This groundbreaking book is the only honest, balanced and complete introduction to the frightening online eating disorder underground. Explore a world that no one wants to believe exists: learn the secret code words, debunk the myths (find out why thousands of young girls are really flooding these sites) and read hundreds of anonymous rants, declarations of commitment and pleas for help from Ana's girls. This book does not promote eating disorders. It exposes the undeniable fact that thousands of young people are struggling in isolation with very real, life threatening disorders and we, as a society have not been able to help them. If we ignore this information, we choose to ignore their cry and lose the opportunity to gain potent insight into their world. Ana's girls are our children, our sisters, our spouses, our patients and our students; they are represented in every class and race. No community is sheltered from this pain. No community is complete without their health. Let us take the first step towards becoming whole by hearing their cry.
After being targeted by a coordinated campaign of threats and media harassment, Ewurabena was forced to flee Ghana with her young family. But the last thing she expected was for President Obama to endorse the journalist behind it all.
In 1603, Paru a young concubine is on the run. A precious jewel, her only possession has been stolen. And now the mysterious assailants are after her life. Friendless and penniless, Paru decides to fight back. Her razor sharp wit and her sensuous charms bring her closer to danger and a chance to start a new life. Meanwhile, the Empire is facing a crisis. An heir has to be chosen. Who will rule the magnificent Mughal Empire? Will it be Emperor Akbar’s alcoholic son – Jahangir – who is intolerant of other religions and infatuated with wine and women? Or his young son Khusrau, who is still a child? The noblemen choose neither. They place their hopes on a prince who has never been seen. The elusive third prince, fathered by Akbar long ago on a battlefield. The only way to find the Prince is by tracking down a precious jewel Akbar had given the mother... Will the Third Prince take over the Empire? Will Paru wrest back what is rightfully hers?
“Truly thrilling. Daniel Levin brilliantly conveys both the menace and the evil of Middle Eastern intrigue, and some victories of human kindness over cruelty and despair.” —Daniel Kahneman, New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow “In laying bare the raw human toll of the ferocious and cruel Syrian conflict, Proof of Life asks the reader to make a choice between cynicism and compassion.” —Ayaan Hirsi Ali, New York Times bestselling author of Infidel Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days. Levin, a lawyer turned armed-conflict negotiator, uses his extensive contacts to chase leads throughout the Middle East, meeting with powerful sheikhs, drug lords, and sex traffickers in his pursuit of the truth. He also discovers remarkable people who retain their essential goodness and spirit in the face of adversity. In Proof of Life, Levin dives deep into a shadowy world where few have access—an underground industry of war where everything is for sale, including arms, drugs, and even people. He offers a fascinating study of how people use leverage to get what they want from one another and where no one does a favor without wanting something in return, whether it’s immediately or years down the road. Proof of Life is a fast-paced thriller wrapped in a memoir, a must-read for anyone interested in power dynamics, international affairs, the Middle East, or our growing number of forever wars.
A brilliant, deeply reported narrative about religious extremism, radicalization, and the bonds of family: the story of an American woman who traveled to ISIS-controlled Syria with her two children and extremist husband and the sister back home who worked tirelessly to help her escape. Raised in a restrictive Jehovah’s Witness community in Arkansas, sisters Lori and Sam Sally spent their teens and twenties moving around the South and Midwest, working low-wage jobs and falling in and out of relationships. Caught in an eternal sibling rivalry—where younger, quieter Lori protected outgoing, reckless Sam—the two women eventually married a pair of brothers and settled down in Elkhart, Indiana, just around the corner from each other. And it was there that their lives totally diverged. While Lori was ultimately able to leave her violent marriage, Sam was drawn deeper into hers—and deeper into the control of a husband who slowly radicalized, via the internet, into a jihadist. With their daughter and Sam’s child from a previous relationship, the couple moved to Raqqa, Syria, where Moussa fought for ISIS and Sam, who never even converted to Islam, attempted to survive and protect her children from airstrikes, extremist indoctrination, and the brutality of the ISIS system. In Raqqa, Sam’s oldest son appeared in several Islamic State propaganda videos, and she participated in ISIS’s practice of enslaving Yezidi women and children. Sam says her husband coerced her to move, but Lori—who quit her job and worked tirelessly to try get Sam out of Syria—isn’t so sure. American Girls combines an in-depth examination of Sam and Lori's lives with on-the-ground reporting from Iraq, providing readers with a rare glimpse into the world of American women who join ISIS. Interweaving deeply reported narrative drama with expert analysis, the book explores how the subjugation and abuse experienced by women in the United States, women like Sam and Lori, are the same themes that enable the rise of patriarchal, extremist ideologies like the one espoused by ISIS. Fascinating, resonant, and moving, American Girls is an unforgettable journey—from small-town Arkansas to Raqqa, from domestic abuse to a militant terrorist organization—all told through the extraordinary story of two close, complicated sisters.
How does sexual consent work? How do we know that another person really wants to have sex with us? Why do people sometimes give in to sex that they are not in the mood for? And how come it is sometimes difficult to draw a sharp line between sex and assault? Dynamics of Sexual Consent addresses these questions based on deeply personal interviews with 20 Swedish women and men of various ages and sexual orientations. In doing so, it contributes to understandings of sexual consent and sexual grey areas through its combination of conceptual rigour, analytical detail and empirical richness. While starting in the legal definition of consent as voluntary participation, the book broadens the discussion to a wider sociological and philosophical sphere where gendered power dynamics and relational dependencies challenge simplistic understandings of voluntariness. Contesting tendencies to see miscommunication as the key problem related to consent, it shows that emotional aspects are often the main factor standing in the way of genuinely consensual interactions. While the analysis is informed by a gender perspective emphasizing the gendered power asymmetries of heterosexuality, it also foregrounds men’s vulnerability and the power dynamics of samesex interactions. A key argument of the book is that, given the contextual and ambiguous nature of sexual interactions, it is impossible to delineate unequivocal and concretely applicable guidelines for what counts as consent. To compensate for the lack of universal, fail-safe rules, what is needed is an intensified collective reflection on consent and sexual grey areas, which can make individuals better equipped to identify and respect their own and others’ boundaries. An empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated contribution to understanding of sexual consent and sexual grey areas, Dynamics of Sexual Consent will be of interest to scholars and students of gender studies, sociology and criminology.
Idea 1:Norseen, a teenage girl with special needs, suffers from deafness; she has a superpower that allows her to enter the world of dreams, inherited from her grandmother who had been alluding to her, before she actually told her before her death that she will be waiting for her there.Only pure-hearted are allowed to enter that world. Norseen enters that odd world where she becomes a superhero, and where she is waited by its folk to save their world, and, thereafter, to save the real world.There exists a tiny creature that looks like a firefly; it clings to the chosen person to save the world of dreams, when he fights the evil Tera who ruins that beautiful world and then affects the person's life and his reality.Tera waits for the hero that will allow her to leave the world of dreams and take on the real world, that is why she always fights, but Norseen stays in her way, until she eventually eliminates her. In the end, the events reach their peak, and Norseen encounters many surprises.In order for Norseen to take on Tera, she needs to pass through seven doors; therefore, Norseen gathers a team of her friends with special needs, because only people with pure hearts can enter the world of dreams and save it. Each one of them has a different superpower, but Norseen has the strongest one.The aim of the series: to teach the children to accept the other and accept those with special needs who will save the whole world in the story.
