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Saisir sa chance: Mémoires de David M. Culver (Biographies et mémoires)
Par David M. Culver, Alan Freeman. 2018
David Culver, figure clé tant du milieu des affaires que du milieu culturel canadien, raconte son enfance à Montréal, ses…
études aux universités McGill et Harvard et son service militaire pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Il décrit surtout sa spectaculaire ascension au sein d’Alcan, jusqu’à accéder au poste de président-directeur général, devenant du coup le chef d’une des plus grandes sociétés multinationales du Canada, dont le siège social était à Montréal. Ces mémoires lèvent le voile sur la gestion d’une multinationale bien enracinée en sol québécois. Il propose des conseils pragmatiques sur la manière de cultiver le talent, développer la technologie et surmonter les défis au sein d’une entreprise qui opère aux quatre coins de la planète. Au fil de délicieuses anecdotes et d’inoubliables rencontres avec des grands du XXe siècle – dont Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger et Jawaharlal Nehru – David Culver se révèle un imposant leader aux intérêts et aux talents multiples. Dans ses mémoires, David Culver médite sur sa passion pour l’architecture – et ses initiatives de protection du patrimoine montréalais par l’entremise de la Maison Alcan – et l’importance de la musique et du sport dans sa vie. Saisir sa chance témoigne de l’optimisme de Culver, qui a de tout temps cru que les choses les plus extraordinaires peuvent arriver lorsqu’on s’y attend le moins.What I Wish I Had Told My Children (Biography and memoirs)
Par Michel Bastarache, Antoine Trépanier. 2023
In this intimate volume, Michel Bastarache reveals details of his youth in Acadia and his multiple professional roles before becoming…
the first Acadian justice to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada. In a letter addressed to his two children who died from an incurable disease, Me. Bastarache recounts his constant fight for equality between francophone and anglophone communities. He reminisces on his commitment among groups protecting francophones outside Québec, then on his careers as teacher, civil servant, lawyer, and judge.In this story, Bastarache takes the reader backstage to his most important causes and he reveals some of the secrets of the highest court in Canada. Me. Bastarache weighs in on the controversy surrounding the Inquiry Commission on the process for appointing judges of the Court of Québec, as well as his mediator work for reconciliation and compensation of alleged victims of sexual abuse by ex-priests in New Brunswick.Mad Woman: The hotly anticipated follow-up to lifechanging bestseller, MAD GIRL
Par Bryony Gordon. 2024
'Visceral and honest' Telegraph'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer' Elizabeth Day'Bryony writes with such entertaining and brazen candour about…
mental illness...she really helps people tackle their own stuff. Her writing has helped me before and this will be another hit' Matt HaigTHE HOTLY ANTICIPATED FOLLOW-UP TO SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*, MAD GIRLWhat if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that's making us so sad?Ten years on from first writing about her own experiences of mental illness, Bryony Gordon still receives messages about the effect it has on people. Now perimenopausal and well into the next stage of her life, parenting an almost-adolescent, just what has that help - and that connection with other unwell people - taught Bryony about herself, and the society we live in? What has she learned, and why have her views on mental health changed so radically? After coming out the other side of the biggest trauma of our living memory - a global pandemic - existing in a state of perma-crisis has now become our new normal.From burnout and binge eating, to living with fluctuating hormones and the endless battle to stay sober, Bryony begins to question whether she got mental illness wrong in the first place. Is it simply a chemical imbalance, or rather a normal response from your brain telling you that something isn't right? Mad Woman explores the most difficult of all the lessons she's learned over the last decade - that our notion of what makes a happy life is the very thing that's making us so sad.Bestselling author Bryony Gordon is unafraid to write with her trademark blend of compassion, honesty and humour about her personal challenges and demons, which means her books and journalism have had profound impact on readers. She founded the mental health charity, Mental Health Mates, which has become a vast online community.*Bryony Gordon's Mad Girl was a number one Sunday Times bestseller on 12th June 2016.Saint Francis (Christian Encounters)
Par Robert West. 2010
In this Christian Encounter Series biography, author Robert West explores the life of Saint Francis, a man who lived entirely…
devoted to God.Francis of Assisi has inspired the church for centuries. Francis took the gospel literally, following all that Jesus said and did without limit, and his devotion led to a life filled with miracles and wonders.Born to a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, Italy, Francis didn&’t seem destined for the life of prayer and poverty that he chose. Bankrolled by his father, and with natural good looks and personality, Francis indulged in worldly pleasure. He had a ready wit, sang merrily, and delighted in fine clothes and showy display. Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his frolicking ways and led him to a life of prayer and unbridled devotion to Scripture. He gave over all his possessions to the poor and embraced a life of simplicity and poverty, transforming him from a self-centered youth to a man living for God and a model of complete obedience.Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience.Snapshots Sent Home: From Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine—A Memoir
Par Jt Blatty. 2024
“… an intimate, finely-written memoir about the truths and realities shared by soldiers everywhere ... devastatingly moving ...”—Jon Lee Anderson,…
staff writer, The New Yorker; author of Che Guevara and The Fall of BaghdadUS combat veteran and photographer JT Blatty journeyed to Ukraine in 2018 to capture oral history and portraits of Donbas volunteer soldiers. In frontline bunkers and Kyiv flats, her story began to blend with theirs in a universal bond of combat veterans, compelling her to stay as a new war began.“… powerful, engaging narrative … a sense of place and people that is usually only arrived at by being there ..."—Alexa Dilworth, independent writer and editor; former publishing director and senior editor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke UniversityThe Next Elvis: Searching for Stardom at Sun Records
Par Barbara Barnes Sims. 2014
An American institution, Sun Records has a history with many chapters -- its Memphis origins with visionary Sam Phillips, the…
breakthrough recordings of Elvis Presley, and the studio's immense influence on the sound of popular music. But behind the company's chart toppers and legendary musicians there exists another story, told by Barbara Barnes Sims. In the male-dominated workforce of the 1950s, 24-year-old Sims found herself thriving in the demanding roles of publicist and sales promotion coordinator at Sun Records. Sims's job placed her in the studio with Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Carl Perkins, and other Sun entertainers, as well as the unforgettable Phillips, whose work made the music that defined an era.The Next Elvis: Searching for Stardom at Sun Records chronicles Sims's career at the studio, a pivotal time at this recording mecca, as she darted from disc jockeys to distributors. Sims not only entertains with personal stories of big personalities, but also brings humor to the challenges of a young woman working in a fast and tough industry.Her disarming narrative ranges from descriptions of a disgraced Jerry Lee Lewis to the remarkable impact and tragic fall of DJ Daddy-O Dewey to the frenzied Memphis homecoming of Elvis after his military service. Collectively, these vignettes offer a rare and intimate look at the people, the city, and the studio that permanently shifted the trajectory of rock 'n' roll.In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning
Par Grace Elizabeth Hale. 2023
Winner of the Mississippi Historical Society Book of the Year Award In this &“courageous and compelling … essential and critically…
important&” book (Bryan Stevenson), an award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America. A Washington Post Noteworthy Book | An Amazon Best Book of the Month Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird, with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth. Years later, as a rising scholar of white supremacy, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South—because Johnson's death, she found, was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob. A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, In the Pines casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World
Par Perdita Finn. 2023
Renowned spiritual teacher and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn teaches the art and healing power of…
connecting with the dead, as she guides readers through the magical process of conversing with the unseen world."Finn weaves a spellbinding meditation . . . an affecting ode to the power of the unseen." —Publisher's Weekly What if you could live in a world where the guidance of those who were gone was available, right at your very fingertips? It's possible, if we are open to it. Anyone can reclaim the forgotten guidance of the dead, and anyone can return to the realm of magic and miracles. In Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, author, spiritual teacher, and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn reveals that life is beginningless, love is endless, and those who have passed don&’t truly go anywhere when they die. Weaving together memoir, history, and a non-denominational spirituality based in ecology, Finn invites readers to live the experience that the stories of our lives are much older, bigger, and more merciful than we have been led to believe.Take Back the Magic takes the reader on a journey of healing, possibility, and love, as the story of how Finn healed her relationship with her bitter, patriarchal father long after his death unfolds over the course of thirteen moving chapters. Along the way, readers will learn how they, too, can reconnect with the generous guidance of the soul&’s long story through deep time, recovering their lost relationships with their ancestors and the Earth itself. Throughout, Finn shares guidance, tips, and practical advice that will aid readers in forging their own relationships with those who have passed, as she invites every reader to reconnect with their own inner knowing and to call forth magic from the most ancient parts of humanity. An inspiring invitation to healing in this life, and to experience that we are never alone, Take Back the Magic shows that the whole world is simply souls reaching out to and finding each other—and no one is ever truly lost to us, if we allow ourselves to begin our own conversations with the unseen world.Thicker than Water: A Memoir
Par Kerry Washington. 2023
Award-winning actor, director, producer, and activist Kerry Washington shares the deeply moving journey of her life so far, and the…
"beautiful" story of discovering her truth in this instant New York Times bestseller (Oprah Winfrey). While on a drive in Los Angeles, on a seemingly average afternoon, Kerry Washington received a text message that would send her on a life-changing journey of self-discovery. In an instant, her very identity was torn apart, with everything she thought she knew about herself thrown into question. In Thicker than Water, Washington gives readers an intimate view into both her public and private worlds—as a mother, daughter, wife, artist, advocate, and trailblazer. Chronicling her upbringing and life&’s journey thus far, she reveals how she faced a series of challenges and setbacks, effectively hid childhood traumas, met extraordinary mentors, managed to grow her career, and crossed the threshold into stardom and political advocacy, ultimately discovering her truest self and, with it, a deeper sense of belonging. Throughout this profoundly moving and beautifully written memoir, Washington attempts to answer the questions so many have struggled with: Who am I? What is my truest and most authentic self? How do I find a deeper sense of connection and belonging? With grace and honesty, she inspires readers to search for—and find—themselves.The Rye Bread Marriage: How I Found Happiness with a Partner I'll Never Understand
Par Michaele Weissman. 2023
How do partners in long-lasting relationships live together without driving each other up a wall? After forty years of marriage,…
Michaele Weissman has a few answers. When they first meet, John— a dashing European, a Latvian refugee, a physics PhD—is hoping to settle down. Michaele, a fast-talking American college student, is hungry for an independent life as a writer and historian. &“I am too young, and you are too Latvian,&” the twenty-year-old Michaele tells the twenty-eight-year-old John, explaining why she is ending their four-month romance. Fifteen years later, the two are married. Their love for each other does not assuage the trauma John experienced as a child during World War II; nor does it help Michaele understand her husband&’s unwavering devotion to every aspect of Latvian culture, particularly his passion for the dark, intense rye bread of his birthplace (nothing like the rye she knew growing up in her secular Jewish household). Michaele feels like an outsider in her own relationship, unable to touch a core piece of her husband&’s being. So, as John realizes his dream of opening a rye bread bakery, Michaele embarks on a fascinating journey. Delving into history and traveling across Europe with John, she excavates poignant stories of war, privation, and resilience—and realizes at last that rye bread represents everything about John&’s homeland that he loved and lost. Eventually Michaele even comes to love rye bread, too. How do the stories we live and the stories we inherit play out in our relationships? How do individuals learn to tolerate ethnic, religious, and national differences? The Rye Bread Marriage is a beautifully told, often humorous, love story about the messiness of spending a lifetime with another human being. Michaele Weissman reminds us that every relationship is a mystery—and a miracle.Mad Woman: The hotly anticipated follow-up to lifechanging bestseller, MAD GIRL
Par Bryony Gordon. 2024
'Visceral and honest' Telegraph'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer' Elizabeth Day'Bryony writes with such entertaining and brazen candour about…
mental illness...she really helps people tackle their own stuff. Her writing has helped me before and this will be another hit' Matt HaigTHE HOTLY ANTICIPATED FOLLOW-UP TO SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*, MAD GIRLWhat if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that's making us so sad?Ten years on from first writing about her own experiences of mental illness, Bryony Gordon still receives messages about the effect it has on people. Now perimenopausal and well into the next stage of her life, parenting an almost-adolescent, just what has that help - and that connection with other unwell people - taught Bryony about herself, and the society we live in? What has she learned, and why have her views on mental health changed so radically? After coming out the other side of the biggest trauma of our living memory - a global pandemic - existing in a state of perma-crisis has now become our new normal.From burnout and binge eating, to living with fluctuating hormones and the endless battle to stay sober, Bryony begins to question whether she got mental illness wrong in the first place. Is it simply a chemical imbalance, or rather a normal response from your brain telling you that something isn't right? Mad Woman explores the most difficult of all the lessons she's learned over the last decade - that our notion of what makes a happy life is the very thing that's making us so sad.Bestselling author Bryony Gordon is unafraid to write with her trademark blend of compassion, honesty and humour about her personal challenges and demons, which means her books and journalism have had profound impact on readers. She founded the mental health charity, Mental Health Mates, which has become a vast online community.*Bryony Gordon's Mad Girl was a number one Sunday Times bestseller on 12th June 2016.Sans masque
Par Truda Rosenberg. 2010
Sans masque fait la chronique des expériences exceptionnelles de Truda Rosenberg, une jeune Juive qui a vécu pendant la Seconde…
Guerre Mondiale. La seule survivante de sa famille, Rosenberg témoigne l’adversité et la cruauté humaine endurée par des millions de Juifs à travers l’Europe. De sa fuite de Belzec, un camp de concentration où 500 000 juifs ont été abattus, aux multiples confrontations avec les autorités Nazis, durant lesquelles elle a dû déployer de nombreuses fausses identités, au ghetto de Varsovie, où elle contribua à une insurrection, l’auteure raconte une série d’épisodes qui altéra sa vie pour toujours. Les épisodes qui regroupent le volume illustrent combien il est difficile de retrouver son identité lorsque celle-ci fut brutalement piétinée. Le récit est une attestation à la résilience de la dignité humaine, à sa capacité d’adaptation aux pires circonstances et surtout à sa soif de triomphe. Au travers de cet ouvrage, l’auteur entend contribuer aux archives collectives qui témoignent du génocide systématique de son peuple pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale et célébrer la décision la plus importante de sa vie – celle de ressaisir ses racines et sa culture.Panzer Ace: The Memoirs of an Iron Cross Panzer Commander from Barbarossa to Normandy
Par Richard Freiherr von Rosen. 2018
A richly illustrated memoir by highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier—&“recommended to anyone with an interest in the Panzerwaffe in the Second…
World War&” (Recollections of WWII). After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, Richard Freiherr von Rosen led a Company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak Company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank.) Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built. They were the most powerful heavy tanks to see service, and only one kind of shell could penetrate their armor at a reasonable distance. Every effort had to be made to retrieve any of them bogged down or otherwise immobilized, which led to many towing adventures. The author has a fine memory and eye for detail. Easy to read and not technical, his account adds substantially to the knowledge of how the German Panzer Arm operated in the Second World War. &“The author has a fine memory and eye for detail . . . It adds substantially to the knowledge of how the German Panzer Arm operated during the Second World War.&”—Military Vehicles Magazine &“The images accompany the story well. Richard Von Rosen, wounded several times and fighting a good part of the war on the eastern front, was certainly a lucky soldier, and we are also lucky to read these pages . . . highly recommend to all fans of memories of the Second World War.&”—Old Barbed Wire BlogNow in paperback and featuring an interview with Ben Stiller; a guided group tour to concentration camps allows Stahl to…
confront personal and historical demons with both deep despair and savage humor IN SEPTEMBER 2016, JERRY STAHL was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy. The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl’s lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling—out-of-control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for the entire United States—would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million? Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl’s own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tourrash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope
Par Don Ryn, Susie Ryn, Newell Cerak, Colleen Cerak. 2009
A grief reversed. A hope deferred. Mistaken Identity tells the unprecedented story of Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one…
buried under the wrong name, and the other in a coma being cared for by the wrong family.Five lives were lost in a tragic car accident, and the sole survivor was rushed to the hospital, where she remained in a coma for five weeks. Everyone believed that Laura Van Ryn was in a coma, and that Whitney Cerak had died in the crash—until Whitney woke up.This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt? In Mistaken Identity, the Van Ryn family and the Cerek family describe their ordeal and explore the bond sustaining and uniting them as they deal with their bizarre reversal of life lost and life found.Mistaken Identity weaves a complex tale of honesty, vulnerability, loss, hope, faith, and love in the face of one of the strangest twists of circumstances imaginable.Yes Man
Par Danny Wallace. 2006
Recently single, Danny Wallace was falling into loneliness and isolation. When a stranger on a bus advises, "Say yes more,"…
Wallace vows to say yes to every offer, invitation, challenge, and chance. In Yes Man, Wallace recounts his months-long commitment to complete openness with profound insight and humbling honesty. Saying yes takes Wallace into a new plane of existence: a place where money comes as easily as it goes, nodding a lot can lead to a long weekend overseas with new friends, and romance isn't as complicated as it seems. Yes eventually leads to the biggest question of all: "Do you, Danny Wallace, take this woman . . ." Yes Man is inspiring proof that a little willingness can take anyone to the most wonderful of places.Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present
Par Lex Williford, Michael Martone. 2007
From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative…
nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970.Contributers include: Jo Ann Beard, Wendell Berry, Eula Biss, Mary Clearman Blew, Charles Bowden, Janet Burroway, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Anne Carson, Bernard Cooper, Michael W. Cox, Annie Dillard, Mark Doty, Brian Doyle, Tony Earley, Anthony Farrington, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Diane Glancy, Lucy Grealy, William Harrison, Robin Hemley, Adam Hochschild, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver , Ted Kooser, Sara Levine, E.J. Levy, Phillip Lopate, Barry Lopez, Thomas Lynch, Lee Martin, Rebecca McCLanahan, Erin McGraw, John McPhee, Brenda Miller, Dinty W. Moore, Kathleen Norris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lia Purpura, Richard Rhodes, Bill Roorbach, David Sedaris, Richard Selzer, Sue William Silverman, Floyd Skloot, Lauren Slater, Cheryl Strayed, Amy Tan, Ryan Van Meter, David Foster Wallace, and Joy Williams.The Sinatra Club: My Life Inside the New York Mafia
Par Sal Polisi, Steve Dougherty. 2012
The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America—too dangerous and too deadly to fail. Until it was destroyed from…
within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime Family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi. He was born in Brooklyn—the same place that spawned Murder, Inc., Al Capone, and John Gotti, the future Mob godfather who became his friend. Polisi was raised on a family legacy that led him into the life he loved as a member of the Colombos, one of the New York Mob’s feared Five Families, and came of age when the Mafia was at the height of its vast wealth and power. Known by his Mob name, Sally Ubatz (“Crazy Sally”), he ran an illegal after-hours gambling den, The Sinatra Club, that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas—Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, and Tommy DeSimone. For Polisi, the nonstop thrills of glory days spent robbing banks, hijacking trucks, pulling daring heists—and getting away with it all, thanks to cops and public servants corrupted by Mob money—were fleeting. When he was busted for drug trafficking, and already sickened by the bloodbath that engulfed the Mob as it teetered toward extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life—a rat. In this riveting, pulse-pounding, and, at times, darkly hilarious first-person chronicle of his brazen crimes, wild sexual escapades, and personal tragedies, Polisi tells his story of life inside the New York Mob in a voice straight from the streets. With shocking candor, he draws on a hard-won knowledge of Mob history to paint a neverbefore- seen picture of the inner workings of the Mob and the larger-than-life characters who populated a once extensive and secret underworld that, thanks to guys like him, no longer exists. *** I was always a street guy. I was into robbing and stealing and gambling and loan sharking. I wasn’t involved in the bigmoney sit-downs, the labor racketeering and construction company shakedowns, the Garment District and garbage and cement company kickbacks. . . . For guys like me and Fox, my blood brother and crime partner, the thing we loved about being in that life was the action, the excitement. . . .We were in it for the money, sure. But it was the danger, the thrills that made the life of crime something special. A guy like John Gotti was different. He was far more ambitious than me and Fox. He wasn’t just in it for the rush and the riches. He wanted the power and the glory. John Gotti’s tragedy, if you can call it that, was that he was born too late for the old-school gangster crown that he craved. He began his rise as the Mob was beginning to crumble; by the time he got to the top, the bottom had dropped out. From the beginning, John was charismatic and smart. He just wasn’t cut out to be godfather. Once he became boss, he drove the bus right off the bridge. Or maybe it was the bus that drove him. Either way, I watched him go. Here’s how it all happened.She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana
Par Haven Kimmel. 2006
The # 1 New York Times bestseller A Girl Named Zippy was a rare and welcome treat: a memoir of…
a happy childhood. Spunky, strong-willed, and too smart for her own good, Zippy Jarvis brought readers delight and joy. In She Got Up Off the Couch, Haven Kimmel invites us to rejoin the quirky and hilarious Jarvis family saga, shining the spotlight now on her remarkable mother, Delonda.Zippy is growing up and struggling with both her hair and her distaste for shoes. But this memoir strikes a deeper and more emotional chord, as now Kimmel shines the spotlight on her remarkable mother, Delonda. Courageous and steadfast, Delonda finally realized that she could change her life, and she got up off the funky couch in the den, bought a beat-up flower power VW bug (and then learned to drive it), and went back to school, which gave her the chance to gain both financial independence and, at long last, self-respect. A true pleasure for old fans and new ones alike, She Got Up Off the Couch is a gorgeous encapsulation of an innocent time when a child didn't understand that her mother was depressed or felt stifled, but just noted on her way out the door that Delonda was a fixture in the living room. Kimmel captures the seminal moments of her mother's burgeoning empowerment with the full strength of her distinctive, deft storytelling, and with the overflowing sense of humor that made A Girl Named Zippy a favorite of readers everywhere.Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl
Par Stacey O'Brien. 2008
On Valentine's Day 1985, biologist Stacey O'Brien first met a four-day-old baby barn owl -- a fateful encounter that would…
turn into an astonishing 19-year saga. With nerve damage in one wing, the owlet's ability to fly was forever compromised, and he had no hope of surviving on his own in the wild. O'Brien, a young assistant in the owl laboratory at Caltech, was immediately smitten, promising to care for the helpless owlet and give him a permanent home. Wesley the Owl is the funny, poignant story of their dramatic two decades together. With both a tender heart and a scientist's eye, O'Brien studied Wesley's strange habits intensively and first-hand -- and provided a mice-only diet that required her to buy the rodents in bulk (28,000 over the owl's lifetime). As Wesley grew, she snapped photos of him at every stage like any proud parent, recording his life from a helpless ball of fuzz to a playful, clumsy adolescent to a gorgeous, gold-and-white, macho adult owl with a heart-shaped face and an outsize personality that belied his 18-inch stature. Stacey and Wesley's bond deepened as she discovered Wesley's individual personality, subtle emotions, and playful nature that could also turn fiercely loyal and protective -- though she could have done without Wesley's driving away her would-be human suitors! O'Brien also brings us inside the prestigious research community, a kind of scientific Hogwarts where resident owls sometimes flew freely from office to office and eccentric, brilliant scientists were extraordinarily committed to studying and helping animals; all of them were changed by the animal they loved. As O'Brien gets close to Wesley, she makes important discoveries about owl behavior, intelligence, and communication, coining the term "The Way of the Owl" to describe his inclinations: he did not tolerate lies, held her to her promises, and provided unconditional love, though he was not beyond an occasional sulk. When O'Brien develops her own life-threatening illness, the biologist who saved the life of a helpless baby bird is herself rescued from death by the insistent love and courage of this wild animal. Enhanced by wonderful photos, Wesley the Owl is a thoroughly engaging, heartwarming, often funny story of a complex, emotional, non-human being capable of reason, play, and, most important, love and loyalty. It is sure to be cherished by animal lovers everywhere.