I Was There, Charley! is a unique narrative written by an 88 year old survivor of the Battle of Bataan and the Bataan Death March. In it you will go with him from the early days of basic training to the explosive day when the Japanese bombed Clark Field in the Philippines and he realized Sherman’s “War is Hell” was right on the money. Slave with him in the blazing sun of the Philippines infamous prison camps of O’Donnell and Cabanatuan. Sweat and freeze in the steel mill and on the docks of Hirohata and Fusiki prison camps in Japan. Starve on a diet of rice and greens soup, sleep on bedbug and lice infested bamboo slats. Make the endless trips to the A-frame latrines as you suffer the pangs of Diarrhea and Dysentery. These and hundred of other brutalities only the godless mongols of Japan could inflict. All are told here.
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Winner of the 2019 Foreword INDIES Award Bronze Medal, When Charley Met Emma teaches kids about disability, empathy, and the beauty of friendships with people who are different from you. When Charley goes to the playground and sees Emma, a girl with limb differences who gets around in a wheelchair, he doesn't know how to react at first. But after he and Emma start talking, he learns that different isn't bad, sad, or strange--different is just different, and different is great! This delightful book will help kids think about disability, kindness, and how to behave when they meet someone who is different from them.
"Steinbeck falsified his trip. I am delighted that you went deep into this." -- Paul Theroux, Author of "Deep South" and "The Tao of Travel""No book gave me more of a kick this year than Bill Steigerwald's investigative travelogue 'Dogging Steinbeck.'" -- Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.com"... a wry, wistful, but never angry tale about a great literary deception that lasted way too long." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"... an idol-slaying travelogue of truth.' -- Shawn Macomber, The Weekly StandardFirst journalist Bill Steigerwald took John Steinbeck's classic "Travels With Charley" and used it as a map for his own cross-country road trip in search of America. Then he proved Steinbeck's iconic nonfiction book was a 50-year-old literary fraud. A true story about the triumph of truth.Bill Steigerwald had a brilliant plan for showing how much America has changed in the last half century -- or so he thought. He'd simply retrace the 10,000-mile route John Steinbeck took around the USA in 1960 for his beloved bestseller "Travels With Charley." Then he'd compare the America he saw with the country Steinbeck described in his classic road book. But when the intrepid ex-newspaperman from Pittsburgh started researching Steinbeck's trip he uncovered a shocking literary scoop. Steinbeck's iconic nonfiction book was a fraud. "Travels With Charley" was not just full of fiction. It was a deceptive and dishonest account of the great novelist's actual road trip. Steigerwald made his own road trip exactly 50 years after Steinbeck did. Chasing and fact-checking Steinbeck's ghost for 11,276 miles and 43 days, meeting hundreds of ordinary Americans, often sleeping in the back of his car in Wal-Mart parking lots, he drove from Maine to California to Texas. Despite the Great Recession and national headlines dripping with gloom and doom, Steigerwald discovered an America along the Steinbeck Highway that was big, empty, rich, safe, clean, prosperous and friendly. He didn't just reaffirm his faith in America to withstand the long train of abuse from Washington and Wall Street, however. He also exposed the half-century-old myths of "Travels With Charley," ruffled the PhDs of the country's top Steinbeck scholars and forced "Charley's" publisher to finally tell the truth. Steigerwald is a well-traveled journalist and veteran libertarian columnist. With the spirit of a teenage driver, a dogged pursuit of the facts and a refreshing point of view about America proudly located in the heart of Flyover Country not Manhattan, he spins the story of his ride with Steinbeck's ghost into a provocative, news-making and entertaining American road book.('Travels With Charley' timeline and more at www.truthaboutcharley.comMore Praise & Critiques"I still believe John Steinbeck is one of America's greatest writers and I still love 'Travels With Charley, ' be it fact or fiction or, as Bill Steigerwald doggedly proved, both. While I disagree with a number of Steigerwald's conclusions, I don't dispute his facts. He greatly broadened my understanding of Steinbeck the man and the author, particularly during his last years. And, whether Steigerwald intended it or not, in tracking down the original draft of 'Travels With Charley' he made a significant contribution to Steinbeck's legacy. "Dogging Steinbeck" is a good honest book."-- Curt Gentry, Author of "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders" (with Vincent Bugliosi)I wanted ... first to express my personal admiration for the job you did. Second to tell you that you became a kind of a journalistic hero in my travel-story about Steinbeck, because you did such fantastic detailed research on the subject, and you did it alone, in sometimes-difficult circumstances.- Geert Mak, Dutch journalist/historian and author of "In America: Travels With John Steinbeck"
This forthright autobiography offers fresh, disarmingly funny insights on being a highly conspicuous anomaly and making it work. Overcoming prejudice and hatred, Charley Pride has won the hearts of country music listeners and has garnered fantastic acclaim, winning three Grammys and selling more than 30 million records in the U.S. alone. Photos.
When a clergy couple has a baby it's big news. When they adopt a baby, it's even bigger news. But when they adopt a baby with special needs? Everyone is tested. All the couple wants is to be parents. Little do they know that adopting a baby with Down syndrome breaks all the rules. What the family wants is to talk them out of it. Thus begins a phone-calling campaign of do-gooders warning of the pitfalls. Surely this couple has no idea what they are doing. Surely they realize it's a lifetime choice. What these well-intentioned people don't know is that it's the chance of a lifetime. What the church wants is a typical pastor's family (The handsome Pastor. The thin, perfect pastor's wife. The well-behaved, well-mannered preacher's kid). What they get is the polar opposite, and what they find out is that sometimes even church life can have it's challenges. Throw out the textbooks, step into the classroom of real life and meet a colorful cast of characters (and angels) as you journey through this honest, intimate, hilarious, and poignant look at the marriage between family, church, school, and community, the secret chaos of parenting a special needs child, and the profound impact it has on all who open their hearts with unconditional love. Add to that, a young man named Charley who is unimpressed with his Down syndrome, a refusal to be stereotyped, and an infatuation with girls. Mix in an obsession of going to the prom, and a peer tutor who sees past the barriers of disability, and dreams really do come true. A love story twenty-four years in the making, Life With Charley is a powerful message of hope, faith, and discovery. The reader will laugh and cry while learning from the unlikeliest of sources that the key to happiness is not in trying to fit in, but in just being yourself.
I was surprised when a friend told me he wasn't aware that St. Bernard had ever had a college. After thinking about it for a moment, I realized it had been almost thirty years since St. Bernard College closed its doors. That was what motivated me to write a book about my experience there. I attended St. Bernard College from August 1966 until May 1970. It was a time when St. Bernard College strived with attendance peeking during those years. Also of significance, various sports were putting St. Bernard on the map. The 1967-68 basketball team was outstanding, winning their conference championship in one of the highest scoring games in conference history. In writing the book, I mention many other things that went on there, including campus activities, other sports and the professors, priests and students of the college. The book emphasizes two primary things: that outstanding basketball team of 1967-68 of which I was a member, and the influence Coach Charles Richard had on his athletes, students and the college itself. You will take a walk down memory lane as you read about what it was like at St. Bernard College in the late Sixties.
Although Charles Best is known for discovering insulin, the story of his life neither begins nor ends with that one moment. Not only did he make many other discoveries, he was also one half of an extraordinary couple who, during their almost sixty years together, were involved in many of the significant events of the twentieth century. Margaret & Charley is the story of these two people from their beginnings on the east coast at the turn of the century through the years that followed. Through diaries, scrapbooks, photograph albums, and other documentation, the details of their lives are shared with the reader.
'Those familiar with Patricia Highsmith's particular brand of sinister storytelling will recognize the mayhem Fielding so cunningly unleashes' Publishers Weekly Charley Webb is a smart, beautiful single mother-of-two who left New York City in search of her own version of paradise in Palm Beach, Florida. She now writes a column for the Palm Beach Post, in which she shares her views on sex, shopping and the more entertaining goings-on in her neighbours' lives - much to their disgust. Charley knows she's not the most popular person in town - but then she receives a letter from a genuine fan. Jill Rohmer is a young woman serving time on death row for the murders of three small children - and she wants Charley to write her biography. For there are many hidden truths surrounding the murders Jill is now ready to reveal, including the existence of a mysterious man she calls Jack. But as Charley begins to delve into Jill's background, she starts receiving threatening, anonymous letters regarding her own children. Jill is safely locked away - so does this mean the elusive Jack is still out there somewhere? Charley finds herself in a desperate race against time to unlock the secrets behind the murders before her own family becomes the killer's next target.
Born in 1882 to a family of recent immigrants to America, Alfred Plowman dreamed of becoming a writer. Between 1907 and 1913 he wrote at least 20 short stories that were published in pulp fiction magazines. They appear together here for the first time, along with correspondence, from editors and others, relating to the work. Al Plowman's stories provide a fascinating look into turn of the century St. Louis, Missouri, where he grew up. With only an eighth grade education Al entered the working world to help support his family while simultaneously writing stories and submitting them to publishers in New York. These pulp fiction stories are tales of the moral questions of the time, filled with characters placed in troubling circumstances that require them to make difficult, often painful, decisions. These tales provide a glimpse into the past, into the world of working class people aspiring to better lives at the turn of the twentieth century in a rapidly growing American city.
