The Hero S Body A Memoir

A memoir of motorcycles and muscles, of obsession and grief, and of a young man who learned how to stay alive through literature. At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for The Hero’s Body. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s Townie, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood. Lauded by The New Yorker for his “unrelenting, perfectly paced prose,” Giraldi writes here with daring, searing honesty about the fragility and might of the American male. An unflinching memoir of luminous sorrow, a son’s tale of a lost father and the ancient family strictures of extreme masculinity, The Hero’s Body is a work of lasting beauty by one of our most fearless writers.

A memoir of motorcycles and muscles, of obsession and grief, and of a young man who learned how to stay alive through literature. At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for The Hero’s Body. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s Townie, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood. Lauded by The New Yorker for his “unrelenting, perfectly paced prose,” Giraldi writes here with daring, searing honesty about the fragility and might of the American male. An unflinching memoir of luminous sorrow, a son’s tale of a lost father and the ancient family strictures of extreme masculinity, The Hero’s Body is a work of lasting beauty by one of our most fearless writers.

At just 47, William Giraldi's father was killed in a motorcycle crash. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for The Hero's Body. This is an investigation into three generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi's own adolescent forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family's pitiless, exacting codes of manhood. Lauded by The New Yorker for his 'unrelenting, perfectly paced prose,' Giraldi writes with searing honesty about the American male.

Television industry journalist Michael Ausiello tells the story of his final year with his partner of thirteen years, Kit Cowan--diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of neuroendocrine cancer--while revisiting the many memories that preceded it, and describes how their undeniably powerful bond carried them through all manner of difficulties, with humor always front and center of the relationship.

I wasn't afraid of death. How could I be? I lived under death's shadow every day. When you swallow eighty Vicodin, twenty sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you. When you continually use drugs with the kind of reckless determination that I did, the limit to how much heroin or crack you can ingest is not defined in dollar amounts, but in the amounts your body can withstand without experiencing a seizure or respiratory failure. Yet at the end of every binge, every night of lining up six, seven, eight crack pipes and hitting them one after the other bam! bam! bam! every night of smoking and snorting bag after bag of heroin . . . after all of that, when you still wake up to see the same dirty sky over you as the night before, you start to think that instead of dying, maybe your punishment is to live---to be stuck in this purgatory of self-abuse and misery for an eternity. Sometimes you start to think that death would come as a blessed relief. Toward the end, I found myself contemplating death again. Only this time I wasn't going to leave it to chance. I was going to buy a gun, load the thing, place the barrel in my mouth, and blow my fucking brains out. I sat on my parents' sofa as I pondered this. All I needed was a gun. And then all-- of my problems-- would be solved.

This meticulously edited collection offers you the true accounts about the Confederate States of America, including documents that were most influential for the creation of the states and the life stories of its principal leaders and officers. "The History of the Confederate States of America" and "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" represent the best source for understanding the background, the creation, fight and the ultimate defeat, written by the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis. The collection also includes memoirs and biographies of the Confederate Leaders: Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee & Heros von Borcke. Finally, this collection is enriched with the most pivotal documents of the Confederate States. Contents: History of the Confederate States of America The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Memoirs & Biographies: Jefferson Davis by Frank H. Alfriend Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke Memoirs of Heros von Borcke Official Documents of the Confederate States: Constitution of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America Constitution of the Confederate States of America The Address of the People of South Carolina assembled in Convention, to the People of the Slaveholding States of the United States South Carolina Ordinance of Secession Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union Mississippi Ordinance of Secession Florida Ordinance of Secession Alabama Ordinance of Secession Georgia Ordinance of Secession Louisiana Ordinance of Secession Texas Ordinance of Secession Arizona Territory Ordinance of Secession Virginia Ordinance of Secession Arkansas Ordinance of Secession North Carolina Ordinance of Secession Tennessee Ordinance of Secession Missouri Ordinance of Secession Kentucky Ordinance of Secession Dix-Hill Cartel Robert E. Lee's Letter Announcing Surrender ...