Biographies&Memoirs Audiobooks

In order to survive her childhood, Vanya Erickson was forced to become fluent in two languages: her Christian Scientist mother’s honeyed versions of the truth; and her rancher father’s hard-as-the-scrape-of-his-bootheels words, which stung like the back of his hand. Long version: From the outside, Vanya’s childhood of riding horses with her father in the solitude of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and attending flamboyant operas with her mother in the city looked idyllic. But life for Vanya was more about learning to gauge and survive her parents’ unpredictable actions - from being left to lie in her own blood-soaked diaper while her Christian Scientist mother prayed, refusing to get medical help, to watching her father writhe on his bed in the detox ward, his hands and feet tethered with leather straps. Vanya the only way she knew how: by immersing herself in the beauty and solitude of the wilderness around her.

George Mason was a short, bookish man who was a friend and neighbor of athletic, broad-shouldered George Washington. Unlike Washington, Mason has been virtually forgotton by history. But this new biography of forgotten patriot George Mason makes a convincing case that Mason belongs in the pantheon of honored Founding Fathers. Trained in the law, Mason was also a farmer, philosopher, botanist, and musician. He was one of the architects of the Declaration of Independence, an author of the Bill of Rights, and one of the strongest proponents of religious liberty in American history. In fact, both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison may have been given undue credit for George Mason's own contributions to American democracy.

This is the story of the other victims of German occupation in France, the story of my mother who was separated from her family and fled, and the torture that remained with her forever.<br><br>These are the memoirs as told to me by my mother. I have attempted to tell her story as accurately as she presented them to me, piecing together her own written journals, along with various anecdotes that supplemented and peppered stories over my lifetime, without embellishing by interposing my own interpretations of events. This is not a suspense novel, although certainly the events recounted herein were suspenseful to those who experienced them. They certainly sounded suspenseful to me as I heard and read them. So as to avert embarrassment to anyone reading these words, I have on occasion chosen to use pseudonyms, while trying to keep the gist of the story true to form. My mother was French, and occasionally some French words and phrases appear throughout the text. I have included translations wherever appropriate. She also lived and studied in Italy before moving to Israel, and eventually to the United States. Again, where words and phrases are included in those languages, and I have included translations to the best of my ability.

The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt is a historical thriller from award-winning political journalist and Washington insider Burt Solomon, featuring Teddy Roosevelt's near death...accident or assassination attempt? Theodore Roosevelt had been president for less than a year when on a tour in New England his horse-drawn carriage was broadsided by an electric trolley. TR was thrown clear but his Secret Service bodyguard was killed instantly. The trolley’s motorman pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the matter was quietly put to rest. But was it an accident or an assassination attempt…and would there be another “accident” soon? The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt casts this event in a darker light. John Hay, the Secretary of State, finds himself in pursuit of a would-be assassin, investigating the motives of TR’s many enemies, including political rivals and the industrial trusts. He crosses paths with luminaries of the day, such as best-pal Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Mark Hanna, and (as an investigatory sidekick) the infamous Nellie Bly, who will help Hay protect the man who wants to transform a nation.

Throughout a long career as a special and foreign correspondent for major Italian publications and the state-owned broadcaster RAI, Marco Lupis has been up close and personal with many of the people who have shaped the world as we know it. In this book, Lupis recalls the most important interviews of his career, not only with brave men and women who dedicated their lives to fighting injustice and abuse of power, but also with some of the biggest names of the modern era: Nobel laureates, heads of state, rock stars and supermodels, to name but a few.<br><br>This book offers a unique insight into fifty personalities who in some way shaped the second half of the 20th century (the ‘short century’). It features exclusive interviews conducted by Marco Lupis during his decades-long career as a special and foreign correspondent covering Latin America and the Far East for some of Italy’s biggest media outlets, including Corriere della Sera, Panorama, L’Espresso, La Repubblica and RAI. You will hear from leading figures from the worlds of politics, culture and the arts, including: rock star Peter Gabriel, singer-songwriter Franco Battiato, supermodel Claudia Schiffer, Mexican revolutionary Subcomandante Marcos, Nobel laureate and Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, Argentine president Carlos Menem, Japanese and Chinese Nobel-winning writers Kenzaburō Ōe and Gao Xingjian, and East Timorese president and Nobel laureate José Ramos-Horta. Sometimes dramatic, occasionally light-hearted, but always accurate and packed with fascinating revelations, Lupis’s interviews cover the great issues of the modern era: war, freedom, the fight against injustice and the quest for truth, be it through politics, literature, art or cinema.

“Papa explains the war like this: ‘When the elephants dance, the chickens must be careful.’ The great beasts, as they circle one another, shaking the trees and trumpeting loudly, are the Amerikanos and the Japanese as they fight. And our Philippine Islands? We are the small chickens.” Once in a great while comes a storyteller who can illuminate worlds large and small, magical and true to life. When the Elephants Dance introduces us to the incandescent voice of Tess Uriza Holthe, who sets her remarkable first novel in the waning days of World War II, as the Japanese and the Americans engage in a fierce battle for possession of the Philippine Islands. The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. Outside the safety of their little refuge the war rages on—fiery bombs torch the beautiful Filipino countryside, Japanese soldiers round up and interrogate innocent people, and from the hills guerillas wage a desperate campaign against the enemy. Inside the cellar, these men, women, and children put their hopes and dreams on hold as they wait out the war, only emerging to look for food, water, and medicine. Through the eyes of three narrators, thirteen-year-old Alejandro Karangalan, his spirited older sister Isabelle, and Domingo, a passionate guerilla commander, we see how ordinary people must learn to live in the midst of extraordinary uncertainty, how they must find hope for survival where none seems to exist. They find this hope in the dramatic history of the Philippine Islands and the passion and bravery of its people. Crowded together in the cellar, the Karangalans and their friends and neighbors tell magical stories to one another based on Filipino myth and legend to fuel their courage, pass the time, and teach important lessons.

In 1994, Lizbeth Meredith said good-bye to her four- and six year-old daughters for a visit with their non-custodial father only to learn days later that they had been kidnapped and taken to their father's home country of Greece. Twenty-nine and just on the verge of making her dreams of financial independence for her and her daughters come true, Lizbeth now faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget. For the next two years fueled by memories of her own childhood kidnapping Lizbeth traded in her small life for a life more public, traveling to the White House and Greece, and becoming a local media sensation in order to garner interest in her efforts. The generous community of Anchorage becomes Lizbeth's makeshift family one that is replicated by a growing number of Greeks and expats overseas who help Lizbeth navigate the turbulent path leading back to her daughters.

I consider it an obligation to write a book about my benefactor after His physical departure from this world. This book is in English; it has certain sections updated so it does not follow the Turkish version textually but they are along the same line. If you like reading New Age books like the Castenadas and the Lobsang Rampas, this book is for you. If you are a musician you will also find sections that may interest you. Asst. Prof. Rahmi Oruc Guvenc was known as a musician and a Master of Music-Sufism connections in the West. In this book, you will find a concise rendition of his teachings, works, and endeavors. Enjoy the read! ”...this book is about Oruc Bey. If this book attracts attention and if there is demand, I would very much like to write about my apprenticeship with him. But my aim in this book is to outline the life and works of Rahmi Oruc Guvenc and provide insight into his teachings. I have no wish to crowd the book with details like dates, places, and names.”

This book is the first handbook about being contemporary and personal diary written by me. The calm of well-being, of inventions. The three-dimensional aspects of concrete and human objects, for a research in individual thought. A work that frees from stylistic commitments, mistakes are everyone's, the present must be represented but, without the fear of having made a bigger mistake than the previously accepted silence. By choosing a speech, it promises a definitive daily solution to rhetorical-historical art. It describes my experiences, imaginatively the memories of a good in the land of evil. Diary written in a simple way, a textual form to fill even an absence of complete information about the right to good, which characterizes an insensitivity in public and journalistic publications. A phenotype inclusive of modern material, Christian and Arabic objectivity. It wants to represent a door to the future, a new party. The period of the eighteen letters contained reaches from August 2005 to March 2007.

Tales of the Seer is a collection of the best stories published by the seer. The objective is to gather in a text the necessary help for a life analysis and positive replacement even in the face of casualties failures. This collection is inspiring and you can not lose for a price unique.