The Write Stuff

Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review), The Right Stuff is the basis for the 1983 Oscar Award-winning film of the same name and the 8-part Disney+ TV mini-series. From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. " Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.

With clarity and wit, preacher and writer Sondra Willobee explores the joyful process of crafting effective sermons. Gathering the strategies of good writers, Willobee shows how to capture and keep listeners' attention, how to generate suspense through structure, and how to increase impact with vivid language. In addition, Willobee offers examples, exercises, and reflections that help turn each chapter into a preaching workshop. The result is a book that will rekindle the creativity of experienced preachers and help new preachers develop their own compelling voices.

Rachel, the "It" Girl, asks her best friend, Hannah, to write an e-mail to unobtainable Dylan, but when he starts falling for the e-mails, it's Hannah he's falling for, not Rachel.

A collection of papers by practicing graphologists as well as critics from many fields, providing a balanced evaluation of claims that personality, aptitude, and psychological and physical health can be determined through handwriting analysis. Paper edition (unseen), $21.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In this brilliant account of the literary war within the Cold War, novelists and poets become embroiled in a dangerous game of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy at the heart of the vicious conflict fought between the Soviet Union and the West During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays, and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution for their authors if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union recruited secret agents and established vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turned on one another, lovers were split by political fissures, artists were undermined by inadvertent complicities. And while literary battles were fought in print, sometimes the pen was exchanged for a gun, the bookstore for the battlefield. In Cold Warriors, Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Among those involved were George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carré, Anna Akhmatova, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, and Václav Havel. Here, too, are the spies, government officials, military officers, publishers, politicians, and critics who helped turn words into weapons at a time when the stakes could not have been higher. Drawing upon years of archival research and the latest declassified intelligence, Cold Warriors is both a gripping saga of prose and politics, and a welcome reminder that--at a moment when ignorance is all too frequently celebrated and reading is seen as increasingly irrelevant--writers and books can change the world.

The Australian Labor Party has forgotten how to win national elections. Federal Labor finds itself with only one in three Australians prepared to give it their vote. It has arrived at a historic tipping point that if not fixed potentially spells the end for one of the world's oldest and most successful social democratic parties. Caught between its more conservative working-class base in Australia's suburbs and regions and its inner-city progressive activists, Labor appears unable to bridge a growing chasm, and unable to build winning national coalitions. The 129-year-old ALP only succeeds when its right-wing, known as Labor Unity or Centre Unity, is on top of its game. The Write Stuff: Voices of Unity on Labor's Future features thirty essays on the way forward for Labor and Australia. Its contributors are drawn from across the nation's expanses - new and established voices, members of federal and state parliaments, and leading unionists. With the defeat at the last election and postponement of Labor's national conference there is a vacuum at the heart of the ALP - a genuine battle of ideas and vigorous policy debate. The Write Stuff provides that contest in spades. As its chapters testify, ideas remain powerful tools in our nation's public debate. Big ideas and sharp thinking - politics with purpose - will underpin a Labor comeback in the twenty-first century. We do not intend to be the last ones to turn out the lights on the way out for the ALP. Labor needs to be bigger, not smaller: a bigger and more diverse party reflective of modern Australia, and a party of bigger ideas and national ambition. Millions of working Australians rely on the nation's oldest political party and more than ever they need Labor to li429ght the way nationally. The Australian way of life is really the Labor way. It can remain so only if we choose the Right way. Nick Dyrenfurth and Misha Zelinsky have rendered the Labor movement an extraordinary service in having The Write Stuff published. It encourages a contest of ideas, but perhaps more importantly provides a signpost which begins the journey back to government in Canberra. - Stephen Loosely

Guide to help parents encourage their children's writing, with information on how to respond to writing.

The Write Stuff: Thinking through Essays equips developing writers with the critical thinking skills they need to interpret and analyze information and express their ideas clearly and logically in writing.

Twenty years past, the governors plotted murder. Ruled by avarice, they imprisoned the winged dragons of Taran Leigh in the black cells of a stone lair. Tormented by spine and spur the once peaceful creatures howl, immense webbed wings beating beneath iron bars. Those who raised their voices in protest were banished--skyriders, the men who rode the dragons--vanished to the distant mountains of the Mirror.Now, Treasa, the daughter of exiles, seeker of secrets, dreams with the lair's dragons, her heart torn by her love for the winged creatures and a man who masters them. She must choose her path with care. The lair's black -garbed riders sense the dragon's growing savagery. Yet one, Conall, longs to grasp their power, subdue them and soar, unaware that winged flight, merged in harmony, is his for the asking. Then, a curved talon rends Conall's flesh and dragon scale, rattling against white ribs and the world shifts. As hearts once parted bind, Terasa and Conall join forces to fight for the dragon's freedom. Alliances form, old myths are revealed and new myths are born.