Or that’s how Damon saw it, anyway. Damon wanted a book that talked a lot about love. Damon Courtenay died on the morning of April Fool’s Day. In this tribute to his son, Bryce Courtenay lays bare the suffering behind this young man’s life. Damon’s story is one of life-long struggle, his love for Celeste, the compassion of family, and a fight to the end for integrity. A testimony to the power of love, April Fool’s Day is also about understanding: how when we confront our worst, we can become our best.

    Known for his versatility, passion and fearlessness, he's become one of our most beloved actors. But in February 2008, Patrick announced he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Always a fighter, he refused to let the disease bring him to his knees, and his bravery has inspired both his legion of fans and cancer patients everywhere. Yet this memoir, written with wisdom and heart, recounts much more than his bout with cancer. In vivid detail, Patrick describes his Texas upbringing, his personal struggles, his rise to fame with North and South, his commercial breakthroughs in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, and the soul mate who's stood by his side through it all: his wife, writer and director Lisa Niemi. A behind-the-scenes look at a Hollywood life and a remarkable love, this memoir is both entertainment and inspiration. Patrick and Lisa's marriage is a journey of two lives intertwined and lived as one--throughout their years in Hollywood and at home on their working ranch outside Los Angeles, and culminating in the hope and wisdom they've imparted to all who know them. This book will open the door for families, individuals, and husbands and wives to grow, bond and discover entirely new levels of love and sharing, proving that life shouldn't be lived as a series of endings, but rather as the beginning of greater strength and love.

    In its journey from coalition politics to single-party hegemony, it has emerged as a very different entity from the one that first came to power in 1998. Veteran journalist Saba Naqvi—who has spent two decades covering the BJP—tells the story from the party’s founding in 1980 to its two stints in power. Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi is both a first-person account of racy events as they unfolded in the nation’s history, and a work that raises larger analytical points about the BJP’s growth. It examines the role of the RSS cadre and its equations with elected leaders, the calibration of ideology, the issue of political finance and the social expansion of the party, as also the cults of personality that would emerge around, first, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then, more forcefully, around Narendra Modi. The book provides a riveting account of the party’s difficult journey from ‘untouchability’ (when allies were unwilling to join) to its presumed ‘invincibility’ today. Naqvi’s long-standing equations with members of the party, developed over two decades of consistently fair reporting, delivers a narrative full of insights that are both fresh and deep, and anecdotes that are as lively as they are telling. In revealing hitherto unknown aspects, and reminding readers of the bigger picture, Shades of Saffron is a deep dive into the contemporary history of a party that keeps reinventing itself.

    He also wrote "India: The Siege Within".

    This personal, illustrated account of school days in a rigidly communist institution and everyday life with his family and community provides a rare glimpse of this secretive nation. His shocking and moving portrayal bears witness to this spirited young boy's resilience and survival in a society forced to operate under the shadow of labour camps, public executions and the deception of UN representatives by Korean officials. When the famine comes so too does death by starvation of friends and close ones, and Hyok Kang watches as his classmates drop out of school one by one, too weak to attend. All this is normal. After all, the propaganda North Koreans are fed by their government insists that compared to the rest of the world, this is paradise! Hyok Kang's childhood and courageous escape through China Vietnam and Cambodia to South Korea is a remarkable story that goes to the heart of a nation living under a disturbing delusion of 'paradise'.

    Relying heavily on official records bulk of them still security classified in violation of democratic norms the book uncovers a systematic obstruction of justice by the Government of India. First for any book in India, the narrative has been augmented with the excerpts and images of still secret records. Archival material and information obtained under the freedom of information acts of India, the US and the UK has also been made use of.

    Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, he has written more than forty-five plays, including True West, Fool for Love, and Buried Child. Shepard has also appeared in more than fifty films, beginning with Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Right Stuff. Despite the publicity his work and life have attracted, however, Shepard remains a strongly private man who has said many times that he will never write a memoir. But he has written intensively about his inner life and creative work to his former father-in-law and housemate, Johnny Dark, who has been Shepard's closest friend, surrogate brother (they're nearly the same age), and even artistic muse for forty-five years and counting.Two Prospectors gathers nearly forty years of correspondence and transcribed conversations between Shepard and Dark. In these gripping, sometimes gut-wrenching letters, the men open themselves to each other with amazing honesty. Shepard's letters give us the deepest look we may ever get into his personal philosophy and creative process, while in Dark's letters we discover insights into Shepard's character that only an intimate friend could provide. The writers also reflect on the books and authors that stimulate their thinking, their relationships with women (including Shepard's anguished decision to leave his wife and son--Dark's stepdaughter and grandson--for actress Jessica Lange), personal struggles, and accumulating years. Illustrated with Dark's candid, revealing photographs of Shepard and their mutual family across many years, as well as facsimiles of numerous letters, Two Prospectors is a compelling portrait of a complex friendship that has anchored both lives for decades, a friendship also poignantly captured in Treva Wurmfeld's film, Shepard & Dark.

    First diagnosed when he was only ten years old, she was the model of resilience throughout his childhood, fighting her disease with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush. But just as she faces a relapse, her husband —a successful businessman and devoted father—is diagnosed with ALS. He is told that in a few months' time, he be unable to walk, eat, or breathe on his own. Dan, a recent college graduate living the good life in Los Angeles, has no choice but to return home to help. Reinstalled in his parents' basement (in one of the only non-Mormon homes in a Salt Lake City subdivision) Dan is reunited with his siblings. His older sister Tiffany is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. Younger brother Greg comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. Younger sister Michelle is a sullen teenager experimenting with drinking and flirting with her 35-year-old soccer coach. And baby sister Chelsea—the oddest duck in a family of misfits—can only think about dance. Together they form Team Terminal, going to battle against their parents' illnesses and cracking plenty of jokes along the way. As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that you don't get to choose when it's time to grow up.

    'In my lap, hopping atop my thighs as the truck lurches, as my body shivers, sits a sturdy canvas Domke bag filled with Nikons and Kodachrome film, which I'm hoping to use to photograph the pull-out of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Actually, I have no idea how to photograph a Soviet pull-out. Though this is my second story as a professional photojournalist, I'm still not clear on what it is photojournalists actually do in a real war.' What follows is the hilarious and winning memoir of a young woman finding and fighting her way through the war zones of the world. It is a thrilling coming-of-age story, told with humour and uncommon wisdom, about how one woman fought her way on to battlefields, and the danger, pain, truths and love she discovered there.

    Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacy—and explores why some of this country’s oldest wounds have never healed.Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning.In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy—that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans—and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it. Through the arc of Seidule’s own life, as well as the culture that formed him, he seeks a path to understanding why the facts of the Civil War have remained buried beneath layers of myth and even outright lies—and how they embody a cultural gulf that separates millions of Americans to this day.Part history lecture, part meditation on the Civil War and its fallout, and part memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the deeply-held legends and myths of the Confederacy—and provides a surprising interpretation of essential truths that our country still has a difficult time articulating and accepting.

    The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travelers--young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a consummate DC insider, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters, and discovering her voice in the process.

    Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century’s most fantastic figures and arguably the most famous man on the planet. But until now, he has never been the subject of a complete, unauthorized biography. Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America’s master storytellers, radically reshapes our understanding of the complicated man who was Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali’s life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He conducted more than 500 interviews and uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files, as well dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Collectively, they tell Ali’s story like never before—the story of a man who was flawed and uncertain and brave beyond belief. “I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me—black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.” He was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost. Like so many boxers, he stayed too long. Jonathan Eig’s Ali reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition. Ali is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world.

    I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ROADIES FORM THAT HAS "F--K YOU, RAGHU" WRITTEN ALL OVER IT; I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE POSTER THAT WAS HELP UP THIS YEAR DURING THE CHANDIGARH AUDITIONS THAT READ, "BAAP TOH BAAP HOTA HAI. RAGHU ROX".I SEE EQUAL PARTS RESPECT, EQUAL PARTS LOATHING. EQUAL PARTS RAGHU, EQUAL PARTS THE BULLY.'There is a man - tall, bald, muscular, intimidating - who manages to induce terror and awe in all those who dare walk into his interrogation room. There was once a boy - scrawny, weak, easily intimidated, voice unbroken at fifteen - who was bullied consistently through his childhood. This is the story of how that boy became the man he is today: part-time singer, song-writer and jammer; full-time producer, cameraman and editor; Sherlock Holmes and Batman worshipper; staunch atheist with an innate fear of water and heights. This is the autobiography of the rudest man on Indian television.RAGHU RAM, THE ORIGINAL ROADIE, SPLIT WIDE OPEN

    Millions of people worldwide know of him through Ralph Fiennes’ chilling portrayal in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Goeth was the brutal commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp—Oskar Schindler’s drinking buddy, and yet his adversary. Responsible for the deaths of thousands, Amon Goeth was hanged in 1946.Goeth’s partner Ruth, Teege’s much-loved grandmother, committed suicide in 1983. Teege is their daughter’s daughter; her father is Nigerian. Raised by foster parents, she grew up with no knowledge of the family secret. Now, it unsettles her profoundly. What can she say to her Jewish friends, or to her own children? Who is she—truly?My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me is Teege’s searing chronicle of grappling with her haunted past. Her research into her family takes her to Poland and to Israel. Award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair supplies historical context in a separate, interwoven narrative. Step by step, horrified by her family’s dark history, Teege builds the story of her own liberation.

    The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma - in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero falters, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic's characters are flawed, but their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar dilemmas. Gurcharan Das's best-selling book India Unbound examined the classical aim of artha, material well being. This, his first book in seven years, dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well being. It addresses the central problem of how to live our lives in an examined way - holding a mirror up to us and forcing us to confront the many ways in which we deceive ourselves and others. What emerges is a doctrine of dharma that we can apply to our business decisions, political strategies and interpersonal relationships - in effect, to life itself.