Academic Life

Two incredible women, an unlikely friendship and a united mission to save the lives of some of the world's poorest and most desperate women. Healing Lives reveals the untold tale of Mamitu Gashe, Dr Catherine Hamlin's protégée, and the inspiring almost 60-year friendship between the two women. In 1962, three years after Drs Catherine and Reg Hamlin arrived in Ethiopia, an illiterate peasant girl sought their aid. Mamitu Gashe was close to death and horrifically injured during childbirth after an arranged marriage in a remote mountain village.

Against a global backdrop of wartime suffering and postwar hope, Borrowing Life gathers the personal histories of the men and women behind the team that enabled and performed the modern medical miracle of the world's first successful organ transplant.

For Efrem Harkham, hospitality isn't just a job - it's a way of life. And that attitude is evident when you walk into any of Harkham’s one-hundred-plus luxury hotels. In a true, rags-to-riches American success story, Harkham built a renowned international hotel brand that is synonymous with comfort and refinement.

What are you going to do for the rest of your life? For David Lawrence, Jr., a brilliant newspaper editor and publisher with a distinguished, three-decade-long journalism career who retired in 1999 at the age of 56, the answer in his words was to dedicate his life to a "[N]ewly energized purposefulness: that every child have a real chance to succeed."

When I bounced the idea of An Accidental Life off Jim Browne, my financial manager with a keen understanding of the human condition, he said that all of us benefit from serendipity, from the accidental life. (We in fact met by happy accident.) He added that my life was and is typical, or perhaps a tad off the norm. Surely he's correct in that we all benefit from fortuitous events, but I think he's incorrect in that such events in my life are typical or normal.

What makes a wine distinctive is the goût du terroir, or the taste of the land - plus the personality and passion of the wine maker who lovingly adds his own liqueur de dosage or secret ingredient to each bottle. Here is a vintner's month-by-month account of one vintage at the Iron Horse vineyard located in the hills of Sonoma County in California. Author and wife of Iron Horse's wine-maker, Joy Sterling, fascinates with her account of the commitment involved in producing a premium wine.

Many fantasize about dramatically changing their lives - living in accordance with their ideals rather than the exigencies of job, bills, and possessions. William Powers actually does it. Here, his family, with baby in tow, searches for balance, community, and happiness in a small town in Bolivia. They build an adobe house, plant a prolific orchard and organic garden, and weave their life into a community of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, and creative businesspeople. Can this Transition Town succeed in the face of encroaching North American capitalism?

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Harvard geometer and Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, listeners not only get insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics.

Transformative, enlightening and inspiring - a compelling and candid story of life with constant pain. Irish broadcaster and producer Andrea Hayes is well known to the Irish public for her positive, friendly and down-to-earth persona on television and radio. Hidden behind her smile, though, is Andrea's battle with constant chronic pain. After over 20 years of unanswered questions, misdiagnosis, failed procedures and despair, she was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, Chiari Malformation 1.

Like most lawyers, Gwilliam was trained to win, and he's always been an expert at getting winning legal verdicts. His biggest personal (and eventually legal) wins, however, came after facing the shame and pain of a crushing courtroom defeat. This set him on a spiritual and psychological journey that caused him to look anew at every aspect of his life, including his history as a high school gang member (he still bears the scar of a poorly removed tattoo), failed marriages, and lots of partying.

As a Pennsylvania Game Warden for more than three decades, Wasserman investigated thousands of game law violations and arrested many violent career poachers. But another big part of his job was in the public relations and education field where he penned a weekly newspaper column entitled It’s a Wild Life. Hence, the title of this audiobook, which contains twenty-six of his most notable stories selected from more than seven hundred published over a fifteen-year period.

"Life Lived Well" is Jeremy Zoch's heartfelt gift, an invitation to embrace a life that is intentional, active, and treasured. With each minute, you'll find stories from Jeremy's life along with exercises challenging you to reflect, celebrate, forgive, and move forward to your best life. Zoch embraces the fact that our stories shape us, probing you to ask yourself: What stories do I want to shape me?

At age 28, the doctors told Martina Clark she had HIV and five years to live. With a sense of nothing to lose, she dove into activism. Then, she fell into an international career, starting as the first openly HIV-positive person to work for UNAIDS in 1996. A mix of personal memoir, travel, humor and an up-close look at the squishy underbelly of the United Nations, My Unexpected Life follows her personal journey—emotional and physical—interwoven with her professional path.

Behind the counter of your local pharmacy lies a world of wisdom you may never have tapped into. In Call the Pharmacist, award-winning pharmacist and women’s health advocate Elizabeth Roddick shares her decades of experience helping thousands of patients make sense of their medicines, lifestyle changes and health challenges.

This is a true story about Brandon C. Gandy, who overcame fifteen birth defects, twenty-eight surgeries, a medically induced coma, and cancer, and became the eighth person in the world to have a testicular and kidney transplant. During all of his near-death medical challenges, Brandon persisted; he would remain an athlete and he tackled many different sports. His brave, strong journey sheds light on real-life struggles of what a miracle child has to go through growing up and how he turned his preconceived weaknesses into his ultimate strengths with his endless faith.

Violet has always dreamed of being a midwife. All that stand in her way are anxiety, self-doubt and three years of hard work. With best friend Zoe by her side, can she overcome the obstacles and make her dream come true? Life Lessons is book one in the Lessons of a Student Midwife series. Join Violet on her journey. Treat yourself to Life Lessons today.

Do you feel trapped in a job that's going nowhere? Like you're on an unnecessary stepping stone towards your end goal? Fast food and serving ice cream all summer wasn't in the plans, the dreams, or the hopes and desires. Working minimum wage was necessary because it paid the bills. While working at an unappealing and unenjoyable job, Tamara learns some life lessons. Join her as she walks through the low valley of ice cream cones, laugh at her mistakes, and be encouraged that a summer job does not define a personality!

Rene Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, France, on March 31, 1596. He attended a Jesuit college and studied law for two years, but he soon gave up formal academics to immerse himself in “the great book of the world”. In 1618, he joined the army, where he became interested in military engineering and expanded his knowledge of physics and mathematics. Then, one night in 1619, he experienced what he described as divine visions, which inspired him to create a new mathematics-based philosophy.

Written to commemorate the centenary of Karl Marx’s birth, Max Beer, an Austrian historian of the socialist and Marxist movements, presents a clear, detailed and highly accessible work: the first half comprises a biography, full of fascinating quotations and insightful observations whilst the second analyses many aspects of Marx’s historical and economic teachings, with useful exemplars.