Author: Luan Starova
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299287939
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
In My Father’s Books, the first volume in Luan Starova’s multivolume Balkan Saga, he explores themes of history, displacement, and identity under three turbulent regimes—Ottoman, Fascist, and Stalinist—in the twentieth century. Weaving a story from the threads of his parents’ lives from 1926 to 1976, he offers a child’s-eye view of personal relationships in shifting political landscapes and an elegiac reminder of the enduring power of books to sustain a literate culture. Through lyrical waves of memory, Starova reveals his family’s overlapping religious, linguistic, national, and cultural histories. His father left Constantinople as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the young family fled from Albania to Yugoslav Macedonia when Luan was a boy. His parents, cosmopolitan and well-traveled in their youth, and steeped in the cultures of both Orient and Occident, find themselves raising their children in yet another stagnant and repressive state. Against this backdrop, Starova remembers the protected spaces of his childhood—his mother’s walled garden, his father’s library, the cupboard holding the rarest and most precious of his father’s books. Preserving a lost heritage, these books also open up a world that seems wide, deep, and boundless.
Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307394123
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 463
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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman
Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141915307
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise little-known period of its development. A selection of letters and small-scale theological treatises from a group known as the Apostolic Fathers, several of whom were probably disciples of the Apostles, they provide a first-hand account of the early Church and outline a form of early Christianity still drawing on the theology and traditions of its parent religion, Judaism. Included here are the first Epistle of Bishop Clement of Rome, an impassioned plea for harmony; The Epistle of Polycarp; The Epistle of Barnabas; The Didache; and the Seven Epistles written by Ignatius of Antioch - among them his moving appeal to the Romans that they grant him a martyr's death.
Author: Raimond Gaita
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921161
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
Winner of the 1998 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, Romulus, My Father is an iconic and deeply loved book. Romulus Gaita fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christina and their infant son Raimond soon after the end of World War II. Tragic events were to overtake the boy's life, but Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary story to tell about growing up with his father amid the stony paddocks and flowing grasses of country Australia. Written simply and movingly, Romulus, My Father is about how a compassionate and honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life. It is about passion, betrayal and madness, about friendship and the joy and dignity of work, about character and fate, affliction and spirituality. No one will read this wonderful book without an enhanced sense of the possibilities of being alive. 'I know of no other book where the love between father and son has been more beautifully expressed.' Robert Manne
Author: Choman Hardi
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Charting the life of exile and displacement, terror and betrayal, repression and the subjugation of women, family love, flight, survival, and the mixed blessings of a mixed marriage in Britian, this book is a collection of poetry.
Author: Jim Durham
Publisher: BalboaPress
ISBN: 1452549036
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
In many ways, Jim Durham has lived the same life all of us have lived. He was raised by imperfect parents, involved in good and bad relationships, experienced a range of religious influences, and worked hard to be the best person he could be. But a few critical experiences brought the essence of his life out of the shadows. A chance encounter led him to a college he couldnt locate on a map (although Durham claims there is no such thing as coincidence). The death of a son and the challenges of raising a special-needs child are just a few of the powerful influences on his writing. His decision to leave the full-time practice of law, start a new career, and eventually start his own business are all addressed in My Fathers Writings. You will learn lessons he learned, share in the struggles he endured. You will find references to writers and inspirational leaders ranging from Samuel Johnson, the Reverend Peter Gomes, and Wayne Dyer, to Ram Dass, Nelson Mandela, Buddha, and Jesus Christ.
Author: Ruth Stiles Gannett
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486492834
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
A young boy runs away from home to rescue an abused baby dragon held captive to serve as a free twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week ferry for the lazy wild animals living on Wild Island.
Author: Hugh Howey
Publisher: John Joseph Adams
ISBN: 035821324X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Nearly sixty teens awaken halfway through their training, stranded on a harsh alien world with few supplies, no adults, and led by a treacherous artificial intelligence, but their greatest enemy is each other.
Author: Lisa Romeo
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 1943859698
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
Starting with Goodbye begins with loss and ends with love, as a midlife daughter rediscovers her enigmatic father after his death. Lisa has little time for grief, but when her dead dad drops in for “conversations,” his absent presence invites Lisa to examine why the parent she had turned away from in life now holds her spellbound. Lisa reconsiders the affluent upbringing he financed (filled with horses, lavish vacations, bulging closets), and the emotional distance that grew when he retired to Las Vegas and she remained in New Jersey where she and her husband earn moderate incomes. She also confronts death rituals, navigates new family dynamics, while living both in memory and the unfolding moment. In this brutally honest yet compelling portrayal and tribute, Lisa searches for meaning, reconciling the Italian-American father—self-made textile manufacturer who liked newspapers, smoking, Las Vegas craps tables, and solitude—with the complex man she discovers influenced everything, from career choice to spouse. By forging a new father-daughter “relationship,” grief is transformed to hopeful life-affirming redemption. In poignant, often lyrical prose, this powerful, honest book proves that when we dare to love the parent who challenged us most, it’s never too late.
Author: John McCain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060957867
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Senator John McCain learned about life and honor from his grandfather and father, both four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy. Both their careers and their courage helped prepare McCain for the biggest challenge of his life when, as a naval aviator, he was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and seriously injured. When his captors realized McCain's impressive military legacy, they offered him early release. In what has now become a legendary act of heroism, McCain refused the offer and was subsequently tortured, held in solitary confinement, and imprisoned for more than five years. Faith of My Fathers is about what McCain learned from his father and grandfather, and how their example enabled him to survive. Told with humility, grace, and humor, it is a story of three imperfect men who faced adversity and emerged with their honor intact. It is a story to inspire and instruct, one that shows what fathers give to their sons, and what, ultimately, endures.
