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The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
by Helen BenedictMore American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine. " InThe Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L. A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D. C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers--including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful,The Lonely Soldieris a clarion call for change.
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper
by Howard E. Wasdin Stephen TemplinA book that takes you inside SEAL Team Six, the covert squad that killed Osama Bin Laden. SEAL Team Six is a secret unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and counterinsurgency. In this dramatic, behind-the-scenes chronicle, Howard Wasdin takes readers deep inside the world of Navy SEALS and Special Forces snipers, beginning with the grueling selection process of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) the toughest and longest military training in the world. After graduating, Wasdin faced new challenges. First there was combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team Two. Then the Green Course: the selection process to join the legendary SEAL Team Six, with a curriculum that included practiced land warfare to unarmed combat. More than learning how to pick a lock, they learned how to blow the door off its hinges. Finally as a member of SEAL Team Six he graduated from the most storied and challenging sniper program in the country: The Marine's Scout Sniper School. Eventually, of the 18 snipers in SEAL Team Six, Wasdin became the best; which meant one of the best snipers on the planet. Less than half a year after sniper school, he was fighting for his life. The mission: capture or kill Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. From rooftops, helicopters and alleys, Wasdin hunted Aidid and killed his men whenever possible. But everything went quickly to hell when his small band of soldiers found themselves fighting for their lives, cut off from help, and desperately trying to rescue downed comrades during a routine mission. The Battle of Mogadishu, as it became known, left 18 American soldiers dead and 73 wounded. Howard Wasdin had both of his legs nearly blown off while engaging the enemy. His dramatic combat tales combined with inside details of becoming one of the world's deadliest snipers make this one of the most explosive military memoirs in years.
Clara Barton: Civil War Hero and American Red Cross Founder
by Susan E. HamenTeen biography of Clara Barton.
Benjamin Franklin
by Balu SathyaThis Tamil book gives, in a nutshell, a biography of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A leading author and printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat, this biography of multifaceted Benjamin Franklin will influence young generation to emulate.
Bernard Shaw
by N. RajeshwarThis Tamil book is a biography of Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, a co-founder of the London School of Economics and above all a Nobel Laureate. The book touches briefly upon his early Years, family, education, personal life, political activism and final years.
Bhagath Singh
by MuthuramanThis Tamil book is a biography of Shaheed (means "martyr") Bhagat Singh who was an Indian freedom fighter and considered to be one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement.
Safe Passage
by Ida CookGala opera evenings. Sudden wealth and fame. Dangerous undercover missions into the heart of Nazi Germany. Standing up to the perils of the Blitz. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook-two decidedly ordinary Englishwomen who came of age between the wars and seemed destined never to stray from their quiet London suburb and comfortable civil service jobs. But in 1923 a chance hearing of an aria from Madame Butterfly sparked a passion in the sisters that became a vehicle for both their greatest happiness and the rescue of dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. Safe Passage is one of the most unusual and inspiring accounts to come out of the cataclysm of World War II. First published in 1950, Ida's memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. The Cook sisters' zest for life and genuine "goodness" shines through every page and explains why the leading opera singers of their day befriended and loved them. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters never departed from their homespun virtues of thrift, hard work, self-sacrifice and unwavering moral conviction. They sewed their own clothes, traveled third class, bought the cheapest tickets during opera season and directed every spare resource, as well as their own considerable courage and ingenuity, toward saving as many people as they could from Hitler's death camps. Uplifting and utterly charming, Safe Passage is moving testimony to all that can be achieved when conscience and compassion are applied to a collapsing world.
Tearing the Silence
by Ursula HegiBrilliantly interviewed by bestselling novelist Ursula Hegi, German Americans born in Germany during and immediately following World War II speak out about the legacy of grief and shame that continues to haunt them.
Royal Weddings
by Emily BrandFrom William the Conqueror to Prince William and Kate Middleton, A British Heritage Publisher Offers a Revealing Look at Bygone Royal Weddings With the impending nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton this April, Shire Publications offers Royal Weddings, the perfect primer on Britain's rich nigh-millennial history of kingly couplings and the ideal accompaniment to the aforementioned must-see event of the twenty-first century. Royal Weddings traces the evolution of matrimonial majesty from the politically charged, relatively austere, private affairs which dominate much of English history, to the grandiose extravaganza of Prince Charles's and Diana's union in 1981. Over time, British royal weddings have become the standard by which all other wedding ceremonies are compared. The book abounds with eye-opening details and interesting stories, such as how King Henry VIII's marital vows--"...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part..."-- have been paradigmatic ever since; or the touching account of the 15th century monarch, Edward IV, who married beneath him and had to keep his marriage to a poor soldier's widow a secret. Even with nearly a thousand years of British royalty to cover, author Emily Brand deftly keeps from wallowing in a mire of historical pedantry. Instead, she has culled together exquisitely fascinating facts and anecdotes and presents her discoveries in a lively and inquisitive tone. Her account of the 1625 wedding of King Charles I--for which the monarch wasn't even present (he sent a surrogate for the lavish affair held at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris), reads as if she herself was present at the scurrilous event. Royal Weddings is a sleek 56 pages volume, generously enhanced with 60 full-color pieces of rare art and photos that go beyond traditional wedding pictures and add to the guilty, yet informative, pleasure of the book. There are examples of elaborate decorations, feasts and wedding cakes; ornate jewelry, commemorative medallions and other unique items; wedding dresses and evolving fashions; marriage certificates, announcements, menu cards and other juicy particulars; even the nullification document of King Henry VIII's short-lived marriage to Anne of Cleves, who Henry believed was misrepresented in the picture he was shown of her before agreeing to the coupling. Emily Brand is a writer and historian with a special interest in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England. She has written widely on domestic and family life for a number of history and genealogy magazines, including publications from BBC Magazines Bristol, the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and the National Archives. She is also an author for history society London Historians, of which she has been made an honorary member.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroes
by Vic ArmstrongThink you don't know Vic Armstrong? Wrong! You've seen his work in countless films... He's been a stunt double for James Bond, Indiana Jones and Superman, and he's directed action scenes for three Bond movies, Mission Impossible 3, Thor, and the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man to name but a few. Counting Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger among his friends, and officially credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Most Prolific Stuntman, Vic's got a lot of amazing stories to tell, and they're all here in this - the movie memoir of the year!
The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir
by George Lucius Salton Anna Salton EisenAfter a half century, the author who now lives in Florida returned to his hometown in Poland to find that "... the wall that I have carefully built between the past and present has crumbled..." Salton (nee: Saltzman) relates surviving ten concentration camps as an adolescent and liberation by American soldiers, including Jewish ones to his astonishment.
A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother
by Janny ScottAn unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama--his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece of the story. Award-winning reporter Janny Scott interviewed nearly two hundred of Dunham's friends, colleagues, and relatives (including both her children), and combed through boxes of personal and professional papers, letters to friends, and photo albums, to uncover the full breadth of this woman's inspiring and untraditional life, and to show the remarkable extent to which she shaped the man Obama is today. Dunham's story moves from Kansas and Washington state to Hawaii and Indonesia. It begins in a time when interracial marriage was still a felony in much of the United States, and culminates in the present, with her son as our president-- something she never got to see. It is a poignant look at how character is passed from parent to child, and offers insight into how Obama's destiny was created early, by his mother's extraordinary faith in his gifts, and by her unconventional mothering. Finally, it is a heartbreaking story of a woman who died at age fifty-two, before her son would go on to his greatest accomplishments and reflections of what she taught him.
The Life of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht
by Elihu LauterpachtHersch Lauterpacht, of whom this book is an intimate biography by his son, Elihu, was one of the most prolific and influential international lawyers of the first half of the twentieth century. Having come to England from Austria in the early 1920s, he first researched and taught at the London School of Economics before moving to Cambridge in 1937 to become Whewell Professor of International Law. He did valuable work to enhance relations with the United States during the Second World War, and was active after the war in the prosecution of William Joyce and the major Nazi war criminals. For ten years he was also involved in various significant items of professional work and in 1955 he was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice. The book contains many extracts from his correspondence, the interest of which will extend to lawyers, historians of the period and beyond.
Augustine's Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity
by Brian StockAugustine's philosophy of life involves mediation, reviewing one's past and exercises for self-improvement. Centuries after Plato and before Freud he invented a 'spiritual exercise' in which every man and woman is able, through memory, to reconstruct and reinterpret life's aims. Brian Stock examines Augustine's unique way of blending literary and philosophical themes. He proposes a new interpretation of Augustine's early writings, establishing how the philosophical soliloquy (soliloquium) has emerged as a mode of inquiry and how it relates to problems of self-existence and self-history. The book also provides clear analysis of inner dialogue and discourse and how, as inner dialogue complements and finally replaces outer dialogue, a style of thinking emerges, arising from ancient sources and a religious attitude indebted to Judeo-Christian tradition.
David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance
by Shlomo Aronson Naftali GreenwoodThis book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist "renaissance," of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the "Jewish renaissance. " The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.
Latino Representation in State Houses and Congress
by Jason P. CasellasThis book argues that Latino representation in U. S. legislative institutions is shaped not only by demographics but by legislative institutional design, as well as elite-driven methods, features of the electoral system, and the increasing mainstreaming of Latinos in American society. The election of Latino legislators in the United States is thus complex and varied. This book provides evidence on how successful Latinos have been in winning state legislative and congressional districts in which they have no natural advantage. In particular, this book demonstrates that Latino candidates benefit from higher percentages of Latino citizens in the state, more liberal citizenries, and citizen legislatures. Jason Casellas argues that the legislatures most conducive to the election of Latino candidates are Florida, New Mexico, and California, whereas the least conducive are the U. S. House and New York.
The Crisis of Russian Democracy
by Richard SakwaThe view that Russia has taken a decisive shift towards authoritarianism may be premature, but there is no doubt that its democracy is in crisis. In this original and dynamic analysis of the fundamental processes shaping contemporary Russian politics, Richard Sakwa applies a new model based on the concept of Russia as a dual state. Russia's constitutional state is challenged by an administrative regime that subverts the rule of law and genuine electoral competitiveness. This has created a situation of permanent stalemate: the country is unable to move towards genuine pluralist democracy but, equally, its shift towards full-scale authoritarianism is inhibited. Sakwa argues that the dual state could be transcended either by strengthening the democratic state or by the consolidation of the arbitrary power of the administrative system. The future of the country remains open.
Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore's Life in Science
by Shane CrottyShane Crotty's biography of David Baltimore details the life and work of one of the most brilliant, powerful, and controversial scientists of our time. Although only in his early sixties, Baltimore has made major discoveries in molecular biology, established the prestigious Whitehead Institute at MIT, been president of Rockefeller University, won the Nobel Prize, and been vilified by detractors in one of the most scandalous and protracted investigations of scientific fraud ever. He is now president of Caltech and a leader in the search for an AIDS vaccine. Crotty not only tells the compelling story of this larger-than-life figure, he also treats the reader to a lucid account of the amazing revolution that has occurred in biology during the past forty years. Basing his narrative on many personal interviews, Crotty recounts the milestones of Baltimore's career: completing his Ph. D. at Rockefeller University in eighteen months, participating in the anti--Vietnam War movement, winning a Nobel Prize at age thirty-seven for the co-discovery of reverse transcriptase, and co-organizing the recombinant DNA/genetic engineering moratorium. Along the way, readers learn what viruses are and what they do, what cancer is and how it happens, the complexities of the AIDS problem, how genetic engineering works, and why making a vaccine is a complicated process. And, as Crotty considers Baltimore's public life, he retells the famous scientific fraud saga and Baltimore's vindication after a decade of character assassination. Crotty possesses the alchemical skill of converting technical scientific history into entertaining prose as he conveys Baltimore's huge ambitions, intensity, scientific genius, attitude toward science and politics, and Baltimore's own view about what happened in the "Baltimore Affair. "Ahead of the Curve shows why with his complex personality, keen involvement in public issues, and wide-ranging interests David Baltimore has not only shaped the face of American science as we know it today, but has also become a presence in our culture.
The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot
by Herbert KrosneyA writer and documentary filmmaker based in New York and Jerusalem, Krosney describes how Egyptian peasants discovered a bound papyrus book in Coptic near the Nile in the middle to late 1970s that was identified in 2000 as the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, which was mentioned by some early Christians but condemned 1,800 years ago. It has been radio-carbon dated at 220-340 +/- 60 years. He includes quotations from the text, but the text itself was published as The Gospel of Judas (ISBN 1-4262-0042-0), which was the first modern translation of the ancient Coptic document. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
By My Brother's Side
by Robert Burleigh Tiki Barber Ronde Barber Barry RootTiki and Ronde were each other's best friends. Together from the start, these twins might not have been the strongest or the tallest, but they were fast and worked hard at what they loved. And they loved sports, especially football. Then one day Tiki badly hurt his knee in a biking accident, and he was sure he'd never be able to play again. Their mother had always told them, "You are each other's best friends. Stick together, believe in yourselves, and you can do anything." They kept her words in their hearts and never gave up. Based on the childhood of National Football League superstars Ronde and Tiki Barber, this inspiring book about the values of family, hard work, and determination is the story of what it takes to be a champion.<P> <i>Advisory: Bookshare has learned that this book offers only partial accessibility. We have kept it in the collection because it is useful for some of our members. To explore further access options with us, please contact us through the Book Quality link on the right sidebar. Benetech is actively working on projects to improve accessibility issues such as these. </i>
Ambani
by N. ChokkanThis book is a biography of Dhirubai Ambani who won the prestigious best industrialist of India of the 20th century award from "Business Barons" in 1999 and who started his life from a humble beginning with moderate education to achieve Himalayan victory in business world with high enterprising ability.
Ambedkar
by R. MuthukumarThis book is a biography of Bodhisatva Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar also known as Babasaheb who was an Indian jurist, political leader, Buddhist activist, philosopher, thinker, anthropologist, historian, orator, prolific writer, economist, scholar, editor, revolutionary and a revivalist for Buddhism in India. He was also the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of Indian Constitution and was awarded the highest Indian civilian award "Bharat Ratna".
Aravindar
by Uma SampathThis book is the biography of Aurobindo Akroyd Ghosh who was an Indian/Hindu nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, evolutionary philosopher, yogi and guru and who advocated a new spiritual path which he called the "integral yoga."
Azim Premji
by N. ChokkanThis book is a biography of Azim Hashim Premji who is an Indian business tycoon, philanthropist and the chairman of Wipro Limited, an enterprise which emerged as one of the Indian leaders in the software industry.
Betty White in Person
by Betty WhiteAmerica loves Betty White! From her early days in television with her first show "Life with Elizabeth," to "Password," through her mischievous years as Sue Ann Nivens on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and now as Rose on the delightful series "The Golden Girls," she has been loved and lauded. Now, at last, in this wonderful new book, we meet the real Betty White, up close and personal. Gathered here are Betty's wit and wisdom, her observations and intuitions. In these pages, she looks forward and back, and shares all that she sees. Somehow, Betty White has learned to take all that life can give, and has found the best in every smallest part. She recounts for us stories and adventures(and misadventures, too!) shared with many of her favorite friends. We read her warm and open thoughts about sex, grief, hope, friendship, and aging, and hear her familiar voice, as she touches upon topics like enthusiasm, people- watching, imagination, saving things, and believe it or not, things she hates! This book is a true gem. In these pages we meet the woman behind the endearing celebrity - and discover that they are one and the same. For years audiences have identified and been attracted to that singular spark of energy and enthusiasm, that "something" that Betty White brings to every role and infuses into each of her marvelous characters. Now, that unique quality provides inspiration for many more people, as readers laugh, cry, and sigh right along with her.