Champions aren't born, they're made. The haunting, searingly candid New York Times bestselling memoir of Greg Louganis' journey to overcome homophobia, colorism, and disability to become one of the best Olympic athletes in the world. Greg Louganis began diving at age nine. At sixteen, he beat out more experienced competitors to win a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. By all accounts, the world was his for the taking. But there was more happening beneath the surface... In his tell-all autobiography Greg invites readers into the harrowing, inspirational true story of his life on and off the diving board. Adopted at nine months, Greg spent most of his life fighting colorism in his community and struggling with late-detected dyslexia. Athleticism was an area in which he thrived—he was in control, he could prove his worth, and he would show the world what he was capable of. But as a closeted gay man living in a violently homophobic world, Greg lived in fear: fear that coming out would mean sacrificing his career and reputation, and fear that by not speaking out he was perpetuating the status-quo. But as his skill as a diver became internationally known, the spotlight he found himself under only intensified his struggles, leading to difficulties with relationships and substance abuse. It took the true spirit of a champion to heal, rise above adversity, and fight for others. A sports memoir and LGBTQ book in the vein of Meg Rapinoe's One Life, in Breaking the Surface Olympic diver Greg Louganis reflects on the highs and lows of his iconic life and career—from testing positive to HIV and going on to win double gold medals at the Olympics, to overcoming astounding prejudice and becoming an LGBTQ+ activist—in a raw, honest exploration of how we define greatness.

Wave breaking represents one of the most interesting and challenging problems for fluid mechanics and physical oceanography. Over the last fifteen years our understanding has undergone a dramatic leap forward, and wave breaking has emerged as a process whose physics is clarified and quantified. Ocean wave breaking plays the primary role in the air-sea exchange of momentum, mass and heat, and it is of significant importance for ocean remote sensing, coastal and ocean engineering, navigation and other practical applications. This book outlines the state of the art in our understanding of wave breaking and presents the main outstanding problems. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in this topic, including researchers, modellers, forecasters, engineers and graduate students in physical oceanography, meteorology and ocean engineering.

Deep beneath the sea off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of being human... but at what terrible price? Hans Christian Andersen's dark original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans.

"Breaking the Surface will be a disruption to traditional archaeological approaches to the prehistoric past. Having performed fieldwork on the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe for over 20 years, the author aims to confront a major development in human history--digging, or the creation of holes. The book begins with a detailed examination of the extant remains of Neolithic pit-houses, the roofed dugout structures that are the earliest evidence for settled habitation in Europe. Rather than seek confirmation for what has already been theorized about their use (e.g., housing, storage, refuse), the author turns to the more specific actions of the people who dug these holes in the surface, and, more critically, to the consequences that those prehistoric actions had on those people's understanding of their place(s) in their ground worlds: how digging into the surface altered their perspectives of themselves and others, and of their world and of other worlds beyond the material and visible. The book turns to how scholars in other disciplines, such as philosophy and linguistic anthropology, have been asking similar questions about holes and the consequences of breaking and cutting. The resulting book offers comprehensive discussions of the philosophy of holes and perforations (particularly the paradox of a hole - does it exist, is it beyond materiality?), the linguistic anthropology of cut- and break-words (what diversity exists in the ways that extant communities talk and think about perforations and perforating), and the perceptual psychology of concavities (the case that holes attract our visual attentions)"--

In Breaking the Surface, Doug Bailey offers a radical alternative for understanding Neolithic houses, providing much-needed insight not just into prehistoric practice, but into another way of doing archaeology. Using his years of fieldwork experience excavating the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe, Bailey exposes and elucidates a previously under-theorized aspect of prehistoric pit construction: the actions and consequences of digging defined as breaking the surface of the ground. Breaking the Surface works through the consequences of this redefinition in order to redirect scholarship on the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, offering detailed critiques of current interpretations of these earliest European architectural constructions. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Magura in Romania), with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with cultural diversity in framing spatial reference and through an examination of pre-modern ungrounded ways of living. Breaking the Surface is as much a creative act on its own-in its mixture of work from disparate periods and regions, its use of radical text interruption, and its juxtaposition of text and imagery-as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture. Unflinching and exhilarating, it is a major development in the growing subdiscipline of art/archaeology.

Surface Detail is among Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction. It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful -- and arguably deranged -- warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war -- brutal, far-reaching -- is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata

This is a new edition of Greg Louganis's 1995 #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography and Literary Guild Selection. It is the unflinchingly honest first-person account of a man breaking free of a lifetime of silence and isolation. Born to a young Samoan father and Northern European mother, and adopted at nine months, Greg began diving at age nine, and at sixteen won a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But despite his astonishing athletic skill, Greg struggled with late-detected dyslexia, prejudice toward his dark skin coloring and anguish over his homosexuality, which he felt compelled to hide. Being in the spotlight intensified his difficulties with relationships and substance abuse. However, Louganis went on to win double gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics. His triumph at the 1988 Olympics came several months after he tested positive for HIV. This is the haunting, searingly candid story of the world's greatest diver. This new edition includes a new foreword.