When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Her tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps - with the help of her inspired and inspiring teacher, Anne Sullivan - is one of the great stories of human courage and dedication. The Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen Keller's classic autobiography detailing the first 22 years of...

A charming memoir of one woman's unexpected journey from country chic to backwoods barnyard. McGaha never thought she would be pulling camouflage carpet off her ceiling or rescuing opossums from her barn and calling it "date night." Most importantly, she never thought she would only have $4.57 in her bank account. After she and her husband discovered that they owed a lot of back taxes, they foreclosed on their suburban home and moved to a one-hundred-year-old...

Born a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841. He spent the next 12 years as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation, and during this time he was frequently abused and often afraid for his life. This is his detailed description of slave life and plantation society.

"Are you constantly striving to keep up with life's busy expectations? It's easy to feel consumed with the desire to "succeed" and "acquire" and miss the simple opportunities waiting for you to slow down: a walk in the forest, sharing laughter with family, a personal moment of gratitude...Slow provides practical advice and fascinating insights into: messiness to mindfulness, decluttering to de-owning, asking why to asking where to now? Slow is an...

Knut Hamsun believed that modern literature should express the complexity of the human mind and nowhere is that philosophy more evident than in this stunning modern masterpiece, "Hunger." First published in 1890 in Norwegian and based on Hamsun's own experiences with poverty prior to his success as an author, "Hunger" tells the story of an unnamed vagrant who stumbles around the streets of Norway's capital city of Kristiania (now Oslo) looking for...

With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt resigned his post as assistant secretary of the navy to recruit the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The legendary Rough Riders-an unlikely combination of cowboys, frontiersmen, Native Americans, African-Americans, and Ivy League alumni-trained in Texas before shipping off to Cuba. The regiment met their enemy in the tropical summer heat, fighting rain, mud, and malaria as well as the...

First published in 1974 as A Circle of Children this is the first of four books from learning disabilities specialist Mary MacCracken. This is a book about children so emotionally disturbed they cannot fit into society; it is also the story of a woman whose involvement with these children changed the shape of their lives forever. When Mary MacCracken joined a school for emotionally disturbed children as a volunteer, she quickly found herself rocked...

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my relationship with my dad as much as I have enjoyed writing about it. And most of all, I hope you have remembered some moments or times where you can look back and say, "My father did love me and cared about me." And if your father is still living and you do not have a relationship with him or your relationship is not tight, pick up the phone, or better yet, go where he is and start communicating with him......

The first essay in this collection begins by declaring that seriousness is not a virtue, setting the tone for the light and playful pieces that follow. Drawn from G. K. Chesterton's weekly columns in The Illustrated London News and the New Witness, the essays here cover a range of topics, not necessarily connected, but which remain charming even when discussing weighty subjects. Topics include, "On Seriousness," "Lamp-Posts," and "On Pigs as Pets."...

I arrived in Uganda in 2004, not knowing what to expect but amongst protests by friends and family who equated the country to what they saw happening in South Africa. At that time, we grew to expect the frequent loss of electricity in Uganda. We knew to bring flashlights after that first year. During my first visit, I was overwhelmed when I heard people talking outside the home we were staying at. Dogs barked which added to the mysterious sounds outside...