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  Scottish History - William...

  Kelly Mass

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  This book consists of two titles: 
  Book 1: Scotland is an old country with an ancient history. There is no doubt about that. Many traditions, words, symbols, and other cultural aspects we see as normal today, originate from Scotland. Scotland's documented history started with the Roman Empire's entryway in the first century, when the province of Britannia broadened as far north as the Antonine Wall. Caledonia, to the north, was home to the Picti, whose uprisings drove Rome's armies back to Hadrian's Wall. As Rome withdrew from Britain, the Scoti, a group of Gaelic pirates, started colonizing Western Scotland and Wales. Ancient Scotland saw the Neolithic Age around 4000 BC, the Bronze Age around 2000 BC, and the Iron Age around 700 BC before the arrival of the Romans. 
  Book 2: The Film "Brave Heart" has it right on some points but does a bad job with historic precision with others, most likely because they're just attempting to dramatize a Hollywood film, not promoting dull precision. Let's see what info we can learn from history about the real William Wallace. William Wallace was a Scottish knight. In order to comprehend the impact of that time's knight civilization and roles, we will discuss the idea itself. We will also discuss the brutal reign of Edward I of England, the sadistic murder of William Wallace (worse than you might think), and several other factors contributing to his capture, his resistance, and his following.

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  Finding My Way - A Memoir of...

  Robin F. Schepper

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  A deeply personal memoir about finding family and belonging from White House staffer Robin F. Schepper.  
   
  Growing up torn between her single Pan Am–stewardess mom and brothel-owning grandmother in 1960s New York City, Robin F. Schepper never imagined that she’d one day have an office in the East Wing of the White House. Her childhood in a German American neighborhood on the Upper East Side was peppered with half-truths, from the family secrets surrounding her grandmother’s immigration to deceptions about her biological father.  
   
  In a world of self-absorbed adults, Robin largely raised herself: she secured a scholarship to a prestigious private school and worked several jobs as a teenager to pay her own living expenses before finally escaping to California for college. Street-smart and undeniably driven, once in the professional world Robin quickly ascended in the male-dominated political sphere, traveling the globe while being subjected to sexual harassment and assaults that echoed obstacles her mother and grandmother had faced. Through it all, Robin searched for her biological father. She felt that if she could understand why he abandoned her, she could free herself from secrets, lies, and shame.  
   
  Robin eventually rose to work for the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama and, in the meantime, created her own family by adopting two sons from Kazakhstan. Intimate and captivating, Finding My Way follows an ambitious woman who reached the highest pinnacles of a political career while simultaneously fulfilling her own quest to heal from family trauma and discover her true identity. 

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  Karl-Ludwig Sand - Celebrated...

  Alexandre Dumas

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  To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language—has minced no words—to describe violent scenes of violent times.In this, the fourth of the series, Dumas tells the story of Karl-Ludwig Sand, a man little known to the English-speaking world, but famous among German speakers; he was the man who assassinated August von Kotzebue, a vigorous advocate of Russia's interests and the interests of the Austrian Empire.In the years immediately following the fall of Napoleon, many people in Germany, particularly young people, were eagerly anticipating the coming of liberal goverment. Much to their dismay, the autocratic governments existing before the war were not only re-established, but put great energy to ensuring that a liberal revolution would never happen. Karl-Ludwig Sand, a young German student, became convinced that Kotzebue was the key figure in this wave of repression. He made up his mind to kill the man, and kill him he did.Dumas gives us an intimate and revealing portrait of Sand's intellectual and emotional development, tracing with the hand of a master novelist the development of the character not of a fiction, but of an actual man. It is  particularly interesting because Dumas, quite the advocate of liberal government himself, is clearly sympathetic toward Sand, though he clearly portrays the brutality of the murder of Kotzebue and the unstable trend of sand's mind leading up to it. In particular, through extensive transcriptions of Sand's journals and letters, he shows how this deeply Christian man became a deeply Christian assassin.Enjoy!

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  My Guru and His Disciple

  Christopher Isherwood

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  My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood's own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, scriptwriting conferences at M-G-M, intellectual sparring sessions with Berthold Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the Vedanta Center, a six-month period of celibacy and sobriety, and the pious drudgery of translating (in collaboration with the Swami) the Bhagavad-Gita. Seldom has a single man been owed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline; out of the passionate dialectic between these drives, My Guru and His Disciple has been written.

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  Monique and the Mango Rains -...

  Kris Holloway

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  What is it like to live and work in a remote corner of the world and befriend a courageous midwife who breaks traditional roles? Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Mali Midwife is the inspiring story of Monique Dembele, an accidental midwife who became a legend, and Kris Holloway, the young Peace Corps volunteer who became her closest confidante. In a small village in Mali, West Africa, Monique saved lives and dispensed hope every day in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter and where many children are buried before they cut a tooth. Kris worked side-by-side with her as they cared for each other through sickness and tragedy and shared their innermost secrets and hopes. 
  Monique's life was representative of many women in one of the world's poorest nations, yet she faced her challenges in extraordinary ways. Despite her fiercely traditional society and her limited education she fought for her beliefs birth control, the end of female genital mutilation, the right to receive a salary, and the right to educate her daughters. And she struggled to be with the man she loved. Her story is one of tragedy joy, rebellion, and of an ancient culture in the midst of change. It is an uplifting tribute to indomitable spirits everywhere.

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  Martin Luther - A Late Medieval...

  Volker Leppin

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  This brief, insightful biography of Martin Luther strips away the myths surrounding the Reformer to offer a more nuanced account of his life and ministry. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, this accessible yet robustly historical and theological work highlights the medieval background of Luther's life in contrast to contemporary legends. Internationally respected church historian Volker Leppin explores the Catholic roots of Lutheran thought and locates Luther's life in the unfolding history of 16th-century Europe. Foreword by Timothy J. Wengert.

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