As a young student in London, he embarked on a quest to grasp the meaning and contemporary relevance of his religion and, hopefully, to find “paradise.” After experimenting with the mystical branch of Islam, Sufism, and with classical Islam, he set off on extensive travels through the Muslim world. Along the way, he came to accept that he might never reach paradise, realizing that it’s the journey that’s important. At a time when the Western view of Islam is so often distorted and over-simplified, Desperately Seeking Paradise is essential reading.

    The life of an international DJ playing at the most exotic destinations worldwide, in the most precarious of psychic circumstances, is rich to the point of toxicity. A globally-known DJ choosing to keep his identity secret takes us on a journey into the heart of life lived in the hedonistic fast lane of club culture for 30 years. Whether playing to 10,000 fans in Ibiza or in a local pub function room, this is a cautionary tale for the rave generation whose days of pills, thrills, and bellyaches are behind them. It may, as well, contain advice: though we cannot advise that it is always followed.This book is not an instruction manual - more a cautionary tale that may illuminate anyone who has harboured ambition to pack a dancefloor...

    Forcing food on an increasingly recalcitrant spouse. Brushing his teeth. Watching someone you love more than ever slip away day by day. As her husband James’s Parkinson’s disease with eventual dementia began to progress, writer Susan Allen Toth decides she intensely wants to keep her husband at home—the home he designed and loved and lived in for a quarter century—until the end.No saint, as she often reminds the reader, Toth found solace in documenting her days as a caregiver. The result, written in brief, episodic bursts during the final eighteen months of James’s life, has a rare and poignant immediacy. Wrenching, occasionally peevish, at times darkly funny, and always deeply felt, Toth’s intimate, unsparing account reflects the realities of seeing a loved one out of life: the critical support of some friends and the disappearance of others; the elasticity of time, infinitely slow and yet in such short supply; the sheer physicality of James’s decline and the author’s own loneliness; the practical challenges—the right food, the right wheelchair, the right hospital bed—all intricately interlocking parts of the act of loving and caring for someone who in so many ways is fading away.“We all need someone to hear us,” Toth says of the millions who devote their days to the care of a loved one. Her memoir is at once an eloquent expression of that need and an opening for others. No Saints around Here is the beginning of a conversation in which so many of us may someday find our voices.

    "There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books," she writes, "a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but never really a stranger. My real, true world." Later, she quotes editor Hazel Rochman: "Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but, most important, it finds homes for us everywhere." Indeed, Quindlen's essays are full of the names of "friends," real or fictional—Anne of Green Gables and Heidi; Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen, to name just a few—who have comforted, inspired, educated, and delighted her throughout her life. In four short essays Quindlen shares her thoughts on the act of reading itself ("It is like the rubbing of two sticks together to make a fire, the act of reading, an improbable pedestrian task that leads to heat and light"); analyzes the difference between how men and women read ("there are very few books in which male characters, much less boys, are portrayed as devoted readers"); and cheerfully defends middlebrow literature:Most of those so-called middlebrow readers would have readily admitted that the Iliad set a standard that could not be matched by What Makes Sammy Run? or Exodus. But any reader with common sense would also understand intuitively, immediately, that such comparisons are false, that the uses of reading are vast and variegated and that some of them are not addressed by Homer.

    Editorial Reviews Hixon, a disciple of both Ramakrishna's wife and his spiritual successor, provides contemporary commentary based on The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and The Great Master . This retelling in clear contemporary English requires no background knowledge and makes accessible the ideas of a most remarkable Hindu saint who worshipped Kali, the Divine Mother, but also experienced union with Jesus, Muhammad, and Allah. Hixon claims his book ``is not a conventional biography but a workbook'' to provide Ramakrishna's guidance to the spiritually inclined reader of any religious tradition and to clarify the mystical path. Hixon is self-effacing: what shines through is Ramakrishna sanctity and wisdom, as well as the devotion of his disciples. Recommended for most libraries.

    Taber shares memories of her childhood in the Southwest and Mexico as well as her married life and early pursuit of a writing career.

    Years of listening to other people's stories of going through tough times, hoping to overcome difficult odds, or trying to find a way to make a difference in the world brought Edward Grinnan to the undersanding that personal change is vital to achieving success. In each chaper of this book, he weaves the tales of other people with his own story to reveal how each of us can learn about the keys to powerful personal change. He shows these principles at work in his own personal struggle with alcoholism, and how he has learned through his own missteps to accept change and become the person he was meant to be.

    Despite impressive research, the author's needlessly pugilistic stance--he comes off as one defending the honor of Judaism against pagan insurgents--bleeds his argument of real force. In sum, these are his beliefs: Paul, who claimed to be a Pharisee rabbi, was in fact "an adventurer of undistinguished background"; Jesus, portrayed by Gospel writers as opposing the Pharisees, was in fact one himself, a devout Jew who believed he'd been chosen by God to overthrow Roman rule & reign as King of Israel; the earliest Xians didn't preach the divinity of Christ until Paul rejected the Torah & replaced it with a pagan myth of a dying & resurrected god. When it comes to asserting the Jewishness of Jesus, he stands on firm ground alongside most contemporary scholars. His work will probably strengthen the belief that Jesus was to some extent an anti-Roman political revolutionary, Paul a Hellenistic interloper. However, it's difficult to take seriously the charge that Paul "sought fame by founding a new religion" because he "was disappointed in his hopes of advancement." By making Paul out as a sort of carnival huckster, he ignores the apostle's religious profundity; by making of Paul a spiritual Svengali who misled many of Jesus' closest followers, he'll seem to some to be promulgating his own religious myth. His arguments simply confirm the observation that when it comes to the early years of Xianity, documentary material is so scarce & fragmentary that the few available texts can, & have, been used to bolster every conceivable viewpoint. Like other debunkers, he sometimes lets polemic get in the way of prudence; many of his assertions stand unsubstantiated by quote or other reference. A historical brief of questionable reliability--but undeniably fascinating. Elegantly argued, this should ruffle feathers for years to come.--Kirkus (edited)

    His experience was not the little league, boys-of-summer stuff of modern America. For him, it was life and death. Now middleaged and living in California, Alan finds himself coaching a team of eight-year-olds in his beloved sport—and nothing is going right. For a start, the kids are no good at soccer. Secondly, they’re pampered. Born and bred on the sport, Black’s hardscrabble Scottish upbringing consisted of playing tough and victory at all costs. Needless to say, his coaching methods are a far cry from the “winning isn’t everything” mentality his little leaguers have been reared with; and players and parents alike are shocked as Black attempts to transform the losing team through drills and bombast. Alone at night, watching evangelicals on TV, Black finds himself searching for some truth in the culture he finds so bizarre. And it’s with the Tigers that he feels most out of sync—faced with a mix of soft suburban children, a raft of overprotective parents, and an Iranian co-coach called Ali. Told with Black’s uproarious Scottish sensibility, Kick the Balls follows the abrasive, irreverent, and hilarious coach as he contends with a team that winds up with a zero-win record. Both a celebration of his own tough childhood and an account of one man’s navigation of an alien culture, Kick the Balls will delight fans of well-told, laugh-out-loud memoirs.

    is proud to reissue Lady from Savannah in response to widespread demands for a biography of our Founder, Juliette Gordon Low. In truth, however, this is much more than the story of one woman and the organization she started. It is first of all a chronicle of two great American families - the Kinzies who were founders of Chicago and the Gordons whose name is magic to this day in Savannah, Georgia - that in 1860 produced the gallant, willful, exasperating, generous, and wholly lovable Juliette (known as Daisy) Gordon. The narrative of Daisy's marriage to Willy Low also offers insider's view of Edwardian high society in England. The Girl Scouts are most particularly proud that this woman from a background of wealth and privilege was able to envision a youth movement "for the girls of all America," which serves a membership of ever-increasing diversity as the diversity of our country grows.

     Last King of the Cross lays bare Australia's most notorious underworld figure.In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family and growing up in Sydney's rough and tumble west - before establishing himself as a tough guy and teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer and nightclub king on the Golden Mile.Bullets fly, blades flash and bodies fall. In a city of shadows, John builds his army and empire - partying like a playboy prince of darkness while staying one step ahead of the cops, the outlaw gangs and hungry triggermen, plotting to take him and his family down.Crazier than Goodfellas, more compelling than The Godfather, Last King of the Cross is a colourful crime saga like no other and powerful proof that truth is always stranger than fiction.

    Stormont writes not to draw attention to the life of his friend but rather to allow modern believers to grasp the spiritual significance of Wigglesworth's life and ministry.

    And of how Nicola battled with her own alcoholism but, determined to throw off her mother's legacy, came through a survivor.

    The astounding autobiography of the man who transformed Rumi from a learned religious teacher into the world's greatest poet of mystical love.

    He lost his sight forever. To cheer him up, his mother wrote letters to baseball superstars of the day, explaining her son’s condition. Soon Ed was invited into their clubhouses and dugouts, as the players and coaches personally made him feel at home. Despite the warm reception he got from his heroes, Ed was told repeatedly by others that he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile because of his limitations. But Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto became Ed’s mentor and encouraged him to pursue his passion—broadcasting. Ed then overcame hundreds of barriers, big and small, to become a pioneer—the first blind person covering baseball on a regular basis, a career he has successfully continued for six decades. Ed may have lost his sight, but he never lost his faith, which got him through many pitfalls and dark days. When Ed’s two sons were very young, his wife walked out and left him to raise them all by himself, which he did. Six years later, Ed’s ex-wife returned and sued him for full custody, saying that a blind man shouldn’t have her kids. The judge agreed, tearing Ed's sons away from their father's loving home. Ed fought the heartbreaking decision with appeals all the way up to the highest level of the court system. Eventually, he prevailed, marking the very first time in US history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse. Even in his later years, Ed is still enjoying a remarkably blessed life. In 2006, he married his second wife, Allison, at home plate in old Yankee Stadium, the only time that such a thing ever happened on that iconic spot. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner himself catered the whole affair, which was shown live on national television. Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is truly a magical read and a universally uplifting and inspirational tale for everyone, whether or not you happen to be a sports fan. Over his long and amazing life, Ed has collected hundreds of anecdotes from his personal relationships and encounters with everyone, from kings and presidents to movie stars and sports Hall-of-Famers, many of which he shares in this memoir, using his trademark humorous and engaging style, cowritten with his youngest son, Christopher.