Together, they chronicle Sean’s young life and the effects of autism on him and his family. As a youngster, Sean was confrontational, uncontrollable, “isolated and desperately unhappy.” Baffled about how to interact with others, he felt “like an alien from outer space.” Then, at seventeen, Sean experienced a breakthrough that began his release from autism. Today he’s a public speaker, college student, and reporter—and close to his family. You absolutely must read this book.

    It's the third of November, and it's Friday, and it's his twenty-first birthday. When Timothy walks to his usual street corner to see his favourite special bus, he meets Charlie. Charlie is a builder who is desperate for Timothy's help because Timothy is very tall, six feet six inches. Timothy has never had a job before - or no work that he's kept for more than a day. But when Timothy and Charlie have to collect money from a local thug, things don't exactly go according to plan...Over the course of one day, Timothy's life will change for ever.

    But he was alive and trapped inside his own body for ten years.In January 1988 Martin Pistorius, aged twelve, fell inexplicably sick. First he lost his voice and stopped eating. Then he slept constantly and shunned human contact. Doctors were mystified. Within eighteen months he was mute and wheelchair-bound. Martin's parents were told an unknown degenerative disease left him with the mind of a baby and less than two years to live.Martin was moved to care centers for severely disabled children. The stress and heartache shook his parents’ marriage and their family to the core. Their boy was gone. Or so they thought.Ghost Boy is the heart-wrenching story of one boy’s return to life through the power of love and faith. In these pages, readers see a parent’s resilience, the consequences of misdiagnosis, abuse at the hands of cruel caretakers, and the unthinkable duration of Martin’s mental alertness betrayed by his lifeless body.We also see a life reclaimed—a business created, a new love kindled—all from a wheelchair. Martin's emergence from his own darkness invites us to celebrate our own lives and fight for a better life for others.

    He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Literature or Life, a bestseller in France, is a deeply personal account not only of Semprun's time at Buchenwald, but also of the years before and after, of his painful attempts to write this book...created out of obsessions that returned him again and again like themes in a nightmarish rhapsody.His long reverie on life-as-death, now translated with the mesmerizing power of fiction. It is a profound contribution to Holocaust literature.? Semprun was awarded the Jerusalem prize at the 1997 Jerusalem International Book Fair. ? Semprun's first novel, The Long Voyage, won Europe's prestigious Formentor Prize.

    It reveals her truamatic childhood and institutionalization, followed by her escape to the quiet cul-de-sac where her psychoanalysist lived. There, for many years, she made the journey towards recovery through Freudian analysis.

    Timothy Gallwey teams up with two esteemed physicians to offer a unique and empowering guide to mental health in today's volatile world. The Inner Game of Stress applies the trusted principles of Gallwey's wildly popular Inner Game series, which have helped athletes the world over, to the management of everyday stress-personal, professional, financial, physical-and shows us how to access our inner resources to maintain stability and achieve success.Stress attacks every aspect of our well-being. Gallwey explains how negative self-talk undermines us, making us believe that pressure is inevitable and that other people's expectations are paramount-which leaves us feeling helpless and unhappy. But as Gallwey shows, we have the means to build a shield against stress with our abilities to take childlike pleasure in learning new skills, to properly and healthily rest and relax, and to trust in our own good judgment. With his trademark mix of case histories and interactive worksheets, Gallwey helps us to tap into these inner strengths, giving us these invaluable tools:- the STOP technique: Learn how to Step back, Think, Organize, and Proceed with a more conscious choice process, even in the most chaotic circumstances.- the Attitude tool: If you're feeling resentment, try gratitude. - the Magic Pen: Develop the ability to open up your intuition and wisdom.- the Transpose exercise: Imagine what the other person thinks, feels, wants-and develop empathy, kindness, and better relationship skills.- the PLE triangle: Use your goals for Performance, Learning, and Experience to redefine success and enhance enjoyment.Now you don't have to be a champion athlete-or an athlete at all-to keep your life in perspective and your performance at its peak. A one-of-a kind guide, The Inner Game of Stress allows anyone to get in the game and win.

    They are both married with children, and for the most part, they are happy. On almost the same day, Anna, a psychiatrist, crosses paths with Yves, a writer, while Louise, a lawyer, meets Anna's analyst, Thomas. Love at first sight is still possible for those into their forties and long-married. But when you have already mapped out a life path, a passionate affair can come at a high price. For our four characters, their lives are unexpectedly turned upside down by the deliciously inconvenient arrival of love. For Anna, meeting Yves has brought a flurry of excitement to her life and made her question her values, her reliable husband, and her responsibilities to her children. For Louise, a successful career woman in a stable and comfortable marriage, her routine is uprooted by the youthful passion she feels for Thomas. Thought-provoking, sophisticated, and, above all, amusing, Enough About Love captures the euphoria of desire through tender and unflinching portraits of husbands, wives, and lovers.

    Ellis Island. Arriving off one of the many transatlantic freighters are Cetta Luminita and her illegitimate baby boy Natale, fleeing the poverty and violence of their Southern Italian hometown. Having sacrificed everything, and endured every possible shame, Cetta has but one wish: that her baby should be an American, and grow up with the freedom to decide his own destiny. As they alight, US Immigration officials give Natale a new name: Christmas. Growing up in the Lower East Side of New York with his mother, who works as a prostitute, Christmas is determined to be a success, whether a decent person or a gangster. The city is ruled by gangs from each community, Italian, Jewish and Irish, and survival is dependent on ruthlessness and strength. But Christmas has a vivid imagination, and an ability to tell stories that people want to believe...and thus is born his imaginary gang, the Diamond Dogs, which earns him respect within the ghetto. All this changes the day he saves the life of a rich Jewish girl Ruth, and despite their different backgrounds, he falls hopelessly in love with her. When circumstance tears them apart, Christmas vows that he will find her, by any means possible. A sweeping saga of love and hate set in the Roaring Twenties, The Boy Who Granted Dreams is the story of Christmas and Ruth; the story of the dawn of radio, Broadway and Hollywood; and above all, a story about believing in the power of dreams.

    Sam Pivnik survived the two ghettoes set up in his home town of Bedzin and six months working on the processing ramp at Auschwitz, where prisoners were either taken away for entry to the camp or gassing.After this harrowing experience, he was sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. He could have died on the 'Death March' that took him west as the Third Reich collapsed, and he managed to swim to safety when the Royal Air Force mistakenly sank the prison ship Cap Arcona in 1945.On 14 occasions he should have been killed, yet now in his 80s, Sam tells the story of his life, a tale of survival against the most extraordinary odds.

    Losing her beloved husband after only seven years of marriage, heartbroken widow Nathalie steels herself against emotional attachments until she unexpectedly falls in for her offbeat, guileless co-worker, Markus, who represents the opposite of everything.

    Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

    When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu. Shortly after the girls returned to the US for boarding school, Jessie first started to exhibit symptoms of severe bipolar disorder (she would later learn that this ran in the family, a well-kept secret). Jessie embarked on a series of destructive marriages as the condition worsened. Glenn was always by her side throughout. Jessie's mental illness was passed on to her son, Calen. It wasn't until Calen entered McLean's psychiatric hospital that Jessie herself was diagnosed. Fifteen years and twelve years of sobriety later, Jessie is a stable and productive member of society. Glenn continues to be the major support in Jessie's life.In Resilience, the sisters share their story of triumphing over Jessie's illness. The book is written in Jessie's voice with running commentary and an epilogue written by Glenn.

    While Jeremy can’t remember the previous year, he savors the miracle of waking up alongside the woman he loves.The next time he wakes, another year has passed and he finds himself a spectator of his own life. Victoria now carries his child, but the man alongside her is a disturbingly different person—a cruel, egotistical, seemingly unknowable Jeremy. Is it amnesia? Insanity? Or has the God Jeremy defied with his selfish act now cursed him?This strange and beautiful novel tells the tale of a man lost between life and death, but connected by the love—as friend, lover, son, and father—given and taken over the course of a lifetime, a love that simply won’t let go.

    Exiting Nirvana details Clara Claiborne Park's continuing efforts to have her daughter Jessy 'exit Nirvana,' develop as an artist, and connect with our world.

    It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on.After fleeing his parents and dropping out of high school, his savant-like ability to visualize electronic circuits landed him a gig with KISS, for whom he created their legendary fire-breathing guitars. Later, he drifted into a “real” job, as an engineer for a major toy company. But the higher Robison rose in the company, the more he had to pretend to be “normal” and do what he simply couldn’t: communicate. It wasn’t worth the paycheck.It was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told him he had the form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way Robison saw himself—and the world.Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger’s at a time when the diagnosis simply didn’t exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes you inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as “defective,” who could not avail himself of KISS’s endless supply of groupies, and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people’s given names (he calls his wife “Unit Two”). He also provides a fascinating reverse angle on the younger brother he left at the mercy of their nutty parents—the boy who would later change his name to Augusten Burroughs and write the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors.Ultimately, this is the story of Robison’s journey from his world into ours, and his new life as a husband, father, and successful small business owner—repairing his beloved high-end automobiles. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien, yet always deeply human.