ghostbox memoir
Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Suleiman, Rubin / Suleiman, Susan Rubin, PUBLISHER: University of Nebraska Press, Can you forget the place you once called home? What does it take to make you recapture it? In this moving memoir, Susan Rubin Suleiman describes her returns to the city of her birth--where she speaks the language like a native but with an accent. Suleiman left Budapest in as a young child with her parents, fleeing communism; thirty-five years later, she returned with her two sons from a brief vacation and began to remember her childhood. Her earliest memories, of Nazi persecution in the final year of World War II, came back to her in fragments, as did memories of her first school years after the war of the stormy marriage between her father, a brilliant Talmudic scholar, and her mother, a cosmopolitan woman from a more secular Jewish family. In , after the fall of communism and the death of her mother, Suleiman returned to Budapest for six-month stay. She recounts her ongoing quest for personal history, interweaving it with the stories of present-day Hungarians struggling to make sense of the changes in their individual and collective lives. Suleiman's search for documents relating to her childhood, the lives of her parents and their families, and the Jewish communities of Hungary and Poland takes her on a series of fascinating journeys within and outside Budapest. Emerging from this eloquent, often suspenseful diary is the portrait of an intellectual who recaptures her past and comes into contact with the vital, troubling world of contemporary Eastern Europe. Suleiman's vivid descriptions of her encounters with a proud, old city and its people in a time of historical change remind us that every life story is at once unique and part of a larger history.
House of Cards: The True Story of How a 26-Year-Old
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Dickerson, David Ellis, PUBLISHER: Riverhead Books, An original and hilarious memoir by an ex greeting card writer, virgin fundamentalist, and "This American Life" contributor that chronicles how, in the belly of the social expression industry, he learned to love, thrive, and finally feel comfortable in his own skin. David Dickerson's dream is to write greeting cards Valentine's Day, sympathy, and holiday cards. Greeting cards offer him the chance to indulge his gifted obsession with words, puns, and humor. But when he manages to win a coveted slot at Hallmark, he soon discovers his own limited life experience has left him unprepared for sentiments he writes about in his cards: As a fundamentalist-raised, twenty-seven-year-old virgin social misfit, he knows that his world is decidedly circumscribed. In "House of Cards," Dickerson tells of his time at Hallmark and how the experience and the cast of characters he meets there open his eyes to a much larger and emotionally rich world. In comic and sometimes cringe-inducing detail, he chronicles his bumpy journey to maturity, from straitlaced evangelical Christian to (relatively) modern single guy. As Dickerson navigates supervisors and colleagues who don't understand him, he learns what it takes to connect with this new lot of personalities and how to write funny lines that resonate with the heart of America. Along the way he confronts his past, his beliefs, his relationships, even his virginity, as he ponders whether his struggle to stay true to the life he knows is worth it. Endearing and idiosyncratic, "House of Cards "is the very human story of one man who, step by step, stumble by stumble, embarrassment by embarrassment, finds his place in the world.
Then Again
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Keaton, Diane, PUBLISHER: Random House, ""Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she'd collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK."" So begins Diane Keaton's unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as "Annie Hall, " but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. And so, in a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Throughout her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals--literally thousands of pages--in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, about herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane's grandparents. Diane has sorted through all these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother--a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy struggling to find an outlet for her talents--as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years. More than just the autobiography of a legendary actress, "Then Again" is a book about a very American family with very American dreams. Diane will remind you of yourself, and her bonds with her family will remind you of your own relationships with those you love the most.
Think Big: My Life in Politics
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Manning / Manning, Preston, PUBLISHER: McClelland & Stewart, He built a party from nothing to become Leader of the Opposition in just 14 years Preston Manning grew up in a political household but his first career choice was as a business consultant. It was only years later, when he sensed a rising discontent among fellow Westerners, that he decided the time was right to establish a reform movement. In the fall of , he wrote a memo in Calgary. In the spring of he addressed a meeting in Vancouver. In the fall the Reform Party's founding assembly was held in Winnipeg. And from then on the movement's progress was unstoppable. This is a candid account by Reform's founder, and the father of the Canadian Alliance, of the most extraordinary story in contemporary Canadian politics. Manning describes Reform's first battles: the election of "Senator-in-Waiting" Stan Waters, the grassroots campaign against the Charlottetown accord, and the hard-fought federal election. He frankly acknowledges some of his party's early missteps in Ottawa. But he also recounts with vigour the cynicism - and worse - that was evident in the behaviour of the governing Liberal party. Manning denounces Mr. Chretien's mishandling of the Quebec referendum. And he recapitulates in devastating detail the full story of Shawinigate. Manning describes the birth of the Canadian Alliance. He follows the agonizing growing pains it experienced under Stockwell Day's inept leadership and he considers what might have been. He is candid in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the party's current leadership. Of his own career - post-politics - he is cheerfully forward-looking: there is challenging terrain ahead and Preston Manning proposes to serve as an advance scout. This is a thoughtful, informed, sometimes surprisingly funny memoir by a man who has attained, by dint of his own extraordinary achievements, stature as a contemporary statesman. "From the Hardcover edition."
Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Pipher, Mary, PUBLISHER: Riverhead Books, In this thoughtful and inspiring memoir, the author of the "New York Times" bestsellers "Reviving Ophelia, The Shelter of Each Other," and "Another Country" explores her personal search for understanding, tranquility, and respect through her work as a psychologist and seeker. aThere are three kinds of secrets, a Mary Pipher says in "Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World." aThose we keep from everyone, those we keep from certain people, and those we keep from ourselves. Writing this book forced me to deal with all three.a After decades of exploring the lives of others through her writing and therapy, Mary Pipher turns her attention to herselfaculling insights from her own life to highlight the importance of the journey, not just the destination. Like most lives, Pipheras is filled with glory and tragedy, chaos and clarity, love and abandonment. She spent her childhood in small Nebraska towns, the daughter of a doctor mother and a restless jack-of-all-trades father. Often both of her parents were away and Pipher and her siblings lived as what she calls aferal children.a Later, as an adult and a therapist, Pipher was able to do what she most enjoyed: learn about the world and help others. After the surprising success of "Reviving Ophelia," she was overwhelmed by the attention and demands on her time. In , after a personal crisis, Pipher realized that success and fame were harming her, and she began working to find a quieter, more meditative life that would carry her toward self-acceptance and joy. In "Seeking Peace," Mary Pipher tells her own remarkable story, and in the process reveals truths about our search for happiness and love. While her story is unique, athe basic map and milestones of my story are universal, a she writes. aWe strive to make sense of our selves and our environments.a In "Seeking Peace," Pipher reflects on her life in a way that allows readers to reimagine theirs.
The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Rhenisch, Harold, PUBLISHER: Brindle & Glass, At once a memoir, a work of philosophy, a story of European immigration to Canada's dark places of the earth, and an exploration of the roots and effects of colonialism, "The Wolves At Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century" is a stylistic and rhetorical tour de force from one of Canada's master prose stylists.Dissident communists fleeing s Germany, Harold Rhenisch's grandparents imagined that British Columbia's Interior was the end of the earth-a new world where they could fulfil their dreams of the land, freed from tyrrany and from history itself. A generation later, in the wake of World War II, his father arrived, carrying many of the same ideas with him. What they found instead was a colonial culture as highly developed as Doris Lessing's Rhodesia.Rhenisch grew up at the nexus of these cultures: a Germany where Nazism simultaneously did and did not happen, a Canada in the process of shedding British colonialism for American, and a land-the Interior-that had no point of contact with any of them.With remarkable range and vision, Rhenisch turns in a bravura performance, sifting through the ashes of personal experience, family anecdotes, literature, art, history, and the land itself for clues to a great untold story, Rhenisch assembles a collage of images and ideas that becomes a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. The hidden history of a forgotten outpost of the Empire is laid open, shattering dearly held myths and exposing buried skeletons.How was the sunny, carefree Okanagan Valley fruit culture built on the back of King Leopold's Congolese slave trade? How does Margaret Atwood's garrison theory of literature reflect on Rhenisch family's hidden Nazi past? How did the Hudson's Bay Company Blanket act as both a cherished kitsch object for generations of Canadians and a tool of genocide? Alternating between light and darkness, great humour and sharp indignation, this is a disturbing, thought-provoking and important work from a masterful writer and cultural analyst.
A.D. Avoiding Doomsday: Managing & Making the Most of
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Bell, Ian Hedley, PUBLISHER: Authorhouse, A. D. . AVOIDING DOOMSDAY (MANAGING & MAKING THE MOST OF SMALL TO MEDIUM BUSINESSES) This book is more an academic or 'technical' document produced in a simple readable format for Owners of Businesses to use as a definitive means of checking out and planning their business activity. So many people start out in business without the right preparation and plans on how and where to target their actions and finances. The book serves to help monitor and assess the business momentum and its chances of survival or failure - hence the title. Whether a business is small, medium or large, the fundamentals of how to approach the management and projection of that business are much the same. The book is not necessarily going to apply to all types of business but its prime objective is to bring to the reader's attention only the 'front line' specifics that need to be considered. This 'bible' is, therefore, an aide memoir from which to draw examples and concepts and to apply them to the business being considered. There are many informed books on the market but most go into great depth as to the facts and data that they supply. This book has the secondary objective of offering a set of simple and basic facts that, at the end of the day, are those that will bring a business to success rather than failure. No reams of 'mumbo jumbo' text to confuse just simple straight forward facts in a logical order that will cut through the 'waffle' and give the reader what he wants to know - straight up and simply expressed. In any business, the prime overall objective must always be to: - "Increase order intake, improve profit levels, spread the customer and product/service base and, therefore, enhance yourmarket footprint." That is what this book sets out to do for the reader whether he is new in a business or running one that has been going for some time. I would see this book being of value right across the board from Business Owners, to Teaching Institutions, Business Associations and Government driven areas such as the Department of Trade and Industry and the like.
The Curtain: Witness and Memory in Wartime Holland
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Schogt, Henry G., PUBLISHER: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Henry Schogt met his wife, Corrie, in in Amsterdam. Each knew the other had grown up in the Netherlands during World War II, but for years they barely spoke of their experiences. This was true for many people -- the memories were just too painful. Years later, Henry and Corrie began to piece their memories together, to untangle reality from dreams. Their intent was to help others understand what had happened then, and how it influenced and affected not only their lives but those of all who survived. The seven stories in "The Curtain" reveal how two families -- one Jewish, one non-Jewish -- fared in the Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II. Each vignette highlights a specific aspect of life; all show how life changed for everyone, and forever. Four stories are based on the author's memories of his own non-Jewish family: Henry's friendship with a Jewish teenager; the conflict of personal antipathy with the realization that help must be provided; the Schogt parents' determination to do the right thing; the difficulties of coping with an aunt with Nazi sympathies. These are stories about the randomness of survival and the elusive nature of memory. For the Jewish family, three stories drawn from the memories of the author's wife and family demonstrate the bewildering situation of trying to make impossible life-determining decisions when faced with confusing and deceitful decrees. The family must struggle with the luck -- or absence thereof -- of finding refuge when forced from their homes, and with the perplexing inconsistencies of the collaboration of Dutch authorities and police with the Nazis. "The Curtain" emphasizes the difference between the options that were open to non-Jews and Jews in the Netherlands. Non-Jews could freely choose whether to actively resist the Germans, collaborate with the Nazis, or just to do nothing, and try to live a normal life in spite of wartime restrictions. Dutch Jews, on the other hand, did not have a choice -- whatever they did, whatever decisions they made, they were doomed, and it often seemed, when someone survived, just simple luck. A short introduction about the war years and an appendix with a chronology of decrees, events, and statistics, provide background information for this haunting memoir of those disturbing years during the German Occupation in the Netherlands.
From Butler to Buffett: The Story Behind the Buffalo News
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Light, Murray B. / Buffett, Warren E., PUBLISHER: Prometheus Books, In , a twenty-three-year-old entrepreneur named Edward H. Butler arrived in Buffalo, New York, to found a newspaper eventually called "The Buffalo Evening News. Under Butler's aegis the "News became one of the most successful newspapers in America, growing along with the thriving city at the end of the Erie Canal, which was expanding rapidly as immigrants poured in and America urbanized. About a century later, in , Warren E. Buffett, recognizing the value of the paper, bought "The Buffalo Evening News, and to this day, despite competition from large media conglomerates, "The Buffalo News (as it is now called) remains a successful independent publication. There is no better person to tell the story of the "News than Murray B. Light, who held senior editorial positions at the paper for over 30 years. Beginning with the founding of the newspaper by Butler, Light provides a wealth of historical information and many in-depth, behind-the-scenes profiles of key persons who influenced, the course of the paper. Chief among these is founder Edward H. Butler, a dynamo of energy, whose enthusiasm, innovation, and high standards are still felt to this day. His son, Edward Butler Jr., also played an important role, extending the reach of the "News into radio and television. Almost as influential as the senior Butler was Alfred H. Kirchhofer, whose workaholic personality, staunch Republican Party connections, and active involvement in the Buffalo community became legendary. Regarding the current owner, Warren Buffett, Light has many interesting insights into his famous low-key, hands-off style of management. He assumed ownership of the "News at a critical time, bolstering its financialstrength while encouraging complete editorial independence. Light also devotes a chapter to current publisher Stanford Lipsey, a longtime associate of Buffett, highlighting his leadership in the wake of the bitter court dispute with the "Courier Express. Along the way Light offers interesting comments on newspaper trends and on many longtime and widely read reporters and columnists, such as Ray Hill, Bob Curran, Lee Coppola, Jeff Simon, Alan Pergament, Donn Esmonde, Janice Okun, Larry Felser, and many others. This detailed memoir of the persons and events that had a formative influence on a major independent regional newspaper will interest both newspaper professionals and readers in the Western New York community, as well as many outside the area.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Wittman, Robert K. / Shiffman, John, PUBLISHER: Broadway Books, "The Wall Street Journal "called him "a living legend." "The London Times "dubbed him "the most famous art detective in the world." In "Priceless, "Robert K. Wittman, the founder of the FBI's Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career for the first time, offering a real-life international thriller to rival "The Thomas Crown Affair." Rising from humble roots as the son of an antique dealer, Wittman built a twenty-year career that was nothing short of extraordinary. He went undercover, usually unarmed, to catch art thieves, scammers, and black market traders in Paris and Philadelphia, Rio and Santa Fe, Miami and Madrid. In this page-turning memoir, Wittman fascinates with the stories behind his recoveries of priceless art and antiquities: The golden armor of an ancient Peruvian warrior king. The Rodin sculpture that inspired the Impressionist movement. The headdress Geronimo wore at his final Pow-Wow. The rare Civil War battle flag carried into battle by one of the nation's first African-American regiments. The breadth of Wittman's exploits is unmatched: He traveled the world to rescue paintings by Rockwell and Rembrandt, Pissarro, Monet and Picasso, often working undercover overseas at the whim of foreign governments. Closer to home, he recovered an original copy of the Bill of Rights and cracked the scam that rocked the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow." By the FBI's accounting, Wittman saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and antiquities. He says the statistic isn't important. After all, who's to say what is worth more --a Rembrandt self-portrait or an American flag carried into battle? They're both priceless. The art thieves and scammers Wittman caught run the gamut from rich to poor, smart to foolish, organized criminals to desperate loners. The smuggler who brought him a looted 6th-century treasure turned out to be a high-ranking diplomat. The appraiser who stole countless heirlooms from war heroes' descendants was a slick, aristocratic con man. The museum janitor who made off with locks of George Washington's hair just wanted to make a few extra bucks, figuring no one would miss what he'd filched. In his final case, Wittman called on every bit of knowledge and experience in his arsenal to take on his greatest challenge: working undercover to track the vicious criminals behind what might be the most audacious art theft of all. "From the Hardcover edition."
Reluctant Witness: Memoirs from the Last Year of the
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Mahoney, Brian H. / Mahoney, James J., PUBLISHER: Trafford Publishing, The late James Mahoney went overseas in the spring of as the leader of one of the four bomb squadrons in a B-24 bomb group (the original 492nd) which endured extraordinary losses for 89 days of operation before being disbanded. The enduring mystery of why such an exceptionally well qualified and prepared group suffered so singularly is one of many significant themes he addresses in his 52 vignettes. Mahoney was reassigned to a bomb group with much better luck (the 467th), and finished the war as their Deputy Commander. As both a 'man among men' and a recognized natural leader, he was positioned to note character and ability, and took it as his charge to develop both of these in the course of administering to the technical and demanding business of a combat organization comprising souls. Later in life, wanting to make sense of what he experienced and to record the terrific sacrifice of his peers, he distilled and organized his memories. Overcoming his natural reticence to show his hand emotionally, and fearful that grisly accounts might register as sensational horror instead of sobering lesson, he labored carefully to build for his readers a rich context for his 'war stories'. These memoirs take the reader through the methodology and equipment of aviation and strategic bombing in the era before stand-off weaponry, when hundreds of planes at a time, each with ten-man crews, flew in unpressurized planes through flak and fighter filled skies for hours at a time at 40 degrees below zero, to bomb targets in Hitler-occupied Europe. He introduces the reader to his acquaintances and friends, commanders and charges - a range of memorable rascals, unforgettableheroes, and ordinary mortals showing their true mettle and courage under dire circumstances. Jim Mahoney's account of his 13 months in combat is an engaging mix of timeless morals and enduring humor. The big themes are laid out with common sense, while the practical joke, the stroke of genius, or personal quirk are offered as clear windows to the host of characters and their relationships. These certainly capture the fact and flavor of the daylight bombing campaign over northern Europe and make a contribution to the historical record, but they also transcend that specific time and place, drawing the readers in any era into human drama, played out in all of its variety in the pressure-cooker of wartime. The son's contribution has been to document some of the more unusual aspects of his father's account, so that these can be received as more than just precious memoir - as contributions to the historical record.This has entailed many interviews, travel to remnants of his father's Rackheath and North Pickenham bases in East Anglia, and contemplation of the horrible effectiveness of aerial bombardment on several of the Mighty Eighth Air Force's 'ground zeros' in Germany. Additionally, the son supplies the reader with a variety of material designed to make the dated techn