Prison Journey: A Memoir

Prison Journey: A Memoir

FB Ali was a rising star in the Pakistan Army when, in 1969, Gen Yahya Khan, the army chief, declared martial law and took over the country. Disheartened at the direction in which Pakistan was heading, and his inability to do anything about it, he contemplated resigning, but the 1971 war with India intervened. Given an important combat command shortly before it began he witnessed firsthand how badly this disastrous war was mismanaged by the military regime and the incompetent generals it had appointed. The resulting debacle drove him to initiate and lead the army action that forced Gen Yahya Khan to hand over power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had won the 1970 election. The usual fate of kingmakers befell him: in 1972 he was retired from the army and a few months later arrested and tried on charges of trying to overthrow the government. Narrowly escaping a death sentence, he ended up with life imprisonment, spending over 5 years in prison before he was released following Bhutto's ouster in another military coup. Though offered a significant role in the new setup he decided to move to Canada with his family. This memoir contains an insider account of many important events of that decade, including the 1971 India-Pakistan war and the troubles in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh. It is also a poignant tale of courage and endurance in the face of adversity.

Bearded Lady

Bearded Lady

Mara Altman, author of the bestselling Kindle Single Sparkle, returns to top comic form to address the problem every woman faces but no woman wants to acknowledge: facial and body hair. Her brave, witty memoir gives listeners a rare, honest glimpse into the hidden world of lasers and razors. It begins in childhood, when Altman discovers that hair sometimes grows in unexpected places – and that it's best to remove it immediately, or risk ridicule from 8th-grade girls. It continues into early adulthood, when romantically inclined men make offhand remarks about her fine coating of fur. From there it's a hilarious, heartfelt journey from Barcelona to Bangkok in search of a cure, an explanation, and the perfect pair of tweezers.

The Americanization of Edward Bok

The Americanization of Edward Bok

This book was to have been written in 1914, when I foresaw some leisure to write it, for I then intended to retire from active editorship. But the war came, an entirely new set of duties commanded, and the project was laid aside. Its title and the form, however, were then chosen. By the form I refer particularly to the use of the third person. I had always felt the most effective method of writing an autobiography, for the sake of a better perspective, was mentally to separate the writer from his subject by this device. Moreover, this method came to me very naturally in dealing with the Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in this book, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personality apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work. I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book. Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward Bok: simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact, my chief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' Home Journal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing my real self. Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different was the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed sway. Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let him have full rein. But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decision to retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised and amused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to those closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute freedom and gratitude that I felt. Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself. There are no longer two personalities. The Edward Bok of whom I have written has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been there, save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy, therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact, I could not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him in the first person, as if he were myself, is impossible, for he is not.

The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America, and What It Taught Us About Love

The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took to Keep My Best Friend in America, and What It Taught Us About Love

After her traditional engagement to her high school sweetheart falls apart, Liza Monroy faced the prospect of another devastating loss: the deportation of her best friend Emir. Desperate to stay in America, Emir tried every legal recourse to obtain a green card knowing that his return to the Middle East—where gay men are often beaten and sometimes killed—was too dangerous. So Liza proposes to Emir in efforts to keep him safe and by her side. After a fast wedding in Las Vegas, the couple faces new adventures and obstacles in both L.A. and New York City as they dodge the INS. Their relationship is compounded further by the fact that Liza’s mother works for the State Department preventing immigration fraud. Through it all, Liza and Emir must contend with professional ambition, adversity, and heartbreak and eventually learn the true lessons of companionship and devotion. This marriage that was not a marriage, in the end, really was.

The Marriage Act is a timely and topical look at the changing face of marriage in America and speaks to the emergent generation forming bonds outside of tradition—and sometimes even outside the law.

From Three Feet Off the Ground: The Year My Children Taught Me How to See the World . . . and Myself

From Three Feet Off the Ground: The Year My Children Taught Me How to See the World . . . and Myself

For Christie Havey Smith, her role as a mother is her greatest gift. But one significant day, tensions bring her to the floor, and the go-getter girl sees how she has misplaced pieces of herself in the midst of motherhood. Suddenly all she wants is to explore the possibility of being instead of trying to be everything. This is Christie's charismatic story of following her toddlers in a humbling yearlong lesson on how to see the world. It is the heart song of a mother making life-changing discoveries with a view from three feet off the ground. She sets out wanting to remember what it means to be amazed, be free, be attentive, be present and love without limits. What she experiences is the spiritual discovery of herself.

''With boundless curiosity, courage, and a wide-open heart, Christie Havey Smith takes us on the adventure of motherhood. From Three Feet Off the Ground is a story rich with insights and luminous moments of wonder.'' –Lisa Fugard, Author of Skinner's Drift

Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

An Exceptional Telling of an Exceptional Journey!

Mark David Gerson never wanted to be a writer, never believed in a world beyond that of his five senses. But when life began to chip away at his sense of self with a relentlessness that he couldn't ignore, he found himself launched on a spiritual journey that would redefine everything about him — multiple times.

It was a journey of surrender that ultimately birthed a timeless fantasy trilogy…and a new life he could never have imagined.

“My life, as you will discover, has been rocky, on-the-edge and unconventional. It has been scary, disrupted and a distant remove from what most people still cling to as 'security.'

“It has also been creative, exhilarating, passion-filled, vibrant, exciting, adventurous and enriching. It has pushed me beyond the boundaries of what I believe and what I believe I want, and it has propelled me beyond the frontiers of the conventionally possible.

“In every moment, it steers me on a course that I could never consciously chart for myself. In every breath, it reminds me that the story knows best — the story I'm living as much as the story I'm writing.”

“I don’t know anyone who has regularly risked more, given up more, to be a writer.”

~William Reichard, author of This Album Full of Angles

“Mark David is a master…one of the great teachers!”

~ Rev. Mary Omwake, Leadership Council: Ass'n for Global New Thought

“Your words may be what others read, but your life is your true message.”

~ Rev. Cherise Thorne, author of Knowing Spirit

“A book that has the power to awaken, empower and inspire anyone who reads it.”

~ Melissa Shawn, Austin, Texas

My Life in Middlemarch

My Life in Middlemarch

A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth–Middlemarch– and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.

Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford, and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not.

In this wise and revealing work of biography, reporting, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot's masterpiece–the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure–and brings them into our world. Offering both a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography and an exploration of the way aspects of Mead's life uncannily echo that of Eliot herself, My Life in Middlemarch is for every ardent lover of literature who cares about why we read books, and how they read us.

Days and Dazed in Peru: A year in the ancient land of the Incas

Days and Dazed in Peru: A year in the ancient land of the Incas

Living in a foreign culture is like playing a game where the rules aren’t explained. A retired engineer from a small town on the Columbia River in Oregon moves to a large city on the Rio Piura in Peru and struggles to find some rules. This memoir of a year in Peru is warm and comical and affirms that the most important unwritten rule of any game is to enjoy it. My wife of 38 years and I realized a lifelong dream of living as a couple in a foreign land when we moved to Peru to fulfill a 1-year Fulbright Teacher Exchange assignment. Teri taught and I wrote every day about our experiences. My journal launched as a how-to book about survival in another culture but philosophical currents swirled and Peruvian stories soon eddied into personal stories. Reflecting on my childhood and youth, love and marriage, family and friends, aging and cancer ultimately helped me better understand and appreciate the confusing cultural mores in the ancient land of the Incas.

9/11 and the Art of Happiness

9/11 and the Art of Happiness

On 11 September 2001, Australian Yvonne Kennedy boarded American Airlines flight 77 to return to Australia after a US holiday. That day has since been seared into our consciousness. Her flight was hijacked and deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. All passengers on board were killed.

Yvonne's death left her family devastated. In 9/11 and the Art of Happiness her son, Simon Kennedy, a well-known Australian comedian and broadcaster, recounts the distressing and often at-times bizarre events that followed. Initially there is confusion: Was his mother actually on the plane? The world of officialdom then turns everything upside down and there is no space to grieve: airline officials require endless information; FBI agents pay home visits; and an invitation is received to meet Barrack Obama at an official US memorial service. And there is always the media wanting personal information.

However, even ten years after the event, Simon is reminded each day of the 9/11 attack. The aftermath of his mother's shocking death remains, making it difficult to come to terms with his loss but even more remarkable that he has found his way to forgiveness.

9/11 and the Art of Happiness is an engrossing story of the life-changing impact a global political event has on the individuals and their families who are caught in the maelstrom.

12 Years a Slave: 1000 COPY LIMITED EDITION (Illustrated Hardcover with Jacket) Now a Major Movie (Engage Books)

12 Years a Slave: 1000 COPY LIMITED EDITION (Illustrated Hardcover with Jacket) Now a Major Movie (Engage Books)

Solomon Northup was born a free man in New York State. At the age of 33 he was kidnapped in Washington D.C. and placed in an underground slave pen. Northup was transported by ship to New Orleans where he was sold into slavery. He spent the next 12 years working as a carpenter, driver, and cotton picker. This narrative reveals how Northup survived the harsh conditions of slavery, including smallpox, lashings, and an attempted hanging. Solomon Northup was among a select few who were freed from slavery. His account describes the daily life of slaves in Louisiana, their diet and living conditions, the relationship between master and slave, and how slave catchers used to recapture runaways. Northup's first person account published in 1853, was a dramatic story in the national debate over slavery that took place in the nine years leading up to the start of the American Civil War.

From God's Monster to the Devil's Angel:: Life of a Chicago Gang Member

From God's Monster to the Devil's Angel:: Life of a Chicago Gang Member

Most boys would love to have a former Chicago Bear player as a father. For me, it wasn't glamorous being thrown and kicked around like a football. He wasn't my hero. He was a monster. When he tossed me out, I became just like him. When I was born my crack addicted mother was seventeen. My father was thirty-six, and married to another woman. My father divorced his wife and kids to pursue a relationship with my mother. My mother escaped the abuse by leaving us when I was six. With no one else to abuse, my father committed unspeakable acts of violence against me. I was athletically gifted. I played sports to stay away from my abusive home. I ended up becoming one of the best football players in Chicago, but it was not enough to keep me out of the life of crime. At sixteen, I was put out on the gang ridden streets. Gang life seemed to be the only way for a homeless kid to survive. I ended up joining one of the most murderous gangs in Chicago. My memoir details many near death experiences as I come of age on the deadly streets of Chicago. The tumultuous gang life caused me to become oblivious to the person in the mirror. One violent act committed by my gang made national headlines. A retired Chicago policeman entered my life and attempted to steer me in the right direction. Time was ticking as this cop tried to undo all the negativity that I had acquired on the streets. Later, my father was murdered in his home! Common sense pointed to his violent, gang banging son, with an axe to grind.

Amazing Grace: autobiography

Amazing Grace: autobiography

By the time Gladys Clark Brown was in her teen years, her destiny seemed all too clear. She had dropped out of high school when she became pregnant, and was struggling on welfare to make ends meet with an abusive, drug-addicted spouse. However, God had an altogether different plan for Brown, who instead discovered a life-changing spirituality as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian, as well as a remarkable career spanning roles as an educator, counselor, church administrator, and more.

Amazing Grace is her inspiring and incredible autobiographical account of the seven decades following her birth in 1935. In it, she shares both her trials and her triumphs, from her darkest days to the guiding light of the Holy Spirit. Starting with her ill-fated beginning as one of five children of a single parent, Brown charts her own remarkable course, emerging from the destitution and pain of life with a drug-addicted husband to retrace her steps and land a high school degree, as well as three masters degrees beyond it. Along the way, her commitment to her God and church demonstrated time and again, that, through the bleakest of times, the Lord’s amazing grace will lead the way.

A Tiger's Walk: Memoirs of an Auburn Football Player

A Tiger's Walk: Memoirs of an Auburn Football Player

Readers have the opportunity to enter the world of college football and follow one player through his experiences on the gridiron of the Southeastern Conference for the Auburn Tigers. A Tiger’s Walk observes him as he battles the highs and lows of championship and losing seasons, coaching hirings and firings, and personal success and tragedy.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, the self-proclaimed “football capital of the South,” Rob Pate grew up well aware of the significance of college football in his home state. At the age of five he embarked on a journey in football that carried him from a proud youth league ballpark in small-town Alabama to the splendor of SEC football, as well as to the National Football League.

Readers can gain an understanding of daily life in college football from the perspective of someone who recently stepped off the field for the very last time. This is one Tiger’s walk in the world of today’s student athlete, helping fans watch from the sidelines and become one of the team.

We Missed Dessert

We Missed Dessert

For all those who‘s life has been touched by someone suffering with Early Onset Alzheimer’s…this book is for you. This work is a very personal look into the heart of one who has been left behind. Trudy Jo Hahn Snader delivers both warm and tender, yet poignant, thoughts as she copes in dealing with this unforgiving disease that slowly takes away the one she holds most dear to her heart. Join her in her journey to grieve and heal, and then live a life that is different from all that she once knew.

Raybo: Stories of the Bumper Bandit

Raybo: Stories of the Bumper Bandit

“Raybo: Stories of the Bumper Bandit” is a collection of true stories from the Dirty Thirties and beyond. You'll find stories of family, fun, and survival. Centered in Arkansas and Western Oklahoma, Raybo will take you back in time to a place where everyone was barefoot and sometimes love was all you had.

Mustang Colonel's Journey

Mustang Colonel's Journey

Brad Hallock, the younger of two children, grew up in Central Oregon and graduated from Redmond Union High School in 1955. He had earned with two, 4-year, Navy scholarships. Both required he sign 4-year, no-marriage contracts. He later breached the contracts and married his high school sweetheart, Carol Sweet. After some college, Brad joined the United States Air Force and began a challenging, but totally rewarding, career. He was assigned to Yale University after basic training, then to an overseas, remote assignment. He returned “surplus to the Air Force” in his field and was assigned to an Air Transportation squadron. Then fortuitously, the Air Force implemented a new, Airman Education & Commissioning Program, just as Brad's enlistment was about to end. He was assigned to The University of Tennessee (UT) where he later made his forth stripe (SSgt). Brad graduated in fifteen months with a Bachelor of Science degree. Brad's first assignment was to Hawaii, with two stops in Texas to get a commission and study about Air Force Transportation. After learning his trade in Hawaii, Brad qualified for higher education and was sent back to UT for his Master of Science degree in Business Management. Upon graduation, he volunteered for a remote tour in Vietnam. Instead, he was sent to Don Muang, Thailand. He worked the system to allow his family to join him there for a 2-year tour. When he again volunteered for a remote assignment to Vietnam, Brad was moved south to U-Tapao, Thailand. He left Thailand after 3 years with the remote assignment requirement fulfilled. Brad then worked in Transportation Computer Systems design at the Military Airlift Command (MAC) headquarters, Scott AFB, IL. There, he was heavily involved in developing two, worldwide computer systems. He returned to Hawaii to later become MAC's, 61st Wing, Director of Transportation (a Colonel's position). During a temporarily assignment to the Philippines, he assisted with the evacuation of Vietnam (Oper

That God's Work Be Displayed: What I Saw After I Lost My Sight

That God's Work Be Displayed: What I Saw After I Lost My Sight

In the fall of 1972, John Erickson was 16 years old, and things were not going well. It was his ninth emergency visit to a hospital in the last four years, and he lay unconscious after a seizure at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. The doctors didn’t know why their efforts continued to fail, but they finally told his parents nothing more could be done. A priest arrived to administer Last Rites. As a last-ditch effort, Erickson’s parents approved a high-risk procedure in the hopes of buying their son at least a little more time. And miraculously, it did. Young John emerged from that procedure, which had finally been successful, and began the journey of learning to live as a legally blind person. Along the way he would discover God’s love through the people around him and ultimately come to understand a purpose for his ordeal. This is his story, shared in the hopes of encouraging others to find faith in the midst of life’s greatest challenges.

The Philosopher's Daughter, a memoir

The Philosopher's Daughter, a memoir

Jennifer was not an academic like her philosopher father. She danced and sang and painted and spent her college years at jazz clubs. Her father had been a rebel in his youth–a poet– at the end of a long line of military men. He fell in love with words and reason; Jennifer fell in love with theater and dance. In Hollywood she taught stars like Cher, and worked as a team with her son Michael, a gifted piano man and recording artist. Suddenly life took a devastating turn, choices were made. Jennifer witnessed and recorded her son's year behind bars awaiting trial for attempted murder. During the weeks before his death, she began to write this memoir. Today, she lives atop a hill overlooking the Pacific with horses, dogs, cats, chickens' and a big red rooster who crows all night long. Her life is full of surprises–peaceful and extraordinary.

Leaving Kentucky in the Broad Daylight

Leaving Kentucky in the Broad Daylight

Growing up in rural Kentucky in the 1960s-1970s may sound like a walk through Mayberry to some and in many ways, it was. The atmosphere was specific to the time and to the changes in process as a nation emerged from the restrictive 1950s in heated pursuit of the American Dream, which was still alive and well, even among the poverty dwellers. Old men still played checkers in front of the mom and pop store, which sold cold Cokes in a bottle from a red chest cooler with a bottle opener built into the side.

As civil rights tension increased in he rest of the world, Katrina and her classmates cooed and ooohed over the integration of a Filipino child and an African-American child into their community. While America recoiled from the near miss of the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of a beloved president, Katrina's mother would sneak and watch American Bandstand while her husband was at work and Katrina spent her time with a ghostly child.

The Chapman family may have been poor in the purse, but they were rich in stories. You will laugh and cry in the same moment as Katrina share her memories of growing up with a eccentric (her aunt calls it “oddly turned”) family including a father who was a walking country music encyclopedia to a mother who could make any occurrence into a tall tale.

“Leaving Kentucky in the Broad Daylight” details Katrina’s life growing up in Pleasant Ridge, Kentucky and presents her memoirs until the point that she left home in 1978. You will follow her through ups and downs of life, including frequent attacks by a mynah bird, raising her brothers while her father worked and her mother was chronically ill, and an unexpected teenage pregnancy.

Including over 80 personal photographs, you will grow up with Katrina as you page through the ups and downs of her life as a reluctant Southern belle. This book will be followed by the sequel called I Aim to Misbehave,due out in Fall of 2014, covering Katrina's life after leaving home until present day.

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

These hilarious tales of urban terror reveal the dark truth hidden behind three seemingly innocent words—a phrase that you have seen a hundred times before but will never view in the same light again—

WANTED TO SHARE

John Birmingham's rendering of a life in share houses will leave you laughing, cringing and reminiscing about your own brushes with the mad, bad residents of flate mate hell.

All the Things I Never Told My Father

All the Things I Never Told My Father

A blonde, blue-eyed little girl, the only child of an educated Jewish family of Krakow, Poland. She was only 5 years old when the bleak years of World War II began and Nazi Germany occupied Poland. Separated from her parents, her grandparents never heard from again, All The Things I Never Told My Father is a true story told from the heart. A story about a child surviving an impossible ordeal and the courage she discovered in herself along the way.

The Crusade Years, 1933–1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath

The Crusade Years, 1933–1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath

Covering an eventful period in Herbert Hoover’s career—and, more specifically, his life as a political pugilist from 1933 to 1955—this previously unknown memoir was composed and revised by the 31st president during the 1940s and 1950s—and then, surprisingly, set aside. This work recounts Hoover’s family life after March 4, 1933, his myriad philanthropic interests, and, most of all, his unrelenting “crusade against collectivism” in American life. Aside from its often feisty account of Hoover’s political activities during the Roosevelt and Truman eras, and its window on Hoover’s private life and campaigns for good causes, The Crusade Years invites readers to reflect on the factors that made his extraordinarily fruitful postpresidential years possible. The pages of this memoir recount the story of Hoover’s later life, his abiding political philosophy, and his vision of the nation that gave him the opportunity for service. This is, in short, a remarkable saga told in the former president’s own words and in his own way that will appeal as much to professional historians and political scientists as it will lay readers interested in history.

Against The Wind: a memoir

Against The Wind: a memoir

Outback ski enthusiast Kirk VanHee received the wake-up call of a lifetime after a monster avalanche atop Aspen Mountain nearly took his life. A child of the sixties with a troubled past, Kirk found the family he’d never had among Aspen’s close-knit hippie community. But his new life of peace, love and self-discovery turned menacing after a recreational drug habit quickly escalated into a full-on battle with addiction in a dangerous underworld of drug dealing and drug running. He knew that sooner rather than later he was going to die—in an overdose or a drug deal gone bad. What he didn’t know was that Mother Nature would come calling first, and that in one powerful moment, he would be given everything he’d need to turn his life around.

Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story

Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story

Discover the unforgettable New York Times bestselling memoir about growing up in a dysfunctional Mormon family–and finding escape, adventure, and hard-earned wisdom on the road…

What would you do if your stepfather pinned you down and tried to cast Satan out of you? For thirteen-year-old Ingrid, the answer is simple: RUN.

For years Ingrid Ricks yearned to escape the poverty and the suffocating brand of Mormon religion that oppressed her at home. Her chance came when she was thirteen and took a trip with her divorced dad, traveling throughout the Midwest, selling tools and hanging around with the men on his shady revolving sales crew. It felt like freedom from her controlling mother and cruel, authoritarian stepfather—but it came with its own disappointments and dysfunctions, and she would soon learn a lesson that would change her life: she can't look to others to save her; she has to save herself.

Rites of Passage and Rituals of Humiliation: Circling the drain during the high school years of the 60's.

Rites of Passage and Rituals of Humiliation: Circling the drain during the high school years of the 60's.

In ancient cultures brief, intense rites and rituals mark the transition to adulthood. In America these trials are intense, but they are not brief. The rites and rituals are spread over a period of time we refer to as the high school years. The memories of the ordeals we weathered during this period remain with us throughout our lives. Whether we view that period as positive or negative, they are the times we cannot forget. An unexpected move from his suburban Chicago home has left fourteen year old Jerry Weis friendless and faced with starting over in the small Kansas farming community of Chanute. Blessed with neither athletic ability or scholarly dedication, he struggles to find not only friends, but also his identity. His attempts to navigate the crucial high school years will bring him face to face with challenges that range from school administrators and teachers, students, employers, dating, and even ministers seeking his salvation. Unfortunately, not all of his encounters can be chalked up as victories. Humorous and often touching, Jerry's efforts to deal with these years provide proof that not all of life's lessons are easy to learn or taught in the high school curriculum. Anyone who has made the journey from junior high school to the coveted diploma will find that Jerry's experiences bring to life the triumphs, near disasters, and misadventures of the high school years with both honesty and candor. It is a memoir that brings the past to life again.