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False Claims: One Insider's Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption
by Lisa PrattaIn Big Pharma, lives are secondary to profit margins. But Lisa Pratta stood her ground—risking everything to expose the lies of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical business mired in deception, greed, and the systemic abuse of both patients and employeesAs a rising star in pharmaceutical sales, Lisa Pratta wanted to believe that she was helping improve the lives of people who suffered from illness. But as she climbed the corporate ladder, she uncovered a sinister world of bribery, fraud, and sexual harassment—all papered over with a thin veneer of corporate respectability.At Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Lisa found herself at a small company with a blockbuster drug that could have been a lifeline for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis—that is, if it was prescribed properly. But instead, Questcor chose profits over patients, training its sales force to push untested treatment regimens with the sole purpose of beating its competition. Lisa recognized this as not only dangerous but highly illegal. In the midst of this controversy, Questcor arbitrarily inflated the drug’s price to a jaw-dropping $28,000 per vial. Torn between her morals and the financial stability the job provided for her special-needs son, Lisa made a decision that would change her life forever: she reported the fraudulent practices of the company to the federal government. For nearly a decade, she led a double life—feeding insider information to the Department of Justice while enduring the relentless demands of her company to sell their drug using illegal marketing tactics. She faced constant fear of exposure, knowing that the government offered her no protection if her secrets were revealed. Nonetheless, Lisa pressed on, determined to hold Questcor accountable for the laws they were breaking and the lives they were endangering.This incredible true story offers a sobering look at the unscrupulous sales methods used by America’s corrupt pharmaceutical industry, spotlights the levers they pull to extract ludicrous profits from the sick and dying, and is a page-turning portrait of one woman’s heroic fight against Big Pharma and a mother’s struggle to protect her family.
Falwell Inc.: Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire
by Dirk SmillieSpiritual Street Fighter. Radical Educator. Christian Entrepreneur.The late Reverend Jerry Falwell was a controversial and divisive religious and political figure whose legacy will long outlive him. Falwell Inc. is the first close examination of how he built his conservative empire, from the inner workings of the fund-raising juggernauts behind his church, university, and conservative causes, to the explosive growth of Liberty University, founded by Falwell to mint conservative lawyers, judges, and politicans. Falwell's religious ventures are now in the hands of his two very different sons. They are expanding their father's empire beyond what he ever achieved.Investigative reporter Dirk Smillie reveals the financial rapids Reverend Falwell and son Jerry Jr. hit when business failures piled up $100 million in debt and nearly sank his school and ministry. Smillie uncovers the extraordinary impact Falwell, in saving his spiritual enterprises, has had on Lynchburg, Virginia, and how savvy real estate investments and relentless fund-raising saved the empire. Falwell Inc. details the spreading influence his legacy continues to exert on our country.Falwell Inc. is above all an astonishing behind-the-curtains look at a powerful but flawed man and his multimillion-dollar business, political, religious, and education enterprises, by a reporter with unprecedented access to the family.
Fama y soledad de Picasso
by John BergerUn retrato íntimo y controvertido de Pablo Picasso por John Berger, ganador del Premio Booker. En su momento de mayor genialidad, Pablo Picasso era el pintor revolucionario que desafiaba a los valores de su época. En su momento de mayor fama, era como un personaje de la realeza: idolatrado, rico y en absoluto aislamiento. John Berger dirige su penetrante mirada sobre este pintor enigmático y prodigioso. En una senda que abarca historia, política y arte, vida pública y privada, Berger sigue el recorrido de Picasso desde su infancia malagueña hasta el periodo azul y el Cubismo, de la creación del Guernica a los grabados de sus últimos años, ofreciéndonos la dimensión exacta de sus triunfos y el coste implacable de su fama. Cuando fue publicado por primera vez, la crítica tildó este libro de «insolente, insensible, doctrinario y perverso. Esta edición revisada y con un nuevo ensayo, demuestra el poder y la vigencia de «el libromás importante sobre Picasso escrito hasta hoy... Una biografía profunda, seria, crítica, tan demoledora como llena de comprensión» (John Canaday, New Republic). Reseñas:«Leyendo el estupendo Fama y soledad de Picasso, de John Berger, uno se convence de esa ambivalencia del éxito... Un libro extraordinario... Recomendable tanto para los admiradores de Picasso como para cualquiera que quiera adentrarse en los misterios y riesgos que conlleva el genio.»Álvaro Quintana, blog Correspondencia «John Berger analiza de manera brillante ese sesgo algo tramposo que la palabra "genio" adquiere cuando se trata de entender o explicar a Picasso y su descomunal obra artística.»El País Cultural (Uruguay) «Berger es una de las mayores voces en la crítica de arte contemporánea... Probablemente, el ensayista más perceptivo.»Philadelphia Inquirer «Sus contemporáneos más cercanos en términos de audacia estética podrían ser Umberto Eco o el tardío W. G. Sebald, pero resulta difícil compararlo a cualquier autor inglés del último medio siglo. Berger, simplemente, rompió todos los moldes.»The Guardian «Los libros de Berger poseen la peculiar cualidad de parecer libros sólo por azar. Construidos con palabras, las portan sin embargo con indulgencia, casi a regañadientes, como si igual pudieran haber estado hechos de lienzo y pintura o, aún mejor, de polvo y paja, barro y hueso.»Herald Tribune «Las obras de John Berger viven entre los géneros y en un grado de contemporaneidad absoluto. Mezclando la poesía, el ensayo y hasta el periodismo más personal, sus obras son un intento de reflexión trascendente sin perder la historia inmediata pero tampoco la metafísica o cualquier atisbo de pensamiento lírico.»Luis Antonio de Villena, El Cultural de El Mundo «Fue la voz de los frágiles, residuos del mundo moderno a los que su obra otorgó dignidad de reyes... Poeta, novelista, ensayista y crítico de arte, toda su obra literaria es el testimonio de alguien que contempla un universo que se desvanece ante sus ojos.»Javier Rodríguez Marcos, El País «Un autor esencial. [...] La mirada de Berger era tan profunda como diversa. Una mirada humanista, rebelde y serena al mismo tiempo, la de un renacentista. En pocos autores se ha producido la fusión que él logró entre imagen y escritura.»Pedro Antonio Curto, El Comercio «Fue el Leonard Cohen de otra clase de rotunda melancolía: la de la tristeza (social, íntima) que provoca el auténtico saber en mitad de la sociedad capitalista de fauces abiertas y hambre incansable. [...] Era un activista, su literatura viene de ahí, del compromiso a la manera de Albert Camus, de la protesta, de la obsesión con el poder y sus lepras.»Diego Medrano, El Comercio «Uno de los autores más irreverentes del siglo XX.»Elena Hevia, El Periódico de Aragón
Fame: The Hijacking of Reality
by Justine Bateman"Wholly riveting."--New York Times Book Review"Justine Bateman was famous before selfies replaced autographs, and bags of fan mail gave way to Twitter shitstorms. And here's the good news: she took notes along the way. Justine steps through the looking glass of her own celebrity, shatters it, and pieces together, beyond the shards and splinters, a reflection of her true self. The transformation is breathtaking. Revelatory and raucous, fascinating and frightening, Fame is a hell of a ride."--Michael J. Fox, actor, author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future"In a new book, Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, the two-time Emmy nominee takes a raw look at the culture of celebrity, reflecting on her stardom at its dizzying peak--and the 'disconcerting' feeling as it began to fade."--People MagazineA Book Soup (Los Angeles, CA) best seller, October 15–21, 2018"As the title Fame: The Hijacking of Reality more than implies, this is a book about the complicated aspects of all things fame."--Vanity Fair"Bateman digs into the out-of-control nature of being famous, its psychological aftermath and why we all can't get enough of it."--New York Post"The Family Ties alum has written the rawest, bleakest book on fame you're ever likely to read. Bateman's close-up of the celeb experience features vivid encounters with misogyny, painful meditations on aging in Hollywood, and no shortage of theses on social media's wrath."--Entertainment Weekly"Bateman addresses the reader directly, pouring out her thoughts in a rapid-fire, conversational style. (Hunter S. Thompson is saluted in the acknowledgments.)...But her jittery delivery suits the material--the manic sugar high of celebrity and its inevitable crash. Bateman takes the reader through her entire fame cycle, from TV megastar, whose first movie role was alongside Julia Roberts, to her quieter life today as a filmmaker. She is as relentless with herself as she is with others."--Washington Post"While Bateman's new book Fame: The Hijacking of Reality (out now) touches on the former teen starlet's experience in the public eye, it's not a memoir. Far from it, in fact--it's instead an intense meditation on the nature of fame, and a glimpse into the repercussions it has on both the individual experiencing it and the society that keeps the concept alive."--Entertainment Weekly"Bateman takes an unsentimental look at the nature of celebrity worship in her first book, Fame: The Hijacking of Reality."--LA WeeklyEntertainment shows, magazines, websites, and other channels continuously report the latest sightings, heartbreaks, and triumphs of the famous to a seemingly insatiable public. Millions of people go to enormous lengths to achieve Fame. Fame is woven into our lives in ways that may have been unimaginable in years past.And yet, is Fame even real? Contrary to tangible realities, Fame is one of those "realities" that we, as a society, have made. Why is that and what is it about Fame that drives us to spend so much time, money, and focus to create the framework that maintains its health?Mining decades of experience, writer, director, producer, and actress Justine Bateman writes a visceral, intimate look at the experience of Fame. Combining the internal reality-shift of the famous, theories on the public's behavior at each stage of a famous person's career, and the experiences of other famous performers, Bateman takes the reader inside and outside the emotions of Fame. The book includes twenty-four color photographs to highlight her analysis.
Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands
by Stuart Hall Bill Schwarz"Sometimes I feel myself to have been the last colonial." This, in his own words, is the extraordinary story of the life and career of Stuart Hall—how his experiences shaped his intellectual, political, and theoretical work and how he became one of his age's brightest intellectual lights. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Kingston, Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself uncomfortable in his own home. He lived among Kingston's stiflingly respectable brown middle class, who, in their habits and ambitions, measured themselves against the white elite. As colonial rule was challenged, things began to change in Kingston and across the world. In 1951 a Rhodes scholarship took Hall across the Atlantic to Oxford University, where he met young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean, including V. S. Naipaul and George Lamming. While at Oxford he met Raymond Williams, Charles Taylor, and other leading intellectuals, with whom he helped found the intellectual and political movement known as the New Left. With the emotional aftershock of colonialism still pulsing through him, Hall faced a new struggle: that of building a home, a life, and an identity in a postwar England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity. With great insight, compassion, and wit, Hall tells the story of his early life, taking readers on a journey through the sights, smells, and streets of 1930s Kingston while reflecting on the thorny politics of 1950s and 1960s Britain. Full of passion and wisdom, Familiar Stranger is the intellectual memoir of one of our greatest minds.
Families, Lovers, and their Letters: Italian Postwar Migration to Canada (Studies in Immigration and Culture #4)
by Sonia CancianFamilies, Lovers, and their Letters takes us into the passionate hearts and minds of ordinary people caught in the heartbreak of transatlantic migration. It examines the experiences of Italian migrants to Canada and their loved ones left behind in Italy following the Second World War, when the largest migration of Italians to Canada took place. In a micro-analysis of 400 private letters, including three collections that incorporate letters from both sides of the Atlantic, Sonia Cancian provides new evidence on the bidirectional flow of communication during migration. She analyzes how kinship networks functioned as a means of support and control through the flow of news, objects, and persons; how gender roles in productive and reproductive spheres were reinforced as a means of coping with separation; and how the emotional impact of both temporary and permanent separation was expressed during the migration process. Cancian also examines the love letter as a specific form of epistolary exchange, a first in Italian immigrant historiography, revealing the powerful effect that romantic love had on the migration experience.
Families: A Memoir and a Celebration
by Wyatt CooperPersonal experiences are recounted in a celebration of the family which illuminates the significance of blood relationships.
Family Circle
by Susan BraudyIn 1970, Kathy Boudin, revolutionary Weatherman, fled the ruins of a town house on West Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village after a bomb that was being made there exploded, killing three people, and America's sympathy with radicalism fell apart. The Weathermen had started as angry kids who planted stink bombs and emulated the Black Panthers, but the bomb they were building on Eleventh Street was deadly. Kathy, daughter of the celebrated lawyer Leonard Boudin, third generation of the famous Boudin family, emerged naked from the wreckage, was given some clothes by a neighbor, slipped into the night, and went underground for the next eleven years, her name soon appearing on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.Susan Braudy tells the riveting story of the Boudin family circle through four generations. She writes of Kathy Boudin's childhood, growing up in Manhattan in an ambitious, liberal New York Jewish family, daughter of a revered left-wing labor and civil liberties lawyer and an intellectual poet mother. Braudy writes of Kathy's parents; her father, Leonard, who patterned his life after that of his uncle, the great labor lawyer and leftist legal scholar, Louis B. Boudin (in the 1930s he fought in court for new laws to protect and organize labor unions and was one of the foremost translators and interpreters of Karl Marx). Leonard Boudin fought on behalf of dissenters on the left. He argued the cases of Paul Robeson and the two-time convicted spy Judith Coplon before the Supreme Court, forcing the U.S. government to allow free travel to all citizens and preventing the admission of illegally gathered evidence, rulings that crucially curtailed the power of J. Edgar Hoover. Braudy writes of Boudin's legal work on behalf of such clients as Rockwell Kent and Julian Bond; his defense of Fidel Castro in connection with his seizure of American capital in Cuba; his case on behalf of Dr. Benjamin Spock (arrested for protesting the Vietnam War; Boudin put the war, not Dr. Spock, on trial); and his case on behalf of Daniel Ellsberg, helping him to leak the Pentagon Papers, which set the stage for Nixon's resignation. We see Kathy's mother, Jean Boudin, poet and intellectual, an orphan taken in by a cultivated Jewish family whose circle included Marc Blitzstein and Clifford Odets; her courtship and marriage to Leonard (they were toasted as "the most gorgeous couple of the left"); her years as the dutiful, devoted wife to a husband who conducted countless affairs; her suicide attempt when Kathy was nine. And we see Leonard's lifelong mentor and competitor--his brother-in-law, the brilliant, scrappy independent journalist and government critic I. F. Stone, a born leader and fighter who made war on government bureaucrats (believing they usurped power) and on his deadly enemy, J. Edgar Hoover.We follow Kathy at Bryn Mawr, organizing the school's maids to demand fair wages, graduating magna cum laude in the top five of her class; failing to get into Yale Law School (while her brother was a star at Harvard); helping to plan the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and the "Days of Rage" that followed; breaking Black Panther Assata Shakur out of jail; bombing the headquarters of the Manhattan Police Department and the Capitol in Washington; and finally, in 1981, being part of the botched robbery of a Brinks truck that turned into a bloodbath (two policemen and one Brinks guard were killed), which resulted in her trial with her father as her lawyer; her years in Bedford Hills prison as a model prisoner, teacher, and AIDS activist--and her release after twenty-two years.A huge, rich, riveting book--a story of idealism and passion; of law and brilliant legal minds; of political intrigue and government witch-hunts; of SDS and the Days of Rage; of Vietnam protests and underground revolutionary terrorism; and of the golden family at the center of this vortex, who came to be seen through five decades as the very emblem of the American left.
Family History Of Smoking
by Andrew RiemerA Family History of Smoking is a compelling memoir about two European families living through the last gasps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From great-grandfather David, who saw his family's fortunes decline with the gradual rise of anti-Semitism, to the ultra-modern, glamorous mother who held her family together through World War II, Andrew Riemer paints a beautiful portrait of a now vanished world that literally went up in smoke.Set against the backdrop of the tumult of early twentieth-century Europe, A Family History of Smoking is full of eccentric characters, literary anecdotes and historical drama, and is a moving tribute to a family, its strength and its stories.
Family History of Fear
by Agata Tuszynska"Family History of Fear has been in me for years. Along with this secret. From the instant I found out I was not who I thought I was." Every family has its own history. Many families carry a tragic past. Like the author's mother, many Poles did not tell their children a complete story of their wartime exploits--of the underground Home Army, the tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising, the civil war against the Communists. Years had to pass before the stories of suffering and heroism could be told.In Family History of Fear, Agata Tuszyńska, one of Poland's most admired poets and cultural historians, writes of the stories she heard from her mother about her secret past. Tuszyńska, author of Vera Gran ("a book of extraordinary depth and power"--Richard Eder, The Boston Globe; "captivating"--Newsweek; "darkly absorbing, shrewd, and sharply etched"--Publishers Weekly), has written a powerful memoir about growing up after the Second World War in Communist Poland--blonde, blue-eyed, and Catholic.The author was nineteen years old and living in Warsaw when her mother told her the truth--that she was Jewish--and began to tell her stories of the family's secret past in Poland. Tuszyńska, who grew up in a country beset by anti-Semitism, rarely hearing the word "Jew" (only from her Polish Catholic father, and then, always in derision), was unhinged, ashamed, and humiliated. The author writes of how she skillfully erased the truth within herself, refusing to admit the existence of her other half. In this profoundly moving and resonant book, Tuszyńska investigates her past and writes of her journey to uncover her family's history during World War II--of her mother at age eight and her mother, entering the Warsaw Ghetto for two years as conditions grew more desperate, and finally escaping just before the uprising, and then living "hidden on the other side." She writes of her father, one of five thousand Polish soldiers taken prisoner in 1939, becoming, later, the country's most famous radio sports announcer; and of her relatives and their mysterious pasts, as she tries to make sense of the hatred of Jews in her country. She writes of her discoveries and of her willingness to accept a radically different definition of self, reading the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, opening up for her a world of Polish Jewry as he became her guide, and then writing about his life and work, circling her Jewish self in Lost Landscapes: In Search of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Jews of Poland. A beautiful and affecting book of discovery and acceptance; a searing, insightful portrait of Polish Jewish life, lived before and after Hitler's Third Reich.From the Hardcover edition.
Family Man
by Diana ChildressDid you founding father Alexander Hamilton had eight children? Learn more about this important historical figure in this story.
Family Meals: Bringing Her Home
by Michael TuckerMichael Tucker and his wife Jill Eikenberry are enjoying the early years of retirement in their dream house, a beautiful 350-year-old stone farmhouse in the central Italian province of Umbria, but Jill’s mother Lora is a constant source of worry. Lora is eighty-seven and her second husband of many years, Ralph, has just turned ninety-one. Jill is traveling frequently to Lora and Ralph’s home in Santa Barbara from the Tucker’s pied-à-terre in New York, disrupting their plans to vacation in Italy for 6 months of the year. The elderly couple (Lora and Ralph, that is) have transitioned from independent living to an Assisted Care facility in Santa Barbara; Ralph has just had a third heart attack and suffers from chronic back pain, while Lora is beginning to slip mentally and is nearly deaf, although she refuses to wear a hearing aid.In fact, the couple is preparing to take a much needed three-month vacation in Italy when life gets in the way. Michael and Jill must visit Lora and Ralph in Santa Barbara, making sure that everything in the elders’ lives is in order-their finances, their caretaking situation, their apartment. The couple then returns to Italy for much-needed respite, and prepare to be joined by their friends, the Shechtmans and the Liedermans. In preparation, Michael and Jill drive into town and purchase tickets for a symphony concert of the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in the magnificent Spoleto Cathedral, a program that is part of the celebrated Spoleto Festival. After a fabulous meal at one of their favorite restaurants, Jill and Michael walk home and as they prepare to get to bed Jill learns the terrible news that Ralph has passed away.Jill has received the call from Josie, Ralph’s caretaker, that he has died-he has suffered a series of small yet fatal strokes-and Jill calls her mother and breaks the news, as Lora has not yet been told. Michael is able to book tickets for the couple to fly home, and calls his children, who will also travel to California to be with Lora. When they get there, a lot is to be done. Ralph is cremated, and Michael and Jill must meet with Ralph’s daughter Kathy and review Ralph’s finances, and meanwhile must take control over Lora’s finances and medical insurance. Lora has many friends in Santa Barbara, and they assure the Tuckers that they will care for Jill’s mom, and so Michael and Jill return to Italy to resume their life.What happens next is a brilliant surprise that neither Michael nor Jill could have expected or planned. Lora decides to move from her home in Santa Barbara to New York City, and finds an apartment in the building in which Michael and Jill live. Then Michael and Jill’s children, Alison and Max, decide not only to relocate to Manhattan but also move in together, reuniting the Tucker/Eikenberry clan after years of separation.Michael Tucker brings alive the joys and challenges that families give us. Family Meals is a heart-warming, beautifully told story of his own unique family and the journeys each of them have taken. It is a book that addresses a fact of life all of us will face-aging-with remarkable charm, sympathy and warmth, and a celebratory book that explores the responsibility we have to our families. It is also a book that explores the different ways that families experience life-how different clans and different cultures celebrate, support, care and mourn.
Family Memories: An Autobiographical Journey
by Rebecca WestPublished posthumously, this wise and entertaining family history and memoir offers keen insight into the origins of Rebecca West and her work Working on Family Memories for over twenty years, West set out to narrate the story of her mother&’s, father&’s and husband&’s unique and talented families. As in her novels, the richly drawn characters of her heritage and childhood traverse a diverse landscape, from Scotland to Australia to Africa, encountering love, loss, and a panoply of challenges. Although fans will recognize many settings, characters, and themes from her novels, West&’s exploration of her family stands on its own as an engaging narrative. Told with her compelling voice, West&’s chronicles reflect not only the importance of family to identity, but to the way one relates to the larger world.
Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century
by Sarah Abrevaya SteinNamed one of the best books of 2019 by The Economist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A National Jewish Book Award finalist."A superb and touching book about the frailty of ties that hold together places and people." --The New York Times Book ReviewAn award-winning historian shares the true story of a frayed and diasporic Sephardic Jewish family preserved in thousands of lettersFor centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree. In Family Papers, the prizewinning Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family’s correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. They wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers.With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys' letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.
Family Pictures / Cuadros de Familia
by Carmen Lomas Garza<P>Family Pictures is the story of Carmen Lomas Garza's girlhood: celebrating birthdays, making tamales, finding a hammerhead shark on the beach, picking cactus, going to a fair in Mexico, and confiding to her sister her dreams of becoming an artist. <P>These day-to-day experiences are told through fourteen vignettes of art and a descriptive narrative, each focusing on a different aspect of traditional Mexican American culture. The English-Spanish text and vivid illustrations reflect the author's strong sense of family and community. For Mexican Americans, Carmen Lomas Garza offers a book that reflects their lives and traditions. For others, this work offers insights into a beautifully rich community. <P>[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts for K-1 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
Family Portrait
by Catherine Drinker BowenIn Family Portrait I meet my brothers not obliquely but head on. Together we skate on the Lehigh Canal; the black ice rushes beneath our feet and across the river at the steel works; the open hearth fires glow red and high as any imagined hell. Together we sail our boats on Jersey waters; in the old parlor in Bethlehem Harry and I make music with piano and violin. Always, in real life, my brothers were teaching me; they looked down from their heights and pulled me along.
Family Power: The True Story of How "The First Family of Taekwondo" Made Olympic History
by Steve Lopez Diana Lopez Mark Lopez Jean LopezAn inspiring sports memoir from the family who captured America?s heart at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Lopez family set new records at the Beijing Olympics with three siblings on the same U.S. taekwondo team?and a fourth sibling as their coach. Mark took the silver medal, and Steven and Diana both brought home the bronze, with big brother Jean coaching them to victory. Here, for the first time, is the inspiring story of a family united behind a dream. In 1972 Julio Lopez and his wife Ondina emigrated from Nicaragua, hoping for a better life for their family in America. In an atmosphere of love, support, mutual respect, and healthy competition, their children trained hard in taekwondo, daring to dream they might reach the pinnacle of their athletic field in the Olympics. Told in turn by Steven, Mark, Diana, and Jean, this is the incredible story of how one close-knit family?s boundless determination and rock-solid support system took them from their home in Texas to Olympic glory in Beijing.
Family Romance
by John LanchesterFamily Romance is a beautifully written memoir in which John Lanchester joins the dots of his parents' history, their extraordinary secrets and the shape of their shared life. From his grandparents' beginnings in rural Ireland and colonial Rhodesia, Lanchester navigates through his parents' lives: his father Bill's devastating war-time separation from his parents; his mother Julia's tragic first love, her decision to become a nun and her adoption of a new identity. Lanchester illuminates their characters and Julia's motives with moving insight.
Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
by Jean StrouseJean Strouse captures the dramas, mysteries, intrigues, and tragedies surrounding John Singer Sargent's portraits of the Wertheimer family.Jean Strouse’s Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers looks at twelve portraits of one English family painted by the expatriate American artist at the height of his career—and at the intersections of all these lives with the sparkle and strife of the Edwardian age.In commissioning this grand series of paintings, Asher Wertheimer, an eminent London art dealer of German-Jewish descent, became Sargent’s greatest private patron and close friend. The Wertheimers worked with Rothschilds and royals, plutocrats and dukes—as did Sargent. Asher left most of his Sargent portraits to the National Gallery in London, a gift that elicited censure as well as praise: it was a new thing for a family of Jews to appear alongside the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats and dignitaries painted by earlier masters.Strouse’s account, set primarily in England around the turn of the twentieth century, takes in the declining fortunes of the British aristocracy and the dramatic rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. It travels back through hundreds of years to the Habsburg court in Vienna and forward to fascist Italy in the 1930s. Its depictions of Sargent, his sitters, their friendships and circles, and the portraits themselves light up a period that saw tumultuous social change and the birth of the modern art market.Sargent brilliantly portrayed these transformations, in which the Wertheimers were key players. Family Romance brings their interwoven stories fully to life for the first time.
Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line
by Catherine Slaney Daniel G. HillCatherine Slaney grew into womanhood unaware of her celebrated Black ancestors. An unanticipated meeting was to change her life. Her great-grandfather was Dr. Anderson Abbott, the first Canadian-born Black to graduate from medical school in Toronto in 1861. In Family Secrets Catherine Slaney narrates her journey along the trail of her family tree, back through the era of slavery and the plight of fugitive slaves, the Civil War, the Elgin settlement near Chatham, Ontario, and the Chicago years. Why did some of her family identify with the Black Community while others did not? What role did "passing" play? Personal anecdotes and excerpts from archival Abbott family papers enliven the historical context of this compelling account of a family dealing with an unknown past. A welcome addition to African-Canadian history, this moving and uplifting story demonstrates that understanding one’s identity requires first the embracing of the past. "When Catherine Slaney first consulted me, her intention was to research the life of her distinguished ancestor Anderson R. Abbott. After she told me her story of the discovery of her African heritage and the search for her roots, I urged her to make that the subject of her book. Cathy has served both of these objectives, giving us an intricate and fascinating account of her quest for her own lost identity through the gradual illumination of Dr. Abbott and his legacy for modern Canadians. Family Secrets carries an important message about the issue of ’race’ as a historical artifact and as a factor in the lives of real people."– James W. St. G. Walker, University of Waterloo "This is a welcome addition to the growing collection of African-Canadian materials that connects an unknown past to a promising future. That Slaney was unaware of her Black ancestry, despite that heritage being so rich and powerful, speaks to the dilemma of Black history research – it is there but requires considerable digging to uncover."– Rosemary Sadlier, President, Ontario Black History Society
Family Secrets: Gay Sons - A Mother's Story
by Jean M BakerAs a clinical psychologist, Jean Baker had always considered herself open-minded and tolerant, but found she wasn’t prepared for the revelation that her only two children were both gay. Family Secrets is an inspirational story of how she and her family learned to accept one another and overcome their internalized fears and prejudices as well as how they coped with a much greater challenge in their personal lives--HIV/AIDS. Family Secrets is more than a parenting memoir, however. It is a guide that draws upon research and scientific findings to capsize the myths and stereotypes that contribute to societal homophobia. It offers important insight into the developmental needs of gay children, and it discusses the issues faced by gay and lesbian youth and their families.Offering practical suggestions about how parents and schools can help gay, lesbian, and bisexual children grow up to be productive, psychologically healthy adults, Family Secrets discusses the effects of social prejudice and stigma on the social and emotional development of sexual minorities. As long as homophobia is running rampant in American society, gay children are going to be reluctant or afraid to confide in their parents, and parents will have trouble understanding and accepting homosexuality in their children. To end the secrecy and build open and healthy environments for all children and adolescents, this book discusses: tactics for reducing homophobia in non-gay youths promoting tolerance and understanding of sexual minorities at home and in school the effects an AIDS death has on families “coming out” about HIV/AIDS discussing homosexuality with your children, regardless of whether or not they are gay or lesbian sexual orientation and the interaction of biology with experienceBecause Family Secrets is written from the viewpoint of a parent/psychologist, it offers insights into the developmental needs of gay and lesbian children in a way that no other book has done. School counselors, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, teachers, school administrators, and the parents and siblings of gays and lesbians will all benefit from reading this honest, helpful, and encouraging book.
Family Values: Two Moms and their Son
by Phyllis BurkeA beautifully written memoir of the author's fight to legally co-parent her lesbian lover's child--an inspiring story of love, liberation, and family values. Set against the background of the San Francisco lesbian-gay civil rights struggle, Burke's uplifting portrait of her nontraditional family will deeply touch readers.
Family Vista: The Memoirs of Margaret Chanler Aldrich
by Margaret Chanler AldrichFirst published in 1958, these are the memoirs of Margaret Chanler Aldrich, a descendant of the prominent Astor family. A nurse for the American Red Cross during the Spanish-American War, and later the Philippine-American War, Aldrich joined the woman’s suffrage movement and became notable as one of Carrie Chapman Catt’s capable officials in the campaign for suffrage in New York State.A fascinating autobiography!
Family Wanted: Stories of Adoption
by Sara HollowayPersonal essays by Meg Bortin * Sarah Cameron * Dan Chaon * Dominic Collier * Bernard Cornwell * Robert Dessaix * Matthew Engel * Paula Fox * A. M. Homes * Tama Janowitz * Lynn Lauber * Carol Lefevre * Daniel Menaker * Priscilla T. Nagle * Sandra Newman * Mirabel Osler * Emily Prager * Jonathan Rendall * Martin Rowson * Abigail Rubin * Lise Saffran * Lindsay Sagnette * Hannah wa Muigai * Jeanette Winterson * Mark Wormald. Adoption, until recently a hidden subject, has become an open field of psychological study, policy debate, and ethical interest. Family Wanted is an honest, heartwarming, and heartbreaking collection featuring important authors personally involved in all sides of adoption. Here are more than twenty pieces, many published for the first time. Among the contributors are Paula Fox, an adoptee herself, who meets the daughter she didn't raise and finds she is "the first woman related to me I could speak to freely"; Bernard Cornwell, adopted by a now-defunct religious cult, who responds by converting to "atheism and frivolity"; African author Hannah wa Muigai, who recounts being impregnated as a teenager by an older lover--whom she then found in bed with another man; Tama Janowitz, who to her comical shock learns to love the "hyperactive sweating lunatic" she adopted in China; and Daniel Menaker, who as an adoptive father becomes less concerned with the cause-and-effect of heredity and more content with "the lottery that to a large extent is everyone's life." "Gripping ... [Family Wanted] pulls the reader through [a] variety of emotions. ... Some families work, others don't. This anthology does." -The Guardian (London).