In his 2016 best-seller, The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir, Bill Griffeth told of learning that the father who raised him was not, in fact, his biological father. In this sequel, Bill continues his journey to learn about his newly discovered biological family and shares some of the dramatic stories strangers and friends told him about their own shocking DNA discoveries. In the process, Bill stumbles on some closely guarded family secrets. This "moving portrait of coming to terms with the past" is at once witty and sensitive and provides "a clear-sighted and compassionate roadmap for us all." Warning: It's another page-turner that may keep you up all night
Praise for CNBC CREATING WEALTH The rapidly growing influence of the individual investor and the stunning evolution of technology are two of the most remarkable developments in the history of the financial world. In CNBC Creating Wealth, we help you take advantage of these fundamental changes to Wall Street and take charge of your own investing. "Learning how the market works requires some discipline and homework on everyones part. This book is an indispensable guide that explains how to profit by choosing the right investments and avoiding the riskier ones." Terry Savage author of The Savage Truth on Money "CNBC Creating Wealth is an excellent resource for investors of all ageswith or without market experience." Bambi Holzer Senior Vice PresidentInvestments and Retirement Plan Consultant with PaineWebber From the Foreword "Successful investors understand what makes stock prices go up and down. Thats where information comes in. . . . This book is designed to figure out what is important so you can separate useful information from useless noise." Bill Griffeth CNBC Anchor and host of Power Lunch
An invaluable resource for wealth managers advising individuals, couples, and families, this book explains why human emotions drive all investor behavior and makes a powerful case for why advisors need to be aware of such emotions in advising clients—especially in high-stakes situations.Despite the fact that wealth advisors may employ algorithms, fancy financial models, economic theory, and predictive reasoning to forecast future investment returns, according to seasoned wealth management advisor Chris White, people—in other words, clients—basically decide how much risk to take with their money based on emotional factors such as the love they received as children, early life experiences of loss and "imperfect love," psychic wounds, and family traumas. A must-read for anyone in the wealth management profession, including wealth advisors, financial consultants, certified financial analysts, and retirement advisors, this groundbreaking book offers a radically new and well-articulated framework for managing relationships with clients as well as the essential tools to advise, mentor, and guide clients in making financial management decisions.Readers will understand how to recognize the emotional and psychological factors behind investor behavior and apply this insight to be a better wealth advisor. The author explains why early childhood experiences of love, joy, and loss and sometimes very subtle family dynamics play a key role in adult investor behavior; why being sensitive to an individual's unique psychological "systems" is key to being able to accurately assess his or her tolerance and acceptance of risk-taking as part of the wealth management process; what can cause a client's personality to change, especially in high-stress or high-stakes situations; and how to employ sophisticated client relationship management practices such as curiosity, appreciative inquiry, and powerful questioning to understand clients' needs at a deep psychological level.
Griffiths has one of the finest ears – for song, for varieties and cadences of speech – of any poet writing today. His compacted lyrics flash with intelligence and humour. They are shaped by anger, empathy and childish delight. But they are also charged with the excitement of contemporary form: swift, filmic montage and free use of the page space. His poems dig, probe, reveal, expose the language as it is lived, with a range possibly unequalled in any British poet. Their sharp diagnoses of social domination and the ideas that sustain and mask it are a wake-up call. But there is nothing dry about them: they savour language, ask you to dance with it, show you the pain in it, enlarge the world with it. Griffiths was a key member of the British Poetry Revival, both as an activist in the Poetry Society and in the small press scene, and as a writer of inventive, formally innovative poetry. He continues to explore the shapes of contemporary experience, and to denounce agencies of unfreedom. By now he is the author of a large body of work, which this book seeks to make available to ordinary readers. The essays collected here offer guides to reading, commentaries on forms and sources, and a range of insights into how the poems work. There is also a bibliography, an interview, photographs and visuals, all of which help to give a vivid sense of Griffiths’s world.
Stotty 'n' Spice Cake brings together regional recipes, dialect, social history and kitchen technology to give us an insight into how kitchen skills, tools and diets have developed. Bill Griffiths takes us on a journey through cooking history - from the griddle on an open fire and the 'beehive' oven to the widely used, much loved and polished kitchen range (th' yuven). This book describes the changing tastes - as well as changes in supplies of meat, fish and grain over the years to include traditions such as the popularity of oatcakes, broth and bread. Recipes from across the region, such as Leak Pudding, Carlins, Singin'-hinny, Taffle Apple, Barley Broth and wartime recipes 'Warton Pie' (Wartime Pie) of course, all served with much home grown North East humour. A joyous celebration of the history of the food and its people from the North East of England.
Until the 20th century, dialect was a marker of economic, social and cultural change. We know that the North East maritime connections with the Dutch led to the introduction of many 'new' words. The Scottish influence of the keelmen (fisherman) on the Tyne and their effect on local language was much more radical. Although the Tyneside dialect and identity and this way of speaking is fast waning, the popularity of discovering this language and dialect shows there is still a great interest in the languages and dialect of the past.
The last major mine in the North East region closed in 2005 and with it went a way of life. Through dialect words, humour, stories and songs Pitmatic will help you to understand the everyday lives and work of miners. Miners who provided fuel, helped sustain an economy, consolidated communities and created a unique and rich regional culture. This book is a joyous celebration of the history of the North East bringing together the words spoken by miners and their families and how they related to the wider languages of the world.
Spud Tatum, a native of South Louisiana, was given a second chance He was physically re-engineered and endowed with World Class Speed. With this talent he traveled to Savannah, Georgia and tried out as a "walk on" Defensive Back- (Strong Side Safety) with the "Savannah Colonels" at the insistence of Dan Wells, Head Scout for the Colonels. Dan was his girlfriend's Uncle, and a chance acquaintance. Blinding speed, perfect timing and opportunity turn Spud into an NFL Star with the "upstart" Savannah Colonels, a young Expansion Team that was not expected to go far in the league. Something intangible happens to the team, and they rally around Spud to play far beyond their means. Spud makes friends, helps others, and is consumed by a young lady, "Lessy", a teenager in a wheelchair. Savannah is a great city full of real characters and the story is a rolling account of how Spud keeps his head on his shoulders by fishing, hunting, and grounding himself with friends, and a "family" he constructs from scratch Something he sorely lacked, and didn't know it.
Nobody’s Fool follows the story of Schlitzie’s long career—from Coney Island and the Ringling Bros. Circus to small-town carnivals and big-city sideshows—which is one of legend. Today, Schlitzie is most well-known for his appearance in the cult classic Freaks. The making of Freaks and Schlitzie’s role in the film is a centerpiece of the book. In researching Schlitzie’s life (1901–1971), Griffith has tracked down primary sources and archives throughout the country, including conducting interviews with those who worked with him and had intimate knowledge of his personality, his likes and dislikes, how he responded to being a sideshow “freak,” and much more. This graphic novel biography provides never-before-revealed details of his life, offering a unique look into his world and restoring dignity to his life by recognizing his contributions to popular culture.
From Bill Griffith, the acclaimed creator of Zippy the Pinhead, comes the story of Ernie Bushmiller and his iconic comic strip Nancy, told in an original graphic novel that recounts the history of comics and the secrets of comic book storytellingFrom Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is more than just the bio of a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception in 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve—and today it is experiencing a resurgence thanks to the work of new writer/artist Olivia Jaimes.Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—enough to communicate environment to the reader (two wouldn’t read properly, and four is one too many). This distillation helped contribute to the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, making it a comic strip not about childhood, like Peanuts, but about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics, specifically humorous comics.
Nobody's Fool follows the story of Schlitzie's long career--from Coney Island and the Ringling Bros. Circus to small-town carnivals and big-city sideshows--which is one of legend. Today, Schlitzie is most well-known for his appearance in the cult classic Freaks. The making of Freaks and Schlitzie's role in the film is a centerpiece of the book. In researching Schlitzie's life (1901-1971), Griffith has tracked down primary sources and archives throughout the country, including conducting interviews with those who worked with him and had intimate knowledge of his personality, his likes and dislikes, how he responded to being a sideshow "freak," and much more. This graphic novel biography provides never-before-revealed details of his life, offering a unique look into his world and restoring dignity to his life by recognizing his contributions to popular culture.
Legendary cartoonist Bill Griffith brings a personal touch to this illustrated history of his great-grandfather, William Henry Jackson—a pioneering photographer of the American West whose work led to Yellowstone becoming the first National Park and was a major influence on Ansel Adams In his new graphic biography, legendary cartoonist Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead, tells the story of his namesake and great-grandfather, William Henry Jackson, who was one of the first photographers of the American West. Jackson’s photography spurred Americans to move westward, inspiring photographers such as Ansel Adams, and playing a role in the creation of our national parks, including Yellowstone. Using his unique approach to graphic novel biography, which Kirkus hails as setting a “standard” for the medium, Griffith explores every aspect of his great-grandfather’s life and legacy, which he pulls from family letters, diaries, and anecdotes, primary sources, and the archives of the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, as well as from the more than 25 books written about Jackson and his work. Like all of Griffith’s biographies, Photographic Memory is a thoroughly researched, sharply observant character study written from a place of love, which explores photography in an illustrated medium. Not an easy trick to pull off—unless you are Bill Griffith.
This is the renowned cartoonist's first long-form graphic work a 200-page memoir that poignantly recounts his mother s secret life, which included an affair with a cartoonist and crime novelist in the 1950s and 60s. Invisible Ink unfolds like a detective story, alternating between past and present, as Griffith recreates the quotidian habits of suburban Levittown and the professional and cultural life of mid-century Manhattan in the 1950s and 60s as seen through his mother s and his own then-teenage eyes. Griffith puts the pieces together and reveals a mother he never knew."
The Buildings Are Barking is Bill Griffith's tender, poetic, deeply felt comics tribute to his wife, life-long partner, muse, copy editor, and fellow cartoonist Diane Noomin. "I'm still unable to accept her death. I relive all 49 of our years together every day. How could anyone so alive, so funny, so lovely, be gone? Who am I without her?" Griffith summons all of his comics-making expertise in order to bring his beloved Diane back to life in a remarkable act of mourning and memory. His cartoon avatar Griffy has long provided grounded, snarky counterpoint to the pop-culture-damaged flights of fancy uttered and enacted by Zippy The Pinhead in the Zippy strip. Here, it's the Griffith character who is damaged enough by grief to become sincere and express his emotions, while both Noomin and her avatar Didi Glitz (in artwork taken from her own comics) manifest to bounce off the bereft Griffith with wisdom, advice to live life, and sharp sarcasm of her own.Returning to Noomin and Griffith's shared origins in underground comics, The Buildings Are Barking is Bill's first original work for the single-issue comic-book format in over forty years. His comic strip Zippy has run in daily newspapers since 1985, after a decade as a weekly, and he has recently created several graphic biographies for the book market, including Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead (Abrams, 2019) and Three Rocks: The Story Of Ernie Bushmiller, The Man Who Created Nancy (Abrams, 2023). Fantagraphics has published a dozen Zippy collections and other Griffith anthologies since 1990, and his 2015 book Invisible Ink: My Mother's Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist is still available in hardcover. Diane Noomin's best-of collection, Glitz-2-Go (Fantagraphics, 2012) is available in paperback.
This book draws together a major selection of poems from 1984-2004. Including works on London, sport, boats, cartoons, food, the classics, the mystical, history, crime, and the North. A taut, rhythmic verse, with respect for word-sound and a cheering disregard for consensus on history, language and ‘poetry’.
