Search results for ""author bill hayes""

____________________________ A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls 'the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected' of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks. ____________________________ 'A beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life ... Exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous' - Joyce Carol Oates 'A loving tribute to Sacks and to New York ... Read just 50 pages, and you’ll see easily enough how Hayes is Sacks’s logical complement' - Jennifer Senior, New York Times ____________________________ Bill Hayes came to New York in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera. And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers. ____________________________ 'A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love' - Kirkus Reviews

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We often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries--eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don't, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, "I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story." An acclaimed journalist and memoirist--and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks--Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes's narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, and city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.

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Get an inside look at the real beginning of outlaw biker culture with this raucous and heartfelt recounting of the early days of biker clubs (Roadbike). The story starts one weekend in 1947, at a motorcycle race in Hollister, California. A few members of one club, the no-holds-barred Boozefighters, got a little juiced up and took their racing to the street. Word of the fracas spread, and soon enough Life magazine was on hand to tell the world, with sensational (albeit posed) pictures of the outlaws. And then the Hollister riot made its way into the movies, immortalized in Marlon Brandos The Wild One. What was the reality behind the myth? Through interviews with the surviving members of the Boozefighters, current member Bill Hayes and club historian Jim JQ Quattlebaum take readers right into the fray for a firsthand account of what happened in Hollister, and the formation of the Boozefighters, where the outlaw biker culture truly began. The book, with its great stories and entertaining real-life characters (MotorcycleUSA.com), is mandatory reading for anyone interested in American motorcycling history (Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly).

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As featured on 60 Minutes, Dateline, Inside Edition, and 48 Hours, the shocking true story of banker Edmond Safra's death and the man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the crime. When billionaire banker Edmond Safra died in the ashes of Monaco’s La Belle Époque building on December 3, 1999, the event made international headlines—for many reasons. One, of course, was the sheer wealth of the Lebanese mogul and his formidable presence in the international banking world. But the more seductive reason for the worldwide attention was the strange and intriguing way Safra died—ensconced within the armored walls of his vigilantly secured residence in the “safest city in the world.” At 4:45 in the morning, a firestorm gutted Safra’s opulent Monte Carlo penthouse, trapping—and killing—Safra and one of his nurses, Vivian Torrente. When the fire was ruled arson, a fast finger was pointed at the only other nurse present: former Green Beret Ted Maher. The true, bizarre circumstances that led to Safra’s death and to the subsequent imprisonment of Ted Maher are contained within the pages of Framed in Monte Carlo: How I Was Wrongfully Convicted for a Billionaire’s Fiery Death. The story features a play-by-play of that deadly night, as well as Ted’s sham of a trial that put him behind bars for seven years and eight months. Brutal betrayals, harrowing kidnappings, prison breaks straight out of The Great Escape, and more pepper the pages of Framed in Monte Carlo. Ted was freed when the judge from his trial came forward with a stunning revelation. But his life was never the same. And since his return to American soil, he’s continued to unearth more and more disturbing details about his ordeal. Armed with fresh facts, a greater understanding of the players, and a wider lens of perspective, Ted now reveals all, including his never-before-released findings that seek to answer the lingering big question: Who did kill Edmond Safra? The powerful famous names legitimately put forth by the author will shock you.

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