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  A Knock at the Door - The Story...

  Ory Slonim

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  The inside story of Israel’s secret negotiations to bring home their soldiers taken hostage by terrorist groups. Suppose one day, your son or husband, while serving in the military or working as a journalist, is taken hostage by a terrorist group—and you have no idea whether your loved one is dead or alive or how to even make contact with the insurgents holding him. It’s a nightmare scenario that has sadly taken place dozens of times in the past twenty years in the Middle East.Here in the U.S., the government does not always get involved. Instead, it will engage the services of a neutral country to negotiate with the terrorists. Unfortunately, many times the terrorists insist on never-ending demands in order to torment the family of the hostage. Unlike Israel, we’ve never had a central address for these types of scenarios. But maybe after reading this book, it’s an idea we could, and should, consider. Ory Slonim, the international “door knocker,” was an invention of necessity by the Israeli government.There were many good and brave human beings involved in this matter. Here for the first time is the story of the one man in Israel who, for more than two decades, was known as the “door knocker.” He had been a private Israeli lawyer when he was asked to undertake, on behalf of the Israeli government, secret negotiations to find out the whereabouts of Israeli soldiers who were taken alive. In his capacity as negotiator, his story will take you into the worlds of the furtive Mossad, the twisted minds of terrorists, the forever traumatized lives of the parents whose children never came home from battle, and into Ory’s own resilient, compassionate, and amazingly resolute negotiations when ordinary people would have easily broken down.hostage by terrorist groups. His ultimate mission was to bring them home, dead oralive. In his capacity as negotiator, his story will take you into the worlds of the furtive Mossad, the twisted minds of terrorists, the forever traumatized lives of the parents whose children never came home from battle, and into Ory’s own resilient, compassionate, and amazingly resolute negotiations when ordinary people would have easily broken down.

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  Mae Murray - The Girl with the...

  Michael G. Ankerich

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  This story of a silent-film star’s rise and fall offers “a lesson about those heady days of early Hollywood and the transience of fame” (Library Journal).   Renowned for her classic beauty and charismatic presence, Mae Murray rocketed to stardom as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, moving across the country to star in her first film, To Have and to Hold, in 1916. An instant hit with audiences, Murray soon became one of the most famous names in Tinseltown.   But Murray’s moment in the spotlight was fleeting. The introduction of talkies, a string of failed marriages, a serious career blunder, and a number of bitter legal battles left the former star in a state of poverty and mental instability that she would never overcome.   In this intriguing biography, Michael G. Ankerich traces Murray’s career from the footlights of Broadway to the klieg lights of Hollywood, recounting her impressive body of work on the stage and screen and charting her rapid ascent to fame and decline into obscurity. Featuring exclusive interviews with Murray’s only son, Daniel, and with actor George Hamilton, whom the actress closely befriended at the end of her life, Ankerich restores this important figure in early film to the limelight.   “If Billy Wilder hasn’t made the definitive movie about the delusions of stardom in Sunset Boulevard, Murray’s story, a blend of absurdity and pathos, would make a terrific one.” —TheWashington Post  Includes photos

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  A Bazaar Life - The...

  David Alliance

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  At the age of thirteen, David Alliance was taken out of school by his father and apprenticed into the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, where he learned the business skills that were to prove invaluable in one of the most successful business careers of modern times. In 1950, with just ?14 in his pocket, he arrived in Manchester in search of textile bargains, going hungry and sometimes forced to sleep on the street. Six years later, however, when he was still only twenty-four, he bought a loss-making textile mill, turned it around in six months and went on to build the biggest textile company in the Western world. At one stage his businesses, including his mail-order company, N Brown Group, employed more than 80,000 people. He did it through a mixture of incredibly hard work, creativity and nerve, and some of his takeovers, often of companies many times larger than his own, were breathtaking in their ingenuity. No obstacle was unscalable - his guiding principle all his life was that everything is achievable 'if you put your heart and soul into it'. Humble, charming and delightfully honest, Alliance's extraordinary rags-to-riches tale is not only that of a remarkable journey, but goes far beyond the world of business. Among many stories which have until now remained secret, Alliance tells of how he used the skills he learned in the bazaar to negotiate with the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to allow the Ethiopian Jews to be airlifted to Israel, his friendship with the Shah of Iran and the first-hand insight into the infamous Guinness affair. In A Bazaar Life, written with Ivan Fallon, he sets out the lessons he has learned in a long career, and the principles that have guided him. Young - and older - entrepreneurs can learn a lot from his story.

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  Chicago Days Hoboken Nights

  Daniel Pinkwater

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  As millions of radio listeners already know, no one has had a life quite like storyteller Daniel Pinkwater. In this comical collection of memories, Pinkwater tells of how he grew into the beloved figure he is today: a robust genius of the printed page and rotund genie of the radio. He shares a conversation with his father about art school that changed the course of his career, describes his inauguration as a sculptor in a sleazy Chicago art factory, and recounts setting off for a bright center of the American art scene—             or at least as close as Hoboken, New Jersey. Finally, we hear as Pinkwater pictures his first true audience, children. Chicago Days / Hoboken Nights is a memoir about how a visual artist turned to writing, only to be hailed as a "comic master" by the Washington Post Book World.

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  Against Their Will - Sadistic...

  Nigel Cawthorne

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  Real-life accounts of harrowing abductions and resilient survivors from the author of Prince Andrew: Epstein, Maxwell and the Palace. 
   
  True stories of twisted criminals who hold their victims in endless captivity to satisfy their perverse desires, Against Their Will is a comprehensive compendium of the most disturbing kidnappings of all time.Jaycee Lee Dugard—lived to tell the tale of her eighteen years of captivity in paroled rapist Phillip Garrido’s suburban backyardElizabeth Smart—bravely held on for nine long months in a forced marriage to religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell, who repeatedly raped her in the name of GodElisabeth Fritzl—amazingly overcame twenty-four years trapped in a basement dungeon built especially for her by her father, JosefColleen Stan—heroically endured seven years as a sex slave, brutally tortured with the full consent of her captor’s wifeTina Marie Risico—escaped certain death at the hands of a killer by being an unwilling accomplice in other kidnappings 
   
  “Not for the faint of heart.” —Series & TV

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  The Autobiography of Charles...

  Charles Darwin

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  This work, unsurprisingly, offers invaluable insights into the life and times of Charles Darwin, his personality and the formative influences that made him what he was, for here we have his own words and 'voice' at the close of a prodigiously productive career. He tells of his childhood, his student days at Edinburgh and Cambridge, his love of beetles, shooting and geology and of his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. He talks at some length about his meetings with the great scientific men of the age, his attitudes to his critics, to religion and of his theories of evolution. 
  He also discusses his scientific methods and the background to the publication of many of his works including 'The Origin of Species' and 'The Descent of Man', and how he came to join 'The Beagle' as naturalist. This is an indispensable work for any student of Darwin, of evolution and conceivably, creationism. It is undoubtedly the autobiography of a great man.Greg Wagland reads The Autobiography of Charles Darwin for Magpie Audio. Note: This is the version authorized and edited by his son, Francis. Francis Darwin and Charles' wife Emma censored and excised some passages, in part to limit references made to his home life.

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