Other books that might interest you

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  Chinook Crew 'Chick' - Highs and...

  Liz McConaghy

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  Liz McConaghy spent a total of seventeen years flying with the RAF’s Chinook Fleet. Aged just 21, she was the youngest aircrew member to deploy to Iraq and was also the only woman on the Chinook wing for four years. In her astounding career, Liz McConaghy completed two deployments to Iraq followed by ten deployments to Helmand province in Afghanistan in support of the enduring Operation Herrick campaign. 
   
  Liz’s inspiringly honest story reveals the highs and lows that she witnessed at war, and the cost that came with that both, physically and mentally for those involved. During her deployments, she survived not only a near fatal wire strike onboard her CH47, but numerous enemy fire ‘contacts’ defending her crew by returning fire from both the M134 ‘Minigun’ and M60 weapons entrusted to her to operate. 
   
  Her biggest honor of all her duties, however, was serving on the Medical Emergency Response Team, or MERT, flying ambulance as it was more commonly known. This involved recovering wounded soldiers from the battlefield, often under fire, and witnessing them both die and indeed come back to life at her feet in the cabin of her Chinook. 
   
  Liz saw Camp Bastion grow from a barbed wire fence surrounding an area of tents in the sand to the huge Operating Base it became. She was also on the last 1310 Flight deployment there as the British forces withdrew 10 years later handing it back to the Afghan National Army. 
   
  Very few Chinook crew members, if any, spanned the length of time deployed as Liz McConaghy did. This is a genuinely unique tale that only Liz could tell, which ends with her battling the memories that haunted her, long after she had left the battlefield. Her own war within took her to the point of suicide once she had left the service. Her survival from both the battles in foreign lands and in her own head led her to begin telling her story, in the hope she can help others win their wars.

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  Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision...

  Nadra Nittle

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  When Toni Morrison died in August 2019, she was widely remembered for her contributions to literature as an African American woman, an identity she wore proudly. Morrison was clear that she wrote from a Black, female perspective and for others who shared her identity. But just as much as she was an African American writer, Toni Morrison was a woman of faith. 
   
   
   
  Morrison filled her novels with biblical allusions, magic, folktales, and liberated women, largely because Christianity, African American folk magic, and powerful women defined her own life. Her relatives, particularly her mother, were good storytellers, and her family's oral tradition included ghost stories and African American folktales. But her family was also Christian. As a child, Morrison converted to Catholicism and chose a baptismal name that truly became her own—Anthony, from St. Anthony of Padua—going from Chloe to Toni. Morrison embraced both Catholicism and the occult as a child and, later, as a writer. She was deeply religious, and her spirituality included the Bible, the paranormal, and the folktales she heard as a child. 
   
   
   
  Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision unpacks this oft-ignored, but essential, element of Toni Morrison's work—her religion—and in so doing, gives listeners a deeper, richer understanding of her life and her writing.

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  Justinian I - Biography of the...

  Kelly Mass

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  Justinian I, known to history as Justinian the Great, ruled as the Byzantine emperor from 527 until his death in 565. His reign is marked by a series of ambitious efforts to revive the grandeur of the Roman Empire, although many of these goals were only partially realized. This vision, known as the renovatio imperii or "reinstatement of the Empire," encapsulated his drive to restore Roman territories lost to barbarian invasions and to reassert imperial authority across the Mediterranean world. 
  One of the most prominent aspects of Justinian's renovatio imperii was the partial reconquest of the western provinces of the fallen Roman Empire. His military campaigns, led by the brilliant general Belisarius, achieved remarkable successes. Belisarius swiftly captured the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, establishing Byzantine control over the region. Shortly thereafter, he, along with other generals like Narses, waged a series of successful campaigns against the Ostrogoths in Italy, eventually reclaiming key territories such as Dalmatia, Sicily, Rome, and much of Italy. This marked the end of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, which had ruled for over fifty years. Additionally, under the leadership of the praetorian prefect Liberius, the Byzantines reasserted control over the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These victories re-established Roman dominance in the western Mediterranean and brought in substantial annual revenues, estimated at over a million solidi.

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  My First Thirty Years - A Memoir

  Gertrude Beasley, Marie Bennett,...

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  Shortly after its 1925 publication, Gertrude Beasley's ferociously eloquent feminist memoir was banned and she herself disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Though British Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell called My First Thirty Years "truthful, which is illegal" and Larry McMurtry pronounced it the finest Texas book of its era, Beasley's words have been all but inaccessible for almost a century—until now. 
   
  Beasley penned one of the most brutally honest coming-of-age historical memoirs, one which strips away romantic notions about frontier women's lives at the turn of the twentieth century. With characteristic ferocity, Beasley rejected a life of dependence, persisting in her studies and becoming first a teacher, then a principal, then a college instructor, and finally a foreign correspondent. 
   
  Along the way, Beasley becomes a strident activist for women's rights, socialism, and sex education. She is undaunted by authority figures but secretly ashamed of her origins and yearns to be loved. My First Thirty Years is profoundly human and shockingly candid, a rallying cry that cost its author her career and her freedom. 
   
  Her story deserves to be heard. 
   
  Contains mature themes.

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  The Serial Killer’s Apprentice -...

  James Renner

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  Investigative reporter James Renner reopens cold cases that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including: 
   
   
   
  ● Murder—Beverly Jarosz, just sixteen years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home. It all started with an anonymous gift. 
   
   
   
  ● Stolen Identity—Joseph Newton Chandler was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was the Zodiac killer; others say he was D. B. Cooper, or even Jim Morrison. 
   
   
   
  ● Suicide or murder?—Joseph Kupchik hid gambling problems from friends and family until he was found at the bottom of a nine-story parking deck in downtown Cleveland—with multiple stab wounds. 
   
   
   
  ● Heist—In 1969, Lakewood bank employee Ted Conrad nabbed $215,000 from the vault one day after his twentieth birthday. The FBI still shows up at his high school reunions. 
   
   
   
  ● Controversy—Jeffrey Krotine was thrice tried for the grisly 2003 murder of his wife and ultimately acquitted, to the frustration of prosecutors, detectives, and jurors. 
   
   
   
  These stories venture into dark alleys and strip clubs, as well as suburbs and small towns, where some of the region's most horrendous crimes have occurred.

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  Self-Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

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  Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is a seminal essay that explores the importance of individualism and personal integrity. Emerson challenges readers to avoid conformity and follow their own instincts and ideas. This work has inspired countless readers to trust in their inner voice and embrace a life of self-determination. Essential for anyone interested in philosophy, personal growth, and the foundations of American transcendentalism.

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