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  Lost and Broken - My Journey...

  Congressman Adam Smith

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  Adam Smith, 26-year member of Congress and Chair of the House Armed Services Committee for the last four years, offers a candid memoir about his years-long struggle with anxiety and chronic pain, and the winding path to find the right diagnosis and treatment. 
   
  “Early one morning in April of 2016 I woke up and seriously contemplated the possibility that I would never be able to generate the strength, focus, and courage to get out of bed. The combination of crippling anxiety, chronic pain, muscle atrophy, and the fascinating mix of pharmaceuticals coursing  
  through my body had, I feared, finally broken me. My life terrified me. I had been fighting some combination of these battles for just over three years at this point, and I didn’t think I could do it for one more day.” 
   
  Representative Adam Smith was successful by all measures, with a long, distinguished career in Congress and a loving marriage with children. Yet seemingly out of nowhere, his body and mind broke down to the point where every day was a relentless struggle to just keep moving. It’s a struggle millions of Americans know all too well. Would he be able to meet his responsibilities as a husband and father? Could he still maintain his breakneck professional schedule and continue to do his job well? He soon realized he couldn’t will himself well—he needed help. Thus began a desperate search for the right diagnosis and treatment for his mental and physical pain that lasted over six years and involved more than a hundred different health care providers. With unflinching honesty, Smith reveals how he got to this lowest point in life, and how he slowly, painfully, and unevenly found his way back to having a calmer mind and being free of chronic pain and medication. 
   
  Smith discovered the severe limitations of our nation’s health care system, and brought him face to face with the cost of the stigma our country has against admitting to and dealing with mental health issues. He learned that life isn’t about finding that quick fix or clear-cut mental and physical program to stop worrying and struggling. It’s about learning who you are, understanding your body and mind well enough to face those struggles that we will all inevitably face, and then being able to enjoy your life even when those struggles come.

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  Infantry Life - Vietnam's...

  Dennis M. Witt

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  Firefights, mortar attacks, and friendly fire were all part of the experiences of an infantryman in the jungles of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. But bugs, leeches, exhaustion, swamps, accidents, snakes, C-rations, digging in, cutting overhead cover, grief, humor, camaraderie, rain, thirst, impressive weapons, useless weapons, care packages, and much, much more filled up most of the infantryman's one-year tour in Vietnam. 
   
   
   
  Daily life as an infantryman in Vietnam was a completely foreign experience compared to the lives most young American soldiers knew growing up. The war and the jungle saw to that. Soldiers had to cope and adapt. Almost all did. 
   
   
   
  In this book, the author tells many stories of events he personally experienced during his year in Vietnam. Through these stories, he aptly describes the daily life and shared experiences of soldiers in the 4th Infantry Division in the jungles of Vietnam's Central Highlands. 
   
   
   
  Anyone who has a personal connection with someone who served as an infantryman in Vietnam or simply has curiosity about infantry life in Vietnam will better understand, after listening to this book, the answer to the question "What was daily life like for them there?"

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  Lucky Lindy and Lady Lindy

  Editors Charles River

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  In many ways, Charles Lindbergh represented the best and worst of America during the first half of the 20th century. Lindbergh became famous for being an aviation pioneer whose solo flight across the Atlantic captured the imagination of an entire world, yet he was an isolationist who wanted to keep American freedoms safe for Americans and no one else. Lindbergh was the quintessential family man, yet he fathered illegitimate children and suffered an unspeakable tragedy that became known as “The Crime of the Century.” Lindbergh embodied some of his era’s greatest virtues and harbored some of its worst prejudices.  
  Lindbergh was a 25 year old U.S. Air Mail pilot who was probably best known for two crashes before shooting to fame with his non-stop flight across the Atlantic from New York City to Paris on May 20-21, 1927. Lindbergh was Time Magazine’s first Man of the Year in 1927, and he used his newfound fame to promote the development of commercial flight and become a spokesman and symbol for advances in aviation.  
  In 1928, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but she was disappointed that she had to do so as a passenger, complaining, “I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.” But by the mid-1930s, Earhart had set a multitude of altitude and distance records, but she wanted to attempt a circumnavigation of the world. After an ill-fated first attempt, Earhart and Fred Noonan set off on another attempt, creating one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Earhart and Noonan were to land on Howland Island, 1700 miles southwest of Hawaii, but radio transmissions ceased between the plane and authorities on the ground the morning of July 2, 1937. Earhart and Noonan had disappeared, never to be seen again, despite one of the nation’s largest and costliest manhunts to date.  
  The speculation over exactly what happened to Earhart and the mystery of her disappearance remain.

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  A Word Is Not a Sparrow - A...

  Various Authors, Barry Abrams,...

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  Artists in Ukraine have lost their livelihoods. The Ukraine Audiobook Relief Project was launched to support artists in Ukraine whose lives are threatened because of war. 
  It is a fundamental aspect of war to suppress story, language, and culture. Moved by this crisis of culture, members of PANA (the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association) created this audiobook to raise money for Ukrainian relief. Joined by writers and musicians, we have volunteered our work to show our support for artists living through war. 
  The profits from the sale of this audiobook will provide financial support to the Artists at Risk Connection in Ukraine through PEN America, a non-profit organization that endeavors to safeguard the right to artistic freedom of expression and ensure that artists and cultural professionals everywhere can live and work without fear. We urge you to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine by supporting its artists. 
  The folk wisdom of Ukraine includes this expression: “A word is not a sparrow … once it flies out, you won’t catch it." 
  A Word Is Not A Sparrow is a diverse anthology of stories set amid Russian repression through the centuries; personal narrator testimony about the impact in America of immigrant grandparents from Ukraine and elsewhere; powerful fables and allegories that deliver universal messages about displacement, migration, and human connection; and classic Cossack folk tales that are a touchstone of Ukrainian culture. Listen as we let these words fly out around the world. 
  Narrated by PANA member volunteers Barry Abrams, Jennifer Jill Araya, Dave Arlington, Rosemary Benson, Anna Crowe, Claudia Dunn, Andrea Emmes, Gary Furlong, Rebecca Gallagher, Caroline Hewitt, Susan Iannucci, Elizabeth Jasicki, Tom Jordan, Jennifer March, Janet Metzger, Rich Miller, Erin Moon, Sara Morsey, Traci Odom, Sheri Saginor, and Tiffany Williams. 
  Music by Michael Nazaretz & the Samovar Russian Folk Ensemble, Jeff Crompton, Roger French, and Kenny Raskin. 
  Writers include Barry Abrams, Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, Andrea Emmes and Karen Bogle, Vladislav Davidzon, Christopher Dewees, Thaisa Frank, Teresa Johnson, Alla Kudzieva, Taras Shevchenko, and Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.

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  Herman Melville

  Geoffrey Giuliano

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  Herman Melville was one of the most original and ambitious writers in American literature. Novelist, sailor, and storyteller, he drew upon his experiences at sea to create works that explored adventure, fate, human nature, and the mysteries of existence. Though not fully appreciated during his lifetime, he is now regarded as one of the greatest authors in the English language. 
   
  Born in New York City in 1819, Melville spent his youth working a variety of jobs before going to sea as a merchant sailor and whaler. His travels through the Pacific inspired his early books and provided the foundation for the work that would secure his literary reputation. In 1851, he published Moby-Dick, the epic tale of Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the white whale, now recognized as one of the masterpieces of world literature. 
   
  This biography traces Melville's journey from restless seaman to literary giant. Drawing upon letters, journals, historical records, and contemporary accounts, it explores his life, adventures, achievements, and enduring legacy. More than a century after his death, Herman Melville remains one of the most celebrated and influential writers in American history.

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  The Trials of Madame Restell -...

  Nicholas L. Syrett

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  For forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, “Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth-control medication, attended women during their pregnancies, delivered their children, and performed abortions in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. It was the abortions that made her famous. “Restellism” became the term her detractors used to indict her. Restell began practicing when abortion was largely unregulated in most of the United States, including New York. But as a sense of disquiet arose about single women flocking to the city for work, greater sexual freedoms, changing views of the roles of motherhood and childhood, and fewer children being born to white, married, middle-class women, Restell came to stand for everything that threatened the status quo. From 1829 onward, restrictions on abortion began to put Restell in legal jeopardy. For much of this period, she prevailed—until she didn’t. A story that is all too relevant to the current attempts to criminalize abortion in our own age, The Trials of Madame Restell paints an unforgettable picture of the changing society of nineteenth-century New York and brings Restell to the attention of a whole new generation of women whose fundamental rights are under siege.

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