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The Unbreakable Child
by William F. Mcmurry David Clohessy Kim Michele Richardson Father Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.Kim Richardson's story of surviving abuse at the hands of the Catholic nuns of Kentucky's St. Thomas/St. Vincent Orphanage, and later joining the class action suit brought by forty-four survivors, including her two sisters, which ended in victory. This book is about hope, justice, and ultimate forgiveness.
The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amedeo Modigliani
by Celia Hawkesworth Velibor ColicThe life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Consisting of a series of vignettes, mostly set in the painter's studio and peopled by his lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who ended her own life the day after Modigliani's death), the prostitutes who were his occasional models and several Bohemian visitors, the novel spans the last months of Modigliani's life, evoking the strange workings of the painter's troubled and often drug-fuelled mind and its expression in his paintings, ultimately succeeding in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine
by Sherwin B. Nuland"Life is short, and the Art so long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious; and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and the externals, cooperate."-attributed to Hippocrates, c. 400 B.C.E. The award-winning author of How We Die and The Art of Aging, venerated physician Sherwin B. Nuland has now written his most thoughtful and engaging book. The Uncertain Art is a superb collection of essays about the vital mix of expertise, intuition, sound judgment, and pure chance that plays a part in a doctor's practice and life. Drawing from history, the recent past, and his own life, Nuland weaves a tapestry of compelling stories in which doctors have had to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Topics include the primitive (and sometimes illegal) procedures doctors once practiced with good intentions, such as grave robbing and prescribing cocaine as an anesthetic (which resulted in a physician becoming America's first cocaine addict); the curious "cures" for irregularity touted by people from the ancient Egyptians to the cereal titan John Harvey Kellogg and bodybuilder Charles Atlas; and healers grappling with today's complex moral and ethical quandaries, from cloning to gene therapy to the adoption of Eastern practices like acupuncture. Nuland also recounts his most dramatic experiences in a forty-year medical career: the time he was called out of the audience of a Broadway play to help a man having a heart attack (when no other doctor there would respond), and how he formed a profound friendship with an unforgettable-and doomed-heart patient. Behind these inspiring accounts always lie the mysteries of the human body and human nature, the manner in which the ill can will themselves back to health and the odd and essential interactions between a body's own healing mechanisms and a doctor's prescriptions.Riveting and wise, amusing and heartrending, The Uncertain Art is Sherwin Nuland's best work, gems from a man who has spent his professional life acting in the face of ambiguity and sharing what he has learned.
The Uncharted Heart
by Melissa HardyThese eight tales of survival and triumph, suffused with magical realism, bring to life the harsh struggles, the dreams, the greed, the obsessions, the xenophobia -- and the love -- experienced by the trappers and prospectors who flocked to northern Ontario during the Porcupine Gold Rush (1900 - 1922).
The Uncharted Path
by Lee Myung-BakBorn poor in the wake of the Korean war, Lee Myung-Bak was destined for a life of poverty. But through intelligence and self-determination, he excelled in school, putting himself through college, hauling garbage six times a day to pay for tuition. He then took a low-level job at Hyundai, an organization of about 90 people at the time. Through a relentless work ethic and inability to compromise his beliefs, he rose to the role of CEO and found himself on a mission not just to expand the Hyundai corporation, but to grow South Korea from a nation of poverty to a G20 economy. The Uncharted Path is the story of a man and nation driven to greatness by a conviction to liberty, commerce, and the belief that at the root of every success lies extreme perseverance and uncompromising principles. These principles and lessons would lead not only to success in business, but also developed a refreshing and unique perspective on the state of our globalizing world, and how nations and businesses must operate together to improve the lives of people everywhere.
The Uncollected David Rakoff
by David Rakoff Timothy YoungBestselling and Thurber Prize-winning humorist David Rakoff was one of the most original, delightfully acerbic voices of his generation. Here, in one place, is the best of his previously uncollected material--most never before published in book form. David Rakoff's singular personality spills from every page of this witty and entertaining volume, which includes travel features, early fiction works, pop culture criticism, and transcripts of his most memorable appearances on public radio's Fresh Air and This American Life. These writings chart his transformation from fish out of water, meekly arriving for college in 1982, to a proud New Yorker bluntly opining on how to walk properly in the city. They show his unparalleled ability to capture the pleasures of solitary pursuits like cooking and crafting, especially in times of trouble; as well as the ups and downs in the life-span of a friendship, whether it is a real relationship or an imaginary correspondence between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss (co-authored with Jonathan Goldstein). Also included is his novel-in-verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. By turns hilarious, incisive and deeply moving, this collection highlights the many facets of Rakoff's huge talent and shows the arc of his remarkable career.With a foreword by Paul Rudnick.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism
by John BarnesAn eloquent and thought-provoking book on racism and prejudice by the Liverpool and England football legend John Barnes.John Barnes spent the first dozen years of his life in Jamaica before moving to the UK with his family in 1975. Six years later he was a professional footballer, distinguishing himself for Watford, Liverpool and England, and in the process becoming this country's most prominent black player.Barnes is now an articulate and captivating social commentator on a broad range of issues, and in The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism he tackles head-on the issues surrounding prejudice with his trademark intelligence and authority.By vividly evoking his personal experiences, and holding a mirror to this country's past, present and future, Barnes provides a powerful and moving testimony. The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism will help to inform and advance the global conversation around society's ongoing battle with the awful stain of prejudice.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism
by John Barnes'brilliantly written ... a genuinely important book' Jonathan Ross, The Jonathan Ross Show'something we all need to be reading ... an absolutely brilliant book ... a great read for all of us' Zoe Ball, BBC Radio 2'an absolutely terrific book' Susanna Reid, Good Morning Britain'[John Barnes is] such a clear thinker ... well worth reading' Richard Madeley, Good Morning Britain'this book feels uncomfortable, but important, too ... Passionate, confrontational stuff' The ObserverAn eloquent and thought-provoking book on racism and prejudice by the Liverpool and England football legend John Barnes.John Barnes spent the first dozen years of his life in Jamaica before moving to the UK with his family in 1975. Six years later he was a professional footballer, distinguishing himself for Watford, Liverpool and England, and in the process becoming this country's most prominent black player.Barnes is now an articulate and captivating social commentator on a broad range of issues, and in The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism he tackles head-on the issues surrounding prejudice with his trademark intelligence and authority.By vividly evoking his personal experiences, and holding a mirror to this country's past, present and future, Barnes provides a powerful and moving testimony. The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism will help to inform and advance the global conversation around society's ongoing battle with the awful stain of prejudice.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism
by John BarnesAn eloquent and thought-provoking audiobook on racism and prejudice by the Liverpool and England football legend John Barnes.John Barnes spent the first dozen years of his life in Jamaica before moving to the UK with his family in 1975. Six years later he was a professional footballer, distinguishing himself for Watford, Liverpool and England, and in the process becoming this country's most prominent black player.Barnes is now an articulate and captivating social commentator on a broad range of issues, and in The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism he tackles head-on the issues surrounding prejudice with his trademark intelligence and authority.By vividly evoking his personal experiences, and holding a mirror to this country's past, present and future, Barnes provides a powerful and moving testimony. The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism will help to inform and advance the global conversation around society's ongoing battle with the awful stain of prejudice.(P) 2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words
by Bill AdlerTells the incredibly moving story of America's most beloved star in her own words. She evokes her impoverished childhood in the South & her abuse by relatives, her heralded rise as America's most successful talk show host.
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes
by Scott Wallace<P>ven today there remain tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. Deliberately hiding from the outside world, they are the unconquered, the last survivors of an ancient culture that predates the arrival of Columbus in the New World. <P> In this gripping first-person account of adventure and survival, author Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon's uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest's secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with one such tribe the mysterious flecheiros, or People of the Arrow, seldom-glimpsed warriors known to repulse all intruders with showers of deadly arrows. <P>On assignment for National Geographic, Wallace joins Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo at the head of a thirty-four-man team that ventures deep into the unknown in search of the tribe. Possuelo's mission is to protect the Arrow People. But the information he needs to do so can only be gleaned by entering a world of permanent twilight beneath the forest canopy. <P>Danger lurks at every step as the expedition seeks out the Arrow People even while trying to avoid them. Along the way, Wallace uncovers clues as to who the Arrow People might be, how they have managed to endure as one of the last unconquered tribes, and why so much about them must remain shrouded in mystery if they are to survive. <P> Laced with lessons from anthropology and the Amazon's own convulsed history, and boasting a Conradian cast of unforgettable characters all driven by a passion to preserve the wild, but also wracked by fear, suspicion, and the desperate need to make it home alive The Unconquered reveals this critical battleground in the fight to save the planet as it has rarely been seen, wrapped in a page-turning tale of adventure. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
by Kenneth WhyteA lively, unexpected, and impeccably researched piece of popular history, The Uncrowned King reveals how an unheralded young newspaperman from San Francisco arrived in New York and created the most successful daily of his time, pushing the medium to an unprecedented level of influence and excitement, and leading observers to wonder if newspapers might be "the greatest force in civilization," more powerful even than kings and popes and presidents.Featuring an eight-page insert of black and white photographs, The Uncrowned King offers a window onto the media world at the turn of the 19th century, as seen by its most successful and controversial figure, William Randolph Hearst. Kenneth Whyte's anecdotal, narrative style chronicles Hearst's rivalry with Joseph Pulitzer, the undisputed king of New York journalism, in the most spectacular newspaper war of all time. They battled head-to-head for three years, through the thrilling presidential election campaign of 1896 and the Spanish-American War-a conflict that Hearst was accused of fomenting and that he covered in person. By 1898, Hearst had supplanted Pulitzer as the dominant force in New York publishing, and was well on his way to becoming one of the most powerful and fascinating private citizens in 20th-century America.
The Undefeated
by Kwame AlexanderWinner of the 2020 Caldecott Medal A 2020 Newbery Honor Book Winner of the 2020 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award The Newbery Award-winning author of THE CROSSOVER pens an ode to black American triumph and tribulation, with art from a two-time Caldecott Honoree. Originally performed for ESPN's The Undefeated, this poem is a love letter to black life in the United States. It highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion, and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes. The text is also peppered with references to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others, offering deeper insights into the accomplishments of the past, while bringing stark attention to the endurance and spirit of those surviving and thriving in the present. Robust back matter at the end provides valuable historical context and additional detail for those wishing to learn more.
The Undeniable Favor of God: Achieving My Present by Walking in the Light of God's Love
by Elizabeth Jean BruceThe quotations are taken from the back cover of the book: “DR. ELIZABETH JEAN BRUCE shares pleasant surprise experiences that made her journey more fulfilling than she expected, on her road to one of her major life goals” [of becoming a Clinical Psychologist.] Despite being shy, she manages to make her dream of working with people as a Clinical Psychologist into a reality. “She believes as life unfolds, beautiful things happen. People must not let themselves become distracted by the unpleasant occurrences in life that try to steal their joy away. They must absorb and keep their focus on the beauty, truth and light of life. This is what empowers them to eradicate darkness!” Through writing this autobiographical account, she reveals her philosophy of life: “Feeling fulfilled and finding purpose significantly contributes to quality of life. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is it all for? Many people have specific yearnings or ‘callings’ or a desire to achieve distinctive goals in life. In many cases these desires are God-given to fulfill the human part in the wholeness of creation. Once purpose is discovered and the major long term goal is established, it is important to recognize the requirements for achieving the long term goal. Once requirements are learned, people can map out their journey toward the main goal with short term goals. These are plan steps that help highlight when milestones are achieved. During the journey. There will likely be difficult times,... so it is very important not to take for granted people around who are life-giving and strengthening for other's emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Everyone must also utilize their faith in God, who keeps everyone fortified to endure disheartening times.”
The Undeniable Favor of God: Achieving My Present by Walking in the Light of God's Love
by Elizabeth Jean BruceA licensed psychologist and trauma expert shares the story of how she met life&’s challenges and achieved personal fulfillment through faith. Having a sense of purpose significantly contributes to the quality of our lives. Many people experience God-given &“callings&” to achieve distinctive goals in life. These yearnings give us a sense of fulfillment by showing how we fit into the wholeness of creation. But discovering our purpose and establishing a major long-term goal are only the first steps of the journey. We must also understand what is required of us to reach our final destination, and make sure to note the milestones we achieve along the way. There will be difficult periods during the journey. To see our way through them, it helps to surround ourselves with people who strengthen our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. We must also utilize our faith in God, who keeps us fortified to endure disheartening times. Dr. Bruce believes that wonderful things happen as life unfolds. In The Undeniable Favor of God, she teaches others how to focus on the beauty, truth, and light of life.
The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin
by Kirsty BellHumane, thought provoking, and moving, this hybrid literary portrait of a place makes the case for radical close readings: of ourselves, our cities, and our histories.The Undercurrents is a dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism told from a precise vantage point: a stately nineteenth-century house on Berlin&’s Landwehr Canal, a site at the center of great historical changes, but also smaller domestic ones. The view from this house offers a ringside seat onto the city&’s theater of action. The building has stood on the banks of the canal since 1869, its feet in the West but looking East, right into the heart of a metropolis in the making, on a terrain inscribed indelibly with trauma. When her marriage breaks down, Kirsty Bell—a British-American art critic, adrift in her midforties—becomes fixated on the history of her building and of her adoptive city. Taking the view from her apartment window as her starting point, she turns to the lives of the house&’s various inhabitants, to accounts penned by Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Gabriele Tergit, and to the female protagonists in the works of Theodor Fontane, Irmgard Keun, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A new cultural topography of Berlin emerges, one which taps into energetic undercurrents to recover untold or forgotten stories beneath the city&’s familiar narratives.
The Underdog: How I Survived the World's Most Outlandish Competitions
by Joshua DavisJoshua Davis had a dream. He dreamt of being the best. It didn't really matter what he was the best at, he just wanted to be number one, the big enchilada, to say that he had made it. This is how it began: Josh was driving through the Mojave Desert one day when he saw a sign for the American arm-wrestling championship - all comers welcome. He decided to enter. He came fourth, out of four, but this was enough to secure him a place on Team USA and the chance of a show-down with the 'Russian Ripper' at the world championships in Poland (that didn't end very well either). But Josh had tasted the dizzy rush of competition and wanted more. And more turned out to be the most outlandish contests in the world - from bull fighting in Spain and backward running in Italy, to sumo wrestling and the World Sauna Championship in Finland. Joshua's quest is by turns hilarious, harrowing and a little insane, but it is also inspiring - because, after all, every underdog deserves his day.
The Underdogs: Children, Dogs, and the Power of Unconditional Love
by Melissa Fay GreeneFrom two-time National Book Award nominee Melissa Fay Greene comes a profound and surprising account of dogs on the front lines of rescuing both children and adults from the trenches of grief, emotional, physical, and cognitive disability, and post-traumatic stress disorder.The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age twenty-four by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled." Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life. "How many people are stranded like I was," she wondered, "who would lead productive lives if only they had a dog?"A thousand state-of-the-art dogs later, Karen Shirk's service dog academy, 4 Paws for Ability, is restoring broken children and their families to life. Long shunned by scientists as a manmade, synthetic species, and oft- referred to as "Man's Best Friend" almost patronizingly, dogs are finally paid respectful attention by a new generation of neuroscientists and animal behaviorists. Melissa Fay Greene weaves the latest scientific discoveries about our co-evolution with dogs with Karen's story and a few exquisitely rendered stories of suffering children and their heartbroken families.Written with characteristic insight, humanity, humor, and irrepressible joy, what could have been merely touching is a penetrating, compassionate exploration of larger questions: about our attachment to dogs, what constitutes a productive life, and what can be accomplished with unconditional love.
The Underground Girls Of Kabul: The Hidden Lives of Afghan Girls Disguised as Boys
by Jenny NordbergAn Afghan woman's life expectancy is just 44 years, and her life cycle often begins and ends in disappointment: being born a girl and finally, having a daughter of her own. For some, disguising themselves as boys is the only way to get ahead.Nordberg follows women such as Azita Rafaat, a parliamentarian who once lived as a Bacha Posh, the mother of seven-year-old Mehran, who she is raising as a Bacha Posh as well, but for different reasons than in the past. There's Zahra, a teenage student living as a boy who is about to display signs of womanhood as she enters puberty. And Skukria, a hospital nurse who remained in a bacha posh disguise until she was 20, and who now has three children of her own. Exploring the historical and religious roots of this tradition, The Underground Girls of Kabul is a fascinating and moving narrative that speaks to the roots of gender.
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
by Jenny NordbergAn investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girlIn Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as "dressed up like a boy") is a third kind of child - a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom. The Underground Girls of Kabul is anchored by vivid characters who bring this remarkable story to life: Azita, a female parliamentarian who sees no other choice but to turn her fourth daughter Mehran into a boy; Zahra, the tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and refuses her parents' attempts to turn her back into a girl; Shukria, now a married mother of three after living for twenty years as a man; and Nader, who prays with Shahed, the undercover female police officer, as they both remain in male disguise as adults. At the heart of this emotional narrative is a new perspective on the extreme sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the violent backdrop of America's longest war. Divided into four parts, the book follows those born as the unwanted sex in Afghanistan, but who live as the socially favored gender through childhood and puberty, only to later be forced into marriage and childbirth. The Underground Girls of Kabul charts their dramatic life cycles, while examining our own history and the parallels to subversive actions of people who live under oppression everywhere.
The Underground Railroad in Connecticut
by Horatio T. StrotherThis account of fugitive slaves traveling through Connecticut “includes many stories from descendants of the underground agents . . . a definitive work.” —Hartford CourantHere are the engrossing facts about one of the least-known aspects of Connecticut’s history—the rise, organization, and operations of the Underground Railroad, over which fugitive slaves from the South found their way to freedom. Drawing his data from published sources and, perhaps more importantly, from the still-existing oral tradition of descendants of Underground agents, Horatio Strother tells the detailed story in this book, originally published in 1962. He traces the routes from entry points such as New Haven harbor and the New York state line, through important crossroads like Brooklyn and Farmington. Revealing the dangers fugitives faced, the author also identifies the high-minded lawbreakers who operated the system—farmers and merchants, local officials and judges, at least one United States Senator, and many dedicated ministers of the Gospel. These narratives are set against the larger background of the development of slavery and abolitionism in America—conversations still relevant today.
The Undertaker's Daughter
by Kate Mayfield'On the last day of 1959 my father, the Beau Brummel of morticians, piled us into his green and white Desoto in which we looked like a moving pack of Salem cigarettes. He drove away from Lanesboro, the city in which we all were born, and into a small town on the Kentucky and Tennessee border. It was only a ninety-minute drive, but it might as well have been to Alaska. When our big boat of a car glided into Jubilee we circled the town square and headed towards the residential section of Main Street. My father pulled the car over and our five dark heads turned to face a huge, slightly run down house. My parents were total strangers to this tiny enclave, but it didn't matter because my father had finally realised his dream in this old house, which was to own his own funeral home.'
The Undertaker's Daughter: A Memoir
by Kate Mayfield“The Undertaker’s Daughter is a wonderfully quirky, gem of a book beautifully written by Kate Mayfield.…Her compelling, complicated family and cast of characters stay with you long after you close the book” (Monica Holloway, author of Cowboy & Wills and Driving With Dead People).How does one live in a house of the dead? Kate Mayfield explores what it meant to be the daughter of a small-town undertaker in this fascinating memoir evocative of Six Feet Under and The Help, with a hint of Mary Roach’s Stiff. After Kate Mayfield was born, she was taken directly to a funeral home. Her father was an undertaker, and for thirteen years the family resided in a place nearly synonymous with death, where the living and the dead entered their house like a vapor. In a memoir that reads like a Harper Lee novel, Mayfield draws the reader into a world of haunting Southern mystique. In the turbulent 1960s, Kate’s father set up shop in sleepy Jubilee, Kentucky, a segregated, god-fearing community where no one kept secrets—except the ones they were buried with. By opening a funeral home, Frank Mayfield also opened the door to family feuds, fetishes, murder, suicide, and all manner of accidents. Kate saw it all—she also witnessed the quiet ruin of her father, who hid alcoholism and infidelity behind a cool and charismatic façade. As Kate grows from trusting child to rebellious teen, the enforced sobriety of the funeral home begins to chafe, and she longs for the day she can escape the confines of Jubilee and her place as the undertaker’s daughter. “Mayfield fashions a poignant send-off to Jubilee in this thoughtfully rendered work” (Publishers Weekly).
The Undertaker's Wife: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Laughter in the Unlikeliest of Places
by Jodie Berndt Dee OliverOn Dee Branch’s first date with Johnnie Oliver, a fourth-generation funeral director, she knew she was in for a unique relationship when he had to leave “for just a minute”—and he came back to the car with a corpse. Over twenty years later, Dee was still in love with her charming southern gentleman when he passed away suddenly in 2007. Determined to carry on Johnnie’s work, Dee earned her mortuary science degree, only to find herself no longer needed in the family business. So Dee crossed the racial divide in the most segregated industry in America and joined the staff of an African-American funeral home as a single white woman. In The Undertaker’s Wife, Oliver draws from her wealth of experience to provide candid and often hysterically funny advice on dying well and surviving the loss of those who have gone before. Her insights on the common ground of grief, survival, and the ever-present faithfulness of God (to all of us, regardless of our race, religious upbringing, or socio-economic background) will help readers prepare for one of life’s only certainties—and do it with wisdom, grace, and a healthy dose of joy.
The Undertaking: Life Studies From The Dismal Trade
by Thomas Lynch"[Lynch] brings the lessons of death to life, and turns life and death into art." --Time Out New York Here is the voice of both witness and functionary. Lynch stands between "the living and the living who have died" with outrage and amazement, awe and calm, straining for the brief glimpse we all get of what mortality means to a vital species.