Book picks similar to
Kim; A Gift from Vietnam by Frank W. Chinnock


non-fiction
nonfiction
childhood
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The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.


Jennifer Baggett - 2010
    Three friends, each on the brink of a quarter-life crisis, make a pact to quit their high pressure New York City media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world in The Lost Girls.

Paramedico: Around the World by Ambulance


Benjamin Gilmour - 2011
    From England to Mexico, and Iceland to Pakistan, Gilmour takes us on an extraordinary thrill-ride with his wild coworkers. Along the way he learns a few things, too, and shows us not only how precious life truly is, but how to passionately embrace it.

Land With No Sun: A Year in Vietnam With the 173rd Airborne (Stackpole Military History Series)


Ted G. Arthurs - 2006
    From May 1967 through May 1968, Ted Arthurs was in the thick of it, humping an eighty-pound rucksack through triple canopy jungle, chasing down the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. As sergeant major for a battalion of 800 men, it was his job to see them through this jungle hell and get them back home again.

No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop


Robert Cea - 2005
    Rob Cea starts off as an idealistic young cop, a true believer in the system for which he works tirelessly. He is sadly mistaken. The system he tried so hard to appease ultimately led to his downfall and the ruination of his life.What separates this from other cop–and–robber stories is the brutal authenticity from the cop himself. We will see and hear exactly what is discussed in a patrol car. We will see how the law was栮d is汯utinely bent to make collars stick any way possible. And we will see how Cea slowly spirals to depths of hell.No Lights, No Sirens is simplistic in its scope: A young idealistic boy becomes a man through fire, and then becomes exactly what he has been chasing for so long, a hardened man possessed by demons. With rapid fire and gritty narrative, Cea writes about his fall to the depths, and his salvation. We see the dark side of detective work in New York's most crime–riddled neighbourhoods from a first–hand view never before seen.

The Happiest Refugee


Anh Do - 2010
    His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing - not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for days - could quench their desire to make a better life in the country they had dreamed about. Life in Australia was hard, an endless succession of back-breaking work, crowded rooms, ruthless landlords and make-do everything. But there was a loving extended family, and always friends and play and something to laugh about for Anh, his brother Khoa and their sister Tram. Things got harder when their father left home when Anh was only nine - they felt his loss very deeply and their mother struggled to support the family on her own. His mother's sacrifice was an inspiration to Anh and he worked hard during his teenage years to help her make ends meet, also managing to graduate high school and then university. Another inspiration was the comedian Anh met when he was about to sign on for a 60-hour a week corporate job. Anh asked how many hours he worked. 'Four,' the answer came back, and that was it. He was going to be a comedian! The Happiest Refugee tells the incredible, uplifting and inspiring life story of one of our favourite personalities. Tragedy, humour, heartache and unswerving determination - a big life with big dreams. Anh's story will move and amuse all who read it. - Happiest Refugee: My Journey From Tragedy To Comedy By Anh Do (Paperback)

The Crippler: Cage Fighting and My Life on the Edge


Chris Leben - 2016
    And it takes another kind of person to stand out from all the rest as both a wild man and a rock star. Chris Leben, otherwise known as “The Crippler,” is that kind of person.Leben’s reputation started when he appeared on the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter, a reality show and competition where hopeful fighters live together and vie for a UFC contract and a path to greatness. He quickly made a name for himself with his controversial and abrasive behavior. During his subsequent ten-year career in ultimate fighting, Leben became one of the most recognized figures in the sport, enthralling audiences around the world with his wild, head-first style of fighting as he took on some of the world’s best fighters, including Anderson Silva, Yoshihiro Akiyama, and Wanderlei Silva.But Leben’s success in the ring and international fame hid a troubled background. Abandoned by his father at a young age, Leben’s mother worked long hours to raise him and his two siblings, and Leben learned early he had to be tough to fend for himself. For most of his life, Leben struggled with alcohol and narcotics, and he was suspended by the UFC for nine months for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The Crippler is not just an exciting account of his rise to prominence within the UFC; it’s the incredible story of a renowned wild man dealing with his personal demons and learning that the toughest opponent is always yourself.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Pedalling to Hawaii: A Human Powered Adventure


Stevie Smith - 2004
    One rainy, miserable Monday he resolves to grab life with both hands and embark on an adventure: the first entirely human-powered journey around the world. Although he had never been on an expedition of any kind and had no money, Stevie and his friend Jason dreamed up a voyage that would take them from England to Hawaii by bicycle, inline skates and ocean-going pedal boat. For 111 days, they pedalled 7,500 kilometers across the Atlantic, and then crossed the United States to take on the challenge of the Pacific. Pedalling to Hawaii is hilarious, entertaining and refreshingly non-heroic, packed with thrills and spills as the intrepid and sometimes blundering duo make their way around the world. It is also a meditative account of a search for simplicity and integrity.

Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me


Lucinda Franks - 2014
    She’s a radical, self-styled hippie, and he is New York’s famous district attorney, a legal luminary of the establishment; she’s a prizewinning New York Times journalist who has chained herself to fences, bloodied draft files, and otherwise broken the law for her beliefs, and he is a secret iconoclast who could have put her in jail.     Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me is the memoir of their triumph against the odds, their ongoing thirty-five-year marriage, a union between two people so deeply in love but so different—and with so many decades separating them—that their family and friends fought to keep them apart.     Franks offers a confidential tour of their marriage, as well as the never-revealed, behind-the-scenes details of Morgenthau’s famous cases. We see a red-faced Ronald Lauder storm into Morgenthau’s office after the DA seizes a priceless Egon Schiele painting from the walls of the Museum of Modern Art; we witness the CIA dismissing Morgenthau’s discovery of the growing terrorist cell in New York that would become al-Qaeda headquarters. This is an unusually close look at the privates lives of two well-known people who have always refused to reveal themselves to the public.

Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life


Nina Stibbe - 2013
    Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life is the laugh-out-loud story of the trials and tribulations of a very particular family.

A Christmas Memory


Truman Capote - 1956
    We are proud to be reprinting this warm and delicately illustrated edition of A Christmas Memory--"a tiny gem of a holiday story" (School Library Journal, starred review). Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship between two innocent souls--one young and one old--and the memories they share of beloved holiday rituals.

Patrimony


Philip Roth - 1991
    Roth watches as his eighty-six-year-old father—famous for his vigor, charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections—battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father's long, stubborn engagement with life.

Acid Alex


Al Lovejoy - 2005
    It veers between abject mistreatment, religious hysteria and narcotic intoxication, while journeying deep into the violent underworld of Cape Town gangs and international organized crime, then behind the cold bars of prison and out the other side. Much more than the story of an alternate and differently lived life, every person who wants to fully grasp the complexities and richness of South Africa's social architecture should read this book. Hailed as a great book of reference, not only invaluable for checking facts and culture, but also for feeling the pureness of South Africa's socio-emotional pulse. A unique story told in a unique voice. Acid Alex will shock you, assault, educate and entertain you, and take you on a trip beyond your wildest imagining. A compelling, totally gripping page-turner and a story that reaches deep into ... and, touches the soul."

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey


Jackie Kay - 2010
    In a book shining with warmth, humour and compassion, she discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that our internal landscapes are as important as those through which we move. Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

Amelia's Story: A Childhood Lost


D.G. Torrens - 2011
    This is a powerful true story of one young girls struggle to survive the state care system in the 70's and 80's. Amelia has just one wish, to make it to adulthood, to hold her destiny in her own hands. This is a harrowing true story, one of survival and human strength. Amelia has been separated from all her siblings never to see them again for many years, she is moved from one children's home to another, until finally it's just too much for her to bear. Amelia starts to wonder about the peace and finality of her own death.

A Rip in Heaven


Jeanine Cummins - 2004
    It was covered by Court TV and profiled on the Ricki Lake Show. Now, here is the intimate memoir of a shocking crime and its aftermath...one family's immediate and unforgettable story of what victims can suffer long after they should be safe.