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Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos
by Lyssa ChapmanAn empowering memoir that can inspire others to break the cycle of abuse and forge happiness out of extreme adversity.The ninth child of bounty hunter Duane Chapman, made famous on the A&E show Dog the Bounty Hunter, Lyssa Chapman has overcome an upbringing that can only be called tragic. In her piercing memoir, she shares the details of her harrowing childhood and her journey to faith, and offers compassionate guidance, advice, and hope to those who might feel overwhelmed in their own circumstances. As a child, Baby Lyssa&’s parents divorced and left her neglected. Things only got worse from there. Walking on Eggshells reveals Lyssa&’s nightmare passage from mental and physical abuse to removal from school and confinement at home, flight from protective services, and teen pregnancy. Despite it all, and against incredible odds, Lyssa found her faith. She also found her way out of the spiral of bad decisions to build a healthy relationship with her parents and forge a rewarding, positive life with God. An astonishing true story of one young woman&’s trek from poverty and abuse to fulfillment and stardom, Walking on Eggshells is heartrending, powerful, and inspiring.
Walking on Water: A Novel (The Walk Series #5)
by Richard Paul EvansWith this New York Times bestseller, the beloved Walk series ends as Alan Christoffersen reaches his destination and the beginning of a new life: “Definitely a journey worth taking” (Booklist).After the death of his beloved wife, after the loss of his advertising business to his once-trusted partner, after bankruptcy forced him from his home, Alan Christoffersen embarked on a daring cross-country journey—a walk across America, from Seattle to Key West, with only the pack on his back. Through it all he learned life-changing lessons about love, forgiveness, and most of all, hope. Now Alan must again return west to face yet another crisis, one that threatens to upend his world just as he had begun to heal from so much loss, leaving him unsure of whether he can reach the end his journey. It will take the love of a new friend, and the wisdom of an old friend, to help him to finally leave the past behind and find the strength and hope to live again. Walking on Water is a beautiful story of one man’s search for a new beginning, of “humorous moments, heartwarming moments, moments of self-discovery, and moments of profound wisdom” (Deseret Morning News).
Walking on Water: A Voyage Around Britain and Through Life
by Geoff HoltThe danger in refusing to accept your disability whilst searching for a cure is that it may somehow propagate a notion that walking is good, and being in a wheelchair is bad. Even the term 'cure' implies remedying a bad situation. Of course most disabled people would prefer not to be disabled at all - me too - but so long as we are afforded equal rights, we are not discriminated against, and we can work and live in an accessible environment, then who has the right to say we would be better off walking?
Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution
by null Derrick JensenRemember the days of longing for the hands on the classroom clock to move faster? Most of us would say we love to learn, but we hated school. Why is that? What happens to creativity and individuality as we pass through the educational system?Walking on Water is a startling and provocative look at teaching, writing, creativity, and life by a writer increasingly recognized for his passionate and articulate critique of modern civilization. This time Derrick Jensen brings us into his classroom--whether college or maximum security prison--where he teaches writing. He reveals how schools perpetuate the great illusion that happiness lies outside of ourselves and that learning to please and submit to those in power makes us into lifelong clock-watchers. As a writing teacher Jensen guides his students out of the confines of traditional education to find their own voices, freedom, and creativity.Jensen's great gift as a teacher and writer is to bring us fully alive at the same moment he is making us confront our losses and count our defeats. It is at the center of Walking on Water, a book that is not only a hard-hitting and sometimes scathing critique of our current educational system and not only a hands-on method for learning how to write, but, like Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a lesson on how to connect to the core of our creative selves, to the miracle of waking up and arriving breathless (but with dry feet) on the far shore.
Walking Papers: The Accident that Changed My Life, and the Business that Got Me Back on My Feet
by Francesco ClarkWalking Papers is the incredibly inspiring story of a young man who wouldn't give up. Francesco Clark was a twenty-four-year-old with a bright future when he went to Long Island for the weekend--but a nocturnal dive into the pool's shallow end changed everything, forever. Paralyzed from the neck down, Francesco was told by his doctors that he would never move from his bed or even breathe without assistance. But Francesco fought back. Within days, he was breathing on his own. His father, a doctor himself, investigated every opportunity for experimental treatment, and Francesco used every resource available to speed his recovery. To avoid having his lungs painfully suctioned, he sang, loudly, for hours--and that was just the beginning. Francesco moved back home with his parents and began the long process toward recovery. Many doctors discourage patients with spinal cord injury from pursuing physical therapy beyond very basic movements, but Francesco embarked on a five-hour daily regimen, including the treadmill program that Christopher Reeve had made famous. Soon he astounded the medical establishment with his progress. Francesco's accident also left him unable to sweat out toxins, leaving his complexion poor. He and his father began to experiment, and the Clark's Botanicals skin-care line was born. Now CB products are sold worldwide in stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, and the company has won many major fashion awards and is enjoyed by a host of celebrities. The lessons Francesco learned about persistence from his recovery process, and the loving support of his amazing family, have both contributed to his incredible business success. Seven years after the accident, Francesco continues to improve and to surprise his doctors--for instance, he can now work on a computer. Walking Papers is the inspiring story of how, with individual determination and unconditional family support, Francesco Clark overcame extreme adversity and achieved an extraordinary triumph.
Walking Point: From the Ashes of the Vietnam War
by Perry A. UlanderIn this intimate memoir, Perry A. Ulander chronicles with powerful clarity the bewildering predicament he confronted and the fellowship and guidance that transformed him during the year he served as an American GI in the jungles of Vietnam. Conveying with unadorned precision the harrowing experiences that shatter his core beliefs, Ulander also captures the camaraderie and humor of his platoon, the hostility between "lifers" and draftees, the physical hardships of reconnaissance missions, and the unrelenting apprehension underlying everyday life. Ultimately, he describes the surrendering of social norms and accepted identities that allows him to glimpse a previously unimagined realm of heightened awareness. Written after a lifetime of reflection on the nature of war and the effect of violence and domination on the minds and spirits of those forced to practice it, Walking Point offers a powerful narrative for readers with an interest in the effects of war and violence, American involvement in Vietnam, PTSD, and how trauma can be a catalyst for spiritual transformation. Giving voice to profound insights gained through extreme adversity, Ulander movingly captures the depth of trust and commitment among a group of unwitting warriors who struggle to stay alive and sane in unchartered territory. Contents CHAPTER 1: Into the Unknown CHAPTER 2: The Magic Poncho Liner CHAPTER 3: Initiation CHAPTER 4: Head On CHAPTER 5: The Valley of the Shadow CHAPTER 6: Into the Light CHAPTER 7: Short Time CHAPTER 8: No Time CHAPTER 9: HomeFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
Walking Stars: Stories of Magic and Power
by Victor VillasenorWalking Stars, by Victor Villasenor, is a collection of autobiographical short stories. The author shares some stories from his own life, stories his mother and father told him, and stories that have been passed down in the family from generation to generation. After each story, Villasenor provides comments in brief Author's Notes. Many of the stories in Walking Stars contain fantasy elements.
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. One Step at a Time.
by Ed StaffordFrom the star of Discovery Channel's Naked and Marooned comes a a riveting, adventurous account of one man’s history-making journey along the entire length of the Amazon#151;and through the most bio-diverse habitat on Earth Fans of Turn Right at Machu Piccu and readers of Jon Krakauer and Bill Bryson and will revel in Ed Stafford's extraordinary prose and lush descriptions In April 2008, Ed Stafford set off to become the first man ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon. He started on the Pacific coast of Peru, crossed the Andes Mountain range to find the official source of the river. His journey lead on through parts of Colombia and right across Brazil; all while outwitting dangerous animals, machete wielding indigenous people as well as negotiating injuries, weather and his own fears and doubts. Yet, Stafford was undeterred. On his grueling 860-day, 4,000-plus mile journey, Stafford witnessed the devastation of deforestation firsthand, the pressure on tribes due to loss of habitats as well as nature in its true-raw form. Jaw-dropping from start to finish, Walking the Amazon is the unforgettable and gripping story of an unprecedented adventure. Walking the Amazon is also available as a Spanish edition entitled Caminado El Amazonas.
Walking the Appalachian Trail
by Larry LuxenbergA fascinating portrait of the community of people—and one cat—who&’ve traveled the trail end to end, by the founder of the Appalachian Trail Museum. Countless hikers have walked stretches of the two-thousand-plus-mile Appalachian Trail, but only a small, deeply dedicated group has completed the trek all the way through from Georgia to Maine. This book explores the history of the trail through colorful profiles of those who are a part of this unique community and reveals the customs and culture that have evolved around them over the years. From the sore muscles to the moments of solitude in nature, from the retired postmaster who parachuted onto the top of Springer Mountain to begin his journey to the woman who set out in tennis shoes because she couldn&’t find women&’s hiking boots in her size, Walking the Appalachian Trail explores questions of who these end-to-enders are, what drives them, what risks they face, and what rewards to body and soul they gain from this extraordinary walk. Includes color photographs
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
by Bruce FeilerOne part adventure story, one part archaeological detective work, one part spiritual exploration, Walking The Bible vividly recounts an inspiring personal odyssey -- by foot, jeep, rowboat, and camel -- through the greatest stories ever told. Feeling a desire to reconnect to the Bible, award-winning author Bruce Feiler set out on a perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. Traveling over three continents, through five countries, and four war zones, Feiler is the first person to complete such a historic expedition. He crosses the Red Sea, climbs Mt. Sinai, and interviews bedouin and pilgrims alike, as he attempts to answer the question: Is the Bible just an abstraction, or is it a living, breathing entity? Both a pulse-pounding adventure and an uplifting spiritual quest, Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible is a stunning and elevating work of courage, scholarship, and heart that revisits the inscrutable desert landscape where the world's great religions were born -- and uncovers fresh answers to the most profound questions of the human spirit.
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
by Bruce Feiler"The process of gathering these images reminded me of the Bible's effortless ability to reinvent itself for each generation and each new way of searching." -Bruce Feiler Its stories may be the best known in the world, but its locations have long been a mystery. Where did Noah's ark land? Where did Moses receive the Ten Commandments? Where are the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Now, in Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey, New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler offers an unprecedented heart-stirring adventure through the landscape of some of history's most storied events. Featuring Bruce Feiler's own photography as well as his selections from professional collections, Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey brings together breathtaking vistas, intimate portraits, and fascinating panoramas, providing firsthand access to the inscrutable land where three of the world's great religions were born-and finally puts a face on the stories that have long inspired the human spirit. Over several years, Feiler traveled nearly ten thousand miles through the deserts of the Middle East, which led first to his runaway national bestseller Walking the Bible. This new illustrated book follows his route, offering a thrilling photographic voyage through the actual places of some of the Bible's most memorable events-from the heights of Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark landed, to the desert outpost in Turkey, where Abraham first heard the words of God, to the summit where Moses overlooked the Promised Land. Walking the Bible: A Photographic Journey chronicles a landscape that nurtured the relationship between humans and the divine, breathing new meaning into stories that have been a timeless source of inspiration.
Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the Amazon
by Gomercindo RodriguesA close associate of Chico Mendes, Gomercindo Rodrigues witnessed the struggle between Brazil's rubber tappers and local ranchers--a struggle that led to the murder of Mendes. Rodrigues's memoir of his years with Mendes has never before been translated into English from the Portuguese. Now, Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes makes this important work available to new audiences, capturing the events and trends that shaped the lives of both men and the fragile system of public security and justice within which they lived and worked. In a rare primary account of the celebrated labor organizer, Rodrigues chronicles Mendes's innovative proposals as the Amazon faced wholesale deforestation. As a labor unionist and an environmentalist, Mendes believed that rain forests could be preserved without ruining the lives of workers, and that destroying forests to make way for cattle pastures threatened humanity in the long run. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes also brings to light the unexplained and uninvestigated events surrounding Mendes's murder. Although many historians have written about the plantation systems of nineteenth-century Brazil, few eyewitnesses have captured the rich rural history of the twentieth century with such an intricate knowledge of history and folklore as Rodrigues.
Walking the Himalayas: An Adventure of Survival and Endurance
by Levison WoodWINNER OF THE 2016 EDWARD STANFORD ADVENTURE TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD'Levison Wood has breathed new life into adventure travel.' Michael Palin'Levison Wood is a great adventurer and a wonderful storyteller.' Sir Ranulph Fiennes'Britain's best-loved adventurer... he looks like a man who will stare danger in the face and soak up a lot of pain without complaint.' The TimesFollowing in in the footsteps of the great explorers, WALKING THE HIMALAYAS is Levison Wood's enthralling account of crossing the Himalayas on foot. His journey of discovery along the path of the ancient trade route of the Silk Road to the forgotten kingdom of Bhutan led him beyond the safety of the tourist trail. There lies the real world of the Himalayas, where ex-paratrooper Levison Wood encountered natural disasters, extremists, nomadic goat herders, shamans (and the Dalai Lama) in his 1,700-mile trek across the roof of the world. WALKING THE HIMALAYAS is a tale of courage, stamina and the kindness of strangers that will appeal to the adventurer in us all.
Walking the Himalayas: An Adventure of Survival and Endurance
by Levison WoodLevison Wood's most challenging expedition yet begins along the Silk Road route of Afghanistan and travels through five countries. Following in the footsteps of the great explorers, Levison walks the entire length of the Himalayas in an adventure of survival and endurance. A personal story of discovery, Levison forges strong bonds with local guides, porters, mountain men, soldiers, farmers, smugglers and shepherds. By travelling on foot, and following the same footpaths that locals use, he uncovers stories that might otherwise remain hidden. Along the way he also reveals the history of the Himalayas and two millennia of exploration, and examines a continent in crisis in the 21st century.Packed with action and emotion, more than anything Walking the Himalayas is a story of personal adventure and striving beyond the limits of convention.(P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton
Walking the Night Road: Coming of Age in Grief
by Alexandra ButlerThe house looked as if she'd brushed it over with a hurried hand. Things were open—drawers, cans, and closets. A pile of newspapers fanned out across the floor by the front door, and still I did not wonder. She must have dropped them as she ran, I thought. My mother was often late. But had I stopped to look, I would have seen the fear in the way the house had settled—a footstool that lay on its side, several books that had fallen from their shelves. When you count back, you can see a story from the end. I like that—the seemingly natural narrative that forms this way. With the end in my hand, the story becomes mine. I can have it all make sense, or I can lose my mind like she lost hers—like I lost her. But I can have my story. Walking the Night Road speaks to the experience of caring for a loved one with a terminal illness and the difficulties of encountering death. Alexandra Butler, daughter of the Pulitzer Prize–winning gerontologist Robert N. Butler and respected social worker and psychotherapist Myrna Lewis, composes a lyrical yet unsparing portrait of caring for her mother during her sudden, quick decline from brain cancer. Her rich account shares the strains of caregiving on both the provider and the person receiving care and recognizes the personal and professional sacrifices caregivers must make to fulfill the role. More than a memoir of dying and grief, Butler's account also tests many of the theories her parents pioneered in their work on healthy aging. Authors of such seminal works as Love and Sex After Sixty, Butler's parents were forced to rethink many of the tenets they lived by while Myrna was incapacitated, and Butler's father found himself relying heavily on his daughter to provide his wife's care. Butler's poignant and unflinching story is therefore a rare examination of the intimate aspects of aging and death experienced by practitioners who suddenly find themselves in the difficult position of the clients they once treated.
Walking the Road to Freedom: A Story about Sojourner Truth
by Jeri Chase FerrisTraces the life of the Black woman orator who spoke out against slavery throughout New England and the Midwest.
Walking the Woods and the Water
by Nick Hunt"Nick Hunt has written a glorious book, rich with insight and wit, about walking his way both across and into contemporary Europe. . . . So many memorable encounters with people and places! A book about gifts, modernity, endurance and landscape, it represents a fine addition to the literature of the leg."--Robert Macfarlane, award-winning travel writer, author of The Wild Places and The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot"This moving and profoundly honest book sometimes brings a sense of unlimited freedom, sometimes joy, sometimes an extraordinary, dream-like dislocation: always accompanied by a dazzling sharpness of hearing and vision. I see now how that youthful walk informed so much of Paddy's style. Before setting out Hunt was going to write to Paddy. The letter was never written, and by the time he set off, Paddy was dead. How touched and fascinated he would have been to read this book."--Artemis Cooper, biographer of Patrick Leigh Fermor and co-editor of The Broken RoadIn 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor set out to chance and charm his way across Europe, "like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar." The books he later wrote about this walk, including Between the Woods and the Water, are a half-remembered, half-reimagined journey through cultures now extinct and landscapes irrevocably altered by the traumas of the twentieth century.Nick Hunt dreamed of following in Fermor's footsteps. Eighty years later he began his own "great trudge"--on foot all the way to Istanbul. He walked across eight countries, following two major rivers and crossing three mountain ranges. With only Fermor's books to guide him, he trekked some 2,500 miles from Holland to Turkey.Why? For an old-fashioned adventure. To discover for himself what remained of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, the unknown, the deeper currents of myth that still flow beneath Europe's surface. This is a story worthy of Fermor's own.Nick Hunt is a travel writer, freelance journalist, fiction writer, and storyteller whose articles have appeared in the Economist, the Guardian, and other publications. He is also co-editor of The Dark Mountain.
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)
by Cookie MuellerThe first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Muellerís 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times. Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."
Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption
by Vaneetha Rendall RisnerThe astonishing, Job-like story of how an existence filled with loss, suffering, questioning, and anger became a life filled with shocking and incomprehensible peace and joy.Vaneetha Risner contracted polio as an infant, was misdiagnosed, and lived with widespread paralysis. She lived in and out of the hospital for ten years and, after each stay, would return to a life filled with bullying. When she became a Christian, though, she thought things would get easier, and they did: carefree college days, a dream job in Boston, and an MBA from Stanford where she met and married a classmate.But life unraveled. Again. She had four miscarriages. Her son died because of a doctor's mistake. And Vaneetha was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, meaning she would likely become a quadriplegic. And then her husband betrayed her and moved out, leaving her to raise two adolescent daughters alone. This was not the abundant life she thought God had promised her. But, as Vaneetha discovered, everything she experienced was designed to draw her closer to Christ as she discovered "that intimacy with God in suffering can be breathtakingly beautiful."
Walking Through Twilight: A Wife's Illness—A Philosopher's Lament
by Douglas GroothuisHow do you continue to find God as dementia pulls your loved one into the darkness? Nothing is simple for a person suffering from dementia, and for those they love. When ordinary tasks of communication, such as using a phone, become complex, then difficult, and then impossible, isolation becomes inevitable. Helping becomes excruciating. In these pages philosopher Douglas Groothuis offers a window into his experience of caring for his wife as a rare form of dementia ravages her once-brilliant mind and eliminates her once-stellar verbal acuity. Mixing personal narrative with spiritual insight, he captures moments of lament as well as philosophical and theological reflection. Brief interludes provide poignant pictures of life inside the Groothuis household, and we meet a parade of caregivers, including a very skilled companion dog. Losses for both Doug and Becky come daily, and his questions for God multiply as he navigates the descending darkness. Here is a frank exploration of how one continues to find God in the twilight.
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher'What's so impressive about Justin Butcher's book is the interweaving of his personal face-to-face experiences in Israel and Palestine against the backdrop of the social and political realities there. This book displays an empathy that is unusual in discussions of that tangled and tragic situation - the kind of empathy that will be essential in arriving at any decent solution to it.' BRIAN ENO 2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.'This is a gripping and intelligent book that everybody should read.' PATRICK COCKBURN, Middle East correspondent, The Independent
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.
Walking to Jerusalem: Blisters, hope and other facts on the ground
by Justin Butcher2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.
Walking to Vermont
by Christopher S. WrenA distinguished former foreign correspondent embraces retirement by setting out alone on foot for nearly four hundred miles, and explores a side of America nearly as exotic as the locales from which he once filed. Traveling with an unwieldy pack and a keen curiosity, Christopher Wren bids farewell to the New York Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan and saunters up Broadway, through Harlem, the Bronx, and the affluent New York suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties. As his trek takes him into the Housatonic River Valley of Connecticut, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and along a bucolic riverbank in New Hampshire, the strenuous challenges become as much emotional as physical. Wren loses his way in a suburban thicket of million-dollar mansions, dodges speeding motorists, seeks serenity at a convent, shivers through a rainy night among Shaker ruins, camps in a stranger's backyard, panhandles cookies and water from a good samaritan, absorbs the lore of the Appalachian and Long Trails, sweats up and down mountains, and lands in a hospital emergency room. Struggling under the weight of a fifty-pound pack, he gripes, "We might grow less addicted to stuff if everything we bought had to be carried on our backs." He hangs out with fellow wanderers named Old Rabbit, Flash, Gatorman, Stray Dog, and Buzzard, and learns gratitude from the anonymous charity of trail angels. His rite of passage into retirement, with its heat and dust and blisters galore, evokes vivid reminiscences of earlier risks taken, sometimes at gunpoint, during his years spent reporting from Russia, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. He loses track of time, waking with the sun, stopping to eat when hunger gnaws, and camping under starry skies that transform the nights of solitude. For all the self-inflicted hardship, he reports, "In fact, I felt pretty good." Wren has woven an intensely personal story that is candid and often downright hilarious. As Vermont turns from a destination into a state of mind, he concludes, "I had stumbled upon the secret of how utterly irrelevant chronological age is." This book, from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Cat Who Covered the World, will delight not just hikers, walkers, and other lovers of the outdoors, but also anyone who contemplates retirement, wonders about foreign correspondents, or relishes a lively, off-beat adventure, even when it unfolds close to home.
Walking Towards Thunder: The true story of a whistleblowing cop who took on corruption and the Church
by Peter FoxFormer Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox is a hero in many people's eyes. A police officer with 36 years' service in the Hunter region, he rose to national prominence in 2012 for his major role in speaking out for the victims of abuse within the church. He had been at the coalface fighting these heinous crimes for decades. He had worked with the victims and supported their families. He knew an enquiry was long overdue. His decision to become a whistle blower helped trigger Prime Minister Julia Gillard's historic decision to establish a far-reaching Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in institutions.He had no idea what speaking up would unleash. Peter's dedication and focus cost him his career, his health and also affected his wife's health. He and his family were threatened. Former friends shunned him. But the victims and the families that he supported consider him their champion. To them he is a hero.Walking Towards Thunder details the cumulative horrors our police face every day, it reveals the cover ups and the way sexual predators were moved around. It shows the backlash he faced and the lengths those in power will go to avoid facing the truth. Confronting and inspiring, this is an unforgettable story.