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Silent in an Evil Time: The Brave War of Edith Cavell
by Jack BattenDutiful nurse, hospital matron, courageous resistance fighter, Edith Cavell was all of these. A British citizen, the forty-eight-year-old Cavell was matron of an institute for nurses in the suburbs of Brussels at the outbreak of World War I. Dedicated to the methods of Florence Nightingale, her intelligence and ferocious sense of duty had transformed the institute into a leading training center.When the Germans captured Belgium in the fall of 1914, an organization was formed to assist British and French soldiers trapped behind German lines. Edith was asked to help and she didn't hesitate. From that moment forward, Edith sheltered escaping soldiers in her hospital, using trickery to keep the suspicious Germans from discovering them. She helped arrange a secret route to neutral Holland and back to England at great personal risk, enabling soldiers of all ranks to slip through German lines. Using the institute as part of an elaborate Allied escape route, Edith Cavell was responsible for one thousand soldiers eventually making their way home.But Cavell's role was discovered and a German military court put her on trial in Brussels, where she was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. On October 12, 1915, she put on her nurse's uniform and met her fate, immediately becoming a worldwide martyr and rallying point for the British in their war against Germany.In this riveting account, author Jack Batten brings an incredibly brave woman and her turbulent times to life.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Seawolves: First Choice
by Daniel E. KellyThey called themselves Seawolves . . . The men of SEALs, PBRs, and SF called them saviors . . . Created in 1967, the HAL-3 helicopter squadron--aka Seawolves--provided quick-reaction close air support to SEALs, PBR River Rats, and Special Forces advisers and their troops. During the five years of the unit's existence, the seven detachments of Seawolves amassed stunning statistics: 78,000 missions, 8,200 enemy kills, 8,700 sampans sunk, and 9,500 structures destroyed. These 200 men collected a total of 17,339 medals. This is the story of one of those men. . . . Taking enemy fire while braced against the rocket pod of a Huey gunship and shooting an M-60 freehand in 110 mph winds was just part of Dan Kelly's job in Vietnam. As a gunner in the all-volunteer Seawolves, he served with distinction until three bullets bought him a trip home. Here is his amazing story of the Seawolves--a harrowing tale of unsung heroism and undaunted courage in combat.
Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair
by Anthony ArthurFew American writers have revealed their private as well as their public selves so fully as Upton Sinclair, and virtually none over such a long lifetime (1878—1968). Sinclair’s writing, even at its most poignant or electrifying, blurred the line between politics and art–and, indeed, his life followed a similar arc. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur weaves the strands of Sinclair’s contentious public career and his often-troubled private life into a compelling personal narrative. An unassuming teetotaler with a fiery streak, called a propagandist by some, the most conservative of revolutionaries by others, Sinclair was such a driving force of history that one could easily mistake his life story for historical fiction. He counted dozens of epochal figures as friends or confidants, including Mark Twain, Jack London, Henry Ford, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Camus, and Carl Jung. Starting with The Jungle in 1906, Sinclair’s fiction and nonfiction helped to inform and mold American opinions about socialism, labor and industry, religion and philosophy, the excesses of the media, American political isolation and pacifism, civil liberties, and mental and physical health. In his later years, Sinclair twice reinvented himself, first as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934, and later, in his sixties and seventies, as a historical novelist. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth, one of eleven novels featuring super-spy Lanny Budd. Outside the literary realm, the ever-restless Sinclair was seemingly everywhere: forming Utopian artists’ colonies, funding and producing Sergei Eisenstein’s film documentaries, and waging consciousness-raising political campaigns. Even when he wasn’t involved in progressive causes or counterculture movements, his name often was invoked by them–an arrangement that frequently embroiled Sinclair in controversy. Sinclair’s passion and optimistic zeal inspired America, but privately he could be a frustrated, petty man who connected better with his readers than with members of his own family. His life with his first wife, Meta, his son David, and various friends and professional acquaintances was a web of conflict and strain. Personally and professionally ambitious, Sinclair engaged in financial speculation, although his wealth-generating schemes often benefited his pet causes–and he lobbied as tirelessly for professional recognition and awards as he did for government reform. As the tenor of his work would suggest, Sinclair was supremely human. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur offers an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclair’s life and the country he helped to transform. Taking readers from the Reconstruction South to the rise of American power to the pinnacle of Hollywood culture to the Civil Rights era, this is historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest. Praise "Lively, unsparing look at the turn-of-the-century muckraker, social critic and novelist who changed the way America did business. . . . Arthur organizes his biography into chapters reflecting Sinclair's various crusading "selves"—e. g. , The Warrior, The Pilgrim of Love, etc. —and uses a deft, light touch. . . An immensely readable biography. "– Kirkus Reviews “. . excellent new biography. ”– USA Today “…a model of good biography. ” –Los Angeles Magazine “Absorbing. ” –The Wall Street Journal "intimate and intellectually astute. &quo
Wenger: The Making of a Legend
by Jasper ReesGranted access to Wengers friends and family, players and rival managers, Jasper Rees has written the untold story behind this private man. He follows Wenger from childhood in Alsace, through his stints as a journeyman player, to his coaching days at Nancy, Monaco, Grampus Eight and Arsenal.
The Best Game You Can Name
by Dave BidiniBidini returns to the game he loves bestIn 2004, Dave Bidini laced on his skates and slid onto the ice of Toronto's McCormick Arena to play defence with the Morningstars in the E! Cup tourney. While thrashing around the ice, swiping at the puck and his opponents, Bidini got to thinking about how others see the game. Afterward, he set off to talk to former professional players about their experiences of hockey. The result is vintage Bidini -- an exuberant, evocative, highly personal, and vividly coloured account of his and his team's exploits, interwoven with the voices of such hockey heroes as Frank Mahovlich, Yvan Cournoyer, John Brophy, Steve Larmer, and Ryan Walter.All aspects of the game are up for grabs in The Best Game You Can Name -- the sweetest goals, the worst fights, the trades, the off-ice perks and the on-ice rivalries, not to mention the rotten pranks. Bidini and the former players offer sometimes startling observations about the fans, coaches, owners, other players, and the huge rush of being on the ice, stick in hand, giving everything you have to the best game you can name.From the Hardcover edition.
Revelations: Diaries of Women
by Mary Jane Moffat Charlotte PainterExcerpts from the private diaries of women, known and unknown, among them Louisa May Alcott, Sophie Tolstoy, George Eliot, Anais Nin.
Odette
by Jerrard Tickell'I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst... I completely believe in the potential nobility of the human spirit.'During some of the darkest days of the Second World War, a young Frenchwoman living as a mother and housewife in England left her ordinary life to become a British agent, working covertly in France to aid the Resistance. Entering a murky and deadly world of espionage and double-dealing, she was betrayed to the Germans, only to endure torture by the Gestapo and the hell of the infamous concentration camp of Ravensbruck. Yet she retained a compassion, grace and spiritedness that mystified her captors; and, living to see the liberation of Europe, she kept, in the direst circumstances, her fundamental trust in goodness. ODETTE tells the moving and inspirational story of a woman, who, in her courage and her ability to hold on to hope, was far from ordinary.
Running with Monsters: A Memoir
by Albo Michael Bob ForrestCelebrity Rehab star and Thelonious Monster frontman Bob Forrest's memoir about his drug-fueled life in the L.A. indie rock scene of the '80s and '90s and his life-changing decision to become a drug counselor who specializes in reaching the unreachable.Life has been one strange trip for Bob Forrest. He started out as a suburban teenage drunkard from the Southern California suburbs and went on to become a member of a hip Hollywood crowd that included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Depp, and River Phoenix. Los Angeles was their playground, and they hung out in such infamous haunts as the Viper Room and the Whisky a Go Go. Always one to push things to their limit, Bob partied the hardest and could usually be found at the center of the drama. Drugs weren't Bob's only passion. He was also a talented musician who commanded the stage as the wild and unpredictable lead singer of Thelonious Monster. They traveled the world, and their future seemed bright and wide open. But Bob's demons grew stronger as he achieved more success and he sank deeper into his chemical dependency, which included alcohol, crack, and heroin habits. No matter how many times he went to rehab, sobriety just wouldn't stick for him. Soon he saw his once-promising music career slip away entirely. Eventually Bob found a way to defeat his addiction, and once he did, he saw the opportunity to help other hopeless cases by becoming a certified drug counselor. He's helped addicts from all walks of life, often employing methods that are very much at odds with the traditional rehab approach. Running with Monsters is an electrifying chronicle of the LA rock scene of the 1980s and '90s, the story of a man who survived and triumphed over his demons, and a controversial perspective on the rehab industry and what it really takes to beat addiction. Bob tells his story with unflinching honesty and hard-won perspective, making this a reading experience that shocks, entertains, and ultimately inspires.From the Hardcover edition.
The Long Goodbye: Memories Of My Father
by Patti DavisRonald Reagan's daughter writes with a moving openness about losing her father to Alzheimer's disease. The simplicity with which she reveals the intensity, the rush, the flow of her feelings encompasses all the surprises and complexities that ambush us when death gradually, unstoppably invades life.In The Long Goodbye, Patti Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer's disease, saying goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that steals what is most precious-a person's memory. "Alzheimer's," she writes, "snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes."She writes of needing to be reunited at forty-two with her mother ("she had wept as much as I over our long, embittered war"), of regaining what they had spent decades demolishing; a truce was necessary to bring together a splintered family, a few weeks before her father released his letter telling the country and the world of his illness . . .The author delves into her memories to touch her father again, to hear his voice, to keep alive the years she had with him.She writes as if past and present were coming together, of her memories as a child, holding her father's hand, and as a young woman whose hand is being given away in marriage by her father . . . of her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, of the moment when he let her go and she went off on her own . . . of his teaching her the difference between a hawk and a buzzard . . . of the family summer vacations at a rented beach house-each of them tan, her father looking like the athlete he was, with a swimmer's broad shoulders and lean torso. . . . She writes of how her father never resisted solitude, in fact was born for it, of that strange reserve that made people reach for him. . . . She recalls him sitting at his desk, writing, staring out the window . . . and she writes about the toll of the disease itself, the look in her father's eyes, and her efforts to reel him back to her. Moving . . . honest . . . an illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a woman and her father.From the Hardcover edition.
The Bear's Embrace: A Story of Survival
by Patricia Van TighemOn a chilly autumn morning in 1983, during a relaxing escape to the Canadian Rockies, Patricia Van Tighem and her husband were attacked by a grizzly bear. Although they survived, their ordeal was just beginning. For years Van Tighem endured numerous surgeries as doctors attempted to reconstruct her face and ease her pain. The nightmares that haunted her carried their own psychological burden. In many ways she had to redefine her sense of who she was. Yet she was resolved to recover– as a survivor, a wife and a mother. Van Tighem’s tale is astonishing and beautifully written. Showing a resilience that has overcome even the most traumatic of events, The Bear’s Embrace is a truly inspiring testament to the power of the human spirit.
The House on Childress Street: A Memoir
by Kenji JasperIn this vivid and piercing memoir of his grandfather, noted novelist Kenji Jasper captures the story of his family and sheds a keen light on the urban and rural experiences of Black America. Author Kenji Jasper only knew his maternal grandfather, Jesse Langley Sr. , as a quiet man who smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much liquor and quoted the Bible like it was the only book he'd ever laid eyes on. Jesse's children rarely hugged him, and his nearly sixty years of marriage to Sally seemed cold and complicated. But when the man who declared himself "The Lone Ranger" passed away in late 2002, Kenji began a long and life-changing journey to learn more about the grandfather he barely knew. From the streets of his native Washington, D. C. , to rural Virginia, North Carolina, and his home in Brooklyn, Jasper's journey to find the truth leads him through three generations of stories, through tales of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, addiction and redemption. The House on Childress Street examines life, love, and survival through the eyes of one little family on one little block that somehow manages to speak for us all. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Prairie People: A Celebration of My Homeland
by Robert CollinsAn intimate look at the people of the prairies in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta–who they are, how they live, what makes them a breed apart The prairies are Robert Collins’s spiritual home. He was born and raised on a Saskatchewan farm, but spent most of his adult life living elsewhere. Now he returns to his homeland to pay homage to the special character of the people who live in this unique region of Canada. Prairie Peopleis an absorbing combination of stories, anecdotes, and touches of history told in the voices of ordinary people and linked by the author’s own narrative and memories. It explores the characteristics that define these people to themselves and to the rest of Canada. Prairie people are clearly not all alike: city and town dwellers differ from farmers, farmers from ranchers, ranchers and cowboys from oilmen. But many of the stereotypes are true. They are defiantly pessimistic. They believe they are tougher than everybody else. They are uncommonly independent and self-reliant. In this sympathetic yet realistic portrait, Collins looks at where the original settlers of the prairies came from. He describes how nature shaped them, and how hard work through good times and bad toughened them. He finds evidence of their legendary friendliness and neighbourliness. And he seeks to understand their deep attachment either to the left and right in politics and their unifying distrust of “Central Canada. ” From the Hardcover edition.
Cloughie: Walking on Water
by Brian CloughBrian Clough, arguably Britain's greatest ever football manager, died in September 2004 at the age of 69. His passing was marked by a minute's silence at both the Derby County and Nottingham Forest grounds and provoked a wave of tributes from across the sporting spectrum. A memorial service due to be held at Derby Cathedral had to be moved to Pride Park to accommodate the fans' demand for tickets. This overwhelming affection and respect was fully deserved for the man who was often described as being controversial, outspoken and opinionated. His achievements in football speak for themselves: he took two lowly Midlands sides to the very top, winning two consecutive European Cups, with unfashionable Nottingham Forest, in a feat that will surely never be matched by a club of similar stature.This special edition contains two new chapters, written shortly before he died, which offer his candid and entertaining views on club directors and chairmen and on Newcastle's treatment of Sir Bobby Robson, as well as his scathing analysis of England's recent performances. Cloughie also talks honestly about his battles with alcohol and the liver transplant that gave him 21 months of health and happiness.
Up With The Lark: My Life On the Land
by Joan Bomford'An evocative portrait of a forgotten period of Britain's farming history... is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily TelegraphJoan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.
The Many Lives of Miss K: Toto Koopman - Model, Muse, Spy
by Jean-Noel Liaut Denise Raab JacobsA life of glamour and tragedy, set against the watershed cultural and political movements of twentieth-century Europe. "Toto" Koopman (1908-1991) is a new addition to the set of iconoclastic women whose biographies intrigue and inspire modern-day readers. Like her contemporaries Lee Miller or Vita Sackville-West, Toto lived with an independent spirit more typical of the men of her generation, moving in the worlds of fashion, society, art, and politics with an insouciant ease that would stir both admiration and envy even today. Sphinxlike and tantalizing, Toto conducted her life as a game, driven by audacity and style. Jean-Noël Liaut chases his enigmatic subject through the many roles and lives she inhabited, both happy and tragic. Though her beauty, charisma, and taste for the extraordinary made her an exuberant fixture of Paris fashion and café society, her intelligence and steely sense of self drove her toward bigger things, culminating in espionage during WWII, for which she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Ravensbruck. After the horrors of the camp, she found solace in Erica Brausen, the German art dealer who launched the career of Francis Bacon, and the two women lived out their lives together surrounded by cultural luminaries like Edmonde Charles-Roux and Luchino Visconti. But even in her later decades, Toto remained impossible for anyone to possess. The Many Lives of Miss K explores the allure of a freethinking and courageous woman who, fiercely protective of her independence, was sought after by so many but ultimately known by very few.
My Life In His Paws: The Story of Ted and How He Saved Me
by Wendy HillingMy Life in His Paws is the story of the amazing dog who gave back someone's freedom and confidence. Wendy Hilling has a rare skin condition which means her skin is very delicate. Every moment is difficult and causes pain. It affects the body inside and out: her throat is very narrow and she can stop breathing at any time. But eight years ago Wendy's life changed forever. She met Ted, the Golden Retriever, and he became her full-time carer. He has saved her life more times than she can remember, always watching and listening, and Wendy is now entirely reliant on him. This is the story of Wendy and her incredible bravery living with a disability and battling against the odds. It's also the story of Ted, the extraordinary assistance dog, and the unique relationship between a human and animal and the extraordinary things animals are capable of.
Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq
by Christina AsquithCaught up in a terrifying war, facing choices of life and death, two Iraqi sisters take us into the hidden world of women's lives under U.S. occupation. Through their powerful story of love and betrayal, interwoven with the stories of a Palestinian American women's rights activist and a U.S. soldier, journalist Christina Asquith explores one of the great untold sagas of the Iraq war: the attempt to bring women's rights to Iraq, and the consequences for all those involved.On the heels of the invasion, twenty-two-year-old Zia accepts a job inside the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, trusting that democracy will shield her burgeoning romance with an American contractor from the disapproval of her fellow Iraqis. But as resistance to the U.S. occupation intensifies, Zia and her sister, Nunu, a university student, are targeted by Islamic insurgents and find themselves trapped between their hopes for a new country and the violent reality of a misguided war.Asquith sets their struggle against the broader U.S. efforts to bring women's rights to Iraq, weaving the sisters' story with those of Manal, a Palestinian American women's rights activist, and Heather, a U.S. army reservist, who work together to found Iraq's first women's center. After one of their female colleagues is gunned down on a highway, Manal and Heather must decide whether they can keep fighting for Iraqi women if it means risking their own lives.In Sisters in War, Christina Asquith introduces the reader to four women who dare to stand up for their rights in the most desperate circumstances. With compassion and grace, she vividly reveals the plight of women living and serving in Iraq and offers us a vision of how women's rights and Islam might be reconciled.
The Rise of Abraham Cahan (Jewish Encounters Series)
by Seth LipskyPart of the Jewish Encounters seriesThe first general-interest biography of the legendary editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, the newspaper of Yiddish-speaking immigrants that inspired, educated, and entertained millions of readers; helped redefine journalism during its golden age; and transformed American culture. Already a noted journalist writing for both English-language and Yiddish newspapers, Abraham Cahan founded the Yiddish daily in New York City in 1897. Over the next fifty years he turned it into a national newspaper that changed American politics and earned him the adulation of millions of Jewish immigrants and the friendship of the greatest newspapermen of his day, from Lincoln Steffens to H. L. Mencken. Cahan did more than cover the news. He led revolutionary reforms--spreading social democracy, organizing labor unions, battling communism, and assimilating immigrant Jews into American society, most notably via his groundbreaking advice column, A Bintel Brief. Cahan was also a celebrated novelist whose works are read and studied to this day as brilliant examples of fiction that turned the immigrant narrative into an art form. Acclaimed journalist Seth Lipsky gives us the fascinating story of a man of profound contradictions: an avowed socialist who wrote fiction with transcendent sympathy for a wealthy manufacturer, an internationalist who turned against the anti-Zionism of the left, an assimilationist whose final battle was against religious apostasy. Lipsky's Cahan is a prism through which to understand the paradoxes and transformations of the American Jewish experience. A towering newspaperman in the manner of Horace Greeley and Joseph Pulitzer, Abraham Cahan revolutionized our idea of what newspapers could accomplish.(With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)nd Nextbook Press.(With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
Tom Finney Autobiography
by Tom FinneyTom Finney personifies a vanished golden era of football, playing his entire career under the maximum wage and never wavering in his loyalty to Preston North End. A true gentleman of the game, who is still justifiably idolised more than 40 years since he retired from football, Finney recalls the highs and lows of his marvellous career with a warmth and affection that will appeal to all who read his story. But Finney's life has been about much more than football, and he writes movingly about his current role as full-time carer to his beloved wife, Elsie.
Pour Me: A Life
by Adrian GillSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE'An intense, succulent read that's intermittently dazzling' THE TIMES'Chilling, exquisitely moving' DAILY TELEGRAPH'A superb memoir - and one of the best books on addiction I have ever read' EVENING STANDARDA. A. Gill's memoir begins in the dark of a dormitory with six strangers. He is an alcoholic, dying in the last-chance saloon. He tells the truth - as far as he can remember it - about drinking and about what it is like to be drunk. He recalls the lost days, lost friends, failed marriages ... But there was also an 'optimum inebriation, a time when it was all golden'.Sobriety regained, there are painterly descriptions of people and places, unforgettable musings about childhood and family, art and religion; and most movingly, the connections between his cooking, dyslexia and his missing brother. Full of raw and unvarnished truths, exquisitely written throughout, POUR ME is about lost time and self-discovery. Lacerating, unflinching, uplifting, it is a classic about drunken abandon.
The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals
by Lauren SlaterA stunning new book about the role of animals in our lives, by a popular and acclaimed writer From the time she is nine years old, biking to the farmland outside her suburban home, where she discovers a disquieting world of sleeping cows and a "Private Way" full of the wondrous and creepy creatures of the wild--spiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and foxes--Lauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from her troubled life. As she matures, her attraction to animals strengthens and grows more complex and compelling even as her family is falling to pieces around her. Slater spends a summer at horse camp, where she witnesses the alternating horrific and loving behavior of her instructor toward the animals in her charge and comes to question the bond that so often develops between females and their equines. Slater's questions follow her to a foster family, her own parents no longer able to care for her. A pet raccoon, rescued from a hole in the wall, teaches her how to feel at home away from home. The two Shiba Inu puppies Slater adopts years later, against her husband's will, grow increasingly important to her as she ages and her family begins to grow. Slater's husband is a born skeptic and possesses a sternly scientific view of animals as unconscious, primitive creatures, one who insists "that an animal's worth is roughly equivalent to its edibility." As one of her dogs, Lila, goes blind and the medical bills and monthly expenses begin to pour in, he calculates the financial burden of their canine family member and finds that Lila has cost them about $60,000, not to mention the approximately 400 pounds of feces she has deposited in their yard. But when Benjamin begins to suffer from chronic pain, Lauren is convinced it is Lila's resilience and the dog's quick adaptation to her blindness that draws her husband out of his own misery and motivates him to try to adjust to his situation. Ben never becomes a true believer or a die-hard animal lover, but his story and the stories Lauren tells of her own bond with animals convince her that our connections with the furry, the four-legged, the exoskeleton-ed, or the winged may be just as priceless as our human relationships. The $60,000 Dog is Lauren Slater's intimate manifesto on the unique, invaluable, and often essential contributions animals make to our lives. As a psychologist, a reporter, an amateur naturalist, and above all an enormously gifted writer, she draws us into the stories of her passion for animals that are so much more than pets. She describes her intense love for the animals in her life without apology and argues, finally, that the works of Darwin and other evolutionary biologists prove that, when it comes to worth, animals are equal, and in some senses even superior, to human beings.From the Hardcover edition.
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane
by Stephen Crane Thomas A. Gullason790 pages - For the first time in one volume all 112 short stories and sketches, including some never before published in book form, of the famous American author of The Red Badge of Courage.
One Million Lovely Letters: When life is looking hopeless, one inspirational letter can change your life forever
by Jodi Ann BickleyOne Million Lovely Letters is one woman's inspirational journey to recovery. A witty and uplifting testament to the power of words to heal the heart and mind. As featured on 'Jodi's Lovely Letters', part of the popular BBC One series 'Our Lives'. In the summer of 2011, aged only 22, Jodi Ann Bickley contracted a serious brain infection that would change her life forever. Jodi had been performing at Camp Bestival on the Isle of Wight. Returning with pockets full of glitter, she thought the happy memories would last forever. A week later, writhing in pain on the doctor's surgery floor, Jodi found out that she had been bitten by a tick and contracted a serious brain infection.Learning to write and walk again was just the start of the battle. In the months that followed Jodi struggled with the ups and downs of her health and the impact it had on her loved ones. Some days Jodi found herself wondering whether she could go on. She had two choices: either to give up now or do something meaningful with the time she had been given. Jodi chose the latter. This is the story how she turned her life around.'An extraordinary woman.' Stephen Fry'There is so much emotion in these pages that we challenge you not to cry.' Cosmopolitan'It's a fantastic book, from a fantastic wordsmith, and I'm so proud of how much Jodi has achieved since I've known her. Proper chuffed. Ed x' Ed Sheeran www.onemillionlovelyletters.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXxglvEMUQc
The Immigrant Suite: Hey Xenophobe, Who You Calling a Foreigner?
by Hattie GossettWriting from the upper west side of Manhattan, where Harlem intersects with waves of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Korea, Cambodia, Ivory Coast, India, Native America, and from all over the globe, Hattie Gossett vividly invokes her neighborhood experience. With wit and candor, she questions why so many people are forced from their home countries, only to be despised as interlopers in the United States; why older immigrants see younger ones as the enemy; who gets paid a living wage, who gentrifies their neighborhood, and who sends their money back home. From the grocery store to the cleaners to the tenement walk-up and everywhere in between, Gossett captures the voices overheard and imagined in this breathless immigrant suite.
Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large
by Kimberly BrittinghamKim Brittingham struggled for years with her weight and body image before she learned how to love her self unconditionally, find her confidence, and fully enjoy her life. In this unflinching, humorous, and uplifting memoir, she openly explores her complex relationships with food and dieting, sex and dating, and exercise and health, ultimately inspiring every woman to live life to the absolute fullest, no matter what your jean size.From the Trade Paperback edition.