Randi Davenport's young son, Chase, kept having problems, but a diagnosis proved elusive. Some said it was autism, others, ADHD-but as time went by, the problems only increased. She worked hard to provide her family with a sense of stability and strength, but her husband's erratic behavior only made the situation worse. Eventually, James Davenport slipped into his own world, leaving his wife and kids behind. At fifteen, Chase entered an unremitting...

When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror. Each had a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls. The younger two-one of them Jane-even shared a birthday. With so much in common, the two families quickly became inseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults, and before long the pairs had exchanged partners-divorced, remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm...

"Homer Simpson meets Anthony Robbins. Marsh's honesty and humanity make Fat, Forty, and Fired essential reading for anyone whose life has ever hit a roadblock. Hilarious and inspiring." --Bob Rosner, best-selling author and internationally syndicated Working Wounded columnist "An extremely funny and touching account of how someone can use humor and optimism to put adversity into perspective. Marsh's warm and distinctive view of life lights up every...

The extraordinary story of an all-American girl's conversion to Islam and her ensuing romance with a young Egyptian man, "The Butterfly Mosque" is a stunning articulation of a Westerner embracing the Muslim world. When G. Willow Wilson already an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East at just twenty-seven leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course that leads to her...

A rare day-to-day account by a young German squadron leader in Jagdstaffel 35 during the grim last year of World War I. Originally published in 1933, Wings of War provides minute descriptions of kills, losses, and the Germans' step-by-step retreat in the face of increasingly overwhelming Allied forces in the air. Brutally honest and vividly written, Rudolf Stark's account of the end-game of the Imperial German Army Air Service provides an intimate,...

How does a parent make sense of a child's severe mental illness? How does a father meet the daily challenges of caring for his gifted but delusional son, while seeking to overcome the stigma of madness and the limits of psychiatry? W. J. T. Mitchell's memoir tells the story-at once representative and unique-of one family's encounter with mental illness and bears witness to the life of the talented young man who was his son. Gabriel Mitchell was...

The Three Roosevelts is the extraordinary political biography of the intertwining lives of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who emerged from the closed society of New York's Knickerbocker elite to become the most prominent American political family of the twentieth century. As Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author James MacGregor Burns and acclaimed historian Susan Dunn follow the evolution of the Roosevelt political philosophy,...

A glimpse behind one of the deadliest professions in the world-the modern military sniper-and both the triumph and tragedy that hide behind the trigger. Monty was already a veteran sniper in the British armed forces when he shipped out to the Middle East. First stop, Iraq, where he learned how to maneuver in a land where the enemy could hide in plain sight. Then came Afghanistan, where Monty's skills, stamina, and character would be tested to their...

In the 1940s Henry J. Kaiser was a household name, as familiar then as Warren Buffett and Donald Trump are now. Like a Horatio Alger hero, Kaiser rose from lower-middle-class origins to become an enormously wealthy entrepreneur, building roads, bridges, dams, and housing. He established giant businesses in cement, aluminum, chemicals, steel, health care, and tourism. During World War II, his companies built cargo planes and Liberty ships. After the...

Miracles can happen to anyone. Steve Rom, a sportswriter at the Ann Arbor News, never thought his friendship with a recently retired Super Bowl champion would last. Rod Payne, a member of the 2000 world champion Baltimore Ravens, and a former All-America center at the University of Michigan, never thought the camaraderie he shared with his teammates in the NFL could be found with a rookie reporter. But when the two met by chance on Michigan's campus...