Download or read book Bin Laden s Bald Spot written by Brian Doyle and published by Red Hen Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of humorous short stories from the award-winning author of The Plover and Mink River. Welcome to the peculiar, headlong world of Brian Doyle’s fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling—these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldn’t be. Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget. “To read Brian Doyle is to apprehend, all at once, the force that drives Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman, and James Joyce, and Emily Dickinson, and Francis of Assisi, and Jonah under his gourd. Brian Doyle is an extraordinary writer whose tales will endure. The sublime ‘Waking the Bishop’ is going to inhabit American anthologies forever and ever.” —Cynthia Ozick, New York Times–bestselling author of Heir to the Glimmering World “What I like about Brian Doyle’s writing is that it’s real—it’s got mud and blood and tears but it’s also got earthly angels who teach him to grasp on to each small epiphany as it opens before him.” —Martin Flanagan, author of The Call and The Art of Pollination

Download or read book Bin Laden s Bald Spot Other Stories written by Brian Doyle and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the peculiar and headlong world of Brian DoyleÆs fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling--these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldnÆt be. Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget: ... The barber who shaves the heads of the thugs in Bin LadenÆs cave tells cheerful stories of life with the preening video-obsessed leader, who has a bald spot shaped just like Iceland. ... A husband gathers all of his wifeÆs previous boyfriends for a long day on a winery-touring bus. ... A teenage boy drives off into the sunset with his troubled sisterÆs small daughters...and the loser husband locked in the trunk of the car. ... The late Joseph Kennedy pours out his heart to a golf-course bartender moments before the stroke that silenced him forever. ... A man digging in his garden finds a brand-new baby boy, still alive, and has a chat with the teenage neighbor girl whose son it is. ... A man born on a Greyhound bus eventually buys the entire Greyhound Bus Company and revolutionizes Western civilization. ... A mountainous bishop dies and the counting of the various keys to his house turns... tense. ... A man discovers his wife having an affair, takes up running to grapple with his emotions, and discovers everyone else on the road is a cuckold too. And many others.

Download or read book Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace written by Brian Doyle and published by Franciscan Media. This book was released on 2017-08-09 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Brian Doyle is an extraordinary writer whose tales will endure.” —Cynthia Ozick, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Quarrel and Quandary This is a guided tour through the mind of one of the most acclaimed voices in contemporary Catholic writing. Brian Doyle effortlessly connects the everyday with the inexpressible and consistently marries searingly honest prose with interruptions of humor and humanity. These essays bear Doyle’s trademark depth and deliver with eloquence his piercing observations on mohawks and miracles, vigils and velociraptors, syntax and scapulars, jail and jihad, and mercy beyond sense. A 2018 Catholic Press Association Book Award winner. The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

Download or read book The Bin Ladens written by Steve Coll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap "Riveting . . . The most psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind yet." - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In The Bin Ladens, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll continues where Ghost Wars left off, shedding new light on one of the most elusive families of the twenty-first century. Rising from a famine-stricken desert into luxury, private compounds, and even business deals with Hollywood celebrities, the Bin Ladens have benefited from the tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, suddenly thrust into a world awash in oil, money, and the temptations of the West. But what do these incongruities mean for globalization, the War on Terror, and America's place in the Middle East? Meticulously researched, The Bin Ladens is the story of a remarkably varied and often dangerous family that has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically different ends.

Download or read book Leaping written by Brian Doyle and published by Loyola Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this spirited collection of essays, Brian Doyle employs his wit, wisdom, and gusto for life as he shares with readers his thoughts on Jesus, the Mass, Birds, Bees, and so much more. What would be a good alternative name for Jesus? What does a honeybee at Mass have to tell us about Christ? What is, after all, the real point of saying prayers when someone is suffering? Through the good and the bad, the serious and the hilarious, Doyle finds just the right story and just the right words to help us better understand life and love—and to help us see our faith in a whole new light.

Download or read book Sea Stories written by Admiral William H. McRaven and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the success of his #1 New York Times bestseller Make Your Bed, which has sold over one million copies, Admiral William H. McRaven is back with amazing stories of bravery and heroism during his career as a Navy SEAL and commander of America's Special Operations Forces. Admiral William H. McRaven is a part of American military history, having been involved in some of the most famous missions in recent memory, including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, and the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. Sea Stories begins in 1963 at a French Officers' Club in France, where Allied officers and their wives gathered to have drinks and tell stories about their adventures during World War II-the place where a young Bill McRaven learned the value of a good story. Sea Stories is an unforgettable look back on one man's incredible life, from childhood days sneaking into high-security military sites to a day job of hunting terrorists and rescuing hostages. Action-packed, humorous, and full of valuable life lessons like those exemplified in McRaven's bestselling Make Your Bed, Sea Stories is a remarkable memoir from one of America's most accomplished leaders.

Download or read book The Operator written by Robert O'Neill and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This instant New York Times bestseller—“a jaw-dropping, fast-paced account” (New York Post) recounts SEAL Team Operator Robert O’Neill’s incredible four-hundred-mission career, including the attempts to rescue “Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips, and which culminated in the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist—Osama bin Laden. In The Operator, Robert O’Neill describes his idyllic childhood in Butte, Montana; his impulsive decision to join the SEALs; the arduous evaluation and training process; and the even tougher gauntlet he had to run to join the SEALs’ most elite unit. After officially becoming a SEAL, O’Neill would spend more than a decade in the most intense counterterror effort in US history. For extended periods, not a night passed without him and his small team recording multiple enemy kills—and though he was lucky enough to survive, several of the SEALs he’d trained with and fought beside never made it home. “Impossible to put down…The Operator is unique, surprising, a kind of counternarrative, and certainly the other half of the story of one of the world’s most famous military operations…In the larger sense, this book is about…how to be human while in the very same moment dealing with death, destruction, combat” (Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author). O’Neill describes the nonstop action of his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, evokes the black humor of years-long combat, brings to vivid life the lethal efficiency of the military’s most selective units, and reveals details of the most celebrated terrorist takedown in history. This is “a riveting, unvarnished, and wholly unforgettable portrait of America’s most storied commandos at war” (Joby Warrick).

Download or read book Crimes Committed by Terrorist Groups written by Mark S. Hamm and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.

Download or read book Spirited Men written by Brian Doyle and published by Cowley Publications. This book was released on 2004-01-25 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable collection of essays, acclaimed writer Brian Doyle offers “resurrections, restorations, reconsiderations, appreciations, enthusiasms, headlong solos, laughing prayers, imaginary meetings with most unusual and most interesting men.” Geographically and chronologically diverse—Plutarch of Greece; William Blake of England; Robert Louis Stevenson of Scotland; James Joyce and Van Morrison of Ireland; and others—Doyle sees them as men of “immense spiritual substance, prayerful fury, enormous grace,” men concerned with “the moral grapple” and “the sinuous crucial puzzle of love.” In telling the stories of these talented, troubled, and extraordinary men, Doyle discerns clues about how to be a good man, headlong in the pursuit of love and capable of greatness.

Download or read book The Wet Engine written by Brian Doyle and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essayist muses on the scientific, emotional, literary, philosophical, and spiritual understandings of the heart--from cardiology to courage, from love letters and pop songs to the teachings of Jesus--with his own infant son's heart surgery as the thread weaving his reflections together.

Download or read book A Promised Land written by Barack Obama and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-08-13 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

Download or read book Martin Marten written by Brian Doyle and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as Dave prefers to call it, like the Native Americans once did, Wy'east). He is entering high school, adulthood on the horizon not far off in distance, and contemplating a future away from his mother, father, and his precocious younger sister. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (a small animal of the deep woods, of the otter/mink family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well"--

Download or read book Grace Notes written by Alexandra Stoddard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout her life, Alexandra Stoddard has sought inspiration from writers, poets, and people she has met. In Grace Notes, she shares this wisdom and her own learnings, beautifully captured in brief, motivating observations, in 365 daily meditations of warmth, affirmation, encouragement, and optimism. Season by season, day by day, you'll explore different themes: joy, love, loss, risk, courage, wholeness, growth, play, and success. In addition to offering inspirational quotes from many cultures and two "grace notes," each page provides space to write down your own sacred inspirations. With courage and confidence, Grace Notes takes you on a spiritual journey every day of your life—and whenever you feel the need to be transported to serenity and grace.

Download or read book Triple Cross written by Peter Lance and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A chilling account of a killer who slipped through the hands of a daft justice system….Triple Cross chronicles one of the most vicious spies of our time."—Toronto Sun In the years prior to 2001, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. For almost two decades the former Egyptian army commando succeeded in living a double life—marrying an American woman, becoming a naturalized citizen, and infiltrating the CIA in Europe, the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, and the FBI in California—even as he helped orchestrate the campaign of terror that culminated in the 9/11 attacks. Triple Cross is award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance's chilling true account of the career of the master spy known to his al Qaeda brothers as "Ali the American"—an explosive narrative revealing the gaping holes in our nation's security net. Finally, coming off his previous FBI exposé, Cover Up, Lance also chronicles the collapse of the Brooklyn murder trial of former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio, a case that could well have revolutionized public understanding of the background of 9/11.

Download or read book Epiphanies Elegies written by Brian Doyle and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epiphanies & Elegies is a collection of delightful, accessible poems shot through with wonder, humor, faith, and Irish Catholic heritage. Brian Doyle illuminates seemingly ordinary, everyday events in poems that will immediately touch with the reader with their truth. These warm and insightful pieces are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant takes on the small wonders and inevitable tragedies of life.

Download or read book So Very Much the Best of Us written by Brian Doyle and published by ACTA Publications. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Brian Doyle the most passionate Catholic storyteller in America? Here is new evidence that he is. In this brand new compilation of some of his best stories that have appeared in various publications throughout the world, Doyle explores the promise of Catholicism in America that he has experienced and observed from his childhood through today.

Download or read book The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World written by Brian Doyle and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An affectionate homage,” this novel of Stevenson’s evolution into an adventure writer is “a loving reconstruction of an era of storytelling now lost” (New York Times). The young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco in the nineteenth century while waiting for his beloved’s divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady’s adventurous and globe-trotting husband, John Carson—but he never got around to it. And very soon thereafter he was married, headed home to Scotland, and on his way to becoming the most famous novelist in the world, after writing such classics as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped. But now Brian Doyle brings Stevenson’s untold tale to life, braiding the adventures of seaman John Carson with those of a young Stevenson, wandering the streets of San Francisco, gathering material for his fiction, and yearning for his beloved across the bay. An adventure tale, an elegy to one of the greatest writers of our language, a time-traveling plunge into The City by the Bay during its own energetic youth, The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World is entertaining, poignant, and sensual. “[A] triumph.” —Washington Post “Rich prose and a unique perspective on one of the world’s most beloved authors.” —Publishers Weekly “A tale of bounding energy with a delicate touch, driving always towards the beautiful and the true.” —Helen Garner, author of The Spare Room “[A] tender, affectionate, and terribly fun homage to the joys of storytelling and storytellers.” —Kirkus Reviews