Other books that might interest you

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  One Hundred Sixty Acres of Dirt...

  Marsha Arzberger

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  This colorful history of pioneer life in Arizona sheds light on the experiences of the homesteader families who founded the Kansas Settlement. 
   
  In 1909, fifteen families left their homes in Kansas to claim homesteads a thousand miles away in a remote region of the Arizona Territory. In this beautiful but unforgiving new home, they would realize their dream of owning their own land. They named their new community Kansas Settlement. 
   
  Those who persevered met the challenges, raised their families, and prospered. Their determination was inspiring and left a legacy of courage. In One Hundred Sixty Acres of Dirt, author Marsha Arzberger tells the tales of these remarkable people—farmers, cowboys, pioneer women, and schoolmarms—drawn from personal journals and family scrapbooks. 
   
  A descendent of one of the original Kansas Settlement families, Arzberger vividly recounts their journey West, as well as their dealings with rustlers, droughts, Apaches, and straying husbands. This carefully researched account captures the daily lives, joys, and tragedies of Arizona’s Kansas Settlement.

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  Woman Walking Ahead - In Search...

  Eileen Pollack

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  This book restores a little-known advocate of Indian rights to her place in history. In June 1889, a widowed Brooklyn artist named Catherine Weldon traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sitting Bull hold onto land that the government was trying to wrest from his people. Her efforts were counterproductive; she was ordered to leave the reservation, and the Standing Rock Sioux were bullied into signing away their land. But she returned with her teenage son, settling at Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River. In recognition of her unusual qualities, Sitting Bull's people called her Toka heya mani win, Woman Walking Ahead.Predictably, the press vilified Weldon, calling her "Sitting Bull's white squaw" and accusing her of inciting Sitting Bull to join the Ghost Dance religion then sweeping the West. In fact, Weldon opposed the movement, arguing that the army would use the Ghost dance as an excuse to jail or kill Sitting Bull. Unfortunately, she was right.Up to now, history has distorted and largely overlooked Weldon's story. In retracing Weldon's steps, Eileen Pollack recovers her life and compares her world to our own.

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  First In Last Out - An American...

  John D Howard

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  A Vietnam veteran recounts his experience through two tours of duty—early in the conflict and then in its final stages. Fresh out of West Point, John Howard arrived for his first tour in Vietnam in 1965, the first full year of escalation when U.S. troop levels increased dramatically, from 23,000 to 184,000. When Howard returned for a second tour in 1972, troop strength stood at 24,000 and would dwindle to a mere fifty the following year. He thus participated in the very early and very late stages of American military involvement in the Vietnam War.   Howard’s two tours—the first as a platoon commander and member of an elite counterguerrilla force, and the second as a senior advisor to the South Vietnamese—provide a fascinating lens through which to view not only one soldier’s experience in Vietnam, but also the country’s.

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  Murdoch - The All Black who...

  Ron Palenski

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  The story of Keith Murdoch, who passed away earlier this year, is the great unsolved mystery of world rugby. The All Black who was sent home from the tour of the British Isles in 1972 and who exiled himself to the vastness of the Australian outback remains a banner headline in rugby memories. It does so despite the passing of the years. The basics of the story are well known: the strength of the man who scored the All Blacks' only try against Wales, then the celebrations that night that went so horribly wrong. Murdoch only appeared publicly a few times in all those years since the tour, but never said much and nothing at all of the events of that night, or how he felt then and later. But now, the story can be told more fully than before through anecdotes and memories of teammates and colleagues and through the damning words of those who condemned him to his life on the run.

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  The Cell Game - Sam Waksal's...

  Alex Prud'homme

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  "It began with a promising cancer drug, the brainchild of a gifted researcher, and grew into an insider trading scandal that ensnared one of America's most successful women. The story of ImClone Systems and its "miracle" cancer drug, Erbitux, is the quintessential business saga of the late 1990s. It's the story of big money and cutting-edgescience, celebrity, greed, and slipshod business practices; the story of biotech hype and hope and every kind of excess.At the center of it all stands a single, enigmatic figure named Sam Waksal. A brilliant, mercurial, and desperate-to-be-liked entrepreneur, Waksal was addicted to the trappings of wealth and fame that accrued to a darling of the stock market and the overheated atmosphere of biotech IPOs. At the height of his stardom, Waksal hobnobbed with Martha Stewart in New York and Carl Icahn in the Hamptons, hosted parties at his fabulous art-filled loft, and was a fixture in the gossip columns. He promised that Erbitux would "change oncology," and would soon be making $1 billion a year.But as Waksal partied late into the night, desperate cancer patients languished, waiting for his drug to come to market. When the FDA withheld approval of Erbitux, the charming scientist who had always stayed just one step ahead of bankruptcy panicked and desperately tried to cash in his stock before the bad news hit Wall Street.Waksal is now in jail, the first of the Enron-era white-collar criminals to be sentenced. Yet his cancer drug has proved more durable than his evanescent profits. Erbitux remains promising, the leading example of a new way to fight cancer, and patients and investors hope it will be available soon.

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  The Long Tail of Trauma - A Memoir

  Elizabeth Wilcox

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  This is a story of mothers. This is a story of daughters. This is a story of the trauma we carry and the trauma we tend to. So begins this multigenerational memoir that explores the author's maternal history of repeated trauma, separation, adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and their impact on mental health. Set against a twenty-year dialogue with her mother Barbara who suffers from long undiagnosed PTSD, author Elizabeth Wilcox opens her maternal history with the birth of her illegitimate grandmother Violet to a German house servant outside London in 1904. With her mother's encouragement, Wilcox goes on to trace the lives of Violet and her mother Barbara, both of whom are deeply impacted by maternal separation and the complex trauma they have endured because of war.  Through a dual timeline that is both present day and historic, Wilcox weaves together the documented and imagined voices of the women who precede her. The historic narrative begins with young Violet who endures multiple separations: from her mother until the age of six, from her German Jewish stepfather during WWI at the age of ten, and from her own three-year-old daughter Barbara when her family escapes without her from Holland during Hitler's invasion. Later put on a train to Wales with her eighteen-month-old brother Neville during Operation Pied Piper, Barbara also tragically endures an itinerant childhood of foster homes, boarding schools and abuse.  In this compelling work, Wilcox deftly weaves the psychological findings she uncovers as a journalist and writer in the field of early childhood education and mental health, providing greater understanding of the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adult wellbeing and mental health. Through her mother Barbara who has successfully raised seven children despite her difficult past, Wilcox also shows what it means to parent with intention, forgiveness and unconditional love.

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