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Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me About Caring for the Living
by Robert A. JensenThe owner of the world’s leading disaster management company chronicles the unseen world behind the yellow tape, and explores what it means to be human after a lifetime of caring for the dead.You have seen Robert A. Jensen—you just never knew it. As the owner of the world’s largest disaster management company, he has spent most of his adult life responding to tragedy. From the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, and the Bali bombings, to the 2004 South Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, and the Grenfell Tower Fire, Jensen has been at the practical level of international incidents, assisting with the recovery of bodies, identifying victims, and repatriating and returning their personal effects to the surviving family members. He is also, crucially, involved in the emotional recovery that comes after a disaster: helping guide the families, governments, and companies involved, telling them what to expect and managing the unmanageable. As he explains, “If journalists write the first rough draft of history, I put the punctuation on the past.”Personal Effects is an unsparing, up-close look at the difficult work Jensen does behind the yellow tape and the lessons he learned there. The chronicle of an almost impossible and grim job, Personal Effects also tells Jensen’s own story—how he came to this line of work, how he manages the chaos that is his life, and the personal toll the repeated exposure to mass death brings, in becoming what GQ called “the best at the worst job in the world.” A rare glimpse into a world we all see but many know nothing about, Personal Effects is an inspiring and heartwarming story of survival and the importance of moving forward, Jensen allows his readers to see over his shoulder as he responds to disaster sites, uncovers the deceased, and cares for families to show how a strong will and desire to do good can become a path through the worst the world can throw at us.
Personal Foul
by Tim Donaghy Phil ScalaThe media has often speculated and sports fans have debated, but until now no one has known the real story. Personal Foul takes an in-depth look at former NBA referee Tim Donaghy and the betting scandal that rocked professional basketball. This is the decisive book that reveals exactly what was done and how it all happened. Which games were affected and how? Did referees target particular players or teams? Just how much did the NBA know and when? How did the mafia get involved? The book answers all of these questions and more. Thrilling and poignant, Personal Foul takes readers on the journey of one man wrestling his own demons and shines a light on a culture of gambling and "directive" officiating in the NBA that promises to change the way sports fans view the game forever. The book also includes a foreword by Phil Scala, the FBI Special Agent who worked the Gambino case.
Personal History
by Katharine GrahamWinner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for BiographyAn extraordinarily frank, honest, and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women, Personal History is, as its title suggests, a book composed of both personal memoir and history.It is the story of Graham's parents: the multimillionaire father who left private business and government service to buy and restore the down-and-out Washington Post, and the formidable, self-absorbed mother who was more interested in her political and charity work, and her passionate friendships with men like Thomas Mann and Adlai Stevenson, than in her children.It is the story of how The Washington Post struggled to succeed -- a fascinating and instructive business history as told from the inside (the paper has been run by Graham herself, her father, her husband, and now her son).It is the story of Phil Graham -- Kay's brilliant, charismatic husband (he clerked for two Supreme Court justices) -- whose plunge into manic-depression, betrayal, and eventual suicide is movingly and charitably recounted. Best of all, it is the story of Kay Graham herself. She was brought up in a family of great wealth, yet she learned and understood nothing about money. She is half-Jewish, yet -- incredibly -- remained unaware of it for many years.She describes herself as having been naive and awkward, yet intelligent and energetic. She married a man she worshipped, and he fascinated and educated her, and then, in his illness, turned from her and abused her. This destruction of her confidence and happiness is a drama in itself, followed by the even more intense drama of her new life as the head of a great newspaper and a great company, a famous (and even feared) woman in her own right. Hers is a life that came into its own with a vengeance -- a success story on every level.Graham's book is populated with a cast of fascinating characters, from fifty years of presidents (and their wives), to Steichen, Brancusi, Felix Frankfurter, Warren Buffett (her great advisor and protector), Robert McNamara, George Schultz (her regular tennis partner), and, of course, the great names from the Post: Woodward, Bernstein, and Graham's editorpartner, Ben Bradlee. She writes of them, and of the most dramatic moments of her stewardship of the Post (including the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the pressmen's strike), with acuity, humor, and good judgment. Her book is about learning by doing, about growing and growing up, about Washington, and about a woman liberated by both circumstance and her own great strengths.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Personal History (WOMEN IN HISTORY)
by Katharine GrahamAs seen in the new movie The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep, here is the captivating, inside story of the woman who piloted the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media.In this bestselling and widely acclaimed memoir, Katharine Graham, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, tells her story - one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candour and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband - a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson - plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman's union as she entered the profane boys' club of the newspaper business.As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, discovering her own strength and sense of self as she confronted - and mastered - the personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.
Personal Impressions
by Isaiah BerlinThis enthusiastically received collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciation of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world - sometimes in both. The names of many of them are familiar - Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, L. B. Namier, J. L. Austin, Maurice Bowra. With the exception of Roosevelt he met them all, and he knew many of them well. For this new edition four new portraits have been added, including recollections of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson. The volume ends with a vivid and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956.
Personal Impressions: Updated Edition
by Isaiah BerlinIn this collection of remarkable biographical portraits, the great essayist and intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin brings to life a wide range of prominent twentieth-century thinkers, politicians, and writers. These include Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Boris Pasternak, and Anna Akhmatova. With the exception of Roosevelt, Berlin met them all, and he knew many of them well. Other figures recalled here include the Zionist Yitzhak Sadeh, the U.S. Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter, the classicist and wit Maurice Bowra, the philosopher J. L. Austin, and the literary critic Edmund Wilson. For this edition, ten new pieces have been added, including portraits of David Ben-Gurion, Maynard and Lydia Keynes, and Stephen Spender, as well as Berlin's autobiographical reflections on Jewish Oxford and his Oxford undergraduate years. Rich and enlightening, Personal Impressions is a vibrant demonstration of Berlin’s belief that ideas truly live only through people.
Personal Memoirs
by Ulysses S. Grant James M. McphersonFaced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without rival in American literature, and his autobiography deserves a place among the very best in the genre. This Penguin Classics edition of Grants Personal Memoirs includes an indespensable introduction and explanatory notes by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson.
Personal Memoirs
by Ulysses S. GrantMark Twain had known many of the great men of the Civil War and the Gilded Age, and esteemed none more highly than Ulysses S. Grant, who was modest, sensitive, generous, honest, and superlatively intelligent. Grant's courage, both moral and physical, was a matter of record. His genius as a general assured his immortality. In 1881, Twain urged Grant to write his memoirs. No one is interested in me, Grant replied. Out of the army, out of office, and out of favor--that was his life now. He reminded Twain that the Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, written by his wartime assistant, Adam Badeau, had sold poorly. And John Russell Young's book, Around the World with General Grant, published in 1879, had been a complete flop. Broke and sick--he began suffering agonizingly painful throat cancer in 1884-- Grant agreed to write four articles for the Century Magazine on some of his Civil War battles, and Century offered to publish his memoirs if only he'd write them. Twain was on a lecture tour when he heard that Grant might be willing to write a book and hurried back to New York to tell Grant that he could arrange for publication of the book by a small firm that he controlled. Grant accepted his offer because Twain had been the first person to suggest he write his memoirs. The inflexible will and powerful mind that helped make Grant a great general were stronger than the torturing pain, the sleepless nights, the terrors of death. Yet there was no sense of this heroic struggle in the narrative he produced with stubby pencils or by dictating to a secretary. The book was like the man himself--often humorous, frequently charming, always lucid, sometimes poignant, generous to his enemies, loyal to his friends. Twain was astonished when he discovered that Grant had produced a considerably longer book than he had contracted to write, but Grant had always tried to give more than was expected of him. He did so even now. Grant finished his book in July 1885. The Memoirs were a triumph. The narrative has the directness and limpidity of the purest English prose as it was first crafted by William Tyndell and then spread throughout the English-speaking world in the King James version of the Bible. Grant had reached deep into himself and into the world history of the Anglo-American people to grasp the core of its culture, the English language. He trusted in that narrative style that achieves its effects by never straining for effect, assembled it into vivid pictures sufficiently understated to allow an intelligent reader's imagination room to expand, and shaped a literary architecture with a born artist's eye. His recollections were inevitably partial and selective. As with all memoirs, Grant's was at its best as a revelation of the way he remembered the events of his tumultuous life and the feelings they evoked in him as death drew near. Its truth was less in the details of what he recalled as in the story he had to tell, of justice triumphant over a great evil. On July 23, 1885, several days after correcting the galley proofs of his book, Grant died in a summer cottage on the slopes of Mount McGregor, New York, surrounded by friends and family. The memoirs, published a few months later, have never been out of print.
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (Civil War Ser.)
by Ulysses Simpson GrantIntelligent, deeply moving firsthand account of Civil War military campaigns by former U.S. President and key figure in the Union's victory. Perhaps the finest military memoir ever written, the volume offers an incomparable vantage point on that conflict. Includes Grant's letters to his wife, photographs by Mathew Brady, maps, and more.
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: Volumes One and Two (Barnes And Noble Library Of Essential Reading)
by Ulysses S. GrantThe celebrated remembrances of the man who led the Union to victory during the Civil WarCompleted just days before his death, Grant&’s Personal Memoirs is a clear and compelling account of his military career, focusing on two great conflicts: the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. Lauded for its crisp and direct prose, Grant&’s autobiography offers frank insight into everything from the merits of the war with Mexico to the strategies and tactics employed by Union forces against the Confederacy to the poignancy of Grant&’s meeting with General Lee at Appomattox Court House.Beloved and bestselling since its publication in 1885, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is a seminal work of military history and one of the great achievements of American autobiography.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America – 3-volume Ser.)
by Alexander HumboldtOne of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc: And Other Tributes to the Maid of Orlv©ans
by Mark TwainA novel of the life of the defender of medieval France by the celebrated author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She saved France when she was fourteen . . . She was burned at the stake for her efforts . . . Meet the girl who captured Mark Twain&’s heart. A forgotten masterpiece from one of America&’s greatest authors—and the last full-length novel he ever wrote—Joan of Arc follows the Savior of France from her childhood in Domrémy, to her campaigns throughout the French countryside, to her demise at the hands of the English and Burgundians. Mark Twain was sarcastic, witty, and oft-irreverent, but he had a soft spot for the Maid of Orléans. (As will you after you read this book!) He spent twelve years in research, two in writing, including multiple visits to the National Archives in Paris, and proclaimed Joan of Arc the &“best of all my books!&” If you love well-written classics of stunning historical figures, then this is the book for you.
Personal Writings (Vintage International)
by Albert CamusThe Nobel Prize winner's most influential and enduring personal writings, newly curated and introduced by acclaimed Camus scholar Alice Kaplan.Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Personal Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope and depth of his interior life. Grappling with an indifferent mother and an impoverished childhood in Algeria, an ever-present sense of exile, and an ongoing search for equilibrium, Camus's personal essays shed new light on the emotional and experiential foundations of his philosophical thought and humanize his most celebrated works.
Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters including the text of The Spiritual Exercises (Saint Ignatius of Loyola)
by Joseph A. Munitiz Ignatius of Loyola StaffHis Reminiscences describe his early life, his religious conversion following near-paralysis in battle, and his spiritual and physical ordeals as he struggled to assist those in need, including plague, persecution and imprisonment. The Spiritual Exercises offer guidelines to those seeking the will of God, and the Spiritual Diary shows Ignatius in daily mystical contact with God during a personal struggle.
Personalities and Problems: Interpretive Essays in World Civilizations Volume 2
by Ken WolfAssuming no previous knowledge of history, Personalities and Problems is a unique collection of original essays about real people whose lives or careers demonstrate solutions to problems of their times. Each chapter focuses on a problem or issue and illustrates it by discussing the lives of two historical figures (actual or near contemporaries of each other) whose careers illustrate the richness and variety of history.
Personality and Politics: Obama For and Against Himself
by Stephen J. WayneRenowned presidential scholar Stephen Wayne takes a close look at the interplay of personal character, partisan politics, and public opinion on presidential decision-making. In this systematic character study, Wayne considers how President Obama’s policy beliefs and operating style fueled his meteoric success as a candidate, but have had a decidedly mixed impact on his governance as president. Arguing that character matters, Wayne shows that Obama’s personal dimensions both contribute and detract from his policy achievements and political goals.Taking into account the environment in which he took office up through the “shellacking” of the Democrats in November 2010, the book looks at how Obama has dealt with the troubled economy and a polarized political climate. Wayne sets his study within the larger literature on presidential character and explores the broader questions surrounding presidential leadership in a democratic society: Do presidents lead or follow public opinion? To what extent do leadership skills make a difference? What kind of policy and political impact can presidents have in the twenty-first century?
Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe
by Ian KershawOne of New York Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the FallHow far can a single leader alter the course of history?From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age&’s uniquely devastating despots—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms. At the summit of these societies were leaders whose personalities somehow enabled them to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences for others.Ian Kershaw&’s new book is a compelling, lucid and challenging attempt to understand these rulers, whether those operating on the widest stage (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini) or with a more national impact (Tito, Franco). What was it about these leaders, and the times in which they lived, that allowed them such untrammelled and murderous power? And what brought that era to an end? In a contrasting group of profiles—from Churchill to de Gaulle, Adenauer to Gorbachev and Thatcher to Kohl)—Kershaw uses his exceptional skills as an iconic historian to explore how strikingly different figures wielded power.
Personne ne m’entendait pleurer
by Isabel Cano Angélique Olivia MoreauL'histoire vraie de la vie d'Isabel Cano après la guerre civile espagnole. La mort, la faim et les problèmes familiaux ont donné naissance à une vie faite d'incertitudes et de dépression, et Isabel peine à survivre. Elle doit comprendre que l'existence peut lui offrir bien plus que des souvenirs envahissants, ou l'inquiétude et le doute constants. Née à une époque qui ne garantissait pas sa survie, Isabel est perdue et doit trouver des réponses.
Perspectives
by Hugh DownsEssays covering many subjects and interests by one of television's icons.