Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story.

    Though officially unsolved, Jane’s murder was apparently the third in a series of seven brutal rape-murders in the area. Nelson was born a few years after Jane’s death, and the narrative is suffused with the long shadow her murder cast over both the family and her psyche.Jane explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, and documentary sources, including newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane’s own diaries written. Each piece in Jane has its own form that serves as an important fissure, disrupting the tabloid, "page-turner" quality of the story, and eventually returning the reader to deeper questions about girlhood, empathy, identification, and the essentially unknowable aspects of another’s life and death. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, Jane’s powerful and disturbing subject matter, combined with its innovations in genre, expands the notion of what poetry can do—what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them.

    He has sung "Happy Birthday" 657 times. A witness to the joys of discovery, Done inspires readers with the everyday adventures and milestones of his 32 third graders in this irresistible collection of bite-sized essays. From the nervous first day of school to the hectic Halloween parade to the disastrous spring musical, Done connects what happens in his classroom to the universal truths that touch us all. He reminds us of the delight of learning something for the first time and of the value of making a difference. 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny is for anyone who has ever taught children -- or been to third grade. It is a testament to the kids who uplift us -- and the teachers we will never forget. With just the right mix of humor and wisdom, Done reveals the enduring promise of elementary school as a powerful antidote to the cynicism of our times.

    She spoke to her mother, Sharon Rocha, at 8:30 p.m. that night. This would be the last time anyone from her immediate family ever spoke to her.A search began which lasted an agonizing four months. Sadly, Laci Peterson and her son Conner were found dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay on April 18, 2003.Her husband, Scott, was eventually arrested and charged with the murder of Laci and Connor. After a sensational, media-saturated trial, Peterson was found guilty of capital murder and was sentenced to death on March 16, 2005.This book deals with the story in three separate sections: first, Sharon describes the ordinary, loving life her daughter led, including fond memories of her childhood and adolescence. Second, it covers her marriage, disappearance, the community's moving search for her, and her and Connor's eventual recovery from San Francisco Bay. Third, it tells the story of the trial in detail not before revealed. Sharon will also talk about victim's rights, a subject on which she now campaigns regularly.From the Hardcover edition.

    Their world was an insulated, close-knit community of grass-roofed cottages, cattle herders, and tribal councils. The lions and pythons that prowled beyond the village fences were the greatest threat they knew. All that changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin began attacking their villages.Amid the chaos, screams, conflagration, and gunfire, 5-year-old Benson and 7-year-old Benjamin fled into the dark night. Two years later, Alepho, age 7, was forced to do the same. Across the Southern Sudan, over the next 5 years, thousands of other boys did likewise, joining this stream of child refugees that became known as the Lost Boys. Their journey would take them more than 1000 miles across a war-ravaged country, through landmine-sown paths, crocodile-infested waters, and grotesque extremes of hunger, thirst, and disease. The refugee camps they eventually filtered through offered little respite from the brutality they were fleeing.In They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin, by turn, recount their experiences along this unthinkable journey. They vividly recall the family, friends, and tribal world they left far behind them and their desperate efforts to keep track of one another. This is a captivating memoir of Sudan and a powerful portrait of war as seen through the eyes of children. And it is, in the end, an inspiring and unforgettable tribute to the tenacity of even the youngest human spirits.

    For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation—until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

    Her mother, the beautiful Alia, taught her daughter the skills she needed to survive. A plastic smile. Saying yes. Burying in boxes in her mind the horrors she glimpsed around her. Learn to erase your memories, she instructed. He can read eyes.In this richly visual memoir, Salbi describes tyranny as she saw it--through the eyes of a privileged child, a rebellious teenager, a violated wife, and ultimately a public figure fighting to overcome the skill that once kept her alive: silence.Between Two Worlds is a riveting quest for truth that deepens our understanding of the universal themes of power, fear, sexual subjugation, and the question one generation asks the one before it: How could you have let this happen to us?

    Autoportrait is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Levé works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Levé's prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine—until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author's dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction . . . made entirely of facts.

    Three weeks later, John's cousin Anthony Radziwill died of cancer. In this moving and candid memoir, Carole Radziwill, Anthony's widow, tells her story.

    At the same time, her groundbreaking scientific work challenged gender stereotypes in the academic community and led to important legislation banning carcinogens in children’s sleepwear. With candor and humor, Breaking Trail recounts Blum’s journey from an overprotected childhood in Chicago to the tops of some of the highest peaks on earth, and to a life lived on her own terms. Now with an index, additional photos, and a new afterword, this book is a moving testament to the power of taking risks and pursuing dreams.

    They were young and in love, with a perfect little house and not a care in the world. Then they brought home Marley, a wiggly yellow furball of a puppy. Life would never be the same.Marley quickly grew into a barreling, ninety-seven-pound streamroller of a Labrador retriever, a dog like no other. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, flung drool on guests, stole women's undergarments, and ate nearly everything he could get his mouth around, including couches and fine jewelry. Obedience school did no good—Marley was expelled. Neither did the tranquilizers the veterinarian prescribed for him with the admonishment, "Don't hesitate to use these."And yet Marley's heart was pure. Just as he joyfully refused any limits on his behavior, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley shared the couple's joy at their first pregnancy, and their heartbreak over the miscarriage. He was there when babies finally arrived and when the screams of a seventeen-year-old stabbing victim pierced the night. Marley shut down a public beach and managed to land a role in a feature-length movie, always winning hearts as he made a mess of things. Through it all, he remained steadfast, a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.

    This book is the distillation of conversations, none previously published, that took place between 2002 and 2004. Beginning with the garden, that "work of the imagination," the explorations journey through personal recollections, the creative process, and the harmony of the life cycle. A bouquet of poems and a total of 26 full-color photographs accompany the various sections. The Wild Braid received a 2006 American Horticultural Society Book Award.

    A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.

    Although young Robert Douglas's life was blighted by the cruel if sporadic presence of his father, it was equally blessed by the love of his mother, Janet. While the story of their life together is in some ways very sad, it is also filled with humorous and happy memories. NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM is a superb evocation of childhood and of a Glasgow of trams and tenements that has long since disappeared.

    The Iran-Iraq War is at its bloodiest. The ayatollahs, the rulers of Iran, have reduced the age of recruitment into the army. If Abbas doesn't leave soon, he will have to go to war.In the strange and often frightening city of Istanbul, Abbas has to grow up fast. Living alone for twelve weeks in a rundown hotel, he has to learn to live by his wits, and watch his back. Will he ever get his dream visa to England?

    It took someone who would never have any of these things to teach her what it means to be human.This extraordinary true story begins with the welcome news of a new member of the Williams family. Sarah's husband, Paul, and their two young daughters share her excitement. But the happiness is short-lived, as a hospital scan reveals a lethal skeletal dysplasia. Birth will be fatal.Sarah and Paul decide to carry the baby to term, a decision that shocks medical staff and Sarah's professional colleagues. Sarah and Paul find themselves having to defend their child's dignity and worth against incomprehension and at times open hostility. They name their daughter, Cerian, Welsh for "loved one." Sarah writes, "Cerian is not a strong religious principle or a rule that compels me to make hard and fast ethical decisions. She is a beautiful person who is teaching me to love the vulnerable, treasure the unlovely, and face fear with dignity and hope."In this candid and vulnerable account, Sarah brings the reader along with her on the journey towards Cerian's birthday and her deathday. It's rare enough to find a writer who can share such a heart-stretching personal experience without sounding sappy, but here is one who at the same time has the ability to articulate the broader cultural issues raised by Cerian's story. In a society striving for perfection, where worth is earned, identity is constructed, children are a choice, normal is beautiful, and deformity is repulsive, Cerian's short life raises vital questions about what we value and where we are headed as a culture.Perfectly Human was first published in the United Kingdom as The Shaming of the Strong. This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

    To Ralph's classmates, news of one more Fletcher baby is just "scuttlebutt." But for Ralph, the oldest of nine, being part of a large family means more kids to join in the fun—from making tripods in the woods and "snicking" up the rug, to raising chicks and even discovering a meteor (well, maybe). It doesn't feel like there's life beyond Marshfield, Massachusetts. Then one day Dad's new job moves the family to Chicago, and there's so much Ralph has to leave behind. In this humorous and captivating memoir, Ralph Fletcher traces the roots of his storytelling.

    Whether he is describing his coming of age in America, his formative war experiences, or his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a Country is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions.

    There are many books out there about the Dead told from the perspective of roadies, journalists, third party observers, and fans. However, with the exceptions of Jerry Garcia's ramblings in Garcia: A Signpost to New Space and Conversations With the Dead, Lesh's Searching for the Sound is the first time a founding member of America's favorite band tells their own story of what it was like inside the Grateful Dead. And what a wonderful, strange tale it is.Phil Lesh, considered the most academic of the group due to his avant-garde classical composition training, literate mind, and passion for the arts, decided to write his story himself. Written without the crutch of a ghostwriter, Searching for the Sound might be considered disjointed in places, but overall it comes across as conversational, intimate, informative, and candid (particularly regarding topics of drug use and death). If you are familiar with the band and their extended family, their history, the sixties' musical milestones and influences and all the band's famous tales (the Garcia/ Lesh "silent" confrontation, being busted on Bourbon Street, the Wall of Sound), you may be a little disgruntled there is not much new here in the way of content. However, what is "new" and totally satisfying is Phil's warm, optimistic perspective on the many events that helped shape his life. As described by Lesh, his life's journey, much like the Dead's music, is "a [series] of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until it's ending has come and gone." For the many fans who enjoyed the fruits of his life pursuit of sonic explorations, Searching for the Sound is a welcome addition to their Dead library.

    When a stranger on a bus advises, "Say yes more," Wallace vows to say yes to every offer, invitation, challenge, and chance.In Yes Man, Wallace recounts his months-long commitment to complete openness with profound insight and humbling honesty. Saying yes takes Wallace into a new plane of existence: a place where money comes as easily as it goes, nodding a lot can lead to a long weekend overseas with new friends, and romance isn't as complicated as it seems. Yes eventually leads to the biggest question of all: "Do you, Danny Wallace, take this woman . . ."Yes Man is inspiring proof that a little willingness can take anyone to the most wonderful of places.

    It is a message from a 12-foot by 9-foot cell in a cinderblock building surrounded by coils of razor wire in the middle of a dirt field in Arkansas. It was written by a young man named Damien Echols and it chronicles his life and his experiences in a way that clearly illuminates him, not as a monster, but as a human being. For over 10 years Damien has been an inmate on death row for a crime he did not commit. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley have become known as The West Memphis Three, and though the story of their arrest and conviction is widely known, most people don't know the real people behind the sound bites and the TV news segment clips. Damien has spent much of his time behind bars diligently maintaining his integrity and his sanity by writing. Almost Home is the product of that self-discipline, and in it you will meet someone who has survived an ordeal many of us would find impossible to live through. killer, but as time passes and more facts rise to the surface, it becomes even more clear that he is the victim of a peculiar species of hysteria. Read this book and know the truth about him. It is an urgent message from death row; the whole story of who Damien Echols really is.

    In 'Behind Closed Doors' Jenny Tomlin recounts her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a physically and sexually abusive father, as well as how she and her siblings not only survived but eventually transcended their experiences, and how she went on to find love and happiness in her life.

    This story of unwavering determination proves anyone can make their dreams come true. Ends with 20+ motivational tips on living with a disability.

    The couple made a home at their New England farmhouse, where they rejoiced in rituals of writing, gardening, caring for pets, and connecting with their rural community through friends and church. The Best Day the Worst Day presents a portrait of the inner moods of "the best marriage I know about," as Hall has written, against the stark medical emergency of Jane's leukemia, which ended her life in fifteen months. Between recollections of better times, Hall shares with readers the daily ordeal of Jane's dying through heartbreaking but ultimately inspiring storytelling.

    By his own choice, Mike's life went from upper-middle class plush to scum-of-the-earth repulsive overnight. With only a backpack, a sleeping bag and a guitar, Mike and his traveling companion, Sam, set out to experience life on the streets in six different cities—from Washington D.C. to San Diego— and they put themselves to the test.    For more than five months the pair experienced firsthand the extreme pains of hunger, the constant uncertainty and danger of living on the streets, exhaustion, depression, and social rejection—and all of this by their own choice. They wanted to find out if their faith was real, if they could actually be the Christians they said they were apart from the comforts they’d always known…to discover first hand what it means to be homeless in America.   Mike and Sam's story is gritty, challenging, and utterly captivating. What you encounter in these pages will radically alter how you see your world—and may even change your life.

    Now in the delightfully candid, outlandishly funny Waiting for Birdy, Newman charts the year she anticipated the birth of her second child while also coping with the realities of raising a toddler. As she navigates life with her existentially curious and heartbreakingly sweet three-year-old, and her doozy of a pregnancy, she lends her irresistibly unique voice to the secret thoughts and fears of parents everywhere. Filled with quirky warmth and razor-sharp wit, Waiting for Birdy captures the universal wonder, terror, humor, and tenderness of raising a family.

    Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something clicked—something miraculous—and audiences saw it at once. Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions (and the women) flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years from the day when the two men joined forces, it all ended.After that traumatic day, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart.In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of a fifty-year friendship, from the springtime, 1945 afternoon when the two vibrant young performers destined to conquer the world together met on Broadway and Fifty-fourth Street, to their tragic final encounter in the 1990s, when Lewis and his wife ran into Dean Martin, a broken and haunted old man.In Dean and Me, Jerry Lewis makes a convincing case for Dean Martin as one of the great — and most underrated — comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love Lewis felt, and still feels, for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.

    The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She married and had a son.A turning point in Kate's life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is her inspiring story.

    She became the helpless victim of a sociopath—bullied, dominated, and sexually abused by a man only fourteen years her senior: her stepfather. For nearly two decades she was held prisoner, both physically and emotionally. But at the age of twenty-one she escaped . . . and then she fought back.The Little Prisoner is the shocking, astonishing, and ultimately uplifting true story of one woman's shattering twenty-year ordeal—and how she triumphed against an evil and violent human monster when honesty and bravery were her only weapons.

    But how did a former file clerk from Cleveland and up with an Oscar nomination? The story begins in 1976, when Harvey began publishing his autobiographical, slice-of-downtrodden-life comic book, illustrated by a who's who of underground comic artists, including R. Crumb, Frank Stack, Gary Dumm and Joe Sacco. Titan is proud to present our third book from Harvey, an all-new compilation of his best work, featuring 100 per cent previously uncollected material.

    A pioneer of modern acoustic blues, a fine songwriter and arranger, a powerful singer, and one of the most influential guitarists of the '60s, he was also a marvelous storyteller, a peerless musical historian, and one of the most quotable figures on the Village scene. The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a first-hand account by a major player in the social and musical history of the '50s and '60s. It features encounters with young stars-to-be like Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Joni Mitchell, as well as older luminaries like Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Odetta. Colorful, hilarious, and engaging, The Mayor of MacDougal Street is a feast for anyone interested in the music, politics, and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture

    Tracing the memories of home through both people and place, McGahern details family life and the beginnings of a writing career that would take him far from home, and then back again. Haunting and illuminating, All Will Be Well is an unforgettable portrait of Ireland and one of its most beloved writers.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    The sky was so blue it looked as if it had been ironed. I crossed the street, ordered coffee, and sat to wait for my husband to meet me. It was our eighth wedding anniversary and Dave and I were about to begin a new chapter in our seventeen years together. Sipping coffee, I watched as a line of thick black smoke crept across the sky from Manhattan, oblivious to the fact that my life was about to change forever.On September 11, 2001, Marian Fontana lost her husband, Dave, a firefighter from the elite Squad 1 in Brooklyn, in the World Trade Center attack. A Widow's Walk begins that fateful morning, when Marian, a playwright and comedienne, became a widow, a single mother, and an unlikely activist. Two weeks after 9/11, the city attempted to close Squad 1, which had suffered the loss of twelve men. Known for her feisty spirit and passionate loyalty, Marian, who was still reeling from her profound loss, began to mobilize the neighborhood to keep the firehouse open. From this unlikely platform the 9/11 Widows and Victims' Families Association grew. Over the next twelve months, Marian struggled with the tragedy's endless ripple effects, from the minute and deeply personal—she wonders who will play Star Wars with her son, Aidan, and carry him on his shoulders; to the collective: she works to get families and widows necessary information about the recovery effort and attends private meetings with Governor Pataki, Mayor Giuliani, Senator Clinton, and Mayor Bloomberg. Through it all, Marian's irrepressible humor is her best armor, as well as evidence of her buoyant strength. Written with great heart and humanity, A Widow's Walk is a timely opportunity for remembrance and a timeless testament to love's loss and the resilience of the human spirit.

    Born with a congenital neuromuscular disease, Johnson has never been able to walk, dress, or bathe without assistance. With assistance, she passionately celebrates her life's richness and pleasures and pursues a formidable career as an attorney and activist. Whether rolling on the streets of Havana, on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, or in an auditorium at Princeton debating philosopher Peter Singer, Harriet McBryde Johnson defies every preconception about people with disabilities, and shows how a life, be it long or short, is a treasure of infinite value.

    Based on Crystal's one-man Broadway show of the same name, "700 Sundays"--referring sadly to the time shared by an adoring father and his devoted son--offers a heartfelt, hilarious memoir.

    Beloved for her sharp analysis, elegant prose and exceptional ability to intuit character, Williams wrote political profiles for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair that came to be considered the final word on the capital's most powerful figures. Her accounts of playing ping-pong with Richard Darman, of Barbara Bush's stepmother quaking with fear at the mere thought of angering the First Lady, and of Bill Clinton angrily telling Al Gore why he failed to win the presidency -- to name just three treasures collected here -- open a window on a seldom-glimpsed human reality behind Washington's determinedly blank façe. Williams also penned a weekly column for the Post's op-ed page and epistolary book reviews for the online magazine Slate. Her essays for these and other publications tackled subjects ranging from politics to parenthood. During the last years of her life, she wrote about her own mortality as she battled liver cancer, using this harrowing experience to illuminate larger points about the nature of power and the randomness of life. Marjorie Williams was a woman in a man's town, an outsider reporting on the political elite. She was, like the narrator in Randall Jarrell's classic poem, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," an observer of a strange and exotic culture. This splendid collection -- at once insightful, funny and sad -- digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people that run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.

     Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, on November 30, 1912, he left home at age fifteen when his mother passed away. For the next twelve years, he lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, working as a piano player, bus boy, Civilian Conservation Corpsman, and professional basketball player before taking up photography in the late 1930s and moving to Chicago. He was awarded the first Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in photography in 1942 and chose to work with Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C. During World War II, he was an Office of War Information (OWI) correspondent. He photographed fashion for Vogue and Glamour before joining the staff of Life in 1949 and remained a photojournalist for the magazine until 1969. He also became famous in the late 1960s for his stories on Black revolutionaries, later incorporated into his book Born Black. He was a founder and editorial director of Essence magazine from 1970 to 1973. His film career began in 1961 when he wrote and directed a documentary, Flavio. He received an Emmy Award for another documentary, Diary of a Harlem Family, in 1968. He produced and directed Hollywood films including The Learning Tree, Shaft, Shaft's Big Score, The Super Cops, and Leadbelly. He is first and foremost a celebrated photojournalist and fine art photographer whose work, collected and exhibited worldwide, is emblematic of American culture. In A Hungry Heart, he reaches into the corridors of his memory and recounts the people and events that shaped him: from growing up poor on the Kansas prairie to withstanding the unbearably cold winters of Minnesota to living on the edge of starvation in Harlem during the Depression. He more than survived the challenges and crises of his life; he thrived and has become one of the most celebrated and diversely talented figures in American culture.

    Choosing to ignore his many dubious achievements in the world of Australian show business (Martin/Molloy, The Late Show, a short-lived but torrid affair with Sharon on Kath & Kim), New Zealand-born Martin instead recalls dozens of tiny life-changing moments that, frankly, could have happened to anybody.In damning personal testimony spanning nearly forty years on both sides of the Tasman, Martin wreaks havoc as an apprentice props man in amateur theatre, attempts to corrupt his school’s ‘weird religious kid’, tries vainly to seduce an unwilling babysitter, turns an entire tour bus against him, battles an addiction to Donkey Kong, seeks to master the art of ‘kerning’ under the tutelage of a tyrannical Geordie, and is forced to donate an unfeasible amount of blood in an attempt to save his own life.Lolly Scramble is a light but flavoursome assortment from a man who appears to have learnt very little from his many mistakes. Tuck right in, but don’t eat them all at once or you’ll spoil your dinner.

    Soon he was the only doctor for tens of thousands of residents and refugees in the surrounding area. During six years of war and intermittent ceasefire, he often worked without gas, electricity, or running water, with only local anesthetics and homemade medical supplies.Although he treated mainly civilians, Baiev upheld the Hippocratic Oath by also caring for Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters alike--a practice that branded him a traitor by both sides. Kidnapped and nearly killed on several occasions, Baiev finally fled Chechnya in 2000 and won political asylum in the United States.An important eyewitness account of the reality of the Chechen-Russian conflict, which has killed 20 percent of the Chechen population, made homeless another 350,000, and seen the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers. Grief of My Heart is a searing memoir that is certain to become a classic in the literature of war.

    Joined by a friend, Joyce learned lessons that can help all of us travel on life's up-and-down journey with more grace and lightness. She shares them in this enjoyable recounting of her journey across mountains and valleys, cities and farms.

    Not only does she have to deal with the animals and their ailments, but she also has to contend with the perils of matchmaking mothers and macho farmers -- not to mention the guys who want to know 'where is the real vet?'

    Despite being given the all clear, in 2000 she learned that the disease had spread to her lungs and bones and there was nothing more the doctors could do. Faced with such devastating news, Jane did not give up. She decided to fight - the life sentence, the disease, and the expectations of living with cancer. Battling fierce pain to complete three London marathons, the Great North Run, and a 2,500 mile bicycle journey 'From Rome to Home', she has raised nearly GBP1million for charity. THE LUXURY OF TIME is Jane's story, told with her husband Mike. It is the story of a marriage, of two ordinary people made extraordinary by the courage with which they face their greatest challenge. They tell, in alternating chapters, what life has been like since 1990 when Jane was first diagnosed, how they coped separately and together, how they told their children, how they deal with the physical and emotional pain. With searing honesty and surprising humour, they write about their fears, hopes and ambitions for an uncertain future.

    Then write your own. I plan to.Tom Romano, author of Crafting Authentic VoiceFor twenty years Penny Kittle has woven together artful teaching and a love of language, celebrating the written word with classes from elementary school through graduate school. Now, she shares the stories of students with whom she's celebrated, struggled, and learned. More than a teaching memoir, The Greatest Catch is a close-up look at how to teach powerful lessons and how to learn powerful lessons from teachingespecially from teaching writing.Kittle teaches her students that writing is a tool for developing their intellectual, academic, and emotional selves, and in these essays, she shows how both she and her students' lives have been profoundly influenced by writing. You'll look over her shoulder as she tries to win over a mischievous third grader, works with a fifth-grade alcoholic, and attempts to make sense of her profession as she watches secondary students drop out of school. And in each instance, you'll see how writing can provide an outlet for difficult feelings, build connections and community, or foster resiliency in writers of any age.Best of all, The Greatest Catch is a model for your own professional development. In addition to her inspirational and pragmatic stories, Kittle includes Craft Notes that demonstrate how she composed her essays so that you can use the same strategies for your classroom life. You'll find these tools immediately useful for structuring reflective writing that helps you uncover the many layers of meaning in your work, just as Kittle, herself, has.Join Penny Kittle in the journey of a teaching lifetime and learn from her experience. Begin with any essay in The Greatest Catch or read it cover to cover. You'll find that no matter where you start you'll end up at the same place: inspired to teach, write, and learn.

    Through plain yet descriptive language seasoned with wry, biting adjectives, he ably conveys the sights, sounds and feelings of his surroundings. His musings are funny and hopeful, and Cheek shapes his childhood voice to suit stories of his tense relationship with his violent, alcoholic father; his mother's endless tolerance and denial; and his admiration for his maternal grandmother, who taught him to "be full of love, not hate." His child's-eye reportage captures the intricacies of his mother's postmarital relationship with Tuck, a strong, kind and gentle black man Cheek had met years earlier, and their secret life as an interracial family. The secret was revealed only after Cheek's mother had Tuck's baby, which enraged her family enough for them to have a court declare her an unfit mother. When the judge ordered her to give up one of the children, the author took the choice out of his mother's hands when he elected to leave the family and become a ward of the state, turning the formerly optimistic young man against the rest of his family. In an epilogue written in his adult voice, Cheek explains that his motivation for writing the book was vengeance, which in the process of writing turned to understanding and, finally, forgiveness. (Publisher's Weekly)

    Their father, a self–made man, had worked his way up from nothing to become a colonel in the Shah's army, and their mother, a woman of equally modest roots, had made a career for herself as a respected schoolteacher. But in February, 1979, Colonel Latifi was arrested by members of the newly installed Khomeini regime, and publicly pilloried as an "Enemy of God." Some months later, after having been shunted from one prison cell to another, and without benefit of a legitimate trial, Colonel Latifi was summarily executed.Fearing for the safety of her children, Mrs. Latifi made a wrenching decision: to send her daughters, ages ten and eleven, to the west, splitting up the family until they could safely reunite. Out on their own, Afschineh and her sister, Afsaneh, were forced to become strong young women before they'd even had a childhood.Even After All This Time is a story of hope and heartache, a story of a family torn apart for six harrowing years, and finally coming together to rebuild in America. In the richly evocative tradition of the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, this is a story of a family that had the courage to dream impossible dreams and to make them come true against impossible odds.

    So much evil was done there was a voice inside me shouting, "Justice".'With no one to confide in, Kathy suffered in silence as she was battered by her father and molested by local boys.At the age of eight, she was torn from her family and incarcerated in a series of Catholic homes. When she was sent to a psychiatric unit, she suffered terrifying electric- shock therapy and further cruelty at the hands of her supposed carers.After ending up in a Magdalen laundry, she fell victim to sexual abuse and gave birth to baby Annie just weeks before her fourteenth birthday. Don't Ever Tell is Kathy's harrowing account of her ruined childhood and of her subsequent fight for justice.

    Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother's road: a journey which began in his ancestors' town in Turkey and led to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of mountainous Karabagh. Monte's life embodied the agony and the follies of the end of the Cold War and the unraveling of the Soviet Union. Yet, who was this man, really? A terrorist or a hero? My Brother's Road is not just the story of a long journey and a short life, it is an attempt to understand what happens when one man decides that violent deeds speak louder than words

    In Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, Fantasia speaks -- with a spirit as strong as her voice -- about what it takes to believe in the power of one's self. She turns all that she's learned into uplifting life lessons, including: Recognize your gift • You made your bed, now lie in it • Give props where props are due • Like mother, like daughter • It ain't about the bling.

    But what began as a doable dream for the two of them suddenly looks quite different when, on their first morning in the cabin—without electricity, a telephone, running water, or real windows—the couple learn that Amy is pregnant. In this lyrical and intimate chronicle of making a home the hard way, Johnson describes the competing joys and anxieties of preparing for fatherhood in a setting as challenging as it is promising: a paradise of mythic snowfalls and warming wood stoves and elk tracks at the front door, but also a place where vision, and even struggle and compromise, are not always enough. Hannah and the Mountain tells a rare and delicate story of two people exploring the unmapped territories of loss and grief and finding solace and grace in the mountains. It offers the reader an unforgettable portrait of a couple growing up, learning nature’s hard and beautiful lessons, and discovering a love of place and each other strong and wild enough to renew them and be carried into the future

    The bravery he showed after suffering near-fatal injuries in the final days of World War II is the stuff of legend. Now, for the first time in his own words, Dole tells the moving story of his harrowing experience on and off the battlefield, and how it changed his life.Speaking here not as a politician but as a wounded G. I., Dole recounts his own odyssey of courage and sacrifice, and also honors the fighting spirit of the countless heroes with whom he served. Heartfelt and inspiring, One Soldier's Story is the World War II chronicle that America has been waiting for.

    Then she was diagnosed with ALS, and her world turned upside down. I Remember Running is Darcy's story of change and loss and challenges during her first year with ALS, as she struggles to make sense of her diagnosis and redefine herself in the face of this terminal illness. With unflagging courage, wit, and eloquence, Darcy shares what she calls her "fast-forward" life, a life in which she applies for disability, leaves her job, and plans her own funeral as well as meets and moves in with her true love, buys a house, and gives birth to her first child in less time than it takes most of us to accomplish even one of these things. Beautifully written and wholly inspiring, I Remember Running proves that it is possible to live a rich, meaningful life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, and will move readers to see the world in a different light.

    Bicycling was simply the method by which he chose to distract himself from his grief. But for Hancock, the 2,747-mile journey from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast became more than just a distraction. It became a pilgrimage, even if Hancock didn't realize it upon dipping his rear tire in the Pacific Ocean near Huntington Beach, California in the wee hours of a July morning. On his two-wheel trip, Hancock battled searing heat and humidity, curious dogs, unforgiving motorists and the occasional speed bump--usually a dead armadillo. Hancock's thoughts returned to common themes: memories of his son Will, the prospect of life without Will for him and his wife, and the blue moth of grief and depression.

    Don't, for instance, pass the Fryemont Inn when the windows are open--not unless you plan to come inside and enjoy fresh-baked rolls, gourmet cooking, and an owner who is as warm and inviting as the food. She's just one of the friendly faces you'll meet in Bryson City Secrets.Told with winsome humor and deep affection, Bryson City Secrets is a story-lover's delight, continuing Dr. Walt Larimore's reminiscences of his early years of country medical practice. Pull up a chair and feast on this rich fare of Smoky Mountain personalities, highland wisdom, and all the tears, laughter, tenderness, faith, courage, and misadventures of small-town life.

    But little did he know the effect this new pal, soon-to-be named Norton, would have on his future: celebrity encounters, transatlantic, jet-setting excursions, and lessons about love and commitment that extended way beyond the usual relationship between a man and his feline.The Norton Trilogy is the complete chronicles of Norton, the perfect Scottish Fold who won the hearts of hundreds of thousands through the endearing tales of his adventures with his not-so-perfect human in the three bestselling titles, The Cat Who Went to Paris, A Cat Abroad, and The Cat Who'll Live Forever. Bound together in one complete volume for the first time, these books let readers revel in Norton--his loveable nature, rebellious streak, and very uncatlike demeanor--and follow his often hilarious escapades across two continents.From outshining Sir Anthony Hopkins at a movie premiere in the Hamptons and being feted with a Pounce pizza at Spago by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, to making canine friends at the dog run in Washington Square Park and charming the hotel staff at the ritzy Tremoille Hotel in Paris, Norton's uncanny genius and unique relationship with the author touch everyone they meet.Traveling together through France, Italy, Holland and Spain, and culminating in their last cross-country trip in America, we learn about Norton's deeply moving last days and the lessons they taught his devoted human about death and grief and how to appreciate the joyful times we have here on earth.The Norton Trilogy is more than a story about a cat--it is a tribute to true friendship and the extraordinary bond between people and their pets.Peter Gethers, in addition to being the chronicler of his wonderful Scottish Fold cat Norton, is a novelist, screenwriter, and book publisher. He is the author of two novels, The Dandy and Getting Blue. Under the pseudonym Russell Andrews, he is the author of four internationally bestselling thrillers: Gideon, Icarus, Aphrodite and Midas.

    What I did not anticipate was how my journey would also resonate with men.America knows Jane Fonda as actress and activist, feminist and wife, workout guru and role model. In this extraordinary memoir, Fonda shows that she is much more. From her youth among Hollywood’s elite to her film career and her activism today, Fonda reveals intimate details and personal truths she hopes can provide a lens through which others can see their lives and how they can live them a little differently. Surprising, candid, and wonderfully written, My Life So Far is filled with insights into the personal struggles of a woman living a remarkable life.

    As a child, she is constantly told to always tell the truth, no matter the consequences, for she must model herself on Jehovah, and Jehovah does not lie. She dutifully studies the truth book, a supplemental religious text that contains the principles of the faith." When Joy is ten years old, her parents divorce. Earlier, her father had been disfellowshipped, or excommunicated from the congregation, for smoking. When Joy is twelve, her mother marries a respected brother in their church. He has an impeccable public persona, but behind closed doors at home he is a savage brute. Joy and her younger brother Tony are forbidden from seeing their father and are abused mercilessly - to the point they both think they are going to die. Their battered mother does nothing to protect them. Nor does their church, to which Joy voices her appeals. For two years they suffer, until one day Joy reaches out to her father, and together they plan and execute the children's daring escape.

    A few months after sending a blind application letter to George Steinbrenner, on Opening Day 1992 Matt found himself walking into the legendary Yankee clubhouse. There, amid the chaos and excitement, he was greeted by none other than his idol Don Mattingly — who promptly played a prank on him.Thus began two years of adventures and misadventures, from being set up on a date by the bullpen to playing blackjack on the team plane to studying for an exam at 3 am in Yankee Stadium. Through these often hilarious experiences, and especially through his friendships with the ballplayers, Matt learned priceless lessons about honor, responsibility, and the importance of believing in oneself. A magical tale of what happens to a young man when his fondest dream comes true, Bat Boy wonderfully evokes that twilight time just before adulthood, ripe with possibility, foolishness, and hard-won knowledge.

    In this new collection of essays, a treat for dedicated fans and new readers alike, Winik explores how she — and other women — face midlife and aging without getting tangled up in the past or the future, all with her trademark humor and insistence on the truth-the good, the bad, and the ugly.The collection is divided into five sections: "Back," about her family and her past; "Underfoot," about being a mom; "In the Mirror," about growing older; "Above us Only Sky," about a key turning point in her life, and "Ahead," about facing the future.

    Such as:WHO IS HE?WHERE DID HE COME FROM?HOW DOES HE DO IT?The reader will alsoLEARN a multitude of inside SECRETS with which he or she too can mystify anyone.THE MYSTERIOUS MR. BLAINEFOR THE FIRST TIME IN RECORDED HISTORYWILL READ YOUR THOUGHTS THROUGH THE WRITTEN WORD“A latter-day Houdini.” —The New York Times“The hottest name in magic.”— USA TodayHIS SECRETS WILL BECOME YOURS

    Phil McGraw's beloved sister–in–law, an ordinary woman transformed by tragedy who has become an extraordinary hero for us all.In 2001, Cindi Broaddus was a passenger in a car driving along a lonely highway on her way toward a much–anticipated vacation. Suddenly, the predawn peace was shattered when an unknown assailant threw a gallon–sized jar full of sulphuric acid off an overpass and through the windshield. Though Broaddus was covered with second– and third–degree burns across her face and body, miraculously she did not die.Today, she is not only alive and well, but has a positive message of survival and hope to share.A Random Account recounts Broaddus's incredible journey from life–threatening disaster to recovery. Throughout her years–long, often excruciating recuperation – involving numerous reconstructive surgeries, multiple skin grafts, and implanted tissue expanders – this single mother of three has had one goal: to prevent such a terrible crime from happening again. Although her attacker has never been caught, Broaddus travels far and wide, sharing her story, lobbying for improving highway safety, and offering hope and down–to–earth guidance for other victims of senseless tragedy. For such a random act can happen to anyone, turning one's life upside down in an instant. As compelling as it is important, A Random Act is a must–read tale of tragedy and triumph from a truly remarkable woman.

    Their story is one of hardship, violence, and cautious, heartbreaking attempts toward compassion. Lesley's fearless journey through his family history provides a remarkable portrait of hard living in the Western states, and confirms his place as one of the region's very best storytellers.

    Written by Sidney Finkel Biography - Historical / Self-Published / Paperback / January 2005

    Penfold is an appealing, successful thirty-five-year-old businesswoman running her own company when her parents, worried that she works too hard, invite her to a country picnic-party one weekend. There she meets widower Brian and is swept off her feet. Romantic and exuberant, with four loving children, Brian seems like everything a woman could possibly want, and Roz falls deeply in love. But soon Roz begins to notice troubling signs that Brian is not what he seems. A pattern of lies and petty cruelties begins to emerge that, over the course of their decade together, comes to encompass a litany of physical, mental, and sexual abuse appalling in its scope and malevolence. Often too traumatized and ashamed to admit the true extent of what she is experiencing, Roz instead pours her anguish into a series of graphic diaries that provide a touching, profoundly shocking, and completely original portrait of domestic abuse.An extraordinary visual testimony, Dragonslippers presents the many warning signs of abuse and offers a frank examination of the psychology of both abusers and victims. Above all, this is the story of a woman who fights for and finds the strength to break free.

    More than 50 members of his immediate and extended family were killed. Despite the pain he has faced, Sam's story of survival is a testimony to triumph of the human spirit. He has shared his experiences with groups at schools, events and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan. After much urging by friends and family, he has put his story in writing. This is the hardcover edition of his book.

    In measured but powerful prose, he describes the efficient actions of the tie-down team, the prisoner's often meandering last words, and the way that he himself lifted his glasses from his nose to signal the executioner to start the IV flow.

    But as the twins approached adolescence, Pamela began to succumb to schizophrenia, hearing disembodied voices and eventually suffering many breakdowns and hospitalizations.Divided Minds is a dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia, and the other who becomes a psychiatrist, after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness, as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them.

    Many of us travel abroad, and few of us live in the towns or cities where we were born. It wasn't always so. “Travel from America to Europe became a commonplace, an ordinary commodity, some time ago, but when I first went such departure was still surrounded with an atmosphere of adventure and improvisation, and my youth and inexperience and my all but complete lack of money heightened that vertiginous sensation,” writes W. S. Merwin. Twenty-one, married and graduated from Princeton, the poet embarked on his first visit to Europe in 1948 when life and traditions on the continent were still adjusting to the postwar landscape. Summer Doorways captures Merwin at a similarly pivotal time before he won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1952 for his first book, A Mask for Janus—the moment was, as the author writes, “an entire age just before it was gone, like a summer.”

    Almost thirty years later, at the age of forty-two, he set out to find and face his abuser. The Tricky Part tells the story of this relationship and its complex effect on the man Moran became. He grew up in an exemplary Irish Catholic family-his great aunt was a cloistered nun; his father, a newspaper reporter. They might have lived in the Denver neighborhood of Virginia Vale, but they belonged to Christ the King, the church and school up the hill. And the lessons Martin absorbed, as a good Catholic boy, were filled with the fraught mysteries of the spirit and the flesh. Into that world came Bob-a Vietnam vet carving a ranch-camp out of the mountain wilderness, showing the boys under his care how to milk cows, mend barbed wire fence, and raft rivers. He drove a six-wheeled International Harvester truck; he could read the stars like a map. He also noticed a young boy who seemed a little unsure of himself, and he introduced that boy to the secret at the center of bodies.Told with startling candor and disarming humor, The Tricky Part carries us to the heart of a paradox-that what we think of as damage may be the very thing that gives rise to transformation, even grace.

    Nancy worked for Elvis from 1967 until his untimely death in 1977. Read her stories of what those years were like, of what the routines were at Graceland, and what it meant to be close to Elvis and his family on a daily basis. Read the sad account of her rushing upstairs, after a frantic call from Ginger Alden, and finding him on the bathroom floor. This book presents that picture, one that every Elvis fan will want to see."

    I would not like to lose even a moment of your slow decline.” From acclaimed author John Terpstra comes the story of his wife’s family and the short lives of her three brothers, each of whom lived with muscular dystrophy until their early twenties. With humour, reverence and great love, Terpstra charts the experience of a family under unusual, but resoundingly human, circumstances. He recreates the daily life, the vitality and wit shared by the three boys, and his relationships with them as they entered the final stages of their illness. Above all, he underlines the privilege of spending time with each of them – Neil, Paul and Eric – coming to know their persistence as individuals, their collective brand of humour and the force field of their personalities in unison. Terpstra recounts the habits, the gentle rituals and oddities of living in the boys’ realm: their shared passion for sports, their penchant for nicknames, their records and correspondence, and the steady flow of friends, family and caregivers who participated in their lives. Many times along the way, convictions are checked, challenged and rechecked, faith upended and restored, and perceptions of illness, disability and quality of life vigorously shaken. The Boys honours the last year in the lives of three brothers whose days could never rightly be called wasted or tragic, but whose time on earth was all too brief. Terpstra celebrates life and challenges the brackets we place around lives characterized by illness. He centres the mechanics of the boys’ physical presence within the geography of their home and community. The Boys is also a gradual examination of storytelling, of the ownership of stories, of where stories effectively begin and whether they ever end. “I have made a heap of all that I could find…” says Terpstra, “the stuff kept in trunks and boxes; loose photos and albums, a diary, keepsakes, the written notes. What remained, materially, of their lives. Can art be made from terminal disease? After all these years the narrative of their lives had distilled into key moments and events, I would like to say, but it was really in the putting-together and spelling out in words of insignificant and mundane moments and events that their various lights began to shine. I was also thinking about St. Augustine, and the brief, numbered chapters of his Confessions. I thought, at first, that each of the chapters should be addressed directly to God, as they are in that book, because then the big why of the family’s story could stay front and centre the whole time. It seemed appropriate. Except that the big why never dominated the story as it originally unfolded, and was not doing so as the story unfolded before me. Scrap St. Augustine. With their lives these brothers who had no future raised life high; in their daily routines, routine itself became holy. Can art be made from terminal disease? I took my cue from them.” This book is a smyth-sewn paperback bound in card stock with a letterpress-printed jacket. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Fred Smeijer’s Quadraat and Quadraat Sans, and printed offset on laid paper.

    As benefactor to many writers including Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky, he stood for several decades at the center of the Russian literary milieu. It is no exaggeration to claim that Chukovsky knew everyone involved in shaping the course of twentieth-century Russian literature. His voluminous diary, here translated into English for the first time, begins in prerevolutionary Russia and spans nearly the entire Soviet era. It is the candid commentary of a brilliant observer who documents fifty years of Soviet literary activity and the personal predicament of the writer under a totalitarian regime.From descriptions of friendship with such major literary figures as Anna Akhmatova and Isaac Babel to accounts of the struggle with obtuse and hostile censorship, from the heartbreaking story of the death of the daughter who had inspired so many stories to candid political statements, the extraordinary diary of Kornei Chukovsky is a unique account of the twentieth-century Russian experience.

    Meet the woman who experienced depression when it often went undiagnosed and how she made her way out of that pit. In this book she walks beside you, encouraging you to follow a balanced path to physical, mental, and spiritual wellness.

    They all wanted to help, to say the right thing. Yet somehow, all too often, their best attempts at kindness proved more debilitating than comforting. The grim reality of cancer is that life, with all its myriad demands, continues: the dog still needs walking, the daily meals need preparing and dishing up. What can I do to help? you ask. Well, stand by, because the answer is: plenty.

    She and her "saner half," Mack, have gone so far as to transform their living room into an indoor forest, complete with two dead trees providing a variety of perches and a screened porch making do as a practise flyway. Johns nurses her feathered convalescents day and night, helping them to drink and bathe and hunt, and gaining deep insights into their highly individual personalities. Most she attempts to release back into the wild but a few, inevitably, move in to stay.Birds of a Feather: Tales of a Wild Bird Haven is a warm and funny account of eight months -- from May to December -- in the life of this caring wildlife rescuer. Fans of Johns's earlier wildlife books will relish her humorous descriptions of the antics of such irresistible characters as Blossom, the media-savvy chicken, and the goats Mower and Munch. Enhanced by line drawings of her avian housemates, this delightful collection of anecdotes in the tradition of James Herriot and Farley Mowat celebrates some of Nature's smallest and most awe-inspiring miracles.

    Now, in an autobiography as unique as he is, Peck tells his story through the people in his life. From his roots as a poor Vermont farmer’s son to his years as a soldier in World War II, from his time slogging away in a paper mill to his semi-retirement in Florida, Peck shows us people who too often go unseen and unheard–the country’s poor and uneducated.“For decades, I’ve examined the autobiographies of my fellow authors. Bah! Many could have been titled And Then I Wrote . . . So instead of my life and lit, here is the unusual, a tarnished treasury of plain people who enriched me, taught me virtues, and helped me hold a mite of manhood. They’re not fancy folk, so please expect no long-stemmed roses from a florist. They are, instead, the unarranged flora that I’ve handpicked from God’s greenhouse . . . weeds in bloom.”From the Hardcover edition.

    From deciphering the mysteries of wedding food to learning to understand florist-speak, from picking a suitable mother-of-the-bride outfit-without looking like a Red Hot Mama or, worse, your grandmother in lavender and lace-to keeping a sense of humor when some of what can go wrong does, this down-to-earth guide makes a perfect gift for every mother determined to give her daughter the wedding of her dreams.

    Filled with faith and hope, this moving narrative gives readers an eternal perspective on their earthly sojourn. “People often speak of life and death as if these two concepts were mutually exclusive,” writes best-selling author K. Douglas Bassett. “This book is an attempt to bring together life and death—the latter being an extension of the former. More than just being connected, I believe they flow into each other.” Written for those who need answers or edification regarding their own mortality or the mortality of someone they love, The Barber’s Song is an affirmation of the reality of eternal life and the power of the Atonement, which paves way for the ultimate family reunion. Doug Bassett has crafted a message that sinks deep into the heart of those who are willing to risk loving another person completely. The Barber’s Song can help readers get and keep their priorities straight. —Jack R. Christianson, director, Orem Institute of Religion

    But through it all, in the face of chronic depression, Falk kept reaching out for the life he'd always wanted. Hello to All That is his story--crazed, comic, poignant, suspenseful, and hopeful.

    His troop of Scimitar light-armoured vehicles was attached to the 1 CHESHIRE Battle Group (under the charismatic command of Colonel Bob Stewart). Fresh from Germany he and his men found themselves in a highly political and lethally dangerous civil war. They witnessed appalling atrocities and human tragedy on a giant scale. Both the soldiers and civilians showed massive courage and resilience.Thanks to the Author's diary we have here an extraordinary spontaneous and important account of British troops performing vital military and humanitarian tasks. War correspondent and MP, Martin Bell describes it as 'earning its place among the impartial narratives of the Bosnian War.

    J. E. Williams has risked his health and personal safety to journey among shamans in Peru, the place he calls the mystical and spiritual center of our times. In its rain forests, mountains, and environmentally attuned indigenous population, Peru's mystical landscape fosters inner discovery.The Andean Codex guides the reader step by step through journeys to Andean sacred places like Machu Picchu, Cuzco, and Moray, and in the process uncovers the esoteric meaning of these ruins. Williams recounts his initiation with Peruvian shamans, including shamanic ceremonies he performed at Machu Picchu and his experiences using the mind-expanding, heart-opening ayahuasca and the sacred coca plant.Throughout these encounters, Williams weaves in practical advice that brings the wisdom of Andean shamans to life. His unforgettable account of their prayers, practices, and ceremonies offers a rare opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a shaman and experience the Andean sacred way.

    Imagine watching hundreds of boys perish around you from hunger, disease, or attacks by enemy soldiers and wild animals. To most of us, it is unimaginable, but this was reality for "The Lost Boys of Sudan," thousands of young boys who were separated from their families and forced to walk approximately 1,000 miles to reach safe refuge from war and certain death. For the first time, this award winning book offers readers a chronological timeline of the epic journey taken by these children, beginning in their rural villages of Southern Sudan and ending with their arrival as young men to the United States. Narrated through the voice of Joan Hecht, one of their American mentors, whom they lovingly call "mom" or "Mama Joan;" "The Journey of the Lost Boys" is a compelling story of courage, faith and the sheer determination to survive by a group of young orphaned boys. Because of Joan Hecht’s personal relationship with them, she is able to portray their story in a way that most famous reporters and authors cannot. In addition to her extensive research of the political and historical events surrounding the long lasting civil war in Sudan, are the heart-rending personal stories and original drawings of the boys themselves. A must read for anyone interested in the the true story of the Lost Boys of Sudan!

    Amazingly, the many pieces have come together to form a design that none of us imagined at first. First there is An in Holland in the early 1940s, fighting to keep the War from taking over her young, promising life. Met with unspeakable horrors, she takes risks that would confound the bravest of souls. At the same time, groups of women across North America meet in sewing circles, making quilts—and then bundling them up and sending them off to do their part to give comfort and courage and respite during the War.           I, Lynn, come 20-some years later, showing up in Amsterdam in the early 1970s, a little rebellious and tired of another war. I didn't know An, and quilts were not something I ever made. But my grandmother and aunts, and other older women in my childhood church, did. And I knew an immigrant's longing for the textures of home. We have scattered images of 19 quilts, which eventually emerge near the heart of this story, throughout the book. These quilts drew An and me to each other. We'll put this story together a little like a quilt top—here a patch, there a patch, until the design emerges, startlingly cohesive. Terrible odds. Determined women. Quilts, well-worn from having been called into active duty.

    In the camps, she stayed close to her mother, but her mother died in her hands in Belsen shortly before liberation. Isabelle recovered from typhus and pleurisy in Sweden and later moved to France ro live with her uncle, the only survivor of the family.Frances Irwin, "Remember to be a Good Human Being": A Memoir of Life and the Holocaust. A fifteen, Frances snuck out of the Konskie ghetto through sewers to get food for her family. After almost two years imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau, she endured a death march to Mauthausen and was liberated from that camp's Lenzing sub-camp. She immigrated to the U.S., where she became a lecturer on the Holocaust for Facing History and Ourselves and a member of the board and executive committee of Hillel at Brooklyn College.Lotti Kahana-Aufleger,Eleven Years of Suffering The inspiring story of a woman willing to make almost any sacrifice to save her ill husband, six-year-old daughter, and elderly parents from the Romanian-run (and Ukrainian-assisted) camps in Transnistria. With resourcefulness and courage, Lotti and Sigfried rescued the family from extreme brutality and from the murderous Aktions, in which the camp inmates were taken across the Bug River to be killed.Margit Raab Kalina, Surviving a Thousand deaths (Memoir:1939-1945) At the war's outbreak, a 16-year-old Margit and her family fled Karvina (Czech Silesia) to Eastern Poland. After her father was killed in a bomb-raid, the family fled westward to Tarnow, where the Gestapo shot Margit's mother. Margit worked at the Madritsch textile factory there and then in the Paszow labor camp, was deported to Auschwitz, and from there to Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, she joined her only surviving relatives in Bratislava.Jane Lipski, My Escape into Prison and Other Memories of a Stolen Youth, 1939-1948 The story of a young woman surviving both the Nazis and Soviet prisons. Part of the Bedzin ghetto resistance, after her family was deported to Auschwitz she escaped to Slovakia, where she met her future husband. Soviet partisans took them to Moscow to be honored as heroes, but imprisoned them instead; she never saw her husband again. Jane bore her son in prison, and miraculously they both survived. Repatriated to Poland in 1948, she later settled in the U.S.

    He and his gang were great tacticians, backing up their moves with psychological set-ups to convince pit bosses that they were watching legitimate high rollers getting lucky, while in fact their casinos were being robbed blind. Here, for the first time, Richard Marcus tells his outrageous tale of a lifetime spent cheating casinos. This insider story of how one very smart man and his small band were able to beat some of the biggest casinos at their own game opens a window on to a hidden world of intriguing personalities, tense situations and very close shaves.

    Subtly exploring the roots of fantasy, insecurity, stereotypes, and attraction, Andy Quan emerges as plainly comfortable with himself, his body, and his identity as an Asian man in the notoriously objectifying gay community. This level of comfort shows in the slyly humorous ways he allows the issue to surface in these narratives, where pickups trawling for a passive geisha often get more than they bargained for. Whether narrating the course of a romantic encounter gone bad, detailing the goings-on at an orgy, or smashing the stereotype of the Asian boytoy, Six Positions offers fresh, thoughtful, and creative considerations of gay bodies and acts, while celebrating determined and unadulterated sexual desire.

    A womans Life in the Garda Siochana

    Illnesses include a variety of autoimmune system disorder, cancer, and Lou Gehrig's disease, as well well as several other chronic and serious illnesses. This book strives to help you recognize yourself in your straggles and feel less alone in your pain. Each devotional issue illustrates God's involvement in the midst of pain.                                      These issues include:              Pain - Weakness - Identity - Loss of independence                                    Loneliness  - Facing death"

    Former editor from the Irish Field tells her story of climbing Everest.

    This book puts the history-making punk period into the context of a very unusual life. It also offers a vivid insight into the London new wave scene from someone who was present at many of the epochal moments, rubbing shoulders with Johnny Rotten and many other movers and shakers. While Eater's original recorded legacy was limited to four singles ("Outside View" the most famous), an EP and an album, the fact the book's foreword has been provided by Henry Rollins of Black Flag fame is testament to their influence. Rollins says: "Andy Blade has gone to great lengths to tell the tale of how it went down and what happened afterwards with a steel trap memory and an alarming lack of restraint or self-congratulation. Punches are not pulled, and I'm sure there will be a few ruffled feathers." The Sid and Johnny stories are worth the price of admission on their own. People who are now acknowledged as Punk gods pass through the pages of this book. He was at shows that are the real stuff of legend, like the first ever UK appearance of the Ramones. A photo section includes previously unseen pictures of the band from Andy Blade's archives.

     So begins Victor Rivas Rivers in this powerful chronicle of his escape from the war zone of domestic violence—too often regarded as a “private family matter”—and his journey toward independence, recovery, and renewal. In A Private Family Matter, Victor recalls his days as an angry youth living under the rule and wrath of his father. A Cuban immigrant, Victor's dad was nicknamed El Ciclón for his tempestuous temperament, which led him not only to beat his wife but to abuse—and eventually kidnap—his own children. How Victor managed to seek help for his family and criminal punishment for his father, overcome his demons and learn to love himself, and share his experience with other victims and survivors of domestic abuse is at the heart of this profound and affecting memoir.

    Vince Dooley had the perfect view of the bedlam, riding atop the shoulders of his players, and he had the perfect view of everything that happened in 1980 that led up to the ultimate climax. They played with the tenacity of Bulldogs all year, yet it might have been the purloined pig that united the team. It was also the year the silver britches returned. It was the last year for the fans on the railroad tracks. And on the eve of a national championship, Vince Dooley almost left Georgia to return to Auburn to coach his alma mater. One year removed from a mediocre 6-5 season, Georgia certainly got a boost from freshman tailback Herschel Walker, the most sought-after schoolboy athlete in the state's history. It was so important that Georgia sign Walker, in fact, that backfield coach Mike Cavan moved to Wrightsville, Georgia--100 miles south of the Athens campus from Christmas to Easter--when divine intervention seemingly moved Walker to a decision. But Walker alone was not enough. That became clearly evident when a dramatic comeback was needed to overcome Florida, and a wide receiver who had lost his scholarship for disciplinary reasons and suffered an offseason injury in a car accident resurrected his college career with the most incredible play in Georgia's history. Yet the championship season was almost derailed before it started in the season opener, when Nate Taylor, Pat McShea, and even punter Jim Broadway epitomizedthe roles of the unsung heroes in a onepoint win. From beginning to end, it was a year of unusual drama, sprinkled with generous doses of humor. And when it was all done, the 1980 team had reached a place no Bulldog team had ever gone before.

    Farrington retells the story of the Israelites and their time in the desert, before they reached the Promised Land. The struggle of the Israelites wandering in the desert serves to illuminate the everyday challenges of letting go of the past in order to move on to the future. While transitions often feel like an endurance contest that would be better if it would end sooner rather than later, Farrington invites us to rethink these unsettling periods and learn to embrace them. She shows how times of transition can become periods of rest, play, creativity, and discernment. Transitions, Farrington claims, give us the opportunity to re-create and renew ourselves and become more fully what God calls us to be.

    To make art. To make a "career" of art. In her unique and honest memoir, Barbara Caruso paints her life-- vibrant challenging, and engaged-- as a Canadian visual artist. With a rarity of contemporary avant-garde painters, Caruso's memoir emerges as important documentation of the artist's creative process. "A Painter's Journey" also provides a much-needed public record of Canadian art exhibits, and tracks Caruso's interaction with artists, collaborators, the Toronto art community, and her life with poet Nelson Ball. "A Painter's Journey" reads like a novel; in spare, elegant prose, Caruso tells the story of a young woman artist navigating the turbulent, fascinating years between 1966 and 1973 in the Toronto art world.

    This tribute to his work includes nearly 150 images and focuses on his post-9/11 output, including a haunting suite inspired by that event, homages to his famous friends the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, and pieces drawing on his memories of an impoverished Southern childhood. The book also has a rich overview of Dial's pre-9/11 work. An in-depth biography and contextualizing essays by leading art historians shed new light on Dial's life and work.

    Equally at home recounting the lore of her outlaw husband, Stephen Reid, or interpreting the arcane rituals of her teenage girls, Musgrave brings to her literary essays that same invigorating freshness for which she has become known through her fiction and poetry. In settings ranging from the aching solitude of the Queen Charlotte Islands to the sweaty intensity of bandido apartments in Panama, Musgrave muses with her legendary wit and pastiche, while creating graffiti-like impressions of the writer's essential take on those closest to her.

    Each story about caring for the elderly is self-contained; each person telling his or her story knows your pain in watching a loved one suffer, the joy of giving of oneself, and the emotional and physical exhaustion of the whole experience. It is an intimate and powerful resource for caregivers, filled with true stories about seniors and aging parents.

    Part memoir, part love story, part wildly scenic travel piece, 'The Greek for Love' is James Chatto's account of life on Corfu, recalling the idyllic lifestyle and hospitable reception of the islanders.

    In his second collection of humorous stories and insightful reflections, Guillaume looks at the lighter side of castle building, jousting on ESPN, learning Arthurian mythology (with the help of tequila), and making topiary animals out of duct tape. Plus, just to prove that no subject is beyond the scope of his irreverent sense of humor, he also shares the laughter and chaos that took place "behind the scenes" during two reigns as King of Caid. Whether by fate or "an implausible disruption of the natural balance of the universe," Guillaume's readers are in for some royal laughs, and some touching moments, as the SCA's funniest knight wins the throne and seeks shelter from the reign in a deluge of hilarious stories, including: Spitting Distance from Chivalry Christmas Crazies: Forgotten Medieval Holiday Folklore Of Arms and the Knight I Sing To Find the SCA, Just Turn Right at Spiderman Fangs for the Memories: Medieval Halloween Monsters Reigny Days and Mondays

    Mirta Ojito was born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees. Now a reporter for The New York Times, Ojito goes back to reckon with her past and to find the people who set this exodus in motion and brought her to her new home. She tells their stories and hers in superb and poignant detail-chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.Growing up, Ojito was eager to excel and fit in, but her parents'--and eventually her own--incomplete devotion to the revolution held her back. As a schoolgirl, she yearned to join Castro's Young Pioneers, but as a teenager in the 1970s, when she understood the darker side of the Cuban revolution and learned more about life in el norte from relatives living abroad, she began to wonder if she and her parents would be safer and happier elsewhere. By the time Castro announced that he was opening Cuba's borders for those who wanted to leave, she was ready to go; her parents were more than ready: They had been waiting for this opportunity since they married, twenty years before.Finding Ma�ana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence--and the will to confront darkness--that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Ma�ana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Ma�ana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.

    Garrison is a proficient writer with an inspiring story, but his self-awareness and insight into disability give weight to his memoir. His sly sense of humor, meanwhile, provides a good balance to his heavier material. The author has great talent in showing, not telling, the reader the steps of the journey and the mindset of his younger self. His choice of language is spectacular, including the progressions of his fear and confidence levels as a very young man, progressing through the years. Masterful sharing of experiential detail.