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My Way Home
His life was barely worth a dollar. He slept outside, on park benches, in stairwells, under bushes. Michael Gaulden lived in shelter after shelter across the United States. With his father incarcerated and mother disabled, he stayed homeless for ten years. |
Michael learned death was a big part of youth homelessness. Education was not. To survive, he had to become something more. Caught in between two worlds- his dreams vs. his reality- violence, gangsters, hunger, poverty, and sorrow marked his daily life.
Michael vowed to change his fate through getting his high school diploma. He never hoped to dream that not only would he graduate from high school but also from a prestigious California university. This is the true story of a homeless boy, marked for prison or worse, who fought against tremendous odds and persevered to achieve academic and professional success.
Being Seen
Being Seen is a memoir about a woman with autism struggling not only to be seen, but to be understood and respected. Anlor Davin grew up in a small town on the Western coast of France. From earliest childhood she was beset by overwhelming sensory chaos and had trouble navigating the social world. Only many years later did she learn that she was autistic. |
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Through incredible effort, Anlor was able to parlay her knowledge of the French language into a job teaching in the notorious South Side neighborhood of Chicago, one of America's most violent. Anlor married, had a child, and even dreamed that she might be able to pass as a neurotypical person. The grim toll of daily compensating for her autism and “pretending to be normal” proved too great a challenge and Anlor’s life imploded. She spiraled downward into a kind of hell, losing her marriage and her beloved son.
Desperate, Anlor moved west to California, where she found a mysterious and ancient tradition of spiritual practice from the Far East—zen. Through this profound meditation and community she was able to slowly rebuild her life, this time with honest acceptance of the challenge she faced. The path took her through extreme emotional and physical duress but—at last—led to proper medical diagnosis and treatment of her autism. Today, Anlor works to help people understand her way of being, and the value of basic meditative practice in living and thriving with autism.
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Surviving Mental Illness: My Story
The Road to Recovery Written from the perspective of someone whose life has been challenged by mental illness, this book offers help, hope, and inspiration to others struggling with psychological disorders. It provides information about mental illness in general-and mood disorders in particular-valuable tips about treatment and medication, and resources and organizations dedicated to helping those suffering from these disorders. |
One Groovy Summer
This novel relates the enjoyable story told from the perspective of a young man who just graduated from high school in 1968. This was a time when he could be drafted into the Vietnam War any day now. So this eighteen year old boy and his friends just wanted to have as much fun, adventure, and romance as possible. And that is just what they did that summer and much more. |
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Misdiagnosed
When a lymphoma scare threatened the life of a journalist, she began a quest to find the correct medical diagnosis for the mysterious illness she'd battled for nearly 20 years. She turned to her favorite TV show, House M.D., for inspiration. She used her research skills to look for a "real life" Gregory House to give her some answers. In this brutally honest memoir, Nika Beamon reveals how she found the doctor who saved her and how you can too. |
Autism's Stepchild: A Mother's Story
Autism's Stepchild is the story of a mother's unfailing struggle over two decades to find adequate care for her daughter Jean. Misdiagnosed and misunderstood Jean had a condition that today would be understood to be autism. Erik Erikson became interested in her and counseled her family. She became the chapter "Early Ego Failure" in his classic book, Childhood and Society. |
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Storm Over South Africa
Storm over South Africa follows the lives and tribulations of a diverse group of characters through the Second Anglo-Boer War from 1899-1902 in South Africa. They belonged to different levels of the opposing societies and the story follows their actual life and death experiences in this conflict. |
The reader is guided through the various twists and turns of the first major British conflict of the 20th century from its beginning through to its end. The naivety and excitement of combatants in the lead up to and beginning of the Second Anglo-Boer War was contagious. It pulled many naïve young men into the maelstrom of combat. The failures, frustrations, disappointments, disillusionments and sufferings soon emerge. It is a tale of imperial arrogance and determination, of stubbornness, innocence, love and loss experienced in a rugged and alluring land far from the heart of the British Empire.