Book picks similar to
Daylight Forever: A Memoir by Mahvash Khajavi-Harvey


autobiography-memoir
middle-east-muslims
women
6-ebook-not-at-zlibrary

Prisoner of Tehran


Marina Nemat - 2007
    After complaining to her teachers about lessons being replaced by Koran study, Marina was arrested late one evening. She was taken to the notorious prison, Evin, where she was interrogated and tortured. Aged sixteen, she was sentenced to death. Prisoner of Tehran is the astonishing account of one woman's remarkable courage in the face of terror and her quest for freedom.

World War II London Blitz Diary, Volume 1


Ruby Side Thompson - 2011
    Her diary is a true and detailed account of what she experienced during that horrific time. The diary chronicles Ruby's struggle to survive in the midst of a horrendous war, where London is bombed nightly. In this true account Ruby speaks frankly and honestly.

Letting Go: A Marine's Journey Through War and His Search for Meaning


Jeffrey Sands - 2014
    Letting Go: A Marine’s Journey Through War and His Search for Meaning takes the reader deep inside the authors head, giving them an unfiltered view of his struggles with war, and the difficulty he faced trying to adjust as a civilian to a world out of touch with his values. “I looked inside, compelled to stare, staining the image of a dead body into my memory. I did not deserve to look away. I had to know the awfulness of war; the wickedness of our species.” - Page 162 MORE FROM THE BACK COVER Letting Go is an excellent account of a Marine before, during, and after 9/11. Through the eyes of Jeff Sands, he retells his story with brutal honesty, describing what possessed him to join the Marine Corps, his experiences while serving, to include deploying to Iraq during the initial invasion, and the demons he endured while trying to readjust to civilian life. This book was begun as a diary of sorts. It was written to try and understand the chaos that exists inside one’s own head, especially after experiencing war and seeing its effects. It was flushed out over many sleepless nights, and refined over time with clarity. It’s more than just a story about war and struggle, it’s a story about what compels someone to join the Marine Corps, risking his life for something greater than himself. It’s a story about how the Marine Corps molds not only men’s bodies, but their minds. It’s a story about war, and its effects... good and bad. It's a story about heartbreak. And it’s a story about trying to adjust to a corporate world out of touch with the values of the Marine Corps; a world without a purpose. Follow Jeff as he takes you through the streets of Baghdad, giving you an unfiltered description of what he experienced and the injustice he saw. Then, watch him try to adjust as a civilian, eventually leaving behind his job, his marriage, and everything he owns, in order to pursue the ideals that were the reasons he joined the Marine Corps; ideals that were reinforced by war. See how he deals with his tortured mind, eventually teaching himself how to let go. ABOUT LETTING GO: A MARINE’S JOURNEY THROUGH WAR AND HIS SEARCH FOR MEANING Released December 15th, 2014, this is the first book by Jeff Sands about his own life and his own experiences.

The Ungrateful Refugee


Dina Nayeri - 2019
    . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart-rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” ―Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question many of us do not give much thought to, and yet there are more than 25 million refugees in the world. To be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple falls in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials.Nothing here is flattened; nothing is simplistic. Nayeri offers a new understanding of refugee life, confronting dangers from the metaphor of the swarm to the notion of “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience. Here are the real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.

Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran


Roxana Saberi - 2010
    The intelligence agents who captured her accused her of espionage—a charge she denied. For several days, Saberi was held in solitary confinement, ruthlessly interrogated, and cut off from the outside world. For weeks, neither her family nor her friends knew her whereabouts.After a sham trial that made headlines around the world, the thirty-one-year-old reporter was sentenced to eight years in prison. But following international pressure by family, friends, colleagues, various governments, and total strangers, she was released on appeal on May 11, 2009. Now Saberi breaks her silence to share the full account of her ordeal, describing in vivid detail the methods that Iranian hard-liners are using to try to intimidate and control many of the country's people.In this gripping and inspirational true story, Saberi writes movingly of her imprisonment, her trial, her eventual release, and the faith that helped her through it all. Her recollections are interwoven with insights into Iranian society, the Islamic regime, and U.S.-Iran relations, as well as stories of her fellow prisoners—many of whom were jailed for their pursuit of human rights, including freedom of speech, association, and religion. Saberi gains strength and wisdom from her cellmates who support her throughout a grueling hunger strike and remind her of the humanity that remains, even when they are denied the most basic rights.Between Two Worlds is also a deeply revealing account of this tumultuous country and the ongoing struggle for freedom that is being fought inside Evin Prison and on the streets of Iran. From her heartfelt perspective, Saberi offers a rich, dramatic, and illuminating portrait of Iran as it undergoes a striking, historic transformation.

Band Of Strangers: A WW2 Memoir of the fighting in Normandy and "The Bulge"


James K. Cullen - 2018
    Cullen is a retired business executive and veteran of The Battle of The Bulge. During the second world war, as an army staff sergeant, he trained infantrymen for battle, then volunteered to go to Europe and enter the trenches himself. He was awarded four battle stars—Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, and Germany, Bronze Star, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, Combat Infantry Badge, and the Belgian fourragère of 1940. Once the war ended, he returned to life as a civilian. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University on the GI Bill. Mr. Cullen has been married to the love of his life for over fifty years. He has two children, and five grandchildren. He is active in veterans' groups, including the Battle of the Bulge Group, and has participated in a reenactment of the Battle of The Bulge with a group of WWII re-enactors in Washington state. James K. Cullen is 95 years old. Band Of Strangers is his first book.

Breaking Free Leader Guide


Beth Moore - 2008
    Corresponds to the video presentations and member-book units of t

The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865


Eliza Frances Andrews - 1908
     Eliza Frances Andrews, more commonly known as Fanny, was born in 1840 to world of pre-Civil War southern privilege; her father was a prominent judge in the region who owned two hundred slaves and a cotton plantation. Georgia’s secession from the Union provoked many disagreements within Fanny’s family, as it did with many others across the South. Her father firmly opposed secession, fearing it would be lead to the destruction of their way of life, while Fanny and the rest of family supported the Rebel cause, indeed three of her brothers went on to fight for the Confederacy. Fanny did not record the first three years of the conflict, but as she began to be increasingly surrounded by death and destruction she decided to begin records the events that she witnessed. John Inscoe, editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, found the book particularly notable for the account of Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea and “her harrowing retreat from her home in Washington; as [Sherman’s] Union forces approached, she moved across ravaged areas to find refuge at her sister’s plantation in the southwestern part of the state.” Fanny describes in brilliant detail the collapse of the traditional agrarian world of the South and how members of the old ruling class were forced to become refugees in their own state. “a rich source of insight into the southern home front of the Civil War.” Kim Kleinman, A Journal of the History of Science Society “Andrews was a product of the Old South but a woman who became self-sufficient and independent as her world changed.” Charlotte A. Ford, The Georgia Historical Quarterly “With an insider’s view, she proved a talented writer and astute observer. … The diary is filled with Andrews’s fiery, spirited persona” Saporta Report Eliza Frances Andrews was a popular Southern writer of the Gilded Age. Andrews's published works, notably her Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl along with her novels and numerous articles, give a glimpse into bitterness, dissatisfaction, and confusion in the post-Civil War South. The War-Time Journal of a Georgian Girl, 1864-1865 was first published in 1908 and she passed away in 1931.

Mosquito Mayhem: de Havillands Wooden Wonder in Action in WWII


Martin W. Bowman - 2010
    Oboe entailed the pilot flying dead straight and level for ten minutes on the attack run. Suddenly a tremendous flash lit up the sky about 50 yards ahead of our nose and exactly at our altitude. Within a tenth of a second we were through the cloud of dirty yellowish-brown smoke and into the blackness beyond. I shall never forget the spontaneous reaction of both my pilot and myself. We turned our heads slowly and looked long and deep into one anothers eyes - no word was spoken - no words were needed.The Mosquito was probably World War IIs most versatile combat aircraft. This book contains hundreds of firsthand accounts from many of the twoman crews who flew in them; pilots and navigators. It portrays the dramatic experiences of flying in its many roles as pathfinder, night fighter, reconnaissance aircraft, precision bombing and low-level ground attack aircraft. It describes many of the RAFs most audacious raids on prime but difficult targets where carpet bombing by heavy bombers was likely to be ineffective and cause unnecessary casualties to civilians. It is a remarkable record of the aircraft and the men that flew them.

A Hundred Feet Over Hell: Flying With the Men of the 220th Recon Airplane Company Over I Corps and the DMZ, Vietnam 1968-1969


Jim Hooper - 2009
    Flying over Vietnam in two-seater Cessnas, they often made the difference between a soldier returning alive to his family or having the lonely sound of “Taps” played over his grave. Based on extensive interviews, and often in the men’s own words, A Hundred Feet Over Hell puts the reader in the plane as this intrepid band of U.S. Army aviators calls in fire support for the soldiers and marines of I Corps.

Youth In Asia: 1968. Vietnam. The Central Highlands. Young Men Will Change. Some Will Die.


Allen Tiffany - 2015
     Youth In Asia relives the friendships, loyalties and betrayals of young men in combat. Written by an infantryman who served as both an enlisted man and an officer after the war, Youth In Asia presents a realistic account of five men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade separated from their unit in the darkness of a jungle night. After the furious fight for Hill 875 and the battles around Dak To, this story is set near the border with Cambodia as North Vietnamese Army units and Viet Cong irregulars are massing for the brutal Tet Offensive of 1968 that broke the back of America's war effort.It is a story of determination, triumph and loss. It is a story of furious, close combat in lethal firefights, and it is a story of confusion both on the battlefield and in the minds of young men a million miles from their homes. Those that survive will have changed. Forever.

Battle on the Lomba 1987: The Day a South African Armoured Battalion shattered Angola’s Last Mechanized Offensive - A Crew Commander's Account


David Mannall - 2014
    

Four Seconds: A Memoir


Laura Andrade - 2019
     “You’ll like it,” she argued. “I know I’ll like it,” I said. “That’s why I’m not going to try it.” “Try it just this once and I’ll never ask you to do it again.” That was a deal. I slipped back into the driver’s seat while Pat corn-rowed two neat lines of the silky white powder on the back of a plastic cassette tape cover. Fifteen hundred dollars every month, an abusive boyfriend, a molested child, a lost family, hotels for houses, a ruined leg, a gun to my head, a knife to my butt, a jail cell all my own. Black eyes, bruised days, broken hours. Looking back, it seems strange what I gave up to get my roommate off my back. It only took four seconds. *** In her debut memoir, Andrade tells of her years with cocaine and crystal methamphetamines—using, then selling—until all she had left of the life she wanted was a chalk outline and a pack of cigarettes. This is the story of her use and recovery, of the people who frustrated and inspired her, of her decision to leave the drug world. It is the story of her slow, often unsteady walk home.

The Last of the Hippies - An Hysterical Romance


Penny Rimbaud - 1982
    

SOE's Mastermind: The Authorised Biography of Major General Sir Colin Gubbins KCMG, DSO, MC


Brian Lett - 2016
    This is not surprising as from its creation in late 1940 at Prime Minister Winston Churchill's command 'to set Europe ablaze', Gubbins was the driving force behind SOE. Over the next four years as, first, Operations and Training Director (codename M) and, from 1943, its Commander (CD) he masterminded every aspect of its worldwide covert operations. Remarkably this is the first full biography of the man whose contribution to victory ranks in the premier league. The Author's research and access to family archives reveal the experiences in The Great War and later in Russia, Ireland, Poland and as Head of British Resistance that made Gubbins such a pivotal and influential wartime figure. The result is a fascinating biography that reveals as much about SOE's extraordinary activities as it does about the man who inspired and commanded them.