True Survival

From the New York Times bestselling author Caroline Paul, a thrilling, gravity-defying book that takes us skyward to explore the art of aeronautics—and the human drive to live daringly. Flying has long represented that beautiful, high-stakes human drive to invent, to explore, to experience. Caroline Paul has known it since she was twenty and learned to fly a single-engine plane for the first time. In her thirties, she moved to a paraglider; in her forties, a motorized hang glider.

It was one of the strangest sights the Coast Guard pilots had ever seen: a tall-masted wooden ship, the kind that sailed centuries ago, capsizing in the wind and towering waves of Hurricane Sandy off the coast of North Carolina. It looked like something out of a movie - and, in a way, it was. The ship was the Bounty, a replica of a British merchant vessel of the same name whose crew famously mutinied in 1789. She had been built for a Marlon Brando film in the 1960s - and now she was sinking, her 16-person crew fleeing into the sea amid the splintered wood and torn canvas.

Throughout life, you experience so many emotions, decisions, people, and situations. It lies in your conscience to learn from life and handle it the right way. Afi Kingdom is an author, international podcaster, mindset coach, and an efficient educator. He tries to share his life's experiences through skills to shape and manipulate personalities, relationships, style, confidence, and other essential elements of living.

Yuna was just an eight-year-old girl when she experienced total devastation. Growing up in the Mongolian countryside, she wasn't ready to face the darker side of the world. And yet she had to. After she was kidnapped by an organized crime gang, Yuna had to overcome her fears at an early age and start taking care of herself. She tried to escape from slavery, but everybody that she encountered wanted to take advantage of her.

Frank X. Walker sees many supposed survival skills as "Creative Solutions to Life’s Challenges" in his contribution to NPR's This I Believe series. This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features Americans, from the famous to the unknown, completing the thought that begins with...