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The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir
by Matthew Schrier"What is your name?" asked General Mohammad. "Matthew," I said. I had stopped saying Matt a while ago because it means &‘dead' in Arabic. On New Year's Eve in 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he'd been photographing the intense combat of the country's civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al Nusra Front—an organization the world would come to know as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. He'd face a daily struggle just to survive. And, eventually, he'd escape. In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists. Managing to keep his heritage a secret, Schrier used humor to develop relationships with his captors—and to keep himself sane during the long months of captivity. The Dawn Prayer (Or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison): A Memoir is a tale of patriotism and unimaginable bleakness shot through with light . . . of despair and friendship, sacrifice and betrayal, in a setting of bombed-out buildings and shifting alliances. It's the story of the first Westerner to escape al Qaeda—not a battle-hardened soldier, but an ordinary New Yorker who figured out how to set his escape plan in motion from a scene in Jurassic Park. From the prisoners' fiercely competitive hacky sack games and volleyball tournaments (played using a ball made of shredded orange peels and a shoelace) to his own truly nail-biting outbreak, Matthew Schrier's story is unforgettable—and one you won't want to miss.
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World
by Maya Jasanoff“Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le CarréA visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing todayMigration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: these forces shaped Joseph Conrad’s destiny at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world. Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in England as an author. He saw the surging, competitive "new imperialism" that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places “beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,” and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals. In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling, and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spell-binding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world—and through it to our own.
Daws: The Story of Dawson Trotman, Founder of the Navigators
by Betty Lee SkinnerDaws founded the Navigators, an important, evangelical Christian organization. As part of the organization, he was instrumental in establishing the Navigator Homes where individuals received nurture and theological and practical training. Daws was committed to world evangelism through individual discipleship and follow-up. His moto was that evangelism happens when trained individuals live the Christian life and witness to and disciple others.
Dawson's Fall: A Novel
by Roxana RobinsonA cinematic Reconstruction-era drama of violence and fraught moral reckoningIn Dawson’s Fall, a novel based on the lives of Roxana Robinson’s great-grandparents, we see America at its most fragile, fraught, and malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson’s tale weaves her family’s journal entries and letters with a novelist’s narrative grace, and spans the life of her tragic hero, Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the country’s new political, social, and moral landscape.Dawson, a man of fierce opinions, came to this country as a young Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in a war he understood as a conflict over states’ rights. He later became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier, finding a platform of real influence in the editorial column and emerging as a voice of the New South. With his wife and two children, he tried to lead a life that adhered to his staunch principles: equal rights, rule of law, and nonviolence, unswayed by the caprices of popular opinion. But he couldn’t control the political whims of his readers. As he wrangled diligently in his columns with questions of citizenship, equality, justice, and slavery, his newspaper rapidly lost readership, and he was plagued by financial worries. Nor could Dawson control the whims of the heart: his Swiss governess became embroiled in a tense affair with a drunkard doctor, which threatened to stain his family’s reputation. In the end, Dawson—a man in many ways representative of the country at this time—was felled by the very violence he vehemently opposed.
The Day After The Day After: My Atomic Angst
by Steven ChurchSteven Church grew up in the 1970s and '80s in Lawrence, Kansas, a town whose predictable daily rhythms give way easily to anxiety-and a place that, since Civil War times, has been a canvas for sporadic scenes of havoc and violence in the popular imagination. Childhood was quiet on the surface, but Steven grew up scared-scared of killer tornadoes, winged monkeys, violent movies, authority figures, the dissolution of his parents' marriage, and most of all in Reagan's America, nuclear war. His fantasies of nuclear meltdown, genetic mutation, and post-apocalyptic survival find a focal point in 1982 when filming begins in Lawrence for The Day After, a film which would go on to become the second-highest Nielsen-rated TV movie. Despite cheesy special effects, melodramatic plotlines, and the presence of Steve Guttenberg, the movie had an instant and lasting impact on Church, and an entire generation. Combining interview, personal essay, film criticism, fact, and flights of imagination, Church's richly layered and darkly comic memoir explores the meaning of Cold War fears for his generation and their resonance today.
A Day at the Beach
by Geoffrey WolffWith these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family.He shares with us, then, the wisdom of an alert man learning through the unsettling collisions of time, place, and local custom, and through the force of hardship and hazard, to bring his many disparate selves together -- with astonishing high-stakes candor and dazzling literary agility.
Day by Day with St. Benedict
by Terrence G. KarbongIn a beautiful and lucid year's worth of daily meditations, this Benedictine scholar and practitioner of The Rule brings to life the teachings of St. Benedict. He provides insight into how The Rule was originally practiced and shows the lay person how those old teachings have relevance, beauty and usefulness for today's challenges and dilemmas. This is a marvelous meditation calendar for those who desire deeper spirituality in the form of brief, daily retreats.
The Day Diana Died
by Christopher AndersenWhere were you the day Diana died? Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the tragic death of the Princess of Wales on August 31, 1997 is one of those defining benchmarks in history -- an event that touched each of us so profoundly, we will never forget the moment we heard the news. A full year after the Paris car crash that ended Diana's life at age thirty-six, millions around the world remain in shock. Over the sixteen years since her storybook wedding to Prince Charles, she had evolved from "Shy Di" into the planet's most photographed, written about, & talked about woman -- indeed, the most famous person in the world. For all Diana's global fame, much of the human drama that swirled around her death remains veiled in mystery & intrigue. Now, in the manner of his headline-making Kennedy biographies Jack & Jackie & Jackie After Jack, Christopher Andersen draws on important sources -- many of whom have agreed to speak here for the first time -- to re-create in vivid & often startling detail the events leading up to that fateful night in Paris. Diana was, in every sense of the word, larger than life -- a force of nature that, as the Royal Family learned, could be neither dismissed nor ignored. A bittersweet saga of triumph, love, & loss, The Day Diana Died captures those last days when Diana's star never shone brighter -- & evokes the beauty, grace, heartache, & compassion that made Diana one of the most compelling figures of our time.
The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up
by Rich BlakeDonny Herbert was a hardworking Buffalo city firefighter who, in December 1995, was searching the attic of a burning house when the snow-laden roof collapsed. For six minutes he was without oxygen. A beloved husband, a father of four boys, a neighborhood fixture who was always willing to lend a helping hand, Donny fell into a vegetative state that lasted nearly a decade. His prognosis was poor, and while he could open his eyes, he was unresponsive to the world around him. Donny Herbert was, for all practical purposes, gone. Until one day, in April 2005, when he woke up and spoke almost nonstop to his family and loved ones for nearly sixteen hours. The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up is the story of this remarkable moment, which was covered by the press worldwide, from the New York Times to the AP newswire. For his wife, Linda, who had held the family together for years, who had prayed nightly for Donny's recovery, it was a miracle. For his doctors and nurses, it was a medical mystery. For his sons -- including his youngest, with whom he had never before had a conversation -- it was a blessing. After his remarkable day, Donny Herbert fell into a deep sleep and never experienced a comparable moment of clarity. He died, in February 2006, from pneumonia. Written by Linda's cousin,The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up makes the reader wonder: Was it an experimental drug cocktail or an act of God that brought Donny back? Linda believes that each contributed to the miraculous day when he woke, but more than anything, she credits Donny himself-a man with the strength to will himself back into his family's lives, if only to remind them one last time of how very much he loved them. This is as much Linda's story -- one of perseverance and faith -- as it is of a remarkable husband, father, and firefighter.
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
by Charles Lane"Absorbing ... Riveting ... A legal thriller. "--Kevin Boyle, The New York Times Book Review. Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town like many where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. On April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex-Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty African Americans who had occupied a courthouse. Seeking justice for the slain, one brave U. S. attorney, James Beckwith, risked his life and career to investigate and punish the perpetrators--but they all went free. What followed was a series of courtroom dramas that culminated at the Supreme Court, where the justices' verdict compromised the victories of the Civil War and left Southern blacks at the mercy of violent whites for generations. The Day Freedom Died is a riveting historical saga that captures a gallery of characters from presidents to townspeople, and re-creates the bloody days of Reconstruction, when the often brutal struggle for equality moved from the battlefield into communities across the nation.
The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors
by Chris BartonA discovery that made the world a brighter place!Joe and Bob Switzer were very different brothers. Bob was a studious planner who wanted to grow up to be a doctor. Joe dreamed of making his fortune in show business and loved magic tricks and problem-solving. When an accident left Bob recovering in a darkened basement, the brothers began experimenting with ultraviolet light and fluorescent paints. Together they invented a whole new kind of color, one that glows with an extra-special intensity—Day-Glo.This cover reproduction is not printed with Day-Glo colors. The actual book, however, is printed using three Day-Glo colors: Saturn Yellow, Fire Orange, and Signal Green.
The Day I Died: My Astonishing Trip to Heaven and Back
by Freddy VestFreddy Vest was on the back of a horse, competing in a calf-roping event in front of a crowd when he suddenly collapsed due to a heart attack. He was dead before he hit the ground. One moment he was sitting on his horse. The next moment he was somewhere else--somewhere beyond description. He had moved on. Without travel, transport, angelic assistance, or the passage of time he was with Jesus, where he discovered firsthand that heaven is a real place and God is a real person and that death is not the end but the beginning of true life. In The Day I Died, Vest touches on the transformation from death to heaven and some of the benefits of finding oneself in that place, including: The unforgettable awareness of God’s presence The sense of His immeasurable love The freedom from the constraints of time The ease of communication with the Lord The peace and security that attend His presence The understanding that prayers are instantly heard by God.
The Day I Stopped Being Pretty
by Rodney LoftonThe Day I Stopped Being Pretty, chronicles the life of a young, black gay male who awakes and finds himself in the emergency room after a failed suicide attempt. After regaining consciousness, he begins to reflect on the events of his life that led him to attempting to take his life. His story is told in gritty and raw flashback, focusing on the men who shaped him into the man he has become, beginning with the first man he ever loved, his father. His story addresses, the discovery of his burgeoning sexuality, his life filled with low-self esteem, which leads him to seek love in the arms of many to compensate for the love he never received from his father. During the course of his life, we see his battle with substance abuse, physical abuse and sexual activities that lead to his eventual HIV diagnosis. After he shares the path that led him to his own self-destruction, he realizes in the face of death, the love that he has sought in many others, has always been in the one place he never looked, within himself. This raw and gritty story spans twenty-seven years of the lead character, as he faces racism, homophobia, rape and coping with being HIV positive. It is a story that shows the face of growing up black, living gay and loving positive. The Day I Stopped Being Pretty is one that shows triumph over adversity and the ability to find the love we all search for, self love.
The Day I Turned Uncool
by Dan ZevinSooner or later, each of us must face the day we develop a disturbing new interest in lawn care; the day we order sauvignon blanc instead of Rolling Rock; the day we refuse to see any concert where we cannot sit down. Sooner or later, each of us must face the day we turn uncool. Dan Zevin, who “was never exactly Fonz-like to begin with,” is having a hilariously hard time moving from his twenties to his thirties, and he confesses everything in these comic not-coming-of-age tales. As he shamefully employs his first cleaning lady, becomes abnormally attached to his dog, and commits flagrant acts of home improvement, Dan’s headed for an early midlife crisis—and a better-late-than-never revelation: Growing up is really nothing to be reluctant about. In fact, it’s very cool.
The Day I Went Missing: A True Story
by Jennifer MillerIt's happened to all of us at one time: falling victim to someone who says the words we want to hear. It usually ends with a wounded heart or lost love. But in one woman's case, it took a deadly turn. Jennifer Miller, an Emmy-nominated TV writer, was a highly functioning member of the Hollywood scene who had everything going for her: great contacts, great work, and the promise of an even greater future. But what Jennifer did not have was a happy life, or even the ability to understand what happy meant. A single woman who did not know what it was like to have a love relationship, she was haunted by a deepening despair. She toyed with therapy, but Jennifer, the daughter of a shrink, was convinced that she was beyond help. Then she met Dr. David Cohen, and discovered something worse than depression. Believing she had finally found someone to trust completely, Jennifer allowed herself to get sucked into Dr. Cohen's world. What followed is a chilling tale of fraudulent therapy that is enthralling and horrifying from its skillful beginning to its shocking conclusion.
A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties
by Robert GreenfieldA Day in the Life is the story of how the ideal marriage between two young and extraordinarily beautiful members of the English upper class fell apart as the psychedelic dreams of the sixties gave way to the harsh, hard-rock reality of the seventies. A tender, moving, and often harrowing look at the moment in time when the counterculture collided with the international jet set, A Day in the Life captures the spirit of that era and the people who lived through it with unerring accuracy and heartfelt precision.When Tommy Weber and Susan "Puss" Coriat, London's most beautiful couple, were married in 1964, it was the fitting end to a storybook romance. But the fast cars Tommy loved to race, their celebrity friends, and the huge trust fund Puss had inherited masked a tortured truth--both had suffered through oppressive and neglectful childhoods and were now caught up in a wildly extravagant lifestyle that neither Puss' inheritance nor Tommy's increasingly desperate schemes could support. Six years later, Puss found herself wandering around India with her two sons while Tommy, who was now smuggling drugs to survive, lived in London with a stunning young actress. A Day in the Life is also the stirring account of how the couple's tow sons--one of whom is the well-known actor Jake Weber--somehow managed to survive a childhood that would have destroyed those of lesser spirit.An unbelievable true-life tale that often reads like a novel, A Day in the Life follow the fortunes and misfortunes of one remarkable family while also introducing us to an extensive cast of supporting characters that includes Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Charlotte Rampling, as well as many of the movers and shakers who helped create the "Swinging London" scene.
The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans - And Other Possible Phenomena
by Mike Pearl__________If you live on planet Earth, you're probably scared about the future. Terrorism, complicated international relations, global warming, and a raft of other issues make it hard not to be. Watching the news you have to wonder: is it safe to go out there or not? In The Day It Finally Happens, Mike Pearl games out many of the 'could it really happen?' scenarios we've all speculated about, assigning a probability rating, and taking us through how it would unfold. He explores what would likely occur in dozens of possible scenarios - the final failure of antibiotics, the loss of the world's marine life, the abolition of the British monarchy, and even the arrival of aliens - and reports back from the future, providing a clear picture on how the world would look, feel, and even smell in each of these instances. Hilarious, enlightening, and terrifying, this book makes science accessible and is a unique form of existential therapy, offering practical answers to some of our most worrisome questions. Thankfully, the odds of humanity pulling through look pretty good. __________For fans of such bestsellers as What If?,The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Uninhabitable Earth, as well as Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell, this is a book about future events that we don't really understand and getting to know them in close detail. Entertaining speculation featuring both authoritative research and a bit of mischief: a look at how humanity is likely to weather such happenings as the day nuclear war occurs, the day the global internet goes down, the day we run out of effective antibiotics, and the day immortality is achieved.(P) 2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Day Jesse James Was Killed
by Carl W. BreihanJesse James is Dead!On April 3, 1882, a bullet fired by Bob Ford from a Smith & Wesson .44 revolver ended the life of Jesse James, notorious badman. Since then, the James story has grown into a full-blown American legend.Here is the dramatic, day-by-day account of the gunman’s lawless adventures—which to some held the bravura of a Robin Hood and to others were wanton banditry—right up to the blood-curdling moment when Jesse is shot down dead in his own parlor.Now, for the first time, new material—drawn from authentic letters, old newspapers, and the personal remembrances of the James family, neighbors, and friends—casts a fascinating light on the motives and deeds of the entire James gang.
The Day My Brain Exploded: A True Story
by Ashok RajamaniAfter a full-throttle brain bleed at the age of twenty-five, Ashok Rajamani, a first-generation Indian American, had to relearn everything: how to eat, how to walk and to speak, even things as basic as his sexual orientation. With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother’s wedding!), as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process, he introduces readers to his family—his principal support group, as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, coruscating, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the reader into unfamiliar territory, much like the experience Alice had when she fell down the rabbit hole. That he lived to tell the story is miraculous; that he tells it with such aplomb is simply remarkable.More than a decade later he has finally reestablished a productive artistic life for himself, still dealing with the effects of his injury—life-long half-blindness and epilepsy— but forging ahead as a survivor dedicated to helping others who have suffered a similar catastrophe.
The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing
by Darina Al-Joundi Mohamed KacimiThe Homeland actress&’s &“recollections of her unconventional youth in war-torn Beirut are heartbreaking yet humorous . . . in this unique&” memoir (Publishers Weekly). Raised in 1970s Lebanon on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. She spent her adolescence defying death in Beirut nightclubs as bombs fell across the city. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment directed at her daily by the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father&’s last wish is for his favorite song, &“Sinnerman&” by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral instead of the traditional suras of the Koran. When she does just that, the final act of defiance elicits a catastrophic response from her surviving family members. In this dramatic true story, Darina Al-Joundi is defiantly passionate about living her life as a liberated woman, even if it means leaving everyone and everything behind in this &“beautifully taut and relentlessly unemotional&” memoir (Kirkus).
Day Nine: A Postpartum Depression Memoir
by Amanda MundayA harrowing memoir about a woman’s struggle with postpartum depression. Nine days after the birth of her daughter, Amanda was involuntarily admitted to a Toronto psychiatric ward for postpartum depression. The typical hold-and-release process in Ontario is seventy-two hours. She stayed eighteen days. New parent sleep deprivation is familiar, but Munday’s tumultuous experience with depression is one rarely discussed within parent communities. Any mental illness comes with a strong public stigma, and with mental illness connected to motherhood, the judgments run deep. Through her experiences, Munday presents the harsh realities of new parenthood and the quiet suffering postpartum depression commands. Day Nine is an intimate memoir that reads like a freight train, revealing how common life transitions — childbirth and parenthood — can unravel into a medical emergency few new parents are prepared for.
Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War
by Annia CiezadloA luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, Day of Honey weaves history, cuisine, and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival. In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship--a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war. Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband's hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a determined young Kurdish woman who dreams of exploring the world, only to see her life under occupation become confined to the kitchen; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city's legendary cafés; Salama al-Khafaji, a soft-spoken dentist who eludes assassins to become Iraq's most popular female politician; and Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo's sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes--which are included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food. As bombs destroy her new family's ancestral home and militias invade her Beirut neighborhood, Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with an extraordinary ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life in a larger political and historical context. From forbidden Baghdad book clubs to the oldest recipes in the world, Ciezadlo takes us inside the Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide. Day of Honey is a brave and compassionate portrait of civilian life during wartime--a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.
Day of Honey
by Annia CiezadloA luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, Day of Honey weaves history, cuisine, and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival. In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship--a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war. Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband's hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a determined young Kurdish woman who dreams of exploring the world, only to see her life under occupation become confined to the kitchen; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city's legendary cafés; Salama al-Khafaji, a soft-spoken dentist who eludes assassins to become Iraq's most popular female politician; and Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo's sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes--which are included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food. As bombs destroy her new family's ancestral home and militias invade her Beirut neighborhood, Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with an extraordinary ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life in a larger political and historical context. From forbidden Baghdad book clubs to the oldest recipes in the world, Ciezadlo takes us inside the Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide. Day of Honey is a brave and compassionate portrait of civilian life during wartime--a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.
A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw
by Isaac Bashevis SingerMr. Singer has created out of remembered fragments of his own childhood a place instantly familiar where life is not neat and orderly.<P><P> Winner of the National Book Award
The Day of Shelly’s Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief
by Renato RosaldoThis deeply moving collection of poetry by Renato Rosaldo focuses on the shock of his wife Michelle (Shelly) Rosaldo's sudden death on October 11, 1981. Just the day before, Shelly and her family had arrived in the northern Philippine village of Mungayang, where she and her husband Renato, both accomplished anthropologists, planned to conduct fieldwork. On October 11, Shelly died after losing her footing and falling some sixty feet from a cliff into a swollen river. Renato Rosaldo explored the relationship between bereavement and rage in his canonical essay, "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage," which first appeared in 1984 and is reprinted here. In the poems at the heart of this book, he returns to the trauma of Shelly's death through the medium of free verse, maintaining a tight focus on the events of October 11, 1981. He explores not only his own experience of Shelly's death but also the imagined perspectives of many others whose lives intersected with that tragic event and its immediate aftermath, from Shelly herself to the cliff from which she fell, from the two young boys who lost their mother to the strangers who carried and cared for them, from a tricycle taxi driver, to a soldier, to priests and nuns. Photographs taken years earlier, when Renato and Shelly were conducting research across the river valley from Mungayang, add a stark beauty. In a new essay, "Notes on Poetry and Ethnography," Rosaldo explains how and why he came to write the harrowing yet beautiful poems in The Day of Shelly's Death. More than anything else though, the essay is a manifesto in support of what he calls antropoesía, verse with an ethnographic sensibility. The essay clarifies how this book of rare humanity and insight challenges the limits of ethnography as it is usually practiced.