Nowhere Near Normal

In the bestselling tradition of Augusten Burroughs, a compassionate, witty, and completely candid memoir that chronicles growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder. When all the neighborhood kids were playing outdoors, seven-year-old Traci Foust was inside making sure the miniature Catholic saint statues on her windowsill always pointed north, scratching out bald patches on her scalp, and snapping her fingers after every utterance of the word God. As Traci grew older, her OCD blossomed to include panic attacks and bizarre behaviors, including a fear of the sun, an obsession with contracting eradicated diseases, and the idea that she could catch herself on fire just by thinking about it. While stints of therapy -- and lots of Nyquil -- sometimes helped, nothing alleviated the fact that her single mother and mid-life crisis father had no idea how to deal with her. Traci Foust shares her wacky and compelling journey with brutal honesty, from becoming a teenage runaway on the poetry slam beat in the hippie beach towns of Northern California to living at a family-owned nursing home, in a room with a seventy-five- year-old WWII Vet who kept mistaking her for a prostitute. In this funny, frenetic, and wonderfully dark-humored account of her struggles with a variety of psychological disorders, Traci ultimately concludes that there is nothing special about being “normal.”

In the bestselling tradition of Augusten Burroughs, a compassionate, witty, and completely candid memoir that chronicles growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder. When all the neighborhood kids were playing outdoors, seven-year-old Traci Foust was inside making sure the miniature Catholic saint statues on her windowsill always pointed north, scratching out bald patches on her scalp, and snapping her fingers after every utterance of the word God. As Traci grew older, her OCD blossomed to include panic attacks and bizarre behaviors, including a fear of the sun, an obsession with contracting eradicated diseases, and the idea that she could catch herself on fire just by thinking about it. While stints of therapy -- and lots of Nyquil -- sometimes helped, nothing alleviated the fact that her single mother and mid-life crisis father had no idea how to deal with her. Traci Foust shares her wacky and compelling journey with brutal honesty, from becoming a teenage runaway on the poetry slam beat in the hippie beach towns of Northern California to living at a family-owned nursing home, in a room with a seventy-five- year-old WWII Vet who kept mistaking her for a prostitute. In this funny, frenetic, and wonderfully dark-humored account of her struggles with a variety of psychological disorders, Traci ultimately concludes that there is nothing special about being “normal.”

Ollie and Moritz might never meet, but their friendship knows no bounds. Their letters carry on as Ollie embarks on his first road trip away from the woods--no easy feat for a boy allergic to electricity--and Moritz decides which new school would best suit an eyeless boy who prefers to be alone. Along the way they meet other teens like them, other products of strange science who lead seemingly normal lives in ways Ollie and Moritz never imagined possible: A boy who jokes about his atypical skeleton; an aspiring actress who hides a strange deformity; a track star whose abnormal heart propels her to victory. Suddenly the future feels wide open for two former hermits. But even as Ollie and Moritz dare to enjoy life, they can't escape their past, which threatens to destroy any progress they've made. Can these boys ever find their place in a world that might never understand them? Because You'll Never Meet Me A William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist

This is the first textbook designed to teach statistics to students in aviation courses. All examples and exercises are grounded in an aviation context, including flight instruction, air traffic control, airport management, and human factors. Structured in six parts, this book covers the key foundational topics relative to descriptive and inferential statistics, including hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, z and t tests, correlation, regression, ANOVA, and chi-square. In addition, this book promotes both procedural knowledge and conceptual understanding. Detailed, guided examples are presented from the perspective of conducting a research study. Each analysis technique is clearly explained, enabling readers to understand, carry out, and report results correctly. Students are further supported by a range of pedagogical features in each chapter, including objectives, a summary, and a vocabulary check. Digital supplements comprise downloadable data sets and short video lectures explaining key concepts. Instructors also have access to PPT slides and an instructor’s manual that consists of a test bank with multiple choice exams, exercises with data sets, and solutions. This is the ideal statistics textbook for aviation courses globally, especially in aviation statistics, research methods in aviation, human factors, and related areas.

After thyroid cancer, Crohn’s disease, and a slew of other autoimmune conditions ransacked her body in her twenties and thirties, Francesca was left feeling completely alone in her chronic pain. Constant, relentless, often indescribable, and always exhausting, it affected her whole life—intimacy, motherhood, friendship, work, and mental health. Yet it was also fairly invisible—and because of that, Francesca felt entirely alone in the centrifuge of her own pain. But after twenty-plus years of living this way, isolated and depressed, she started to wonder: if she lived in pain, others must too—so why couldn't she name one person in her community who suffered like she did? On a whim, Francesca started asking women in her community if they had chronic pain—only to find that she was surrounded by women also battling in silence. The more she spoke to people, the more she found common themes and experiences, proving that her stories of pain were not unique, and neither were her feelings of loneliness and seclusion. Liberated by this discovery, Francesca realized something: while she couldn’t alleviate anyone's pain, maybe she could lift the shadows surrounding it—bring these common stories into the light, with the goal of helping her fellow chronic pain sufferers feel a little less alone. Imbued with a deep respect for the women who tell their stories in its pages, as well as a healthy skepticism of the healthcare world and how it can silence, shame, and ignore women in pain, Not Weakness is galvanizing memoir about living and loving with chronic pain.

“Painting the world a new picture on healthy” - Angela M. Landeros Angela M. Landeros started her journey toward a healthier immune system after her skin began breaking out in hives and she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For the next two years, she sifted through her diet to eliminate inflammatory foods, and then she kept working to find a diet that reacted well with her body. She now believes you can change body chemistry by tracking what you eat—and you can also improve your immune system, heal your digestive system, strengthen your brain, and reduce inflammation throughout your body. The best part is you don’t have to count calories: All you need to do is track what goes into your body and how those ingredients make you feel. By creating a list of substances that have a negative effect on your body, substances you should never eat or come into contact with, and those that you may consume occasionally, you’ll be equipped to transform your health and life. Start paying attention to what your body is telling you, and change your lifestyle for good with the insights, lessons, and action plan in The FLog Journal.

First published in 1989: This text was written to provide a relatively broad comprehensive study of the thymus in health and disease, including relationships to the endocrine system, immue system, and again.

“It echoed around my head. The carbon wing blade flexed in the water as I thrust like a man possessed. Past the point of no return, I was above the log jam. A broken blade, maybe even a missed stroke and that could be my last. The river was rough, it was ugly and I was bouncing like a cork.” Lovers of adventure will thrill at the task Steve Posselt set himself on the biggest kayak trip of his life. Up the Mississippi, through the canals of the US and the UK, down the Thames, across the channel and up the Seine to Paris. Crazy? Steve Posselt is a climate warrior, determined to raise the awareness of climate chaos and its impact on our daily lives. He set off from Canberra in January 2015 to drag his kayak through three continents and attend the Paris Climate Conference officially known as COP21. This is the story of what he learned about himself on the way. It is also the story of despair and redemption as a buoyant, enthusiastic movement embraced him when he finally returned home. A must read for every climate activist, adventurer and their friends.