The Journey Home
The Journey Home

Author: Radhanath Swami

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 1608879852

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The story of one man’s journey from his youth in suburban Chicago to an adult in spiritual India and a world of mystics, yogis, and gurus. Within this extraordinary memoir, Radhanath Swami weaves a colorful tapestry of adventure, mysticism, and love. Readers follow Richard Slavin from the suburbs of Chicago to the caves of the Himalayas as he transforms from young seeker to renowned spiritual guide. The Journey Home is an intimate account of the steps to self-awareness and also a penetrating glimpse into the heart of mystic traditions and the challenges that all souls must face on the road to inner harmony and a union with the Divine. Through near-death encounters, apprenticeships with advanced yogis, and years of travel along the pilgrim’s path, Radhanath Swami eventually reaches the inner sanctum of India’s mystic culture and finds the love he has been seeking. It is a tale told with rare candor, immersing the reader in a journey that is at once engaging, humorous, and heartwarming. Praise for The Journey Home “Here is an inspiring chapter of “our story” of spiritual pilgrimage to the East. It shows the inner journey of awakening in a fascinating and spellbinding way.” —Ram Dass, author, Be Here Now “He tells his story with remarkable honest—the temptations of the 1970s, his doubts, hopes, and disappointments, the culture shock, and the friendships found and lost . . . Add a zest of danger, suspense, and surprise, and Radhanath Swami’s story is a deep, genuine memoir that reads like a novel.” —Brigitte Sion, assistant professor of Religious Studies, New York University

The Long Journey Home
The Long Journey Home

Author: Margaret Robison

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-05-17

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1588369226

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First introduced to the world in her sons’ now-classic memoirs—Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors and John Elder Robison’s Look Me in the Eye—Margaret Robison now tells her own haunting and lyrical story. A poet and teacher by profession, Robison describes her Southern Gothic childhood, her marriage to a handsome, brilliant man who became a split-personality alcoholic and abusive husband, the challenges she faced raising two children while having psychotic breakdowns of her own, and her struggle to regain her sanity. Robison grew up in southern Georgia, where the façade of 1950s propriety masked all sorts of demons, including alcoholism, misogyny, repressed homosexuality, and suicide. She met her husband, John Robison, in college, and together they moved up north, where John embarked upon a successful academic career and Margaret brought up the children and worked on her art and poetry. Yet her husband’s alcoholism and her collapse into psychosis, and the eventual disintegration of their marriage, took a tremendous toll on their family: Her older son, John Elder, moved out of the house when he was a teenager, and her younger son, Chris (who later renamed himself Augusten), never completed high school. When Margaret met Dr. Rodolph Turcotte, the therapist who was treating her husband, she felt understood for the first time and quickly fell under his idiosyncratic and, eventually, harmful influence. Robison writes movingly and honestly about her mental illness, her shortcomings as a parent, her difficult marriage, her traumatic relationship with Dr. Turcotte, and her two now-famous children, Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison, who have each written bestselling memoirs about their family. She also writes inspiringly about her hard-earned journey to sanity and clarity. An astonishing and enduring story, The Long Journey Home is a remarkable and ultimately uplifting account of a complicated, afflicted twentieth-century family.

The Journey Home
The Journey Home

Author: Jorge Posada

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 006237964X

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The legendary New York Yankee catcher tells the incredible story of his personal journey, offering an unexpected, behind-the-plate view of his career, his past, and the father-son bond that fueled his love of the game. For seventeen seasons, the name Jorge Posada was synonymous with New York Yankees baseball. A fixture behind home plate throughout the Yankees biggest successes, Jorge became the Yankees' star catcher almost immediately upon his arrival, and in the years that followed, his accomplishments, work ethic, and leadership established him as one of the greatest Yankees ever to put on the uniform. Now, in this long-awaited memoir, Jorge Posada details his journey to home plate, sharing a remarkable, generational account of his journey from the ball fields of Puerto Rico to the House that Ruth built. Offering a view from behind the mask unlike any other, Jorge discusses the key moments and plays that shaped teams and forged a legacy that came to define Yankee baseball for a generation. With pitch-by-pitch recall, Jorge looks back across the years, explaining how—as part of the Core Four alongside Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera—he helped to reestablish the Yankees as a dynasty and win five World Series. Going beyond his all-star career, Jorge also shares his life in full for the first time, examining how his remarkable journey to the big leagues began in the most unexpected of ways. Digging into his cultural roots in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, Jorge illuminates three generations of cherished father-son relationships that have made him the man he is today. At the center is the deep bond he shares with his father and namesake, Jorge Sr, who escaped Cuba and would eventually mold his son to be a ball player, honing his talent and instilling in him the drive necessary to fulfill his childhood dream of playing in the Bronx. Complete with sixteen pages of color photographs, this touching and earnest memoir is a testament to hard work and a celebration of the generational gift of baseball between fathers and sons.

Roots and Sky
Roots and Sky

Author: Christie Purifoy

Publisher: Revell

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1493401793

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When Christie Purifoy arrived at Maplehurst that September, she was heavily pregnant with both her fourth child and her dreams of creating a sanctuary that would be a fixed point in her busily spinning world. The sprawling Victorian farmhouse sitting atop a Pennsylvania hill held within its walls the possibility of a place where her family could grow, where friends could gather, and where Christie could finally grasp and hold the thing we all long for--home. In lyrical, contemplative prose, Christie slowly unveils the small trials and triumphs of that first year at Maplehurst--from summer's intense heat and autumn's glorious canopy through winter's still whispers and spring's gentle mercies. Through stories of planting and preserving, of opening the gates wide to neighbors, and of learning to speak the language of a place, Christie invites readers into the joy of small beginnings and the knowledge that the kingdom of God is with us here and now. Anyone who has felt the longing for home, who yearns to reconnect with the beauty of nature, and who values the special blessing of deep relationships with family and friends will love finding themselves in this story of earthly beauty and soaring hope.

Running with Scissors
Running with Scissors

Author: Augusten Burroughs

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1429902523

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The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir from Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors, now a Major Motion Picture! Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs.... Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Cathedral of the Wild
Cathedral of the Wild

Author: Boyd Varty

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1400069858

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“This is a gorgeous, lyrical, hilarious, important book. . . . Read this and you may find yourself instinctively beginning to heal old wounds: in yourself, in others, and just maybe in the cathedral of the wild that is our true home.”—Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Own North Star Boyd Varty had an unconventional upbringing. He grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, a place where man and nature strive for balance, where perils exist alongside wonders. Founded more than eighty years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty’s father and uncle, visionaries of the restoration movement. But it wasn’t just a sanctuary for the animals; it was also a place for ravaged land to flourish again and for the human spirit to be restored. When Nelson Mandela was released after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, he came to the reserve to recover. Cathedral of the Wild is Varty’s memoir of his life in this exquisite and vast refuge. At Londolozi, Varty gained the confidence that emerges from living in Africa. “We came out strong and largely unafraid of life,” he writes, “with the full knowledge of its dangers.” It was there that young Boyd and his equally adventurous sister learned to track animals, raised leopard and lion cubs, followed their larger-than-life uncle on his many adventures filming wildlife, and became one with the land. Varty survived a harrowing black mamba encounter, a debilitating bout with malaria, even a vicious crocodile attack, but his biggest challenge was a personal crisis of purpose. An intense spiritual quest takes him across the globe and back again—to reconnect with nature and “rediscover the track.” Cathedral of the Wild is a story of transformation that inspires a great appreciation for the beauty and order of the natural world. With conviction, hope, and humor, Varty makes a passionate claim for the power of the wild to restore the human spirit. Praise for Cathedral of the Wild “Extremely touching . . . a book about growth and hope.”—The New York Times “It made me cry with its hard-won truths about human and animal nature. . . . Both funny and deeply moving, this book belongs on the shelf of everyone who seeks healing in wilderness.”—BookPage

The Journey Home (Disney/Pixar The Good Dinosaur)
The Journey Home (Disney/Pixar The Good Dinosaur)

Author: Bill Scollon

Publisher: RH/Disney

Published: 2015-10-13

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 0736432043

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In theaters November 25, 2015, Disney/Pixar The Good Dinosaur is a humorous and exciting original story about Arlo, a lively Apatosaurus with a big heart. After a traumatic event unsettles Arlo's family, he sets out on a remarkable journey, gaining an unlikely companion along the way--a human boy. This Step 2 Step into Reading leveled reader based on the film is perfect for boys and girls ages 4 to 6. Step 2 Readers use basic vocabulary and short sentences to tell simple stories. For children who recognize familiar words and can sound out new words with help.

My Long Trip Home
My Long Trip Home

Author: Mark Whitaker

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1451627564

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In a dramatic, moving work of historical reporting and personal discovery, Mark Whitaker, award-winning journalist, sets out to trace the story of what happened to his parents, a fascinating but star-crossed interracial couple, and arrives at a new understanding of the family dramas that shaped their lives—and his own. His father, “Syl” Whitaker, was the charismatic grandson of slaves who grew up the child of black undertakers from Pittsburgh and went on to become a groundbreaking scholar of Africa. His mother, Jeanne Theis, was a shy World War II refugee from France whose father, a Huguenot pastor, helped hide thousands of Jews from the Nazis and Vichy police. They met in the mid-1950s, when he was a college student and she was his professor, and they carried on a secret romance for more than a year before marrying and having two boys. Eventually they split in a bitter divorce that was followed by decades of unhappiness as his mother coped with self-recrimination and depression while trying to raise her sons by herself, and his father spiraled into an alcoholic descent that destroyed his once meteoric career. Based on extensive interviews and documentary research as well as his own personal recollections and insights, My Long Trip Home is a reporter’s search for the factual and emotional truth about a complicated and compelling family, a successful adult’s exploration of how he rose from a turbulent childhood to a groundbreaking career, and, ultimately, a son’s haunting meditation on the nature of love, loss, identity, and forgiveness.