Book picks similar to
I Choose: Subtlety in Cults by Isabelle Renaud
psychology
religion
cults
not-found
Will Yoga Meditation Really Change My Life?: Personal Stories from 25 of North America's Leading Teachers; A Kripalu Book
Stephen Cope - 2003
The result is a unique collection of stories offering insight and inspiration for everyone seeking a more satisfying life.
Small Miracles Ii
Yitta Halberstam - 1998
Each Small Miracles book is a collection of more than sixty heartwarming stories that recall remarkable coincidences that have changed people's ordinary lives.
Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult
Faith Jones - 2021
Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, she prayed for hours every day and read letters of prophecy written by her grandfather, the founder of the Children of God. Tens of thousands of members strong, the cult followers looked to Faith’s grandfather as their guiding light. As such, Faith was celebrated as special and then punished doubly to remind her that she was not.Over decades, the Children of God grew into an international organization that became notorious for its alarming sex practices and allegations of abuse and exploitation. But with indomitable grit, Faith survived, creating a world of her own—pilfering books and teaching herself high school curriculum. Finally, at age twenty-three, thirsting for knowledge and freedom, she broke away, leaving behind everything she knew to forge her own path in America.A complicated family story mixed with a hauntingly intimate coming-of-age narrative, Faith Jones’ extraordinary memoir reflects our societal norms of oppression and abuse while providing a unique lens to explore spiritual manipulation and our rights in our bodies. Honest, eye-opening, uplifting, and intensely affecting, Sex Cult Nun brings to life a hidden world that’s hypnotically alien yet unexpectedly relatable.
After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father
Natascha McElhone - 2010
Presents a story of a magical love affair and all-consuming grief, of being a mother alone and trying to live for the future.
Steve Jobs Graduation Speech
Steve Jobs - 2011
Here, word for word is that amazing speech to inspire you to find what it is that you "Love".
The Church of 80% Sincerity
David Roche - 2008
Born with a severe facial deformity, David's life has been anything but easy. Still, over time, he's learned to accept his gifts as well as his flaws, and to see that, sometimes, they are one and the same. In this compelling book, he shares his hard-earned lessons, providing an irresistible and unforgettable glimpse of his (and everyone's) inner beauty and offering profound encouragement in dealing with whatever life brings.
Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler 1431-1476
Radu R. Florescu - 1973
Check-raising the Devil
Mike Matusow - 2009
2. Fascinating Memoir: This book has it all: high stakes gambling, drugs, jail, psychotic episodes and debilitating depression and mental illness, plus the depths of despair and heights of victory. 3. Very High Profile: Mike Matusow is one of the most recognizable and followed players in poker today. Yahoo's online search engine identifies over 1.1 million websites that provide content about Mike Matusow. His weekly online video show "The Mouthpiece" at CardPlayer.com, averages over 2,000 viewers per day. 4. Super Popular Subject: Poker is the third most watched sport on cable television, behind auto racing and football. 5. Secondary Market Possibilities: The National Institute of Mental Health estimates there are 5.7 million people in the U.S. that have bipolar disorder and the CDC estimates 1.6 million elementary school children have been diagnosed ADHD.Get Ready for a Wild Ride… Hang on tight as Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, poker player extraordinaire, takes you with him on a breathtaking, true-life roller coaster ride from his humble beginnings in a trailer park to a rock and roll lifestyle full of hot women, sex, wild drug-filled parties and million-dollar wins and losses. Yet behind the glamour and glory of his high-stakes poker career lurked the flip side: a person torn between two debilitating mental illnesses?—?bipolar disorder and ADHD. To dig himself out of depression and suicidal despair, Matusow turned to dangerous street drugs to self-medicate a problem he didn’t understand, and spiraled deeper into the darker world of addiction, police narcotic stings, and jail time. In this revealing and tumultuous autobiography, the combustible Matusow holds nothing back. You’ll get a mouthful of the man behind the infamous Matusow Meltdowns seen on national TV. Riveting, exhilarating, sexy, sometimes shocking and always fascinating, this voyeur’s look into the world of high-stakes poker, mental illness, and ultimately, Matusow’s inspiring redemption, will keep you glued to your seat until the very last page!
We Don't Die: A Skeptic's Discovery of Life After Death
Sandra Champlain - 2012
The goal of “We Don’t Die” is to have people believe that their deceased loved ones are still near them, help them navigate through the grieving process and educate that we are ‘eternal souls having a human experience. It is unique because it teaches people about the grieving process, keeping relationships whole, gives awe inspiring exercises that the reader experiences that we must be ‘more than our bodies.’ It gets readers in touch with the purpose of their lives and gets them on the path to producing results. Readers will no longer fear death, their pain of losing someone will be lessened, they will have hope, faith, and powerful access to live a successful life.
When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening
Jan Frazier - 2007
She was "flooded with a causeless joy that has never left me." In this book the commonplace belief that enlightenment is only for saints comes apart at the seams. Anyone can be enlightened, and all we need to do is ask.This rare and beautiful account puts Jan Frazier solidly in the tradition of enlightened teachers from J. Krishnamurti to Byron Katie.Guns and money aren't going to buy peace of mind. Giving up fear is.
The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in a Polygamous Mormon Sect
Daphne Bramham - 2008
These zealous believers impose severe and often violent restrictions on women, deprive children of education and opt instead to school them in the tenets of their faith, defy the law and move freely and secretly over international borders. They punish dissent with violence and even death. No, this sect is not the Taliban, but North America's fundamentalist Mormons.From its very beginning, the Mormon church, an offshoot of Christianity, found itself on the margins of both convention and the law. In addition to their unorthodox interpretation of the more mainstream Christian denominations, the Mormons embraced one tenet in particular that others found hard to accept: the idea that only by engaging in polygamous marriage could a man enter the highest realms of the kingdom of heaven.In 1890, under immense pressure from the federal government in the United States, the Mormons agreed to renounce polygamy in return for the right to the status of statehood in Utah, where they had settled. Since then, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has officially taken the position that plural marriage is unlawful and is not to be pursued.However, colonies of renegade fundamentalist Mormons have continued to practise polygamy and thrive to this day in Canada and the United States, despite the fact that they are flouting the law. In the U.S., the "prophet" Warren Jeffs made headlines when, having been placed on the list of America's Most Wanted, he was apprehended in 2006 and was convicted as an accomplice to rape. While his acolytes and subjects lived in poverty, Jeffs was driving around in a luxury SUV when state troopers pulled him over.The story is much the same here in Canada, where the "bishop" of a fundamentalist sect in Bountiful, B.C., Winston Blackmore, heads up a multi-million dollar group of companies and flies on private jets while his supporters and employees live hard-scrabble lives and tithe their meager earnings to the church.Daphne Bramham explores the history and ideas of this surprisingly resilient and insular society, asking the questions that surround its continued existence and telling the stories of the men and women whose lives are so entwined with it — both the leaders and the victims.How can it be that a group can live in open defiance of the law for over 100 years, when its leaders appear on the Phil Donohue Show and CNN and boast of their practices, which include marriage to girls well below the legal age of consent? How do their schools receive government funding when they teach racism and indoctrinate pupils into the belief that women are naturally subordinate to men? How do fundamentalist Mormon businesses escape prosecution for their regular violations of child labour laws? How does the sect manage to straddle the Canada—U.S. border so effortlessly, with American girls living as plural wives in Canada without actually immigrating and Canadian girls shipped off to the U.S. the same way?These are pointed questions, and a great deal depends on the answers. By delving into the life stories of the men and women who make up the ranks of the fundamentalist Mormons — or "Saints" as they call themselves — Bramham makes it clear that the arguments swirling around the legality of what goes on in Bountiful are anything but abstract. She tells the stories of young girls forced into "marriages" with men old enough to be their grandfathers and installed in households more like motels than homes, with each wife quartered separately and rigorously scheduled to have regular intercourse with her husband. She takes us into the life of a young girl forced into a "marriage" with such complex genealogical implications that she became her own step-grandmother. And it is not just the girls who suffer under the religious regime of the fundamentalist patriarchs. As Bramham shows, simple math is enough to tell you that boys must suffer as well. And they do. Because the Saints believe they are compelled to marry more than one wife, it is inevitable that while some men — invariably the most powerful — have more than one wife (or indeed dozens), others are doomed to have none. These young men work doggedly for the businesses run by their leaders, at a fraction of the wage they should be earning, in the hope of one day being rewarded with a bride and, therefore, a ticket to heaven. But there will never be enough girls, and so some of the boys — those less compliant — are cast off and become "Lost Boys," uneducated and unprepared for the outside world, but cut off all the same from the only community they have ever known.But for all the power wielded by the fundamentalist Mormon leaders, they are far from invincible. The Secret Lives of Saints also tells the stories of the men and women who have escaped the sect and challenged the Saints. Although, as Bramham argues forcefully, the government has often been asleep at the wheel when it comes to enforcing the law in the fundamentalist communes, the survivors and the fighters do have the law on their side and Bramham give a detailed and dramatic account of the prosecutors and police crusading to rein in the excesses of the Saints.Finally, Bramham makes it clear that questions of justice and freedom, of religious and cultural difference, don't only apply to marginal sects like the Saints, but to every group. Balancing what is good for the individual with what is good for the group, or weighing the entitlement of any group against the laws and priorities of the whole country, is not easy. Our constitution allows us to pursue faith as we choose, and that is not a right anyone would challenge lightly. And yet, as the fundamentalist Mormons show, this freedom can become a source of oppression. In the end The Secret Lives of Saints is about what is required for any tolerant society.
A Goomba's Guide to Life
Steven R. Schirripa - 2002
Schirripa, The Sopranos’ own Bobby Bacala, exposes the inner mysteries of this unique Italian-American hybrid in A Goomba’s Guide to Life so that anyone can walk, talk, and live like a guy “from the neighborhood.”Über-goomba Steve Schirripa shows how being a goomba made him what he is today, offering lessons learned on his own journey from Bensonhurst to Vegas, and to his current gig as Bobby Bacala on one of TV’s most popular shows. Along the way, he shares secrets that will help you get in touch with your own inner goomba. You’ll learn what music to enjoy (Sinatra, yes; Snoop Dogg, no), what movies to watch (Raging Bull, yes; Titanic, never), which sports to follow (baseball is good; golf and tennis, fuhgeddaboudit), and even tips on goomba etiquette. Ever wonder how a real goomba gets the best seat in the house? (Hint: It involves tipping, jewelry, and intimidation.) Schirripa even includes goomba do’s and don’ts (never, ever criticize a goomba’s mother or her gravy; always wear more jewelry than you think you need).With knockout photographs of Schirripa and his compares, and insider information on how to think goomba, speak goomba, cook and eat goomba, and even how to behave at goomba weddings and funerals, A Goomba’s Guide to Life will show any wiseguy wannabe how to sing like a Soprano.