Book picks similar to
Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Compassion and Courage by Susan Hagen
nonfiction
9-11
acts-of-courage
history
Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration
Marcia Ann Gillespie - 2008
Now, MAYA ANGELOU: A GLORIOUS CELEBRATION offers an unusual and irresistible look at her life and her myriad interests and accomplishments. Created by the people who know her best--her longtime friends Marcia Ann Gillespie and Richard A. Long, and her niece Rosa Johnson Butler--it is part tribute, part scrapbook, capturing Angelou at home, at work, and in the public eye. In photographs, text, and ephemera, MAYA ANGELOU chronicles the writer's childhood in Stamps, Arkansas; her brief-but-illustrious career on the New York stage; her appointment as the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Council; and more. There are behind-the-scenes glimpses of Angelou as a down-home regal diva who revels in cooking for a crowd that often includes celebrities like Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, or Quincy Jones along with relatives and old friends--and as the highly disciplined writer who begins her legendary writing process in a local hotel room at 5: 30 a.m. armed with yellow pad, Bible, bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus and a deck of cards for solitaire. Readers who have come to know and love Maya Angelou will be surprised and delighted by this personal, illustrated portrait of the renowned poet, author, playwright, and humanitarian.
Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History
Helene Stapinski - 2001
In the memoir Mary Karr calls “a page-turner,” Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City—a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight—with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.
Greek Mythology: Discovering Greek Mythology! (Ancient Greece, Titans, Gods, Zeus, Hercules) (Greek Mythology, Ancient Greece, Titans, Gods, Zeus, Hercules)
Martin R. Phillips - 2014
Culture has yet to turn away from the mythology of the ancient Greeks, and this fact can be seen in various aspects of our modern life. Through various forms of entertainment, we come across themes and events depicted in Homer’s works of the Iliad and Odyssey. We find ourselves viewing and referencing the strength and trials of Heracles. We even find various parallels between the lives and myths of the ancient Greeks to our own modern world. The history of Greece herself cannot be separated by the mythology of its ancient peoples. From heroes such as Heracles and Perseus, to the underhanded dealings of gods and mortals alike, their story is one a creative attempt to understand the forces which dwell about us and within us. In this book you will find specific stories central to Greek mythology. This is a key into understanding the mindset, not only of these ancient peoples, but of our modern world as well. We may not subscribe as the Greeks did to these myths as factual accounts of historical events, however, these tales allegorically represent the things that humankind still endures and rejoices in. In this text, you will find the spirit of love, of nature, of war and of peace. These myths often deal with very blunt subject matter, as they were the dominant lens through which the world was viewed during much of ancient Greece. The research and writing involved in bringing you this collection of Greek mythology has been an absolute pleasure, and I hope that you are as fascinated in reading this as I was in putting it together. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn...
In the Beginning, There was Chaos
The Titans’ Rule
The Olympian Rule
Hercules and the Twelve Labors
Other Important Beings in Greek Mythology
Greek Mythology and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
Meet Your Roman Doppelgangers
BONUS! Find Inside…
and much more!
Download Your Copy Today! The contents of this book are easily worth over $10. To order "Greek Mythology: Discovering Greek Mythology!", click the BUY button and download your copy right now! Tags: Greek Mythology, Mythology, Ancient Greece, Civilizations, Ancient Civilizations, Greece, Greeks, Titans, Gods, Zeus, Hercules, Greek Gods, Apollo, Athena, Gaia, Chaos, Uranus, Cyclops, Chronos, Tartarus, Olympia, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Metis, Hades
We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia
Belinda Hurmence - 1994
Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom. Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Virginia slaves. This is a companion volume to Hurmence's popular collections of North Carolina and South Carolina slave narratives, My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slaveryand Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember.
Obit. Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who Led Extraordinary Lives
Jim Sheeler - 2007
You probably haven't heard of any of them. That doesn't mean it's a book about nobodies. That doesn't mean it is a book about death. The obituaries collected here are at times humorous, ("The Woman Who Outlived Her Tombstone") and at times heartbreaking ("Love Stories from a Plane Crash"). They shine a light into forgotten places ("How to Build a Mountain") and forgotten lives ("TGhe shortest Obituary on the Page"). Inside are countless lessons of life, taught by people we all pass on the street every day. It's not too late to meet them.
Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA
Amaryllis Fox - 2019
Amaryllis Fox's memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter.
Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G.
Henepola Gunaratana - 1998
Ordained at twelve, he would eventually become the first Buddhist chaplain at an American university, the founder of a retreat center and monastery, and a bestselling author. Here, Bhante G. lays bare the often-surprising ups and downs of his seventy-five years, from his boyhood in Sri Lanka to his decades of sharing the insights of the Buddha, telling his story with the "plain-English" approach for which he is so renowned.
Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
Elizabeth Winder - 2013
She lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended the ballet, went to a Yankee game, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She was supposed to be having the time of her life. But what would follow was, in Plath’s words, twenty-six days of pain, parties, and work, that ultimately changed the course of her life.Thoughtful and illuminating, featuring line drawings and black-and-white photographs, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 offers well-researched insights as it introduces us to Sylvia Plath—before she became one of the greatest and most influential poets of the twentieth century.
Hitler's Forgotten Children: My Life Inside The Lebensborn
Ingrid von Oelhafen - 2015
I was stolen as a baby to be part of one of the most terrible of all Nazi experiments: Lebensborn.’ Watch the 2016 interview with the author. In 1942 Erika, a baby girl from Rogaška Slatina, the Slovenian town that was renamed Sauerbrunn (another town with the same name exists in Austria, which made it harder for the author to find her roots after the war) by Nazi occupiers of the northern part of Slovenia, the only present-day European nation that was trisected and completely annexed into both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during WWII, was one of many children that were stolen from their parents by the Nazi occupiers, declared an ‘Aryan’, her true identity erased, and sent to German couples who could not have their own children under the pretense that children were saved from dysfunctional families, struck by prostitution and whatnot, so she was renamed Ingrid, and given new surname "von Oelhafen".After the war, Erika/Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme and the Nazi obsession with bloodlines became clear -- including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her and the deliberate murder of children born into the program who were deemed ‘substandard.’The Lebensborn program was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race, leaving behind thousands of displaced victims in the wake of the Nazi regime.Written with insight and compassion, this is a powerful meditation on the personal legacy of Hitler’s vision, of Germany’s brutal past and of a divided Europe that for many years struggled to come to terms with its own history.
Queen Noor
Susan Muaddi Darraj - 2004
Delve deep into the lives of the world's most powerful women in politics, and learn how ambition and altruism make these extraordinary women truly extraordinary leaders. Lisa Halaby, whose Arab-American father was the CEO of Pan Am Airlines and a former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, led a fairly routine life until she was introduced to Jordan's King Hussein. Within months, the golden-haired Arab-American was married to King Hussein and crowned queen of Jordan.
The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The life of the first woman physician
Julia Boyd - 2005
Few at the time would have disagreed with the actress Fanny Kemble's remark - "What, trust a woman doctor - never!"Yet by the time Dr Blackwell died in 1910 there were hundreds of women practising medicine on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks in no small part to her courage and determination.This is a remarkable story, and one by no means confined to medicine. It embraces slavery, the women's rights movement, the American Civil War and Elizabeth's personal tragedy (she lost an eye in Paris) - as well as a fascinating cast of characters from Abraham Lincoln to Florence Nightingale.Using a treasure trove of primary sources, the book reveals how Elizabeth Blackwell's pioneering efforts helped to fundamentally change the status of women in the West.'Julia Boyd resists the temptation to turn Blackwell into one of those old-fashioned feminist icons of the 1970s... the result is thorough and, above all, thoughtful.' - The Guardian'One can only hope that this excellent biography of an excellent doctor will help garner Blackwell the renown she has always deserved.' - New England Journal of Medicine'Julia Boyd's superb biography reveals B as a complex, tenacious and often frustrating character whose extraordinary single-mindedness changed our world.' - Victorian Geek
Refined by Fire
Brian Birdwell - 2004
He stepped out into the corridor and was instantly engulfed in flames--burns consumed 60 percent of his body, with almost 40 percent of them third-degree. Thirty-plus operations and countless physical therapy sessions later, his recovery has truly been remarkable, and spiritually he and his family are stronger than ever before. Brian and his wife, Mel, tell their captivating story of God's grace and sovereignty.
Son of Escobar: First Born
Roberto Sendoya Escobar - 2020
He became one of the ten richest men on the planet and controlled 80 per cent of the global cocaine trade before he was shot dead in 1993.In 1965, a secret mission by Colombian Special Forces, led by an MI6 agent, to recover a cash hoard from a safe house used by a young Pablo Escobar culminates in a shoot-out leaving many dead. Escobar and several of his men escape. Only a baby survives, Roberto Sendoya Escobar. In a bizarre twist of fate, the MI6 agent takes pity on the child, brings him home and later adopts him.Over the years, Pablo Escobar tries, repeatedly, to kidnap his son. The child, unaware of his true identity, is allowed regular meetings with Escobar and it becomes apparent that Roberto’s adopted father and the British government are working covertly with the gangster in an attempt to control the money laundering and drug trades.Many years later in England, as Roberto’s father lies dying in hospital, he hands his son a coded piece of paper which, he says, reveals the secret hiding place of Escobar’s ‘missing millions'. The code is published in this book for the first time.
Flight 93: The Story, the Aftermath, and the Legacy of American Courage on 9/11
Tom McMillan - 2014
Amazingly, the definitive account of this seminal event has yet to be written. The book offers the most complete account of what actually took place aboard Flight 93 – from its delayed takeoff in Newark to the moment it plunged upside-down at 563 miles per hour into an open field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Flight 93 provides a riveting and complete narrative of the lead-up, event, and aftermath of the flight, based on interviews, oral histories, personal tours of the crash site and evidence recently made public. It examines the lead-up to that horrific morning; the stories of the victims who were launched into the center of history; the revolt that saved untold amounts of carnage on the ground and likely, the US Capitol; the eyewitnesses and first responders who rushed to the crash scene; the impact on family members; the effort to uncover evidence at the site; and the legacy the story leaves for future generations.
Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage
Caroline Jane Knight - 2017
As a direct descendant of Jane's brother, Edward Knight, Caroline is the last of the Austen Knight family to grow up at Chawton House on the estate where Jane Austen lived and enjoyed the most productive period of her writing career. Caroline explored the same places around Chawton House and its grounds as Jane did, dined at the same table in the same dining room, read in the same library and shared the same dream of independence.Caroline's early life was filled with the delights of living in a sixteenth-century English manor, the good cheer of family gatherings and centuries-old Christmas traditions in the Great Hall of Chawton House, the beauty of a country life, and the joys of helping her Granny bake cakes and serve Jane Austen devotees in the Chawton House tea room. But when she was seventeen, Caroline and her family were forced to leave the home her family had lived in for centuries. Heartbroken, but determined to leave all things Austen behind her, Caroline eventually carved out a highly successful career in business.This is the story of Caroline's tumultuous journey to success, her ultimate crisis, her rediscovery and embrace of her Austen heritage, and the creation of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.