biography

Eileen Collins was an aviation pioneer her entire career, from her crowning achivements as the first woman to pilot the space shuttle and the first to command an American space mission to her early years as one of the Air Force's first female pilots. She was only the second woman pilot admitted to the Air Force's elite Test Pilot Program at Edwards Air Force Base. NASA had such confidence in her skills as a leader that she was entrusted to command the first shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster, returning the US to spaceflight after a two-year hiatus. Eileen Collins is among the most recognised and admired women in the world, yet this is the first time she has told her story in a book. It is a story not only of achievement and overcoming obstacles but of profound personal transformation. The shy, quiet child of an alcoholic father and struggling single mother, she grew up in modest circumstances and was an unremarkable student. When she graduated from high school, she had few prospects, but she changed her life to pursue her secret dream of becoming an astronaut. She shares her leadership and life lessons throughout the book with the aim of inspiring and passing on her legacy to a new generation.

"Philadelphia's progressive district attorney offers an inspiring vision of how people can take back power to reform criminal justice, based on lessons from a life's work as an advocate for the accused." --.

An autobiography by the TikTok and Spotify star Drew Afualo.

The author recounts growing up as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in New York.

"A stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking lens on the global refugee crisis, from a man who faced the very worst of humanity and survived to advocate for refugees everywhere One night when Mondiant Dogon, a Bagogwe Tutsi born in Congo, was very young, his father's lifelong friend, a Hutu man, came to their home with a machete in his hand and warned the family they were to be killed within hours. Dogon's family fled into the bush, where they began a long and dangerous journey into Rwanda. Since that day when he was just three years old, Dogon has called himself a forever refugee. He and his family made their way to the first of several UN tent cities in which they would spend the next quarter century. But their search for a safe haven had only just begun"--Provided by publisher.

"A fiery, heartbreaking, riveting memoir that follows one New Hampshire family over the course of three years, unspooling a story of gender identity, poverty, trans youth, and a child caught in the riptide of America's culture wars. Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight children in a poor town abutting the wealthier lakeside village of Gilford. As a young couple, Maxwell and her husband planned not to have children, but when Maxwell became pregnant, she knew she wanted to raise her child near the mountains and lake of her youth. When her six-year-old asks to wear pink sneakers, asks to be a witch for Halloween, asks to wear a girls' dance costume, Abi worries about how their small community will react. But when that child changes her name, grows her hair long, and announces that she is girl, a firestorm descends on the family. Weaving together the story of her own childhood, marked by long afternoons skiing the mountains, a cottage on the lake, a proud gay brother, but also by hunger, neglect, and bullying that pushed her brother to the brink, Abi Maxwell contends with the rural America where she was raised and, years later, where she is now raising her child, as lawmakers push to erase the very existence of trans youths. Intimate and stirring, this book is essential reading for this moment in our history"--.

"From a marine biologist and co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences, a powerful debut memoir: the uplifting story of a young Black scientist's challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature's most misunderstood animal-the shark. You never forget your first shark. For Jasmin Graham, it was a little bonnethead, a type of hammerhead shark: three feet long, gray with a white underbelly, rough-skinned, strongly muscled, and beautiful. Jasmin fell in love: with sharks, and with science. Though she tried to follow the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist, she soon found that, in a field where it was harder to find other young women of color than the elusive elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates, and sawfish) she sought, navigating the choppy waters of traditional academic study was no longer worth it. So Jasmin quit. But that didn't mean abandoning her passion: rather, Jasmin sought to pursue it in another way, joining with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for other young women of color pursuing the fascinating and environmentally essential work of marine studies. Jasmin became an independent researcher: a rogue shark scientist, learning how to keep those endangered but precious sharks swimming free-just like her. Sharks Don't Sink is a riveting, moving, and ultimately triumphant memoir at the intersection of science and social justice: a guidebook to how we can all learn to respect and protect some of nature's most misunderstood and vulnerable creatures-and grant the same grace to ourselves"--Provided by publisher.

"In this unvarnished and affecting memoir, Olympian Kara Goucher reveals her experience of living through and speaking out about one of the biggest scandals in running"--Amazon.

"A true-life detective story and a celebration of a forgotten feminist trailblazer, Mallory O'Meara's The Lady from the Black Lagoon establishes Patrick in her rightful place in film history while calling out a Hollywood culture where little has changed since." - Amazon.

"Jane Goodall is a celebrated scientist for her studies of chimpanzees in the forests of Africa. Before she observed chimps and helped save them from losing their home, Jane was a curious kid who loved learning about animals. She showed people that women could be scientists, just like men, and fought to follow her dream of working with wild chimps. Explore how Jane Goodall went from being a young nature lover in England to the most important chimpanzee expert in the world"--Provided by publisher.