Welcome to the daring, thrilling, and downright strangeadventures of William Willis, one of the world’s original extremesportsmen. Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challengeand a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted asingle-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of FrenchGuiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his owndesign, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. Hisfirst voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleventhousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australiashortly after Willis’s seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor andfitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all butorchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushingsolitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He’d been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s bid to provethat a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis’strips confirmed tha
The bestselling author of Saving Graces shares herinspirational message on the challenges and blessings of copingwith adversity. She’s one of the most beloved political figures in the country,and on the surface, seems to have led a charmed life. In many ways,she has. Beautiful family. Thriving career. Supportive friendship.Loving marriage. But she’s no stranger to adversity. Many know ofthe strength she had shown after her son, Wade, was killed in afreak car accident when he was only sixteen years old. She wouldexhibit this remarkable grace and courage again when the veryprivate matter of her husband's infidelity became public fodder.And her own life has been on the line. Days before the 2004presidential election—when her husband John was running for vicepresident—she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After rounds ofsurgery, chemotherapy, and radiation the cancer went away—only toreoccur in 2007. While on the campaign trail, Elizabeth met many others who havehad to contend with se
Albert Einstein's brain floats in a Tupperware bowl in a grayduffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling acrossAmerica. Driving the car is journalist Michael Paterniti. Sittingnext to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named ThomasHarvey, who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955 -- thensimply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for overforty years. On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave NewJersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein'sperplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as theimaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-drivengenius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars.Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, andpart meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique roadtrips in modern literature.
