Book picks similar to
Home and Away by Kevin Kling
nonfiction
non-fiction
short-stories-essays
audio
Strap Hanger: A Memoir of a Special Forces Soldier
Don Valentine - 2015
It covers the twenty-one years Don spent in the US Army, including six years in Airborne infantry rifle companies, ten years in special forces and five years in military intelligence. His story covers four combat tours, three in Vietnam and one in Laos and stretches from the old “brown boot” army to the new all volunteer army. The story is told in the manner you would hear it if you were sitting with the author having a cup of coffee or a cold beer and chatting about the “good” old days. This memoir covers the following assignments: Basic Combat Training | E Co. 325th AIR, 82d Airborne Division | K Co. 511th AIR, 11th Airborne Division | B Co. 505th AIR, 82d Airborne Division | E Company, 325th, 82d Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C., October 1960 | Training Co., 7th Special Forces Group Ft. Bragg, NC | A Company, 5th Special Forces Group [Sept - Dec 1961] | 1st Special Forces Group, Okinawa | B Co. 5th Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | A Co. 3rd Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | D Co., 1st Special Forces Group, Ft. Bragg, NC | 46th Special Forces Company [Augmented] 1967 Thailand | 1st Special Forces Group, Okinawa | Super Spook Training, Ft. Holabird, MD | The Bird Cage, Ft. Belvoir, VA | 525th Military Intelligence Group, Vietnam | Counterintelligence Special Agent Course Ft. Huachuca, AZ | Defense Against Methods of Entry Course Ft. Huachuca, AZ | 801st MI Det., 5th SFG [Abn], Ft Bragg, NC June 1971-Dec 1973 | Defense Language Institute Monterey, CA | 500th Military Intelligence Group Camp Zama, Japan | Retirement 1 March 1976 Ft. Bragg, NC Some Readers Comments: “I just got through reading all of your army experiences and enjoyed it very much., Clarence J.” “Don I enjoyed reading about your adventures and about those early Army days! I was reading the parts about “Super Spook!” lol And I was thinking to myself, Hum? “ I think I've met some people like them!” I like your particular writing style. “ Dave H. “I was researching Ft Holabird when I came across part of your memoirs. Great reading...my ass is supposed to be house-husbanding & taking care of the dogs & cats while my wife is attending nursing classes...well I guess spending the afternoon reading your memoirs are worth an ass-chewing.”, Daniel M. “Ran across a couple of your chapters years ago, but for some reason never found your website until this week. Love it, you really capture the esprit de corps serving in SF was all about.”, H.C.S. “My wife’s in Reno visiting her mother. I’m supposed to be working on an exam for the State. Instead, I’m too caught up in your story. Thanks for all that you did.” Jim. F. “Top; I just finished reading your story and I had to tell you that I think that you are a very good writer. Your style of writing kept me attentive from the first paragraph.”, Bob W. “Kudos to you for Strap Hanger, and for saying it in common language of the common soldier. I called my style a barrack philosopher style, but never equaled your style of common language in a clear and concise manner. Enjoyed your writing. Congratulations on a job well done.”, Ron A.
Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior
Mark Rathbun - 2013
This autobiographical history of Scientology is told by one of L. Ron Hubbard’s staunchest defenders.
Call Me Sister: District Nursing Tales from the Swinging Sixties
Jane Yeadon - 2013
Staff nursing in a ward where she's challenged by an inventory driven ward sister, she reckons it's time to swap such trivialities for life as a district nurse.Independent thinking is one thing, but Jane's about to find that the drama on district can demand instant reaction; and without hospital back up, she's usually the one having to provide it. She meets a rich cast of patients all determined to follow their own individual star, and goes to Edinburgh where Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute's nurse training is considered the cr me de la cr me of the district nursing world.Call Me Sister recalls Jane's challenging and often hilarious route to realizing her own particular dream.
The Mindset
Ace Bowers - 2019
He was forced to choose which path he was going to take: continue the cycle of family poverty or break it. The Mindset is an inspirational memoir of Ace Bowers’ personal transformation from janitor to millionaire. Bowers began his journey uneducated, overweight, addicted to cigarettes, in debt, and depressed. Revealing the skeletons in his closet for the first time set the scene for how he got to the point of cleaning a motel for $6 an hour. Bowers’ detailed accounts of his turbulent and traumatizing childhood illustrated what it is like growing up in a poor, alcoholic, and abusive family. The metamorphosis began as soon as he changed his mindset. Within five years, Bowers was able to completely turn his life around, going from trash to technology. This memoir illuminates step by step his unconventional path to wealth, health, and happiness.
The Impossible Long Run: My Journey to Becoming Ultra
Janet Patkowa - 2019
One day… I wanted to explore the US in an RV. One day… I wanted to backpack in a foreign country. None of these things were happening because it seemed impossible to fit big adventures into a nine-to-five life. Until one day it hit me. One day was not just going to happen. I had to start taking the steps to make it happen and figure out how to fit it in. I got on the internet and searched for something to inspire me. I found the Becoming Ultra project. And thus began my journey to running a 50 mile race.
The Lincoln Obsession: The Author of Manhunt Chases Down His Own Lincoln Obsession
James L Swanson - 2021
Taking listeners behind the scenes of his research, Swanson discusses the origins of his boyhood passion for Lincoln, including his first visits to Springfield, Illinois, and Ford’s Theatre as a high school student; accounts for Booth’s movements during the manhunt; reveals how he authenticates Lincoln blood relics; and offers details about historic sites that remain little-known or obscure. Swanson describes the intrigue he continues to pursue - the women who aided Booth, lingering questions regarding other conspirators, and a timeline for both Lincoln and the conspirators on the night of April 14, 1865. The Lincoln Obsession is a uniquely personal look at how historical places and relics will forever shed new light on the first presidential assassination in America.
After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
Joseph Weismann - 2017
After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch’s 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.
Even if you don't.: A love story
Bryan C. Taylor - 2018
And even more than that, it's the awe-inspiring life story of Kailen Combs Taylor. Kailen lived with a perpetual sense of wonder, maintaining immutable joy and resilient hope in the midst of some of life's most barbaric trials. Narrated with heartrending candor, this harrowing love story will make you laugh, cry, and frantically turn the page, often all at once. And long after you finish the book and fall back into the hectic fray of life, you may find Kailen's message still resonates in your heart: that life can be a fairytale, even when it's a tragedy. "Bryan has written a book which proves that even in the face of impossible odds, love never fails." -Christina Rasmussen, Author of Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again
From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry
Justin Pearson - 2010
There, he fell in with a subculture of young musicians playing some of the most original and brutal music in the world. Turns out the chaos of Pearson’s bands — The Locust, Swing Kids, and Some Girls — is nothing compared to the madness of his life.An icon of the West Coast noise and punk scene, Pearson managed to arrive at adulthood by outsmarting skinheads and dodging equally threatening violence at home. Once there, the struggle continued, with Pearson getting beat up on Jerry Springer and, on more than one occasion, chased out of town by ferociously angry audiences.From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry is the outrageously candid story of Pearson’s life. In loving, meticulous detail, Pearson gives readers the dirt behind each rivalry, riff, and lineup change.
Olive Oatman: Explore The Mysterious Story of Captivity and Tragedy from Beginning to End
Brent Schulte - 2019
She is the girl with the blue tattoo.The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return.Rumors swelled. Her tattoo became a symbol of Native barbarianism and the triumph of American goodness, but like many stories of that era, the truth is far more complicated.This short book details the murders, her captivity, the aftermath, and her baffling return to her captors. Unravel the mystery of the woman who would become famous for all the wrong reasons and discover what her life story says about cultural identity, the power of resiliency, and what happens when fact and fiction bend and twist to muddy the waters.Read on to find out the truth!
Leah Remini: My Escape from Scientology
Johnny Dodd - 2016
Ron Hubbard—begins in Brooklyn's working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood, where she was introduced to the religion by her mom. More than three decades later, Leah summoned the courage to leave the church—something few celebrities at her level of fame have ever done before and almost none have ever talked about. This People Spotlight Story explores Leah Remini and her escape from Scientology.
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.
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.
21 Months, 24 Days: A blue-collar kid's journey to the Vietnam War and back
Richard Udden - 2015
Threatened by the draft in the late sixties, he enlisted in the Army to avoid becoming a grunt, yet ended up one anyway. He endured a grueling war in Vietnam and then returned to a country too angry to care. While his journey took unexpected turns, his choices got him there, so he did his best to react positively and keep moving forward.Udden delivers his story in a comfortable, friendly style. He conveys the experiences of basic training, advanced infantry training, and what it was like to live, work, guard, patrol, and fight in the jungle. The reader will feel the adrenalin rush of a firefight, the thrill of a wild ride dangling below a helicopter, and the humor in celebrating his 21st birthday on a firebase.Through his words and personal photographs, you will live through his journey exactly as he experienced it.
Into The Rip
Damien Cave - 2021
Having covered the war in Iraq and moved to Mexico City with two babies in nappies, he and his wife Diana thought they understood something about the subject.But when they arrived in Sydney so that Cave could establish The New York Times's Australia Bureau, life near the ocean confronted them with new ideas and questions, at odds with their American mindset that risk was a matter of individual choices. Surf-lifesaving and Nippers showed that perhaps it could be managed together, by communities. And instead of being either eliminated or romanticised, it might instead be respected and even embraced.And so Cave set out to understand how our current attitude to risk developed - and why it's not necessarily good for us.Into the Rip is partly the story of this New York family learning to live better by living with the sea and it is partly the story of how humans manage the idea of risk. Interviewing experts and everyday heroes, Cave asks critical questions like: Is safety overrated? Why do we miscalculate risk so often and how can we improve? Is it selfish to take risks or can more exposure make for stronger families, citizens and nations? And how do we factor in legitimate fears and major disasters like Cave has covered in his time here: the Black Summer fires; the Christchurch massacre; and, of course, Covid?The result is Grit meets Phosphorescence and Any Ordinary Day - a book that will change the way you and your family think about facing the world's hazards.