My Home is in the Smoky Mountains

Product Details

Customer Reviews ::

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

Product Details

In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.

Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying—among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.

As time passed and Nando’s thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.

Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes—a first person account of the crash and its aftermath—is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure: it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews ::

Excellent Book! - Will Ramirez - Los Angeles, CA
I did not expect to enjoy this book so much. It is truly a great and inspiring story. Of course it's a bit depressing at times based on the events but overall it's a great story of survival. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in survival stories and overcoming odds. In fact, after reading this book I was inspired to read "Alive," and although I found it to be very good, this book was more readable and interesting.

Book Review - Never Surrender by LTG (Ret) William G Boykin

Ok, here's another good book that I just plowed in one day. I think I read that thing in about 7 hours with 368 pages. wow! So if this gives you an indication of how interesting this book was, so take note. My overall impression was that Boykin, a special operations hero who has sacrificed a lot for this country. And after all that he has and what he has lived at the end took a group of journalists who wanted to take a cheap shot at the Bush administration has screwed byBoykin and attacking his religious beliefs. And they succeeded.

Boys was a religious man, and that's what the media has decided with his dagger and twist-stick. Just because you wear a uniform does not mean that your right to religious freedom goes out the door. And guys have to be after I'm done with him as a crusader. And to take this hit piece of cyberspace, then all hell broke loose. He and his family were threatened by some Muslim extremists PagesIt 'been fired from his job in DC, and his good name was dragged through the mud.

Now I personally do not so religious. But I respect the religious convictions of a person are, and for some soldiers and contractors, is the belief in God, what is all day. I have no problem with that, but do not be pushed into the neck. But I must say that I am a believer in the concept that there is no such thing as an atheist in the trenches. God, and all forms of GodThe cult, it is through the times when there are no answers to the really bad situations and get down in life. As you read this book, you can see exactly how much life of faith Boykin as an operator and leader of Delta, and how ridiculous and wrong, the media had influenced their opinion of a man.

I do not want to give away the whole book, but I will give you a taste of some of the really cool stuff. Boykin was a member of the original group of young Delta. He was aVietnam veteran, Ranger, air, you name it, and it was in those early days of Charlie Beckwith (founder of Delta) trained. The book describes Boykin, as it was in those early days of the group and goes to some of the details and logic behind the selection process. (What I found very interesting)

As you progress through the book, he goes on with his life in the world Special Operations. He was involved with the mission of the hostages in Iran, Grenada, Operation JustCause and rescue of Kurt Muse, Somalia, hunting war criminals in Bosnia, Wacko and the Branch Davidian incident, hunting and Pablo Escobar. He also talks about his injuries, leaving behind a .50 cal around the arm and shrapnel of Grenada in Somalia. All the while, he remained faithful to his people, country and God

One last thing to bring only get an idea of the type of material in this book. Children often tells the true story behind all these great events of our recentThe story since Vietnam. Puts the rumors about the commitment idiot Wacko Delta and the death of Pablo Escobar is not alone. He goes into detail why they consider rock music actually used during Operation Just Cause / Noriega and the negotiations behind the scenes to save the Kurt Muse. He talks about how Mike Durrant (the pilot in Somalia, who was captured) to the face with the severed limb of one of his fallen comrades beaten by his captors. These are the kinds of data, you can expect fromthis book, and it was a page turner for me.

The Definitive Guide to writing a good advert

For some reason I'm not exactly clear, I did not really find biographies or autobiographies of interest that does not mean that there are interesting people out there, there. For some reason I can not read that others find it interesting. This book is an exception.

It is actually two books, not one: My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising. The first is the autobiography. The second is Hopkins' advice and strategies formost of your advertising and marketing.

Because if I really liked to read a biography. I think the reason that Hopkins did not spend a lot of time talking about his life. Must speak of his life says it is not long for him and does what is really interesting. Another interesting aspect of his biography that talks about various campaigns that actually did and how he made them successful.

In otherThe words, he does not know that fatal error of most autobiographies do: he does not go on and on itself, until you get bored to pieces.

The second book is scientific publicity, and this is the largest classical in advertising and text. This book is so important for people writing copy that legendary copywriter David Ogilvy, says you need to read at least seven times.

Many of the techniques described in this book that writers use today are exposedThe techniques that Hopkins invented. Hopkins covers all the important elements of writing your copy, including securities, the art of telling a story in your copy. It also shows how to test your campaigns so you do not spend your money in campaigns that do not work.

Whether you're a copywriter or a businessman who wants to get more from your advertising, this book is a classic and a must read.

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by ClaudeHopkins is a must for anyone serious about writing is that advertising makes money, to be read.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Product Details

We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true.

For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.

Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.

Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.





An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen

Customer Reviews ::