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This is a book for people living in the trenches--for those who are searching for a deeper sense of satisfaction from the daily grind of being alive in the l990sWord to laypeople who feel the call of the Great Commission upon their lives.ess, a better friend.
Here is an intimate glimpse into Solomon's ancient journal, Ecclesiastes, in which the young king's desperate quest for satisfaction-in work, in sexual conquest, in all the trappings afforded by his fabulous wealth-was as futile as trying to "catch the wind." For those struggling with the anxieties and frustrations of our modern era, the good news is that you can find perspective and joy amid the struggle.
Deployed to Iraq in March 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, US Marine Michael Zacchea thought he had landed a plum assignment. His team's mission was to build, train, and lead in combat the first Iraqi Army battalion trained by the US military. Quickly, he realized he was faced with a nearly impossible task. With just two weeks' training based on outdated and irrelevant materials, no language instruction, and few cultural tips for interacting with his battalion of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, and others, Zacchea arrived at his base in Kirkush to learn his recruits would need beds, boots, uniforms, and equipment. His Iraqi officer counterparts spoke little English. He had little time to transform his troops—mostly poor, uneducated farmers—into a cohesive rifle battalion that would fight a new insurgency erupting across Iraq. In order to stand up a fighting battalion, Zacchea knew, he would have to understand his men. Unlike other combat Marines in Iraq at the time, he immersed himself in Iraq's culture: learning its languages, eating its foods, observing its traditions—even being inducted into one of its Sunni tribes. A constant source of both pride and frustration, the Iraqi Army Fifth Battalion went on to fight bravely at the Battle of Fallujah against the forces that would eventually form ISIS. The Ragged Edge is Zacchea's deeply personal and powerful account of hopeful determination, of brotherhood and betrayal, and of cultural ignorance and misunderstanding. It sheds light on the dangerous pitfalls of training foreign troops to fight murderous insurgents and terrorists, precisely when such wartime collaboration is happening more than at any other time in US history.
Based on ten years of research, the book follows individuals and families as they apply for and live on public aid and eventually leave the system. Rank's chronicle of their day-to-day experiences reveals the many sacrifices and crises that tax ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Beginning with a history of welfare from Roosevelt to Clinton, he focuses on AFDC and the Food Stamp program. He then describes the backgrounds of the recipients, their hopes for the future and attitudes toward welfare, their daily routines and problems, their work behavior, and the effect of welfare on family dynamics. Living on the Edge reveals the experiences of female-headed families, married couples, single men and women, and the elderly.
“Much more than a coming-of-age story, Badluck Way is an important meditation on what it means to share space and breathe the same air as truly wild animals, and the necessary damage that can occur when boundaries are crossed” (Tom Groneberg, author of The Secret Life of Cowboys). In this gripping memoir of a young man, a wolf, their parallel lives and ultimate collision, Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote, windswept Sun Ranch in southwest Montana. The Sun’s twenty thousand acres of rangeland occupy a still-wild corner of southwest Montana—a high valley surrounded by mountain ranges and steep creeks with portentous names like Grizzly and Bad Luck. Just over the border from Yellowstone National Park, the Sun holds giant herds of cattle and elk amid many predators—bears, mountain lions, and wolves. In lyrical, haunting language, Andrews recounts marathon days and nights of building fences, riding, roping, and otherwise learning the hard business of caring for cattle, an initiation that changes him from an idealistic city kid into a skilled ranch hand. But when wolves suddenly begin killing the ranch’s cattle, Andrews has to shoulder a rifle, chase the pack, and do what he’d hoped he would never have to do. Called “an elegant memoir” by the Great Falls Tribune, Badluck Way is about transformation and complications, about living with dirty hands every day. It is about the hard choices that wake us at night and take a lifetime to reconcile. Above all, Badluck Way celebrates the breathtaking beauty of wilderness and the satisfaction of hard work on some of the harshest, most beautiful land in the world.
By the author of Planetwalker, The Ragged Edge of Silence takes us to another level of appreciating, through silence, the beauty of the planet and our place in it. John Francis's real and compelling prose forms a tapestry of questions and answers woven from interviews, stories, personal experience, science, and the power of silence through history, including practice by Native American, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures. Through their time-honored traditions and his own experience of communicating silently for 17 years, Francis's practical exercises lay the groundwork for the reader to build constructive silence into everyday life: to learn more about oneself, to set goals and accomplish dreams, to build strong relationships, and to appreciate and be a steward of the Earth. With its amazing human interest element and first-person expertise, this book is energizing and universally instructive.
In 1976 Gelya Frank began writing about the life of Diane DeVries, a woman born with all the physical and mental equipment she would need to live in our society--except arms and legs. Frank was 28 years old, DeVries 26. This remarkable book--by turns moving, funny, and revelatory--records the relationship that developed between the women over the next twenty years. An empathic listener and participant in DeVries's life, and a scholar of the feminist and disability rights movements, Frank argues that Diane DeVries is a perfect example of an American woman coming of age in the second half of the twentieth century. By addressing the dynamics of power in ethnographic representation, Frank--anthropology's leading expert on life history and life story methods--lays the critical groundwork for a new genre, "cultural biography." Challenged to examine the cultural sources of her initial image of DeVries as limited and flawed, Frank discovers that DeVries is gutsy, buoyant, sexy--and definitely not a victim. While she analyzes the portrayal of women with disabilities in popular culture--from limbless circus performers to suicidal heroines on the TV news--Frank's encounters with DeVries lead her to come to terms with her own "invisible disabilities" motivating the study. Drawing on anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, law, and the history of medicine, Venus on Wheels is an intellectual tour de force.
In the never-ending quest for fulfillment, we sometimes convince ourselves that life would be better if we just had a different career . . . more education . . . a new spouse . . . a fresh start in another location. The solution to life's challenges, we think, is just around the corner, a few steps ahead?always just out of reach. Living on the Ragged Edge Workbook opens the pages of an ancient journal?the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. In this very personal, unbelievably honest book, King Solomon chronicles his search for satisfaction, experiencing everything the world offered. The wisest man who ever lived, he certainly had the intelligence and the vast resources to pursue whatever his heart desired?from personal riches to sexual pleasures. Solomon had it all. He did it all with abandon. And he came to the end of his days with the ultimate secret for the "good life." Do you want to know the secret? Do you want to know how to find joy and peace in this world gone mad? In this bestseller Charles Swindoll delivers his characteristic insights and wisdom in an exploration of the book of Ecclesiastes and brings home to you Solomon's powerful message for living at its best.
At the Ragged Edge chronicles the world's fastest boats and among the most extraordinary of sports spectacles. The focus is on the lives of two of the sport's most famous competitors: Gar Wood was a mechanical genius and a perfectionist. A self-made millionaire who once held more patents than any other living American, he devoted his considerable fortune and skills to becoming the world's greatest speedboat driver. Whether he was fighting off the challenges of racers from other nations, setting speed records, or racing a train down the Hudson River as a publicity stunt, Gar Wood always managed to create a good story for the press and, in the process, became a phenomenon. He was brash, had a vivid imagination and, through his many exploits, became the first to cast national attention on the sport of boatracing. Bill Muncey was a showman and a strategist. At once both cocky and self-effacing, he understood marketing and competed at a time when the ability to represent the sponsor was nearly as important as the ability to push one's foot to the throttle. But, he was skilled on the racecourse, too. He knew how to get the best from his equipment and, most maddening to those he raced against, had the uncanny ability to get into the heads of his fellow competitors and take appropriate advantage. Driving boats capable of traveling the length of a football field in one second, without so much as a seat belt to hold him into his open cockpit, he also knew the sport's danger, the tragedy of losing friends, and the pain of his own harrowing accidents. Along the way, you'll also meet Chris Smith and Ted Jones, two designers and boat builders who would revolutionize the sport; Henry Segrave, one of England's most decorated racers; and Bernie Little, a brash millionaire who spared no expense to have the fastest boat possible. Together, these characters, and many more, tell the fascinating story of hydroplane racing's first one hundred years.
One week in June. One small island. 40,000 annual visitors. Raw speed. Numerous annual deaths. The Isle of Man TT motorcycle road race. Five minutes to go. The claxon sounds, harsh as an air raid siren. Television crews attempt last-minute interviews with riders. The thousand yard-stares give it away: they're really not listening now. Four minutes to go. The grandstand is packed. Some racers tell their mechanics, 'I'll see you later for a pint' - just to make themselves believe they will. Three minutes to go. For the first man on the road, hidden dangers exist. He will have no-one to follow. And he is the hare that the greyhounds will be chasing. Two minutes to go. By the end of the first lap, riders will be howling past faster than a bullet from the barrel of a gun. A full 160pmh. And that's not even the fastest part of the course. One minute to go. The atmosphere is palpably tense. It's like no other sporting event on earth. Formula 1 drivers can crash spectacularly and just walk away. Everyone knows that's not the case here. Five seconds. The starter raises the chequered flag, ready to snap down. No more time for nerves, for doubts. The race has started. How it will end, no-one knows. The TT has begun. In Ragged Edge, Stuart Barker will write the definitive story of this unique event, from the tarmac up. The history, the atmosphere, the heroes, tragedies and legends. And most importantly: our fascination with this seductive yet perilous test of skill and daring. This is the unvarnished, raw truth behind the world's most dangerous sporting event - in the words of those who ride it.