I cut off her hair, thick and beautiful, and she grasps my hand and begs me to remember that I too am a Jew. She knows that she is lost. ‘But remember,‘ she says, ‘you see what is being done to us. That‘s why my wish for you is that you will survive and take revenge for our innocent blood, which will never rest.‘ She has not had time to get up when a murderer who is walking between the benches lashes her on the head with his whip. Blood shows on her now shorn head. That evening, the blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface.—from The Last Jew of TreblinkaWhy do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls. In the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution. There was no pretense of work here like in Auschwitz or Birkenau. Only a train platform and a road covered with sand. A road that led only to death. But not for Chil Rajchman, a young man who survived working as a “barber” and “dentist,” heartsick with witnessing atrocity after atrocity. Yet he managed to survive so that somehow he could tell the world what he had seen. How he found the dress of his little sister abandoned in the woods. How he was forced to extract gold teeth from the corpses. How every night he had to cover the body-pits with sand. How ever morning the blood of thousands still rose to the surface.Many have courageously told their stories, and in the tradition of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved, Rajchman provides the only survivors’ record of Treblinka. Originally written in Yiddish in 1945 without hope or agenda other than to bear witness, Rajchman’s tale shows that sometimes the bravest and most painful act of all is to remember.

    Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster.

    Having grown up in an aviation family, the two boys bought an old Piper Cub, restored it themselves, and set out on the grand journey. Buck is a great storyteller, and once you get airborne with the boys you find yourself absorbed in a story of adventure and family drama. And Flight of Passage is also an affecting look back to the summer of 1966, when the times seemed much less cynical and adventures much more enjoyable.

    Wells housing project.Set against the stunning photographs of a talented young photographer from the projects, Our America evokes the unforgiving world of these two amazing young men, and their struggle to survive unrelenting tragedy. With a gift for clear-eyed journalism, they tell their own stories and others, including that of the death of Eric Morse, a five-year-old who was dropped to his death from the fourteenth floor of an Ida B. Wells apartment building by two other little boys. Sometimes funny, often painful, but always charged with their dream of Our America, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman reach out to grab your attention and break your heart.

    It wasn't long ago that Elli led a normal life; a life rich and full that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet.But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust somehow, but what Elli doesn't know is that this is only the beginning and the worst is yet to come....A remarkable memoir. I Have Lived a Thousand Years is a story of cruelty and suffering, but at the same time a story of hope, faith, perseverance and love.

    Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. When he was broke he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks. His goal was to set a record - most North American species seen in a year - but along the way he began to realize that at this breakneck pace he was only looking, not seeing. What had been a game became a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.

    It's a book about a woman. Marcia Clark takes us inside her head and her heart. Her voice is raw, incisive, disarming, unmistakable. Her story is both sweeping and deeply personal. How did she do it, day after day? What was it like, orchestrating the most controversial case of her career in the face of the media's relentless klieg lights? How did she fight her personal battles - those of a working mother balancing a crushing workload and a painful, very public divorce? When did she know that her case was lost? Who stood by her, and who abandoned her? And how did she cope with the outcome? As Clark shares the secrets of her own life, we understand for the first time why she identified so strongly with Nicole, in a way no man ever could. No one is spared in this unflinching account - least of all Clark herself, who candidly admits what she wishes she'd done differently - and, for the first time, we understand why the outcome was inevitable.

    This sensitive celebration of the remarkable life of Reuters' youngest photographer is filled with 17 journals, replicated collages of writings, drawings and photographs.

    Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.

    It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

    She was born into a large family in rural Romania and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him. After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp, and managed to survive. She tells this story with style and power." --Kirkus Reviews

    But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced--the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, including many of Balakian's relatives, in the century's first genocide.In elegant, moving prose, Black Dog of Fate charts Balakian's growth and personal awakening to the facts of his family's history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government's continued campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. In unearthing the secrets of a family's past and how they affect its present, Black Dog of Fate gives fresh meaning to the story of what it means to be an American.

    In each chapter he tells of one special dog, among them Cookie, the sled dog who saved his life; Snowball, the puppy he owned as a boy in the Philippines; Ike, his mysterious hunting companion; Dirk, the grim protector; and his true friend Josh, a brilliant border collie.

    With her customary boldness and insight, Bell Hooks critically reflects on the impact of birth control and the women's movement on our lives. Resisting the notion that love and writing don't mix, she begins a fifteen-year relationship with a gifted poet and scholar, who inspires and encourages her. Writing the acclaimed book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism at the age of nineteen, she begins to emerge as a brilliant social critic and public intellectual. Wounds of Passion describes a woman's struggle to devote herself to writing, sharing the difficulties, the triumphs, the pleasures, and the dangers. Eloquent and powerful, this book lets us see the ways one woman writer works to find her own voice while creating a love relationship based on feminist thinking. With courage and wisdom she reveals intimate details and provocative ideas, offering an illuminating vision of a writer's life.

    In this book, Sanders tells the story of a passionate and principled political life. He describes how, after cutting his teeth in the Civil Rights movement, he helped build a grassroots political movement in Vermont, making it possible for him to become the first independent elected to the US House of Representatives in forty years. The story continues into the US Senate and through the dramatic launch of his presidential campaign.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    In Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.

    His vivid and energetic record of that experience, The Making of a Chef, takes us to the heart of this food-knowledge mecca. Here we meet a coterie of talented chefs, an astonishing and driven breed. Ruhlman learns fundamental skills and information about the behavior of food that make cooking anything possible. Ultimately, he propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and classrooms, from Asian and American regional cuisines to lunch cookery and even table waiting, in search of the elusive, unnameable elements of great cooking.

    Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's gentle leadership throughout his life of ministerial service had made him an internationally beloved figure, but the words he left behind about his final journey would change the lives of many more people from all faiths, from all backgrounds, and from all over the world.In the last two months of his life, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin made it his ultimate mission to share his personal reflections and insights as a legacy to those he left behind.  The Gift of Peace reveals the Cardinal's spiritual growth amid a string of traumatic events: a false accusation of sexual abuse; reconciliation a year later with his accuser, who had earlier recanted the charges; a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and surgery; the return of cancer, now in his liver; his decision to discontinue chemotherapy and live his remaining days as fully as possible.  In these pages, Bernardin tells his story openly and honestly, and shares the profound peace he came to at the end of his life.  He accepted his peace as a gift from God, and he in turn now shares that gift with the world.

    But none has been quite so dramatic or compelling as the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which the Reverend Jim Jones and 913 of his disciples perished. Deborah Layton had been a member of the Peoples Temple for seven years when she departed for Jonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the South American jungle. When she arrived, however, Layton saw that something was seriously wrong. Jones constantly spoke of a revolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that he had enough control over the minds of the Jonestown residents to carry it out. But her pleas for help--and her sworn affidavit to the U.S. government--fell on skeptical ears. In this very personal account, Layton opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a riveting story of intrigue, power, and murder.

    Katharine's account of her years as subservient daughter and wife is so painful that by the time she finally asserts herself at the Post following Phil's suicide in 1963 (more than halfway through the book), readers will want to cheer. After that, Watergate is practically an anticlimax.

    Over My Head is an inspiring story of how one woman comes to terms with the loss of her identity and the courageous steps (and hilarious missteps) she takes while learning to rebuild her life. The author, a 45-year-old doctor and clinical professor of medicine, describes the aftermath of a brain injury eleven years ago which stripped her of her beloved profession. For years she was deprived of her intellectual companionship and the ability to handle the simplest undertakings like shopping for groceries or sorting the mail. Her progression from confusion, dysfunction, and alienation to a full, happy life is told with restraint, great style, and considerable humor.

    Map; updated with a new afterword.

    Without consultation, Abbey based the central character of eco-guerilla George Washington Hayduke on his friend Doug Peacock. Since then Peacock has become an articulate environmental individualist writing about the West's abundant wildscapes.Abbey and Peacock had an at times stormy, almost father and son relationship that was peacefully resolved in Abbey's last days before his death in 1989. This rich recollection of their relationship and the dry places they explored are recalled in Peacock's honest and heartfelt style in this poignant memoir.

    But in those days they didn't call you "black." They didnt say "minority." They called us "colored" or "nigger." Leon Tillage grew up the son of a sharecropper in a small town in North Carolina. Told in vignettes, this is his story about walking four miles to the school for black children, and watching a school bus full of white children go past. It's about his being forced to sit in the balcony at the movie theater, hiding all night when the Klansmen came riding, and worse. Much worse.But it is also the story of a strong family and the love that bound them together. And, finally, it's about working to change an oppressive existence by joining the civil rights movement. Edited from recorded interviews conducted by Susan L. Roth, Leon's story will stay with readers long after they have finished his powerful account.Leon's Story is the winner of the 1998 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.

    Just four years earlier, Bessie and Sadie, along with former "New York Times" reporter Amy Hill Hearth, co-wrote the bestselling "Having Our Say," which told the story of the sisters' remarkable lives as witnesses to a century. Here, Sadie reflects on the first year following Bessie's death. "Kirkus Reviews" called the book "a bracing reminder that life, a rare gift, must be savored in the living."

    The author charts his progress from inception to completion. Buoyed by memories of his garden and Allways in Huntingdonshire, his innovations include cunning layouts of pathways and flowering plants, the erection of a domed greenhouse and the introduction of cacti, the construction of a rock garden, and the painstaking design of his peculiar triangular space to draw the eye in desired directions and maximize the appeal of the garden.

    Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired.Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women.After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers--Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge.Ultimately Burning the Days is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer.Only once in a long while--Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa--does a memoir of such extraordinary clarity and power appear. Unconventional in form, Burning the Days is a stunning achievement by the writer The Washington Post Book World said "inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever" --a rare and unforgettable book.

    It challenges all our preconceived notions of what it means to be black or white, and what it means to be human.

    H. Lawrence. He wanted, in fact, to write his "Lawrence book." The problem was, he had no idea what his "Lawrence book" would be, though he was determined to write a "sober academic study." Luckily for the reader, he failed miserably.Out of Sheer Rage is a harrowing, comic, and grand act of literary deferral. At times a furious repudiation of the act of writing itself, this is not so much a book about Lawrence as a book about writing a book about Lawrence. As Lawrence wrote about his own study of Thomas Hardy, "It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy, I am afraid-queer stuff-but not bad."

    His father had a passion for the Dodgers; his mother’s passion was for poetry. Somehow, young Roger managed to blend both loves in a career that encompassed writing about sports for the New York Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Time.Kahn recalls the great personalities of a golden era—Leo Durocher, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Red Smith, Dick Young, and many more—and recollects the wittiest lines from forty years in dugouts, press boxes, and newsrooms. Often hilarious, always precise about action on the field and off, Memories of Summer is an enduring classic about how baseball met literature to the benefit of both.

    A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side—and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

    Finding Freedom is a collection of prison stories -- sometimes shocking, sometimes sad, often funny, always immediate -- told against a background of extreme violence and aggression. Masters' commitment to nonviolence leads him more and more into the role of peacemaker as he tries to put compassion into action. We see Masters meditating amid chaos and squalor, touching the hearts and minds of those around him.

    But when she stumbled across the civil rights movement she found herself developing in to a leader-only to encounter the cruelest retribution at the hands of white bigots that she could ever have imagined.

    This unsparing portrait of a childhood in 1939 Hungary--told in the voice of a brave and unforgettable nine-year-old Jewish girl--is the best sort of memoir, revealing not only a compelling story, but also the bruised yet still bold self which bears the weight of its story in memory (The New York Times Book Review).

    Scheduled for publication immediately following the outcome of the civil trial.

    In an “extraordinary” (Newsday) book of “Tolstoyan power” (Washington Post Book World), a doctor shares stories of suffering and redemption from the three-and-a-half years he spent caring for down-and-out AIDS patients in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.

    In her enthralling memoir, she weaves together her personal history with the larger history of Mao's China to create a tale both intimate and epic, colored by deep family bonds and the constant foreboding presence of a totalitarian government.Ye's father, a successful factory owner, had his business taken away at the outset of the Cultural Revolution. His death in 1962, followed by his wife's two years later, left behind a family of five children, a beloved servant known as "Great-Aunt," and the potentially fatal tag of "capitalist." In telling her story, Ye gracefully combines idyllic memories of her childhood on Purple Sunshine Lane with harrowing tales of harassment by the feared Red Guards. As a teen, Ye was sentenced to a prison farm; the book traces her journey from prisoner to university student, her work as a police agent and a translator, and the love affair that led to her dramatic defection to the West.Already a bestseller in Australia, "A Leaf in the Bitter Wind "is a true story with all the characteristics of a great novel-danger, romance, smart social commentary, and a liberal dose of wry humor. Anyone seeking out an intimate view of Asian culture will find it in this "rare uncensored glimpse of life in China during one of the worst times in its history."-"Calgary Sun""A gifted narrator with a photographic memory, Ye records, in riveting detail, the capricious existence of the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution."-"Bloomsbury Review""Compelling . . . laced with irony and surprising twists of fate."-"Maclean's"

    Like Mary Karr or Frank McCourt, we can shape those stories into dramatic narratives that are compelling to others. Blending literary scholarship with practical coaching, Rainer shares her remarkable techniques for finding the essentials of story structure within your life's scattered experiences. Most important, she explains how to treasure the struggles in your past and discover the meaning within those experiences to capture the unique myth at work in your life.

    Whaley's tiny, walled garden is said to be the most visited private garden in America. And no wonder. It is the life's work of a forceful, vibrant, sociable, opinionated, determined woman who has spent the last eighty-five years cultivating whatever life offered. Now, in conversations with award-winning lowcountry novelist William Baldwin, Mrs. Whaley takes us on a tour of her garden - and of her life. Each year since 1940, Mrs. Whaley has made her garden new again and herself through it. She yanks out annuals and perennials alike. She prunes with a vengeance. ("I never walk into my garden without my clippers in hand.") She is careful not to overdo. ("Remember! There's such a thing as too many dancing girls!") As an ever-evolving work of art, the garden reflects Mrs. Whaley's hard-headed determination to make the most of her own remarkable existence. William Baldwin captures and preserves in these pages an intuitive gardener's wisdom. And thanks to this gardener's bracing, positive attitude, we see how a practical personal philosophy might indeed grow out of one's beloved garden.

    That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives--and on Anita Hill's life. Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event.Only after reading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family's Oklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled her to withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings and for years afterward. Only after reading her detailed narrative of the Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding of how Washington--and the media--rush to judgment. And only after discovering the personal toll of this wrenching ordeal, and how Hill copes, do we gain new respect for this extraordinary woman.Here is a vitally important work that allows us to understand why Anita Hill did what she did, and thereby brings resolution to one of the most controversial episodes in our nation's history.

    A native of Yugoslavia who emigrated to America in his teens, Simic believes that tragedy, comedy, and paradox are the commonplace experiences of an exile's life. In this delightful collection of journal entries, autobiographical essays, criticism, and prose poetry, the poet reveals once again his fondness for odd juxtapositions that reveal hidden and unexpected connections.In the title essay, Simic--whom critic Helen Vendler has called "the best political poet on the American scene"--reflects on his family's experiences of their war-torn homeland during World War II and the frightening familiarity of the recent tragic events in the region. The collection has many hilarious moments, such as Simic's memoir of his first days in New York City as a young poet and painter, impressions from his poet's notebook, and first lines from his unwritten books. The book also contains reflections on dreams, insomnia, and the night sky, and considers the work of poets Jane Kenyon and Ingeborg Bachmann, and of visual artists Saul Steinberg and Holly Wright.Charles Simic's most recent poetry collections are Walking the Black Cat ( 1996), nominated for the National Book Award, and Hotel Insomnia. He has won numerous prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, and a P.E.N. Translation Prize.

    As a teenager he was told he would be shipped back to Africa. Driven by an intense need to understand those who hate him because of the colour of his skin, Davis decided to seek out the roots of racism. The author, who is a professional musician, recounts his courageous, lifelong confrontations and conversations with members of the Ku Klux Klan in an attempt to unearth the roots of bigotry and foster harmony between black and white, often using music to bridge the divide.

    A striking, original memoir of the archaeology of language praised as "an etymological wonderment" (William Safire) and "simply and eloquently -- magic".

    In a gloriously straightforward manner, Mary Fleener illustrates her oftentimes decadent social experiences in this complete collection of her autobiographical comics work. The tableaux she weaves are a candid take on the party scene of Southern California, but what is most distinctive isn't her storytelling--it's her art. She has developed a unique style that she calls "cubismo": a blend of underground comix and cubism. She uses this style to convey changes in mental states--specifically, changes in the subjective fields of experience--whether from anger, frustration, or drug use. A truly remarkable achievement.

    From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy’s stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life, and the Depression.

    When a friend of seventeen-year-old June Juanico invited her along to a concert by a popular young singer, she hesitated, but finally went. The singer, of course, was Elvis Presley, and when his eye caught June's, they both got all shook up. So began the most significant of his early relationships - a summer idyll of romance and playful fun that was to be a last stop of innocence on the path to self-destruction. In this clear-eyed, loving, and tender memoir, June gives us Elvis on the verge of mega-stardom, still a country kid with polite manners, a voice that melted hearts, and more sex appeal than anyone could handle. June describes her closeness to Elvis's mother, Gladys, who had hoped June and Elvis would marry, and her rivalry with Colonel Parker, Elvis's handler, who believed marriage would end his protege's career. And then there were the thousands of screaming fans, doing anything they could to get a piece of the King. In the end the self-possessed June knew that however much Elvis loved her, he was on a track no one could stop and would never be in control of his life; she made up her mind to move on and not look back. Not until now. Featuring twenty-three previously unpublished photographs of Elvis and an introduction by Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick, this fresh and completely disarming memoir gives us an American icon as few would know him, in a time and place bathed in the light of remembered love.

    His affecting words cover topics from politics to prejudice, from the human spirit to the individual obstacles he faces every day in his solitary life.

    The father missing from Tripp’s life had gone off to war as well, in the navy in World War II, but the terrors were too much for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended he could not bring himself to return to his wife and young son. Tripp tells of how he learned as a platoon leader to become something of a father to the men in his care, how he came to understand the strange trajectory of his mentally unbalanced father’s life, and how the lessons he learned under fire helped him in the raising of his own sons.

    It has been unoccupied for years but they are drawn to the charm and dignity lying under the grime and cobwebs. Even before the purchase goes through "les Anglais" are welcomed with genuine affection by their new neighbours. From their very first day at St Paradis, in the impoverished department of the Creuse, they begin to make close and lasting friendships in spite of the language barriers. But it is not only their neighbours who welcome them. Soon they are aware that the spirit of a former owner seems delighted to see her family home being restored to life. Indeed, it appears almost as if she has chosen the Loaders for this task..."A Bull by the Back Door" traces how the Loaders face what they describe as "A-Level Housebuying", complete with charts and copious documents, and how they nearly fail. It depicts life in the village of St Paradis and how the family are assimilated, as well as detailing what they do to bring their beautiful stone house back to life again. THE AUTHOR: Anne Loader started in journalism in 1965, with East Midland Allied Press in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. After her marriage she worked as a senior reporter on the Southern Evening Echo at Southampton. She was the feature writer on Northwich World from 1980-84 and was editor of the Crewe Guardian for ten years until 1995 when she was made redundant. She now runs Léonie Press, publishing short-run books on autobiography and local history. Anne originally wrote the book to amuse her elderly mother, who had lived in France in the 1920s and had instilled a passion for France in her daughter from her earliest years. Extracts were serialised in Living France magazine and the book was very well received, becoming Léonie Press's most successful title.SOME REVIEWS:Enchanting... Those who find Peter Mayle's books about life in Provence somewhat patronising of the locals will consider the francophile "A Bull by the Back Door" in refreshing contrast - Living FranceStunning illustrations - Northwich Guardian, Crewe Guardian Rival Peter Mayle - Evening Sentinel, Northwich Chronicle Simply takes you there - superb value for money - BBC Radio Stoke Couldn't put it down; I feel as if I've been there; Wonderfully readable; Just like our own experiences; Thank you for writing this book, I look forward to the next one! - Readers' comments A Bull by the Back Door starts with an account of 'A-level house buying' and many readers will recognise the false hopes and near-misses at the beginning of their search. The family's wholehearted acceptance by the villagers and their efforts to renovate the beautiful stone house will ring bells with anyone who has attempted the same thing and will act as encouragement to others just beginning. - French Property News

    one of the outstanding autobiographies of the century.” – San Francisco Chronicle“Once in a rare while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time and ourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities of human nature... Mrs. Kovaly experienced the two supreme horrors of what Hannah Arendt called this terrible century. But her book is not just a personal memoir of inhumanity. In telling her story – simply, without self-pity – she illuminates some general truths of human behavior... Quietly, with cumulative force, it shows us how the totalitarian state feeds on the blindness and the weakness of man.” – Anthony Lewis, The New York Times“A wonderfully expressive writer. Although her approach is above all personal, Kovaly’s reflections on her experiences reveal a high degree of insight into politics, individual and institutional behavior, and the formation of attitudes.” – Christian Science Monitor“A Jew in Czechoslovakia under the Nazis, Kovaly spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and several concentration camps, losing her family and barely surviving herself. Returning to Prague at the end of the war, she married an old friend, a bright, enthusiastic young Jewish economist named Rudolf Margolius, who saw the country’s only hope for the future in the Communist Party. Thereafter, Rudolf became deputy minister for foreign trade. For a time, the Margoliuses lived like royalty, albeit reluctantly, but then, in a replay of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Rudolf and others, mostly of Jewish background, were arrested and hung in the infamous Slansky Trial of 1952. Kovaly’s memoir of these years that end with her emigration to the West after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 are a tragic story told with aplomb, humor and tenderness. The reader alternately laughs and cries as Kovaly describes her mother being sent to death by Dr. Mengele, Czech Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald drunk at a reception, the last sight of her husband, the feverish happiness of the Prague Spring. Highly recommended.” – Publishers Weekly

    She describes how communism dominated the intellectual life of the 1950s and how she, like nearly all communists, became disillusioned with extreme and rhetorical politics and left communism behind. Evoking the bohemian days of a young writer and single mother, Lessing speaks openly about her writing process, her friends and lovers, her involvement in the theater, and her political activities. Walking in the Shade is an invaluable social history as well as Doris Lessing's Sentimental Education.

    Encourages women to discover their natural storytelling talents, find authentic voices, and record their experiences by providing exercises, meditations, and writing examples for inspiration.

    Be patient. And so begins an encounter with the promise and wonder of nature that will last a lifetime. Deep Woods, Wild Waters traces the winding path that carried Douglas Wood from one wonder to the next, through a landscape of rocks, woods, and waters, with stops along the way for questions and reflections that link human nature to the larger mysteries of the natural world.Like life itself, the author s way is not linear. One landmark leads back to a favorite campsite, another prompts him to consider the gospel of rocks, another launches him into the wilderness beyond the stars a contemplation of time and space and humanity s place in all of it. The creator of thirty-four books, including the classic Old Turtle, and an expert woodsman and wilderness canoe guide, Wood brings all his storytelling and bushwhacking skills to bear as he takes us hurtling down wild rapids, crossing stormy lakes, or simply navigating the treacherous currents and twisty trails of everyday life.A warm, generous, and knowing guide, Wood maps a journey that, as he says, anyone can take, through a landscape anyone can know. Turning the pages, hiking the portages, running the rapids, or scanning the wild country from high promontory, he invites us to say, in a soul-satisfying moment of recognition, I know that place."

    Poems relate reminiscences of a child in war-torn Germany, stories of Holocaust survivors, and the revelations of a young woman who learns of her country's atrocities thirteen years after the end of the war.

    A story about his decision to devote himself to his greatest loves - falconry, his bird dogs, and the prairie he calls home.

    What also comes through her account, however, are less publicized, but resonant and compelling connections between victims of that Ethnic Cleansing and victims of the Holocaust. Elizabeth Walter knew, and suffered with, a few of the two million Volksdeutsche who perished in the Vertreibung. Two million (the currently accepted number for the ethnic German deaths in the Expulsion) is a hefty figure, even by World War II and Holocaust standards, and even for a people whom many in this country still imagine "had-it-coming." Elizabeth Walther also shares with Holocaust victims, and historical slavery and oppression, the knowledge that free and secure people did not really care about her fate. Nobody cared about the Jews in 1942, or in 1943. At least not any body with any power to help them in any significant way. In a similar sense, nobody cared about the Donauschwaben in 1944. If people thought about their situation at all, the "Schwobe" were guilty by reason of race;" just like the Jews since the time of St. Augustine.... and the Haitians since the inception of the slave trade.

     We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin’s early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers’ leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.

    Beautiful, sensuous, and mysterious, she quickly became an essential Balanchine dancer-and the story of her personal life is as dramatic as they story of her rise to fame. Her account of a bizarre childhood, a magnificent if curious dance career, a charged, complicated domestic life with photographer Bert Stern, and a never-ending struggle with emotional, physical, and financial pressures is fascinating-as are her portraits of the other great dance figures who punctuated her life, from Balanchine to Baryshnikov.

    Fresh from nursing school in Victoria and eager to start work, Harold could not have imagined the challenges that awaited her in the tiny village of Mamalilikulla. Leaving the comforts of Victoria behind for a cold, leaky floathome that she shared with two elderly missionaries, she had to adapt quickly to her new circumstances.Transported in unreliable boats to remote outposts to treat the sick, attending births in the most primitive conditions, and teaching—from standard, middle-class textbooks—children who had never even seen a car, this gutsy young woman rose to the challenge. The clash of cultures Hughina experienced was extreme, but through it she developed a new understanding of the people she had been sent to teach and treat, discovering their age-old traditions and witnessing "things that should not be forgotten."Written decades later and based on letters Harold had written home, Totem Poles and Tea—updated in this second edition with original photos from the Harold family collection—ensures that her memories will be preserved.

    Highly regarded for authentic description of living between two worlds

    -- I've Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but on gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune." -- From Bouncing BackSurvival stratagems from Joan RiversWhatever doesn't kill you makes you strongerAnd always remember: Surviving is the best revengeLook at Alexander Graham Bell, who did 22,000 experiments before he hit on the telephone. Just a few more and he would have had call waitingWhenever I hit bottom, the only thing I think of was set down by Jerome Kern: Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. Dr. Kevorkian will get no call from me, unless I think he'd look good in a brooch.A fiercely honest and moving story of how Joan Rivers, one of comedy's greatest stars, survived the worst that life could throw at her, how she hit bottom and then made it back to the top.

    Throughout her life she has recorded personal events and experiences on canvas. This book is her story, in words and pictures.

    Some rivalries transcend the gridiron. Some games last forever.The Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys engaged in a fierce rivalry in the 1966 season, culminating in the Packers defeating the Cowboys to win the NFL championship. The next year, they clashed again, and the result is a game that only needs three words to evoke lasting images from every player, every coach, and every fan who witnessed it: “The Ice Bowl.” The final game of the 1967 season has become one of the most storied contests in NFL history, and sportswriter Mike Shropshire, author of SEASONS IN HELL, brings it all back to life in his panoramic look at the events leading up to the game and how the game influenced both franchises going forward. With photos and insight into the players who battled, as well as those who witnessed, THE ICE BOWL is a must-read for fans of every down.

    Unlike other books that offer only technical information on miscarriage, this moving collection of stories, essays, and poems provides the sort of emotional support and personal identification that so many people desperately crave. Fifty contributors, including four men, share vivid, real-life accounts of how miscarriage has affected their lives.

    After countless tests and treatments, doctors knew little about her strange disease except that it wasn't AIDS or cancer. Two years later, out of a job, in debt, and worried about insurance, Rosemary was invited out by friends--not knowing this would be the night she met her future husband. This is one woman's story about having a real life while facing the question of how long she might live.

    Christians must reexamine God's Word and become equipped to reach out to and receive Jewish people with the love of God in their hearts.

    Until tragedy stopped him, taking away everything he desired, but leading him to something far greater. This is Ron Heagy's true story.

    He won an Academy Award "RM" in 1951 for the film version of Streetcar and an Emmy in 1984 for the TV movie Fatal Vision. His memorable performances in major film classics such as Patton, Baby Doll, On the Waterfront, and One-Eyed Jacks earned glowing notices, and he endeared himself to television viewers as veteran detective Mike Stone in "The Streets of San Francisco". Yet Karl Malden has had anything but an easy road to fame.Growing up tough and poor in Gary, Indiana, as the son of a Serbian steelworker, Maiden turned to the mills himself, doing hard, dangerous work to finance his way through acting school. In When Do I Start? he tells of his determined pursuit of Broadway, his involvement with the Group Theater (which brought him to the notice of Elia Kazan and then almost cost him his career during the anticommunist witchhunts of the fifties), his starring roles in two television series, and his rise to movie stardom. Delicious anecdotes about Kazan, Brando, Jessica Tandy, Paul Muni, Vivien Leigh, Montgomery Clift, Michael Douglas, and many others fill the pages of this memoir by a shrewd and witty observer of show business who turns out to be a gifted, natural storyteller.

    A treat for the 19 million young teens who clamor for anything about Hanson: the only authorized book, containing exclusive interviews and photos never seen before.

     A Trilogy of Performances, nominated for the Governor General's Award for Drama and for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Award for Humour, collects Sandra Shamas' three hit comedy shows: My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry; My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry II; and Wedding Bell Hell.

    Here are novelists, poets, essayists, humorists, cartoonists, journalists, many of them mothers and grandmothers themselves, authors of different ages and cultures, each writing in her own distinctive voice, reaching into the most personal part of her life to share her secret sorrows, joys, hurt, anger, and understanding in I've Always Meant to Tell You. "What do I tell her? What do I not tell her? What do I wish I had said?" Their letters hold thoughtful, provocative, funny, and sometimes painful revelations - memories and confessions, poems, fables and tales - at once personal and universal, touching and profound.

    This book brings together the best of Lombardi's quotations and insights that have challenged many on and off the field.

    It is organized in chapters that cover every two weeks, from fall through winter. Gain insight into the natural world in sequence. Learn about dragonflies, hummingbirds, wood frogs and more.

    The king is Abdullah; the autocratic, charismatic man who ruled Jordan until 1951. The time is the 1930s and '40s, when Jordan's kingdom included Jerusalem. Hearing high praise about Cohen's work, Abdullah hired him to work on his palace in Amman. So began the adventure of a lifetime. Dazzled and bemused by the opulence and strangeness of palace life, Cohen recounts with touching simplicity and grace his growing friendship with the king, and how it endured until overwhelmed by war and assassination.The themes are as relevant today as then: relations between Arabs and Jews, the saga of Arab nationalism and Zionism, the tortuous path to peace -- and those, like Abdullah and Rabin, whose lives have been lost along the way.Cohen's daughter and her husband have translated his story into English for the first time, and place it into a historical context. My Father's King is about wonder, hope, and the triumph of a friendship in a part of the world where, for far too long, distrust and despair have ruled.

    The son of a Presbyterian missionary living in the Himalayas in India soon after independence looks back on the events and exotic setting of his youth.

    Offers a collection of mini-essays originally read over National Public Radio that address everyday issues and experiences ranging from summer camp to the mysteries of the universe.

    It is a book about growing up Christian while maintaining a strong tribal identity, about going first to war and then to prison, and then coming home to rediscover the Long House and the sacred practice of the Seven Drum Religion and the Sweat House.

    Written by Ambassador Naphtali Lau-Lavie, journalist and diplomat, who survived the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and later became a leading personality in the government of Israel, this book reflects upon major historic events during the second half of this century as experienced by the author. Lavie reveals epics of modern Jewish history. As an eyewitness to the decision-making process of the leadership in Israel in the years 1970-85, he describes fascinating occurrences in the Israeli struggle for existence and fateful decisions during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, as well as decisive moves at the time of negotiations with Egypt and the United States for peace, an agreement for which was finally signed in March 1979 on the lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. With his experience as Consul-General of Israel in New York, as emissary of the Jewish State to the largest Jewish diaspora, the author analyzes the ambivalent relationship between the Israelis and the Jewish minorities abroad. Because of his unique experience, he is able to examine the real difference between the two communities and their diverse agendas. In the author's opinion, they are not one community, as some portray themselves, and their respective realities indicate that they never will be.

    

    In her own charming way, she relates the story - not only of the spiritual adventure of one contemplative nun, but also of the spread of contemplative life from New Mexico to Holland. Throughout the book the author explores spiritual themes about the call each person receives from God to venture forth into the spiritual unknown beyond the confines of our own "life plans" into the greater fulfillment of God's loving Providence. God gives His summons; the answer must be ours.

    Working closely with the native healers, Cox studied traditional rainforest remedies and is credited with finding natural drugs that can be used in treating AIDS, discovering a rare species of flying fox, launching an international campaign to save a 30,000-acre rainforest and helping to rebuild a village destroyed by a hurricane. Cox's respect for the traditional villagers and his excitement and perseverance make Nafunua a story of scientific and personal discovery.

    He tells of his family's self-sufficiency in the country, weaving personal memories and reflections into nature's annual cycle.

    An autobiography that is both shocking and poignant, Totem of the Depraved chronicles the life and thoughts of the founder of the most radical film movement of the 80's.

    In this hilarious follow-up to his bestselling Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them, he chronicles the unlikely restoration of an Allis Chalmers tractor nicknamed Woodpecker.

    What she didn't expect to find is the reality of the devastated landscape that makes up the north woods--massive cut-overs, land that has been logged and used beyond any easily recognizable loveliness.However, Grover's extraordinary imagination sees similarities between this ravished landscape and the ravished bodies of her dying friends. Refusing to sentimentalize, she nevertheless finds surprising consolation in loss. From landfills that have become prime wildlife feeding areas, to the unexpected joys of fly-fishing without a hook, Grover again bears witness to something she first began to articulate in San Francisco: the "difficult beauties of deformity."

    These stories from a Minnesota childhood.

    Reminiscent of A Year in Provence, his completely delightful memoir introduces us to the flora, fauna, and neighbors in his new life. Foxgloves and Hedgehog Days is full of amusing anecdotes about Blajan's adjustments to country living - like the time he convinced the local bureaucracy that the rush matting he erected to hide an eyesore had grown roots and was therefore a hedge, not subject to fence height laws. Or the day all the rooftops in the village sprouted bright yellow flowers. Or the ceremony surrounding the death of the community's four-hundred-year-old linden tree and the final miracle it displayed. Or the frogs who showed him why he shouldn't "improve" his pond - and much, much more.

    But none of her plays, movies, or television roles can match the drama of her life. Betty Garrett and Other Songs is the story of a woman who became one of Broadway's biggest stars, made several classic MGM musicals, married a handsome movie star, had two children, and could scarcely believe her happiness and good fortune. Then one day the House Un-American Activities Committee came to call. In this hilarious, moving, bawdy, and ultimately triumphant memoir, Betty Garrett tells how she and her husband, Larry Parks, rebuilt their lives and careers after falling victim to the Hollywood blacklist and how, after Parks' tragic death at the age of sixty, she went on to achieve some of her greatest personal and professional satisfaction.

    This Exceptional Memoir speaks with wit and grace to the perils of Christmas and self-imposed ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas xerox).

    Baker vividly chronicles the experience of seeing his first screenplay produced, derived from a diary kept during two years of down-and-dirty filmmaking with Bruce McDonald on the film "Hard Core Logo". "This is the most absorbing account of getting a move made in this country...It's funny, perceptive, and compelling".--Atom Egoyan.

    A section is devoted to beloved authors from the past, from Jane Austen to Willa Cather and Edith Wharton.

    Yet, as Frederica Mathewes-Green discovered, it is a vital, living faith, rich in ritual beauty and steadfast in integrity. Utilizing the framework of the Orthodox calendar, Mathewes-Green chronicles a year in the life of her small Orthodox mission church, eloquently illustrating the joys and blessings an ancient faith can bring to the worshipers of today.

    In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.’In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless, but entirely conscious, trapped by what doctors call ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he began dictating this remarkable story, painstakingly spelling it out letter by letter.His book offers a haunting, harrowing look inside the cruel prison of locked-in syndrome, but it is also a triumph of the human spirit.

    The book, also known as Auction of Souls, was first published in 1918, shortly after Aurora Mardiganian's arrival in the United States. It was subsequently filmed in 1919, and both the book and the movie created a considerable stir. The book has long been out of print, and the screen adaptation is one of the most sought-after of "lost" films. Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian reprints the original book in its entirety the first time it has been available since the 1930s and also reprints original documentation on the film. The introductory essay provides a brief historical overview, documents films dealing with the subject, and provides a full account of the making of the film and its reception. Slide is the first and only film historian to have tracked down Aurora Mardiganian, who died in 1994. He presents an extraordinary portrait of a young woman, terrorized in her own country, brought to the U.S. and mercilessly exploited by the film industry.

    Enid Blyton is undoubtedly a huge figure in children's literature and one whom inspires much loyalty and love. She is a favourite not just in the classroom but is one of the few authors that children will spend their own pocket money on. The mixture of text and photographs in this book tells the story of Enid's own childhood and what inspired her to become a writer of children's books.

    

    David Dellinger is on one side, Robert Moses on the other. In the middle is Staughton Lynd, chairperson of the first march on Washington against the war, and former director of the Mississippi Freedom Schools.Thirty years later, Staughton Lynd here reaffirms ideas central to the New Left of the sixties: nonviolence, participatory democracy, an experiential approach to education, and anti-capitalism. In essays written between 1970 and 1995, he passionately defends the intellectual contribution of a movement often dismissed as mindlessly activist. In addition, he advocates direct, sustained involvement in meeting the needs of the working class and the poor.Each section of the book identifies major influences on Lynd's life as teacher, historian, lawyer, and organizer. In the section entitled "Accompaniment", Lynd suggests the relevance to the United States of the concepts of liberation theology which have revolutionized Central America. In "Socialism with a Human Face", he expresses continued allegiance to the socialist ideals exemplified by Simone Weft and E. P. Thompson. The final section, "Solidarity Unionism", deals with the self-activity of rank-and-file workers.Living Inside Our Hope will reach out to everyone who remembers the Meals of the sixties with nostalgia and to those, too young to remember, who are seeking a foundation on which to build their own social activism.

    DeSalvo looks for clues in moments of breathlessness from her own family past: the early sexual abuse that left her gasping in fear, her sister's suicide by hanging. She looks too at the lives of asthmatic writers - Proust, of course, but also Elizabeth Bishop, Olive Schreiner, Michael Ryan, and John Updike - always "in search of images of breathlessness" and asthma's effects on self-image and artistic creation.

    The renowned NPR correspondent offers a fresh perspective of the sixties, in a candid memoir of civil-rights work, the Free Speech Movement, and her correspondence with a young American soldier in Vietnam.