Download Free A Life Cut Short Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online A Life Cut Short and write the review.

Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today. In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe’s childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd’s thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe’s most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.
Levas Ciparis, the anti-hero of this masterly critique of life in the late Soviet Union, is a man alone and he desperately wants to belong. He is obstructed in this quest by his own innocence and decency, which occasionally cause him to act with absurd inflexibility. In fact, the irresolvable tension between moral probity and necessary compromise is one of the many themes of this novel: "Yes, I truly did believe, being an honest, sufficiently pure and persistent person, that if I took up the work of the Komsomol, I would most certainly be capable of changing and enriching that community." In part, the first-person narration describes the process of being disabused of that delusion. Ciparis is dead and writes letters to his estranged friend Tomas Kelertas, with whom he has something of a love-hate relationship, which became more obsessive after their estrangement. The randomness of life does not always work against Ciparis, as he recounts his experiences from sickly child in a basement flat to his final moments in Leningrad when all options fall away. The system can work in his favour - primarily through a marriage that gains him a father-in-law who is a powerful, intelligent and utterly corrupt politician at the very top of the Soviet regime in Lithuania - but ultimately there is no place for him in that society or perhaps anywhere. Memoirs of a Life Cut Short is full of ideas, doubts and insightful observations on human behaviour borne along on a helter-skelter plot. Book jacket.
"Frankie - A Life Cut Short" is a historic, nonfiction story of the Life and Unsolved Murder Mystery of Frances S. Bullock, an attractive 40-year-old widow, who was brutally stabbed to death at her home July 26, 1963. The homicide happened in the small mountain town of Franklin, North Carolina and remains unsolved over fifty-five years later. The story reveals much about the victim's family's history including her childhood and adult life that might have led to her untimely death. In addition to the murder it also reveals some domestic violence and abuse that frequently occurred in the lives of some of the persons-of-interest in the case. The book describes in detail recent attempts at solving it as a cold case investigation and re-examination of the evidence of the clothing worn by the victim when murdered.
“. . . a compelling tale of a very large family coming from the Netherlands to Canada. It is also a heartbreaking tale of a young woman's struggle with her health and the impact her illness has on her family. It's hard to put down and Vanderkooy is to be congratulated on such a powerful book.” –Ken Setterington, A Guide to Canadian Children’s Books (with Deirdre Baker) and Branded by the Pink Triangle ". . . it’s the inward journey of adolescent Trudy—imprisoned in her sick bed while the world moves on without her—that will grip you the hardest. The interior dialogue is raw, tender and beautiful." —Doug O'Neill, writer, nature guide book author When Truus immigrates to Canada from the Netherlands as the oldest girl among ten siblings, she is just fifteen years old. From the start, she bears outsize responsibility for helping her devout Calvinist family navigate early struggles, even as the family continues to grow. Three years later she is beginning to find her place in the new land when she contracts an incurable illness. What follows is a five-year battle with illness and hospitalizations, along with emotional turmoil as she grapples with the social, psychological and spiritual implications of her condition. This semi-biographical novel is based on the real-life experiences of the author’s oldest sister.
The precipitous rise and controversial fall of a formidable African leader. Samora Machel (1933–1986), the son of small-town farmers, led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonists and became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. Machel’s military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed people of Southern Africa. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain. Allen and Barbara Isaacman lived through many of these changes in Mozambique and bring personal recollections together with archival research and interviews with others who knew Machel or participated in events of the revolutionary or post-revolutionary years.
John Rubadeau’s long, white beard; homeless-guy wardrobe; and penchant for dirty jokes belied his lofty status as one of the most popular professors ever at the University of Michigan. He taught writing in Ann Arbor for more than 30 years. The cover of his course pack read: “Grammar: the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.” "In A Beard Cut Short: The life and lessons of a legendary professor clipped by a slip of #MeToo," a former student tells the crazy, touching, inspiring, and often funny life story of an eccentric, influential professor. John caught dogs in Wisconsin, sold insurance in Indiana, raised pigs in Tennessee, counseled soldiers in Germany, and had his apartment bugged by the Romanian secret police. He lost a young wife and two baby boys. He was born poor and stayed that way most of his life. But, on his own terms, he met with extraordinary success. "A Beard Cut Short" also shares John’s key lessons on writing, teaching, and life – lessons that have inspired generations of students to watch out for comma splices and follow their dreams. The story is capped by an investigation of an unjust firing that’s a case study in how the misappropriation of #MeToo, a vital social movement, can hurt both the unfairly accused and the movement itself. John Rubadeau's (in)famous Grammar Review is included as a special bonus. Reviews: Rubadeau was an outspoken man of a previous era who taught so long the culture changed around him. As a result, the book is a captivating document on how the language of teaching (and language itself) has changed over the decades, and the ways in which a certain type of larger-than-life educator, once common, has mostly ceased to exist. — Kirkus Former Camera science writer and Colorado Book Award winner (“From Jars to the Stars”) Todd Neff examines the life of his mentor, former University of Michigan Professor John Rubadeau, before plunging in to investigate the unjust #MeToo claims that led to his firing in “A Beard Cut Short: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Professor Clipped by a Slip of #MeToo.” Rubadeau was an old-school writing teacher who fearlessly created room for students to discuss and debate human differences in the classroom, refusing to coddle or protect them, an effort doomed to fail. “I am here to teach you about the intricacies and nuances of the English language not to coddle you or to support your conviction that you are the next Shakespeare,” Rubadeau informed his students. “If you will be devastated because you receive less than an A in this course, drop this class the first day.” Using his investigative skills to obtain confidential documents, Neff concludes that his mentor’s firing “came about through a poisonous brew of stubbornness, incompetence, misplaced zealotry, hypersensitivity, blinkered perspective, bad faith, personal friction, professional jealousy, and shoddy investigative work — all of which led to over-reaction and injustice.” — The Boulder Daily Camera
Frederick Luis Aldama and graphic artists from Mapache Studios give shape to ugly truths in the most honest way, creating new perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about life in the borderlands of the Américas. Each bilingual prose-art fictional snapshot offers an unsentimentally complex glimpse into what it means to exist at the margins of society today.
In the tradition of Ruth Rendell, Lynda La Plante, Frances Fyfield, and Barbara Vine, Cut Short is a gripping psychological thriller that introduces Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel, a woman whose past is threatening to collide with her future. D.I. Geraldine Steel relocates to the quiet rural town of Woolsmarsh, thinking she’s found a restful place where she can battle her demons in private. But when she finds herself pitted against a twisted killer preying on young local women in the park, she quickly discovers how wrong she is ... When an unwitting bystander comes forward as a witness, she quickly becomes the murderer’s next obsession. And Geraldine Steel is locked in a race against time, determined to find the killer before yet another victim is discovered. But can she save the lives of the town’s young women—or will Geraldine herself become the killer’s ultimate trophy?
A powerful portrait of the lives of four boarding school graduates who died too young, John F. Kennedy, Jr. among them, by their fellow Andover classmate, New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan. In his masterful pieces for Vanity Fair and in his bestselling books, William D. Cohan has proven to be one of the most meticulous and intrepid journalists covering the world of Wall Street and high finance. In his utterly original new book, Four Friends, he brings all of his brilliant reportorial skills to a subject much closer to home: four friends of his who died young. All four attended Andover, the most elite of American boarding schools, before spinning out into very different orbits. Indelibly, using copious interviews from wives, girlfriends, colleagues, and friends, Cohan brings these men to life on the page. Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, uses his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence. Will Daniel, Harry Truman’s grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, does everything possible to escape the burdens of a family legacy he’s ultimately trapped by. Harry Bull builds the life of a careful, successful Chicago lawyer and heir to his family’s fortune...before taking an inexplicable and devastating risk on a beautiful summer day. And the life and death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.—a story we think we know—is told here with surprising new details that cast it in an entirely different light. Four Friends is an immersive, wide-ranging, tragic, and ultimately inspiring account of promising lives cut short, written with compassion, honesty, and insight. It not only captures the fragility of life but also its poignant, magisterial, and pivotal moments.
Of the three physicians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Doctor George Edwin Lord (1846–76) was the lone commissioned medical officer, an assistant surgeon with the United States Army’s 7th Cavalry—one more soldier caught up in the U.S. government’s efforts to fulfill what many people believed was the young country’s “Manifest Destiny.” A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn tells Lord’s story for the first time. Notable for its unique angle on Custer’s last stand and for its depiction of frontier-era medicine, the book is above all a compelling portrait of the making of an army medical professional in mid-nineteenth-century America. Drawing on newly discovered documents, Todd E. Harburn describes Lord’s education and training at Bowdoin College in Maine and the Chicago Medical College, detailing what the study of medicine entailed at the time for “a young man of promise . . . held in universal esteem.” Lord’s time as a contract physician with the army took him in 1874 to the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey. From there Harburn recounts how, after a failed romance and the rigors of the U.S. Army Medical Board examination, the young doctor proceeded to his first—and only—appointment as a post surgeon, at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory. What followed, of course, was Lord’s service, and his death, in the Little Big Horn campaign, which this book shows us for the first time from the unique perspective of the surgeon. A portrait of a singular figure in the milieu of the American military’s nineteenth-century medical elite, A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn offers a close look at a familiar chapter in U.S. history, and a reminder of the humanity lost in a battle that resonates to this day.