Search this site      The Miracle Man The Life Story of Joao de Deus Author: Pellegrino-Estrich, Robert ISBN: 8-590-28981-8 Pages: 144 Format: Paperback Publisher: Robert Pellegrino-Estrich Published: September 1, 2002 Condition: Price: USD $6.99 Catalina O'Brien Ely. Nevada City. September 4th 2001: I recommend this book to anyone. My life was transformed after the first visit to this incredible healer. Dolores Cheeks, Montreal, 24 February 2001: Thank you for writing The Miracle Man. I recommend it as one of the best books on the planet. My Life - Bill Clinton Author: Clinton, Bill ISBN: 0-375-41457-6 Pages: 957 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Knopf Published: June 22, 2004 Condition: Price: USD $3.29 Amazon.com: An exhaustive, soul-searching memoir, Bill Clinton's My Life is a refreshingly candid look at the former president as a son, brother, teacher, father, husband, and public figure. Clinton painstakingly outlines the history behind his greatest successes and failures, including his dedication to educational and economic reform, his war against a "vast right-wing operation" determined to destroy him, and the "morally indefensible" acts for which he was nearly impeached. My Life is autobiography as therapy--a personal history written by a man trying to face and banish his private demons. Clinton approaches the story of his youth with gusto, sharing tales of giant watermelons, nine-pound tumors, a charging ram, famous mobsters and jazz musicians, and a BB gun standoff. He offers an equally energetic portrait of American history, pop culture, and the evolving political landscape, covering the historical events that shaped his early years (namely the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK) and the events that shaped his presidency (Waco, Bosnia, Somalia). What makes My Life remarkable as a political memoir is how thoroughly it is infused with Clinton's unassuming, charmingly pithy voice: I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts, and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged only by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgments can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only, response to pain. However, that same voice might tire readers as Clinton applies his penchant for minute details to a distractible laundry list of events, from his youth through the years of his presidency. Not wanting to forget a single detail that might help account for his actions, Clinton overdoes it--do we really need to know the name of his childhood barber? But when Clinton sticks to the meat of his story--recollections about Mother, his abusive stepfather, Hillary, the campaign trail, and Kenneth Starr--the veracity of emotion and Kitchen Confidential-type revelations about "what it is like to be President" make My Life impossible to put down. To Clinton, "politics is a contact sport," and while he claims that My Life is not intended to make excuses or assign blame, it does portray him as a fighter whose strategy is to "take the first hit, then counterpunch as hard as I could." While My Life is primarily a stroll through Clinton's memories, it is also a scathing rebuke--a retaliation against his detractors, including Kenneth Starr, whose "mindless search for scandal" protected the guilty while "persecuting the innocent" and distracted his Administration from pressing international matters (including strikes on al Qaeda). Counterpunch indeed. At its core, My Life is a charming and intriguing if flawed book by an equally intriguing and flawed man who had his worst failures and humiliations made public. Ultimately, the man who left office in the shadow of scandal offers an honest and open account of his life, allowing readers to witness his struggle to "drain the most out of every moment" while maintaining the character with which he was raised. It is a remarkably intimate, persuasive look at the boy he was, the President he became, and man he is today. --Daphne Durham From Publishers Weekly: Former President William Jefferson Clinton's hotly anticipated 957-page doorstop of a memoir is much like its author-charismatic, longwinded, and, many might say, deeply flawed. The first Democratic president to be elected to a second term since FDR in 1936, Clinton has lived what is by any account an eventful, inspiring life. As explained in early passages notable for their frankness and humanity, Clinton, born to humble Arkansas roots, never knew his father. William Jefferson Blythe was killed in an automobile accident just months before his son's birth. Clinton adored his mother, Virginia, a nurse with a large, loving family and a harmless penchant for the racetrack. Olivia My Life of Exile in Kalaupapa Author: Breitha, Olivia R. ISBN: 0-9631388-3-9 Pages: 104 Format: Paperback Publisher: Arizona Memorial Museum Assn. Published: December 1991 Condition: Price: USD $1.69 Book Description: "Dear Mr. Alan Alda: I've told myself over and over that I must send this letter to you. I hope you do get this letter and read it. It is now 5:30 p.m. and I'm watching your show 'M.A.S.H.' Your lines are always witty. Also, I like the person called Winchester, except for the show where he said, "Do I have to live in these dirty leprous surroundings?" or words to that effect. Mr. Alda, the word "leprous" shocked me and angered me so. I decided to write my story telling you and also the world what it is really like to have leprosy. Today is the day that I decided to put down my thoughts and what has happened in my life to this date, as much as I can recall. I tell you, the reason I'm trying to do this is because I am tired of hearing the popular phrase, "It makes me feel like a leper." I don't know if it will be of interest to anyone, and maybe no one will read this, but I think it will be good for me. Here is how it felt and still feels to THIS 'leper'." Rhinestone Cowboy Author: Campbell, Glen / Carter, Tom ISBN: 0-679-41999-3 Pages: 253 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Villard Published: March 22, 1994 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 From Publishers Weekly: Campbell's autobiography shows the pop and country/western singer, guitarist and composer making it to the top, sinking and rising again as he overcame troubles with alcohol, drugs and three marriages--and found religion. Writing with Carter, who also collaborated with Ronnie Milsap and Ralph Emery on their books, Campbell recalls the grinding poverty he underwent as one of 12 children of an Arkansas sharecropper, the career he established playing backup for Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross, and his joining the Beach Boys at the height of their popularity, all before he made it on his own. As interesting as Campbell's story is, his book is disappointing, for his fundamentalism turns him to sermonizing against abortion, the banning of school prayer and the liberal press. Photos not seen by PW. Dou ble day Book Club selection; author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist: There's some good stuff here about Campbell's poverty-stricken Arkansas childhood; his recording sessions with Elvis, the Kingston Trio, Frank Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, and dozens of other acts; his days as a Beach Boy; his admiration for John Wayne, whom he met during the filming of True Grit; his affair with Tanya Tucker; and, not least, his friendship with Pat Paulsen, whose hilarious monologue on gun control is reprinted here. Campbell's career reached its zenith in the early 1970s, when he had his own TV show born of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The parent show, of course, went down for political reasons, which Campbell--and coauthor Carter, a straightforward stylist--talk about with some clarity. Campbell's own downward spiral late in the 1970s followed an unfortunately predictable pattern: alcohol and cocaine abuse. Those dark hours, however, give us the one affecting moment in Campbell's book, during which, with unknowing and ironic desperation, he snorts cocaine and reads his Bible with a kind of furious resolve to do better. Nowadays, Campbell is a sober Christian who tours, plays golf, and takes care of his family. His tone is tedious at times, particularly when he carps about the press, and the reader may long to know more about Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Bobbie Gentry, Roger Miller, and Merle Haggard than Campbell wishes to tell. A lot of good country people were moved by Campbell's recordings of Jimmy Webb songs such as "Wichita Lineman," however, and his book is a sure hit. John Mort Martin Luther King, Jr. Author: Lazo, Caroline ISBN: 0-87518-618-1 Pages: 64 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Dillon Pr Published: April 1994 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 Card catalog description: A biography of the influential civil rights leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. The Last Brother Author: McGinniss, Joe ISBN: 0-671-67945-7 Pages: 626 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Simon & Schuster Published: October 1993 Condition: Price: USD $2.49 From Publishers Weekly: McGinniss's biography of Edward M. Kennedy is a salacious read containing the things that make a bestseller: sex, incest, money, politics, power, compelling personalities. The problem, though, is, can you believe McGinniss? Although the bibliography lists 73 titles, there is not one footnote. There are juicy tidbits about members of the family. Joseph Kennedy progresses from a WW I draft dodger to U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James. He beds innumerable women, manipulates the stock market, becomes a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite. Rose is portrayed as the ultimate holder of Irish grudges: when her husband had his stroke she delayed calling a doctor while she played golf. A devout Catholic, she was actually happy about Joe's affairs because then she didn't have to sleep with him. Retarded Rosemary was lobotomized because she was considered a less-than-perfect Kennedy. There are dark hints that Joseph may have had an incestuous relationship with her. Sexual innuendo is rampant throughout the book. When McGinniss finally gets around to concentrating on Ted, we are given a picture of a lonely boy raised by servants. The first crisis of his life comes when he is expelled from Harvard for cheating. His father was furious, but only because Ted got caught. We see Ted as an ineffective campaign manager for JFK in 1960 and we see him being forced by his father to run for JFK's former Senate seat in 1962. In 1968 after RFK's assassination, Ted turned "reflexively, to women, alcohol and other drugs." The book ends with the Chappaquiddick tragedy in 1969 and the questions raised by Ted's alibi. Thus the biography misses Ted's presidential campaign in 1980 and the events surrounding the rape charges against his nephew William Smith in 1991. Employing journalistic histrionics and amateur psychology in his attempts to find what makes this family and this one man obsessed with winning at all costs, McGinniss concludes that the Kennedys are all-American frauds. The reader will wonder if McGinniss isn't one also. First serial to Vanity Fair; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club Super Releases; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection; NBC miniseries; author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Clinton: Portrait of Victory Author: Taylor, Rebecca  Buffum / Bentley, P. F. (Photographer)                 Kramer, Michael / Rosenblatt, Roger ISBN: 0-446-51758-5 Pages: 127 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Warner Books Published: January 1993 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 "An Epicenter Communications book." Jack: Straight From the Gut Author: Welch, Jack / Byrne, John A. ISBN: 0-446-52838-2 Pages: 479 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Business Plus Published: September 11, 2001 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 Amazon.com's Best of 2001: It's hard to think of a CEO that commands as much respect as Jack Welch. Under his leadership, General Electric reinvented itself several times over by integrating new and innovative practices into its many lines of business. In Jack: Straight from the Gut, Welch, with the help of Business Week journalist John Byrne, recounts his career and the style of management that helped to make GE one of the most successful companies of the last century. Beginning with Welch's childhood in Salem, Massachusetts, the book quickly progresses from his first job in GE's plastics division to his ambitious rise up the GE corporate ladder, which culminated in 1981. What comes across most in this autobiography is Welch's passion for business as well as his remarkable directness and intolerance of what he calls "superficial congeniality"--a dislike that would help earn him the nickname "Neutron Jack." In spite of its 496 pages, Jack: Straight from the Gut is a quick read that any student or manager would do well to consider. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards An Uncommon Friendship From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust Authors: Rosner, Bernat / Tubach, Frederic C. ISBN: 0-520-22531-7 Pages: 271 Format: Hardcover Publisher: University of California Press Published: April 4, 2001 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 From Publishers Weekly: More a pair of parallel memoirs than the anatomy of a friendship, this unusual book recounts the stories of two friends: Rosner, a Hungarian Jew, was uprooted from his life and sent at age 12 to Auschwitz, where he lost his entire family; Tubach, the son of a German soldier, at nearly the same time was sent to a Nazi training camp (though, afterward, his stepmother, defying the local Nazi youth group, steered him away from joining the Adolf Hitler school). The book's structure is unusual: not only do both authors contribute to each chapter in alternating sections, but Tubach's sections are written in the first person, while Rosner's are written (at his request) in the third person. This approach underscores how Rosner reinvented himself after his privations, while Tubach's path was more direct. Intriguingly, Rosner who came to the United States thanks to a GI who generously invited him into his family became a corporate counsel for Safeway, while Tubach who also emigrated to the U.S. after the war found himself wary of power and sympathetic toward student radicals during his tenure as a professor of German at Berkeley. Their friendship, initiated in 1983 by their wives, is undergirded by a "common belief in Euro-American cultural traditions," such as classical music and faith in a common humanity. Still, the friendship grew only gradually, with Rosner slowly revealing heartrending bits of his story of endurance and survival when the two couples took several trips to his childhood village. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal: "We are more than our histories" is the message of this shared memoir. Two grown American men meet in California in 1983 and slowly exchange stories of childhoods in their respective European villages. With time and trust they are able to divulge the particulars of a deeper and more troubling kinship. As teenagers during World War II, they struggled on opposite sides of the Holocaust, Rosner as his Jewish Hungarian family's only survivor at Auschwitz and Tubach as the son of a German Army intelligence officer and a member of the Jungvolk, a pre-Hitler youth organization. Tubach serves as the straightforward and almost dispassionate narrator of these alternating stories of the unimaginable horror of a concentration camp and the confusion and suspicion within a German village on the periphery of Nazi madness. As with other accounts of survival, readers are compelled to consider to what extent who we are is determined by experiences and forces beyond our control, whether a random act of individual kindness or a movement of mass hysteria. While there is inherent drama in these disparate stories, it is the trajectory that each one takes to converge many years later that makes these remembrances powerful and distinct. Ultimately, this is a book about the importance of our common humanity, about resilience and redemption, and about not letting symbols such as a yellow star or a swastika define or confine us. Margaret Brown, Arlington County Public Library, VA. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Memories The Autobiography of Ralph Emery Authors: Emery, Ralph / Carter, Tom ISBN: 0-02-535481-7 Pages: 278 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Scribner Published: November 8, 1991 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 From Publishers Weekly: As well known to music lovers as the singers appearing on his cable TV show Nashville Now, Emery has been a part of the Music City scene for 40 years and a star for 30. His career has included stints as emcee for Opry Almanac on radio station WSM, announcer on the Grand Old Opry program and host of Pop Goes the Country. With freelancer Carter (Almost Like a Song), Emery tells of being sustained by loving grandparents through a miserable childhood dominated first by his alcoholic father and then by a stepfather with no interest in him; three failed marriages and drug addiction preceded his successful fourth marriage and current esteem. He also writes of stars and friends such as Johnny Cash and Barbara Mandrell and of the many victims of drugs and alcohol he has known in the field. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews: Thoroughly engaging and delightfully candid autobiography by a popular southern disk jockey, Grand Old Opry emcee, and host of the cable-TV talk-show Nashville Now. Beginning with his childhood in the dirt South, Emery makes it clear that he is telling about his life rather than serving up a ``famous-entertainers-I-know-intimately'' salute. Raised on his grandparents' 20-acre farm (complete with ``running'' cold water from a pump on the sink) outside of McEwen, Tenn. (pop. 635), Emery--with the very capable assistance of Tom Carter--tells of his childhood entrancement with radio. Ordering picture books of the stars who sang on Grand Old Opry, he sat on the floor studying them as the stars performed over the airwaves. At 19, he landed his first job as a radio announcer, at WTPR, a ``thousand- watt `daytimer' '' in Paris, Tenn. Although he realized he was ``about as important as wall paper,'' Emery enthusiastically played and replayed the station's single 78-rpm copy of 1951's hottest record--``Hey Good Lookin','' by Hank Williams. Emery chooses this juncture to note: ``I wanted to be a broadcaster simply because I wanted to be somebody.'' (His current radio show is aired on 440 stations.) The second half of the book is filled with profiles--done by way of anecdotes and stories--of people Emery has known in the country-music business. He is an insider, and his unvarnished takes on, among others, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Jr., Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Keith Whitley (four months before his fatal overdose at age 33) are fresh and interesting. Emery's chapter on Merle Haggard--``the only singer- songwriter in the history of country music whose skills arguably surpass Hank Williams's''--is worth the price of the book. A fine outing for students of American lives and lovers of country music alike. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Making a Miracle Author: Tylo, Hunter ISBN: 0-671-02778-6 Pages: 342 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Atria Published: March 1, 2000 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 Review: Monterey County Post (CA.) Tylo's autobiography has as many twists and turns as the script for any of the "soaps" she has starred in.... Making A Miracle provides an intimate and interesting look at a woman who has experienced the up and down sides of fame. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Book Description: Twice chosen for People magazine's "The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World" feature, and widely hailed as the most captivating actress on daytime television, Hunter Tylo may seem untouchable, a star out of our orbit. Nothing, as she reveals in this candid autobiography, could be further from the truth. This is the story of a down-to-earth woman -- mother, wife, and friend -- whose grace and class in the face of extraordinary challenges are an inspiration. Meet the real Hunter Tylo and get to know a remarkable person. As Dr. Taylor Hayes, the sexy psychiatrist of CBS's The Bold and the Beautiful -- seen by 350 million daily viewers worldwide -- Hunter brings to life a complex character whose "compassion can sometimes turn to passion, " as the actress describes her; it is this quality that exemplifies Hunter's life as well: she has emerged as a woman whose understated strength turns obstacles into triumphs. Here at last, Hunter tells the complete story of her successful court battle against the producers of Melrose Place, who had fired her before she appeared in a single episode because she became pregnant. But Hunter's motherhood odyssey has taken dramatic twists more heart-wrenching than any television drama. For the first time, Hunter tells the story of her infant daughter Katya's rare eye cancer -- and how her deeply rooted Christian faith has seen her through the ordeal. With honesty and without pretension, Hunter Tylo also takes chances in Making A Miracle -- by revealing much that her millions of fans do not yet know, including a personal crisis that left her to make a choice no woman should have to make. Reading these candid revelations, you may come to see Hunter Tylo in a new light -- and perhaps understand more of who she is and what forces motivate her every day. Beyond the glamour of stardom and celebrity, Making A Miracle is a story about motherhood; for Hunter Tylo, it is the role of a lifetime. Little Tyke Author: Westbeau, Georges H. ISBN: Pages: 115 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Pacific Press Publishing Published: Pacific Press Publishing 1956 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 Book Description: A true story of the gentle lioness whowon America's heart, featured in motion pictures,television and public appearances. 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