Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision


Louis P. Masur - 2009
    To millions of listeners, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is much more than a rock-and-roll album—it’s a poetic explosion of freedom and frustration. It confirmed Springsteen’s status as a quintessential American performer: the rocker who, more than any other, gives voice to our hopes, fears, and aspirations. Runaway Dream chronicles the making of the album that launched Springsteen and his E Street Band into the firmament of American art, deftly sketching the ambition, history, and personalities that combined to create the enduring Born to Run.Springsteen wanted Born to Run to be the greatest rock record ever made. For a musician with just two modest-selling LPs to his credit, it was an extraordinary ambition, and session by session, track by track, Masur shows just how much grit, as well as genius, went into realizing it. Runaway Dream offers an expert tour of the trials and triumphs of Springsteen’s work. In addition to the story of the album itself, Masur masterfully places Born to Run within American cultural history, showing why the girls, hot rods, and Jersey nights of the album still resonate, even for listeners born years after its release.

You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farm Enterprise


Joel Salatin - 1998
    It's like thinking the unthinkable.After all, the farm population is dwindling. It takes too much capital to start. The pay is too low. The working conditions are dusty, smelly and noisy: not the place to raise a family. This is all true, and more, for most farmers.But for farm entrepreneurs, the opportunities for a farm family business have never been greater. The aging farm population is creating cavernous niches begging to be filled by creative visionaries who will go in dynamic new directions. As the industrial agriculture complex crumbles and our culture clambers for clean food, the countryside beckons anew with profitable farming opportunities.While this book can be helpful to all farmers, it targets the wannabes, the folks who actually entertain notions of living, loving and learning on a piece of land. Anyone willing to dance with such a dream should be able to assess its assets and liabilities; its fantasies and realities. "Is it really possible for me?" is the burning question this book addresses.

To The Last Bullet - The Inspiring Story Of A Braveheart - Ashok Kamte


Vinita Kamte - 2009
    The inspiring story of one of the most courageous and promising Indian Police services (IPS) officers comes straight from the heart of his wife, Vinita. It traces the life and career of this fearless officer who showed exemplary valour at his postings-be it at the Naxalite-affected Bhandara district, Satara, Sangali, Solapur or Mumbai. It also brings out the details of his life which would inspire many a youngsters. While the Mumbai terror attacks are largely associated with the Taj Hotel, the Trident Hotel, Nariman House and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) due to wide media coverage, it was lesser-known Cama Hospital incident in which the quickest and the most decisive of action were taken, that too within the first few hours. The only Fidayeen to be ever captured alive Ajmal Kasab, was injured here and three officers-Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte, and Vijay Salaskar and their men made the ultimate sacrifice for this. Vinita Kamte's search for truth of the circumstances that led to the death of her brave husband who sacrificed his life for the nation is heart-rending. Vinita fought a tenacious battle along with her twin sister Revati to get to the truth-for which they also invoked the Right To Information Act (RTI) to understand the chronology of the events of that fateful night. The story answers many questions, but raises many more. The book promises to move your heart as it reveals the dynamic career of this brilliant officer who was also a great human being.About the Author: Vinita Kamte is the wife of IPS officer, Late Mr.Ashok Kamte, who was additional commissioner, East Region Mumbai, when he was killed in action in the Mumbai terror attack of November 26, 2008. Vinita has graduated in Bachelor of Socio-Legal subjects(BSL), Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and Masters in Labour Laws and Labour Welfare from Law College, Pune.Vinita Deshmukh is a senior journalist of 22 years standing. Presently, she is the editor of Intelligent Pune, a pro-active, public journalism weekly, which she launched in 2006. She was Senior Editor of the national daily, The Indian Express, Pune. An award winning journalist, she has won the prestigious Chameli Devi Jain award (2008)and The Statesman Award for Rural Reporting twice(in 1998 & 2005)

Credit Secrets


Scott Hilton - 2017
    In this new tell-all book, you'll discover how one couple used faith, and a few simple strategies, to escape the hole they dug themselves into...finally taking control of their credit & finances... and their lives!

Everything I Need To Know About Love I Learned From Papa Jack


John Gemperle - 2013
    “Love is unpredictable.”Even if you’ve fallen in love a million times, you can’t claim, “Alam ko na ‘yan!” And that’s because “Ang pag-ibig kapag sineryoso, nakakabobo.”It’s really complicated, but you have to remember, “Sa isang relasyon dapat masaya ka, hindi ka stressed, hindi ka pressured.”Because “Love is such a wonderful feeling!”And to those who have not experienced what it is like to be loved, don’t worry, “Lahat ng kaldero, may nakalaang takip.”365 quotes: Read one love quote a day to keep the love troubles away.

The Secret History of the Jesuits


Edmond Paris - 1983
    The author exposes the Vatican's involvement in world politics, intrigues, and the fomenting of wars throughout history. It appears, beyond any doubt, that the Roman Catholic institution is not a Christian church and never was. The poor Roman Catholic people have been betrayed by her and are facing spiritual disaster. Paris shows that Rome is responsible for the two great world wars.

Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye


Steve Turner - 1998
    It perfactly capured the spirit of the times and changed people's perceptions of what soul music could achieve.Behind the songs, however, Gaye's was a troubled life: drug dependency, tortured personal relationships, and ongoing financal and legal difficulties led inexorably to the final fatel meeting with his father. Since his tragic death, his stature has increased rather than diminished. His musical legacy has endured that his popularity and influnce will endure and continue to win new generations of fans."Trouble Man," based on exhausive and exclusive new research, is the definitive story of the turbulent life and violent death of an American icon. Steve Turner probes beyond the undying magic of songs like"I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "What's Going On," and "Sexual Healing" to trace the jagged contours of Gaye's life and examine the man behind the legend. Turner's detailed exploration of Gaye's childhood and his relationship with his family, his religious upbringing, and his meteoric professional success and ultimate descent into drug abuse and financial instability offers a new look at a beloved American musician.

Half Torn Hearts


Novoneel Chakraborty - 2019
    But a few weeks before the engagement, he receives a mysterious voice message from someone from Afsana's past. Curious, Shanay plays the voice message and through those many other such messages, a different world from the past opens up about a beautiful relationship that got broken due to a terrible lie. Half Torn Hearts is a coming-of-age tale of three layered individuals coming in terms with their first loss, which bares the devil that we all possess but are scared of encountering and which eventually becomes the cause of our own ruins.

Ravinder Singh Boxset


Ravinder Singh - 2013
    It is a box set of his books called I Too Had A Love Story, Can Love Happen Twice? and Love Stories That Touched My Heart. I Too Had a Love Story is inspired by the author's own experience with love. He happened to meet a girl on a matrimony website and she died before they were formally engaged. The book questions this kind of love and whether it even qualifies as love.Ravinder Singh: Box Set includes the book Can Love Happen Twice? which is the author's second novel. It is a sequel to I Too Had A Love Story and follows the author's life after becoming a flourishing writer. in the book he and his friends are invited to a radio station for a Valentine's Day show.Finally, Love Stories That Touched My Heart is a collection of short stories about love written by various Indians. The stories were selected from a competition held by Penguin India. The valentine edition of Ravinder Singh was published in 2013 and is available in paperback.

Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains


Rachel Calof - 1995
    It is powerful, shocking, and primitive, with the kind of appeal primary sources often attain without effort.... it is a strong addition to the literature of women's experience on the frontier." --Lillian Schlissel [asking for approval to use quote]In 1894, eighteen-year-old Rachel Bella Kahn travelled from Russia to the United States for an arranged marriage to Abraham Calof, an immigrant homesteader in North Dakota. Rachel Calof's Story combines her memoir of a hard pioneering life on the prairie with scholarly essays that provide historical and cultural background and show her narrative to be both unique and a representative western tale. Her narrative is riveting and candid, laced with humor and irony.The memoir, written by Rachel Bella Calof in 1936, recounts aspects of her childhood and teenage years in a Jewish community, (shtetl) in Russia, but focuses largely on her life between 1894 and 1904, when she and her husband carved out a life as homesteaders. She recalls her horror at the hardships of pioneer life--especially the crowding of many family members into the 12 x 14' dirt-floored shanties that were their first dewllings. "Of all the privations I knew as a homesteader," says Calof, "the lack of privacy was the hardest to bear." Money, food, and fuel were scarce, and during bitter winters, three Calof households--Abraham and Rachel with their growing children, along with his parents and a brother's family--would pool resources and live together (with livestock) in one shanty.Under harsh and primitive conditions, Rachel Bella Calof bore and raised nine children. The family withstood many dangers, including hailstorms that hammered wheat to the ground and flooded their home; droughts that reduced crops to dust; blinding snowstorms of plains winters. Through it all, however, Calof drew on a humor and resolve that is everywhere apparent in her narrative. Always striving to improve her living conditions, she made lamps from dried mud, scraps of rag, and butter; plastered the cracked wood walls of her home with clay; supplemented meagre supplies with prairie forage--wild mushrooms and garlic for a special supper, dry grass for a hot fire to bake bread. Never sentimental, Caolf's memoir is a vital historical and personal record.J. Sanford Rikoon elaborates on the history of Jewish settlement in the rural heartland and the great tide of immigration from the Russian Pale of Settlement and Eastern Europe from 1880-1910. Elizabeth Jameson examines how Calof "writes from the interior spaces of private life, and from that vantage point, reconfigures more familiar versions of the American West." Jameson also discusses how the Calofs adapted Jewish practices to the new contingencies of North Dakota, maintaining customs that represented the core of their Jewish identity, reconstructing their "Jewishness" in new circumstances.

Pound for Pound


F.X. Toole - 2006
    Set in towns where violence is the norm and success stories take on an almost mythic importance, it tells of grandfathers and grandsons—older men for whom life has not been easy and the young men who look to them for guidance —and reveals the transformative power of that relationship. Dan Cooley, an aging but legendary Los Angeles trainer, takes on a troubled young fighter named Chicky Garza, hungry to make a name for himself in the San Antonio boxing circuit, which is rife with crime and corruption. The bond between them grows more powerful than the obstacles they face, ultimately reviving in each man the courage it takes to triumph both in and out of the ring.This masterful, posthumous novel follows Toole's remarkable fiction debut, Rope Burns (recently published in paperback as Million Dollar Baby), which earned comparisons to Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Frank McCourt, and which became an Academy Award-winning film four years after publication. As James Ellroy says in the foreword, “F. X. Toole did not live to visit the set or hug the stars at the premiere. The rumor was true. He had a bum ticker.” It is a tragedy that the world will not hear more from F. X. Toole, but Pound for Pound is a novel that any writer would be proud to leave behind, marking his place in the world of letters.