Bøger af Mark Obmascik

"From a bestselling author, the heartbreaking, redemptive story of two World War II soldiers whose fateful encounter in the Forgotten War of Alaska has fascinated Americans for decades. In researching his bestselling book The Big Year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Obmascik rediscovered a long-lost document from World War II: the diary of a Japanese surgeon, recovered from his body by the soldier who killed him. In the Cradle of Storms reveals the layered and moving story of two men bound together by a nineteen-page diary--and how its words eventually captivated American troops and changed our war-torn society. Written as one desperate man's final testament, Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi's journal revealed the medic's studies in America and his love for the US. It sent shock waves through American troops of the 1940s, shattering racist preconceptions and opening eyes to the common humanity of soldiers on both sides of the battle lines. Years later, it sent Laura Tatsuguchi Davis, the dead medic's daughter, on an intense search for the truth behind her father's life and legacy. And it drove Dick Laird--the sergeant who found the diary--to undertake a forty-year quest on two continents to find Laura, whose kindness and forgiveness offered redemption for his own tortured soul. With journalistic acumen, sensitivity, and unmatched narrative skills, Obmascik tells the unforgettable true story of a horrific battle on a barren Alaskan island, two families struggling for peace, and the unlikely road to forgiveness"--

Now reissued to tie in to the 2011 major motion picture release from 20th Century Fox starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson, the critically heralded book by award-winning journalist Mark Obmascik--"a feathered version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World " ( Outside ). With engaging, unflappably wry humor, The Big Year re-creates the grand, grueling, expensive, and occasionally vicious, "extreme" 365-day contest for a new North American birdwatching record. In this thrilling real-life adventure, three men battle the daunting forces of nature--and each other--in their whirlwind 275,000-mile odyssey from Texas to British Columbia, Cape May to Alaska. One of them achieves an astonishing record unlikely ever to be bested. A captivating tour of human and avian nature, passion and paranoia, honor and deceit, fear and loathing, The Big Year shows the lengths to which people will go to pursue their dreams, to conquer and categorize--no matter how low the stakes.

Each year, hundreds of people set out across North America determined to set a new record in a spectacularly competitive event. Is it tennis? Golf? No, it's bird-watching, and a contest known as the Big Year. This title chronicles the 275,000-mile odyssey of three unlikely adventurers who take their bird-watching so seriously it nearly kills them.