Her parents are Jimmy and Shirley, her sister is Virginia, and her cat is Sylvester. A photo might show a happy, young family, but only a dummkopf would believe that. Jimmy's a wiseguy who relies on charm, snappy wit, and an unyielding belief that he's above the law; as his youngest daughter, Gloria is just like him. Or at least, she knows that she needs to stay on his good side so he doesn't brain her one. Jimmy is violent: he's passionate about hunting, horse races and slasher flicks, and he's prone to outbursts that have him screaming and reaching for his shotgun. Shirley, mild and meek as she is, tries to protect the girls from Jimmy's most brutal moments, but the thing with Jimmy is that it's his way or the highway. Virginia, older and wiser, tries to stand up to Jimmy. Gloria just wants to make him happy. He takes Gloria everywhere. Fishing, hunting, drive-ins, and to his parents dingy bar - a hole in the wall with pickled eggs and pickled alkies. The only place Gloria can't go is the dive where Jimmy bets on horses. It's there, as she sits and waits for hours on end, that she imagines a life different from her own. Gloria's favorite of Jimmy's haunts? Hank Piasceny's gun shop. While Hank and Jimmy throw good-humored insults at each other, Gloria talks to Hank's daughter, Susan. Smart, pretty, kind, and ambitious, Susan is Gloria's idol. She represents everything Gloria wants to be - and can be, as long as she tries as hard in school. Just like Susan tells her too. It's only when Hank commits an unspeakable act of violence, that Gloria and Susan suddenly find themselves on different paths. Hank's violence and Susan's grief serve as eerie warnings of a life to come, especially as Jimmy falls into a depression that has him making threats and reaching for his guns more often and with greater relish. Against all odds, Gloria's fiery determination takes shape and she sets herself on a path away from the cycle of violence whirling around her - in her home, in the projects, in her small New Hampshire city and even in the national landscape where the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the brutality of Vietnam underscore the tragedies she witnesses up close. Gloria Norris's unconventional coming-of-age memoir jangles with electricity and suspense. The life of this gutsy young girl is unforgettable and inspiring, wrought with dark humor and tenderness. From the darkness her irrepressible pluck and determination emerges and Gloria triumphantly carves out a good life on her own terms.

    From her bestselling novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, to her brilliant memoir, Drinking the Rain, she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter--discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. Told with the grace, clarity, and insight we have come to expect from her, A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Shulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.

    After dying her hair blonde and studying the catechism in hopes of passing as Christian Poles, Berta, her mother, and her sister live a life of constant vigilance and fear. It is only through her abiding faith in a higher power that she is enabled to survive while hiding in plain sight.

    Now author Paul Roland turns the tables with this brilliant new exposé - a fascinating psychological profile of the leading Nazis and their lesser-known associates.

    Only at the end, when I watched the inglorious collapse and the obstinacy of his final downfall, was I able suddenly to fit together the bits of mosaic I had been amassing for twelve years into a complete picture of his opaque and sphinx like personality. If my contemporaries fail to understand me, those who came after will surely profit from this account.”—Otto Dietrich When Otto Dietrich was invited in 1933 to become Adolf Hitler’s press chief, he accepted with the simple uncritical conviction that Adolf Hitler was a great man, dedicated to promoting peace and welfare for the German people. At the end of the war, imprisoned and disillusioned, Otto Dietrich sat down to write what he had seen and heard in twelve years of the closest association with Hitler, requesting that it be published after his death. Dietrich’s role placed him in a privileged position. He was hired by Hitler in 1933, was his confidant until 1945, and he worked—and clashed—with Joseph Goebbels. His direct, personal experience of life at the heat of the Reich makes for compelling reading.

    More than 1,100 of them would be dead by journey’s end... The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the Navy’s medical corps, Myers arrived in Manilla shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military. While he and his fellow corpsmen tended to the bloody tide of soldiers pouring into their once peaceful Naval hospital, the Japanese overwhelmed the Pacific islands, capturing 78,000 POWs by April 1942. Myers was one of the first captured.After a brutal three-year encampment, Myers and his fellow POWs were forced onto an enemy hell ship bound for Japan. Suffocation, malnutrition, disease, dehydration, infestation, madness, and simple despair claimed the lives of nearly three quarters of those who boarded "the beast".Myers survived.A compelling account of a rarely recorded event in military history, this is more than Estel Myers’ true story—this is an homage to the unfailing courage of men at war, an inspiring chronicle of self-sacrifice and endurance, and a tribute to the power of faith, the strength of the soul, and the triumph of the human spirit. "An inspiring look at one of World War II's darkest hours." —James Bradley, Author of Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys "A searing chronicle." —Kirkus Reviews"The Belly of the Beast (is)...a searing tribute...(to) America in its bleakest hour." —Senator John McCain, author New York Times bestseller Faith of My Fathers

    "Wiseguy" is Henry Hill's story, in fascinating, brutal detail, the never-before-revealed day-to-day life of a working mobster - his violence, his wild spending sprees, his wife, his mistresses, his code of honor.

    Depicting her father’s ascension to command Auschwitz, the most infamous of all concentration camps, the author reveals his relationship with his family, his unceasing love for his mistress, and the very separate life he led as a senior officer of the S.S. Chronicling his capture at the end of the war, this narrative also documents his imprisonment at Dachau and Nuremburg, his sentencing at the Auschwitz Trial in Krakow, and his subsequent execution. Recounting a shocking tale with clarity and without judgment, this riveting autobiography embodies one woman’s unwavering mission to resolve her own past.

    But Vladimir Nabokov, who came to America fleeing the Nazis, came to think of his time here as the richest of his life. Indeed, Nabokov was not only happiest here, but his best work flowed from his response to this exotic land.Robert Roper fills out this period in the writer's life with charm and insight--covering Nabokov's critical friendship with Edmund Wilson, his time at Cornell, his role at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. But Nabokov in America finds its narrative heart in his serial sojourns into the wilds of the West, undertaken with his wife, Vera, and their son over more than a decade. Nabokov covered more than 200,000 miles as he indulged his other passion: butterfly collecting. Roper has mined fresh sources to bring detail to these journeys, and traces their significant influence in Nabokov's work: on two-lane highways and in late-'40s motels and cafés, we feel Lolita draw near, and understand Nabokov's seductive familiarity with the American mundane. Nabokov in America is also a love letter to U.S. literature, in Nabokov's broad embrace of it from Melville to the Beats. Reading Roper, we feel anew the mountain breezes and the miles logged, the rich learning and the Romantic mind behind some of Nabokov's most beloved books.

    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.

    It was August 3, 1943, just one day after Sam escaped the Camp during a prisoner uprising. With 870,000 murdered at Treblinka, Sam was one of approximately 65 to survive and live until the end of the war. Esther had been hiding in that patch of forest for a year and was out that morning, looking for mushrooms to eat. They met and after hearing of the prisoner revolt, she took him to the Righteous Gentiles who, at great danger to themselves, hid them in their barn for three days while the Nazis, Ukrainians and Poles scoured the area looking for escapees. Deciding to stay and hide with Esther, they dug a forest pit where they “lived” when it was not freezing. They subsisted in the pit and the barns – hungry, cold, and scared – for another year until they were liberated by the Red Army in July of 1944. This is only one piece of their harrowing story of survival. This book tells the story of Sam and Esther, Holocaust survivors, who lost their entire families because of Hitler’s Final Solution. After four years in Displaced Person’s Camps, they arrived in New York Harbor to build a new life. The author, Karen Treiger, is Sam and Esther’s daughter-in-law, and with in-depth research and a bit of luck was able to find the three surviving children of the Styś families – those Righteous Gentiles who helped Sam and Esther during that dark time. She and her family traveled to Poland to walk in Sam and Esther’s footsteps and to meet the Styś children. It was intensely emotional, and the family heard some of what Sam and Esther lived through from those who helped them survive. Also, with the help of a Polish Priest, she was able to locate and meet a Goldberg cousin they never knew they had. My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story brings to life the horror of the Nazis’ actions and the toll that it exacted on so many Jewish families. This is also a story of hope, love and determination; of a family rediscovering the path taken by their parents to find life and freedom in a new world. Sam and Esther’s story is one of love and the will to live no matter what they had to endure. It reminds us that we are still learning the lessons of the Holocaust. TRIBUTES “Karen has written a powerful and personal account of Sam and Esther Goldberg. This book is a must read for those interested in the greatest crime in the history of mankind.” Chris Webb, Author/Historian, Founder of the Holocaust Historical Society,br> “It is vital that this book—as well as other accounts of the Holocaust— be preserved and disseminated widely to future generations to help prevent anything similar from ever happening again.”Marion Blumenthal Lazan, Holocaust Survivor and Co-Author, Four Perfect Pebbles“One can only bow one’s head, out of an unutterable gratitude, to the author for her contribution to the sacred narrative of our people. I call this book sacred, for (as with all forms of scripture) it tells not only what happened - but how to live in light of the story.”Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, President Emeritus, CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; chairman, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 2000-2002. “We are haunted by the question of inexplicable evil. If you want to be inspired in spite of the horrors one human being can do to another human being, read this book.

    In Vietnam it was the bridge at Thanh Hoa, called Dragon's Jaw.For seven long years hundreds of young US airmen flew sortie after sortie against North Vietnam's formidable and strategically important bridge, dodging a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire and enemy MiG planes. Many American airmen were shot down, killed, or captured and taken to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" POW camp. But after each air attack, when the smoke cleared and the debris settled, the bridge stubbornly remained standing. For the North Vietnamese it became a symbol of their invincibility; for US war planners an obsession; for US airmen a testament to American mettle and valor.Using after-action reports, official records, and interviews with surviving pilots, as well as untapped Vietnamese sources, Dragon's Jaw chronicles American efforts to destroy the bridge, strike by bloody strike, putting readers into the cockpits, under fire. The story of the Dragon's Jaw is a story rich in bravery, courage, audacity, and sometimes luck, sometimes tragedy. The "bridge" story of Vietnam is an epic tale of war against a determined foe.

    And nobody witnessed Garland's fierce talent at closer range than Stevie Phillips. During the Mad Men era, Stevie Philips was a young woman muscling her way into the manscape of Manhattan's glittering office towers. After a stint as a secretary, she began working for Freddie Fields and David Begelman at Music Corporation of America (MCA) under the glare of legendary über-agent Lew Wasserman.When MCA blew apart, Fields and Begelman created Creative Management Associates (CMA), and Stevie went along. Fields convinced Garland to come on board, and Stevie became, as she puts it, "Garland's shadow," putting out fires-figurative and literal-in order to get her to the next concert in the next down-and-out town. Philips paints a portrait of Garland at the bitter end and although it was at times a nightmare, Philips says, "She became my teacher," showing her "how to" and "how not to" live.Stevie also represented Garland's fiercely talented daughter, Liza Minnelli, as well as Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, George Roy Hill, Bob Fosse, Cat Stevens, and David Bowie. She produced both films and Broadway shows and counted her colleague, the legendary agent Sue Mengers, among her closest confidantes. Now Stevie Phillips reveals all in Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me..., a tough-talking memoir by a woman who worked with some of the biggest names in show business. It's a helluva ride.

     Poland 1944, Mjetek finds himself in Auschwitz after taking part in Zionist underground activities trying to fight against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. He meets his brother and understands that their entire family has been massacred and that their days are numbered. Mjetek decides to not give up and says he is a blacksmith, though he has never worked with metal. At work in one of the factories, a melted piece of iron falls and burns him. He manages to go back to the camp and his brother takes care of him, selling his golden tooth for medical supplies. Staying in the “clinic” was supposed to be the end of Mjetek but this is actually what saves him. When his brother is marched to his death and they have to say their final goodbye. Mjetek’s story of survival is marked with small miracles, determination and unbelievable bravery. This memoir will leave you breathless and heartbroken, yet, inspired.

    Francesco Clark was a twenty-four-year-old with a bright future when he went to Long Island for the weekend--but a nocturnal dive into the pool's shallow end changed everything, forever. Paralyzed from the neck down, Francesco was told by his doctors that he would never move from his bed or even breathe without assistance. But Francesco fought back. Within days, he was breathing on his own. His father, a doctor himself, investigated every opportunity for experimental treatment, and Francesco used every resource available to speed his recovery. To avoid having his lungs painfully suctioned, he sang, loudly, for hours--and that was just the beginning. Francesco moved back home with his parents and began the long process toward recovery. Many doctors discourage patients with spinal cord injury from pursuing physical therapy beyond very basic movements, but Francesco embarked on a five-hour daily regimen, including the treadmill program that Christopher Reeve had made famous. Soon he astounded the medical establishment with his progress. Francesco's accident also left him unable to sweat out toxins, leaving his complexion poor. He and his father began to experiment, and the Clark's Botanicals skin-care line was born. Now CB products are sold worldwide in stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, and the company has won many major fashion awards and is enjoyed by a host of celebrities. The lessons Francesco learned about persistence from his recovery process, and the loving support of his amazing family, have both contributed to his incredible business success. Seven years after the accident, Francesco continues to improve and to surprise his doctors--for instance, he can now work on a computer. Walking Papers is the inspiring story of how, with individual determination and unconditional family support, Francesco Clark overcame extreme adversity and achieved an extraordinary triumph.