New Biographies Memoirs

In this revelatory memoir, doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth other doctors don’t always understand and often won’t share if they do - that chronic illness is complicated, and that treatment is not just a matter of test results and prescriptions but requires a more comprehensive approach. By sharing her own struggle with a disabling autoimmune crisis, which forced her to question her own conventional medical training and embrace the integrative principles of functional medicine, Li reveals the insider knowledge sufferers need to truly begin healing - mind, body, and spirit.

More than 500 years ago, 16th-century Reformer John Calvin was born—a theologian whose teachings set the stage for reformation of the church around the world. The modern world is in continual need of his Christ-exalting doctrine and vision of the Christian life. In 20 essays by leading Reformed pastors and scholars, this primer explores Calvin’s life, teaching, and legacy for a new generation. This book is a clarion call to Christians everywhere to take seriously the ongoing need of theological reformation across the globe.

When faced with an empty nest, Kari decides to spread her wings. Giving up a job she loves, she sets off to walk across a whole country. A big one. A contemporary take on an ancient experience, Pilgrim is an entertaining and moving memoir of Kari’s 900-kilometer walk to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In classic pilgrim fashion, she meets and befriends an array of companions along the way, from all walks of life, united by a common sincerity of purpose. Battling through sun and snow, mud and mountains, blisters and bedbugs, her real destination turns out to be "deep peace".

Magnanimous and charming, Bob Guterl knew that he could solve the racial problems bedeviling postwar America. Determined to stave off impending global catastrophe, the larger-than-life judge and his resolute wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment, raising their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called “war zones of the American century”―in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town New Jersey.

Samuel de Champlain est le véritable père de la Nouvelle-France. Navigateur, cartographe, écrivain, ethnographe, il avait une vision : celle d’installer une colonie française sur les bords du Saint-Laurent. Il a toujours manifesté un grand respect pour les nations amérindiennes qu’il a côtoyées. Malgré tous les obstacles rencontrés sur sa route et les multiples voyages qu’il a dû effectuer entre la France et le Nouveau-Monde, il n’a jamais cédé, jamais fait de compromis.

Humanity faces an unprecedented crisis that threatens all life on Earth. Desert Storm fighter pilot and NASA astronaut Ron Garan addresses this head-on in Floating in Darkness: A Journey of Evolution. Ron takes us on an extraordinary journey through outer space and inner space. He explores the dancing, intersecting orbits of religion, spirituality, and science while grappling with his own role in the violence of combat and the effects of war on all aspects of human life.

At a certain time in life, we all come to realize what is truly important to us and what just doesn’t matter. For Shirley MacLaine, that time is now. In this wise, witty, and fearless collection of small observations and big-picture questions, she shares with listeners all those things that she is over dealing with in life, in love, at home, and in the larger world… as well as the things she will never get over, no matter how long she lives.

For over twenty-five years, actor Jassa Ahluwalia described himself as 'half Indian, half English'. His fluent Punjabi always prompted bewilderment, medical staff questioned the legitimacy of his name, and the world of casting taught him he wasn't 'the right kind of mixed-race'. Feeling caught between two worlds, it wasn't long before Jassa embarked on a call to action: we need to change how we think and talk about mixed identity.

Christopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve shows that we are all capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury, Nothing Is Impossible reminds us that life is not to be taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.

All Jackie Goldschneider ever wanted was to be thin. As a child, she’d stand in front of the mirror, sucking in her stomach and arching her back to feel her ribs, praying to see a model-like figure looking back. As an obese teen, lonely and tormented by her weight, her doctor encouraged her to start dieting, ultimately leading to a prolonged battle with anorexia that nearly took her life. After decades of hiding her eating disorder from friends, family, and the world, Jackie is ready to expose the realities of her devastating struggle.

Marie Laveau may be the most influential American practitioner of the magical arts; certainly, she is among the most famous. She is the subject of songs, films, and legends and the star of New Orleans ghost tours. Her grave in New Orleans ranks among the most popular spiritual pilgrimages in the US. Author Denise Alvarado explores Marie Laveau's life and work - the fascinating history and mystery. This book gives an overview of New Orleans Voodoo, its origins, history, and practices. It contains spells, prayers, rituals, recipes, and more.

Xi Jinping rules over 1.4 billion people and the second biggest economy on earth. He commands huge armed forces and runs a technology programme meant to dominate the globe. His ambition is to take the place of the United States and to change the world order. Xi's life story is full of drama: plots, purges, murders, a power struggle and a pandemic. The book, based on new sources, leads the listener from the poor, isolated China of the 1950s to the modern economic and military juggernaut of today.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.

Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder memorably recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.

The Super Bowl champion wide receiver for the New England Patriots shares his inspiring story of an underdog kid who was always doubted to becoming one of the most reliable and inspiring players in the NFL. Relentless is the story of Julian Edelman's rise, and the continuing dominance of the Patriot dynasty, filled with memories of growing up with a father who was as demanding as any NFL coach, his near-constant fight to keep his intensity and competitiveness in check in high school and college, and his celebrated nine seasons with the Patriots.

The names Peter, Barbara Ann, and Gerald Egan were familiar to Watertown police before December 31, 1964. The police suspected the trio in a long string of burglaries, and they were under investigation by the FBI for grand theft auto. But on that New Year's night, the Egans were shot execution style at a rest stop off Interstate 81. The gruesome gangland-style killings puzzled local and state police. Theories ranged from a simple confrontation gone awry to a premeditated act of retribution by hardened criminals who feared the Egans would turn state's witness.

In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

This essential biography, by the author most deeply familiar with the vast archives of the Soviet era, offers an unprecedented, fine-grained portrait of Stalin, the man and dictator. Without mythologizing Stalin as either benevolent or an evil genius, Khlevniuk resolves numerous controversies about specific events in the dictator's life while assembling many hundreds of previously unknown letters, memos, reports, and diaries into a comprehensive, compelling narrative of a life that altered the course of world history.

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window.