Other books that might interest you

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  Scribbling the Cat - Travels...

  Alexandra Fuller

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  When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians-and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way-by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere.

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  The Faith of Ronald Reagan

  Mary Beth Brown

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  The New York Times–bestselling author’s biography reveals that President Reagan’s greatest virtue wasn’t allegiance to country, but allegiance to God. 
   
  With warmth and insight, Reagan biographer Mary Beth Brown delves into the spiritual journey of America’s fortieth president and offers profound stories of the provisions God made in his life—from his early success as an actor to his historic presidential victory, and from surviving an assassination attempt to eventually changing the face of politics and the world. 
   
  Drawing on Ronald Reagan’s own words and writings, as well as firsthand interviews with his family, friends, and co-workers, Brown weaves a magnificent story that inspires as it informs. Reagan’s strong devotion to God will encourage believers to enter public service, allowing their faith to motivate their actions, and will draw focus to Christ’s matchless sacrifice—which was forever near and dear to President Reagan’s heart.

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  My Road to Mandalay

  David Townsend

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  Don Townsend signed up on his 20th Birthday in 1940. He spent 1941 supporting the 8th Army in Egypt and then took a commission in the Indian Army, becoming a specialist in Tank Transport. He led convoys across India and delivered tanks, troops and even Christmas drinks to the front lines in the Battle for Burma. His story is told from letters written to his family and from early 1944 to his new pen-friend, who later became his wife.

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  Committed - Dispatches from a...

  Adam Stern

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  Grey’s Anatomy meets One L in this psychiatrist’s charming and poignant memoir about his residency at Harvard. Adam Stern was a student at a state medical school before being selected to train as a psychiatry resident at one of the most prestigious programs in the country. His new and initially intimidating classmates were high achievers from the Ivy League and other elite universities around the nation. Faculty raved about the group as though the residency program had won the lottery, nicknaming them “The Golden Class,” but would Stern ever prove that he belonged? In his memoir, Stern pulls back the curtain on the intense and emotionally challenging lessons he and his fellow doctors learned while studying the human condition, and ultimately, the value of connection. The narrative focuses on these residents, their growth as doctors, and the life choices they make as they try to survive their grueling four-year residency. Rich with drama, insight, and emotion, Stern shares engrossing stories of life on the psychiatric wards, as well as the group’s experiences as they grapple with impostor syndrome and learn about love and loss. Most importantly, as they study how to help distressed patients in search of a better life, they discover the meaning of failure and the preciousness of success.  Stern’s growth as a doctor, and as a man, have readers rooting for him and his patients, and ultimately find their own hearts fuller for having taken this journey with him.

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  Solitude - A Year Alone in the...

  Robert Kull

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  “Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes opens the door, admitting the reader into the society of one man’s soul. A visit is well worth the while.”— American Psychological Association Review of BooksYears after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull set off on a quest to explore the effects of deep solitude on mind and body and to, perhaps, find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking. He travelled alone toa remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness, taking the equipment and supplies he’d need for a year alone, and his cat. On that island, he wrestled with inner storms and with the wild forces of nature that raged around him. He faced immense physical challenges, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him much further.In this diary of Kull’s tumultuous year, he chronicles a life distilled to its essence, and he also offers a philosophical meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. Kull explores the pain and longing we often avoid in our busy lives, as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions, all with humor and brutal honesty. Kull describes the Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.“Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes opens the door, admitting the reader into the society of one man’s soul. A visit is well worth the while.”— American Psychological Association Review of BooksYears after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull set off on a quest to explore the effects of deep solitude on mind and body and to, perhaps, find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking. He travelled alone toa remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness, taking the equipment and supplies he’d need for a year alone, and his cat. On that island, he wrestled with inner storms and with the wild forces of nature that raged around him. He faced immense physical challenges, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him much further.In this diary of Kull’s tumultuous year, he chronicles a life distilled to its essence, and he also offers a philosophical meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. Kull explores the pain and longing we often avoid in our busy lives, as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions, all with humor and brutal honesty. Kull describes the Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.“Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes opens the door, admitting the reader into the society of one man’s soul. A visit is well worth the while.”— American Psychological Association Review of BooksYears after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull set off on a quest to explore the effects of deep solitude on mind and body and to, perhaps, find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking. He travelled alone toa remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness, taking the equipment and supplies he’d need for a year alone, and his cat. On that island, he wrestled with inner storms and with the wild forces of nature that raged around him. He faced immense physical challenges, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him much further.In this diary of Kull’s tumultuous year, he chronicles a life distilled to its essence, and he also offers a philosophical meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. Kull explores the pain and longing we often avoid in our busy lives, as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions, all with humor and brutal honesty. Kull describes the Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.

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  Killing Yourself to Live - 85%...

  Chuck Klosterman

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  For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the spanof twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end-one by choice, one bychance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a halfmile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. . . and what this means for the rest of us.

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