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  The Still Point of the Turning...

  Emily Rapp

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  Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan.  He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun.  He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father.  He would be an avid skier like his mother.  Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education.But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder.  Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three; he would be permanently stalled at a developmental level of six months.  Rapp and her husband were forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about parenting.  They would have to learn to live with their child in the moment; to find happiness in the midst of sorrow; to parent without a future.The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother' s journey through grief and beyond it.  Rapp' s response to her son' s diagnosis was a belief that she needed to " make my world big"-- to make sense of her family' s situation through art, literature, philosophy, theology and myth.  Drawing on a broad range of thinkers and writers, from C.S. Lewis to Sylvia Plath, Hegel to Mary Shelley' s Frankenstein, Rapp learns what wisdom there is to be gained from parenting a terminally ill child.  In luminous, exquisitely moving prose she re-examines our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.

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  Churchill and America

  Martin Gilbert

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  In this stirring book, Martin Gilbert tells the intensely human story of Winston Churchill's profound connection to America, a relationship that resulted in an Anglo-American alliance that has stood at the center of international relations for more than a century.Winston Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a leading American entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn in 1854, spent much of his seventy adult years in close contact with the United States. In two world wars, his was the main British voice urging the closest possible cooperation with the United States. From before the First World War, he understood the power of the United States, the "gigantic boiler," which, once lit, would drive the great engine forward.Sir Martin Gilbert was appointed Churchill's official biographer in 1968 and has ever since been collecting archival and personal documentation that explores every twist and turn of Churchill's relationship with the United States, revealing the golden thread running through it of friendship and understanding despite many setbacks and disappointments. Drawing on this extensive store of Churchill's own words - in his private letters, his articles and speeches, and press conferences and interviews given to American journalists on his numerous journeys throughout the United States - Gilbert paints a rich portrait of the Anglo-American relationship that began at the turn of the last century.In Churchill and America, Gilbert explores how Churchill's intense rapport with this country resulted in no less than the liberation of Europe and the preservation of European democracy and freedom. It also set the stage for the ongoing alliance that has survived into the twenty-first century."This is a fascinating story, straightforward and well told, of one of the 20th century's most important leaders and the critical connection he forged between the world's fading superpower and its rising one."-Publishers Weekly"It is doubtful whether anyone on this planet knows more about the life and times of Winston Churchill than his official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert."-Library Journal

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  United States of Grace - A...

  Lenny Duncan

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  In 1991, when he was thirteen years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket—the start of his great American adventure.Today Duncan, who inspired and challenged audiences with his breakout first book, Dear Church, brings us a deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the US. In his characteristically powerful voice he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith, examining pressing issues like poverty, mass incarceration, white supremacy, and LGBTQ inclusion through an intimate portrayal of his life's struggles and joys. United States of Grace is a love story about America, revealing the joy and resilience of those places in this country many call "the margins" but that Lenny Duncan has called home. This book makes the bold claim that God is present with us in the most difficult of circumstances, bringing life out of death.

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  Pretty Sane - Living...

  Nicola Wall

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  'I always knew I was somewhat different without knowing exactly how. My earliest memory is being given a doll on my third birthday. One day around that time I am looking at a picture of a deer when it turns and runs towards me. There is a cushion with a peacock on it, it comes straight out at me. A woman in a painting turns her head to look at me, her eyes staring into mine until I squeak and run out of the room. It does not matter where I am – at home, my grandparent's house or my aunt's – pictures and paintings move around and then right themselves as soon as I attempt to show anyone. Whenever a picture turns itself into a television, I drag an adult by the hand to show them the magic painting, only to look like a liar when it fails to perform. I finally catch one in the act; my grandad John and I stand in front of the deer painting while it shakes its head and slowly stalks forward. "The deer isn't moving, Nicola; it's just your imagination," he tells me. Next, come the voices.'

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  Tolstoy and the Purple Chair -...

  Nina Sankovitch

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  Nina Sankovitch has always been a reader. As a child, she discovered that a trip to the local bookmobile with her sisters was more exhilarating than a ride at the carnival. Books were the glue that held her immigrant family together. When Nina's eldest sister died at the age of forty-six, Nina turned to books for comfort, escape, and introspection. In her beloved purple chair, she rediscovered the magic of such writers as Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ian McEwan, Edith Wharton, and, of course, Leo Tolstoy. Through the connections Nina made with books and authors (and even other readers), her life changed profoundly, and in unexpected ways. Reading, it turns out, can be the ultimate therapy. 
  Tolstoy and the Purple Chair also tells the story of the Sankovitch family: Nina's father, who barely escaped death in Belarus during World War II; her four rambunctious children, who offer up their own book recommendations while helping out with the cooking and cleaning; and Anne-Marie, her oldest sister and idol, with whom Nina shared the pleasure of books, even in her last moments of life. In our lightning-paced culture that encourages us to seek more, bigger, and better things, Nina's daring journey shows how we can deepen the quality of our everyday lives-if we only find the time.

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  Stories From the Secret War -...

  Terrence M. Burke

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  In 1962, the International Geneva Accords declared Laos to be neutral and generally restricted from foreign interference and foreign troops.  Thus began the CIA’s secret war in Laos, led by a handful of CIA paramilitary officers in the mountains of Laos against North Vietnamese and Lao Communist forces.  One of those secret warriors, CIA Silver Star recipient Terrence Burke, gives a vivid account of primitive guerrilla warfare that eventually led to an attempt by the North Vietnamese to capture him.  Burke’s stories of that war are of gritty and often deadly hit and run tactics against the North Vietnamese, attempted rescues of downed pilots, and daily survival far from American support.

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