They frequently recreate the actions of presidents, military leaders, and soldiers. From Captain America punching Hitler in the jaw on his very first cover, to The Punisher surviving the battle of Firebase Valley Forge, there are countless instances when the military has crossed over to the pages of comic books.Soldiers and superheroes: A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Jason Inman re-discovered his childhood love of comic books during long days at the Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq. He couldn’t help but ask why so many comic books are filled with service members. Maybe it’s their loyalty to everyday citizens and the never-ending quest for justice. The men and women who lace up their books and sacrifice their lives know that battle can change a person. What kinds of soldiers were these fictional characters, and how were they changed by war?Discover the super soldiers in Marvel comics, DC comics and beyond: Super Soldiers: A Salute to the Comic Book Heroes and Villains Who Fought for Their Country looks at the intersection between war and pop culture to understand these questions and more. Each chapter revisits military comic book characters and compares them to personal stories from Inman’s military career. Describing superhero soldiers from DC comics and Marvel comics, including lesser-known characters lost to time.

    As one of five children of divorced parents, he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school, but spent his holidays as a plumbers' mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years and 11 days in government, including long and influential spells as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how he got there.His memoirs offer a unique insight into the complex, sometimes self-serving but always fascinating world of British politics and reveals the toll that high office takes but also, more importantly, the enormous satisfaction and extraordinary privilege of serving both your constituents and your country.Straw’s has been a very public life, but he reveals the private face, too, and offers readers a vivid and authoritative insight into the Blair/Brown era and, indeed, the last forty years of British politics.

    After writing A Confederacy of Dunces, Toole corresponded with Robert Gottlieb of Simon & Schuster for two years. Exhausted from Gottlieb's suggested revisions, Toole declared the publication of the manuscript hopeless and stored it in a box. Years later he suffered a mental breakdown, took a two-month journey across the United States, and finally committed suicide on an inconspicuous road outside of Biloxi. Following the funeral, Toole's mother discovered the manuscript. After many rejections, she cornered Walker Percy, who found it a brilliant novel and spearheaded its publication. In 1981, twelve years after the author's death, A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize.In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression.

    This 14yr old child, Jane, was struck down by a sudden, mysterious illness changing her and her families life instantly, tainting it in a way words cannot even describe. Her bravery and courage, along with her belief that "I will get better one day" makes this book one that you will read and forever hold in your heart and probably not want to put down until the very end! PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A SELF PUBLISHED BOOK AND IT HAS NOT BEEN EDI

    From the start, Jerry has been extremely private about all aspects of his personal life. For more than a year, Oppenheimer conducted in-depth interviews with scores of Jerry s closes friends, family members, bus. assoc., lovers, & fellow comedians who spoke candidly, painting a riveting portrait of the beloved & talented comedian.

    A mother's untimely death causes a boy's emotional spiral that culminates in drug-related shooting and twenty-three years in prison; an honor roll student and all-American athlete drunkenly brandishes a shotgun and accidentally shoots a man; a fresh, hopeful Chicago police officer kills an offender while off duty and saves a fellow patrolman; a blue-collar worker suffers a psychotic break and kills his mother. In 2014, there were 8,124 gunshot homicides; the death rate in America from gun homicides is about thirty-one per million people—far higher than almost every other developed nation.With police incidents, mass shootings, and acts of terrorism, guns remain a controversial and inflammatory topic in the United States. It can be easy to reduce the issue to numbers, or focus on racial tensions or political causes. One quickly forgets that behind each act of gun violence there is a story, a coming together of events that caused it. In The Trigger, Daniel Patinkin brings those stories to the forefront, building moving narratives from exhaustive interviews with six individuals, each of whom have shot and killed someone under different circumstances. In each profile, Patinkin strives to remind us that every perpetrator of gun violence has a face, and that the shooter's story deserves as much attention as the victim’s.

    One man as he was studying for the priesthood. Madeleine Albright famously learned from the Washington Post when she was named Secretary of State. "What is it like to find out you are not who you thought you were?" asks Barbara Kessel in this compelling volume, based on interviews with over 160 people who were raised as non-Jews only to learn at some point in their lives that they are of Jewish descent. With humor, candor, and deep emotion, Kessel's subjects discuss the emotional upheaval of refashioning their self-image and, for many, coming to terms with deliberate deception on the part of parents and family. Responses to the discovery of a Jewish heritage ranged from outright rejection to wholehearted embrace. For many, Kessel reports, the discovery of Jewish roots confirmed long-held suspicions or even, more mysteriously, conformed to a long-felt attraction toward Judaism. For some crypto-Jews in the southwest United States (descendants of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition), the only clues to their heritage are certain practices and traditions handed down through the generations, whose significance may be long since lost. In Poland and other parts of eastern Europe, many Jews who were adopted as infants to save them from the Holocaust are now learning of their heritage through the deathbed confessions of their adoptive parents. The varied responses of these disparate people to a similar experience, presented in their own words, offer compelling insights into the nature of self-knowledge. Whether they had always suspected or were taken by surprise, Kessel's respondents report that confirmation of their Jewish heritage affected their sense of self and of their place in the world in profound ways. Fascinating, poignant, and often very funny, Suddenly Jewish speaks to crucial issues of identity, selfhood, and spiritual community.

    This new, expanded edition features exclusive, unpublished photos taken by the 23-year-old Ernesto on his journey across a continent, and a tender preface by Aleida Guevara, offering an insightful perspective on the man and the icon.Features of this edition include:A preface by Che Guevara’s daughter AleidaIntroduction by Cintio Vintier, well-known Latin American poetPhotos & maps from the original journeyPostcript: Che’s personal reflections on his formative years: “A child of my environment.”  Published in association with the Che Guevara Studies Center, Havana

    Stern, domineering, fiercely loving, Lotty Kneen—born Dragitsa—was always tight-lipped about her early life and family history. She rebuffed Krissy’s curiosity and forbade her from taking the trip back to the old country that might have satisfied it.When her grandmother died recently, Krissy finally felt at liberty to explore the questions that had nagged at her for so long. In The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen Krissy sets out with a box containing her grandmother’s ashes, intending to trace the old woman’s early life in Slovenia and Egypt, and perhaps locate some remnants of family. Along the way she uncovers the extraordinary story of the colony of Slovene women who became the nannies of choice for the wealthy Italians of pre-war Alexandria—and identifies as best she can the places where Lotty’s restless, demanding spirit will be at peace.

    Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.

    Kennedy. Through Lincoln, crucial evidence ended up in Christopher's hands—evidence that was going to be used to facilitate a new future for America. But the U.S. government's position was clear: that evidence had to be confiscated and classified, and the truth hidden away from the public. Christopher was sent to federal prison for years under a sealed warrant and indictment. The Inheritance, Christopher's personal narrative, shares insider information from his encounters with the Russian Government, President Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Clinton White House, the U.S. Justice Department, the Secret Service, and the Kennedy family themselves. It reveals the true intentions of Evelyn Lincoln and her secret promise to Robert Kennedy—and Christopher's secret promise to John F. Kennedy Jr. The Inheritance explodes with history-changing information and answers the questions Americans are still asking, while pulling them through a gauntlet of some of the worst prisons this country has to offer. This book thrillingly exposes the reality of American power, and sheds light on the dark corners of current corruption within the executive branch and the justice and prison systems.

    And no one trusts him. Until Vicky. This is the story of a troubled horse, and the little girl who loved him. Based on the true adventures of her childhood fifty years ago, the author's horse, Joe, teaches the lesson that sometimes beauty is not skin-deep, but heart deep, and that the unloved have much to show us about the true nature of love.

    He wrote it during 1870–71 and published in 1872, as a prequel to his first book The Innocents Abroad (1869). This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

    Reading made him who he is. To understand the thrall of fiction, Spufford goes back to his earliest encounters with books, exploring such beloved classics as The Wind in the Willows, The Little House on the Prairie, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He recreates the excitement of discovery, writing joyfully of the moment when fuzzy marks on a page become words. Weaving together child development, personal reflection, and social observation, Spufford shows the force of fiction in shaping a child: how stories allow for escape from pain and mastery of the world, how they shift our boundaries of the sayable, how they stretch the chambers of our imagination.

    From Comic Strip to Comic Relief, from Bolly-swilling Edina in Ab Fab to her takes on Madonna or Mamma Mia, her characters are household names.But it's Jennifer herself who has a place in all our hearts. This is her funny, moving and frankly bonkers memoir, filled with laughter, friends and occasional heartache - but never misery.BONKERS is full of riotous adventures: accidentally enrolling on a teacher training course with a young Dawn French, bluffing her way to each BBC series, shooting Lulu, trading wild faxes with Joanna Lumley, touring India with Ruby Wax and Goldie Hawn.There's cancer, too, when she becomes 'Brave Jen'. But her biggest battle is with the bane of her life: the Laws of Procrastination. As she admits, 'There has never been a Plan. Everything has been fairly random, happened by accident or just fallen into place. I'm off now, to do some sweeping...'Prepare to chuckle, whoop, and go BONKERS.