Biographies & Memoirs Books - Page 6

Against Medical Advice: One Family's Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery

James Patterson, Hal Friedman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to shake his head and his life was never the same again. From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances. Eventually he is diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive disorder, and Cory embarks on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist, enduring countless combinations of medications in wildly varying doses. Soon it becomes unclear what tics are symptoms of his disease and what are side effects of the drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Despite his lack of control, Cory is aware of every embarrassing movement, and sensitive to every person's reaction to his often aggravating presence. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life is a living hell.


AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE is the true story of Cory and his family's decades-long battle for survival in the face of extraordinary difficulties and a maddening medical establishment. It is a heart-rending story of struggle and triumph with a climax as dramatic as any James Patterson thriller. (2008)

Truman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 288 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the thirty-third President of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American.

From Truman's small-town, turn-of-the-century boyhood and his transforming experience in the face of war in 1918, to his political beginnings in the powerful Pendergast machine and his rapid rise to prominence in the U.S. Senate, McCullough shows a man of uncommon vitality and strength of character. Here too is a telling account of Truman's momentous decision to use the atomic bomb and the weighty responsibilities that he was forced to confront on the dawning of a new age.

Distinguished historian and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author David McCullough tells one of the greatest American stories in this stirring audio adaptation of Truman -- a compelling, classic portrait of a life that shaped history.

Tuesdays with Morrie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2125 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Life lessons to learn 5 out of 5 stars.
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This book is awesome. I read it after my mother passed away and I was only 16 yr. This book taught me so much and I carry it as a sort of life guide...when I feel I'm forgetting the lesson I just refresh myself. This is my most prized book and I still have it near after 10 yrs. Buy this book for any youth you love that has lost or is lost in the world and it will brighted their mind to see that there is more.

Editorial Review:

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - MItch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 827 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More than just the master of horror! 5 out of 5 stars.
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I have been a fan of Stephen King since I was a teenager. This book give the reader both an inside look into his rise to fame and some very sound writing advice. I had been an aspiring writer since my teens as well, but I could never get it quite right. My scripts had a good scene or two, but then they felt forced. Then I read "On Writing," and King's method of developing characters made perfect sense to me. Every writer could find not only writing tips but also inspiration in this book.

Now I'm a published author with an award-winning book (Rowan of the Wood), and it is in part due to what I learned from this book.

Editorial Review:

"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."

Here is Stephen King's master class on his craft.

On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King's childhood and his early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the struggling years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, offer a fresh and often funny perspective on the formation of a writer.

King then turns to the tools of his trade, examining crucial aspects of the wriiter's art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.

King was in the middle of writing this book when he was nearly killed in a widely reported accident. On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how his need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brought him back to his life.

Night

Elie Wiesel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 635 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Incredibly moving 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This astonishing and very moving book is based on Elie Wiesel's youth in concentration camps during WW2. It begins with his childhood in Hungary, then his family's incarceration in a Jewish ghetto, then to Auschwitz (where he last sees his mother and sister) and later to Buchenwald. "Night" is made all the more haunting and powerful by the way that it is written so simply, in a matter of fact tone. Wiesel displays absolutely no self-pity as he describes the way that the Nazis wore them down and stripped them of their humanity, so that they were merely existing in a state of indifference to their fellow prisoners. The only thing that sustained him was being able (through both luck and determination) to remain with his father.

Last year I read the novel "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" and while that is moving, it is Disney-lite in comparison to this.

I have always wondered about some aspects of the Holocaust: why did more Jews not leave their countries when they had the opportunity do do so? Why didn't they heed warnings about what was happening elsewhere? Why did more not resist their oppressors? Wiesel explains this beautifully (within the parameters of his own experience).

When we think of concentration camps so often it is the gas chambers that is foremost, but Wiesel captures so many other horrors: men so starved that they will kill one another for a few crumbs of bread, being force-marched many miles through the snow, the terror of making the wrong decision on the rare instances when they were given a choice in some aspect of their fate.

This is a hauntingly sad, wonderful book.

Editorial Review:

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Weisel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in the substantive new preface, Elie Wiesel reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

Horner, Christopher C.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Philosophy of Global Warming is the new Nazism. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

We all think that history moves forward, that we are always learning and growing better, and therefore that we know much more than our parents and grandparents.

But there is nothing unique or different about the human race in the past 60 years, no matter how much we pretend otherwise. The traits that allowed Hitler to take power in Germany are still within us -- the desire to be part of the "favored" group, the fear of being called different, or worse ignorant, the aversion to being ostracized, the danger of losing our jobs or our status.

I just watched the movie "Swing Kids", about children in pre-war Germany and the slow oppression and conversion of the German people. This movie illustrates how easy it was to convince people of lies, and to get them to oppress the jews and others in order to save themselves.

Modern environmentalism is advanced in much the same way. It's not debated, instead those who disagree are cast aside, mocked, ridiculed, and treated as enemies who must be defeated. Children are turned against their parents, the schools are part of the indoctrination process, and as the Germans outlawed "swing", the environmentalists want to take away many of the freedoms we enjoy in the name of "Global Warming".

Unfortunately for these modern-day Goebbels, too many scientists still have ethics, and the earth has inconveniently disproven their theories with a vengeance. Still the environmentalists soldier on, hoping to complete their brainwashing before it becomes clear to all that global warming is a hoax.

This book is a must-read, which is probably why you won't find it in your local library, and your children will certainly not see it in their school.

Editorial Review:

This shocking exposé of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that supports them aims to explode as many myths as Al Gore tries to promote.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst The Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 381 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.

The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

 

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

John Perkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 653 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Redressing Inequality 4 out of 5 stars.
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Hard-hitting expose` written by a repentant insider who seems to sincerely wish to reverse the process of the exploitation of poor and developing nations by the rich and powerful, developed nations working in collusion with corporate interests and wealthy elites in these poor countries. It is rich with detail, and the final few chapters offer possible solutions or at least remedies to the current state of decay in North-South relations.

Editorial Review:

John Perkins was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the United States—from Indonesia to Panama—to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to U.S. corporations, such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the U.S. government, World Bank, and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks, dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

This extraordinary true story exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world.

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

Fred Kaplan

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America’s sixteenth president through his use of language as a vehicle both to express complex ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment. Like the other great canonical writers of American literature – a status he is gradually attaining – Lincoln had a literary career that is inseparable from his life story. An admirer and avid reader of Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, and the Old Testament, Lincoln was the most literary of our presidents. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature.

Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln’s mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln’s life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln’s legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.

Illuminating and engrossing, Lincoln brilliantly chronicles Abraham Lincoln’s genius with language.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Lee Iacocca

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Total reviews: 226 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The most widely recognized business executive of all time asks the tough questions that America's leaders must address:

What is each of us giving back to our country?

Do we truly love democracy?

Are we too fat and satisfied for our own good?

Why is America addicted to oil?

Do we really care about our children's futures?

Who will save the middle class?

Lee Iacocca believes that leaders are made in times of crisis -- such as today. He has known more leaders than almost anybody else -- including nine U.S. presidents, many heads of state, CEOs of the nation's top corporations, celebrities, and even a pope -- and is uniquely suited to share his wisdom, knowledge, and wit about the leadership of America. Lee Iacocca does not mince words, and in Where Have All the Leaders Gone? he offers his no-nonsense, straight-up assessments of the American politicians most likely to run for president in 2008. He also shares his lessons learned, and issues a call to action to summon Americans back to their roots of hard work, common sense, integrity, generosity, and optimism.

Where have all the leaders gone? Lee Iacocca has the answer.