Book picks similar to
Secret History: An Eyewitness Account Of The Rise Of Mormonism by John Ahmanson
cults
evangelism
mormons
non-fic
An Awakening Walk: 500 Miles to Self-love and Acceptance on the Camino De Santiago
Jennifer Johnson - 2018
This book is a narrative of the journey that shook the author to her core. Shedding layers of self-recrimination and self- judgement she carried through her life, she found herself broken wide open. Over the 500 mile trail Jennifer released tears of grief, anger, and finally learned to embrace those sides of herself that were banished out of shame, fear, and social conditioning. This book is a brutally honest tale of one woman's dogged tenacity to break through the barrier of her own self-abandonment in which she spent decades conforming and bending to the will of others, and finally her triumphant deliverance into unconditional self-love. The physical and personal challenge for the author turned out to be a gut-wrenching, self-exploration towards finding herself. Along the trails of the famed Camino de Santiago of Spain, Jennifer sheds her false self, layer by layer, and at the end of her walk, embraces the authentic beautiful woman she longed for. Old wretched pain and wounds rise to the surface as she purges and heals, step by painful step. The book offers a scenic portrayal of the beautiful landscapes, hotels and inns, churches and cathedrals, local purveyors, and cuisines native to the culture, woven poetically through the author's observant eye for colorful imagery, delectable aromas, and architectural design. Filled with positive affirmations, mantras, prayers, and meditations on "A Course in Miracles," this day by day journey is a spiritual roadmap to walking the Camino. Inspired by her cathartic pilgrimage, the author now arranges tours to assist and guide others to explore, heal, and commune along the trails of the Camino along with other sacred journeys. This book is for you if You have ever struggled with self-image Are curious about The Camino de Santiago You are curious about or a student of "A Course in Miracles" Want to shed layers of false beliefs about yourself Like reading an open-hearted, honest spiritual memoir. If you are interested check out the "look inside" feature And check out winnjourneys.com for more information
The Politically Incorrect Jesus: Living Boldly in a Culture of Unbelief
Joe Battaglia - 2014
He is admired and ridiculed, embraced and rejected. If you want to provoke controversy and emotional discussion, just mention His name.Jesus was inclusive when He welcomed all the weary and burdened to come to Him and experience the love of His Father. But He was not open-minded when it came to the truth. He stated that He was the truth. And this flies in the face of current politically correct thought.In Politically Incorrect Jesus, Joe Battaglia exposes the intellectual dishonesty of political correctness and presents Jesus as the model for embracing a counter-cultural faith, which empowers us to be salt and light. Be bold and stand firm in your faith when the culture demands you stand down.
The Girl in building C
Mary Krugerud - 2018
She entered Ah-gwah-ching State Sanatorium at Walker, Minnesota, for what she thought would be a short stay. In January, her tuberculosis spread, and she nearly died. Her recovery required many months of bed rest and medical care.Marilyn loved to write, and the story of her three-year residency at the sanatorium is preserved in hundreds of letters that she mailed back home to her parents, who could visit her only occasionally and whom she missed terribly. The letters functioned as a diary in which Marilyn articulately and candidly recorded her reactions to roommates, medical treatments, Native American nurses, and boredom. She also offers readers the singular perspective of a bed-bound teenager, gossiping about boys, requesting pretty new pajamas, and enjoying Friday evening popcorn parties with other patients.Selections from this cache of letters are woven into an informative narrative that explores the practices and culture of a midcentury tuberculosis sanatorium and fills in long-forgotten details gleaned from recent conversations with Marilyn, who "graduated" from the sanatorium and went on to lead a full, productive life.
The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook: Easy Meal Plans and Recipes to Eat Well & Keep the Weight Off
Sarah Kent - 2018
During your first 8 weeks post-op, meal planning is essential to make sure you get the nutrition you need. In The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook, Sarah Kent—author of the bestselling Fresh Start Bariatric Cookbook—delivers effective meal plans and recipes specifically tailored for your new lifestyle after VSG.Unlike any other bariatric cookbook on the market, The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook approaches your new diet with immediate and long-term dietary needs in mind, to help you get healthier—not just thinner. In the pages of The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook you’ll find:
8 weeks of easy meal plans for each of the 4 post-op dietary stages (full liquid, pureed foods, soft foods, general diet)
Over 95 protein-packed recipes—many of which yield leftovers for meals later in the week
Post-op recipe icons that let you know at which stages you can eat each recipe, providing specific portion information as well
Knowing what, when, and how much to eat after VSG doesn’t have to be stressful. The Gastric Sleeve Bariatric Cookbook makes it easy, healthy, and simply delicious to eat well after surgery and beyond.
Descending Into Greatness
Bill Hybels - 1993
In fourteen powerful chapters, the authors explore such topics as How Jesus managed power. The intentional decisions necessary to move down. The uplifting nature of true humility. Abundant life through dying to self. The ambush of joy. Moving down is never an easy matter that can be reduced to a formula. It involves a life committed to discipleship. Descending into Greatness introduces you to the touching stories of modern men and women committed to advancing the kingdom of God: from the pro football player, to the medical missionary, to a businessman wrestling with the priorities in the world of finance. Descending into Greatness asks tough questions and gives hopeful answers. Now, this powerful, urgent message also includes a discussion guide so that you can follow through, too. "Like Christ, we must descend-into self-abandonment, unconditional giving, sacrifice, and death to self. And, like Christ, we will then ascend-into fulfillment, blessing, joy, and purpose."
The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
Jeff Guinn - 2017
His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.
Captive: A Mother's Crusade to Save Her Daughter from the Terrifying Cult Nxivm
Catherine Oxenberg - 2018
And I am not alone. In 2011, former Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg joined her daughter, India, at a leadership seminar for a new organization called NXIVM. Her then twenty-year-old daughter was on the threshold of starting her own professional life and they both thought this program might help her achieve her dream. But quickly, Catherine saw a sinister side to the program that claimed to simply want to help its clients become the best versions of themselves. Catherine watched in horror as her daughter fell further and further down the rabbit hole, falling under the spell of NXIVM's hypnotic leader, Keith Raniere. Despite Catherine’s best efforts, India was drawn deeper into the cult, eventually joining an elite “sorority” of women members who were ordered to maintain a restricted diet, recruit other women as “slaves,” and were branded with their leader’s initials. In Captive, Catherine shares every parent’s worst nightmare, and the lengths that a mother will go to save her child. Catherine’s efforts finally led the FBI to take notice—and the journey is not yet over. A powerful depiction of a mother’s love and determination, and with horrifying insider details never revealed in any news story, Captive will keep you reading until the very last page.
Leah Remini: Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology
SummaRead Books - 2015
Remini is widely known for her work in the comedy TV series The King of Queens.In this memoir, Remini goes into great details about all aspects of her life, including, but not limited to, how she was introduced to the church, how she coped with raising a family, how she handled her acting career as well as her interactions with other celebrities who were also involved in the Church of Scientology.SummaReads Features:* Chapter Summaries: Clear, concise and easy to understand descriptions, key concepts and important details.* Chapter Key Takeaways and Points: The most important concepts of each chapter containing at least four specific bullet points.Advantages of SummaReads:* Spend less time reading and more time enjoying and understanding your favorite books.* Discover important detailed analysis you may have missed the first time.* Learn key concepts in simple and efficient manner.* Use as a "cheat sheet" and reference to quickly access important information.* Focus on critical information and eliminate unnecessary details.* Can be used as an effective study aid.
The Story Of The Tour De France
Bill McGann - 2006
The McGann's passionate and insightful writing evokes the raucous cast of riders, promoters, and journalists thrusting through highs and lows worthy of opera. This volume stands out as a must-read book for anyone seeking to appreciate cycling's race of races." -Peter Joffre Nye, author of The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America's Jazz Age Sport and Hearts of Lions "There are LOTS of books on the Tour de France. An increasing number of them are actually written in English. However, of those, none educates Americans about this grand spectacle�s rich past. The Tour de France has a history as fascinating and sordid as Rome�s and it is high time someone undertook to explain this to our American sensibility. Our guide for the trip is a man with a ravenous appetite for both world history and bicycle racing, just the sort of person to paint a Tour champion with the dramatic grandiosity befitting Hannibal himself." -Pat Brady, Editor, Asphalt Magazine At the dawn of the 20th Century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grace in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange�editor of the Parisian sports magazine L�Auto�took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the 6-day races on the track, but on the road. That�s exactly what happened. For almost 3 weeks the riders in the first Tour de France rode over dirt roads and cobblestones in a grand circumnavigation of France. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the 2 World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex with an ever-changing set of rules, as Desgrange kept tinkering with the Tour, looking for the perfect formula for his race. Each year a new cast of riders would assemble to contest what has now become the greatest sporting event in the world.
Breaking Free: How I Escaped My Father-Warren Jeffs-Polygamy, and the FLDS Cult
Rachel Jeffs - 2017
No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader Warren Jeffs—Rachel’s father.Living outside mainstream Mormonism and federal law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs’ iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre.In Breaking Free, Rachel blows the lid off this taciturn community made famous by John Krakauer’s bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven to offer a harrowing look at her life with Warren Jeffs, and the years of physical and emotional abuse she suffered. Sexually assaulted, compelled into an arranged polygamous marriage, locked away in "houses of hiding" as punishment for perceived transgressions, and physically separated from her children, Rachel, Jeffs’ first plural daughter by his second of more than fifty wives, eventually found the courage to leave the church in 2015. But Breaking Free is not only her story—Rachel’s experiences illuminate those of her family and the countless others who remain trapped in the strange world she left behind.A shocking and mesmerizing memoir of faith, abuse, courage, and freedom, Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope for anyone trying to overcome personal obstacles.
Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History
Peter Houlahan - 2019
Norco ’80 tells the story of how five heavily-armed young men—led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian—attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in U.S. history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco ’80 transports the reader back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all. A group of landscapers transforms into a murderous gang of bank robbers armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons. Their desperate getaway turned the surrounding towns into war zones. When it was over, three were dead and close to twenty wounded; a police helicopter was forced down from the sky, and thirty-two police vehicles were destroyed by thousands of rounds of ammo. The resulting trials shook the community to the core, raising many issues that continue to plague society today: from racism and the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder within law enforcement to religious extremism and the militarization of local police forces.
Single But Dating: A Field Guide to Dating in the Digital Age
Nikki Goldstein - 2017
Nikki Goldstein's fresh and fun approach to dating and relationships will instill readers with a new level of confidence, positivity and excitement as they traverse the modern dating landscape.The intersection of real world and digital world situations experienced by today's dater can be confusing and overwhelming. In Single But Dating, Australia's most in-demand sexologist and relationship expert, Dr. Nikki Goldstein, dispenses invaluable advice on how to tackle a broad variety of relevant topics like how to let go of outdated beliefs around what it means to be single, how to become technosexually savvy, how to know if you are overtexting, when to enact a man-ban and how to deal with new dating phenomena like ghosting.Statistics show that women are staying single longer than ever before, prioritizing their professional and financial power over their domestic and reproductive power. That's what makes Single But Dating so timely - it is a crucial guide book for any woman navigating the (sometimes frustrating) dating world full of new rules and distractions. With a surprising mix of some time-tested oldies but goodies, thought-provoking exercises and fresh, forward-looking advice, Dr. Nikki equips single-but-dating women with the tools they need to learn to love both themselves and the wild ride of 21st century dating.
Chess for Beginners: Know the Rules, Choose Your Strategy, and Start Winning
Yelizaveta Orlova - 2018
Chess for Beginners offers new players a quick-start guide to learn the game of chess and start winning in no time with rules, strategies, and tactics for success. Starting with the basics, this comprehensive guide provides a clear, illustrated introduction to the movements of each piece along with basic rules and game dynamics. With this foundation, new players will learn effective strategies and tactics to start playing competitively and confidently.From your first move to your last, Chess for Beginners shows you how to play your best game, with:
A complete overview that introduces players to the chessboard and the movement of each piece with clear, easy-to-follow illustrations and directions.
10 strategies that show players how to control the board, think several moves ahead, go for a quick checkmate, and more!
10 tactics that offer short-term solutions to support your strategy and achieve checkmate.
Position your pieces, coordinate your attack, and capture their king—Chess for Beginners teaches you all of the moves to play the perfect game.
Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology
Leah Remini - 2015
Leah Remini has never been the type to hold her tongue. That willingness to speak her mind, stand her ground, and rattle the occasional cage has enabled this tough-talking girl from Brooklyn to forge an enduring and successful career in Hollywood. But being a troublemaker has come at a cost. That was never more evident than in 2013, when Remini loudly and publicly broke with the Church of Scientology. Now, in this frank, funny, poignant memoir, the former King of Queens star opens up about that experience for the first time, revealing the in-depth details of her painful split with the church and its controversial practices. Indoctrinated into the church as a child while living with her mother and sister in New York, Remini eventually moved to Los Angeles, where her dreams of becoming an actress and advancing Scientology's causes grew increasingly intertwined. As an adult, she found the success she'd worked so hard for, and with it a prominent place in the hierarchy of celebrity Scientologists alongside people such as Tom Cruise, Scientology's most high-profile adherent. Remini spent time directly with Cruise and was included among the guests at his 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes. But when she began to raise questions about some of the church's actions, she found herself a target. In the end, she was declared by the church to be a threat to their organization and therefore a "Suppressive Person," and as a result, all of her fellow parishioners—including members of her own family—were told to disconnect from her. Forever. Bold, brash, and bravely confessional, Troublemaker chronicles Leah Remini's remarkable journey toward emotional and spiritual freedom, both for herself and for her family. This is a memoir designed to reveal the hard-won truths of a life lived honestly—from an author unafraid of the consequences.
Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage
Joe Darger - 2011
From a family that inspired 'Big Love's' story of Bill Henrickson and his three wives, this first-ever memoir of a polygamous family captures the extraordinary workings of a unique family dynamic, and argues for the acceptance of plural marriage as an alternative lifestyle.