I spent 10 years of my life in a convent; this is my passage through it and out the other side. There were happy and sad times, of which I describe in detail. I spend 4 and a half of these 10 years in India and these years were both interesting nd funny but most of all it makes compelling reading all in all.
There is a side to Thailand that very few people have seen and experienced. Darren Mcdonough is one of those people. In his new book, “It Should Never Have Happened to Me”, he recounts his experiences during a revealing sojourn in Thailand and takes readers alongside his odyssey through and out of the country’s seamy underbelly of sex, crime and drugs. Timely, redemptive and brutally honest, “It Should Never Have Happened to Me” is both a startling exposé of the dark side of Thailand and a chronicle of one man’s quest to overcome the trauma he experienced there.
This Should Never Have Happened is the true-life experiences of Laura, a child whose mother is present in body only while her father emotionally, physically, and sexually imposes horrific terror upon his seven children. Nightmarish memories are locked away in her mind until shortly following the elderly mans death, when shocking recollections erupt like a violent volcano, spewing years of unspeakable pain and torment. Journey with Laura as she recalls graphic details and images from turbulent days and brutal nights at the hands of her sadistic father. Witness, through the frightened eyes of a small girl as she grows into a young woman, the escalating intensity of one mans savage treatment of the children he was supposed to cherish and protect.
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
The purpose of this book is to emphasize the senselessness of texting and driving at the same time and the dire consequences it had on several people. One man lost his entire family, leading him to try to commit suicide a week and half later, but he was saved by the hospital staff after he was taken the hospital. He very bitter over this, and he abused the secondaEUR"shift LPN who tried to help him. Three days later, he managed to apologize for the abuse, but she took the abuse in stride and told the man she understood the severe depression he was experiencing. However the doctor she was in love at the time hatched a sinister plot after he found out the man had a great deal of wealth. He used the nurse to help him rob the man. It worked out extremely well. The nurse had the power of attorney over her patient, and she managed to embezzle his wealth and then turned it over to the doctor she was in love with, only to find out he was planning to marry another woman. Surprisingly, her patient forgave her and declined to prosecute. Thereafter, she decided to go back to work at the hospital since the man was no longer able to pay her out of pocket. She later married another doctor and eventually had three children with the man still living with them. Another dire consequence is the effect it had on a Hispanic TV anchor woman, since her fiveaEUR"yearaEUR"old daughter was struck as well as a sixtyaEUR"fouraEUR"yearaEUR"old Negro woman. The fiveaEUR"yearaEUR"old lost consciousness, and the Negro woman wound up with a broken back. The frantic anchorwoman took out her rosary and started praying. The child regained consciousness three days later, and her mother was greatly relieved. Unfortunately, the Negro woman who shared an apartment with her son learned that she would walk again but would be in constant pain the rest of her life. She would have wound up in some nursing home, had it not been for neighbor who lived in the apartment across the hall. Before the accident, they became very close friends, and her son had fallen in love with her, although she was white. One night after work, the neighbor went to the Negro woman's apartment to announce her upcoming wedding. When her son got the news later when he came home from work, he was totally devastated and became extremely intoxicated as a result. The following night, he shot his mother at her behest and then killed himself.
In late 1980s rural Kansas, Mara finds herself taking on more than she can chew. Mara’s mother is a woman arguably ahead of her own time when it comes to the investigative day job she holds, and her own progressive take and unwanted oversharing of her thoughts on the day’s larger social justice issues. Mara’s story allows the reader to start their journey following her mother’s divorce from Mara’s abusive stepfather, and make the move with Mara, her two youngest sisters, and her mother from city life to the rural awakenings that seem to only exacerbate her mother’s own baby boomer inclination towards double standards. Sprinkle in three know-it-all rural town biddies to ensure that The Greatest Generation has their say, and it’s no wonder Xer children are now all referred to as “survivors.” Mara is determined to show her mother, and an entire town of rural Kansans, that the only parties in need of a clue are they themselves. As long as Mara remains convinced that she will win in the battle of wills against her seasoned mother, absolutely nothing at all will go sidewise in this book for any of the characters. An authentic throwdown between the baby boomer and Xer generations, delving into everything from childhood abuse, racism, abortion, religion, higher education, and ensuring those familial elitists who we all believe we know (and either love or hate) are well set for the next generation of epic failure and loss. Sure to infuriate all comers, keep everyone laughing and crying in equal measures. Mara and her mother prove that simply being human, and a product of one’s own generational time, cultural norms, and familial expectations is more than sufficient to ensure offensiveness for generations to come. The challenge lies in learning to love and find the best in each other during times when the last thing in the world any of us wants to do is love or find the best in each other. This book comes with every trigger warning known to mankind. If you are a survivor of childhood sexual or physical abuse and trauma, post-abortion trauma, or racial-related childhood or adult traumas, the author of this book cautions the reader. This book is intended for mature audiences over the age of twenty-five. Parents are not advised to purchase this book for young teenage readers.
In It Should Never Happen Again, Dr Mike Lauder questions the value of public inquiries. Every day, we hear about another inquiry being set up, or why the last one failed to deliver the hoped for outcomes. A great deal of time and taxpayers’ money is spent on inquiries and even more on implementing their recommendations, but the author suggests that those conducting inquiries might be considered (by their own test) criminally negligent in the way they do so and that it is no surprise that they do not lead to the learning they should. The focus of Mike Lauder’s research is the gaps between what is known, what knowledge is used by practitioners and those who judge them. He contends that the difference between the judicial perspective and that of practitioners who are judged by the inquiry process creates barriers that impede others from learning. Crucially, inquiry outcomes do not assist the leadership of organisations to improve risk governance. It Should Never Happen Again is based on research into high profile public inquiries and presidential commissions in the UK, the USA, Continental Europe, and elsewhere. Embracing issues ranging from terrorist attacks to pollution, fire and air disasters; criminal cases; banking and bribery scandals; and the state of public services, Mike Lauder contrasts the judicial perspective of those who inquire, the academic perspective of those who know and the practical perspective of those who are required to act, and offers new models for understanding risk and its governance.
Robert Davidson was diagnosed with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis in October 2007 after having difficulties with the fitness test necessary to retain senior level soccer referee status. Rather than give in to the disease and die, he decided to fight and live as normal a life as possible, borrowing from Winston Churchill, the mantra "Never surrender." He and his wife, Heather, believe it was this attitude that led to him "winning" a double lung transplant January 30, 2010, just weeks before he would have died from the disease. This book is about his journey with that life threatening disease. Although it "steals away the sufferer's breath" Robert travelled to China (finding 12,800 feet up the Himalayas too high) and to the highlands of Scotland for his wife's 60th birthday celebration. He describes with great candour, and sometimes humour, the worst symptoms and challenges of Pulmonary Fibrosis. The huge efforts of getting up in the morning, visiting the local pub for "attitude adjustment hour" and just breathing. The relief of the lung transplant that saved his life and the establishment of The Canadian Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation tells us that we should all have hope and never surrender. Hope you enjoy the journey!
Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman 1 Purpose of this Collection What are our obligations with respect to persons who have not yet, and may not ever, come into existence? Few of us believe that we can wrong those whom we leave out of existence altogether—that is, merely possible persons. We may think as well that the directive to be “fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” 1 does not hold up to close scrutiny. How can it be wrong to decline to bring ever more people into existence? At the same time, we think we are clearly ob- gated to treat future persons—persons who don’t yet but will exist—in accordance with certain stringent standards. Bringing a person into an existence that is truly awful—not worth having—can be wrong, and so can bringing a person into an existence that is worth having when we had the alternative of bringing that same person into an existence that is substantially better. We may think as well that our obligations with respect to future persons are triggered well before the point at which those persons commence their existence. We think it would be wrong, for example, to choose today to turn the Earth of the future into a miserable place even if the victims of that choice do not yet exist.