Book picks similar to
My Life in Prison by Jiang Qisheng
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Of Men and Mary: How Six Men Won the Greatest Battle of Their Lives
Christine Watkins - 2018
Donald Calloway, MIC, calls this book, “Anointed!”, Exorcist Fr. Gary Thomas, subject of the movie, “The Rite,” says, “OF MEN AND MARY is superb. The six life testimonies contained within it are miraculous, heroic, and truly inspiring.” Certain books as this come along that have the power “to transform lives, to free people from darkness,” claims Br. Daniel Maria Klimek, T.O.R. “I plan to share this tremendous work with many through the years.” Powerful in the spirit, OF MEN AND MARY also delivers tasty doses of pure entertainment. You will find yourself inspired by a murderer, a sweet lamb who lost it all, and a man who literally died—and then came back to life. You will suddenly root for a football player tackled by the Blessed Mother, a man caught up in illicit sexual liaisons, and a man whose marriage was as good as dead. While OF MEN AND MARY may be about six males, it is for everyone, because it is also a book about a woman. In the heat of the fiercest of spiritual battles, when all seemed lost and these men were left with nothing to stand on but stormy seas, they were given a lifeboat. That lifeboat—that woman—is the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the boat of safety for all of us, the surest and safest passage to the heart of her Son. She is our victory and sweet reassurance that God's plan is infinitely better than our own; and she is our challenge to follow her Son, no matter the cost, no matter how fierce the battle. Read the stories of these brave men, and you will inevitably come away with a desire to climb in the boat with them and sail safely home. To watch the trailer for OF MEN AND MARY and see the faces of the six men whose stories grace its pages, go to www.QueenofPeaceMedia.com/men.
A Season with Mom: Love, Loss, and the Ultimate Baseball Adventure
Katie Russell Newland - 2021
Along with black-and-white photographs, Katie shares letters written to her mom, who died of cancer before the two of them could go on this adventure of a lifetime together.A Season with Mom reminds readers that in life, as in baseball, sometimes you strike out, but sometimes you hit home runs. Even if the wait is longer than you’d hoped, dreams can come true.
Hey Natalie Jean: Advice, Musings, and Inspiration on Marriage, Motherhood, and Style
Natalie Holbrook - 2015
Hey Natalie Jean is a terrific read for anyone who wants to make her life more beautiful.” – Gretchen Rubin The blog Hey Natalie Jean has won a cult following with writer Natalie Holbrook’s honest, inspiring, and often witty posts on topics like marriage, babies, nesting, and style. Natalie’s first book, Hey Natalie Jean is one part manifesto and three parts ideas, projects, and advice. Beautifully illustrated and whimsically designed, the book offers twenty-five essays and how-tos that serve as a guide to life: making date-night magic in the middle of the mundane, successfully exploring the city with a three-year-old, and creating a satisfying daily routine that still leaves room for little adventures and lots of magic. Natalie’s optimism, creativity, keen eye, and zeal for life are palpable, and she encourages others to make their lives beautiful with ease. This heartfelt, personal collection of essays and photographs shows Natalie’s ability to identify and describe life’s lovely incidentals in the everyday routine of errands, play dates, and naps. Inspiring, moving, and whip-smart, Hey Natalie Jean is an honest look at the hard work and courage that go into creating a beautiful life.
Better Late Than Never: From Barrow Boy to Ballroom
Len Goodman - 2009
Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.
Get Divorced, Be Happy: How becoming single turned out to be my happily ever after
Helen Thorn - 2021
Helen shares her own roller coaster journey from the initial shock of a surprise separation, the messy months hanging out in her PJs through to the highs of rediscovering online dating, tiny pants, rock-solid female friendships and the glorious joy of just being by herself.With the help of relationship experts and an army of women "who know", Get Divorced, Be Happy will show you that going it alone isn't the end, it is just the beginning, and you will come out the other side, stronger, happier and goddamn sassier than ever before.
Best Seat in the House: 18 Golden Lessons from a Father to His Son
Jack Nicklaus II - 2021
Although the “Golden Bear,” as he is known by fans, is widely regarded as the best golfer of all time, with a record number of PGA major championships, his life and values show that true legacy lives on through your children, grandchildren, and others we are blessed to call family and friends.For the first time, the public is given the opportunity to see what made Jack Nicklaus an off-course success, includinghow he and his wife, Barbara, fashioned fifty-plus years of marriage, understanding that they both had to give of themselves “at least 95 percent of the time”the importance of having boundaries and limits that everyone in the family agrees onhow Nicklaus taught his son Jack, who worked as his caddie for several years, to value his competitors and treat them as he would hope to be treatedthe need to be connected to what we’ll leave behind: our legaciesOne June day, Jack Nicklaus II had just completed his second round in a Palm Beach County Junior Golf Association tournament and was sitting at the scorer’s table, signing his scorecard, when somebody told him his dad was on the telephone. He was a little frustrated because he didn’t want to be bothered on such an important day, but his dad wanted to know how he had played, so Jack II spent the next twenty minutes detailing every hole and every shot. Afterward, his father said, “Jackie, would you like to know how your dad did today?” Of course he wanted to know, and he felt a little guilty for not asking. “Well, I just won the US Open.” It was Father’s Day 1980, and on that day Jack II learned a valuable lesson that he carried with him into adulthood: family is more important than anything in the world.
Naked (in Italy): A Memoir About the Pitfalls of La Dolce Vita
M.E. Evans - 2019
In her late twenties, M.E. Evans hops on a plane to Italy on a mission to change her life and that’s exactly what happens. Unfortunately, personal growth isn’t always easy. In Naked, bestselling author, M.E. Evans tackles the dysfunctional family narrative and travel memoir in a way that is refreshingly honest, painfully vulnerable, and wildly entertaining. If you’ve ever set foot in a foreign country or picked up a travel memoir you probably think you already know what Naked is about: a dreamy personal account of the life-altering beauty that is Italy. And sure, that’s in there, nestled somewhere between the profound grief, bruised ego, debilitating anxiety, chronic depression, vagina paintings, a boyfriend with billowing chest hair and a mother-in-law who forcibly irons your underwear. Evans’ dream of a magical life abroad is marred by forbidden love, the death of her younger brother, and a batshit crazy family, yet she skillfully merges tragedy and humor for a wild emotional journey exploring what it means to be human–flaws and all. Evans’ wit, compassion, and vulnerability make reading this book a rarely authentic and relatable experience. You’ll cry, you’ll cackle, and you’ll want Evans to be your best friend.
Derek Prince: A Biography
Stephen Mansfield - 2005
Not just another famous preacher's story, this biography promises to stir readers' faith as they discover Prince's unique brand of biblical wisdom and insight as well as his legacy as a father, prophet, teacher, and leader.
Tower of the Sun: Stories From the Middle East and North Africa
Michael J. Totten - 2014
Totten’s gripping first-person narratives from the war zones, police states, and revolutionary capitals of the Middle East and North Africa paint a vivid picture of peoples and nations at war with themselves, each other, and—sometimes—with the rest of the world. His journeys take him from Libya under the gruesome rule of Muammar Qaddafi to Egypt before, during and after the Arab Spring; from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in Syria on the eve of that country’s apocalyptic civil war to a camp on the Iran-Iraq border where armed revolutionaries threaten to topple the Islamic Republic regime in Tehran; from the contested streets of conflict-ridden Jerusalem to dusty outposts in the Sahara where a surreal conflict few have even heard of simmers long after it should have expired; and from war-torn Beirut and Baghdad to a lonely town in central Tunisia that seeded a storm of revolution and war that spread for thousands of miles in every direction. Tower of the Sun is a timeless close-up of one of the world’s most violent and turbulent regions that will resonate for decades to come. “A decade in the making, Tower of The Sun is not just an authoritative, intimate and lively reconnaissance of the tectonic upheavals shaking the earth from North Africa's Maghreb to Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s also a masterpiece of clear-eyed political analysis and literary journalism in the travel-diary style of Paul Theroux.” – Terry Glavin, author of The Sixth Extinction “Totten…practices journalism in the tradition of George Orwell: morally imaginative, partisan in the best sense of the word, and delivered in crackling, rapid-fire prose befitting the violent realities it depicts.” Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary “I can think of only a certain number of people as having risen to the intellectual and journalistic challenges of the last few years, and Michael J. Totten is one of them.” Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism “Michael J. Totten, to my mind, is one of the world’s most acute observers of Middle East politics. He is also an absolutely fearless reporter, both physically—he has explored the darkest corners of Middle East extremism—and morally.” Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners
The Man Who Stayed Behind
Sidney Rittenberg - 1993
military in the 1940s. A student activist and labor organizer who was fluent in Chinese, Rittenberg became caught up in the turbulence that engulfed China and remained there until the late 1970s. Even with access to China’s highest leaders as an American communist, however, he was twice imprisoned for a total of sixteen years. Both a memoir and a documentary history of the Chinese revolution from 1949 through the Cultural Revolution, The Man Who Stayed Behind provides a human perspective on China’s efforts to build a new society. Critical of both his own mistakes and those of the Communist leadership, Rittenberg nevertheless gives an even-handed account of a country that is now free of internal war for the first time in a hundred years.
The Rescue: Seven People, Seven Amazing Stories…
Jim Cymbala - 2018
Each has a reason to despair and a wound that won’t heal. Until something unexpected happens—something that will change their lives forever.The Rescue tells the powerful, true stories of men and women whose lives should have ended badly but didn’t. What happens to each of them will take you by surprise and give you hope. It will restore your sense that no matter what you are facing, Someone good is in control of the universe. Fortunately, that Someone cares about you. If you or people you care about are facing challenges beyond their strength, it may be time to experience The Rescue.
Hurry Up Nurse!: Memoirs of nurse training in the 1970'
Dawn Brookes - 2016
It follows the experiences of the author as she and her friends come to terms with the non-stop hustle and bustle of hospital life. This book treats the reader to a peep behind the scenes as we enter the hospital wards. As well as an insight into nurse training, hurry up nurse provides a glimpse into the social history of life in the 1970's and early 1980's.
Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim
Anurag Tripathi - 2018
It allegedly involved sexual exploitation, forced castrations, private militias, illegal trade in arms and opium, and land grab on an untold scale-until the self-styled godman was convicted for one of his many crimes in August 2017. The book opens with an anonymous letter which led to the first-ever journalistic investigation, in 2007-Tehelka's Operation Jhootha Sauda-into the reported criminal activities at the Dera. In the years that followed, the author continued to document the lonely battles for justice against the influential godman who had the might of the Dera's machinery and manpower behind him. This book is as much about the grit and determination of ordinary citizens fighting power systems as it is about the difficulty of investigating crimes committed by the rich and powerful in India today.
Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember Their Mothers
Esmeralda Santiago - 2000
They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between-and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences-all of them infused with distinct sabor latino-Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children.Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans
