Other books that might interest you

• 

  To Be a Friend Is Fatal - The...

  Kirk W. Johnson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID's only American employee who spoke Arabic. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq.Appointed as USAID's first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city's IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators-young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be. As sectarian violence escalated, Iraqis employed by the U.S. coalition found themselves subject to a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and death.On his first brief vacation, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a "fugue state," crawled onto the ledge outside his hotel window and plunged. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgery, and PTSD-crushed by having failed in Iraq.One day, Johnson received an email from an Iraqi friend, Yaghdan: People are trying to kill me and I need your help. After being identified by a militiaman, Yaghdan had emerged from his house to find the severed head of a dog and a death threat. That email launched Johnson's mission to get help from the U.S. government for Yaghdan and thousands like him abandoned in Iraq. The List Project has now helped more than 1,500 Iraqis find refuge in America. To Be a Friend Is Fatal is Kirk W. Johnson's unforgettable portrait of the human rubble of war and a book that "redeems a measure of pride from a national episode full of tragedy and shame" (George Packer).

  Show book

• 

  Simply Eliot

  Joseph Maddrey

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Though he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University, at the age of 26, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) emigrated to England, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Influenced equally by his formative years in the New World and his experiences in London during and after World War I, Eliot strove to reconcile a variety of conflicting ideas while trapped in an unhappy marriage - a struggle that gave rise to some of the greatest poems of the 20th century. 
  In Simply Eliot, Joseph Maddrey plumbs the emotional and intellectual life of the man whom critic Edmund Wilson called "one of our only authentic poets.” Taking The Waste Land (written in the aftermath of World War I) and Four Quartets (published 1936-1942) as reference points, Maddrey chronicles Eliot's attempts to create a coherent worldview, and explores how his religious conversion in 1927 led to a spiritual rebirth that allowed him to produce his ultimate poetic statement. 
  Making use of previously unavailable materials, including over 5,000 personal letters, Maddrey offers an intimate and incisive portrait of Eliot, and illustrates his continued relevance as both a Romantic and Classical poet, as well as a religious and spiritual thinker.

  Show book

• 

  Karl Marx: An Essay

  Harold J. Laski

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Born in Manchester in 1893, Harold Laski was a leading figure in the left-wing of British socialism in the first half of the 20th century. An executive member of the Fabian Society and member of the Socialist League faction of the Labour Party, he was party chairman in 1945-6. As a professor at the London School of Economics he influenced a number of prominent politicians of the post-war years, including leaders of the independence movements of Asia and Africa, and Ralph Milliband, father of the current Labour Party leader, Ed Milliband. His political views were complex and embraced democratic socialism, revolutionary Marxism and Zionism. This highly readable 1922 essay on Karl Marx is a scholarly and critical account of Marx's life and work.  - Summary by Phil Benson (adapted from Wikipedia)

  Show book

• 

  Four Feet Tall & Rising - A Memoir

  S. J. Hodges, Shorty Rossi

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Luigi Francis "Shorty" Rossi, the tough-talking, fedora-wearing star of Animal Planet's hit show Pit Boss, may stand only four feet tall, but that hasn't stopped him from living large, becoming a successful businessman and an outspoken advocate for pit bulls, the most misunderstood dog breed in the world.A third-generation dwarf, ex-gang member, and ex-con, Shorty knows what it's like to be misunderstood, and in this candid memoir, he shares his personal story for the first time. No one expected Shorty to live, let alone succeed, and yet he has, overcoming challenges from an abusive home to the violent streets and gangs of South Central LA, to the notorious cell blocks of Folsom Prison where he was imprisoned for attempted murder.After 10 years, 10 months, and 10 days behind bars, Shorty gained his freedom and the chance to put his entrepreneurial and negotiation skills to the test. He cut the ribbon on his own business, Shortywood, with three goals: to turn his life around; act as a talent agent for little people; and establish and fund charities that advocate for, rescue, and place abandoned or abused pit bulls into safe homes. In the process, he became a reality-TV star. Now, with Hercules, his rescued pit bull and newly trained service dog by his side, Shorty continues to save pits from the basements and backyards of breeders and abusers while taking on new and even bigger challenges. And nothing is gonna stand in his way.Shorty Rossi is four feet tall-and rising.

  Show book

• 

  Camping in the Canadian Rockies

  Walter Dwight Wilcox

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  An Account of Camp Life in the Wilder Parts of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Together with a Description of the Region About Banff, Lake Louise and Glacier, and a Sketch of the Early Explorations. - Summary by the author.

  Show book

• 

  The Yorkshire Witch - The Life &...

  Summer Strevens

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “A fascinating tale of witchcraft and skulduggery in darkest Yorkshire in the early 19th century. . . . An extraordinary story, brilliantly told.” —Books Monthly   On the morning of March 20, 1809, the woman who had earned herself the title of “The Yorkshire Witch” was hanged at York’s New Drop gallows before an estimated crowd of twenty thousand people—many of them victims of her hoaxes and extortion.   A consummate con artist, Mary Bateman was adept at identifying the psychological weaknesses of the desperate and poor who populated the growing industrial metropolis of Leeds. Exploiting their fears and terror of witchcraft, Mary was well placed to rob them of their worldly goods, yet she did much more than cause misery and penury. Though tried and convicted of only one murder, the contemporary belief that she was a serial killer is doubtlessly accurate.   A meticulously researched retelling of Mary Bateman’s life and death, and the macabre legacy of her mortal remains, The Yorkshire Witch is also a “wealth of social history . . . about the lives of servants; housing conditions . . . the rise in religious fervour . . . the prevalence of superstitious beliefs . . . accounts of early toxicology; how crimes were prosecuted; the treatment of female convicts; and public executions” (Crime Review).

  Show book