Land Memoir

Truth, Huxley will learn, requires the loss of everything that keeps her from it. Starting over on a small farm on the plains of Kansas, she will find a vast wilderness to cross, one where beauty will triumph over defeat and love overcome death, where the colors of promise and eternity are unveiled, illuminating further each small step on the way to the ecstasy of understanding. It will be ridiculously hard at times. But there, she will be reminded of who she is and where she is going. We are not such as dreams are made of. But sometimes dreams can lead us home.

Atz Kilcher learned many vital skills while helping his parents carve a homestead out of the Alaskan wilderness: how to work hard, think on his feet, make do, invent, and use what was on hand to accomplish whatever task was in front of him. He also learned how to lie in order to please his often volatile father and put himself in harm's way to protect his mother and younger, weaker members of the family. Much later in life, as Atz began to reflect on his upbringing, seek to understand his father, and heal his emotional scars, he discovered that the work of pioneering the frontier of the soul is an infinitely more difficult task.

In this brilliant, gracefully written, and important new book, former Secretary of the Interior and Governor of Arizona Bruce Babbitt brings fresh thought to questions of how we can build a future we want to live in.

In 1910, when Olaf F. Larson was born to tenant livestock and tobacco farmers in Rock County, Wisconsin, the original barn still stood on the property. It was filled with artifacts of an earlier time - an ox yoke, a grain cradle, a scythe used to cut hay by hand. But Larson came of age in a brave new world of modern inventions - tractors, trucks, combines, airplanes - that would change farming and rural life forever. When Horses Pulled the Plow is Larson's account of that rural life in the early 20th century.

When Marlene Bumgarner and her husband moved to a rural plot of land in 1973, she thought of herself as simply a young mother seeking an affordable and safe place in which to raise her child. By the time she left the land nearly a decade later, she had written two books and a weekly newspaper column, served as contributing editor to a national magazine, a college instructor, and a sought-after public speaker. Her natural food store The Morgan Hill Trading Post was the first one in her community.

More than a narrative about a young man destined to accomplish the impossible, more than a chronicle of successful Hollywood writer, producer, and director Lee Stanley's unparalleled success that changed not only his life but also the lives of millions of others.... Faith in the Land of Make Believe is the gritty memoir of someone who was never taught how to be a man, a husband, or a father, and was scared to death somebody would find out.

Dominique Laxalt was 16 when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France.

A compilation of short stories concerned with Mexican life around the turn of the century, The Compromised Land reflects the Hispanic tradition and its continuity of values and origins. The central theme of the volume is that of the immigrant who crosses the border from Mexico to the United States in search of work and a better way of life.

Richard Noble has had the ambition all his adult life to see Britain excel in engineering on the world stage. His achievements in the highly insecure world of record-breaking emphatically demonstrate his commitment to his cause. In his book Take Risk! he tells the extraordinary stories of his 11 projects in record-breaking and aviation that all saw people and companies go out of their way to join him in his exciting endeavours - and take risk.

A passionate skier since he was a child, Anders Morley dreamed of going on a significant adventure, something bold and of his own design. And so one year in his early 30s, he decided to strap on cross-country skis to travel across Canada in the winter alone. This Land of Snow is about that journey and a man who must come to terms with what he has left behind, as well as how he wants to continue living after his trip is over.

The remarkable true story of the miraculous journey that made the Dalai Lama into the man he is today and sparked the fight for Tibetan freedom. In the early weeks of 1959, a bloody uprising gripped the streets of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa as ragtag Tibetan rebels faced off against their Communist Chinese occupiers. Realizing that the impending battle would result in a bloodbath and his own capture, the young Dalai Lama began planning an audacious escape to India, a two-week journey.

Hi there! It's so nice meeting you. I'm very happy to see that you're interested in listening to my adventures. Why don't I give you a sneak peek of my story? Heading to an unknown land to preach the good news to a Northern Indian tribe living just above the Arctic Circle may not sound like a good life, but I didn't care. As long as I was with my husband, I could do everything. And with Christ on our side, we left everything behind to live in the remote wilderness of Alaska.

"The land of little joys" is a book aimed at those who love their place of origin, for those who have been absent for short or long periods and felt the need to go back, to those who never abandoned it despite everything, because in it there are only small joys that at least limit the degree of general dissatisfaction of those who live there.

On November 13th 2001, John Simpson and a BBC news crew walked into Kabul, and the liberation of the Afghan capital was broadcast to a waiting world. It was the end of a sustained campaign against the Taliban, a campaign that Simpson had covered from the beginning, despite appalling difficulties and, often, great danger. In this, his third riveting volume of autobiography, John Simpson focuses on how journalists set about finding the stories that make the headlines.

Everyone's journey to their promised land starts differently. My journey started when I 15, pregnant, and living in the projects. I realized my mission in life became my ministry. The pain became my plan. God's plan took me from the projects to my promised land to use me for the kingdom to help other women.

February, 1940. After a decade of worldwide depression, World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. With Germany on the march and Japan at war with China, the global crisis was in a crescendo. America's top songwriter, Irving Berlin, had captured the nation's mood a little more than a year before with his patriotic hymn "God Bless America."

What does a child do when mom is lost in her own world of fear and pain? What does a child do when dad escapes to the world of alcohol to numb his wounds and sense of failure? What does a child do when there's no answer to the questions that need so much to be answered? Frightened, confused, hurting, angry children. They grow up and repeat the mistakes of their parents. Is there any way out of this cycle?

From top CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O'Brien comes a highly personal look at her biggest reporting moments, from Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the devastating Haiti earthquake to historic elections and high-profile interviews with everyday Americans. Drawing on her own unique background and consciousness as well as her experiences as a journalist at the front lines of the most provocative issues in today's society.

In the small hours of the annual Punta Carnivale celebrations held by Central American communities of the West Bronx, residents witness flames and smoke coming from a popular nightspot known as Happy Land. Fire and rescue personnel arrive at the scene within three minutes, only to find all 87 party-goers trapped inside already dead. The victims have died at an unfathomable speed, succumbing to suffocation and the effects of lethal gases before the flames could even reach them.

A follow-up to the memoir Land of Allusions which focuses on Andrew Davie's continued recovery from a ruptured brain aneurysm and also offers a philosophical reflection of those events, as well as more applicable movie references.