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Aventures in the South, Volume 4: Back Again to Paris
by Jacques CasanovaIt is the fourth book from the "Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt" the "Adventures in the South"
Average Expectations: Lessons in Lowering the Bar
by Shep RoseThis witty and engaging collection of essays from the charismatic star of Southern Charm offers rip-roaring stories and tongue-in-cheek advice on everything from relationships to travel to popular culture and beyond. Perfect for fans of authors as wide-ranging as Andy Cohen to Tucker Max. Shep Rose, star of Southern Charm and owner of Shep Gear, shares this irreverent and relatable collection of lessons and anecdotes about living an untamed, genuine life, raising hell yet having fun along the way. With his signature endearingly snarky voice, he explores topics as varied as the trials and tribulations of being a late bloomer, the ins and outs of ghosting, how to talk about politics without resorting to blows, the dos and don&’ts of getting drunk abroad, and much more. Shep has caroused around the world, from Hong Kong to Dubai to the mean streets of Charleston, and the fact that he hasn&’t been the subject of a Locked Up Abroad episode defies all logic. Average Expectations is a chronicle of one lucky SOB and the exploits that got him where he is today, with advice and stories that will help unleash your inner rabble-rouser, inspire you to live an untamed life, and remind you that at the end of the day, life is all about having fun, having a laugh, and, most important of all, being in on the joke.
Average Joe: The Memoirs of a Blue-Collar Entertainer
by Joe PiscopoThe inside story of award-winning, popular entertainer and actor who discovered that the keys to success in the entertainment industry are a strong work ethic, a willingness to reinvent, refusing to quite, and a drive to survive.Joe Piscopo has made both live and living room audiences laugh for five decades, winning the acclaim and affection of millions of fans. Often recognized as one of the actors who replaced the original cast on Saturday Night Live, he helped rescue the show from cancellation. In Average Joe, Piscopo shares behind-the-scenes stories from an impressive, multi-faceted career. As a new entertainer, he performed stand-up and hosted at the famous Improv in New York City, where he got to know comics who were just starting out, including Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, and Gilbert Gottfried. On SNL, he often paired with newcomer Eddie Murphy, writing and performing now classic skits. He saw himself as the utility guy, the one who could jump in, get something done, and get a laugh. His often uncanny impersonations ranged from President Ronald Reagan to Joan Rivers to his hero Frank Sinatra—all of whom he met in person. Beyond SNL, his career spans from car and beer commercials to roles in major movies. A self-proclaimed Dork Dad, Joe found that celebrity can sidetrack a person from the pursuit of what&’s really important in life. After focusing on fitness for his own health, he was featured on the cover of body-building magazines, which had a notable impact on his career. Today, Joe is still a hardworking entertainer, hosting his own radio show, The Joe Piscopo Show, and performing comedy, song, and dance live across the US and Canada. Joe sums it all up with: &“I&’m part of the blue-collar of show business, baby.&”
Averroes: His Life, Work and Influence
by Majid FakhryThis book provides a comprehensive overview of the life, times, and achievements of Averroes, a twelfth-century Muslim philosopher whose ideas were so controversial that his books were burnt not once, but twice. A fascinating introduction that covers all the key issues and underlines the importance of Islamic philosophy as a vital ingredient in contemporary Western culture.
Aves de paso
by Eduardo Peláez VallejoAves de paso es el retrato familiar de dos de los hermanos mayores de los Pelaez Vallejo, cuyas historias reflejan el entramado sentimental que sostiene a las familias y gran parte de la vida de una generación en la Medellín de finales de los años sesenta. Aves de paso es el conmovedor retrato de los Peláez Vallejo narrado a partir de los recuerdos del autor. Sus hermanos mayores, Ricardo y Marta Luz, son el hilo conductor de esta historia que da cuenta del entramado sentimental que sostiene a las familias y que a su vez se presenta como el reflejo de una generación, en Medellín, a finales de los años sesenta. Con una prosa rica en detalles e imágenes, Eduardo Peláez consigue colar al lector en una serie de episodios íntimos de su pasado familiar, que unidos se convierten en un relato potente y emotivo sobre el amor fraternal. La crítica ha dicho "La de Peláez es una prosa fina, precisa, cálida y con una fuerza descriptiva poco común que dota al lector de vista y oído y le hace ver, oír y sentir los paisajes que retrata con precisión". Darío Jaramillo Agudelo
Aviation Mysteries of the North: Disappearances in Alaska and Canada
by Gregory LieferRussia's most famous aviator disappears on a world record flight over the North Pole. A commercial airliner with thirty-eight people is never found. The wreckage of a strategic bomber is discovered years later and hundreds of miles from where it was lost, without its nuclear payload. Two United States Congressmen on a routine campaign tour vanish, spurring accusations of cover-up and conspiracy. These are but a few of the stories detailed in Aviation Mysteries of the North. Far distant from major media outlets and occurring over remote and unforgiving wilderness, many of the mysteries have been overlooked or forgotten, until now. Meticulously researched, the accounts are a compilation of historically significant mysteries and large capacity aircraft which have been lost over a span of four decades. From takeoff and in flight until the final moments, through searches and controversy, the factual events are presented with captivating insight. Historical perspectives and aircraft descriptions add an informative background to the text.
Aviation: Cool Women Who Fly
by Carmella Van Vleet Lena ChandhokHave you ever looked up into the sky, seen an airplane, and wondered where it was going and who was flying it? Aviation is the study of the design, development and production, and operation of aircraft. In Aviation: Cool Women Who Fly, children ages 9 to 12 learn about this fascinating field and meet three successful women working in aviation. Meg Godlewski is a master certified flight instructor, Kristin Wolfe is a pilot in the Air Force, and Taylor McConnell is a production support engineer.Nomad Press books in the Girls in Science series supply a bridge between girls' interests and their potential futures by investigating science careers and introducing women who have succeeded in science. Compelling stories of real-life aviation experts provide readers with role models that they can look toward as examples of success.Aviation: Cool Women Who Fly uses engaging content, links to primary sources, and essential questions to whet kids' appetites for further exploration and study of aviation. This book explores the history of aviation, the women who helped pioneer flight, and the multitude of varied careers in this exciting and important field. Both boys and girls are encouraged to let their imaginations and dreams soar.
Aviator Extraordinaire: My Story
by G. J. Paul"At Cambridge, as an undergraduate of St. John's, I realized that, more than anything else, I wanted to fly.A lifelong fascination and love of flying and aircrafts is fuel for this engaging autobiography by G J Christopher Paul, CB, DFC; a man bitten by the aviation bug at an air display at the age of four, and thereafter a devotee. His remarkable RAF career was followed by an eventful civilian career in aviation, which saw him organize rallies at places such as Sywell, encouraging 'flying for fun'. Both halves of his flying life are detailed here in chronological order and in his own words. Minor additions have been made to offer technical descriptions to readers unfamiliar with Paul's aviation vocabulary.The fifty year span of his career covered an incredible period of aviation history; from gaining his license in the 1920s to his retirement in the 1970s, there was virtually no iconic or, for that matter, obscure aircraft that Christopher Paul did not fly. Included in the book is an extensive appendix in which Paul details, again in chronological order, every aircraft type he flew during his career. It is a veritable roll of honor of every conceivable aircraft, both British built and International, across arguably the most important period of aviation development.Interwoven with his own career progression and experiences are world events and situations. Coupled with this we can clearly see the development of aircraft over a period of over fifty years. Eloquently written, this is the autobiography of a man who described flying a Spitfire as having 'one's own wings'; the thrill of flight is translated here, and the effect is equally thrilling. A lively account of a life in the skies. "
Avid Reader: A Life
by Robert GottliebWinner of the Anne M. Sperber PrizeA spirited and revealing memoir by the most celebrated editor of his time.After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton--not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it--editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing.But this account of a life founded upon reading is about more than the arc of a singular career--one that also includes a lifelong involvement with the world of dance. It's about transcendent friendships and collaborations, "elective affinities" and family, psychoanalysis and Bakelite purses, the alchemical relationship between writer and editor, the glory days of publishing, and--always--the sheer exhilaration of work.Photograph of Bob Gottlieb © by Jill Krementz
Avidly Reads Board Games
by Eric ThurmAvidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life. Writer and critic Eric Thurm digs deep into his own experience as a board game enthusiast to explore the emotional and social rules that games create and reveal, telling a series of stories about a pastime that is also about relationships. From the outdated gender roles in Life and Mystery Date to the cutthroat, capitalist priorities of Monopoly and its socialist counterpart, Class Struggle, Thurm thinks through his ongoing rivalries with his siblings and ponders the ways games both upset and enforce hierarchies and relationships—from the familial to the geopolitical. Like sitting down at the table for family game night, Board Games is an engaging book of twists and turns, trivia, and nostalgia.
Avidly Reads Board Games
by Eric Thurm“How we should think about board games, and what do they do to us as we play them?”Writer and critic Eric Thurm digs deep into his own experience as a board game enthusiast to explore the emotional and social rules that games create and reveal, telling a series of stories about a pastime that is also about relationships. From the outdated gender roles in Life and Mystery Date to the cutthroat, capitalist priorities of Monopoly and its socialist counterpart, Class Struggle, Thurm thinks through his ongoing rivalries with his siblings and ponders the ways games both upset and enforce hierarchies and relationships—from the familial to the geopolitical. Like sitting down at the table for family game night, Board Games is an engaging book of twists and turns, trivia, and nostalgia.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.
Avidly Reads Making Out
by Kathryn Bond Stockton“Here’s the thing with kissing: it matters intensely or not at all.”Mid-kiss, do you ever wonder who you are, who you’re kissing, where it’s leading? It can feel luscious, libidinal, friendly, but are we trying to make out something through our kissing? For Kathryn Bond Stockton, making out is a prism through which to look at the cultural and political forces of our world: race, economics, childhood, books, and movies. Making Out is Stockton’s memoir about a non-binary childhood before that idea existed in her world. We think about kissing as we accompany Stockton to the bedroom, to the closet, to the playground, to the movies, and to solitary moments with a book, the ultimate source of pleasure.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.
Avidly Reads Passages (Avidly Reads Ser.)
by Michelle D. Commander"What is the value of Black life in America?"In Avidly Reads Passages, Michelle D. Commander plies four freighted modes of travel—the slave ship, train, automobile, and bus—to map the mobility of her ancestors over the past five centuries. In the process, she refreshes the conventional American travel narrative by telling an urgent story about how history shapes what moves us, as well as what prevents so many Black Americans from moving or being moved. Anchored in her maternal kin’s long history on and alongside plantations in rural South Carolina, Commander explores her family members’ ability and inability to navigate safely through space, time, and emotion, detailing how Black lives were shaped by the actual vehicles that promised an escape from the confines of American racism, yet nearly always failed to deliver on those promises. Using personal and public archives, Avidly Reads Passages unfolds distinct histories of transatlantic slavery ships, the possibilities presented by rail lines in the Reconstruction South, the fateful legacies of school busing, and the ways that Black Americans attempted to negotiate their automobility, including through the use of road and travel compendiums such as Travelguide and The Negro Motorist Green Book. In order to understand the intricacies of slavery and its aftermath, Commander began her exploration with the hope of engaging with the difficult evidences and stubborn gaps in her family’s genealogy; what she produced is a biting and elegiac reflection on working-class life in the Black South. Commander demonstrates that the forms of intimidation, brutality, surveillance, and restriction used to control Black mobility have merely evolved since slavery, marking Black life writ large in America, with neither the passage of time nor the passage of laws assuring true and adequate racial progress. Despite this bleak observation, Commander catalogs and celebrates, through affecting stories about her beloved South Carolina community, the compelling strivings of Southern Black people to survive by holding on firmly to family, and their faith that new worlds could be imagined, created, and traveled to someday.Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at American culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Passages offers a unique lens through which to capture the intricacies of Black life.
Avidly Reads Theory
by Jordan Alexander SteinAvidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life. This is a story about the emotional lives of ideas. As an avowed “theory head,” Jordan Alexander Stein confronts a contradiction: that the abstract, and often frustrating rigors of theory also produced a sense of pride and identity for him and his friends: an idea of how to be and a way to live. Although Stein explains what theory is, this is not an introduction or a how-to. Organized around five ways that theory makes us feel—silly, stupid, sexy, seething and stuck—Stein travels back to the late nineties to tell a story of coming of age at a particular moment and to measure how that moment lives on now.
Avidly Reads Theory
by Jordan Alexander Stein“Theory offered us a way of understanding the world that, like so many youthful exuberances, was both vital and ridiculous.”As an avowed “theory head,” Jordan Alexander Stein confronts a contradiction: that the abstract, and often frustrating rigors of theory also produced a sense of pride and identity for him and his friends: an idea of how to be and a way to live. Although Stein explains what theory is, this is not an introduction or a how-to. Organized around five ways that theory makes us feel—silly, stupid, sexy, seething and stuck—Stein travels back to the late nineties to tell a story of coming of age at a particular moment and to measure how that moment lives on now.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life. This is a story about the emotional lives of ideas.
Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science
by James D. WatsonFrom a living legend--James D. Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for having revealed the structure of DNA--a personal account of the making of a scientist. In Avoid Boring People, the man who discovered "the secret of life" shares the less revolutionary secrets he has found to getting along and getting ahead in a competitive world. Recounting the years of his own formation--from his father's birding lessons to the political cat's cradle of professorship at Harvard--Watson illuminates the progress of an exemplary scientific life, both his own pursuit of knowledge and how he learns to nurture fledgling scientists. Each phase of his experience yields a wealth of age-specific practical advice. For instance, when young, never be the brightest person in the room or bring more than one date on a ski trip; later in life, always accept with grace when your request for funding is denied, and--for goodness' sake--don't dye your hair. There are precepts that few others would find occasion to heed (expect to gain weight after you win your Nobel Prize, as everyone will invite you to dinner) and many more with broader application (do not succumb to the seductions of golf if you intend to stay young professionally). And whatever the season or the occasion: avoid boring people. A true believer in the intellectual promise of youth, Watson offers specific pointers to beginning scientists about choosing the projects that will shape their careers, the supreme importance of collegiality, and dealing with competitors within the same institution, even one who is a former mentor. Finally he addresses himself to the role and needs of science at large universities in the context of discussing the unceremonious departure of Harvard's president Larry Summers and the search for his successor. Scorning political correctness, this irreverent romp through Watson's life and learning is an indispensable guide to anyone plotting a career in science (or most anything else), a primer addressed both to the next generation and those who are entrusted with their minds.
Avoid the Day: A New Nonfiction in Two Movements
by Jay Kirk"Avoid the Day truly seems to me to push nonfiction memoir as far as it can go without it collapsing into a singularity and I am at a loss for words. You are just going to have to read it." –Helen Macdonald, author of H is for HawkA surreal, high-wire act of narrative nonfiction that redefines the genre, Avoid the Day is part detective story, part memoir, and part meditation on the meaning of life—all told with a dark pulse of existential horror. What emerges is an unforgettable study of mortality and the artist’s journey.Seeking to answer the mystery of a missing manuscript by Béla Bartók, and using the investigation to avoid his father’s deathbed, award-winning magazine writer Jay Kirk heads off to Transylvania, going to the same villages where the “Master,” like a vampire in search of fresh plasma, had found his new material in the folk music of the peasants. With these stolen songs, Bartók redefined music in the 20th Century. Kirk, who is also seeking to renew his writing, finds inspiration in the composer’s unorthodox methods, but begins to lose his tether as he sees himself in Bartók’s darkest and most personal work, the Cantata Profana, which revolves around the curse of fathers and sons. After a near-psychotic episode under the spell of Bartók, the author suddenly finds himself on a posh eco-tourist cruise in the Arctic. There, accompanied by an old friend, now a documentary filmmaker, the two decide to scrap the documentary and make a horror flick instead—shot under the noses of the unsuspecting passengers and crew. Playing one of the main characters who finds himself inexplicably trapped on a ship at the literal end of the world, alone, and under the influence of the midnight sun, Kirk gets lost in his own cerebral maze, struggling to answer his most plaguing question: can we find meaning in experience?
Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger
by Wendy DaleFrom salsa dancing in a rum-induced haze and struggling to exercise in Colombia ("the guerrillas were using the track again today"), to crossing international borders unconventionally and dodging bombs in Lebanon ("the good news was that they were 'small bombs'"), Wendy somehow manages to find herself in the midst of hysterical, adventurous, and often illegal situations. Case in point--every time she heads to Costa Rica, she is forced to visit another prison. Although a jail may not be everyone's idea of a place to find a date, Wendy soon falls in love with a man, a country, and its people and risks everything she has to clear his name. Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals is a bumpy and hilarious ride in which Wendy discovers that a successful vacation--much like that elusive thing, happiness--can be found in some of the most unlikely places imaginable.
Avondale and Chicago's Polish Village
by Rob Reid Elisa Addlesperger Jacob Kaplan Dan Pogorzelski Dominic PacygaHome to Chicago's Polish Village, impressive examples of sacred and industrial architecture, and the legendary Olson Waterfall, Avondale is often tagged as "the neighborhood that built Chicago." Images of America: Avondale and Chicago's Polish Village sheds light on the little known history of the community, including its fascinating industrial past. From its beginnings as a sleepy subdivision started by a Michigan senator, it became a cultural mecca for Chicago's Polish community, playing a crucial role in Poland's struggles for independence. Other people also called Avondale home, such as Scottish proprietors, African American freedmen, Irish activists, Swedish shopkeepers, German tradesmen, Jewish merchants, Filipino laborers, and Italian entrepreneurs; a diversity further enriched as many from the former Soviet Bloc and Latin America settled here. As in other Chicago neighborhoods, change is the one constant, as the arts have brought a renaissance to this working-class corner of the city.
Awaiting The Dawn
by Dorcas HooverThis is the true story of the Troyer family, American Mennonite missionaries to Guatemala. The story is about the martyrdom of John Troyer in 1981 and how the family coped.
Awake In The Heartland: The Ecstasy of What is
by Joan TollifsonThis is a book about waking up. It's not about techniques, dogmas, traditions, exotic states or future attainments. Rather, it points to the simplicity and wonder of what is, as it is. This is a book about discovering perfection in imperfection, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. It's about enlightenment, not a future attainment, but here and now. It celebrates life as it is, from the beautiful to the horrific, inviting the reader to see that everything is spiritual, and that nothing is a mistake. If there seems to be a gap between what the enlightenment books describe and what you find in your own life, if you still think enlightenment is something that will happen to you in the future (or not at all), if you're still chasing experiences or self-improvement, then this book may be just what you need to see that what you seek is already here. There is a vibrant energy that emanates from the pages of this book that cannot help but resonate with and stir the same essence in the reader and awaken them to the ecstasy of what is-their own true nature. Because the personal story is so beautifully interwoven, the book answers the question so often asked by seekers: "Yes, I under stand BUT...How do I live my life?" Joan is constantly showing the reader, by personal example, that life lives itself as IS no matter WHAT appears. I recommend it. - Sailor Bob Adamson
Awake: Discover the Power of Your Story
by Joel Sheldon ClarkJoel Clark’s heart-pounding, tear-jerking, laugh-out-loud stories didn’t happen by accident. His life of adventure ignited when he embraced the journey God had planned for him—the story God wants to tell through each one of us. With interactive film clips and personal interviews embedded in this Zondervan ebook, Joel invites you into the story Jesus is telling in the middle of the orphan crisis in Africa, the heart-rending tragedy that followed the Haiti earthquake, as well as his own quirky and very real love story. As you meet the characters who have shaped Joel’s journey, you’ll see Jesus through the tears of a young slave in Africa and witness intimate conversations with child soldiers in Haiti and youth group kids in South Africa. And you’ll be challenged to enter a God-adventure of your own. Because, according to Clark, another person’s experiences are never enough. Your unique passions, gifts and circumstances are calling you to live big and say yes. What part of the unfolding story is Jesus longing to tell through you? It’s time to do it … for the story.
Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Classical Chinese Poetry
by David HintonA deep and radically original exploration of Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist wisdom through the lens of the life and work of Tu Fu, widely considered China's greatest classical poet.What is consciousness but the Cosmos awakened to itself? This question is fundamental to the Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist worldview that shapes classical Chinese poetry. A uniquely conceived biography, Awakened Cosmos illuminates that worldview through the life and work of Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.), China's greatest classical poet. Tu Fu's writing traces his life from periods of relative normalcy to years spent as an impoverished refugee amid the devastation of civil war. Exploring key poems to guide the reader through Tu Fu's dramatic life, Awakened Cosmos reveals Taoist/Ch'an insight deeply lived across the full range of human experience.Each chapter presents a poem in three stages: first, the original Chinese; then, an English translation in Hinton's masterful style; and finally, a lyrical essay that discusses the untranslatable philosophical dimensions of the poem. The result is nothing short of remarkable: a biography of the Cosmos awakened to itself in the form of a magisterial poet alive in T'ang Dynasty China.Thirty years ago, David Hinton published America's first full-length translation of Tu Fu's work. Awakened Cosmos is published simultaneously with a newly translated and substantially expanded version of that landmark translation: The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated (New Directions).
Awakening Artemis: Deepening Intimacy with the Living Earth and Reclaiming Our Wild Nature
by Vanessa ChakourA healing resource that blends practical plant-based knowledge with spiritual reconnection to show how respect for and communion with our natural world guides us toward healing. Combining Vanessa's story of her own healing journey with practical plant-based knowledge, Awakening Artemis is rooted in the belief that healing happens through reclaiming an intuitive connection to ourselves, to the natural world, and to our own "inner wild." Having experienced a series of physical traumas growing up--including chronic asthma, a car accident that fractured her back and neck, and sexual trauma--Vanessa pursued various approaches to therapeutic movement from martial arts to yogic practices and explored traditions honoring the mind-body connection while forging a path to recovery. Twenty years now into her journey to reconcile her daily routines with her yearning for greater purpose and connection, Vanessa shares the eclectic mix of elements that have brought her deeper self-awareness, a richer understanding of her place in the world, and the confidence and clear boundaries to truly connect with her loved ones. Organized into five sections that move from the present moment to the forest edge, and into the healing darkness, each chapter focuses on a single plant: on their power to connect us to our bodies and our environment. Using storytelling from her own life, Vanessa connects the plants' power and characteristics to issues we all grapple to heal from and even to understand--from the alienating consequences of cultural appropriation to the intersection between a forest's mycelial network and the neural pathways of our brains. For those seeking to recognize the power and omnipresence of the natural world--from the mugwort sprouting in the city sidewalk to the majesty of a three-thousand-year-old yew in rural Scotland--and harness that to push into new realms of self-discovery, Awakening Artemis is an intimate, unforgettable resource capturing one woman's journey to heal her traumas that opens up a world of potential growth and healing for us all.
Awakening Victory: How Iraqi Tribes and American Troops Reclaimed Al Anbar and Defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq
by Michael SilvermanIn August 2006, many senior U.S. officials thought America had lost the war in Iraq, as the senior U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer there wrote that control of al Anbar Province, the seat of the raging Sunni insurgency, was irrevocably lost to the insurgents. During that time, there were over 100 attacks per day against U.S. military and Iraqi forces in al Anbar, and al Qaeda in Iraq had planted their flag in the provincial capital, Ramadi, declaring it the capital of their new &“Islamic State of Iraq.&” In January 2007, as a spearhead of the newly decided &“Surge,&” the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment deployed to Ramadi as part of the 3rd Infantry Division, the first regular Army unit to deploy to Iraq for a third time. The battalion and its parent brigade went to work in a campaign that will be seen as the D-Day of the Global War on Terror. Starting by clearing al Qaeda from the city of Ramadi and replacing them with legitimate locally raised and trained Iraqi police—while simultaneously fostering the tribal movement known as the &“Awakening Councils&”—the brigade began to have tremendous success. By April 2007, attacks within Ramadi went from twenty per day to one or two per week. By mid-summer 2007, attacks in the entire province were down 90 percent from 2006. Furthermore, the &“Awakening&” had swept through the rest of Iraq, leading to the best security situation seen since 2003. The 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored, was the only battalion to participate in this campaign from start to finish. Moreover, many of the US successes came directly from this unit&’s work. Awakening Victory tells the story of this incredible campaign through the eyes of the commander of the 3rd Battalion, who was right in the thick of the fight. The book also provides a description of the Iraqi insurgency—particularly al Qaeda in Iraq—that offers the depth and texture which are currently lacking in most Americans' perceptions of the war. It describes the battalion&’s actions, including incidents previously unknown to the public, but it is not merely another blood-and-guts war story. The author uses the actions of his battalion to describe a paradigm shift that occurred, while in a totally foreign culture, yet allowed for a move from a war of bombs and bullets to one of partnership and ideas. The author, Lt. Col. Michael E. Silverman (ret) is a political scientist and historian by education and has extensive experience in both warfare and Middle Eastern affairs, including a tour as an advisor to a Saudi Arabian infantry battalion in Riyadh. Silverman served a two-year detail to the Central Intelligence Agency at their Langley headquarters between his last two tours in Iraq. There he was privy to the Director&’s Weekly Iraq Briefing, a working group that discussed issues on the war, many of which ultimately found their way into the President&’s Daily Briefing. Well-versed in international affairs and world religions, he writes with the authority of someone who has both been blown-up by an IED and helped to shape US strategic policy for the Global War on Terror. In this book he describes, from the very front line, the exact turning point where the United States turned a supposedly failed war into a possibly enduring success.