Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 18574 items
The Moon's Our Nearest Neighbour
By Ghillie Basan. 2001
Chasing dreams of their own photographic business, Ghillie Basan and her husband Jonathan swap the comfort of their Edinburgh home…
for Corrunich - a remote cottage at the foot of the Cairngorms. With jumping cows for company, the Basans begin their new life with no electricity and heavy snowstorms. Generators break down and roads quickly become blocked, but the couple have a series of adventures with a fascinating mix of local farmers, terrified tourists, an African president, and their two babies, Yasmin and Zeki. The Moon's our Nearest Neighbour is a heart-warming, amusing account of a life lived in the picturesque beauty of highland Scotland; of the ferocious weather and the spectacularly starry skies; and, most of all, of the tremendous strength of spirit in coming to terms with the hardships and isolation of a new lifestyle.And Not Afraid to Dare
By Tonya Bolden. 1998
The 10 African-American women in this book were not afraid to strive to be free, to be heard, to be…
given a chance at success. It was this gutsiness, this refusal to give up that led them to fulfill their dreams. Read the inspiring stories of writer Toni Morrison, former opera singer Leontyne Price, former astronaut Mae C. Jemison, Olympic gold-medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee, pioneer Mary Fields, escaped slave Ellen Craft, teacher Charlotte Forten Grimke, journalist Ida B. Wells, and educator Mary McLeod Behune.A Legacy of Madness
By Tom Davis. 2011
The story of a loving family coming to grips with its own fragilities, A Legacy of Madness relays the author's…
journey to uncover, and ultimately understand, the history of mental illness that led generations of his suburban American family to their demise.Dede Davis had worried, fussed, and obsessed for the last time: Her heart stopped beating in a fit of anxiety. In the wake of his mother's death, Tom Davis knew one thing: Helplessly self-absorbed and severely obsessive compulsive, Dede led a tormented life. She spent years bouncing around mental health facilities, nursing homes, and assisted-living facilities, but what really caused her death? A Legacy of Madness portrays Tom Davis's captivating discoveries of mental illness throughout generations of his family. Investigating his mother's history led to that of Davis's grandfather, a top administrator at one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country; his great-grandfather who died of self-inflicted gas asphyxiation during the Depression; and his great-great grandmother who, with her eldest son, completed suicide one tragic day. Ultimately, four generations of family members showed clear signs of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and alcoholism--often mistreated illnesses that test one's ability to cope. Through this intimate memoir, we join Davis on a personal odyssey to ensure that he and his siblings, the fifth generation,--recover their family legacy by not only surviving their own mental health disorders but by getting the help they need to lead healthy, balanced lives. In the end, we witness Davis's powerful transition as he makes peace with the past and heals through forgiveness and compassion for his family--and himself. About the author Tom Davis is the Jersey Shore regional editor for Patch.com and an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University. This is his first book. He lives in Metuchen, New Jersey.Twenty Years at Hull House
By Jane Addams.
The classic memoir of one of the Progressive Era s most important reformers and social activists …
If it is natural to feed the hungry it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young comfort to the aged and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all men feel In 1889 Jane Addams and her partner Ellen Starr opened the first settlement house in the United States On Chicago s West Side Hull House was devoted to the city s poor and forgotten from immigrants and unwed mothers to the elderly homeless and hungry Its charter proclaimed its mission to provide a center for higher civic and social life to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago In Twenty Years at Hull House Addams chronicles her revolutionary work from its conception in the Gilded Age through the dawn of the Progressive Era A cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize Addams devoted her life to realizing a more noble vision of democracy More than a personal memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House is a landmark document of social theory and political history This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devicesWhen Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson, The Voice of a Century
By Pam Muñoz Ryan. 2002
An introduction to the life of Marian Anderson, extraordinary singer and the first African American to perform with the Metropolitan…
Opera, whose life and career encouraged social change. Winner of the Sibert HonorThe Bad Touch: The True Story of Harish Iyer and other Thrivers of Child Sex Abuse
By Payal Shah Karwa. 2014
Real-life stories of victims of child sex abuse who emerged victorious! Harish Iyer is a survivor…nay… he is a thriver…
of child sex abuse. He is an award winning social activist who first shared his disturbing story of his sexual abuse on the television show Satyamev Jayate and who gave voice to the issue when most would be silent. Harish’s story will tear the reader apart. He suffers abuse at the hands of his uncle Satheesh, from the time he was seven. Harish was threatened that his parents would be killed if he did not submit to his uncle’s, and sometimes his friends’ barbarism. Until one fine day when Harish musters up the courage and says ‘No!’ He takes his mother into confidence who supports him, but Harish’s woes do not end there. He is castigated by society, his own father believes Harish to be at fault, and so begins Harish’s solo battle to help other sufferers like himself. There are others: noted film director Anurag Khashyap, a victim of incest and sexual abuse, not once but many times over; Jai, living in a Mumbai high-rise suffers abuse and a now 34-year-old mother who suffered sexual abuse as a 12-year-old. The stories in The Bad Touch will shock, horrify, sadden, repulse and numb the reader. But underlying them is the small ray of hope that if the immediate family is sensitive enough to the signals a child may send out, he or she may be rescued from being victimized. This book is a mission: to help ebb the trauma of survivors and inspire them with stories like Harish’s, and to create awareness of the issue of child sex abuse amongst parents/guardians.Losing Amma, Finding Home: A Memoir about Love, Loss and Life's Detours
By Uma Girish. 2014
Uma Girish s Losing Amma Finding Home is a heart-rending narrative of losing a parent living…
through the pain and transforming it to discover one true-calling and life s purpose This is a breathtaking inspirational and personal memoir that will ring true with every reader When Uma arrives to start life in a Chicago suburb with her husband 14-year-old daughter and her dreams in the spring of 2008 she has no clue of the cosmic wheels in motion Barely four weeks later her 68-year-old mother in India is diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer Eight months later she passes away Losing her mother plunges Uma into the deepest despair but more importantly awakens a sudden clarity and knowing that there has to be more to life than this As she begins to navigate a new country and culture she is also called on to navigate the lonely terrain of grief Life begins to open doors and Uma finds comfort connection and purpose in working with seniors at a retirement community Every relationship that she forms with the seniors opens her heart a little wider as she seeks answers to the only questions that matter Who am I Why am I here What am I meant to do with this life Interweaving two cultures through a textured narrative Uma uncovers the truths of her inner journey as she transforms one event one person at a timePretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny
By Jessica Queller. 2008
A timely, affecting memoir from the front lines of medical science: When genetics can predict how we may die, how…
then do we decide how to live? Eleven months after her mother succumbs to cancer, Jessica Queller has herself tested for the BRCA “breast cancer” gene mutation. The results come back positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Thirty-four, unattached, and yearning for marriage and a family of her own, Queller faces an agonizing choice: a lifetime of vigilant screenings and a commitment to fight the disease when caught, or its radical alternative—a prophylactic double mastectomy that would effectively restore life to her, even as it would challenge her most closely held beliefs about body image, identity, and sexuality. Superbly informed and armed with surprising wit and style, Queller takes us on an odyssey from the frontiers of science to the private interiors of a woman’s life. Pretty Is What Changesis an absorbing account of how she reaches her courageous decision and its physical, emotional, and philosophical consequences. It is also an incredibly moving story of what we inherit from our parents and how we fashion it into the stuff of our own lives, of mothers and daughters and sisters, and of the sisterhood that forms when women are united in battle against a common enemy. Without flinching, Jessica Queller answers a question we may one day face for ourselves: If genes can map our fates and their dark knowledge is offered to us, will we willingly trade innocence for the information that could save our lives?A World Within: A Remarkable Story of Coping with a Parent's Dementia
By Minaksh Chaudhry. 2014
This story is an unfinished one The story of a man dying in slow motion …
He clings to flashes of memory and grapples with his reality As he chases the mirage of his memory his world disappears fragment by fragment It is not just his being his self that disintegrates every moment it is the universe as he knew it that fades into oblivion This is a tale of a man building bridges to nowhere Everything around you changes when you take care of a parent with dementia This person who had been bedrock of your strength to whom you looked up to and who was always there for you is now nothing close to his former self His enquiring glances puzzlement doubts and demand for answers signal a total shift in relationship The despair also reveals the person you are temperamental and escapist But this journey has life lessons too When drama of life ends you will have nothing today is all you have so enjoy life With tears there is laughter and amidst confusion there is clarity that life goes on and we must flow with it Here is A World WithinFace Value (America's Next Top Model #1)
By Randi Reisfeld, Taryn Bell. 2009
Enter a world of high-fashion and high-drama with a fabulous new fiction series by America's Next Top Model! A group…
of girls share the same dream: becoming a model. It looks so glamorous: the clothes, the hair, the make-up, the exotic locales.Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley Williams
By Shirley Williams. 2010
The role of women in our society has changed out of all recognition. But it has changed least in the…
House of Commons. I want to describe those changes and the resistances to them through the magnifying glass of my own life, a life that coincides with our turbulent post-war history.'Shirley Williams was born to politics. As well as being influenced by her mother, Vera Brittian, her father George Caitlin, a leading political scientist, encouraged his daughter to have high ambitions for herself - including daring to climb the bookshelves in his library. Elected as MP for Hitchin in 1964, she was a member of the Wilson and Callaghan governments and was also the Secretary of State for Education. As one of the 'Gang of Four' Shirley Williams famously broke away from the Labour Party to found the SDP in 1981 and later supported its merger with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats. CLIMBING THE BOOKSHELVES is the voice of strong and passionate woman of luminous intelligence.Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story
By Jewel. 2015
New York Times bestselling poet and multi-platinum singer-songwriter Jewel explores her unconventional upbringing and extraordinary life in an inspirational memoir…
that covers her childhood to fame, marriage, and motherhood.When Jewel's first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with more than thirty million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life, and the lessons learned from her experience and her music. Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age five, and joined her parents' entertainment act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed family life with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, however, there was also instability, abuse, and trauma. At age fifteen, she moved out and tasked herself with a mission: to see if she could avoid being the kind of statistic that her past indicated for her future. Soon after, she was accepted to the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and there she began writing her own songs as a means of expressing herself and documenting her journey to find happiness. Jewel was eighteen and homeless in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs and it was requested into the top-ten countdown, something unheard-of for an unsigned artist. By the time she was twenty-one, her debut had gone multiplatinum. There is much more to Jewel's story, though, one complicated by family legacies, by crippling fear and insecurity, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she managed to flourish and find happiness despite these obstacles. Along her road of self-discovery, learning to redirect her fate, Jewel has become an iconic singer and songwriter. In Never Broken she reflects on how she survived, and how writing songs, poetry, and prose has saved her life many times over. She writes lyrically about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and loss, about the healing power of motherhood, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.From the Hardcover edition.Tehran, Lipstick and Loopholes
By Nahal Tajadod. 2011
A wry and humorous account of the author's quest to get her Iranian passport renewed. She embarks on a bizarre…
and circuitous journey, meeting a colourful cast of characters along the way: two photographers who specialise in Islamic portraits, a forensic surgeon who trades in human organs, a madam who wants to send prostitutes to Dubai and a grandmother who offers a live chicken to an implacable official.Tehran, Lipstick and Loopholes is a fascinating look at the constraints and contradictions of contemporary life in Tehran from the author's unique standpoint of being both a native of Iran and a foreigner.The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel
By Linda Grant. 2006
The further away anyone was from that block of Ben Yehuda street, the easier it seemed to find a solution…
to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, that stubborn mess in the centre of the Middle East and the more I studied these solutions, the more I thought that they depended for their implementation on a population of table football men, painted in the colours of the two teams: blue and white for the Israelis, green, red and black for the Palestinians. All the international community had to do was to twist the levers and the little players would kick and swing and send the ball into the net, to victory' One block of a Tel Aviv street is the starting point for Linda Grant's exploration of the inner dynamics of Israelis - not the government and its policies, but the people themselves, in all their variety. Iraqi shop-keepers, Teenage soldiers, Mob bosses, Tunisian-born settlers, Russian scientists, and the father of the child victim of a suicide bomber are some of the people she meets.Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays
By Chelsea Hodson. 2018
I had a real romance with this book Miranda JulyA highly anticipated collection from…
the writer Maggie Nelson has called bracingly good refreshing and welcome that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies Schopenhauer and a deadly game of Russian roulette in these essays Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide She asks what our privacy our intimacy and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking linking and sharing Starting with Hodson s own work experience which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission Hodson expands outward looking at the ways in which the human will submits whether in the marketplace or in a relationship Both tender and jarring this collection is relevant to anyone who s ever searched for what the self is worth Hodson s accumulation within each piece is purposeful and her prose vivid clear and sometimes even shocking as she explores the wonderful and strange forms of desire Tonight I m Someone Else is a fresh poetic debut from an exciting emerging voice in which Hodson asks How much can a body endure And the resounding answer Almost everythingPainkiller Addict: From wreckage to redemption - my true story
By Cathryn Kemp. 2017
What if the drugs that were meant to cure you slowly started to kill you?After falling dangerously ill with acute-on-chronic…
pancreatitis, Cathryn Kemp left hospital with a repeat prescription for fentanyl, a painkiller 100 times stronger than heroin.Within two years she was taking almost ten times the NHS maximum daily dose - all on prescription - and her life began to spiral out of control. Cathryn discovered she had just three months to live, unless she gave up the drug she clung to so desperately.After selling everything she owned and checking into rehab, Cathryn was told by the doctors that recovery was highly unlikely. Yet to everyone's amazement, she proved them wrong.Coming Clean is a poignant, vivid and honest memoir of a woman's struggle with, and subsequent victory over, her demons. It is a love story, a horror story, a survival story, and one that shows the very real dangers of the over-prescription of painkillers.Diplomatic Incidents: Memoirs Of An (un)diplomatic Wife
By Cherry Denman. 2011
Cherry Denman has spent her life trailing husband Charlie round some of the world's most remote outposts and can ask…
for the lavatory in eleven languages. While some aspects of living abroad will always puzzle her - saunas, tofu and circumcision, to name just three - she wouldn't have missed it for anything. Lessons learnt range from the practical (possessions belong either in the suitcase or the skip: storage is for wimps), to the truly useful (how to avoid the drinks party bore) and the truly bizarre (the episode with the goat . . .). Charming and witty, these hilarious tales of global misunderstsanding are illustrated with over seventy original line drawings.The Women Who Broke All the Rules: How the Choices of a Generation Changed Our Lives
By Susan B. Evans, Joan P. Avis. 1999
Featuring in-depth interviews with over 100 women, this important book uncovers the untold stories of lives in progress, doing one's…
best and rewriting old rules. The stories tell of the creativity, courage, and determination used by women to forever redefine womanhood.Game Over: My Love For Hip Hop
By Ramos Winter. 2013
Winter Ramos, one of the new faces on VH1's hit reality television show, Love and Hip Hop New York Season…
3 delivers a brazen and unabashed memoir of her life in the world of hip hop. In Game Over, Winter puts all of her emotions on the page leaving no experience, emotional abuse, or former lover uncovered. From her days as assistant to rapper, Fabolous and friend to, Jada Kiss, to appearing on Love and Hip Hop and being Creative Costume Designer for Flavor unit Films, Winter delivers a tell-all book on her famous ex-lovers and experiences in the music industry. As the chick that was always in the mix and cool with everyone, Winter was privy to the cray beyond the videos, private flights, and limos that the cameras caught for us. Her reality and theirs was no game. Game Over is Winter's cautionary tale for the next generation of young women who believe that the fabulous lives of celebrities unveiled in blogs and on reality television shows are all FIRE! Stay tuned, because this GAME is about to get real.The Chocolate Log
By Cheryl Kumar Templeton. 2013
The Chocolate Log has been a comfort and joy to come to over the years The love Cheryl puts…
into her food and the joy and laughter served in many forms warms the heart in the cold hills The taste of home like it was in the good old days when a warm hearth meant something was baking Rocky Singh Anchor Award winning series Highway on My Plate NDTV Goodtimes The Chocolate Log is the story of Cheryl Kumar Templeton a schoolteacher and her husband Allan an Indian Air Force fighter pilot who gave up their secure comfortable careers to start a new life in Mcleodganj a suburb situated in the foothills of the Himalayas which Cheryl describes as a microcosm of the whole world It was here that a new dream unfolded and in its wake was born The Chocolate Log a patisserie and caf they have run for twenty-four years and continue to do so till today She writes with sympathy and affection of the local people the Himachalis the Tibetans the Gaddis of the people who slipped in and out of their lives some of whom returned again and again to their karmic mountain a destination for the soul others who have stayed on in their memories the idealists the visitors who became soul friends the eccentrics the loonies She generously shares with readers the recipes of a few of her many popular offerings brown bread chicken quiche chocolate cake lemon tarts apple pie and even the special train cake she made for her granddaughter s first birthday which have gained her mention in the New York Times Lonely Planet Frommer s The Rough Guide Footprints and other multi-language travel guides But this book is not only about recipes or running a caf She speaks of the years of slogging through eighteen-hour days months of no business and no income of arguments fights frustrations and fatigue Of heartbreak when her granddaughter was born of ups and downs but also of victories The Chocolate Log The Cheryton Cottage Guest House and Wine Oaks where wines are made according to her grandfather s recipes In Cheryl s words This is my story of imagination successes disappointments struggle pain criticism appreciation but most of all of magic At the end of the day and at the end of my story I can only say IT WAS WORTH IT ALL