Thirteen-year-old Timmy Hansen's mom is in Iraq and missing in action, so he has more than enough to be getting on with, apart from the usual troubles of teenhood.
A lot of professors give talks titled 'The Last Lecture'. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasnt about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
A New York Times Notable Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 A bold approach to understanding the American evangelical experience from an anthropological and psychological perspective by one of the country's most prominent anthropologists. Through a series of intimate, illuminating interviews with various members of the Vineyard, an evangelical church with hundreds of congregations across the country, Tanya Luhrmann leaps into the heart of evangelical faith. Combined with scientific research that studies the effect that intensely practiced prayer can have on the mind, When God Talks Back examines how normal, sensible people—from college students to accountants to housewives, all functioning perfectly well within our society—can attest to having the signs and wonders of the supernatural become as quotidian and as ordinary as laundry. Astute, sensitive, and extraordinarily measured in its approach to the interface between science and religion, Luhrmann's book is sure to generate as much conversation as it will praise.
In these twelve award-winning stories, Kate Milliken unflinchingly shows us what can happen when the uninvited guest of our darkest desires comes to call. Whether surrounded by the white noise of a Hollywood celebration or enduring a stark winter in Maine, the characters of If I’d Known You Were Coming yearn to heal old wounds with new hurts. With a wry wit and a keen eye for emotive detail, the author of this unforgettable collection sets intersections in motion that will leave you both winded and wanting more. In one story, a mother, driven by greed, unwittingly finds out how far her needs will push her. A hand model surprises himself and everyone else at the birthday party of an old friend’s daughter in another. With poetic deftness, a woman evaluates the meaning, the familial stories, that we carry with us from birth. In a story ripped from the headlines, a woman pines for the legs her husband lost in a freak accident at a Santa Monica farmer's market. A medical clerk, restless and alone, takes advantage of a disabled neighbor. Kate Milliken knows the ties that bind and how tautly we will pull them. These are stories about desire, betrayal, love, regret, and family. Like all great fiction, If I’d Known You Were Coming possesses that uncanny ability to reveal us to ourselves.
A Study Guide and a Teacher’s Manual Gospel Principles was written both as a personal study guide and as a teacher’s manual. As you study it, seeking the Spirit of the Lord, you can grow in your understanding and testimony of God the Father, Jesus Christand His Atonement, and the Restoration of the gospel. You can find answers to life’s questions, gain an assurance of your purpose and self-worth, and face personal and family challenges with faith.
The book Why Did You Come If You Leave Again? is an ethnographers personal account of the five years he spent in one of the remotest parts of Africa. In the authors comprehensive monograph (eight volumes published by Schwabe) about the Anyuak, a little-known tribe in South Sudan, there was no space left for a portrait of the person who did the fieldwork, his professional and personal itinerary, his experiences and attitudes, his relationship with the local peoplelet alone for all the adventures he lived when crossing the wilderness and when struggling to stay alive. The travel autobiography sheds light on the long and tedious process of ethnographic fieldwork; it is both personal and profound, varying between moments of actions and reflections and eventually leading to an intimate encounter with an African culture. The many riveting stories told in the book are signposts of a spiritual, psychological, philosophical, and physically exhausting expedition through arid savannah, flooded plains, and compact walls of elephant grass to the spiritual home of a courageous people who have created in the middle of wilderness a center of humanity. Though the narrative is essentially about the discovery of a foreign culture, it also relates the exploration of the ethnographers own identity in an environment that didnt offer any possibility to escape. The book is about thirst, starvation, loneliness and lightening, sickness and death, joy and deliverance, snakes and spirits, shadow, spittle and footprints, and eventually about the authors quest for meaning, beauty, and understanding of the world. The memoir tells a saga about forlornness, hope, and achievement, and last but not least, growing friendships as the only reward for struggle and pain. The researchers autobiography is captivating for the soul and the mind. It is funny, sad, informative, inspiring, and poetic.
Misti B.’s incisive and irreverent meditations offer daily doses of humor, healing, and hope for the tragedies, triumphs, and everyday aggravations that come with codependency. If You Leave Me, Can I Come with You? proves that we can laugh at ourselves and still take our recovery seriously. Infusing hard-earned wisdom with self-revealing honesty and fearless humor, Misti B. shines a healing light into the confusions and contradictions, as well as the self-defeating thoughts and actions, that codependents and those in Al-Anon frequently face. Misti’s refreshingly original daily meditations tackle issues such as people-pleasing, lack of boundaries, and perfectionism. On this yearlong journey, she shows how these habits don’t have to overwhelm us if we work a solid Twelve Step program—and learn to take ourselves lightly. This book delivers the right mix of support, inspiration, and irreverence
It’s October 1945 in Southeast England, and twelve-year-old Eva Starbuck’s whole world has just crumbled around her. It has been six years since her beloved father Ulysses was drafted to fight in the Second World War. Now that he is presumed dead after being captured by the Germans, living without him seems intolerable. But little does Eva know that she is about to receive a shocking surprise. After her father’s empty coffin is lowered into the ground, a heartbroken Eva attempts to go on with her life. But when her missing father suddenly reappears under bizarre circumstances, Eva and her family are soon left to wonder if the frightening consequences of his return to their English village may be worse than losing him in the first place.
Seeking to characterize and to vitalize life in a small, rural Texas community as it existed during the Depression, Cindy Holster has introduced in ten short stories a number of characters whose lives reflect not only the hard times they experienced but the various ways in which they dealt with them. While the stories touch on a number of issues that might be considered contemporary or even timelessracism, mental illness, infidelity, ignorance, and intolerancethey also emphasize Christian values and morality. Many of the characters are recurring within the stories, and some emerge as leaders. Walter and Ora Mae Cooper and their son Benjamin are identifiable by their character and compassion, and the Cooper Grocery is revisited again and again as the heart of the community. The Coopers repeatedly reach out to the members of their community and are sought out for counsel, solace, and friendship. The characters are colorful, even eccentric, and all have surprising and sometimes unsettling aspects to their lives.