Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War & Family

Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War & Family PDF Author: Ted Neill
Publisher: Tenebray Press
ISBN: 1730959733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
SILVER MEDAL WINNER - E-Lit Book Awards - 2019 SILVER MEDAL WINNER - Readers Favorite - 2019 WINNER - International Book Awards, American Book Festival - 2019 FINALIST - Silver Falchion Killer Nashville Award - 2019 DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE - Independent Press Awards - 2019 5 STAR REVIEW READERS FAVORITE - 2019 What did it mean to be a hero in 1944? What does it mean today? On the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, these are the questions we ask ourselves as the world faces resurgent nativism, deep social divisions, and rising xenophobia. It’s no exaggeration to say that the gravity of our crises today echoes back to the crossroads of 1944. Finding St. Lo presents us with two distinct voices from the past. The authors are Gordon Cross and Robert Fowler: a medic and sergeant who served in the 134th US Infantry Regiment. In their mobilization, Cross and Fowler witnessed horrific destruction alongside compelling heroism. Their firsthand accounts are joined here by essays by Fowler’s grandson, Ted Neill. Neill explores the scars of war left by his grandfather’s post-traumatic stress and its effects across three generations of family. Through Neill’s reflections, three stories weave into one. The voices of soldiers, family members, and trauma specialists come together in prose that is readable and relatable. The photography of Gordon Cross, published here for the first time, provides an unparalleled window into the scenes of devastation and loss. But Cross also captures the stirrings of recovery and the foundations of a post-war peace that benefited billions—a peace that may endure, if we can be good stewards. Finding St. Lo examines a time in US history that was a crucible for the identity of a generation and the destiny of a nation. These stories and photos demonstrate, without question, that the values of self-sacrifice, community, courage, and compassion that steered a generation in 1944 can still serve us—and save us—today.

Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War & Family

Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War & Family PDF Author: Ted Neill
Publisher: Tenebray Press
ISBN: 1730959733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
SILVER MEDAL WINNER - E-Lit Book Awards - 2019 SILVER MEDAL WINNER - Readers Favorite - 2019 WINNER - International Book Awards, American Book Festival - 2019 FINALIST - Silver Falchion Killer Nashville Award - 2019 DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE - Independent Press Awards - 2019 5 STAR REVIEW READERS FAVORITE - 2019 What did it mean to be a hero in 1944? What does it mean today? On the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, these are the questions we ask ourselves as the world faces resurgent nativism, deep social divisions, and rising xenophobia. It’s no exaggeration to say that the gravity of our crises today echoes back to the crossroads of 1944. Finding St. Lo presents us with two distinct voices from the past. The authors are Gordon Cross and Robert Fowler: a medic and sergeant who served in the 134th US Infantry Regiment. In their mobilization, Cross and Fowler witnessed horrific destruction alongside compelling heroism. Their firsthand accounts are joined here by essays by Fowler’s grandson, Ted Neill. Neill explores the scars of war left by his grandfather’s post-traumatic stress and its effects across three generations of family. Through Neill’s reflections, three stories weave into one. The voices of soldiers, family members, and trauma specialists come together in prose that is readable and relatable. The photography of Gordon Cross, published here for the first time, provides an unparalleled window into the scenes of devastation and loss. But Cross also captures the stirrings of recovery and the foundations of a post-war peace that benefited billions—a peace that may endure, if we can be good stewards. Finding St. Lo examines a time in US history that was a crucible for the identity of a generation and the destiny of a nation. These stories and photos demonstrate, without question, that the values of self-sacrifice, community, courage, and compassion that steered a generation in 1944 can still serve us—and save us—today.

Two Years of Wonder

Two Years of Wonder PDF Author: Ted Neill
Publisher: Tenebray Press
ISBN: 154658188X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
WINNER NAUTILUS AWARD - SILVER MEDAL 2018 WINNER INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD - 2018 WINNER GOLD MEDAL - LITERARY TITAN AWARD - 2019 WINNER SILVER MEDAL - READERS FAVORITE, MEMOIR - 2019 FINALIST NEXT GEN BOOK AWARDS - 2018 BEST MEMOIR FINALIST SILVER FALCHION AWARD - 2019 FIVE STAR REVIEW FROM READERS' FAVORITE September 25, 2012 Ted Neill picked up a knife to cut his wrists open and kill himself. Post hospitalization and treatment for major depressive disorder, he wrote Two Years of Wonder, a memoir based on his journey towards recovery. In it, he examines the experience that left him with such despair: living and working for two years at an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya. Neill interweaves his story with the experiences of Oliver, Miriam, Ivy, Harmony, Tabitha, Sofie, Nea, and other children, exploring their own paths of trauma, survival, and resilience. In prose that is by turns poetic, confessional, and brutal, Neill with the children he comes alongside, strive to put the pieces of their fractured lives back together as they search for meaning and connection, each trying to reclaim their humanity and capacity to love in the face of inexplicable suffering and loss. Two Years of Wonder has been compared to Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, and Brene Brown's Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead. Fan's of these authors, their vulnerability, their depth, and their focus on social issues will find that Neill's story and the story of the children he knew in Kenya,resonates.

Reaper Moon: Race War in the Post Apocalypse

Reaper Moon: Race War in the Post Apocalypse PDF Author: Ted Neill
Publisher: Ted Neill
ISBN: 1791550940
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
When pandemic meets politics the US fractures. Unite to survive. The human epidermis deterioration virus (HEDV) has obliterated the population. Billions have died worldwide. The lucky few who survived are now faced with rising racial tensions and white supremacist armies determined to eradicate all people of color and anyone who tries to stand in their way, including Scot Jameson’s mostly white community. Left for dead, Scot is rescued by a young black girl, Coby, and together they join an integrated community called The Orchard. There they meet Kimberly Tomlinson a charismatic and brilliant young leader who becomes a surrogate mother to Coby and confidant to Scot. The Orchard is soon destroyed by an attack from a rival white supremacist army, Right Nation. While Coby escapes, Scot and Kimberly are both taken prisoner. Separated, Scot and Kimberly must fight to survive, escape, and reunite with Coby. Kimberly’s efforts put her on a collision course with a ring of cruel human traffickers specializing in the exploitation of women of color. Scot, on his own journey with various allies and adversaries, must confront his own biases, ignorance, privilege, and prejudices. As they gather other surviving communities together in an uneasy alliance, the survivors of the The Orchard try to find a way to combat hate, defeat Right Nation, and put an end to the fever of white nationalism. "The writing is some of the best I've seen in a long time, and the story line is unlike anything I've ever read before . . . . . . it's not so hard to imagine something like this actually happening. Highly Recommended." By Sheri Hoyte for Reader Views. Full review: readerviews.com/reviewneillreapermoon NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR - CONTENT WARNING & NOTE ON RACIST LANGUAGE: One of the most frequent comments from readers and reviewers has been around a "content warning," for Reaper Moon. It's a fair request. The book is far more violent and dark than anything I ever have written, but part of the decision to include racist language, racially motivated violence, was to depict in an unfiltered way the trauma of racism and white supremacy. Even if Reaper Moon is built on a Sci-Fi premise, some of the content might be closer to a horror story. That said, the violence of white supremacy, from slavery, to lynchings, to police shootings of people of color is nothing short of a horror story and I felt that in at least one of my books wherein I focus on these issues, I would not pull back from the terror, pain, and trauma of racism. After all, people of color, throughout history, have not been able to opt-out of oppression and the violence—physical, emotional, and psychological—that it entails. That said, I know the relationship between reader and book is an intimate one. I don't hold it against anyone if they choose not to step into the world of Reaper Moon—only that they acknowledge that is their privilege not to. I understand though. At times there is enough horror in real life (and victims certainly don't need to relive it). I try to balance that reality with the need to bear witness to the suffering inflicted on others who otherwise are hidden by the structures of marginalization. Potential readers have also challenged me on whether or not this book just turns the "hate" around and is "racist" in itself or even unfair to white people. I'd say this much: one of the challenges of writing this book was to reflect the humanity of all the characters even those whom I disagreed with down to the core of my soul. The first few drafts of Reaper Moon read very much like a fight between "bad guys" and "good guys." Many characters came off like cartoons, flat, one dimensional. The bad guys were all bad and good guys all good. No nuance, no complexity. It wasn't good writing, it didn't make for good reading, and it sounded polemical. It didn't challenge anyone's assumptions or thinking. So before I did further revisions I spent a month researching white supremacists, watching their films, visiting their websites, reading their literature. I wasn't swayed in the least by the content but what I did sense was that there was terrible trauma (often childhood) and real self loathing behind the racism, fear, and hate I heard from these white men (and some women). I learned from watching that racist people hold on to their hatred of others because without it, they'd have to sit with their own hate for themselves. It's sad. After that, I went back to try to incorporate those realities into my depictions of the white supremacists in the book. I ended up adding 15 chapters and a number of characters! I don't know if it is possible to make a white supremacist sympathetic, but I felt obliged to represent their humanity, since in the end, that is the only thing that will get us out of this mess—recognizing we're all human and that there is inherent dignity, worth, and value in that identity. It is when we're failing to see that, that prejudice begins and hate takes root. Getting into white supremacists’ heads also revealed to me the truism that the lower an individual's self esteem, the higher likelihood they will claim their race, their nation, their religion is superior to all others. It reminded me that although the structures of racism are social and it is perpetuated by policy, it roots lie in the individual psyche and the work to dismantle it takes place at the inter- and intra-personal levels, in addition to social and policy arenas. We certainly don't lack for entry points to jump in and contribute to change.

Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs

Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs PDF Author: Ted Neill
Publisher: Ted Neill
ISBN:
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Liam Reilly is an unattached, occasionally delinquent, teenage ward of the state. He lives in a university workshop. He rides a bike made of bamboo. His best friend is an AI named Eiann.Oh, he’s a genius too.Liam is content with his life, until a demon named Narvicous Scalegrim Gorgonzola Grimmold Maximus the Terrible (Gerald for short) appears in his workshop eating Cheez-Its and twerking to Cardi B. When a bunch of frat boys open a gate to hell in their basement foosball lounge, it falls on Liam, Eiann, and Gerald to stop the demon army waiting on the other side. Liam—an avowed loner—is stuck working with a bunch of other social outcasts: Jeanie, a T-shirt entrepreneur; her excessively “woke” cousin Mitchell; their androgynous friend Jax a.k.a. Jax Vader a.k.a. DJ Max Spinz; and a mysterious, wise-cracking, East African ninja-assassin, Esmeralda—who also happens to be blind—except when she visits other dimensions; that’s a different story. Thrown together with a busload of Latin children trying to escape a migrant detention facility and an underworld demigod, Liam and his lab partners—Eww, please don’t call them friends—basically have to save the world.If they can manage to save each other first.Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs is what you get when you take the supernatural capers of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Sequence, add in the unabashed nerdiness of Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, followed by a helping of the irreverent edginess of an Angie Thomas novel. Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs is current. It is socially relevant. Don’t call it a sequel! It’s not. But it is a part of an interconnected world, the Snog Team Six Series, with some returning characters, reoccurring themes, not to mention some running jokes—if you are hip enough to get them, wink wink, nudge nudge. Challenge accepted?

Happiness is a Warm Foxhole

Happiness is a Warm Foxhole PDF Author: S. Keith Kreitman
Publisher: Nomoreboxes LLC
ISBN: 9780998389721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
At the age of 19, S. Keith Kreitman was drafted into the Army and sent to the front lines as a combat medic in the European Theatre in the final days of World War II. He was thrust into the final, brutal battles with Allied troops as they broke through the German lines and ended the war in Europe, and stationed in Heidelberg as the occupation began. Highly decorated for courage under fire, he never considered himself a hero, but a citizen-soldier who held no illusions about war. The gritty realistic account of combat is balanced with the touching human and occasionally humorous accounts of the experience of military service, war and the aftermath.

The Best We Could Do

The Best We Could Do PDF Author: Thi Bui
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613129300
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

Finding Bix

Finding Bix PDF Author: Brendan Wolfe
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609385071
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Bix Beiderbecke was one of the first great legends of jazz. Among the most innovative cornet soloists of the 1920s and the first important white player, he invented the jazz ballad and pointed the way to “cool” jazz. But his recording career lasted just six years; he drank himself to death in 1931—at the age of twenty-eight. It was this meteoric rise and fall, combined with the searing originality of his playing and the mystery of his character—who was Bix? not even his friends or family seemed to know—that inspired subsequent generations to imitate him, worship him, and write about him. It also provoked Brendan Wolfe’s Finding Bix a personal and often surprising attempt to connect music, history, and legend. A native of Beiderbecke’s hometown of Davenport, Iowa, Wolfe grew up seeing Bix’s iconic portrait on everything from posters to parking garages. He never heard his music, though, until cast to play a bit part in an Italian biopic filmed in Davenport. Then, after writing a newspaper review of a book about Beiderbecke, Wolfe unexpectedly received a letter from the late musician's nephew scolding him for getting a number of facts wrong. This is where Finding Bix begins: in Wolfe's good-faith attempt to get the facts right. What follows, though, is anything but straightforward, as Wolfe discovers Bix Beiderbecke to be at the heart of furious and ever-timely disputes over addiction, race and the origins of jazz, sex, and the influence of commerce on art. He also uncovers proof that the only newspaper interview Bix gave in his lifetime was a fraud, almost entirely plagiarized from several different sources. In fact, Wolfe comes to realize that the closer he seems to get to Bix, the more the legend retreats.

The Family Nobody Wanted

The Family Nobody Wanted PDF Author: Helen Doss
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
ISBN: 1555538495
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Doss's charming, touching, and at times hilarious chronicle tells how each of the children, representing white, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Mexican, and Native American backgrounds, came to her and husband Carl, a Methodist minister. She writes of the way the "unwanted" feeling was erased with devoted love and understanding and how the children united into one happy family. Her account reads like a novel, with scenes of hard times and triumphs described in vivid prose. The Family Nobody Wanted, which inspired two films, opened doors for other adoptive families and was a popular favorite among parents, young adults, and children for more than thirty years. Now this edition will introduce the classic to a new generation of readers. An epilogue by Helen Doss that updates the family's progress since 1954 will delight the book's loyal legion of fans around the world.

Boy Soldier of the Confederacy

Boy Soldier of the Confederacy PDF Author: Kathleen Gorman
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809327225
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Johnnie Wickersham was fourteen when he ran away from his Missouri home to fight for the Confederacy. Fifty years after the war, he wrote his memoir at the request of family and friends and distributed it privately in 1915. Boy Soldier of the Confederacy: The Memoir of Johnnie Wickersham offers not only a rare look into the Civil War through the eyes of a child but also a coming-of-age story. Edited by Kathleen Gorman, the volume presents a new introduction and annotations that explain how the war was glorified over time, the harsh realities suppressed in the nation’s collective memory. Gorman describes a man who nostalgically remembers the boy he once was. She maintains that the older Wickersham who put pen to paper decades later likely glorified and embellished the experience, accepting a polished interpretation of his own past. Wickersham recounts that during his first skirmish he was "wild with the ecstasy of it all" and notes that he was "too young to appreciate the danger." The memoir traces his participation in an October 1861 Confederate charge against Springfield, Missouri; his fight at the battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862; his stay at a plantation he calls Fairyland; and the battle of Corinth. The volume details Wickersham’s assignment as an orderly for General Sterling Price, his capture at Vicksburg in 1863, his parole, and later his service with General John Bell Hood for the 1864 fighting around Atlanta. Wickersham also describes the Confederate surrender in New Orleans, the reconciliation of the North and the South, and his own return and reunification with his family. While Gorman’s incisive introduction and annotations allow readers to consider how memories can be affected by the passage of time, Wickersham’s boy-turned-soldier tale offers readers an engaging narrative, detailing the perceptions of a child on the cusp of adulthood during a turbulent period in our nation’s history.

In Her Place

In Her Place PDF Author: Katharine T. Corbett
Publisher: Missouri History Museum
ISBN: 9781883982300
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This new addition to the popular guidebook series explores women's experiences and the impact of their activities on the history and landscape of St. Louis. When the city was founded, most St. Louisans believed that "a woman's place is in the home," in the house of her father, husband, or master. Over the years, women pushed out the boundaries of their lives into the public arena, and in doing so they changed the face of St. Louis. In Her Place is a guide to the changing definition of a woman's place in St. Louis, beginning with the colonial period and ending with the 1960s. Each chapter explores the experiences of women during a specific time period and identifies the sites of some of their public activities on a map of the city created from historical sources. Along the way, readers will meet such significant St. Louis women as Harriet Scott, Susan Blow, Edna Gellhorn, and Philippine Duchesne and learn about the activities of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, the Sisters of Charity, the League of Women Voters, and the Harper Married Ladies' Club. The book also includes four tours of the St. Louis region addressing the themes of the book and identifying significant buildings, homes, and other key sites. Current photographs will help readers locate the sites on detailed maps. An up-to-date bibliography and resource listing make this an invaluable guide for anyone interested in studying the history of women in the region.