Hal Sirowitz, the Poet Laureate of Queens, offers a funny and tender portrait of his father in this follow up to his acclaimed Mother Said and My Therapist Said. Sirowitz's mother may have dominated the household with her overly protective advice, but his father had a few bon mots to impart to his son as well. In Father Said, he teaches Hal important lessons such as "What to Do When You Burp" and "How to Avoid Being Idle." Mr. Sirowitz's cautionary tales are as idiosyncratic as his wife's: "When your mother tells me don't I think / it's time we got a better washing machine, / Father said, I tell her, Let it decide. / If it breaks down, we'll get a better one."
Dunbar H. Ogden's profile and case study in the courage of his father (also named Dunbar H. Ogden), a white Presbyterian minister who stood up to racism in his town and in his congregation during the Little Rock, Arkansas, school integration episode in 1957, and the deep mental depression this clergyman fell into later in his life.
Amy Carmichael voices the inner thoughts we all have that bring discouragement, doubt and fear, and gives a godly response that dispels these false ideas. Read a short portion in a free moment or pore over its pages prayerfully for hours as it provides bite-sized, biblical answers to your unspoken questions.
From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.
The McCoy kids have big dreams. There's one problem. Their friends don't think they can. Teachers say they should do something different. And other people believe their dreams are too big! Don't worry. There's one person who always believes in them. Who is it? Can this Person help the kids make their dreams come true?
“This book is ridiculously hilarious, and makes my father look like a normal member of society.” —Chelsea Handler “Read this unless you’re allergic to laughing.” —Kristen Bell “If you’re wondering if there is a real man behind the quotes on Twitter, the answer is a definite and laugh-out-loud yes.” —Christian Lander, New York Times bestselling author of Stuff White People Like Tuesdays with Morrie meets F My Life in this hilarious book about a son’s relationship with his foul-mouthed father by the 29-year-old comedy writer who created the massively popular Twitter feed of the same name.
In his third collection, My Father Says Grace, Donald Platt combines elegy with verse of larger historical allusion and reference. At the center of the book stand poems detailing a father’s stroke and slowly developing Alzheimer’s disease and how it affects one family. An extended meditation on a mother-in-law’s dying provides counterpoint to elegies for more public figures like Walt Whitman and Janis Joplin. The private life in “the valley of the shadow of death” often gets juxtaposed with explicitly political verse. One of these poems records the racially charged conversations in a small southern town’s Amazing Grace Beauty Salon. Another describes a Vietnam protestor, famously photographed while sticking flowers in an MP’s gun barrel, alongside images from his later life as a transvestite. The poems tend to find themselves in the midst of crisis, historical or personal. They yearn for “transport” and strive “to be ‘carried across,’ away, out, toward, back into / / some new country / where the soul improvises, croons scat to itself alone.”
An incredible collection of celebrity stories and photographs from 1934 to the present, from the archives of "The Lyons Den" by eminent New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons, compiled by his son, movie critic Jeffrey Lyons. This amazing collection of choice anecdotes takes us right back to the Golden Age of New York City nightlife, when top restaurants like Toots Shor’s, “21,” and Sardi’s, as well as glittering nightclubs like the Stork Club, Latin Quarter, and El Morocco, were the nightly gathering spots for great figures of that era: movie and Broadway stars, baseball players, champion boxers, comedians, diplomats, British royalty, prize-winning authors, and famous painters. From Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, from Ethel Barrymore to Sophia Loren, from George Burns to Ernest Hemingway, from Joe DiMaggio to the Duke of Windsor: Leonard Lyons knew them all. For forty glorious years, from 1934 to 1974, he made the daily rounds of Gotham nightspots, collecting the exclusive scoops and revelations that were at the core of his famous newspaper column, “The Lyons Den.” In this entertaining volume Jeffrey Lyons has assembled a considerable compilation of anecdotes from his father’s best columns, and has also contributed a selection of his own interviews with stars of today, including Penélope Cruz and George Clooney, among others. Organized chronologically by decade and subdivided by celebrity, Stories My Father Told Me offers fascinating, amusing stories that are illustrated by approximately seventy photographs. He so captured the tenor of those exciting times that the great Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg said: “Imagine how much richer American history would have been had there been a Leonard Lyons in Lincoln’s time.”
A powerful and compelling new voice in Christian publishing, with a message urgently needed by today's Christian men. Every man encounters significant struggles in life—struggles that result in poor choices and decisions. Frequently these mistakes can be traced back to a common problem—a father who (even unintentionally) failed to provide counsel or a positive role model. In What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him, author Byron Yawn offers vital input many men wished they had received during their growing-up years. This collection of 30 simple principles will help men to... Identify and fill the gaps that occurred in their upbringing Benefit from the hard-earned wisdom of others so they don't make mistakes Prepare their own sons for the difficult challenges of life The 30 principles in this book are based in Scripture and relevant to every man. They include affection, courage, balance, consistency, and more. A true must-read!
Therapists, like moms, only mean to help. Or do they? Readers can judge for themselves with Hal Sirowitz's second collection of funny and razor-sharp poems about Hal's search for love, understanding, and a little past-life regression. Hal's first collection, is called "Mother Said".