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Dirty Kids: Chasing Freedom with America's Nomads
by Chris Urquhart&“[A] fascinating debut . . . documenting the lives of teenage runaways who traverse America as part of a freewheeling counterculture.&” —Publishers Weekly At age twenty-two, writer Chris Urquhart left a life of middle-class comfort to document the lives of these young nomads for a magazine feature. Captivated, she followed them for three more years. In honest prose interspersed with photographs portraying the grimy beauty of nomadic life, Dirty Kids tells the story of how Urquhart lived alongside runaways, crust punks, and dropouts, hippies, Deadheads, and Rainbows in an attempt to belong in their world. But the road took its toll, and along the way, Urquhart found suffering alongside the freedom—mental health issues, substance abuse, and fears of violence marred her journey. Despite all that, the warm, welcoming family of travelers and their radically alternative culture of sharing, generosity, and non-capitalistic collaboration forever changed her outlook on life and her understanding of freedom. &“An illuminating and memorable twenty-first-century journey. From this angle, Burning Man looks bourgeois.&” —Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing &“Brings readers face-to-face with the bliss of freedom, the terror of loneliness, and the hard but true realities of life on the road—and on the rails—in modern day Babylon.&” —Peter Conners, author of Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead &“Urquhart shows us a seldom-glimpsed slice of America with poetic flair and journalistic objectivity.&” —Ken Ilgunas, award-winning author of Trespassing Across America
Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family
by Jill DamatacIn the style of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings, filmmaker Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America.Jill Damatac left the United States in 2015 after living there as an undocumented immigrant with her family for twenty-two years. America was the only home she knew, where invisibility had become her identity and where poverty, domestic violence, ill health, and xenophobia were everyday experiences. First traveling to her native Philippines, Damatac eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge, fully investigate her roots, and process what happened to her and her family. After nine years, she was granted British citizenship, and returned to the United States, for the first time without fear of deportation or retribution. Damatac weaves together forgotten colonial history and long-buried Indigenous tradition, taking us through her time in America, and cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, and belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food can answer them.
Dirty Laundry: Real Life. Real Stories. Real Funny.
by Andersen Gabrych Maggie RoweEvery other Thursday on Santa Monica Boulevard' s Comedy Central Stage, a motley assortment of Hollywood writers, actors, and comics convened to reveal the most personal— and colorful— parts of their lives. Their soul-baring monologues revealed the sources of their creative genius, from wacky families and psycho exes to random ramblings and unbelievable Hollywood insights. This hilarious collection features confessions from such performers as Richard Belzer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), Jennifer Elise Cox (The Brady Bunch Movie), Marc Evan Jackson (The Good Place), and Kevin Nealon (Saturday Night Live), among others. In more than three dozen anecdotes, they provide the inside scoop on Hollywood, including stories about mishaps at the Emmys, writing for popular shows, being put in a sleeper hold by Hulk Hogan, growing up in famous families, and what it' s like to play Jan Brady. Funny, embarrassing, or sordid— or a combination thereof— but always brutally honest, Dirty Laundry shines a voyeuristic light on the underbellies of the people who have sold their souls to the entertainment biz.
The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
by Kristin KimballFrom a &“graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail&” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this riveting memoir explores a year on a sustainable farm.When Kristin Kimball left New York City to interview a dynamic young farmer named Mark, her world changed. On an impulse, she shed her city self and started a new farm with him on five hundred acres near Lake Champlain. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of the couple&’s first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through their harvest-season wedding in the loft of the barn. Kristin and Mark&’s plan to grow everything needed to feed a community was an ambitious idea, and a bit romantic. It worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, over a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the &“whole diet&”—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. In The Dirty Life, Kristin discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land.
Dirty Little Secrets about Black History, Heroes and Other Troublemakers
by Claud Anderson Joann Anderson Florence Jekins Robert ColemanDirty Little Secrets About Black History, Heroes And Other Troublemakers
Dirty Old Man
by Moll FrenchMonsters do exist, though many parents can't see them. I knew one called Bernie. He groomed me and led me away from home. It's been all over the news lately. Teenagers running away from home. Groomed and snatched from the nest by predators, before they get a chance to spread their wings. Regardless of culture or social class, it's happening everywhere--online, in schools, clubs and societies. It happened to me, Moll. This is my true story, a harrowing account of my stolen youth and my journey to take it back. A story of the ones who overlooked my situation and a story dedicated to those who made a difference to my life. I lived in that squalid mobile home for two and a half years with my abuser. I even married him because I felt I had no way out. From the mind games of my father to the open arms of Bernie, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was helpless for a short time but never hopeless.
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaIn 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ran away from America with two backpacks and ended up in Canada, where she discovered queer anarchopunk love and revolution, yet remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate and riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it reveals how a disabled queer woman of color and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the past and, as the subtitle suggests, "dreams her way home."Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poetry book Love Cake won a Lambda Literary Award.
Dirty Rocker Boys
by Bobbie Brown Caroline RyderAn uncensored Hollywood tell-all filled with explicit tales of love, sex, and revenge from the video vixen made famous by Warrant’s rock anthem “Cherry Pie.”Who could forget the sexy “Cherry Pie” girl from hair metal band Warrant’s infamous music video? Bobbie Brown became a bona fide vixen for her playful role as the object of lead singer Jani Lane’s desires. But the wide-eyed Louisiana beauty queen’s own dreams of making it big in Los Angeles were about to be derailed by her rock-and-roll lifestyle. After her tumultuous marriage to Jani imploded, and her engagement to fast-living Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee ended in a drug haze—followed by his marriage later to Pamela Anderson—Bobbie decided it was time Hollywood’s hottest bachelors got a taste of their own medicine. Step one: get high. Step two: get even. In a captivating, completely uncensored confessional, Bobbie explicitly recounts a life among some of the most famous men in Hollywood: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Costner, Mark McGrath, Dave Navarro, Sebastian Bach, Ashley Hamilton, Rob Pilatus of Milli Vanilli, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, Orgy’s Jay Gordon, and many more. No man was off limits as the fun-loving bombshell spiraled into excess, anger, and addiction. Bobbie survived the party—barely—and her riveting, cautionary comeback tale is filled with the wildest stories of sex, drugs, and rock and roll ever told.
Dirty Rush
by Taylor BellIn this shockingly true-to-life novel written by an all-star team of Internet phenoms from the Total Frat Move generation, you'll get the first true glimpse of "real" sorority life in all its f**ked up glory.Dirty Rush by Taylor Bell is what happens when you take the creative minds behind Babe Walker (author of the New York Times bestselling White Girl Problems series) and add Rebecca Martinson to the mix. Rebecca Martinson--yes, that bitch--the former Delta Gamma sister responsible for the scathing, expletive-filled email that verbally assaulted her entire chapter for being "so f**king boring" at social functions, and threatened to "c*nt punt" every last one of them if their behavior didn't shape up. Dirty Rush is a no-holds-barred look at what really happens when you "go Greek." Taylor Bell comes from a long line of Beta Zeta sorority sisters, who all expect her to pledge upon starting at the university. But Taylor has other plans: she's determined to give her family the proverbial middle finger and destroy the rich tradition they hold so dear by eschewing sorority life altogether. However, Taylor's resolve soon melts when she falls in with a group of hilarious, ultra-saucy girls, who introduce her to all things Greek and soften her to the idea of joining. Resigned to the fate the Greek gods have dealt her, Taylor pledges Beta Zeta and embarks on a collegiate career filled with the kind of carousing sure to make any sorority sister proud. Soon, Taylor's experience as a BZ starts to feel like a jacked-up, drug-infused, and X-rated fairy tale--especially when reality comes crashing down and a rather lewd sex tape is leaked. The girl in the video looks a lot like Taylor. Has Taylor gone off the deep end? Or is someone trying to frame her? Unless she can prove her innocence and re-ingratiate herself with the sisters who've accused her of leaking the video in a Kim Kardashian-style bid for attention, Taylor is at risk of losing everything she's fought (partied) so hard for.
Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding
by Jessie ShollTo be the child of a compulsive hoarder is to live in a permanent state of unease. Because if my mother is one of those crazy junk-house people, then what does that make me?When her divorced mother was diagnosed with cancer, New York City writer Jessie Sholl returned to her hometown of Minneapolis to help her prepare for her upcoming surgery and get her affairs in order. While a daunting task for any adult dealing with an aging parent, it's compounded for Sholl by one lifelong, complex, and confounding truth: her mother is a compulsive hoarder. Dirty Secret is a daughter's powerful memoir of confronting her mother's disorder, of searching for the normalcy that was never hers as a child, and, finally, cleaning out the clutter of her mother's home in the hopes of salvaging the true heart of their relationship--before it's too late. Growing up, young Jessie knew her mother wasn't like other mothers: chronically disorganized, she might forgo picking Jessie up from kindergarten to spend the afternoon thrift store shopping. Now, tracing the downward spiral in her mother's hoarding behavior to the death of a long-time boyfriend, she bravely wades into a pathological sea of stuff: broken appliances, moldy cowboy boots, twenty identical pairs of graying bargain-bin sneakers, abandoned arts and crafts, newspapers, magazines, a dresser drawer crammed with discarded eyeglasses, shovelfuls of junk mail ... the things that become a hoarder's "treasures." With candor, wit, and not a drop of sentimentality, Jessie Sholl explores the many personal and psychological ramifications of hoarding while telling an unforgettable mother-daughter tale.
Dirty Sexy Money: The Unauthorized Biography of Kris Jenner (Front Page Detectives)
by Cathy Griffin Dylan HowardA True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal and how a Ruthless Beverly Hills Socialite Became the Ultimate Momager and Raked In BillionsDirty Sexy Money: The Unauthorized Biography of Kris Jenner is the definitive account of how a Beverly Hills socialite with little formal education built herself a global empire. This tell-all tome unravels the family&’s meteoric rise to fame and the dark secrets they&’ve struggled to hide . . . until now. Together, Howard and Griffin delve behind the headlines and social media hype to tell the true story of Kris&’s life—rather than the rosy picture she likes to paint. Dirty Sexy Money is an unflinching look at Kris&’s triumphs and losses, her crises and celebrations, her famous friendships and family conflicts. It examines in unprecedented detail Kris&’s troubled two decades with Bruce Jenner and the end of their marriage as Bruce transitioned to Caitlyn; it exposes the truth about her current affair with a much younger man . . . and it reveals what she really thinks of her daughter&’s very public marriage to Kanye West. Inside are a wealth of previously untold stories, including intimate details of how Kim&’s sex tape jump-started her career, of the real reasons Kris sold her long-running television reality series—as well as shocking, never-before-heard revelations about her friendships with O.J. Simpson and murdered wife Nicole. The result is a dramatic narrative account of Kris&’s real story as you&’ve never heard it before . . . in all its dirty, sexy glory.
Dirty Sexy Politics
by Meghan MccainIn Dirty Sexy Politics Meghan McCain gives us a true insider's account of life on a campaign trail and takes a hard look at the future of the Republican party. In this witty, candid, and boisterous book, Meghan takes us deep behind the scenes of the campaign trail.
Dirty Thirty
by Asa AkiraThe world knows her as a porn star. . . but it's her way with words that will touch you again and again. Asa Akira's perceptive, funny, and straightforward writings on love, sex, death, marriage and celebrity come together in a surprising book of essays. Personally revealing as well as universal, Dirty Thirty marks the coming of age of a new literary star.
The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare
by John LisleJohn Lisle reveals the untold story of the OSS Research and Development Branch—The Dirty Tricks Department—and its role in World War II.In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him. After a disconcerting amount of time, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), walked in the door. “You know your Sherlock Holmes, of course,” Donovan said as an introduction. “Professor Moriarty is the man I want for my staff…I think you’re it.”Following this life-changing encounter, Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Their inventions included Bat Bombs, suicide pills, fighting knives, silent pistols, and camouflaged explosives. Moreover, they forged documents for undercover agents, plotted the assassination of foreign leaders, and performed truth drug experiments on unsuspecting subjects.Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews, The Dirty Tricks Department tells the story of these scheming scientists, explores the moral dilemmas that they faced, and reveals their dark legacy of directly inspiring the most infamous program in CIA history: MKULTRA.
The Dirty Version: On Stage, in the Studio, and in the Streets with Ol' Dirty Bastard
by Buddha Monk Mickey HessOn the tenth anniversary of his death, The Dirty Version is the first biography of hip hop superstar and founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, to be written by someone from his inner circle: his right-hand man and best friend, Buddha Monk.Ol’ Dirty Bastard rocketed to fame with the Wu-Tang Clan, the raucous and renegade group that altered the world of hip hop forever. ODB was one of the Clan’s wildest icons and most inventive performers, and when he died of an overdose in 2004 at the age of thirty-five, millions of fans mourned the loss. ODB lives on in epic proportions and his antics are legend: he once picked up his welfare check in a limousine; lifted a burning car off a four-year-old girl in Brooklyn; stole a fifty-dollar pair of sneakers on tour at the peak of his success. Many have questioned whether his stunts were carefully calculated or the result of paranoia and mental instability.Now, Dirty’s friend since childhood, Buddha Monk, a Wu-Tang collaborator on stage and in the studio, reveals the truth about the complex and talented performer. From their days together on the streets of Brooklyn to the meteoric rise of Wu-Tang’s star, from bouts in prison to court-mandated rehab, from Dirty’s favorite kind of pizza to his struggles with fame and success, Buddha tells the real story—The Dirty Version—of the legendary rapper.
Dirty Wars and Polished Silver: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix
by Lynda SchusterFrom a former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent, an exuberant memoir of life, love, and transformation on the frontlines of conflicts around the worldGrowing up in 1970s Detroit, Lynda Schuster felt certain life was happening elsewhere. And as soon as she graduated from high school, she set out to find it. Dirty Wars and Polished Silver is Schuster’s story of her life abroad as a foreign correspondent in war-torn countries, and, later, as the wife of a U.S. Ambassador. It chronicles her time working on a kibbutz in Israel, reporting on uprisings in Central America and a financial crisis in Mexico, dodging rocket fire in Lebanon, and grieving the loss of her first husband, a fellow reporter, who was killed only ten months after their wedding.But even after her second marriage, to a U.S. diplomat, all the black-tie parties and personal staff and genteel “Ambassatrix School” grooming in the world could not protect her from the violence of war.Equal parts gripping and charming, Dirty Wars and Polished Silver is a story about one woman’s quest for self-discovery—only to find herself, unexpectedly, more or less back where she started: wiser, saner, more resolved. And with all her limbs intact.
Dirty Water: One Man’s Fight to Clean Up One of the World’s Most Polluted Bays
by Bill SharpsteenDirty Water is the riveting story of how Howard Bennett, a Los Angeles schoolteacher with a gift for outrageous rhetoric, fought pollution in Santa Monica Bay--and won.
Dirty Waters: Confessions of Chicago's Last Harbor Boss
by R. J. NelsonIn 1987, the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the law--he had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixties--but nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss. Director of Harbors and Marine Services was a position so mired in corruption that its previous four directors ended up in federal prison. Nelson inherited angry constituents, prying journalists, shell-shocked employees, and a tobacco-stained office still bearing a busted door that had been smashed in by the FBI. Undeterred, Nelson made it his personal mission to become a "pneumacrat," a public servant who, for the common good, always follows the spirit--if not always the letter--of the law. Dirty Waters is a wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson's time controlling some of the city's most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. A guide like no other, Nelson takes us through Chicago's beloved "blue spaces" and deep into the city's political morass. He reveals the different moralities underlining three mayoral administrations, from Harold Washington to Richard M. Daley, and navigates us through the gritty mechanisms of the Chicago machine. He also deciphers the sometimes insular world of boaters and their fraught relationship with their land-based neighbors. Ultimately, Dirty Waters is a tale of morality, of what it takes to be a force for good in the world and what struggles come from trying to stay ethically afloat in a sea of corruption.
Dirty Work: My Gruelling, Glorious, Life-changing Summer In the Wilderness
by Anna MaxymiwLands of Lost Borders meets The Electric Woman in this vibrant coming-of-age memoir about a young woman's fierce, filthy, exhausting, and joyous experience working at a wilderness lodge.When Anna Maxymiw accepts a summer job as a housekeeper at a fishing lodge in Northern Ontario, she has little idea what to expect. At twenty-three, she has decided to step away from her master's degree and city life to board a floatplane bound for the remote boreal forest. For sixty-seven days, Anna will be working and living alongside twelve strangers. Together this group of young men and women will keep the lodge running. While the fishing guides head out on the water with the fishermen who are the lodge's guests, the women stay on land to clean and serve. Against the backdrop of a vast lake, wild storms, and hot days and eerily still nights, Anna encounters bears, bugs, and the lore surrounding the lake's legendary pike. As the summer progresses, complex (and sometimes fraught) bonds form between the men and women who work at the lodge, the ownership of the lodge changes hands, and tensions build. And Anna notices a shift in her outlook, too: she finds herself letting go of fears and insecurities and welcoming surprises and possibilities, both good and bad, with a willingness to be changed by them.Warm, funny, vulnerable, and wise, Dirty Work offers a singular perspective on the age-old impulse to leave familiar surroundings behind. This memoir is for anyone who has ever felt the urge to test themselves and wondered how they'd fare and who they'd be when they come out on the other side.
Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire
by Edited by Alice WongThe much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms.What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm. But don't worry: there's still sex to consider—and the numerous ways sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Plunge between these pages and you'll also find disabled sexual discovery, disabled love stories, and disabled joy. These twenty-five stunning original pieces—plus other modern classics on the subject, all carefully curated by acclaimed activist Alice Wong—include essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and erotica: a full spectrum of the dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal realities of a wide range of beautiful bodies and minds. Disability Intimacy will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
by Alice Wong&“Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again.&” —Chicago TribuneOne in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act,From Harriet McBryde Johnson&’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults): 17 First-Person Stories for Today
by Edited by Alice WongDisabled young people will be proud to see themselves reflected in this hopeful, compelling, and insightful essay collection, adapted for young adults from the critically acclaimed adult book, Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century that "sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences." --Chicago Tribune, "Best books published in summer 2020" (Vintage/Knopf Doubleday edition).The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy. The accounts in this collection ask readers to think about disabled people not as individuals who need to be &“fixed,&” but as members of a community with its own history, culture, and movements. They offer diverse perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. It is essential reading for all.
Disabled, Female and Proud!: Stories of Ten Women with Disabilities
by Harilyn Rousso Susan Gushee O'Malley Mary SeveranceThis book contains stories of ten women with disabilities who are out doing it, raising families, working, and being active in their communities. Woven through this book is the history of the Disability rights movement. This book is directed towards teen women, but is a good read for all.
A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
by Deborah CampbellIn the midst of an unfolding international crisis, the renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Her frank, personal account of a journey through fear, and the triumph of friendship and courage, is as riveting as it is illuminating. The story begins in 2007 when Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a "fixer"--providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam, who fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian centre, not only supports her husband and two children through her work with foreign journalists but is setting up a makeshift school for displaced girls. She has become a charismatic, unofficial leader of the refugee community in Damascus, and Campbell is inspired by her determination to create something good amid so much suffering. Ahlam soon becomes her friend as well as her guide. But one morning Ahlam is seized from her home in front of Campbell's eyes. Haunted by the prospect that their work together has led to her friend's arrest, Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find her--all the while fearing she could be next. Through its compelling story of two women caught up in the shadowy politics behind today's conflict, A Disappearance in Damascus reminds us of the courage of those who risk their lives to bring us the world's news.From the Hardcover edition.
A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
by Deborah CampbellWinner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for NonfictionWinner of the Freedom to Read AwardWinner of the Hubert Evans PrizeIn the midst of an unfolding international crisis, renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Campbell’s frank, personal account of a journey through fear and the triumph of friendship and courage is as riveting as it is illuminating.The story begins in 2007, when Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a “fixer”—providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam has fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian center. She supports her husband and two children while working to set up a makeshift school for displaced girls. Strong and charismatic, she has become an unofficial leader of the refugee community.Campbell is inspired by Ahlam’s determination to create something good amid so much suffering, and the two women become close friends. But one morning, Ahlam is seized from her home in front of Campbell’s eyes. Haunted by the prospect that their work together has led to her friend’s arrest, Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find Ahlam—all the while fearing she could be next.The compelling story of two women caught up in the shadowy politics behind today’s most searing conflict, A Disappearance in Damascus reminds us of the courage of those who risk their lives to bring us the world’s news.