothes again.” “I dozed off reading.” (Actually, I go to bed in clothes because I am waiting to be called into action, anticipating a fall, or stroke, or shout out. She seems so frail when I tuck her in. I keep the ambulance number, along with the one for the emergency room, on my bedside table.) “It isn’t a good thing for people to go to bed in their clothes . . . The Appeal didn’t come today,” she complains. Our little town’s newspaper, which reports civic events, charitable campaigns, and church news—including the “Movement of the Spirit” at the Full Gospel Church—has appeared erratically recently, possibly because of the increasingly short-staffed post office. This is the kind of lag that can throw my mother into crisis mode. She wants what she wants when she wants it. “Did someone call today? From the church? I can’t find my other shoe, the Mephisto.” I say we will look in the morning, and my mother, somewhat satisfied, almost smiles. For a second, there is the old Betty, who does not often appear now, my old friend. In St. Louis, when we turn off Skinker onto Delmar, not far from the University City gates, Betty always points out the place where, as a young woman, working as a secretary at Union Electric, she waited for the streetcar. She seldom mentions the past, but loves to return to that old streetcar stop. Back in the 1940s, after the war, she was a pretty girl with wavy light brown hair, fresh from the “Miss Legs” contest at the university. Listening to her memories, I see her in a cast-off coat, not long after the war, looking down the tracks toward Webster Groves where she stayed with her aunt, called Nona. There is innocence in her expression, excitement at her new city life as she stands by other women in expensive dresses, the sort that Mammy never allowed her to buy. Sometimes I wonder whether she wishes she had gotten on that streetcar and ridden it to some other life. By the time my mother realized that she was smart or saw she had the kind of looks that open doors, she had already closed too many to go back. “I just wanted a house with a few nice things,” she told me once. “That was my little dream.” . . . Betty—actually Elizabeth, or, on her best stationery, Elizabeth Baker Hodgman—doesn’t see well at all. Certain corners of the world are blurred. Her hearing sometimes fails her, but it is often difficult to determine whether she is missing something or simply choosing not to respond. Also, she is suffering from dementia or maybe worse. Some days she is just about fine, barking orders at Earleen, our cleaning lady, sharp enough to play bridge with her longtime partners. Other times, though, she is a lost girl with sad eyes. I am scared I am going to break her. I am new at all this. We have hunts for liquid tears, or checks, or hearing aids, or the blouse Earleen was supposed to have ironed for church. The mind of my mother has often drifted away from peripheral matters. She has always been busy on the inside, a little far away. Now more than ever, she is in and out, more likely to drift off into her own world for a minute or two. Or sit staring for long spells with a vacant look. Or forget the name of someone she knew, back then, before she had to worry about not remembering. In the afternoons, her whimpers and moans, her little chats with herself are all I hear in the house. The nights, especially just before bed, are the worst. She knows something is happening to her, but would never say so. We circle around her sadness, but she will not let me share it. Acknowledging anything would make it real. These, I fear, are her last days as herself. . . . My mother always drove fast, never stayed home. In the old days, we sped across the plains in our blue Impala, radio blaring DJ Johnny Rabbitt’s all-American voice on KXOK St. Louis. She took me to the county line where I waited for the bus to kindergarten. My mother—“too damn high strung,” my father said—stayed in the bathroom fussing with her hair and smoking Kent cigarettes until the very last minute. “I look like something the cat drug in,” she told herself, frowning into the mirror. When she finally came out, I’d be sitting on the hood of the car, my Batman lunch box already empty except for wads of foil and a few hastily scraped carrots. “I’m a nervous wreck,” I’d cry out. I was an only child, raised mostly among adults. I repeated what I heard and didn’t get half of what I was saying. “Why are you just sitting there?” she’d yell as if I were the one delaying things. Those mornings, heading to school, I learned to love pop music, a lifelong fixation. My mother and I sang along to “This Diamond Ring” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers, and Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” Betty took her shoe off the foot she used for the gas pedal and almost floored it. I like fast things, and the highway between Madison and Moberly will always be one of the places where I will see my mother, hair wrapped in rollers under a scarf, wearing a pair of sunglasses, taking me off into the big wide world. “What are you looking at, little demon?” she would ask. “Don’t bug me,” I’d say. “Mind your own business.” “You are my business.” “Betty,” my father often said, “no one would mistake that kid for anyone’s but yours.” I was Betty’s boy. This year, Betty had to give up her driver’s license after backing into a ditch. Now she must sit home, awaiting invitations. “They won’t even let me go to the grocery store,” she says. Her eyes are wistful and her fingers, with their chipped pink polish, are itchy for the feel of the car keys. . . . Suddenly, Betty yells out. “Oh God,” I think as I run to her, trip on a hair curler and barely escape ankle injury. “What is it?” I ask as I approach her door. “What is it?” “Say,” she begins, “you didn’t get toilet paper.” We go through enough toilet paper for an army. I think she is involved in some sort of art project. A kind of Christo thing. “I’ll get some tomorrow,” I say. “That suits me,” she answers, pausing before asking, “Did you make me a hair appointment?” “I told them it was an emergency.” It is 3 a.m. I steal a cigarette from my mother’s old, hidden cache and sit out on the step in front of our house in the dark. The mailbox made by my father is falling apart now. I would fix it, but am not handy. Nor do I assemble. A trip to Ikea is enough to unhinge me. I would prefer a spinal tap to putting together a coffee table. I am running out of meals I know how to prepare. Tonight, feeling nostalgic, I rolled out tuna casserole made with Campbell’s Mushroom Soup and crushed potato chips. “I didn’t know anyone still made this,” she said. “I was trying to think outside the box . . . Mushrooms are vegetables. Or are they a fungus?” “Be still.” Mushrooms, I realized, are a fungus. I had served my mother a fungus casserole. With barbecue potato chips. . . . “There is no such thing as a perfect parent.” Betty always said that. But to me she was perfect. Especially when she thought she was not. In grade school, on holidays, the mothers brought refreshments. Popcorn balls—crunchy white confections with the popped kernels held together with sorghum—were my favorites. When it was her turn to bring treats, Betty asked what I wanted. I said, “Popcorn balls.” She said, “Oh brother,” and lit a cigarette. The kitchen was not her natural habitat. Her tendency to never turn things off led to exploding percolators and smoky puffs from toasters. A few days after my popcorn-ball request, I found Betty in front of the oven in her hair rollers, which were held in place with pink picks that tended to turn up all around the house. The kitchen, never a page from Good Housekeeping, was strewn with bowls and baking sheets. Sticky lumps of popcorn and fallen curlers were everywhere. On a tray there was a strange grouping of misshapen popcorn balls. When I said they were supposed to be all the same size, Betty appeared exasperated, harassed, so forlorn and disappointed. She had failed. Nothing was right. She thought she had to be some kind of model mother. I reached for a ball and took a bite. “I think these are the best I’ve had,” I told her as I stuck some of the picks from her curlers into the balls so they would look a little snazzy. “Why are you doing that?” she said. “Go outside and throw something.” . . . My mother should not live alone now, but vetoes all conventional alternatives. I try to pretend I am in control. It is my time to play the grown-up and I don’t want the part. “Don’t put me in a place with a lot of old people,” she says. “Fine,” I say to myself. “I’ll go.” In my apartment in New York there are tumbling piles of books and, in the refrigerator, cartons of take-out food I forgot to throw out. By now it must have sprouted new life forms. I imagine squatters with grimy faces, warming their hands over fires crackling from large rusty barrels. Chickens are running everywhere, clucking and bursting madly into flight. I am probably going to have to stay here in Missouri and become a horse whisperer. I have three pairs of pants and about five summer shirts, food-stained from my culinary efforts. This visit, for my mother’s birthday, was supposed to last two weeks. It is getting on two months. I lost my job; I have the time. I am not a martyr. I am just available, an unemployed editor relegated to working freelance. I think about leaving, but cannot seem to make it to the plane. My fingers will not dial the American Airlines number and I realize that my place in New York would feel very empty if I returned. I miss the company of people from work. I’d miss Betty too. Turns out I am a person who needs people. I hate that. “Don’t leave me,” Betty says, if I go to bed before she is ready also. “Are you going to leave me?” If I start to move my work to my father’s desk in the back of the house, forsaking the card table near the couch that is her center of command, she begs me to stay. She sits beside me all day, always wants me near, a real change from the woman who was always shooing me away, off to camp or college, or the next phase, off to be independent. If I allow someone else to take her to the doctor—the foot doctor, say, not an emergency situation—she is angry for a day or two. This is how it is now. My mother is scared. I cannot believe it. But she will not speak of her fears. She is locked up tight. She keeps her secrets. I keep mine. That is our way. We have always struggled with words. I am never certain quite what I will wake up to. Recently, as she was preparing for our daily walk, I discovered her trying to put her sock on over her shoe. This interlude, I know, cannot last. My life, such as it is, is on hold. I am worried by how we are living now, scared of drifting, losing footing on my own ground. Soon she will need more than I can provide, but she is not ready to give up. Despite her vision, her fading hearing, her stomach problems, and the rest, she tries to hold on in this place that is so familiar, her home. It is the smallest things that trouble my mother most—the glass broken, the roast she cannot bake right, the can opener she cannot command to do its work, the TV remote control she cannot operate. Tell her the house is on fire and she will go on with the newspaper. Tell her you cannot find her address book and she will almost fold. Yet she has always been a determined woman, a force. She has been my rock and I am convinced that, at some level, she has survived to give me—a gay man whose life she has never understood—a place to call home. In her wake now, a path of open cabinets, dirty Kleenexes and crumbs, cantaloupe seeds on the couch and the floor, bills she intends to pay, food left out to spoil. I polish the silver, fix her meals, buy her new bracelets, leave Peppermint Patties under her pillow, drive her to her battalion of doctors. I buy mountains of fresh fruit, still—like ice cream—a luxury for a woman raised in the country during the Depression. Even after decades of relative prosperity, a bowl of fresh strawberries remains a thing of beauty to her, a wonderful surprise. She spies them with the delight of an excited girl. I try to imagine anything that will make her a little happier. If only, just once in a while, she could look a little happier. I know that her days are numbered in this house, built by my father, where deer run in the backyard and Sara Dawson down the street watches for Betty’s light in the mornings, in the kitchen window where so many times I have seen my mother’s face watching out for me as I turned into the driveway. For both of us, finally, I know, these are our final days of home. I am a loner, but I hate to lose people. I can only imagine how scary it is to know that the person one is losing is oneself. 2 In Missouri in springtime, the rivers rise and the rolling fields stretching acres and acres, miles and miles, gradually go green as the farmers fret over the wet ground, wondering when it will be dry enough to disc and get the crops out. In the mornings, old women wander through wet grass, bending with dirty hands over jonquils or bursts of peonies, rising to inspect children walking to school or hang summer clothes to air in the breeze. In April and May, torrents of rain come, lightning chars the tree trunks, and the branches fall, and the thunderclaps crash. Creeks and rivers flood the river bottoms and roads. Betty hit the gas and drove through the water, never acknowledging anything unusual. More twisters touch down here than ever now. A few years back, the town of Joplin, a few hundred miles away, was nearly destroyed by a funnel cloud that gathered force as it made its way across the plains. Many people died. The world took note. Betty had little to report. These things happen. That is life. One year, near Paris, a farmer was taken up in the winds. Betty did not register the event, just marched on. She is from determined stock. According to a family story, my mother’s grandmother Anna Callison began a journey one spring morning at the age of eighty-five, departing from Union Station in St. Louis. She traveled alone by train halfway across the country, to Virginia, where as a girl during the Civil War she fetched a drink of water for Traveller, the horse of General Robert E. Lee. She headed back to catch a glimpse of Traveller’s bones, which had been recently excavated, to remember the morning when she saw the general, the war, the days when she was a girl. No one could stop her. Not Mammy, or Nona, or Uncle Oscar. “That old woman was crazy,” Betty says. . . . Spring is long gone now; it is August and the heat has been record breaking. No rain since June. Even the river bottom looks like desert and the corn in the fields is burning on the stalks. On the television news at 6 p.m., I learn that members of the Missouri legislature, some of whom carry guns into sessions, are considering a bill to ban the imposition of sharia law. There is a controversy over a resolution forbidding teenagers access to tanning beds without parental permission. Betty scrutinizes the television. “They are going to start arresting teenagers for illegal tanning,” I tell her. “You’re not as funny as you think you are,” she replies. My humor makes her look as pained as she did at parties when my father, a tenor, and never bashful, belted out barroom ditties as the other husbands strained to mutter a word. I am irony. She is no nonsense. Our lives have been lived on different planes. I like staying up all night, hunched over a manuscript, playing with the words and sentences. I like setting out for somewhere early in the morning when no one is stirring. When I scan my existence, I can recognize no recognizable pattern. At home in New York, I listen to music, read books, fish old photographs from trash cans on the street. I like the unconventional, the city and its stories, castoffs and characters of dubious reputation. My mother has sometimes lived her life for the neighbors. I have never been able to remember the neighbors’ names. . . . “Who is that?” Betty demands to know as a kid roars by in his pickup as we back out of our driveway into the early evening. “Now where is he going?” On the corner, where the city is excavating and there is a pile of dirt, she demands, “What are they doing? It looks like they’ve dug a big hole. You better watch out.” She is wearing the jeans she will never take off and a blouse with wrinkles she cannot see. For many days this pairing has been her choice. I have given up trying to control her clothes. God grant me the serenity to accept the clothes I cannot change. We are thirty minutes late for a dinner so I hit the gas, and in moments we are turning onto 24, heading out of town. We pass a church, not so well kept up, where the sign that usually displays Bible verses beckons with a request: PRAY FOR RAIN. Prayers are frequent around here, especially this summer. Angels are hoped for. A woman nearly killed in a car crash on I-70 claims to have seen an angel crossing the road before her car veered out of control. We pass the place where, some years back, Major’s Drive-In Theater blew down in a bad spring storm. We pass shiny black cows. Mammy always talked about how pretty she thought black cows looked against green grass. But the grass is not green this summer and Mammy is a long time gone. Betty sighs as she surveys the fields. “It’s a good thing we don’t have to try to sell lumber to the farmers this year,” she said. “Lotsa luck.” She hugs her purse, a bag of flowered cloth I purchased for her birthday and she declared too youthful. “I thought you didn’t like that purse,” I commented. “It’s bought and paid for,” she says. “I’m not going to turn my nose up at it.” This is the real country, not a place for rich weekenders. Tractors putt along highways where vapor rises and tar melts. We go by one of the lumberyards our family used to own, closed decades now, where a meth lab was discovered in an outbuilding. Betty turns her head rather than see the place. Some man keeps a collection of boa constrictors on the premises now. Recently one escaped to slither down Rock Road toward the home of my high school typing teacher, an excitable woman, unprepared for a morning of snake wrestling. To my way of thinking, the only proper place for a boa is around Cher’s neck at the Golden Globes. Dinner is at the home of Jane Blades, my old friend. We are late because Betty has demanded her gin and tonic, her five o’clock ritual. When Betty asks whom Jane is married to, I say, “No one you know.” She says she hopes Jane does not have to support him. “Whoever he is.” Betty never thinks anyone has married the right person. Some speak of love and romance. This is not my mother. A ring on the finger is not, in her opinion, a ticket to high heaven, but she is usually curious about the quality of the diamond. . . . “I shouldn’t even be going,” Betty says. “I’m an ugly old woman. I’m an old battle-ax.” “How do you think I feel?” I ask her. “I don’t have a pair of decent pants I can button over my stomach.” “You could take off a few pounds.” “Did you fix your hair that way intentionally?” “Just be quiet. Don’t say a word.” “I’m probably headed for a gastric bypass.” “Stop,” she says. “Don’t talk. . . . Al Roker had one.” “What?” “A gastric bypass. He had it on The Today Show .” “During the weather report?” “Everyone could see it. I thought Earleen would never shut up about it.” . . . Betty peers at the huge metal barbecue on Jane’s patio. “What is that ?” she asks. “I don’t know,” I say. “A school bus?” When Jane comes out, we hug, but Betty draws back. Her family, the Bakers, did not hug socially, and she is not a woman who cares much for such. Nor is she often sentimental. Inside a silver locket she has worn for years, a gift from my father, are the stock photographs of strangers it came with. When she speaks of dying, I tell her how sad I will be. She waves my words away. “The world goes on,” she says. Jane’s house is nice, but a little bare compared to ours, cluttered with antiques laden with hat-pin holders, candy dishes, decanters, ashtrays, and figurines. Many of our things are dusty, but Betty can’t see well enough to recognize this. One could safely say that she considers the absence of bric-a-brac a social problem roughly comparable to malnutrition. My father, the unofficial architect of the lumberyards once owned by my mother’s family, supervised the remodeling of Jane’s house decades ago. He gave my friend his greatest compliment. She did not, as he always put it, dillydally over everything. When I bring this up, Jane says my dad made her laugh, Betty says nothing. She never mentions my father, dead since 1997. She is always silent about loss. “Oh God, what a character,” Jane says of Big George. My mother stares at me. Inside is Evie Cullers, a colorful soul whose light blue sweatshirt says COUNTRY KWWR, MISSOURI’S SUPERSTATION; it looks clean enough for a baby. A former floral designer, now in her sixties, Evie sometimes bemoans the poor quality of current funerals and warns of the pitfalls of cremation. “They burn everybody on the same tray and there is a potential for getting one person’s ashes mixed up with another’s. “If I’m gonna be livin’ in a urn,” she declared, “I’m not crazy about the idea of having a roommate.” I love Evie because she is a character; Betty is sympathetic to her as both have vision problems. “I was over to Wal-Mart,” Evie tells me. “I was searching for something in the drug section and asked some kid for help, said I was visually impaired. He said he’d get someone. Five minutes later, I hear over the loudspeaker, ‘Blind woman needs help in drugs.’ I mean, what else do they say on the loudspeaker at Wal-Mart? ‘We got a bitch in toys’?” Betty’s eye difficulties, not quite as serious as Evie’s now—thanks to a legion of doctors and treatments—began when I was in grade school when her retina detached during a surgery for a condition called latticed retinas that Mammy had as well. There have been eight or ten surgeries since then, culminating in transplanted corneas. It has been decades since she has seen clearly, but no complaints have been uttered. She has played the hand she was dealt, bluffing her way at night or on cloudy days. Just like Evie. . . . We stand around the kitchen island. Betty accepts a glass of wine, but I decline because I have to. I’m nervous, but can’t drink; I can’t take anything that isn’t prescribed. I have a history. Twenty years ago, I was snorting lines of speed before I went to work. When I crashed I never told Betty what had happened. I knew she would try to help, but I knew what she would think of me. I listen as everyone talks about their children. Betty, not one to fuss over wee ones or beg to hold a baby, pays little attention to the pictures being passed. She is quiet, as she is in public these days. She seems to have declared herself beyond participation. Sometimes she seems to fade away. By the time she goes to bed, when things get bad, she will have fewer pieces left in place. Camilla, Jane’s sister, who has worked construction all over the world, including in Iraq, talks about Baghdad. The city, she says, barely exists now. “Just like here,” remarks Evie. “Stoutsville is just gone. We had banks, stores, a restaurant, even a movie theater. And the trains. Every time I heard the whistle, I’d run down to the tracks to wave at the engineer. In summer, the gypsies would come and steal everything. They wore bright colors and drove old cars. Mama would tell us to get under the bed when they were around. People said they liked to run off with children. “There’s not a kid here anybody’d take now.” “In ten years,” says Camilla, “we could be sitting around this table and there could be no Paris at all.” . . . Places like Paris are vanishing. Main Streets in all the towns around are boarded up. Gone are Lillibelle’s Dress Shop, Mrs. Bailey’s department store, Nevin’s Florist, the barbershop where old farmers emerged after a cut and card game to take a pinch of chewing tobacco from the pockets of their overalls. We are decades past the last picture show. Wal-Mart, staffed by those known as Wal-martians, has taken its toll. There is a bail bondsman, and on television, a place called Family Pawn advertises relentlessly. “I’ve never pawned anything,” Betty has confessed to me. “Have you?” I read histories of the place I am from—the Civil War battles, the characters, the traveling Chautauquas, the old houses that lined the shady streets when Paris was the heart of “Little Dixie,” a bastion of Southern sympathy. Long ago, there was an opera house; a grand hotel; a woolen mill that produced yarns, flannel, and blankets. There was a pottery works; a flour mill; plow, wagon, and shoe factories; tobacco warehouses; a feed store; a livery stable; a factory where cigars (Queen of Paris) were made and a wooden Indian stood out front. At Murphy and Bodine’s Clothing Store, a huge stuffed bear in the window displayed men’s coats and hats. Things are different now. A book I read said three things changed rural America: the breakup of the family farm; Wal-Mart; meth. . . . After dinner, Jamie Callis, who graduated a year before me, arrives. The immediate center of attention, she is bawdier than I remembered and I am miffed; I want the spotlight. In the kitchen, Jane whispers that this is Jamie’s first time out since her husband, a veteran, committed suicide. A few days ago when Earleen told Betty all about this, my mother interrupted: “Stop, stop. I can’t hear that. I can’t hear it.” Betty shyly edges her hand toward Jamie’s; she wants to offer something, but cannot reach her without calling attention to herself, and when she sees that I am looking, she withdraws. . . . Driving home, we pass Jamie’s big old house, which was her parents’, and Betty notices a flower bed at the edge of her driveway. “I hope her flowers make it,” Betty says. “Hers more than anyone’s. Look at that woman. A lot of people would fold. She’s carrying on. I like her.” Later, Betty and I are watching the news. She looks up, unhappy. “I’m ignorant, aren’t I?” she asks. “Jane’s sister’s gone everywhere. I’ve never been anywhere much. I never went far.” Ignorance has always been one of my mother’s greatest fears—for herself and for me. Growing up, she emphasized that I would be going to college. She planned for me to become a lawyer, like my father’s father, in St. Louis. I didn’t see it. When I was a kid, I had no notion of what could happen to me. I knew that, somehow, I did not fit exactly; but this was my home. I loved my home. I still hear the sound of the clothes falling in the dryer on the other side of my bedroom wall in our old house. On hot nights I lay with my head at the end of my bed to catch the breeze from the humming fan. Out my window, I could see the field, planted with soybeans. All summer long, Bobby Buck and I ran between the rows of beans all afternoon; at night after supper; and then after dark, when it felt dangerous to go barefoot, as we always were. A curled-up snake might be waiting underfoot. Some animal might spring up. I closed my eyes and took off. Across the street lived the Masons—J.C. and Maggie and their kids, Kevin and Missy. J.C., who drove a big gravel truck, or Maggie took us all to grade school in their sea-green Chrysler, its ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. “Your love,” the radio played, “is like a itchin’ in my heart,” or “Come on, come on boy, see about me.” Early morning in Missouri: fog billowing around the grain elevators, streets slick with ice, blue windows, big women in aprons behind the diner counter beating the hell out of egg yolks. “Tell me a joke,” Missy cried, her small face streaked with a bit of breakfast, swimming in the hood of a parka circled with dirty fluff. “Say a joke. Say a joke. Say a joke.” I was always trying to be funny. I remember Missy, maybe four years old, in winter, with skinned knees in a torn pair of shorts and a pair of her mother’s battered high heels, making her way across the highway, hair full of flakes of snow. Most kids lived on farms. Some of the country kids brought the same lunches every day: one strip of bologna on a slice of bread folded around with a dot of mustard. One girl had skin so dry from walking in the cold to feed that no one would touch her when we played games. I read books and worried. Sometimes when company came I hid in the front closet, among the coats, with their just dry-cleaned smell and blue plastic wrappings. In summer I hung around the house, filling the captain’s decanters with Dr. Pepper, which I drank from my parents’ wineglasses. I watched TV, mostly soap operas: As the World Turns, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and The Edge of Night . When something remarkable happened, I called my aunt June, long-distance, to discuss these events. June—married to my mother’s younger brother, Bill, was a former beauty operator whose home was decorated with furniture from her parents’ funeral parlor in Kansas. She always thought she knew who had done the murders. “I can tell,” she said, as if gifted with special insight into homicide, a special benefit, she implied, of being raised in the funeral home business. In the afternoons I peeped into the tavern to see who was drunk or rode my bike to Mammy’s where a handful of old ladies—Winnie Baker, Betty’s aunt; her sister Maude Eubank; Ruth Holder; and Bess Swartz—often played canasta. Mammy kept score with a pencil she sharpened with a kitchen knife and stuck in her pinned-up braids. She reminded the women, when they excused themselves, not to put paper in the toilet, which was temperamental. I sat on the front porch, listening and reading Ladies’ Home Journal, particularly absorbed by the monthly column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” though I somehow knew I would never be kissing the bride. I sometimes walked with Mammy to Mildred’s Beauty Shop, where I read Photoplay and Modern Screen as the blue-haired ladies lined up, waiting for the dryers in their bibs and wave clips, their new hair colors dripping in rivulets down the sides of their heads. Mammy didn’t go to Mildred’s that often. When it was possible, she washed her hair in rainwater, collected in a flat tin pan, kept on the top of the well, amid the pink roses covered in coffee grounds and eggshells, their branches held together with nylon stockings. . . . Before bed, I check Facebook where Jamie Callis has written, “Why can’t we go back in time? Joyful family and love.” I hear my mother talking to herself as she does when it gets late and she seems particularly anxious and confused. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks herself over and over. “What’s wrong with you?” For a minute, I think she is talking to me. But she would only be so ferocious with herself. “Are you okay, Betty?” I ask. “Are you okay?” Standing in the doorway of her room, I see her wagging her finger at someone who is not there. “I’m fine,” she says. She is yelling at me all of a sudden. “I’m fine.” She is so frustrated, ashamed of herself. I want to go to her, give her a hug, but she would just draw back. “You’re my buddy,” I tell her. “Am I?” she asks. “You know I wouldn’t want just another damn sweet old lady,” I say. Later when I look in, she is dozing with the covers kicked off and her purse in bed beside her, making the odd, sweet noises old people make when they sleep. When she opens her eyes, I put an old soft towel in the dryer to warm up and then spread it around her feet, which she complains get cold at night. 3 Here in Paris, too anxious to linger after the alarm, I get up early to edit in the quiet. A freelance book editor I am struggling to balance Betty, manuscripts with snarled sentences—and my checkbook. Last night, I was up late on the phone with one of my clients, a loon from Los Angeles who believes he has dug up an unprosecuted Nazi still stomping around Germany. Instead of actually acting on my edits, he has e-mailed hundred of documents to be summarized for entry into the text. I have had very little sleep. My sympathies are veering toward the Reich. Mornings in New York, I could be found editing books through the night, at the Malibu Diner on West Twenty-third Street. I sipped my coffee, watched the street and the people, scrutinizing the cops mingling with ancient ladies with drop earrings, streaks of red on their faces, and blaring lipstick—old showgirl types, their often-tinted hair in dry curlicues, who come out early to order rye toast and soft-boiled eggs. I have always lived alone. My life as an editor of books and magazines has been spent lingering in the white spaces between lines of copy, trying to get the work perfect. I was raised to get it right. I was raised to work. These were some of the things my mother taught me by example. . . . Betty started playing the piano when she was a girl. She has a way with the instrument, but it was my father’s voice that people really noticed. Big George was known for singing. The possessor of a voice that could boost celebrants and move even casual mourners, he performed at weddings and special occasions in Madison and Paris. Betty accompanied him. One night, I remember her practicing the “The Lord’s Prayer” over and over so many times I got a headache. “Stop playing ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’” I screamed out from my bedroom. “Don’t bug me,” Betty yelled back. “I’m in a mood.” When my father came home, later than usual, I threw my arms around him as my mother asked where he had been. She said they had to practice for a funeral the next day. We hadn’t had much dinner. Betty never really ate, just pushed her food around on her plate. She wanted to stay thin. “Thy kingdom come,” my father sang, “thy will be done.” His voice filled the house. They went through the song over and over as I slept on the couch. The warmth of my father’s hand on my back brought me back. When I got up, he stood me in front of him with his hands on my shoulders and my feet on his work boots. He walked me all the way to my room like this as Betty kept on at the piano. Betty kept practicing just to make sure she got it right, got it perfect. I had listened to my mother so many nights, playing the church songs over and over; I could sleep through it. But my father, a man with a temper, never could. Big George got up, furious. “Dammit, Betty. Dammit,” he said, his voice loud and angry, “leave that alone and come to bed. I am worn the hell out.” “No one,” my mother yelled back, “wants to hear the pianist hit a clunker when they’re about to go into the ground.” . . . All through school, I worked as hard as I could, tried to win approval. From anyone. I was so hungry for something. My quest to be perfect never really stopped. I tried at work, on every project, at all the jobs I held. For a long time, as I moved from job to job, I was always praised and got promoted, over and over. But I never got it quite right. I am not sure my mother believes she ever got it right either. I don’t think she believes that either one of us have ever really hit the mark. I struggle with my moods. They come in big waves, erratic and intense, though I hide them. I have had to fight at times to stay upright. But here my mother keeps me going. I just get up. I crack the eggs, pick the pieces of shell out of the bowl, and flick them across the room with my fingertips. This morning, as usual, there was coffee, ready and waiting. Every night Betty changes the filter and puts the water, some of which she always manages to spill, into our old, huffy-puffy machine. During her night missions she turns it on for when I come in. She is very conscientious about this; it almost is the last task, aside from the laundry, that she is able to complete successfully. Although she can still play the piano occasionally for church, she cannot cook, or clean, or do anything that requires organizational ability or thinking ahead. She makes the coffee too weak, but if I try to intercede before she gets to it, she looks hurt. It is her job. And she thinks I use too much Folgers. “Coffee’s high,” she says. “Coffee’s high-priced.” Procrastinating, trying to avoid the Nazi hunter’s last crazed draft, I snag this and that from the kitchen. A day that begins with four coffees, two cinnamon rolls, and several trips to the refrigerator for caramel praline ice cream is likely to lead a person into risky emotional territory. If that doorbell rings it had better not be a Jehovah’s Witness. . . . “What is that stuff you drink at Christmas?” Betty asks when she gets up. “What is the name of that stuff you drink at Christmas? I lay awake half last night trying to remember the name of it.” “Eggnog,” I say. We are to drive to Columbia to the hairdresser later. If we don’t leave by noon, we’ll be late and Bliss, Betty’s hairdresser at Waikiki Coiffures, will throw a fit or, as she has threatened, cancel my mother’s appointment. I hate Bliss. She stares at my mother’s clothes on the bad days when we don’t get things quite right. Betty pretends not to notice, but I see how it hurts her feelings. There is a lot she pretends not to notice these days. She doesn’t even seem to take in the weather. This is the third month of the drought. There may be hope for beans, but not for the corn; the farmers are cutting it down for silage. I have never known exactly what silage is, but I wonder if it would enhance a dinner salad. Our flowers, miraculously, have survived, mostly. I am trying my best to keep them alive. In the mornings my mother stands at the window in the dining room, where the silver is tarnished now, in front of a wicker stand where she once kept geraniums, gazing out at the roses for as long as she can bear to stand up. Her face in the pane is like streaks of a watercolor. Even though she is old, I think she is more beautiful than ever, softer. You would never guess her age until she speaks. I do my best to make sure that when she looks in the mirror, there is someone who is familiar though sometimes nothing else is. When dealing with older women, a trip to a hairdresser and two Bloody Marys goes further than any prescription drug. . . . The pink rosebushes came from my grandmother’s garden in Madison. My uncle Bill, adept at an astonishing range of skills, moved them here for Betty after my grandmother gave up her house. “I am grateful to Bill for that,” she says. As if there is not much else she gives him credit for. “It was a hard job. He worked and worked. He worked hard.” When I lie awake worrying about what will come next, I wonder if my mother is contemplating, as she stands at that window, what will become of her mother’s roses—transplanted by her brother’s old rough hands, pruned by my father, watered and tended by the family through decades of harsh summer sun—after she is gone. Caring for things—flowers or people—has never been my strong point. I worry about doing right by my mother. She deserves someone who can help her better, someone who can change a flat or stuff a turkey. My life has been unconventional. I have walked the streets of New York City, lived in studio apartments, eaten tons of takeout. I have made only desultory attempts at personal arrangements. In fact, I have no personal arrangements. Maybe it is impossible to come home again and not to wonder how it is that things turned out quite this way, why I am here, how it came to this, how it is that I cannot quite find the appropriate term for my “lifestyle,” why it is that my mother simply shakes her head when I share details of my existence, why she cannot bring herself to speak of my life. . . . My mother has never tried to be anyone but herself. “At least I’m out and out with my meanness,” she says. “I’m not a sneak. I hate a sneak.” When I was growing up, we tussled a lot, but never really fought. Yes, Betty had her blowups, her bad days, her little tempests, but there was also the sly way she winked when I came home in the midst of one of her bridge games; the way she rolled her eyes at Mrs. Corn in church just for me to see. I was her conspirator and she made me laugh or want to reach out, sometimes, to protect the part of her that rarely showed, her secret soft spot. At the country club, where she could turn a game of golf into a disaster movie, her face took on a wistful look as she watched her ball plunk down a few feet from the tee. Once on Ladies’ Day, Doris Rixsey took the golf club from her hand and said, “Honey, let’s just go have a highball.” Read more

Coming Out to Play

Review “Rogers made history… As the first openly gay male to play a game in a major professional team sport in North America, Rogers’ ascension to becoming a pioneer was complete. Rogers’ return was symbolic, poetic and seamless all at the same time.” Avi Creditor, Sports Illustrated “By standing up, coming out and continuing to play the sport he loves, Robbie Rogers has inspired millions of people around the world. He has refused to let fear stop him from living and loving and his story will move you as it has me." Anderson Cooper "Robbie Rogers is a courageous man who speaks his truth and lives his life in his truth. We all benefit when someone has the courage to tell their story like Robbie has done. Bravo." Maria Shriver "Robbie Rogers' story transcends sport; he's an inspiration to his peers and future generations." Jason Collins, center for the Brooklyn Nets and the first 'out' NBA player "Robbie Rogers' story is as heroic on the field as it is off." Mark Cuban , owner of The Dallas Mavericks, Magnolia Pictures and Landmark Theatres "With courage and honesty, Robbie Rogers has offered us a graceful genuine story about a crucial value in everyone’s life: being true to oneself and to one’s feelings. It’s impossible not to be moved by it." Giovanni Frazzetto , Neuroscientist and author of Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love: What Neuroscience Can--and Can't--Tell Us About How We Feel "Valuable insight into the myriad off-field issues that can affect footballers, and the impact they have on their careers... Reading about those tough experiences will be of benefit to many, players and fans alike."" Sky Sports “You want courage? Rogers came out. In a male team sports world that had never embraced gay athletes, Rogers announced his orientation.” Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated "Rogers’s debut is great inspiration for people of all ages struggling with shame and grappling with identity issues with regard to sexuality or otherwise. Those who enjoy memoir and stories of people who overcome difficulty will embrace this account." Library Journal “In one day, instead of representing the past—the idea that the only way a male athlete could come out would be if he also retired—Robbie Rogers will represent the future.” The Nation “Rogers is now one of the most recognizable faces in the fight against homophobia.” CNN “[Rogers’] status as the only openly gay male athlete in a prominent North American professional sport has made waves.” The Guardian “2013 will be remembered as the year Rogers came out as gay, retired from the sport, and returned to become a trailblazer in the sports world.” Rant Sports About the Author Robbie Rogers started playing soccer at the age of four. He has played for the Columbus Crew, the U.S. Olympic national team, and Leeds United in the U.K., and currently plays for the L.A. Galaxy. Rogers is also co-owner of Halsey, a menswear brand, and is a cofounder of and ambassador for the Beyond “it” campaign. He lives in Los Angeles. Eric Marcus is the author and coauthor of several of books, including Breaking the Surface , the #1 New York Times –bestselling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***Copyright © 2014 Robbie Rogers CHAPTER 1 CRACK-UP I was out cold before my face hit the ground. February 18, 2012, should have been one of the happiest days of my life. Instead, I was crumpled in a heap on the stunningly green pitch (what they call a sports field in England), unconsciously breathing in the scent of freshly cut grass. If I’d been able to hear anything—and I guarantee you that I wasn’t hearing a thing because my brain was still seeing stars— I could have heard a pin drop, because the twenty-one thousand soccer fans in the stands that sunny afternoon were holding their breath to see if the motionless American, who’d just made his debut at the historic Elland Road soccer stadium with their beloved Leeds United, was dead or alive. Just the day before, I was as conscious as I’d ever been when I saw my name posted on the game-day roster at our training grounds for a match against the Doncaster Rovers. I can’t say I was surprised to see my name as much as I was relieved to finally have the chance to play after a month of training with my new team. Being placed on the game-day roster was no guarantee that I’d actually get to play, because I wasn’t in the starting eleven (the eleven “footballers” who are designated to start the game). But if you don’t get on the bench in the first place, there’s no chance you’ll be called in as a substitute. It turned out to be a very dirty, ugly game—not much possession, not great passing—but even so, I enjoyed watching and just being there. The Leeds fans are very passionate. From the start of the game they’re always chanting, singing, and cheering for their team. Going into the second half the score was 0–0. There were five of us on the bench, and once the second half started the coach sent us to warm up at the side of the field, first two of us and then the other three. For a few minutes we jogged and stretched to get ready to possibly go in, and then went back to sit on the bench. And then I got called in. You don’t have a lot of time between getting called and the start of play, but in the few seconds it took to get from the bench to my position on the pitch I thought, This is Leeds United. This is Elland Road. I’m playing football in England. I’m so proud and excited just being on this field where there’s so much history and so many great footballers have played. Since I was a little boy kicking a ball up the steep driveway of the house where I grew up in Southern California, I’d dreamed of playing professional soccer in England. They have the biggest leagues and the most devoted fans, the game is always fast and competitive, and the greatest players want to go there. And now, having worked so hard to make this dream come true, I was running onto the pitch for an English team for the first time. If I was at all nervous in that moment it was only because I was making my debut and was eager to make a great first impression with the fans. I had no idea just how big an impression I’d make. I was only in the game for eleven minutes when one of our defenders kicked the ball up in the air. As it was coming down I challenged for the ball in hopes of winning possession for our team. I could see I was in a good position to head it toward our striker or the opposing team’s goal. So I was backpedaling fast, thinking that I could connect with the ball and flick it off the back of my head. And at the same time, one of their defenders was racing flat-out from the opposite direction so he could flick the ball off the front of his head toward our goal. We both launched ourselves off the ground to meet the ball, but instead of connecting with the ball, my opponent head-butted me straight in the back of my head with the front of his—I was knocked out midair. --- If anyone had known the real Robbie Rogers—and up to that point I’d made sure that no one did—they might have said it would take a blow to my head to get me to face facts about my life. But as I lay paralyzed on the field, fighting my way back to consciousness, all I could think was, Where am I and how did I get here? Good questions to consider in that brain-numbing moment—facedown in the grass, an ocean and a continent away from home. CHAPTER 2 MY TWIN I was a twin. I don’t know how I sensed it without anyone ever telling me, but one day when I was six or seven years old I asked my mother if I’d had a twin brother. But instead of telling you what my mom told me happened to my twin, I thought I’d let her tell the story because she was there: We lived in San Pedro (which is part of Los Angeles) on Seventh Street in a little Spanish-style house right down the street from my office, where I had a legal practice. I was in the middle of a trial, but for some reason I needed to go to the house and either I’d forgotten my key or the key didn’t work. There was a side window that I’d always left open a crack, so I decided to climb in, not even thinking that it was a foolish thing to do considering that I was three months pregnant. The window was maybe four feet off the ground and I’m only five feet tall, so it was a bit of a struggle to get up to the window, and I slipped and fell. It wasn’t until I had some spotting and bleeding later that day that I realized there might be a problem. So I called my doctor, John Roller, who was a dear friend. In fact, he’d delivered two of my mother’s children. He said, “You need to come in right now.” And I said, “I’m in trial, but I’ll come in after court today.” Sometimes I think about my behavior at that time and wonder, Was I nuts to wait? But I waited and once he examined me he told me I was having a miscarriage and that he wanted me to go to the hospital for a D&C (dilation and curettage, which is a procedure to remove any remaining tissue from the pregnancy). I said, “No, I can’t, I’m in trial.” As you might imagine, I was extremely upset and was probably in denial about what was happening to me and by focusing on the trial I didn’t have to think about losing my baby. So the doctor said, “I’m going to give you a prescription that will at least slough off the majority of the lining of your uterus, and I want you to promise me you’ll get it and take this medication tonight.” I promised I would and I did. I don’t know how I managed in the days and weeks that followed, because I had just lost this child and went through a postpartum depression of sorts, but I dealt with the trial, and looked after my two young daughters, and kept going. Approximately four months after this miscarriage, I was still feeling like I was pregnant and called John. He said that he thought I was just going through a difficult time after the miscarriage and needed more time to grieve the loss. But at five months I still had that feeling, so I called John again and said, “I know you think I’m crazy, but I think I’m pregnant.” He said, “Well, maybe you got pregnant again. Weirder things have happened.” So I went to see him and after examining me he said, “You are pregnant.” I said, “How far along?” And he said, “Five months!” I had no idea that I’d been pregnant with twins. In those days they didn’t do routine sonograms, which would have shown two heartbeats before the miscarriage and one after. So I remember thinking, Oh, my gosh, what if I’d had the D&C? I would have lost the second baby without even knowing it. After telling me how incredible this was John got very pensive and said, “Because of the medication I prescribed for you the baby may have birth defects.” Both my doctor and I were Catholic, which is one of the reasons we were so close. He told me that he wouldn’t perform an abortion, but that I might consider consulting with another physician and discussing this option, which I never did. I told him, and I don’t think he was surprised, that I was “looking forward to having the baby and whatever gift the Lord gives me.” Through the rest of my pregnancy I was extremely worried and I prayed, “Please Lord, you’ve given me this child, please take care of him and protect this little boy.” Then on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1987, Robbie was born. John was there to deliver him and he was overjoyed and pranced around the room with this child in his arms, and said, “He’s perfect! Everything about him is perfect!” And then Robbie urinated on him and John added, “Everything works!” Later, John told me that he’d kept a secret from me. He said, “The last time I delivered a baby on Mother’s Day, the child was very malformed and passed away, and I didn’t want to share that with you until after the birth.” No wonder John had been so relieved. I never said a word to my children about Robbie’s twin, so I was shocked when Robbie asked me about his twin brother. He said, “I was a twin, wasn’t I?” I’d probably pushed the memory so far down that it took me a moment before I realized what Robbie was talking about. In a way, it was so eerie. --- So that’s the story of my unnamed twin. But there was one other thing I told my mother when I first asked her about my brother. I said, “I know I had a brother and before he died, he gave me his speed.” CHAPTER 3 “BORDERLINE PRODIGY” I’ve always been known for my “explosive speed,” as any number of sports journalists have observed over the course of my career. But whether my ability to run fast comes from my twin brother, God, the universe, or just my genes, to me it was just me. So what I did on the soccer field came naturally and didn’t seem at all exceptional, although I was happy to put my apparent speed to good use against my opponents. In later years, after I’d started playing professional soccer, reporters writing about my athletic skills helped provide me with some perspective on the gifts I’d been given and when they first became evident. For example, a 2008 article in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper said I’d been a “borderline prodigy in soccer and judo” since I was five. What the article didn’t note was that by the time I was five I’d already been kicking a soccer ball for two years and playing team soccer for one. In the Rogers family it was inevitable that I’d be involved in sports because sports were central to my family’s life even before I showed up on the scene. My two older sisters, Alicia and Nicole (Coco, for short), were already playing soccer and competing in judo before I was out of diapers. By the time I was three I often went along to soccer practice and games, and to keep myself occupied I kicked around a ball on the sidelines, running back and forth and never stopping until it was time to go home. I don’t know if it was my right-footed or left-footed kicking skills (which my father helped me hone), or just the fact that I never stopped kicking the ball that caught the eye of one of my sisters’ coaches. But he approached my mom and suggested they enroll me in AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization), even though I was only four and younger than any other players. After that, if I wasn’t playing in an AYSO game, I was at home practicing my kicking or organizing neighborhood games or juggling the ball around the house. My mom and dad really encouraged me to play because they saw how good it was for me and were happy about the lessons I learned from being on a team. (Though my mom wasn’t so happy the one time I kicked the ball in our living room, which was totally against the rules, and destroyed a treasured family heirloom vase—I was so upset that Mom wound up comforting me.) My first team was called the Purple Octopuses, and then at the end of my first season I was recruited to the “Select” league and a team that was made up of the best players from local AYSO teams. And from there, at age seven, I got recruited to play for the South Bay Gunners, which for a time was an all-Hispanic team, except for me. (I was also two years younger than all of the other Gunners.) While soccer was an increasingly popular sport for kids my age, among Hispanic immigrants soccer was already the number one sport for boys, just as professional soccer is the number one team sport in the world (with the exception of the United States). What I didn’t know at the time was that none of this was free. My parents had to pay a fee (my mom thinks it was about $1,000) just to be on the league team, and then there was the cost of travel whenever we played a team far enough away from home that we needed to stay at a hotel. It would have been bad enough (and costly enough) if I’d been an only child and soccer had been my only sport, but until I was ten years old, soccer was just one of my two major sports, because Alicia and Coco also competed in judo. And whatever my sisters did, I had to do, too. So very quickly I joined them in class, in competitions, and then on the winners’ podium. Like my very talented sisters, I won multiple regional championships in judo. (Alicia, Coco, and I all won all three regional championships in our age groups—the triple crown—at least twice. People come from all over the country to compete at these championships, so they’re actually considered national competitions even though they cover certain regions.) Between judo and soccer we got to travel all over California and from New Jersey to Hawaii and many places in between. My sisters even got to go to Japan and England, and my parents paid for it all. I can’t imagine how much financial pressure that put them under, but they never said no. With three of us playing two sports—and at some point we added my brother, Tim, and sister Katie to the mix—the daily practice and competition schedule was insane. I don’t know how our parents managed it, especially since they had a joint law practice that kept them pretty busy. On a typical weekday one of my parents would leave work early (after going in at six-thirty or seven in the morning) to pick us up after school and drive us to soccer practice, then we’d get a quick dinner, and then go on to judo practice. If we were lucky, we got home by nine and then did our homework. Later, when I’d given up judo and was playing soccer for the Palos Verdes Raiders, my evenings were my own, except on those occasions when my mother would pick me up after club soccer and take me to ODP. That’s the Olympic Development Program, which is a national program designed to identify young players who show skill and talent, and then develop them so there’s a pool of great players for the national team to draw from. Weekends were in some ways more intense than the weekdays because we’d all pile into the car and my parents would get us to six soccer games and a judo tournament in two days. That was even more demanding than it sounds, because those games and tournaments were typically in different places at different times. Mostly I loved it, but sometimes it got to be too much, so Timmy and I would hide our dad’s car keys so we could just stay home and chill. Dad always found them. When it came to games and competitions Mom and Dad always encouraged us to do our best, but never came down on us for losing. That didn’t mean we had the option of not playing. We had to play a sport—at least one—and we had to go to practice. My parents were careful not to limit me to judo and soccer and made sure I had opportunities to try other sports, like baseball and football. I also skateboarded and surfed—I still surf. It took me about five minutes to realize I hated both football and baseball. Mom remembers all of this a lot better than I do: Robbie was always a talented athlete, always. When he was in intermediate school one of Robbie’s coaches wanted him to play flag football because he was so fast. I went to Robbie’s first formal game and he made three touchdowns. When he got off the field he said it was the stupidest game because all they do is hand you a ball and you have to run with it. He never played it again. It was the same with Little League. When Robbie was seven or eight I enrolled him in Little League and soon after, the coach said, “This kid has real athletic talent. You should forget about soccer and judo. There’s a lot of money in baseball. He’s incredible on the bases.” Robbie didn’t like standing still, so he got very good at stealing bases. At the end of his first season, when we asked Robbie about playing the next season, he said, “Did you know that Coach So-and-so said to step in front of the ball just so I could get on the bases? I never want to play that sport again. It is so stupid. You run around the bases for a few seconds and then you stand in the middle of a field and wait for the ball to come to you.” That was the end of baseball. My sister Alicia recalls that one of the reasons I hated baseball, which isn’t something I remember, was that I was so afraid of the ball hitting my “privates.” She said, “During the one season Robbie played Little League, they took pictures of him and you can see he isn’t really paying attention to the camera because he was so busy guarding his privates.” Not surprisingly, none of these photos survive. --- To me it didn’t matter how many sports I was good at because from the start I was most passionate about soccer, and soccer ruled my moods. If my team won, I was happy for the week. If we lost, I’d get depressed and my mother would try to cheer me up. The best, of course, was winning a championship, and the first time that happened I was nine or ten years old and my team, the Gunners, won the State Cup. We were the best soccer team in our age group in California and winning that championship put me on top of the world, especially since I’d scored one of the goals. After we won we were so excited that we celebrated as if we’d just won the World Cup. But we were kids and to us it probably felt better winning that championship than it did for a professional soccer player being the best in the world. I loved the competition and also loved the feeling of accomplishing something great with my team—and it was that feeling that motivated me to keep playing long after my childhood. Early on, there were rewards that went beyond just the sheer joy of winning. My parents, especially my dad, would reward me with things if I hit certain benchmarks (which, come to think of it, probably wasn’t the healthiest sort of arrangement). For example, my dad might say, “If you score six goals in a game, we’ll get you a cat.” I got a cat. Then he said, “If you score seven goals in a game, we’ll get you a snake.” I got a snake, and frogs, and toys (water guns were a favorite), and my bike. I also learned to make deals of my own with my parents, like, “If I score today I want you to take me for sushi.” I think they would have taken me anyway, but it was a nice incentive I set for myself, and my parents were happy to go along with it. (One time, when I was playing professional soccer for the Columbus Crew in 2010, I had the chance to pay my mom back and told her in advance of a game we were set to play on Mother’s Day that I’d score a goal for her, which I did. We were playing against New England and that goal won the game 3–2—and it was my first goal in nearly a year!) Beyond my passion for playing soccer, I was also a huge soccer fan, along with all the other soccer-playing kids in my neighborhood. So we constantly talked about our favorite teams and players. My favorite was Arsenal Football Club. Arsenal is an English team based in the north of London. From the first time I saw Arsenal I became a huge fan and fell in love with the way they played—at times it was almost an art form, so they were fun to watch early in the morning on television while I sat on the couch having some breakfast. Arsenal’s nickname was “the Invincibles” for the 2003–2004 regular season because during that time they never lost a game in the Premier League. Arsenal in those days was an incredible mix of guys who were very talented, including Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Robert Pirès, Freddie Ljungberg, Nwankwo Kanu, Ashley Cole, and Gilberto Silva. They were all stars in their own ways, but Arsenal’s biggest star and my favorite Arsenal player was Thierry Henry—he was fast, technical, and scored amazing goals. But my all-time favorite player when I was growing up never played for Arsenal, and he wasn’t even English. His name is Zinedine Zidane. He was a French midfielder and played for Juventus, Real Madrid, and a few other clubs; he was a true artist on the field and I hoped that one day I could be even half the soccer player he was. Not all of my soccer friends followed a British team like I did, but most of them followed a team somewhere in the world, whether it was Italy, Spain, or Germany. It’s hard to explain, but you developed a really personal relationship with your favorite team, even a continent away. Whenever we played soccer in the streets of my neighborhood, I always called my team Arsenal. And we’d play against teams named for real Arsenal opponents, like Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal’s biggest rival, Tottenham Hotspurs. We almost always won. It’s sort of amazing to me that I ever organized those games, because outside of sports I was a very shy child. My mother tells me that I was the kind of kid who would cling to his mother’s leg when a stranger came to the house. And when she took me to school for the first time I wouldn’t let go. She recalled, “Part of my heart was ripped out because that little guy . . . I’d pull one hand off and there would be an automatic flypaper reaction and his hand was right back where it started. I was finally able to peel him off me, but he was inconsolable as the teacher led him into school. So when I got to the office I called the school and fortunately by then he had settled down. He was a gentle, loving, tender child, but in moments like that my heart ached for him.” It’s not like I don’t recognize myself in my mother’s description, because in a lot of ways I’m still shy, but when it came to sports, something happened to me and I was confident, competitive, even fearless. On the soccer field or competing in judo, no one ever got to see the child who was terrified of leaving his mother on his first day of school. --- I loved competing in both soccer and judo, but it was too much. There wasn’t any time to just be a kid, and when I was ten years old I told my mom I’d had enough. I said that I just couldn’t do both and wanted to quit judo. I explained that I’d miss judo, but I enjoyed soccer more. Judo is an individual sport and soccer is a team sport, and I really enjoyed being part of a team. If I’d had any doubt about my decision at the time, it disappeared later when I realized soccer could help me go to college on a scholarship. But the fact that I enjoyed it more than judo really made the decision easy for me, and I never looked back. It wasn’t until later in my life that I realized all that running around had been too much for my parents, too, and for my mom in particular. In my family, we all see my mom as a powerhouse who never runs out of energy. But she’s actually this tiny person—she says she’s five feet tall, but I’m not so sure if she’s even that tall, and she’s as thin as a rail. With a full-time job and five children to look after and with all those sports to get us to and all of the money it took to keep it all going, Mom was struggling to stay above water. Of course as a child I couldn’t see that anything was wrong, until my parents’ marriage shattered, like a fragile treasured heirloom that got knocked to the ground by a soccer ball. Read more

An American Band

Mastering Herringbone Stitch: The Complete Guide

Review "A solid overview of the popular herringbone technique: from the creation of flat bands--to round and tubular--and on to twisted tubular variations, as well as connections to other types of stitches." -- Perlen Poesie "I can recommend this excellent instructional book to you completely and wholeheartedly. It is not only educational and helpful in the best sense, it is BEAUTIFUL!" -- Pretty Kitty Dog Moon Jewelry About the Author Melinda Barta is the editor of Beadwork magazine. In her Beadwork column, Custom Cool, she teaches beaders of all skill levels how to create custom components using beadweaving stitches. Melinda is the author of the books Custom Cool Jewelry , Hip to Stitch , and Mastering Peyote Stitch , and coauthor of Mixed Metals (all from Interweave).

Introduction to Networking

From the Back Cover Essential IT Skills for On-the-Job Success Mike Meyers, one of the premier computer and network skills trainers, has developed a learning system designed to teach key IT principles in an easy-to-understand way that will prepare you for an IT career. His proven ability to explain concepts in a clear, direct, even humorous way makes these books interesting, motivational, and fun. Inside this book, you will learn to: Distinguish between network classifications Distinguish between network classifications Work with network components, such as cables, network interface cards, and concentrators Work with network components, such as cables, network interface cards, and concentrators Identify network protocols, including TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and others Identify network protocols, including TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and others Install Novell NetWare, Windows 2000, and Red Hat Linux servers Install Novell NetWare, Windows 2000, and Red Hat Linux servers Install Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Linux workstations Install Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Linux workstations Create network file systems, including FAT, NTFS, and NFS Create network file systems, including FAT, NTFS, and NFS Configure and troubleshoot network printing Configure and troubleshoot network printing Plan for a secure network Plan for a secure network Implement network management tools and techniques Each chapter includes:Learning Objectives Four-Color Illustrations Step-by-Step Tutorials Try This! and Cross-Check Exercises Inside Information Sidebars Helpful Notes, Tips, and Warnings Chapter Summaries and Key Term Lists End-of-Chapter Quizzes and Lab Projects Mapped to the NWCET IT Skills Standards Implement network management tools and techniques Each chapter includes: Learning Objectives Learning Objectives Four-Color Illustrations Four-Color Illustrations Step-by-Step Tutorials Step-by-Step Tutorials Try This! and Cross-Check Exercises Try This! and Cross-Check Exercises Inside Information Sidebars Inside Information Sidebars Helpful Notes, Tips, and Warnings Helpful Notes, Tips, and Warnings Chapter Summaries and Key Term Lists Chapter Summaries and Key Term Lists End-of-Chapter Quizzes and Lab Projects Mapped to the NWCET IT Skills Standards End-of-Chapter Quizzes and Lab Projects Mapped to the NWCET IT Skills Standards About the Author Richard McMahon is a professor at the University of Houston, and an experienced textbook author. He has published Networking Administration for NetWare Versions 4.11 and 5, MCSE Windows 2000 Security Design Exam Prep, MCSE SQL Server 2000 Database Design Exam Cram, and a series of Office XP textbooks. Professor McMahon currently teaches Introduction to Networking at the University of Houston with enrollments of 200 students per year.

Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future

Review “ Story Wars is a thorough guide for the novice or even practiced storytellers in all of us. Sachs offers story structures, ways of thinking about characters and messages. He pulls artfully from recent brand successes from companies including Nike and Apple. And he tells a few good stories along the way.” — Forbes “Sachs is full of ideas and strategies to help readers give their brands the rare, compelling story that will raise their message above the melee of advertising noise… the ideas are powerful and solid, and will make inspiring reading for marketing professionals looking to set their stories apart.” — Publishers Weekly “In this timely, practical, perceptive, and thought-provoking book, Sachs (CEO, Free Range Studios) does a remarkable job trumpeting storytelling as a means by which people can effectively influence others.” — CHOICE “The book is an interesting blend of marketing and advertising history, mythology, and psychology that pulled me in and kept me turning the pages… the eye-catching illustrations of Drew Beam. Beam's artwork combined with Sachs's writing style kept me glued to the pages… this one has earned a place on my bookshelf and a noteworthy position on my leadership development reading list.” — T+D magazine, American Society for Training & Development “This fast-paced entertaining book takes on storytelling from the POV of a 24/7 information culture and shares the strategies and tactics that fuel today’s most compelling content.” — Ketchum PR, On the Bookshelf: New Year Reads “Sachs offers a step-by-step guide to corporate storytelling, showing how brands can use recognisable characters, such as "freaks, cheats and familiars" to create instantly relatable campaigns…Marketers who are able to define the core values of a brand then use them to engage the target audience in a compelling, relatable story are the ones who will thrive in the new media landscape of the "digitoral" age.” — Warc “His investigation also unveiled a process to help others create winning stories that he shares with great depth and charm in this book.” — 800 CEO READ “To influence this brave new world, first convince the global media marketplace of your story. The better the story, the better chance of making people think differently.” — Quantas magazine “In the often superficial, deceptive world of marketing and advertising, social innovator Jonah Sachs is an individual with a conscience...Sachs’s engaging work is a call to arms for anyone who works to influence consumer choices.” — getAbstract ADVANCE PRAISE for Winning the Story Wars : Dan Heath, coauthor, Switch and Made to Stick — “Jonah Sachs knows stories. He’s responsible for some of the most popular and respected viral messages of all time: The Story of Stuff , The Meatrix , Grocery Store Wars , and others. This book is a storytelling call to arms, an appeal to tell the stories that matter. So read Winning the Story Wars —and join the fray.” Nick Coe, CEO, Bath & Body Works; former President, Land’s End— “History is written by the winners. And as Jonah Sachs makes abundantly clear, it is now being written by the marketers, the new mythmakers of our time. Whatever your product or your cause, if you want it to succeed, read this wise and enlightening book.” Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International— “ Winning the Story Wars will convince you that storytelling is the most powerful way to move people to action. And it will teach you to use that power to orient our world to a more positive future. If you’re ready to be a great storyteller, read this book.” Deepak Chopra, founder, The Chopra Foundation— “Great leaders transform the world through stories that inspire hope, stability, trust, compassion, and authenticity. This important and thought-provoking book shows that leadership in marketing will require the living and telling of such stories as well.” Bill Bradley, former US Senator; Managing Director, Allen & Company— “We know about who we are both individually and as a society through stories. In this brilliant book, Jonah Sachs tells us how we lost our storytelling capacity and how we must regain it, constructing our own myths and living the truth of the stories we tell.” Paul Hawken, author, The Ecology of Commerce and Blessed Unrest — “In the current maelstrom of media babble and corporate deceit, Jonah Sachs makes sense where none appears to exist. Winning the Story Wars explains why we respond to lies—whether in political or product ads, campaigns or speeches—and how truth ultimately trumps all. This remarkable book delivers on that rare promise of changing how you see the world.” About the Author About the Author: Jonah Sachs. As the cofounder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Sachs has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media noise with unforgettable campaigns. His work on renowned viral videos including The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff have brought key social issues to the attention of more than sixty-five million people online. A constant innovator, his studio’s websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Sachs’s work and opinions have been featured in a variety of media, including the New York Times , NPR, and Fast Company magazine, which named him one of its fifty most influential social innovators. About the Illustrator: Drew Beam Drew Beam is the Innovation Director at Free Range Studios, where he helps clients see the future and leap into it. After earning his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Beam built a successful career creating visuals and innovation strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. His illustrations have been published by Time Warner Books, Penguin Books, and Rolling Stone magazine, to name just a few.