The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality

The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality PDF Author: Mike Sielski
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250275733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"A compelling origin story of a time that really wasn’t so long ago but through the lens of tragedy feels like forever. Kobe-ologists will devour this book, reveling in the anecdotes about his intensity & the engaging game recaps." —Associated Press “Every superhero needs an origin story.” –Jeff Pearlman The inside look at one of the most captivating and consequential figures in our culture—with never-before-heard interviews. Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. The tragedy of that helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter Gianna, unveiled the full breadth and depth of his influence on our culture, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an insight into Kobe that no other analysis has. In The Rise, readers will travel from the neighborhood streets of Southwest Philadelphia—where Kobe’s father, Joe, became a local basketball standout—to the Bryant family’s isolation in Italy, where Kobe spent his formative years, to the leafy suburbs of Lower Merion, where Kobe’s legend was born. The story will trace his career and life at Lower Merion—he led the Aces to the 1995-96 Pennsylvania state championship, a dramatic underdog run for a team with just one star player—and the run-up to the 1996 NBA draft, where Kobe’s dream of playing pro basketball culminated in his acquisition by the Los Angeles Lakers. In researching and writing The Rise, Mike Sielski had a terrific advantage over other writers who have attempted to chronicle Kobe’s life: access to a series of never-before-released interviews with him during his senior season and early days in the NBA. For a quarter century, these tapes and transcripts preserved Kobe’s thoughts, dreams, and goals from his teenage years, and they contained insights into and told stories about him that have never been revealed before. This is more than a basketball book. This is an exploration of the identity and making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him—the essence of the man before he truly became a man.

The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality

The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality PDF Author: Mike Sielski
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250275733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A compelling origin story of a time that really wasn’t so long ago but through the lens of tragedy feels like forever. Kobe-ologists will devour this book, reveling in the anecdotes about his intensity & the engaging game recaps." —Associated Press “Every superhero needs an origin story.” –Jeff Pearlman The inside look at one of the most captivating and consequential figures in our culture—with never-before-heard interviews. Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. The tragedy of that helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter Gianna, unveiled the full breadth and depth of his influence on our culture, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an insight into Kobe that no other analysis has. In The Rise, readers will travel from the neighborhood streets of Southwest Philadelphia—where Kobe’s father, Joe, became a local basketball standout—to the Bryant family’s isolation in Italy, where Kobe spent his formative years, to the leafy suburbs of Lower Merion, where Kobe’s legend was born. The story will trace his career and life at Lower Merion—he led the Aces to the 1995-96 Pennsylvania state championship, a dramatic underdog run for a team with just one star player—and the run-up to the 1996 NBA draft, where Kobe’s dream of playing pro basketball culminated in his acquisition by the Los Angeles Lakers. In researching and writing The Rise, Mike Sielski had a terrific advantage over other writers who have attempted to chronicle Kobe’s life: access to a series of never-before-released interviews with him during his senior season and early days in the NBA. For a quarter century, these tapes and transcripts preserved Kobe’s thoughts, dreams, and goals from his teenage years, and they contained insights into and told stories about him that have never been revealed before. This is more than a basketball book. This is an exploration of the identity and making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him—the essence of the man before he truly became a man.

Perfect Bodies

Perfect Bodies PDF Author: Vivienne Lo
Publisher: British Museum Research Public
ISBN: 9780861591886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
By presenting rigorous situated histories of changing training regimen in different cultures, this collection of papers collectively challenge orthodox notions of the perfect body and its pursuit. The introductory essay by the editor compares and contrasts the different methods and ideals. Ancient regimen and techniques may seem remote, yet many attempt to resolve issues that are common to us all. Some are directed at the immortality or longevity of the physical body, and include performance-enhancing nutrition and drug taking; others train the spirit and souls for the afterlife. Many emphasise the interconnectedness of the human body with its environment. The papers set their topic in its broad socio-political and cultural context, facilitating a dialogue with other contributors who considered many similar questions for the 20th and 21st centuries. Histories of sports, body cultivation and sports medicines in non-European cultures are only just now beginning to emerge. With the Olympics approaching in London, it is timely to explore the diverse traditions of perfecting body and soul, as a fascinating historical project in itself, but also to provide a rich context for envisioning a more widely beneficial approach to sports, medicine and immortality for all.

The Book of Immortality

The Book of Immortality PDF Author: Adam Gollner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439109435
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.

Immortality in Sports

Immortality in Sports PDF Author: Wib Leonard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317257790
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Sports have taken on tremendous importance in the world in which we live. Their social significance - economic, political, and personal - both nationally and internationally is unprecedented. What may not be so immediately obvious is the sociological nature of sports. Sport offers one of the most visible public arenas for understanding the role that 'immortality' plays in individual action, group dynamics, and with audiences and the media. Following a brief introduction to the sociology of sport, Leonard explores these dimensions of the sporting world through the idea of the 'post-self' - how individuals regard themselves and want to be remembered by the public. From the individual psyche to the global arena of sports, this book features vivid examples and quotations from star athletes, coaches, and the media, offering poignant insights into the sporting world and about individuals and society.

Immortality

Immortality PDF Author: Stephen Cave
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307884937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be. A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization. Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals. Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain. But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths. Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently. In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments. He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body. Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them. Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist. We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one? Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started? If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live? And can civilization survive? Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.

Twilight and Philosophy

Twilight and Philosophy PDF Author: Rebecca Housel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470484233
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
twilight and Philosophy What can vampires tell us about the meaning of life? Is Edward a romantic hero or a dangerous stalker? Is Bella a feminist? Is Stephenie Meyer? How does Stephenie Meyer’s Mormonism fit into the fantastical world of Twilight? Is Jacob “better” for Bella than Edward? The answers to these philosophical questions and more can be found inside Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality. With everything from Taoism to mind reading to the place of God in a world of vampires, this book offers some very tasty philosophy for both the living and the undead to sink their teeth into. Whether you’re on Team Edward or Team Jacob, whether you loved or hated Breaking Dawn, this book is for you! To learn more about the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, visit www.andphilosophy.com

The Hour

The Hour PDF Author: Michael Hutchinson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144641874X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The Hour. It's the only cycling record that matters: one man and his bike against the clock in a quest for pure speed. No teammates, no rivals, no tactics, no gears, no brakes. Just one simple question - in sixty minutes, how far can you go? Michael Hutchinson had a plan. He was going to add his name to the list of record-holders, cycling's supermen. But how does a man who became a professional athlete by accident achieve sporting immortality? It didn't sound too hard. All he needed was a couple of hand-tooled bike frames, the most expensive wheels money could buy, a support team of crack professionals, a small pot of glue, and a credit card wired to someone else's bank account. Still, getting the glue wasn't a problem... Michael Hutchinson became a full-time cyclist in 2000 after becoming disillusioned with an academic career. Over the following six years he has won more than twenty national titles, and the gold medal in the Masters' Pursuit World Championships. He is now a writer and journalist (and cyclist) and lives in south London.

The Future of Immortality

The Future of Immortality PDF Author: Anya Bernstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691182612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A gripping account of the Russian visionaries who are pursuing human immortality As long as we have known death, we have dreamed of life without end. In The Future of Immortality, Anya Bernstein explores the contemporary Russian communities of visionaries and utopians who are pressing at the very limits of the human. The Future of Immortality profiles a diverse cast of characters, from the owners of a small cryonics outfit to scientists inaugurating the field of biogerontology, from grassroots neurotech enthusiasts to believers in the Cosmist ideas of the Russian Orthodox thinker Nikolai Fedorov. Bernstein puts their debates and polemics in the context of a long history of immortalist thought in Russia, with global implications that reach to Silicon Valley and beyond. If aging is a curable disease, do we have a moral obligation to end the suffering it causes? Could immortality be the foundation of a truly liberated utopian society extending beyond the confines of the earth—something that Russians, historically, have pondered more than most? If life without end requires radical genetic modification or separating consciousness from our biological selves, how does that affect what it means to be human? As vividly written as any novel, The Future of Immortality is a fascinating account of techno-scientific and religious futurism—and the ways in which it hopes to transform our very being.

The Immortality Key

The Immortality Key PDF Author: Brian C. Muraresku
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 125027091X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience! A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations. The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle. Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive. If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at UPenn and MIT, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity. The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots. Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the NYT bestselling author of America Before.

Fading Echoes

Fading Echoes PDF Author: Mike Sielski
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101139978
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Now in paperback-a true story of hometown heroes. In a state that prides itself on hard-hitting gridiron epics, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was home to the greatest high school football rivalry: the Central Bucks West, captained by senior fullback/linebacker Bryan Buckley, versus the Central Bucks East, led by senior lineman Colby Umbrell. Bryan and Colby would meet each other as opponents on the game field, but their dreams and devotion to their country led each of them to the conflict in the Middle East-Colby as an Army Ranger, and Bryan as a Marine. Only one would make it back to Doylestown. And nothing about them, their families, or their hometown's connection to football would ever be the same