Book picks similar to
True Red by Tuhoe 'Bruno' Isaac
non-fiction
autobiography
biography
christianity
Driving to Treblinka: A long search for a lost father
Diana Wichtel - 2017
Her mother was a New Zealander, her father a Polish Jew who had jumped off a train to the Treblinka death camp and hidden from the Nazis until the end of the war. When Diana was 13 she moved to New Zealand with her mother, sister and brother. Her father was to follow.Diana never saw him again.Many years later she sets out to discover what happened to him. The search becomes an obsession as she painstakingly uncovers information about his large Warsaw family and their fate at the hands of the Nazis, scours archives across the world for clues to her father’s disappearance, and visits the places he lived.This unforgettable narrative is also a deep reflection on the meaning of family, the trauma of loss, and the insistence of memory. It asks the question: Is it better to know, or more bearable not to?
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Ben Carson - 1992
Gifted Hands will transplace you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world, and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others. In 1987, Dr. Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head -- an extremely complex and delicate operation that was five months of planning and twenty-two hours of actual surgery, involving a surgical plan that Carson helped initiate. Gifted Hands reveals a man with humility, decency, compassion, courage, and sensitivity who serves as a role model for young people (and everyone else) in need of encouragement to attempt the seemingly impossible and to excel in whatever they attempt. Dr. Carson also describes the key role that his highly intelligent though relatively uneducated mother played in his metamorphosis from an unmotivated ghetto youngster into one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the world.
Imposter: On booze, crippling self-doubt and coming out the other side
Matt Chisholm - 2021
Elbow Room: A Tale of Tenacity on Kodiak Island, Alaska
D.D. Fisher - 2011
From humorous fishing excursions and frightening bear encounters to snow blinding blizzards and quirky characters, they come face to face with the unpredictable Mother Nature and learn the value of friendship, survival, and solitude in a picturesque but harsh life by the sea. Packed with adventures, challenges, and true Alaskan lifestyle.
Nobody's Child
Kate Adie - 2005
What's your name? Where were you born? What is your date of birth? Simple questions that we are asked throughout our lifeand shows what makes us who we really are.
Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoir
Tom Scott - 2017
Grant and Murray Ball, his travels to the ends of the earth with his close friend Ed Hillary, and more...
Revolution
Russell Brand - 2014
Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.” In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive. You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts. This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.
I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
Nujood Ali - 2009
Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no.” Nujood Ali's childhood came to an abrupt end in 2008 when her father arranged for her to be married to a man three times her age. With harrowing directness, Nujood tells of abuse at her husband's hands and of her daring escape. With the help of local advocates and the press, Nujood obtained her freedom—an extraordinary achievement in Yemen, where almost half of all girls are married under the legal age. Nujood's courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has inspired other young girls in the Middle East to challenge their marriages. Hers is an unforgettable story of tragedy, triumph, and courage.
We Will Not Cease
Archibald Baxter - 1939
In 1915, when he was 33, Baxter was arrested, sent to prison, then shipped under guard to Europe, where he was forced to the front line against his will. Punished to the limits of his physical and mental endurance, Baxter was stripped of all dignity, beaten, starved, and left for dead. In a final attempt to discredit him, authorities consigned him to a mental institution, an experience that would haunt him for the rest of his life.Against the backdrop of troops being mindlessly slaughtered at the whim of upper-echelon officers, We Will Not Cease is a story of extreme bravery and ultimate resolve. Archibald Baxter's lonely fight against the war to end all wars is a nightmare that Kafka could have penned -- except that the story is true.
Intelligence for Your Life: Powerful Lessons for Personal Growth
John Tesh - 2008
As one major city newspaper referred to him, "He's like Oprah, but without the edge." With his staff of 10 full-time researchers, Tesh has uncovered a wealth of practical information and life-changing choices. He now combines that knowledge with some incredible personal experiences for this first book in what promises to be a successful ongoing series. In addition to a wide range of helpful tips, this book reveals what has guided him spiritually and professionally to act out his passions.Street date coincides with PBS Special in March, 2008.
The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith
Joanna Brooks - 2012
This groundbreaking memoir brings you into one of America’s most fascinating but least understood religious traditions. With humor, tenderness, and honesty, The Book of Mormon Girl reveals what it’s like to grow up in a world where angels stand at our bedsides and ancestors know our names, where Coca-Cola is forbidden fruit and Marie Osmond is a style icon. This is a story about leaving behind the innocence of childhood belief and embracing the complications and heartbreaks that come to every adult life of faith.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Maria Augusta von Trapp - 1949
But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.Now with photographs from the original edition.
Jesus Land: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres - 2005
For these two teenagers - brother and sister, black and white - the 1980s were a trial by fire.In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence - high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere - under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe. This brutal, prison-like "Christian boot camp" demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins - sins that few of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David's determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page, a keenly moving ode to the sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family.
An Angel at my Table
Janet Frame - 1982
This autobiography traces Janet Frame's childhood in a poor but intellectually intense family, life as a student, years of incarceration in mental hospitals and eventual entry into the saving world of writers.
Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant
Erin Prophet - 2008
Emerging to find the world still intact, Erin was forced into a radical reassessment of her life and her beliefs. She had spent her adolescence watching her mother vilified as a dangerous cult leader even while attempting to meet her expectations by becoming a "prophet" herself.