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Author: Stephen Mark Davies Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency ISBN: 1618973126 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 81
Book Description
This is a story that had to be told, a book that had to be written. For it is the description of a man’s life lived simply, without glory, uncomplicated, and based solely on the principles of love for family, honesty, and knowing right from wrong. It is the story of my father’s life, beginning with his death, and then looking back on what were the most extraordinary and cherished childhood memories of living with him. My father was a strong, fun-loving man with a great sense of humour and fun. He was born in a time of great depression in Northwest England in the late 1920s. His father worked dockside in the port of Liverpool, pulling horses and traps that transported coal and food stuff all over the county of Lancashire, and was similarly a man who enjoyed life and watching their beloved Liverpool FC playing at Anfield on Saturday afternoons. My dad only ever loved one woman, Marjorie, a Scouse lass of strong Irish heritage. Together they rode the highs and lows of marriage for nearly sixty years. Four children, eleven grandchildren, and six great grandchildren are the testament to a marriage that he and she made work. The lessons he taught me as a boy have helped me to become the man I am today. The guidance he gave me as a teenager enabled me to become the father I have become. And for all this, I thank the Most Extraordinary Ordinary Man who ever lived, and hereby present My Dad’s Story.
Author: Stephen Mark Davies Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency ISBN: 1618973126 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 81
Book Description
This is a story that had to be told, a book that had to be written. For it is the description of a man’s life lived simply, without glory, uncomplicated, and based solely on the principles of love for family, honesty, and knowing right from wrong. It is the story of my father’s life, beginning with his death, and then looking back on what were the most extraordinary and cherished childhood memories of living with him. My father was a strong, fun-loving man with a great sense of humour and fun. He was born in a time of great depression in Northwest England in the late 1920s. His father worked dockside in the port of Liverpool, pulling horses and traps that transported coal and food stuff all over the county of Lancashire, and was similarly a man who enjoyed life and watching their beloved Liverpool FC playing at Anfield on Saturday afternoons. My dad only ever loved one woman, Marjorie, a Scouse lass of strong Irish heritage. Together they rode the highs and lows of marriage for nearly sixty years. Four children, eleven grandchildren, and six great grandchildren are the testament to a marriage that he and she made work. The lessons he taught me as a boy have helped me to become the man I am today. The guidance he gave me as a teenager enabled me to become the father I have become. And for all this, I thank the Most Extraordinary Ordinary Man who ever lived, and hereby present My Dad’s Story.
Author: Mark Slouka Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393292312 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
"I have never before read anything except Nabokov’s Speak, Memory that so relentlessly and shrewdly exhausted the kindness and cruelty of recollection’s shaping devices." —Geoffrey Wolff Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka’s parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial—admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell—in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story, the revelation of her life-long burden and the forty-year love affair that might have saved her, shows the way out of the maze.
Author: Alexandra Styron Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1416595066 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.
Author: Joan Wickersham Publisher: HMH ISBN: 0547350740 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
National Book Award Finalist: “Wickersham has journeyed into the dark underworld inside her father and herself and emerged with a powerful, gripping story.” —The Boston Globe One winter morning in 1991, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Who was he? Why did he do it? And what was the impact of his death on the people who loved him? Using an index—the most formal and orderly of structures—Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history, every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors, exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and a deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter’s anguished, loving elegy to her father.
Author: Kelly Farley Publisher: ISBN: 9780985205188 Category : Adjustment (Psychology) Languages : en Pages : 127
Book Description
Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is a collection of candid stories from grieving dads that were interviewed over a two year period. The book offers insight from fellow members of, in the haunting words of one dad, "this terrible, terrible club," which consists of men who have experienced the death of a child. This book is a collection of survival stories by men who have survived the worst possible loss and lived to tell the tale. They are real stories that pull no punches and are told with brutal honesty. Men that have shared their deepest and darkest moments. Moments that included thoughts of suicide, self-medication and homelessness. Some of these men have found their way back from the brink while others are still standing there, stuck in their pain. The core message of Grieving Dads is "you're not alone." It is a message that desperately needs to be delivered to grieving dads who often grieve in silence due to society's expectations. Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is a book that no grieving dad or anyone who cares for him should be without. As any grieving parent will tell you, there are no words to describe the hell one experiences after the death of a child. Many men have no clue how to deal with or understand the myriad emotional, mental, and physical responses experienced after the death of a child. Stories appearing in the book have been carefully selected to represent a cross-section of fathers, as well as a diverse portrayal of loss. This approach helps reflect the full spectrum of grief, from the early days of shock and trauma to the long view after living with loss for many years. Any bereaved father will find brotherhood in these pages, and will feel that someone understands them. While there is plenty of raw emotion in this book-the stories are not exercises in self-pity nor are they studies in grief. They are survival stories instead. Some are testimonies to hope. Some are gut-wrenching accounts of overwhelming despair. But all of them are real-life stories from real-life grieving dads, and they show that even if one reaches his physical and emotional bottom, it is possible (although not easy) to live through that pain and find one's way to the other side of grief. Most dads in this book found themselves in a state of physical, mental, and emotional collapse after the death of their child. As if the losses alone weren't enough to drive these men to the brink, most try to deal with their grief according to the conventional wisdom so many men are brought up with, which perversely, increases their suffering all the more. We all know the party line about how men are "supposed" to deal with loss or even disappointment: toughen up, get back to work, take it like a man, support your wife, don't talk about your emotions, don't lose control, and if you must cry-by all means do so in private.
Author: Paul Newman Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0593534514 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. The greatest movie star of the past 75 years covers everything: his traumatic childhood, his career, his drinking, his thoughts on Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, John Huston, his greatest roles, acting, his intimate life with Joanne Woodward, his innermost fears and passions and joys. With thoughts/comments throughout from Joanne Woodward, George Roy Hill, Tom Cruise, Elia Kazan and many others. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and Vanity Fair "Newman at his best…with his self-aware persona, storied marriage and generous charitable activities…this rich book somehow imbues his characters’ pain and joy with fresh technicolor." —The Wall Street Journal In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman’s family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor’s life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story. The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. That same stipulation applied to Newman himself. The project lasted five years. The result is an extraordinary memoir, culled from thousands of pages of transcripts. The book is insightful, revealing, surprising. Newman’s voice is powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always meeting that high standard of searing honesty. The additional voices—from childhood friends and Navy buddies, from family members and film and theater collaborators such as Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill, Martin Ritt, and John Huston—that run throughout add richness and color and context to the story Newman is telling. Newman’s often traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Marlon Brando and James Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward—their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is revelatory and introspective, personal and analytical, loving and tender in some places, always complex and profound.
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0593320816 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 44
Book Description
From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post). Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.
Author: Angela South Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1783060212 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
“I had intended this to be the story of my father, an ordinary man living in an extraordinary turbulent half century, which shaped his life and subsequently mine. However, when researching my father’s life, I realise what an extraordinary life my mother had also lived and I want to incorporate her own tale. This is a story that also belongs to my sister and me and tells how we came to be the adults we now are.” This book chronicles the family history of Angela South’s father, John Louis Salter. It starts with his army career, at 14 years old, and how he was posted at 15 to Hong Kong and Mauritius. In WW1, he received the DCM – Distinguished Conduct Medal – and returned home in 1918, with a French bride, Albertine Marie. John left the army in 1925, qualifying as a civil servant despite his lack of education. He settled with his wife in southern England, during the 1920s and 30s. In 1937, Albertine Marie was admitted to a mental asylum for the remainder of her life, due to mental instability. During WW2, he worked in Whitehall and in 1945 was posted to Berlin, where he met Angela’s mother, Christa, who was 20 years old at the time. They returned to England together in 1947, where she studied English and secretarial skills so she could take over as the family bread-winner. John and Christa married in 1951, after the birth of Angela and her younger sister, Karin. My Father's and Mother's Century delves into Angela’s childhood, through the 1950s and 60s, in her somewhat unusual family, and reveals how it impacted on herself and Karin. The book will appeal to fans of family history, biographies and family history.
Author: Paul Auster Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 0571266746 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In 'The Book of Memory' the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The narrator, 'A', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.
Author: Dave Veerman Publisher: Thomas Nelson ISBN: 1418519405 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
Whether his passing was sudden or gradual, regardless of the health of the father-son relationship . . . when the man who gave you life dies, a part of you dies as well. It is an emotional rite of passage that affects who you are, how you relate to others, how you deal with your past, and how you face your future. You will find study questions at the end of each chapter in this book as authors Dave Veerman and Bruce Barton share their own emotional journeys, along with the insights and practical advice of professional counselors. Each chapter of When Your Father Dies also focuses on a specific life experience with personal accounts of men – some famous and some not – who have lost their fathers: "My father's death changed my relationship with God. I learned that He's in charge, not me." "When I realized how young my dad had died [at 59], I knew that I had no time to waste if I was going to make something of my life." More than a book about grief, When your Father Dies is a map through the complex emotions and chages a man goes through following the loss of his father.
Author: Stephen Mark Davies
Author: Stephen Mark Davies
Author: Mark Slouka
Author: Alexandra Styron
Author: Joan Wickersham
Author: Kelly Farley
Author: Paul Newman
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Author: Angela South
Author: Paul Auster
Author: Dave Veerman