The Dirtbag's Guide to Life


Book Description

While a life of adventure has traditionally been reserved for the rich and the sponsored, to the dirtbag, it's a birthright for the masses. Partly a celebration of an underappreciated subculture of hiker trash, ski bums, and vagabonds, and partly a 'how to' guide for adventure on the cheap, The Dirtbag's Guide to Life is the first solid attempt to define an outdoor movement that has taken root in backpacker hostels, long trails, and climbing crags around the world.




High Infatuation


Book Description

* A collection of vivid, intimate essays and prose poetry on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing * 40 percent of these pieces debut here for the first time * Davis has been profiled in publications including Outside, Men's Journal, W Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. Throughout her life, Steph Davis has chosen to take risks, to trust her impulses, to make decisions based on what feels right inside -- and never look back. Studying to be a concert pianist, she quit music the day she was introduced to rock climbing. Later, she abandoned the respectability of university life and pursuit of a law degree to become a "dirtbag climber," living out of her grandmother's hand-me-down Oldsmobile sedan with Fletcher, a heeler mix dog. Today, through courage and perseverance, Davis is a high-profile athlete whose sponsors have included Patagonia, Mammut, Clif Bar, Five Ten and Cascade Designs. In High Infatuation, Davis writes on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing. We wait with her in the tent through weeks of rain, wind, snow, and sleet, hoping for the weather to improve in the mountains of Patagonia, then race with her up a towering rock wall of Yosemite's El Capitan in a single day. More than adventure stories, these pieces reveal Davis' soul. They draw us into her struggles with safety, independence, ambition, and compassion. By following the journey of this remarkable woman, we learn what it means to live a truly adventurous life.




When You Find My Body


Book Description

When Geraldine “Gerry” Largay (AT trail name, Inchworm) first went missing on the Appalachian Trail in remote western Maine in 2013, the people of Maine were wrought with concern. When she was not found, the family, the wardens, and the Navy personnel who searched for her were devastated. The Maine Warden Service continued to follow leads for more than a year. They never completely gave up the search. Two years after her disappearance, her bones and scattered possessions were found by chance by two surveyors. She was on the U.S. Navy’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) School land, about 2,100 feet from the Appalachian Trail. This book tells the story of events preceding Geraldine Largay’s vanishing in July 2013, while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine, what caused her to go astray, and the massive search and rescue operation that followed. Her disappearance sparked the largest lost-person search in Maine history, which culminated in her being presumed dead. She was never again seen alive. The author was one of the hundreds of volunteers who searched for her. Gerry’s story is one of heartbreak, most assuredly, but is also one of perseverance, determination, and faith. For her family and the searchers, especially the Maine Warden Service, it is also a story of grave sorrow. Marrying the joys and hardship of life in the outdoors, as well as exploring the search & rescue community, When You Find My Body examines dying with grace and dignity. There are lessons in the story, both large and small. Lessons that may well save lives in the future.




How to be a Dirtbag


Book Description

The ultimate guide to going on the road. For generations people have abandoned the grind to go travel and live out of cars and backpacks. This book tells you how.




Dirtbag, Massachusetts


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER Winner of the New England Book Award for Nonfiction Winner of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year “The best of what memoir can accomplish... pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy.” –Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year" A TIME Must-Read Book of the Year * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season * A Buzzfeed Book Pick * A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Book * A Chicago Tribune Book Pick * A Boston.com Book You Should Read * A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others. Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.




The Chapo Guide to Revolution


Book Description

Instant New York Times bestseller “Howard Zinn on acid or some bullsh*t like that.” —Tim Heidecker The creators of the cult-hit podcast Chapo Trap House deliver a manifesto for everyone who feels orphaned and alienated—politically, culturally, and economically—by the lanyard-wearing Wall Street centrism of the left and the lizard-brained atavism of the right: there is a better way, the Chapo Way. In a guide that reads like “a weirder, smarter, and deliciously meaner version of The Daily Show’s 2004 America (The Book)” (Paste), Chapo Trap House shows you that you don’t have to side with either sinking ships. These self-described “assholes from the internet” offer a fully ironic ideology for all who feel politically hopeless and prefer broadsides and tirades to reasoned debate. Learn the “secret” history of the world, politics, media, and everything in-between that THEY don’t want you to know and chart a course from our wretched present to a utopian future where one can post in the morning, game in the afternoon, and podcast after dinner without ever becoming a poster, gamer, or podcaster. A book that’s “as intellectually serious and analytically original as it is irreverent and funny” (Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author of No Place to Hide) The Chapo Guide to Revolution features illustrated taxonomies of contemporary liberal and conservative characters, biographies of important thought leaders, “never before seen” drafts of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom manga, and the ten new laws that govern Chapo Year Zero (everyone gets a dog, billionaires are turned into Soylent, and logic is outlawed). If you’re a fan of sacred cows, prisoners being taken, and holds being barred, then this book is NOT for you. However, if you feel disenfranchised from the political and cultural nightmare we’re in, then Chapo, let’s go…




Dirtbag


Book Description

The victories and failures of millennial socialism, as told by the writer who lived it. Amber A'Lee Frost came to New York City from her home state of Indiana as a working class activist (and member of then-unknown Cold War hold-out, Democratic Socialists of America), just before the first major movement for economic justice of the millennium, Occupy Wall Street. Of course, Occupy went bust, then Bernie Sanders went boom, and she threw herself into the campaign with everything she had. Frost has been one of the foremost evangelists of labor and socialist politics ever since, as a writer, activist, former staff and lifetime member of DSA, and cohost of the wildly popular Chapo Trap House podcast. Dirtbag is the much-anticipated debut from one of the most engaging and insightful writers of her generation. This book is more than a political memoir; it is a chapter in the story of the only movement that has a chance to reshape our world into something better. It captures an electric time of thrilling triumphs, stupid decisions, friendships and rivalries new and old, struggle, joy, setbacks, and heartbreak, all with magnetic prose, remarkable candor, and unflappable humor. Throughout it all, Frost burned the candle at both ends, relentlessly campaigning for socialism and the labor movement, from the American Midwest to the British rust belt, and rallying the troops with her brothers-in-arms as a self-described propagandist for the glorious cause of the workers movement (and somehow, always finding moments for plenty of reckless adventuring). The time was a brutal calamity of work and play, with all of the late nights, hard fights, and joyous camaraderie powered by the hope and the faith that maybe, somehow, this time, socialism could actually win.




The Fat Girl's Guide to Life


Book Description

Vibrant, vivacious and gorgeous, Wendy Shanker is a fat girl who has simply had enough - enough of family, friends, co-workers, women's magazines, even strangers on the street all trying (and failing) to make her thin. With her mandate to change the world - and the humour and energy to do it - Wendy shows how media madness, corporate greed and even the most well-intentioned loved ones can chip away at a woman's confidence. She invites people of all sizes, shapes and dissatisfactions to trade self-loathing for self-tolerance, celebrity worship for reality reverence, and a carb-free life for a guilt-free Krispy Kreme. Wendy explores dieting debacles, full-figured fashions and feminist philosophy while guiding you through exercise clubs, doctors' offices, shopping malls and the bedroom. In the process, she will convince you that you can be fit and fat, even as the weight loss industry conspires to make you think otherwise. The Fat Girl's Guide to Life invites you to step off the scales and weigh the issues for yourself.




Big Sam's Guide to Life


Book Description

"Manager of the Month. Manager of the year, I'd say. Manager of the century. Manager of your hearts." "Feast! Feast on my milky teat of triumph. For I am Big Sam, and I am a footballing god." Business leaders and politicians have long realised that there is much to be learned from the world of low-to-mid Premier League football. But what about the rest of us? What can the former manager of England, Crystal Palace and literally nine other teams teach us about our own lives? Across a book chock-full of utter brilliance, 'Big Sam' will pass on some of the wisdom he's accumulated over the years. Like how to deal with betrayal. Or how to seduce a woman in three easy steps. Or how to thwart disaster if someone plays Nickelback on a pub jukebox. There's very little that Big Sam can't turn his hand to and very little that he won't happily share with you lucky readers. So, whether you're trying to deal with online trolls, on a night out and saddled with a disabled or forced to make small talk with people in the goods and service industries, Big Sam's Guide to Life will guide you to the top, or at least avoid relegation.




Forget Me Not


Book Description

In 2005, a previously nameless 10,031-foot mountain in Montana's Gallatin Range was officially designated Alex Lowe Peak by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. It was a hugely appropriate act. Not only was Alex Lowe one of the modern era's most extraordinary mountaineers, his life was intricately woven into the landscape of southwestern Montana.