Biographien

Non-cisgender writers on their experiences of joy, pride, confidence and freedom - rather than fear, hate, rejection and isolation - after coming out or transitioning

The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climb of Mount Everest in this profound and free-flowing memoir-an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth's highest peak to the soul's deepest reaches.What drives a person to the edge of one of the most difficult and revered mountains in the world? How much is one willing to sacrifice and suffer to pursue an authentic and bold life? The most accomplished mountain runner of all time, Kilian Jornet ponders these questions as he contemplates his record-breaking climb of Mount Everest, exploring the mountain's changing nature over four seasons and his own existence.As he recounts a life spent studying, tending, and ascending the greatest peaks on earth, Jornet ruminates on what he has found in nature-simplicity, freedom, and spiritual joy-and offers a poetic yet clearheaded assessment of his relationship to the mountain . . . at times his opponent, at others, his greatest muse. In this sweeping, soulful journey-the flip side of stories like Into Thin Air-Jornet illuminates with beauty and brilliance what it means to be an athlete, a competitor, and a human facing the greatest life challenges-for him, the mountain he yearns to climb and honour.

From a spectacular career spanning almost three decades, these stories have become modern classics and are now for the first time collected in one volume.For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing.Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say 'give it to me' in five languages and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms - at long last - with the other.Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected - it's often harder, more fraught and certainly weirder - but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called 'the funniest man alive' (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing - quite often at himself - and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

Charts are best viewed on a tablet.Picking up where Liar's Poker left off (literally, in the bond dealer's desks of Salomon Brothers) the story of Long-Term Capital Management is of a group of elite investors who believed they could beat the market and, like alchemists, create limitless wealth for themselves and their partners.Founded by John Meriweather, a notoriously confident bond dealer, along with two Nobel prize winners and a floor of Wall Street's brightest and best, Long-Term Captial Management was from the beginning hailed as a new gold standard in investing. It was to be the hedge fund to end all other hedge funds: a discreet private investment club limited to those rich enough to pony up millions.It became the banks' own favourite fund and from its inception achieved a run of dizzyingly spectacular returns. New investors barged each other aside to get their investment money into LTCM's hands. But as competitors began to mimic Meriweather's fund, he altered strategy to maintain the fund's performance, leveraging capital with credit on a scale not fully understood and never seen before.When the markets in Indonesia, South America and Russia crashed in 1998 LCTM's investments crashed with them and mountainous debts accumulated. The fund was in melt-down, and threatening to bring down into its trillion-dollar black hole a host of financial instiutions from New York to Switzerland. It's a tale of vivid characters, overwheening ambition, and perilous drama told, in Roger Lowenstein's hands, with brilliant style and panache.

For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes was at the centre of the Obama Administration - first as a speechwriter, then a policymaker, and finally a multi-purpose aide and close collaborator. Rhodes puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history: starting every morning with Obama in the Daily Briefing;

A candid, honest memoir from one of the most recognisable, influential, and beloved cinematic personalities in the world.

With unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, The Elephant Whisperer is an enthralling book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of 'rogue' elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival - dangerous and unpredictable, they would be killed if Anthony wouldn't take them in. As Anthony risked his life to create a bond with the troubled elephants and persuade them to stay on his reserve, he came to realize what a special family they were, from the wise matriarch Nana, who guided the herd, to her warrior sister Frankie, always ready to see off any threat, and their children who fought so hard to survive.

'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in the vile 'H tel X', living alongside tramps, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts - in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like.Includes an introduction by Dervla Murphy, as well as definitive footnotes assigned to Orwell.

I "Fugleperspektiv" inviterer bogens forfatter os med på en række fugle- og naturoplevelser i Danmark, Sverige, Norge og på Færøerne. Jette Varmer betragter sig selv som en glad amatør på det ornitologiske område. Hun er i øjenhøjde med sine læsere og væver et humoristisk islæt ind i sine personlige forællinger om fugle, natur og fuglefolk. Hendes underholdende historier er krydret med sagn, myter, folketro og fakta. Uanset om Jette Varmer beretter om svimlende fjeldsider på Færøerne eller stiller skarpt på vores hjemlige arter ved foderbrættet, bringer hun os en lille smule tættere på vores vingede medskabninger. Alt sammen fortalt enkelt og vedkommende, og naturligvis i fugleperspektiv. Bogen er første bind i serien 'Nordiske Naturfortællinger'.

Denne bog er skrevet efter jeg har endt jobbet som glædespige/prostitueret. Bogen er er en oplysning om mit liv før, under og efter prostitution. Bogen er fyldt med gode og dårlige oplevelser i forhold til mit liv i en hvis periode. Den er ærlig og reflekterende. Denne bog har været en slags terapi for mig i mit videre liv som "normal".

"De døde, de dømte, de frikendte" er en samling af 23 danske kriminalsager, som har det tilfælles, at de på en eller anden måde har været udsat for tvivlsspørgsmål uanset den enkelte sags endelige afgørelse. Palle Bruus Jensen fremlægger sagerne nøgternt, så det er op til læseren selv at afgøre, om den dømte burde være blevet frikendt, eller måske om den frikendte var skyldig, men havde en lidt for god advokat...Palle Bruus Jensen (f. 1945) er en dansk forfatter, der er særligt kendt for sine faglitterære værker om nogle af de mest opsigtsvækkende danske kriminalsager igennem tiderne. Han har blandt andet skrevet ”De døde, de dømte, de frikendte” (2008) og en bog om Peter Lundin-sagen (”Sagen Lundin: forbrydelse, opklaringen, medierne og ondskaben”, 2003).

Searching for the book of love letters from the Sex in the City movie? This book contains those letters as well as some of the most passionate and romantic poems and love letters ever written. Explore the private longings and passions of the greatest men in history and the women they loved. Find yourself in the middle of torrid love affairs, undying devotion, and scandalous betrayal as you uncover long-lost correspondences between lovers.From great Kings to War Heroes to Philosophers, spanning a period of five centuries, this collection illustrates that the human desires of sex and love were as powerful then as they are now.

An affordably priced, complete retrospective of one of the world's greatest architects, covering her work from the earliest experimentations to the very last projects she worked on before her death in 2016.

For many complaints and conditions, the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think. In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. That these claims come from an experienced, practising orthopaedic surgeon who performs many of these operations himself, makes the unsettling argument particularly compelling.Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence. The placebo effect may be real, but is it worth the recovery time, expense and discomfort?

In January 1991, eight members of SAS regiment embarked upon a top secret mission that was to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they were to sever the underground communication link between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero.

The genius behind such classic songs as Suzanne, So Long, Marianne, and Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen has been one of the most influential songwriters of our time, a man of spirituality, emotion, and intelligence whose work has explored issues of human life - sex, religion, power, meaning, love. This book explores various facets of Cohen's life.

Orla S. Johansen (1910 – 1992) skriver om sine erfaringer som børnehjemsbarn fordi min tid som børnehjemsdreng er så lang, at jeg kunne komme i Guiness' Rekordbog.fordi der af andre er skrevet om dårlige - især kristelige - børnehjem, mens dette bliver om et godt og alligevel kristeligt børnehjem.Børnehjemmet, som det handler om, er Esbjerg Børnehjem, tiden er fra 1915-16 og fremover. Bogen handler om børnehjemsbarnet, som fik en opvækst, han senere er taknemmelig for, og som, temmelig usædvanligt, fik universitetsuddannelse med efterfølgende 39 år som præst. Læseren vil bl.a. se, at borgerskabet i datidens Esbjerg spiller en væsentlig og positiv rolle i historien. Beretningen om Orla S. Johansens tid på Esbjerg Børnehjem og efterfølgende virksomhed som præst i Vejerslev er udgivet af forfatterens fem børn i fællesskab. Begrundelsen for at udgive den er i overensstemmelse med forfatterens begrundelse for at skrive den. Det er en historie om ansvar og engagement, en hverdagshistorie om mennesker på godt og ondt, men mest på godt. Det er et tidsbillede, som måske på nogle områder kan være et korrektiv til vores opfattelse af både børnehjem og præster.

The saying goes that "God only gives you what you can handle." Well God didn't grow up in my atheist, Wiccan, fame-laden, oversexed, teetotalling, drug-free, cloistered, chaotic, non-communicative, workaholic, feral-feeling house.'For Moon Unit, daughter of musician Frank Zappa and his 'manager', Gail, processing a life so unique, so punctuated by the whims of creative urges, the tastes of popular culture and the calculus of celebrity, has at times been eviscerating. But it is her deep sense of humour and unshakeable humility that keeps her - and this memoir - pinned to the ground.A child-star at age 14 after her accidental international hit single (recorded with her father), 'Valley Girl', turned her into a reluctant celebrity, Moon Unit Zappa's life has been utterly extraordinary from her birth in 1967 into a family that was already blessed/cursed as music royalty thanks to the acknowledged genius of Frank. But what are the consequences of growing up in a family who spend most of their time naked arguing about sexual/extra-marital liaisons and practising white magic in a free-for-all state of nonconformist, virtuoso abandon?Earth to Moon is a reckoning with self-esteem, the ghosts of the past and a mother and a father who, in the process of leaving their mark upon on the world, scarred their first daughter on home soil. Brutally self-deprecating and funny as hell, it belies a rose-tinted perspective on the 70s and 80s west coast American scene, from within the belly of the beast of the rock and roll world.