Other books that might interest you

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  Spirits Rebellious

  Kahlil Gibran

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  A clarion call for freedom from one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers and writers, Kahlil Gibran A book so powerful it was burned in the marketplace of Beirut at the time of its publication, Kahlil Gibran’s Spirits Rebellious is a clarion call for freedom in his homeland of Lebanon—for individuals and society. Gibran’s bitter denunciation of religious and political injustice flows through his lyric pen in three parables, that of “Madame Rose Hanie,” “The Cry of the Graves,” and “Kahlil the Heretic.” His vision of liberty is no less powerful today.

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  The Maltese Cat - Celebrated...

  Rudyard Kipling

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  Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, India on 30th December 1865.   
   
  As was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5.  The ill-treatment and cruelty by the Portsmouth couple they boarded with Kipling said contributed to the onset of his literary life.  
   
  At 16 he returned to India to work on a local paper where he was soon contributing and writing.  It also exposed him to the issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.  
   
  In 1886, his ‘Departmental Ditties’, collection of verse appeared in print followed by 39 short stories for his newspaper over only 8 months.  These were then published as ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, shortly after his 22nd birthday.  
   
  He continued his prolific pace of writing before being dismissed in a dispute and, taking his pay-off and the profits from the sale of some publishing rights, decided to return to London, travelling via Rangoon, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, all the while writing articles, and arriving at Liverpool in October 1889. 
   
  Over the next two years he saw further works published as books and in magazines, as well as a nervous breakdown for which he was prescribed a sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India.  
   
  Happier times came with marriage to Caroline Starr Balestier in January 1892.  The honeymoon began in Vermont and ended in Yokahama where they heard their bank had failed.  They returned to Vermont and settled.  Caroline was now pregnant and he was planning the ‘Jungle Books’.  
   
  A failed arbitration between the US and England resulted in an argument between Caroline’s brother and Kipling, and then his arrest.  At the hearing he was mortified by the exposure of his private life and after settling the matter they returned to England and life in Torquay.  ‘Kim’ was published in 1902, and ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’, a year later.  
   
  In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with the citation “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author”.   
   
  When the Great War erupted, he scorned those who refused conscription.  His son enlisted and was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at 18, an exploding shell had ripped his face apart.  This death inspired Kipling’s writing thereafter, but the tragedy broke his life and by 1930 his prolific pen had almost ceased. 
   
  Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 from a perforated duodenal ulcer.  He was 70.  His ashes are buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. 
   
  In the Maltese Cat Kipling returns once more to India and the British Empire.  A polo match is being played.  The fierce competitive instincts of two social classes are fighting for dominance.  All told through the voice of the Maltese Cat, the most cunning of the horses.

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  The Ruin of J Robert Oppenheimer...

  Priscilla J. McMillan

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  This groundbreaking Cold War history reveals the government conspiracy to bring down America’s most famous scientist. 
   
  On April 12, 1954, the nation was astonished to learn that J. Robert Oppenheimer was facing charges of violating national security. Could the man who led the effort to build the atom bomb really be a traitor? In this riveting book, Priscilla J. McMillan draws on newly declassified U.S. government documents and materials from Russia, as well as in-depth interviews, to expose the conspiracy that destroyed the director of the Manhattan Project. 
   
  This meticulous narrative recreates the fraught years from 1949 to 1955 when Oppenheimer and a group of liberal scientists tried to head off the cabal of air force officials, anti-Communist politicians, and rival scientists, who were trying to seize control of U.S. policy and build ever more deadly nuclear weapons. Retelling the story of Oppenheimer’s trial, which took place in utmost secrecy, she describes how the government made up its own rules and violated many protections of the rule of law.  
   
  McMilliam also argues that the effort to discredit Oppenheimer, occurring at the height of the McCarthy era and sanctioned by a misinformed President Eisenhower, was a watershed in the Cold War, poisoning American politics for decades and creating dangers that haunt us today.

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  The Presence of Absence - On...

  Doris Grumbach

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  The story of an ecstatic spiritual moment—and the search to experience it again When she was twenty-seven years old, writer Doris Grumbach had an epiphany. It was as if God were right there beside her, and she had a “feeling of peace so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable joy.” After this fleeting moment, Grumbach became determined to recapture what she had felt. The Presence of Absence is the story of her fifty-year search.   Grumbach is an open-minded and skilled seeker, and she writes candidly of the people she has met along the way. She details how she lost her path after decades of going to her Protestant church and writes of her turn to personal spirituality. In her quest to find God, she encounters a multitude of philosophies and gives all of them their due. She reads the works of Thomas Merton and Simone Weil, seeks the advice of her seminary-attending daughter, and studies the Psalms. Despite the setbacks of disease, injury, and ego, Grumbach perseveres in her pursuit of beauty and proof in the absence.  

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  John Lennon Man of Peace Part 3:...

  Geoffrey Giuliano

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  In part two of this previously unreleased six-plus-hour collection of John Lennon's unique wit and wisdom, the iconic Beatle introduces the world to his stirring non-violent philosophy to not only end the then-raging Vietnam war, but also the deeply-rooted violence within ourselves, a timely message especially important today in this world of seemingly endless international terror and conflict.

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  Bottled - A Mom's Guide to Early...

  Dana Bowman

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  An unflinching and hilarious memoir about recovery as a mother of young kids, Bottled explains the perils moms face with drinking and chronicles the author's path to recovery, from hitting bottom to the months of early sobriety—a blur of pain and chaos—to her now (in)frequent moments of peace. 
   
    
   
  Punctuated by potent, laugh-out-loud sarcasm, Bottled offers practical suggestions on how to be a sober, present-in-the-moment mom, one day at a time, and provides much needed levity on an issue too often treated with deadly seriousness.

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