About the Book I IRS (My Hell of Life) follows the life and experiences of a young black man as he survives the South but continues to face systemic and institutionalized racism throughout his life, in overt as well as subtle ways. The story moves back and forth in time, painting a vivid, often painful, picture of growing up in the South and later working at the IRS and serving in the military. But despite all the racist blows dealt against him, he never doubted that God exists and loves him. About the Author James M. Moten is a retired IRS agent who served in the US Air Force and Marines. He is the owner of Taxonyourside LLC. He works for two CPA firms and has a degree in finance. His special interest is outer space. Moten has eight children.
This intimate, earthy, outrageously blunt memoir by one of the legendary stars of American theater and film is packed with anecdotes about many of Stapleton's associates, including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Olivier, and Marlon Brando. Told in a voice so direct that it is startling, this compelling biography will be a revelation even to those who know this funny lady best. Photos.
This book uses Western philosophical tradition to make a case for a form of thinking properly associated with ancient China. The book's thesis is that Chinese thinking is concrete rather than formal and abstract, and this is gathered in a variety of ways under the symbol "body thinking." The root of the metaphor is that the human body has a kind of intelligence in its most basic functions. When hungry the body gets food and eats, when tired it sleeps, when amused it laughs. In free people these things happen instinctively but not automatically. The metaphor of body thinking is extended far beyond bodily functions in the ordinary sense to personal and communal life, to social functions and to cultivation of the arts of civilization. As the metaphor is extended, the way to stay concrete in thinking with subtlety becomes a kind of ironic play, a natural adeptness at saying things with silences. Play and indirection are the roads around formalism and abstraction. Western formal thinking, it is argued, can be sharpened by Chinese body thinking to exhibit spontaneity and to produce healthy human thought in a community of cultural variety.
So tender yet courageous is this fierce family memoir that it makes mass incarceration nothing less than a new American tragedy. In a shattering work that shifts between a woman’s private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholar’s fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to what, for many years, felt unanswerable. Why? Why did her cousin, a precocious young man who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up dead? Why did he languish in prison? And why, at the age of fifteen, was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someone’s car? Cuz means both “cousin” and “because.” In this searing memoir, Allen unfurls a "new American story" about a world tragically transformed by the sudden availability of narcotics and the rise of street gangs—a collision, followed by a reactionary War on Drugs, that would devastate not only South Central L.A. but virtually every urban center in the nation. At thirteen, sensitive, talkative Michael Allen was suddenly tossed into this cauldron, a violent world where he would be tried at fifteen as an adult for an attempted carjacking, and where he would be sent, along with an entire generation, cascading into the spiral of the Los Angeles prison system. Throughout her cousin Michael’s eleven years in prison, Danielle Allen—who became a dean at the University of Chicago at the age of thirty-two—remained psychically bonded to her self-appointed charge, visiting Michael in prison and corresponding with him regularly. When she finally welcomed her baby cousin home, she adopted the role of "cousin on duty," devotedly supporting Michael’s fresh start while juggling the demands of her own academic career. As Cuz heartbreakingly reveals, even Allen’s devotion, as unwavering as it was, could not save Michael from the brutal realities encountered by newly released young men navigating the streets of South Central. The corrosive entanglements of gang warfare, combined with a star-crossed love for a gorgeous woman driving a gold Mercedes, would ultimately be Michael’s undoing. In this Ellisonian story of a young African American man’s coming-of-age in late twentieth-century America, and of the family who will always love Michael, we learn how we lost an entire generation.
This book keeps you engaged while following Shirley and her children's journey after her husband is killed. She has to take several jobs in order to maintain a home for her children. Her neighbor and friend, Rita, was playing the Ouija board one night. Shirley's dead husband comes through and tells Rita to give Shirley a message . . . a message where to find the large amount of money he had been stashing away for many years. Rita tricks Shirley into giving her the dea
The Great University of Life is about waking up to a remarkably expanded view of life on Planet Earth. It shares a soul journey many millennia in the making and how the author became aware of his "soul history." He explains that a unique soul history is just the nature of creation. Being engaged in an eternal soul journey is perfectly normal and common to each of us. The only unusual aspect of the soul journey described in The Great University of Life is awareness of it during earthly life. Your soul already knows these things. The author shared his transformation in life understanding, and offers insights to help readers open awareness of their own soul story. He believes that life is created to hold meaning and joy, and advises us to relax and trust the process.
In this sensible, simple-to-follow workbook, based on the acclaimedNo More Sleepless Nights program, one of the world's leadinginsomnia experts gives you the tools to be your own sleeptherapist. Filled with interactive quizzes, sleep logs, andself-evaluation exercises, which may be used in conjunction withthe patented Sleep Timer, the workbook will help you uncover theunderlying cause of your own sleep problem, and then put together apersonalized action plan for getting a good night's rest. With advice on improving sleep hygiene and diet, the rightexercise, relaxation techniques, and more, No More SleeplessNights Workbook helps you conquer your own poor sleep rightnow. More importantly, it equips you to beat it again if it everreturns to disturb your dreams.