Imagine, you're with the President in Florida, when America was attacked on 9/11. Buckle your seat belt - You're in the White House Travel Pool. It's gonna get wild! As told by Cameramen, Reporters, and WH Staff - All with the President, The week of 9/11. Revealing stories!
News Cameraman, Chris Carlson was there, in the White House Press Pool, and is your guide. On the morning of 9/11, America had no idea what was happening. The President and the White House Press had less information than the average US TV viewer watching CNN. Learn about the struggle to get any information, while Bush escaped to the skies on Air Force One. Learn what happened to the remaining press who were left in Florida and how it bruised many egos. The back story, on every step of the journey. This account isn't coming from the typical political and editorial spin zones. You'll hear it from the Cameramen who followed the president with their 20x1 zoom lenses, who were there. This is an up close, in-your-face, totally new account of the week of 9/11. You're in the White House Travel Pool!
Captured by ISIS, her bravery and faith became her pathway to freedom.
Badeeah Hassan was just 18 when she witnessed firsthand the horrors of the 2014 genocide of the Yazidi people by ISIS forces. Captured by ISIS, known locally as Daesh, Badeeah was among hundreds forced into a brutal human trafficking network made up of women and girls of Yazidi ethnicity, a much-persecuted minority culture of Iraq. Badeeah's story takes her to Syria where she is sold to a high-ranking ISIS commander known as Al Amriki, the American, kept as a house slave, raped, and routinely assaulted. Only the presence of her young nephew Eivan and her friend Navine, also prisoners, keeps her from harming herself. In captivity, she draws on memories and stories from her childhood to maintain a small bit of control in an otherwise volatile situation. Ultimately, it is her profound sense of faith and brave resistance that lead her to escape with Eivan and reunite with family.
Since her escape, Badeeah has brought her harrowing story of war and survival to the world's stage, raising awareness about the strength of her people and the acts of genocide against them. This captivating account of courage extends beyond the confines of her experience; Badeeah's story is about the resilience of women, girls, and persecuted groups everywhere in the face of seemingly insurmountable oppression.
Bespeak Audio Editions brings Canadian voices to the world with audiobook editions of some of the country's greatest works of literature, performed by Canadian actors.
There was danger in the kind of beauty I was desperate to achieve. At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan Henley were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome-a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it. Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous medical procedures to keep them alive. Doctors expanded the twins' skulls and broke bones to make room for their growing organs. After each surgery, the sisters felt like strangers to each other, unable to recognize themselves in the mirror. Their case attracted international attention. A French fashion magazine said Ariel and Zan "resembled the works of Picasso," as if they were abstract paintings, not girls just trying to survive. Later, plastic surgeons cut and trimmed and tugged their faces toward a tenuous aesthetic ideal. The girls dreamed of appearing "beautiful" but would settle for "normal." Fighting for acceptance was a daily chore. Between besting middle school bullies, becoming a cheerleader in high school, and finding her literary voice in college, Ariel learned to navigate a beauty-obsessed world with a facial disfigurement to become the woman she is today. From a resonant new voice, here is an unforgettable young adult memoir about beauty, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life-and yourself-back together, time and time again.
From National Book Award Finalist Albert Marrin comes the moving story of Janusz Korczak, the heroic Polish Jewish doctor who devoted his life to children, perishing with them in the Holocaust.
Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that 'children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.' Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
Korczak was also a Polish Jew on the eve of World War II. He turned down multiple opportunities for escape, standing by the children in his orphanage as they became confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. Dressing them in their Sabbath finest, he led their march to the trains and ultimately perished with his children in Treblinka.
But this book is much more than a biography. In it, renowned nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines not just Janusz Korczak's life but his ideology of children: that children are valuable in and of themselves, as individuals. He contrasts this with Adolf Hitler's life and his ideology of children: that children are nothing more than tools of the state.
And throughout, Marrin draws readers into the Warsaw Ghetto. What it was like. How it was run. How Jews within and Poles without responded. Who worked to save lives and who tried to enrich themselves on other people's suffering. And how one man came to represent the conscience and the soul of humanity.
This is an unforgettable portrait of a man whose compassion in even the darkest hours reminds us what is possible.
A NASA astrophysicist narrates his improbable journey from an impoverished childhood and an adolescence mired in drugs and crime to the nation's top physics PhD program at Stanford in this inspiring coming-of-age memoir.
Born into extreme poverty and emotional deprivation, James Edward Plummer was blessed with a genius I.Q. and a love of science. But in his community, a young bookworm quickly becomes a target for violence and abuse. As he struggles to survive his childhood in some of the toughest cities in the country, and his teenage years in the equally poor backwoods of Mississippi, James adopts the hybrid persona of a 'gangsta nerd'--dealing weed in juke joints while winning state science fairs with computer programs that untangle the mysteries of Einstein's relativity theory.
When his prodigious intellect gains him admission to the elite Physics PhD program at Stanford University, James finds himself torn between his love of science and a dangerous crack cocaine habit he developed in college. With the encouragement of his mentor Art Walker, the lone Black faculty member in the physics department, James finally seizes his dream of a life in science and becomes his true adult self, changing his name to Hakeem Muata Oluseyi in honor--and celebration--of his African heritage.
In the tradition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Other Wes Moore, A Quantum Life is an uplifting journey to the stars fueled by hope, hustle, and a hungry mind. As he charts his development as a young scientist, Oluseyi also plumbs the mysteries of the universe where potential personal outcomes are as infinite as the stars in the sky.
Occupied Warsaw, Summer 1940:
Witold Pilecki, a Polish underground operative, accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands interned at a new
concentration camp, report on Nazi crimes, raise a secret army, and stage an uprising. The name of the camp -- Auschwitz.
Over the next two and half years, and under the cruellest of conditions, Pilecki's underground sabotaged facilities, assassinated
Nazi officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying Nazi plans to
exterminate Europe's Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life, and his family to warn the West before all was
lost. To do so meant attempting the impossible -- but first he would have to escape from Auschwitz itself...
Frank Thompson isn’t your ordinary Union Army soldier. He’s also a nurse, tending to wounded soldiers on the battlefield … a spy, crossing Rebel lines and risking his life to find out what the enemy has planned … a mail carrier, delivering letters,
foodstuffs, and news from home to his fellow soldiers. But Frank has a secret that could cost him his place in his beloved army. And maybe even his life.
Frank Thompson is actually Sarah Emma Edmonds.
This riveting novel from bestselling author Marissa Moss is based on the true story of Sarah Emma Edmonds, a teenager who masqueraded as a man during the Civil War.
Sarah’s gripping voice vividly reveals her incredible journey of self-discovery and brings to life the truths and horrors of the Civil War. As Frank Thompson, Sarah must grapple with living a lie—while having to deal with ordinary day-to-day life situations in a very non-ordinary way.
The gripping true story of the only women to fly in combat in World War II—from Elizabeth Wein, award-winning author of Code Name Verity.
In the early years of World War II, Josef Stalin issued an order that made the Soviet Union the first country in the world to allow female pilots to fly in combat. Led by Marina Raskova, these three regiments, including the 588th Night Bomber Regiment—nicknamed the “night witches”—faced intense pressure and obstacles both in the sky and on the ground. Some of these young women perished in flames. Many of them were in their teens when they went to war.
This is the story of Raskova’s three regiments, women who enlisted and were deployed on the front lines of battle as navigators, pilots, and mechanics. It is the story of a thousand young women who wanted to take flight to defend their country, and the woman who brought them together in the sky.
Packed with fascinating sidebars and thoroughly researched details, A Thousand Sisters is the inspiring true story of a group of women who set out to change the world, and the sisterhood they formed even amid the destruction of war.
From National Book Award Finalist and Sibert Honor Author Albert Marrin, a timely examination of Red Scares in the United States, including the Rosenbergs, the Hollywood Ten and the McCarthy era.
In twentieth century America, no power--and no threat--loomed larger than the communist superpower of the Soviet Union. America saw in the dreams of the Soviet Union the overthrow of the US government, and the end of democracy and freedom. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the United States attempted to use deep economic and racial disparities in American culture to win over members and sympathizers.
From the miscarriage of justice in the Scotsboro Boys case, to the tragedy of the Rosenbergs to the theatrics of the Hollywood Ten to the menace of the Joseph McCarthy and his war hearings, Albert Marrin examines a unique time in American history...and explores both how some Americans were lured by the ideals of communism without understanding its reality and how fear of communist infiltration at times caused us to undermine our most deeply held values. The questions he raises ask: What is worth fighting for? And what are you willing to sacrifice to keep it?
This timely audiobook from an award-author brings to life an important and dramatic era in American history with lessons that are deeply relevant today.
I say, “Te amo siempre.”
And she says, “I love you more.”
And I say, “Impossible.”
Abuela, Don’t Forget Me is Rex Ogle’s portrait of his grandmother, the one adult he could count on when he was a child—and who is now forgetting him as dementia takes hold of her.
In his award-winning Free Lunch and Punching Bag, Rex charted a coming of age marked by poverty and domestic violence. Here, he celebrates the woman who gave him unconditional love through it all. From a first memory of hiding in a
laundry hamper and squealing with delight when she found him; through collect calls, visits, trips to the library, and a trip to Mexico, where she was raised; school reports, driving lessons, and a first car; to high school and graduation, Abuela,
Don’t Forget Me is a lyrical and life-affirming portrait of the promise of love and home, and of the devoted grandmother who provided it.
