To Survive is Victory

To Survive is Victory

Author: Lin Xiangbei

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2019-09-05

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 1789650607

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‘In those days we dedicated our whole lives to The Party. We put it first, before anything else, whether that was family, love, or even life itself. I will tell you a fact about the path my life has taken – to survive is victory!’ This is the true account of the life of Lin Xiangbei, during a century of tumultuous changes in China. Lin was born in 1918 in Yunan, a small town in north-east Sichuan Province. In 1938, under the influence of a remarkable figure later known as ‘The Double Gun Woman’, Lin became a committed Communist. He worked tirelessly as an underground agent, believing the ideals of Communism would bring a better, fairer society to the people of China. But in 1957 Lin was accused of being a ‘Rightist’, spent several years in and out of labour camps, and was almost broken by the experience. Then came the decade-long nightmare that was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. And yet, through it all, Lin Xiangbei remains committed to the principles of Communism and is proud of his country today. His account gives us not only a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in twentieth-century China, but also an insight into the hardship, fear and insecurity of those years – and the comradeship, self-sacrifice and heroism of the people around him.


The Rule of Three: Will to Survive

The Rule of Three: Will to Survive

Author: Eric Walters

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-02-09

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0143196227

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The explosive ending to the Rule of Three trilogy! After the shocking personal attack on Herb and Adam, the citizens of the fortified neighborhood of Eden Mills are realizing their worst fears: while the power remains off, desperation will grow, leading to more violence. And now it's personal. The rogue militaristic group they had hoped to have vanquished is not only back, but has a new leader, one who is seeking revenge on the neighborhood--especially on Adam. In preparation for an attack they know is coming, the committee members make new alliances and grow in strength, but Adam knows it's up to him to dig down deep within himself, to think like the enemy--to become the enemy--in order to save his family, his neighborhood, and himself.


Survive!

Survive!

Author: Peter DeLeo

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2005-01-12

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0743276566

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The man who accomplished one of the most remarkable feats of survival in history finally tells the story of the event that made worldwide news. This inspiring story shows what sheer determination can achieve against impossible odds. When Peter DeLeo set out one Sunday morning on a sightseeing and photography trip over the central Sierra Nevada mountains in California, he had no idea that he would soon be fighting for his life with the odds stacked very much against him. DeLeo’s single-engine plane encountered turbulence, and he and his two passengers crashed in the mountains. All three survived the accident but sustained multiple injuries. DeLeo had broken ribs, a shattered ankle, and a badly damaged shoulder. After assessing their situation, they decided that the passengers should remain with the plane while DeLeo would hike out to bring back help. It was already winter; he left the limited emergency supplies with the plane’s passengers; and he was hampered by his injuries, but DeLeo was determined to get help. He found or improvised shelter at night, carefully warmed himself during the daytime, drank from small pools of melted snow and ice, and slowly but steadily made his way toward civilization. Suffering from exhaustion and on the verge of collapse, he found a hot spring that provided him with temporary warmth and insects to eat. Injuries, dehydration, malnutrition, and a two-day blizzard slowed him, and a rockslide nearly killed him just as he glimpsed the valley and highway that he so desperately sought, but DeLeo’s courage saw him through. Meanwhile, Civil Air Patrol planes searched fruitlessly for the lost plane and for survivors; twice, DeLeo frantically tried to signal the search planes, but to no avail. When DeLeo finally reached a highway, he found it almost impossible to convince the authorities that he was the lost pilot who had been all but given up for dead. His astonishing survival, one of the most remarkable feats of endurance on record, made national and even international news. Now, for the first time, Peter DeLeo tells his remarkable story in gripping detail. His amazing saga is destined to become a classic.


Locked In

Locked In

Author: Victoria Arlen

Publisher: Howard Books

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501174630

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ESPN personality, former Dancing with the Stars contestant, and Paralympics champion Victoria Arlen shares her courageous and miraculous story of recovery after falling into a mysterious vegetative state at age eleven and how she broke free, overcame the odds, and never gave up hope. When Victoria Arlen was eleven years old, she contracted two rare diseases simultaneously and fell into a mysterious vegetative state. For two years her mind was dark, but in the third year, her mind broke free, and she was able to think clearly and to hear and feel everything—but no one knew. Her doctors wrote her off as a lost cause, and Victoria remained a prisoner in her own body for nearly four years. But every day, silently in her own mind, Victoria would pray to God, and she promised Him that if He gave her a second chance, she would make every moment count, and change the world for the better. At fifteen, against all odds and medical predictions, Victoria woke up. Finally she was able to communicate through eye blinks, and gradually, she regained her ability to speak and eat and move her upper body, but she faced the devastating reality of paralysis from the waist down because of damage to her spine. However, Victoria didn’t lose her strength or steadfast determination, and two years later, she won a gold medal for swimming at the London 2012 Paralympics. She went on to become one ESPN’s youngest on air-personalities and, after nearly ten years of paralysis, she learned to walk again and even competed on Dancing with the Stars. In Locked In, Victoria shares her inspiring story—the pain, the struggle, the fight to live and thrive, and most importantly, the faith that carried her through. Her journey was not easy, but by believing in God’s healing power and forgiveness, she is living proof that, despite seemingly insurmountable odds and challenges, the will to survive and resolve to live can be a force stronger than our worst deterrents.


Going All City

Going All City

Author: Stefano Bloch

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-11-14

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 022649358X

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“We could have been called a lot of things: brazen vandals, scared kids, threats to social order, self-obsessed egomaniacs, marginalized youth, outsider artists, trend setters, and thrill seekers. But, to me, we were just regular kids growing up hard in America and making the city our own. Being ‘writers’ gave us something to live for and ‘going all city’ gave us something to strive for; and for some of my friends it was something to die for.” In the age of commissioned wall murals and trendy street art, it’s easy to forget graffiti’s complicated and often violent past in the United States. Though graffiti has become one of the most influential art forms of the twenty-first century, cities across the United States waged a war against it from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, complete with brutal police task forces. Who were the vilified taggers they targeted? Teenagers, usually, from low-income neighborhoods with little to their names except a few spray cans and a desperate need to be seen—to mark their presence on city walls and buildings even as their cities turned a blind eye to them. Going All City is the mesmerizing and painful story of these young graffiti writers, told by one of their own. Prolific LA writer Stefano Bloch came of age in the late 1990s amid constant violence, poverty, and vulnerability. He recounts vicious interactions with police; debating whether to take friends with gunshot wounds to the hospital; coping with his mother’s heroin addiction; instability and homelessness; and his dread that his stepfather would get out of jail and tip his unstable life into full-blown chaos. But he also recalls moments of peace and exhilaration: marking a fresh tag; the thrill of running with his crew at night; exploring the secret landscape of LA; the dream and success of going all city. Bloch holds nothing back in this fierce, poignant memoir. Going All City is an unflinching portrait of a deeply maligned subculture and an unforgettable account of what writing on city walls means to the most vulnerable people living within them.


Struggle to Survive

Struggle to Survive

Author: William T. Yaley

Publisher:

Published: 2015-02-23

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9780991245185

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"Captures the intense drama of the two months preceding President Gerald Ford's Operation Babylift. The fall of Saigon is imminent. There is not much time left to evacuate the children, many of whom are "Amerasians." This is high drama, based on historical facts."--Page [4] of cover.


Maid

Maid

Author: Stephanie Land

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0316505102

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"A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide (Barack Obama)," this New York Times bestselling memoir is the inspiration for the Netflix limited series, hailed by Rolling Stone as "a great one." At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent in service to upper middle class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit. "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama's Summer Reading List


Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East

Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East

Author: Edmund Burke

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780520246614

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Middle Eastern societies and ordinary people's lives / Edmund Burke III and David N. Yaghoubian -- Precolonial lives -- Assaf: a peasant of Mount Lebanon / Akram F. Khater and Antoine F. Khater -- Shemsigul: a circassian slave in mid-nineteenth-century Cairo / Ehud R. Toledano -- Journeymen textile weavers in nineteenth-century Damascus: a collective / Sherry Vatter -- Ahmad: a Kuwaiti pearl diver / Nels Johnson -- Mohand N'Hamoucha: Middle Atlas Berber / Edmund Burke III -- Bibi Maryam: a Bakhtiyari tribal woman / Julie Oehler -- Colonial lives -- The Shaykh and his daughter: coping in colonial Algeria / Julia Clancy-Smith -- Izz al-Din al-Qassam: preacher and mujahid / Abdullah Schleifer -- Abu Ali al-Kilawi: a Damascus qabaday / Philip S. Khoury -- M'hamed Ali: Tunisian labor organizer / Eqbal Ahmad and Stuart Schaar -- Hagob Hagobian: an Armenian truck driver in Iran / David N. Yaghoubian -- Naji: an Iraqi country doctor / Sami Zubaida -- Post-Colonial lives -- Migdim: Egyptian bedouin matriarch / Lila Abu-Lughod -- Rostam: Qashqai rebel / Lois Beck -- An Iranian village boyhood / Mehdi Abedi and Michael M. [ths] J. Fischer -- Gulab: an Afghan schoolteacher / Ashraf Ghani -- Abu Jamal: a Palestinian urban villager / Joost Hiltermann -- Haddou: a Moroccan migrant worker / David Mcmurray -- Contemporary lives -- Nasir: Sa'idi youth between Islamism and agriculture -- Fanny colonna -- Ghada: village rebel or political protestor? / Celia Rothenberg -- Khanom gohary: Iranian community leader / Homa Hoodfar -- Nadia: mother of the believers / Baya Gacemi -- June leavitt: West Bank settler / Tamara neuman -- Talal Rizk: a Syrian engineer in the Gulf / Michael Provence.


Operation Babylift

Operation Babylift

Author: Ian W. Shaw

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 073364225X

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In late March 1975, as the Vietnam War raged, an Australian voluntary aid worker named Rosemary Taylor approached the Australian Embassy seeking assistance to fly 600 orphans out of Saigon to safety. Rosemary and Margaret Moses, two former nuns from Adelaide, had spent eight years in Vietnam during the war, building up a complex of nurseries to house war orphans and street waifs as the organisation that built up around them facilitated international adoptions for the children. As the North Vietnamese forces closed in on their nurseries, they needed a plan to evacuate the children, or all their work might count for little ... Based on extensive archival and historical research, and interviews of some of those directly involved in the events described, Operation Babylift details the last month of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the most vulnerable victims of that war: the orphans it created. Through the story of the attempt to save 600 children, we see how a small group of determined women refused to play political games as they tried to remake the lives of a forgotten generation, one child at a time.


The Will to Survive

The Will to Survive

Author: Sir Bryan Cartledge

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780231702256

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Despite its relatively small size, Hungary has shown remarkable resilience in its long and difficult history, resisting hostile neighbors and the pressures of two massive neighboring empires. Subjected to invasion, occupation, and frequent historical tragedy, the country has nevertheless survived and even flourished, becoming a stable, sovereign democratic republic with a seat in the European Union. Drawing on his experiences as ambassador to Hungary during the declining years of János Kádár's communist regime, Bryan Cartledge recreates a rich portrait of the country's political, economic, and cultural development. Spanning eleven hundred years, his account begins with the arrival of the Magyars in the ninth century and concludes with the acceptance of Hungary into NATO and the EU. Cartledge recounts Hungary's medieval greatness and its defeats at the hands of the Mongols, Turks, and Nazis. He revisits the nation's unsuccessful struggle for independence and the massive deprivations it suffered after the First World War. He also investigates Hungary's disastrous alliance with the Nazis, motivated by a hope for political redress. Cartledge provides startling insight into the experience of Soviet-imposed communism, which culminated in the brutally suppressed revolution of 1956. Exploiting his intimate knowledge of Hungary and its rich archival sources, he explains how a country can lose almost every war it has engaged in and still forge ahead stronger than before.