Some books pass the time, others change your life. Emily Warner was 16 years old when she read Wind, Sand and Star by the French author and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupery. “It lit a candle,” she said, “It got me thinking about flight.”
But in late 1950s when Warner thought of flying careers, she had [...]
Jack Coleman lugged the foul-smelling garbage bin from the curb and tipped it over into the rear of the sanitation truck. Returning it to the curb, he noticed an elderly woman staring at him. Actually, she was scowling. Unable to contain herself further, she blurted out, “Do you think you’ll ever amount to anything?”
Saying such [...]
Robert Ballard has always been a hunter, an explorer, a finder of lost things. Growing up in San Diego, he was enchanted by stories of explorers and their adventures.
One was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. As a 10-year-old Ballard dreamed of being on board Captain Nemo’s submarine, Nautilus, and peering through its giant window at [...]
For Americans coming of age in the middle of the 20th century, one Hollywood actor above all others embodied the virtues and bravado of the American West — John Wayne.
But the movie star, whose real name was Marion Morrison, was mythology. In John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity Garry Wills described him as our “American Adam [...]
From all appearances Marva Collins didn’t have much going for her — a young, African-American growing up in the South during the Depression. But in truth she possessed riches children, even in the best of families, long for.
Her father, Henry Knight was one of the richest black men in Monroeville, Alabama. “I believed my father [...]