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Wonderment

by Nigel Hey (Goodreads Author)

5.0 of 5 stars 5.00 · rating details · 1 rating · 2 reviews

Wonderment keeps the action going from the author’s childhood nightmares to the suspense of a brush with death in the neurology unit of a London hospital. Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, it’s the first-person life history of a writer who was born with a love of adventure, travel, people, and the mystery of who we are and why – laced with the humor, romance, family l...more Wonderment keeps the action going from the author’s childhood nightmares to the suspense of a brush with death in the neurology unit of a London hospital. Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, it’s the first-person life history of a writer who was born with a love of adventure, travel, people, and the mystery of who we are and why – laced with the humor, romance, family lore and drama that anchors a life well lived. He masters the burden of ill health and gradually, to his surprise, discovers his own spirituality.

It’s a collection of memoirs about many places and experiences – for example the American mountain states, amateur theatre, print and electronic media, Native Americans, living (successfully) with asthma, traveling the world, and of course writing. Here and there I sneaked in philosophical thoughts and observations about the state of humankind as well as the trials and triumphs of a family life shared between London and New Mexico.

In this book as in the five previous titles, I exercise a writer’s prerogative and urge my readers to treasure and cultivate the sense of wonder -- about all things accessible to the five senses. That has been a personal goal, and my life has been both rewarded and sometimes endangered by a hard-to-control curiosity that enriched my world with adventures of mind and body.

After wrestling with the idea for a while, I decided to start Wonderment by explaining how my life spun off from an asthmatic childhood in which I missed much of my schoolwork and was unable to participate in sports with my friends. Early on, this hindrance to “normal” life challenged me to understand and rise beyond such obstacles. I decided I could do this by becoming a writer and journalist, and was determined enough that I sold a children’s story to the BBC at the age of 11.

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"[A] story that depicts one man’s journey in search of Wonderment, these moments in life where you feel as one with the universe around you, when all parts seem to fall precisely in their right place, when you feel, or indeed you are, truly happy. Mr. Hey is an engaging writer, with aphorisms that deserve their place next to the ones he quotes in the beginning of each chapter . . ." -- Zohar Lederman MD, for The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine(less)

Paperback, 382 pages

Published October 1st 2012 by Matador

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Oct 09, 2012 J Willard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wonderment is a tremendous story about a man's search and struggles for love, family, truth, and spirituality, while never losing the eternal quest for the mysteries of the universe and life itself. A true intellectual's search for "what is it all about?" The author's honesty about the struggles of health, living on two continents, and maintaining relationships while searching and exploring career choices is indeed refreshing. A rare combination of travel, adventure, journalism, acting, and scie...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Janet added it

A wonderful gift for his family. Nice to know that he's happy at last.

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About Nigel Hey

Much of my career has been associated with science writing, the rest with other enterprises that we tend to lump together as various parts of “the media.” The media, then, are the subject of a fair amount of commentary in my latest book, Wonderment. Because it is a life story, it also includes some quite different subject material – living twin lives as an Englishman and an American; being always...more Much of my career has been associated with science writing, the rest with other enterprises that we tend to lump together as various parts of “the media.” The media, then, are the subject of a fair amount of commentary in my latest book, Wonderment. Because it is a life story, it also includes some quite different subject material – living twin lives as an Englishman and an American; being always enticed by adventure and travel; cultivating a spiritual and philosophical life; bringing up a family; friendships with Native American people; and living since infancy with chronic asthma. There’s more about the book in my websites, http://www.nigelhey.com and http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.....

When people ask me why I decided to be a journalist, or a writer, I reply simply that it is because I am curious, and being more specific would tie me down to a relatively narrow field. Writing, and the observation and research that supports it, satisfies my curiosity while never failing to fill me with even more wonder. The book explains how this happens to me, and suggests that many people hold back their own gifts for wonderment, missing out on some of the most precious gifts of life. As Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

I earned my first check as a writer at the age of 11, when a short story was accepted by the BBC for the Children’s Hour. I then moved with my parents from England to the United States and while in high school worked an old-fashioned “printer’s devil” and contributed part-time for other local newspapers. After getting a bachelor’s degree in mass communications I wrote for UPI in the States, then for newspapers in Bermuda and England, and finally launched my science writing career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here my job was to find nationally interesting articles in the wide variety of research being done by a lab of 10,000 employees, write them up, and spread the word. I've been consulting and writing books independently since 2001.

I am a native of Morecambe, Lancashire, England, and received my bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. When I was about eight years old my mother announced that I would be a writer, and I have never strayed, nor wanted to stray, from that path. It’s too much fun. I live three months of the year in London and most of the rest in New Mexico. My next book will be a travel memoir set in New Mexico and Arizona.

I began working part-time for U.S. newspapers in my teens. I worked briefly for UPI after gaining a degree in mass communications, worked for two years at the daily Bermuda Mid-Ocean News, where I designed and edited a weekly magazine supplement, and subsequently joined Sandia National Laboratories. I was a Sandia senior administrator (internal consultant) at the time I left to start a consultancy in October 2001.

At other times I served as managing editor of the weekly Albuquerque News and editorial director of the London-based publications arm of IMS International (now Dun & Bradstreet’s IMS Health).

My writings include five published books, several reference works, and hundreds of articles in publications ranging from Smithsonian to the London Sunday Times. The books include three out-of-print popular-science titles, plus three listed by Goodreads -- Wonderment, Solar System (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002), and a history of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), The Star Wars Enigma (Potomac Books, July 2006). I was a contributing author for The Science Book (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001) and The McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (2005).
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