The Roots of My Obsession

Author: Thomas C. Cooper
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 1604692715
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
Why do you garden? For fun? Work? Food? The reasons to garden are as unique as the gardener. The Roots of My Obsession features thirty essays from the most vital voices in gardening, exploring the myriad motives and impulses that cause a person to become a gardener. For some, it’s the quest to achieve a personal vision of ultimate beauty; for others, it’s a mission to heal the earth, or to grow a perfect peach. The essays are as distinct as their authors, and yet each one is direct, engaging, and from the heart. For Doug Tallamy, a love of plants is rooted first in a love of animals: “animals with two legs (birds), four legs (box turtles, salamanders, and foxes), six legs (butterflies and beetles), eight legs (spiders), dozens of legs (centipedes), hundreds of legs (millipedes), and even animals with no legs (snakes and pollywogs).” For Rosalind Creasy, it’s “not the plant itself; it’s how you use it in the garden.” And for Sydney Eddison, the reason has changed throughout the years. Now, she “gardens for the moment.” As you read, you may find yourself nodding your head in agreement, or gasping in disbelief. What you’re sure to encounter is some of the best writing about the gardener’s soul ever to appear. For anyone who cherishes the miracle of bringing forth life from the soil, The Roots of My Obsession is essential inspiration.

Material Obsession

Author: Kathy Doughty
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1741960959
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Explains how anyone, even those who don't think they are 'creative' can confidently choose colours and patterns to create bold, easy-to-make quilts, perfect for today's busy craftspeople.

My Omaha Obsession

Author: Miss Cassette
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149622471X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
My Omaha Obsession takes the reader on an idiosyncratic tour through some of Omaha’s neighborhoods, buildings, architecture, and people, celebrating the city’s unusual history. Rather than covering the city’s best-known sites, Miss Cassette is irresistibly drawn to strange little buildings and glorious large homes that don’t exist anymore as well as to stories of Harkert’s Holsum Hamburgers and the Twenties Club. Piecing together the records of buildings and homes and everything interesting that came after, Miss Cassette shares her observations of the property and its significance to Omaha. She scrutinizes land deeds, insurance maps, tax records, and old newspaper articles to uncover a property’s singular story. Through conversations with fellow detectives and history enthusiasts, she guides readers along her path of hunches, personal interests, mishaps, and more. As a longtime resident of Omaha, Miss Cassette is informed by memories of her youth combined with an enduring curiosity about the city’s offbeat relics and remains. Part memoir and part research guide with a healthy dose of colorful wandering, My Omaha Obsession celebrates the historic built environment and searches for the people who shaped early Omaha.

The Power of Gold

Author: Peter L. Bernstein
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470091029
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind.

Be Obsessed or Be Average

Author: Grant Cardone
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101981075
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
From the millionaire entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of The 10X Rule comes a bold and contrarian wake-up call for anyone truly ready for success. One of the 7 best motivational books of 2016, according to Inc. Magazine. Before Grant Cardone built five successful companies (and counting), became a multimillionaire, and wrote bestselling books... he was broke, jobless, and drug-addicted. Grant had grown up with big dreams, but friends and family told him to be more reasonable and less demanding. If he played by the rules, they said, he could enjoy everyone else’s version of middle class success. But when he tried it their way, he hit rock bottom. Then he tried the opposite approach. He said NO to the haters and naysayers and said YES to his burning, outrageous, animal obsession. He reclaimed his obsession with wanting to be a business rock star, a super salesman, a huge philanthropist. He wanted to live in a mansion and even own an airplane. Obsession made all of his wildest dreams come true. And it can help you achieve massive success too. As Grant says, we're in the middle of an epidemic of average. The conventional wisdom is to seek balance and take it easy. But that has really just given us an excuse to be unexceptional. If you want real success, you have to know how to harness your obsession to rocket to the top. This book will give you the inspiration and tools to break out of your cocoon of mediocrity and achieve your craziest dreams. Grant will teach you how to: · Set crazy goals—and reach them, every single day. · Feed the beast: when you value money and spend it on the right things, you get more of it. · Shut down the doubters—and use your haters as fuel. Whether you're a sales person, small business owner, or 9-to-5 working stiff, your path to happiness runs though your obsessions. It's a simple choice: be obsessed or be average.

The Orchid Thief

Author: Susan Orlean
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307795292
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal

A Way to Garden

Author: Margaret Roach
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 1604698772
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
“A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.

Obsessed

Author: Allison Britz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481489208
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
A brave teen recounts her debilitating struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder—and brings readers through every painful step as she finds her way to the other side—in this powerful and inspiring memoir. Until sophomore year of high school, fifteen-year-old Allison Britz lived a comfortable life in an idyllic town. She was a dedicated student with tons of extracurricular activities, friends, and loving parents at home. But after awakening from a vivid nightmare in which she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was convinced the dream had been a warning. Allison believed that she must do something to stop the cancer in her dream from becoming a reality. It started with avoiding sidewalk cracks and quickly grew to counting steps as loudly as possible. Over the following weeks, her brain listed more dangers and fixes. She had to avoid hair dryers, calculators, cell phones, computers, anything green, bananas, oatmeal, and most of her own clothing. Unable to act “normal,” the once-popular Allison became an outcast. Her parents questioned her behavior, leading to explosive fights. When notebook paper, pencils, and most schoolbooks were declared dangerous to her health, her GPA imploded, along with her plans for the future. Finally, she allowed herself to ask for help and was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. This brave memoir tracks Allison’s descent and ultimately hopeful climb out of the depths.

Noble Obsession

Author: Charles Slack
Publisher: Hyperion Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
A riveting work of history that reads like enthralling fiction, Noble Obsession tells how Goodyear, a single-minded genius, risked his own life and his family's in a quest to unlock the secrets of rubber, and how Thomas Hancock, the scholarly English inventor who raced against Goodyear, ultimately robbed him of fame and fortune. Taking readers from the jungles of Brazil to the laboratories of Europe and the courtrooms of America, this fascinating book tells one of the strangest and most affecting sagas in the history of human discovery.

One Artist, One Material

Author: Elena Castle, Kanae Hasegawa, Amara Holstein, Tracey Ingram, Sophie Lovell, Billy Nolan, Jonathan Openshaw, Inês Revés, Anna Sansom, Louise Schouwenberg, Jane Szita, Femke de Wild
Publisher: Frame Publishers
ISBN: 9492311275
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Divided into six chapters, fifty-five artists talk about their material of choice. Does living in the digital age intensify our relationship with the material world? The success of One Artist, One Material, a regular feature section that has appeared in Frame magazine for over a decade, suggests that it does. An interview with a maker about his or her chosen material, it first appeared in Frame 65 (May/June 2007) and is still going strong. This book contains 55 of those interviews. Within the deceptively simple formula, dramatic, amusing, perplexing and humbling stories unfold. The subjects are enthusiastic about their chosen material to the point of monomania, spending long hours on eBay procuring vintage furniture (Michael Samuels), or behind a microscope arranging diatoms, which are invisible to the human eye (Klaus Kemp), or tracing huge yet transient patterns in sand or snow (Jim Denevan and Simon Beck, respectively). A material’s simplicity often bears no relation to the complexity it expresses in the hands of a creator. Magpie feathers are shaped into disturbing spatial deluges by Kate MccGwire; white balloons are used over and over again by Charles Pétillon to undermine our perceptions of everyday reality. Over One Artist, One Material’s lifetime, art and design have been steadily converging, with pop-up shops now often appearing to be art installations (and occasionally vice versa). Pressures on budgets and increasing awareness of sustainability issues have led designers to take a new look at materials, opting for recycling, making, and even growing their own. Handcrafted items have meanwhile found a new popularity and relevance. All of these material trends are prefigured in One Artist, One Material.