No Time Like the Future

Author: Michael J. Fox
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250265622
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A moving account of resilience, hope, fear and mortality, and how these things resonate in our lives, by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox. The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Michael is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading non-profit funder of PD science. His two previous bestselling memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, dealt with how he came to terms with the illness, all the while exhibiting his iconic optimism. His new memoir reassesses this outlook, as events in the past decade presented additional challenges. In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, but with Fox’s trademark sense of humor, his book provides a vehicle for reflection about our lives, our loves, and our losses. Running through the narrative is the drama of the medical madness Fox recently experienced, that included his daily negotiations with the Parkinson’s disease he’s had since 1991, and a spinal cord issue that necessitated immediate surgery. His challenge to learn how to walk again, only to suffer a devastating fall, nearly caused him to ditch his trademark optimism and “get out of the lemonade business altogether.” Does he make it all of the way back? Read the book.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future

Author: Michael J. Fox
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401395082
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 71

Book Description
Michael J. Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but went on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and garner the highest accolades for his acting, as well as for his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches--all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when "life goes skidding sideways." He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor. Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. He learned Economics as a starving artist; an unexpected turn as a neophyte activist schooled him in Political Science; and his approach to Comparative Literature involved stacking books up against their movie versions. Replete with personal stories and hilarious anecdotes, Michael J. Fox's new book is the perfect gift for graduates.

Lucky Man

Author: Michael J. Fox
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401397794
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
A funny, highly personal, gorgeously written account of what it's like to be a 30-year-old man who is told he has an 80-year-old's disease. "Life is great. Sometimes, though, you just have to put up with a little more crap." -- Michael J. Fox In September 1998, Michael J. Fox stunned the world by announcing he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease -- a degenerative neurological condition. In fact, he had been secretly fighting it for seven years. The worldwide response was staggering. Fortunately, he had accepted the diagnosis and by the time the public started grieving for him, he had stopped grieving for himself. Now, with the same passion, humor, and energy that Fox has invested in his dozens of performances over the last 18 years, he tells the story of his life, his career, and his campaign to find a cure for Parkinson's. Combining his trademark ironic sensibility and keen sense of the absurd, he recounts his life -- from his childhood in a small town in western Canada to his meteoric rise in film and television which made him a worldwide celebrity. Most importantly however, he writes of the last 10 years, during which--with the unswerving support of his wife, family, and friends -- he has dealt with his illness. He talks about what Parkinson's has given him: the chance to appreciate a wonderful life and career, and the opportunity to help search for a cure and spread public awareness of the disease. He is a very lucky man, indeed. The Michael J. Fox Foundation Michael J. Fox is donating the profits from his book to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which is dedicated to fast-forwarding the cure for Parkinson's disease. The Foundation will move aggressively to identify the most promising research and raise the funds to assure that a cure is found for the millions of people living with this disorder. The Foundation's web site, MichaelJFox.org, carries the latest pertinent information about Parkinson's disease, including: A detailed description of Parkinson's disease How you can help find the cure Public Services Announcements that are aired on network and cable television stations across the country to increase awareness Upcoming related Parkinson's disease events and meetings Updates on recent research and developments

Always Looking Up

Author: Michael J. Fox
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144640854X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
'At the turn from our bedroom into the hallway, there is an old full-length mirror in a wooden frame ... This reflected version of myself, shaking, rumpled, pinched and slightly stooped, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, "What are you smiling about?" but I already know the answer: "It just gets better from here."' Struck with Parkinson's - a debilitating, degenerative disease - at the height of his fame, Michael J. Fox has taken what some might consider cause for depression and turned it into a beacon of hope for millions. In Always Looking Up, Michael's Sunday Times bestselling memoir, he writes with warmth, humour and incredible honesty about the journey he has undertaken since he came to terms with his condition.

No Time Like the Present

Author: Nadine Gordimer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408830302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks - with a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality, and an understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul - the inextricable link between personal life and political, communal history. The revelation of this theme in each new work, not only in her homeland South Africa, but the twenty-first century world, is evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters and the difficult choices with which they are faced.In No Time Like the Present, Gordimer brings the reader into the lives of Steven Reed and Jabulile Gumede, a 'mixed' couple, both of whom have been combatants in the struggle for freedom against apartheid. Once clandestine lovers under racist law forbidding sexual relations between white and black, they are now in the new South Africa. The place and time where freedom - the 'better life for all' that was fought for and promised - is being created but also challenged by political and racial tensions, while the hangover of moral ambiguities and the vast and growing gap between affluence and mass poverty, continue to haunt the present. No freedom from personal involvement in these or in the personal intimacy of love.The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer's treatment is timeless. In No Time Like the Present, she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.

No Time Like the Past

Author: Greg Cox
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476749507
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
An original novel set in the universe of Star Trek: The Original Series that reveals long-held secrets about Captain Kirk's past for the first time! STARDATE 6122.5. A diplomatic mission to the planet Yusub erupts in violence when ruthless Orion raiders attempt to disrupt the crucial negotiations by force. Caught in the midst of a tense and dangerous situation, Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise finds an unexpected ally in the form of an enigmatic stranger who calls herself “Annika Seven.” STARDATE 53786.1. Seven of Nine is taking part in an archaeological expedition on an obscure planetoid in the Delta Quadrant when a disastrous turn of events puts Voyager’s away team in jeopardy—and transports Seven across time and space to Yusub, where she comes face-to-face with one of Starfleet’s greatest legends. STARDATE 6122.5. Kirk knows better than most the danger that even a single castaway from the future can pose to the time line, so he and Seven embark on a hazardous quest to return her to her own era. But there are others who crave the knowledge Seven possesses, and they will stop at nothing to obtain it—even if this means seizing control of the Enterprise!

The Ministry for the Future

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316300160
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 579

Book Description
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem "If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox) The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. "One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books "If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year) "Masterly." —New Yorker "[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus "Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green

I Live a Life Like Yours

Author: Jan Grue
Publisher: FSG Originals
ISBN: 0374600791
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
"A quietly brilliant book that warms slowly in the hands." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times I am not talking about surviving. I am not talking about becoming human, but about how I came to realize that I had always already been human. I am writing about all that I wanted to have, and how I got it. I am writing about what it cost, and how I was able to afford it. Jan Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three. Shifting between specific periods of his life—his youth with his parents and sister in Norway; his years of study in Berkeley, St. Petersburg, and Amsterdam; and his current life as a professor, husband, and father—he intersperses these histories with elegant, astonishingly wise reflections on the world, social structures, disability, loss, relationships, and the body: in short, on what it means to be human. Along the way, Grue moves effortlessly between his own story and those of others, incorporating reflections on philosophy, film, art, and the work of writers from Joan Didion to Michael Foucault. He revives the cold, clinical language of his childhood, drawing from a stack of medical records that first forced the boy who thought of himself as “just Jan” to perceive that his body, and therefore his self, was defined by its defects. I Live a Life Like Yours is a love story. It is rich with loss, sorrow, and joy, and with the details of one life: a girlfriend pushing Grue through the airport and forgetting him next to the baggage claim; schoolmates forming a chain behind his wheelchair on the ice one winter day; his parents writing desperate letters in search of proper treatment for their son; his own young son climbing into his lap as he sits in his wheelchair, only to leap down and run away too quickly to catch. It is a story about accepting one’s own body and limitations, and learning to love life as it is while remaining open to hope and discovery.

Jake's Women

Author: Neil Simon
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573694356
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Book Description
Neil Simon Full Length, Comedy Characters: 1 male, 7 female Combination interior and Unit set. America's premier comic playwright makes another hilarious foray into the world of modern relationships. Jake, a novelist who is more successful with fiction that with life, faces a marital crisis by daydreaming about the women in his life. The wildly comic and sometimes moving flashbacks played in his mind are interrupted by visitations from actual females. Jake's women i

The Year Without Pants

Author: Scott Berkun
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118660633
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
A behind-the-scenes look at the firm behind WordPress.com and the unique work culture that contributes to its phenomenal success 50 million websites, or twenty percent of the entire web, use WordPress software. The force behind WordPress.com is a convention-defying company called Automattic, Inc., whose 120 employees work from anywhere in the world they wish, barely use email, and launch improvements to their products dozens of times a day. With a fraction of the resources of Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they have a similar impact on the future of the Internet. How is this possible? What's different about how they work, and what can other companies learn from their methods? To find out, former Microsoft veteran Scott Berkun worked as a manager at WordPress.com, leading a team of young programmers developing new ideas. The Year Without Pants shares the secrets of WordPress.com's phenomenal success from the inside. Berkun's story reveals insights on creativity, productivity, and leadership from the kind of workplace that might be in everyone's future. Offers a fast-paced and entertaining insider's account of how an amazing, powerful organization achieves impressive results Includes vital lessons about work culture and managing creativity Written by author and popular blogger Scott Berkun (scottberkun.com) The Year Without Pants shares what every organization can learn from the world-changing ideas for the future of work at the heart of Automattic's success.