Publisher: Muswell Press
Czechoslovakia 1938-39. The annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany, its catastrophic effect on a family living in Prague, the political fallout of appeasement. The book ends with the invasion of Czrchoslovakia in March 1939.
A fiercely intelligent, hilarious, and deeply feminist collection of interrelated personal stories from Academy, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award–winning actress and director Christine Lahti. For decades, actress and director Christine Lahti has captivated the hearts and minds of her audience through iconic roles in Chicago Hope, Running on Empty, Housekeeping, And Justice for All, Swing Shift, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, God of Carnage, and The Blacklist. Now, in True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness, this acclaimed performer channels her creativity inward to share her own story for the first time on the page. In this poignant essay collection, Lahti focuses on three major periods of her life: her childhood, her early journey as an actress and activist, and the realities of her life as a middle-aged woman in Hollywood today. Lahti’s comical and self-deprecating voice shines through in stories such as ""Kidnapped"" and ""Shit Happens,"" and she takes a boldly honest look at the painful fissures in her family in pieces such as ""Mama Mia"" and ""Running on Empty."" Taken together, the collection illuminates watershed moments in Lahti’s life, revealing her struggle to maintain integrity, fight her need for perfection, and remain true to her feminist inclinations. Lahti’s wisdom and candid insights are reminiscent of Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and Joan Rivers’s I Hate Everyone—and yet her experiences are not exclusive to one generation. The soul of her writing can be seen as a spiritual mother to feminist actresses and comedic voices whose works are inspiring today’s young women, including Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, Caitlin Moran, and Jenny Lawson. Her stories reveal a stumbling journey toward agency and empowerment as a woman—a journey that’s still very much a work in progress. True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness is about the power of storytelling to affirm and reframe the bedrock of who we are, revealing that we’re all unreliable eyewitnesses when it comes to our deeply personal memories. Told in a wildly fresh, unique voice, and with the unshakable ability to laugh at herself time and again, this is Christine Lahti’s best performance yet.Show book
The author of True Crime: Michigan “tells the tale of an alleged World War I German spy and love-ad bandit from Royal Oak who killed to cover up his work” (C&G News). In the fall of 1916, New York housemaid Augusta Steinbach fell in love with a man she met through a matrimonial advertisement in her local newspaper. She traveled to Detroit to marry her correspondent, but in March 1917, she mysteriously disappeared. What began as a routine search for a missing person turned into a baffling case of deception, bigamy, and murder. Follow detectives as they unravel the tangled web spun by Michigan’s original lonely-hearts killer—a criminal mastermind the Detroit News dubbed “one of America's master outlaws.” Includes photosShow book
In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can't sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she'd reported from, places where she thought she'd escaped emotionally unscathed. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control is magnified by her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Haiti who despite their brief connection seems to have found a place in her confused heart. With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland sets out to repair her broken psyche. Investigating her own illness and the history of PTSD, she discovers she is not alone: traumatic events have sweeping influence. While we most often connect it to veterans, PTSD is more often caused by other manner of trauma, and can even be contagious-close proximity to those afflicted can trigger it in those around them. As McClelland confronts the realities of her disorder, she learns to open her heart to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment. Vivid, suspenseful, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is an unforgettable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance, and a compelling story of survival that expands the definition of what trauma is and offers powerful hope for those who need to work through it.Show book
In this revelatory memoir, the former CEO of Sonic challenges established thinking, offering counterintuitive career advice essential for every professional at all levels, whether you're just starting out or in the middle of your career. In his bestselling Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduced readers to the 10,000-hour rule—the foundation of success in any endeavor. But as Clifford Hudson reveals, there are serious pitfalls to this rule. What happens to those who spend years trying to achieve something that doesn’t quite pan out? Do you really have to grind down the same path for many years, sacrificing priorities to become successful? In this thought-provoking memoir, Hudson asks whether or not mastery is even necessary to succeed. Most people don't need to be experts in their field. Yes, the successful know more than the average person about a particular topic, and they often possess a better-than-average ability with a particular skillset; but not everyone who is successful is an expert, he makes clear. More importantly, in today’s technology-driven environment, change is the only constant, including the nature of work and the skills required to do it. Over-investing in expertise is often riskier than learning to be adaptive and open to new knowledge, ideas, and skills. Experience can also lead to overconfidence. And yet we continue to deeply value the expertise ideal. In Master of None, Hudson turns expertise on its head and shows that by embracing variety and becoming more versatile, anyone can succeed and become more open to different opportunities in life. To do so, he provides three basic rules that will see any professional through: Don't plan, exploreDon't specialize, generalizeDon't keep your head down, turn it up toward opportunity Groundbreaking and thought provoking, Master of None is a new way forward to help businesses and professionals at all levels thrive.Show book
When Eleanor Pfaehler and I met, we stood on opposite sides of an invisible, and seemingly insurmountable, wall," Sheila Walsh writes. "Eleanor and I talked over this wall. At times we reached up to hug. But the wall was always there."Then Eleanor was diagnosed with liver cancer. Finally, by the grace and mercy of God alone, the wall came crashing down. Eleanor and I found ourselves swimming in the river of mercy with our arms around each other, holding each other, willing to give our lives for each other."Unexpected Grace is a tender account of the relationship between a mother and daughter-in-law and how they discovered extravagant grace in the midst of what could have been the most tragic experience of their lives. Their story will encourage you and help you see how God can bring good out of even the bleakest circumstances.Previously published as Stories from the River of Mercy.Show book
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington sharing his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to help black people learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating blacks and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and a feeling of dignity to students. Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite.Show book
