personal narratives

Documents the stories of ten real-life heroes who performed heroic deeds while serving in the Vietnam War.

A look at the emotional side of medicine?the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life?s most challenging moments. But doctors? emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients.

"In 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester's father but her mother, a stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South, who made the most enduring mark on the town"--Amazon.com.

"The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been one of the world's most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises for over four decades. In this oral history collection, men and women from Palestine-including a fisherman, a settlement administrator, and a marathon runner-describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the historic crisis"--Amazon.com.

Alona Frankel was just two years old when Germany invaded Poland. After a Polish carpenter agreed to hide her parents but not her, Alona's parents desperately handed her over to a greedy woman who agreed to hide her only as long as they continued to send money. Isolated from her parents and living among pigs, horses, mice, and lice, Alona taught herself to read and drew on scraps of paper. In time, the money ran out and Alona was tossed into her parents' hiding place, at this point barely recognizing them. After Poland's liberation, Alona's mother was admitted to a terminal hospital for tuberculosis and Alona was handed over to a wealthy, arrogant family of Jewish survivors who eventually cast her off into an orphanage. Despite these daily horrors and dangers surrounding her, Alona's imagination would not let her give up. Today she lives in Israel and has written and illustrated over fifty children's books, including the international best seller, Once Upon a Potty.

Fanya Gottesfeld Heller was born into a traditional Jewish family in a small Ukrainian village. She was able to evade the Nazi death squads with the help of a small group of Christian rescuers. Beset by hunger, and faced with the constant threat of execution, she miraculously survived. Today she shares her story and dedicates her life to furthering the cause of tolerance and hope.

The story of a child who, at the age of twelve, lost everything: hope, home, and even his own identity. Like so many Holocaust victims, Felix Weinberg's early childhood years were idyllic. That changed in 1938 when his father traveled to England, hoping to arrange for his family to emigrate there. His efforts came too late. Over the following years Felix survived five concentration camps. He lost his mother and brother in the camps and was liberated at Buchenwald. At the age of seventeen he was finally reunited with his father in Britain where they built a new life together.

Hundreds of applicants from all over the world compete to be accepted into the Cardiovascular Disease Training Fellowship at Johns Hopkins. The competition is intense because only nine doctors are chosen each year. This is the story of one doctor who was accepted. The training is intense, arduous, and often unforgiving. Those who survive the pressures and relentlessly push themselves, reach the top ranks of American medicine.

A memoir of Elli Friedmann in which she tells about her experiences at Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was taken at the age of thirteen in 1944, when the Nazis invaded her native Hungary.

Autobiography of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle about his achievements on the field of battle during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 1999 and 2009, earning one hundred and fifty Pentagon-confirmed kills and more unconfirmed with his sniper rifle. Explores Kyle's life on duty and also how the wars have affected him and his wife, Taya, at home.