2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition Category Finalist in Mountain Literature On May 20, 1986, high on Mount Everest, Sharon Wood was ready to give up. Snow plumes swirled off the summit ridge and spilled down the North Face, engulfing her. A four-hundred-foot high rock wall, the crux of the Hornbein Couloir, loomed above—impossible. Then Wood’s partner, Dwayne Congdon, handed her the end of the rope and said, “your lead.” Hours later, at the far too late hour of 9:00 p.m., Wood became the first North American woman to reach the summit, and the first woman in the world to do so via the difficult West Ridge. Their ascent of the West Ridge by a new variation, without Sherpa assistance, is an accomplishment that has never been repeated. In Rising, Wood reflects on the seventy days she spent on the mountain and on the pivotal experiences and influences that brought her to that staggeringly beautiful and austere corner of the world. Beyond the physical hardships, she faced personal challenges as an outlier in the male bastion of Himalayan climbing. These were compounded by the vexing presence of her past mentor and lover with his new girlfriend on the American team climbing on the same side of the mountain. It didn’t help that the media pitched the two women as rivals, both vying to become the first North American woman to reach the summit of the highest mountain in the world. Wood rose to all these challenges, finding camaraderie and inspiration among her teammates, particularly in the expedition cook, a strong woman whose perspectives were essential to the team’s remarkable esprit de corps, as well as with “the other woman,” her so-called American rival. Rising is both a gripping, adrenalin-filled mountain story and a reflective memoir that reaches beyond the summit to explore a life lived in Everest’s long shadow: unexpected acclaim, outrageous expectations, and personal struggles. As Wood tells her story today, her perspective is steeped in six decades of life experience rich with adventure, change, growth, and humility. It is a tale that feels poignantly relevant—a testament to the strength of the human spirit to overcome all obstacles, whether mountain peaks, social expectations, or self-imposed barriers.
The instant her phone rang, Reverend Sharon Risher sensed something was horribly wrong. Something had happened at Emanuel AME Church, the church of her youth in Charleston, South Carolina, and she knew her mother was likely in the church at Bible study. Even before she heard the news, her chaplain's instinct told her the awful truth: her mother was dead, along with two cousins. What she couldn't imagine was that they had been murdered by a white supremacist. Plunged into the depths of mourning and anger and shock, Sharon could have wallowed in the pain. Instead, she chose the path of forgiveness and hope - eventually forgiving the convicted killer for his crime. In this powerful memoir of faith, family, and loss, Sharon begins the story with her mother, Ethel Lee Lance, seeking refuge in the church from poverty and scorn and raising her family despite unfathomable violence that rattled Sharon to her core years later; how Sharon overcame her own struggles and answered the call to ministry; and how, in the loss of her dear mother, Sharon has become a nationally known speaker as she shares her raw, riveting, story of losing loved ones to gun violence and racism. Sharon's story is a story of transformation: How an anonymous hospital chaplain was thrust into the national spotlight, joining survivors of other gun-related horrors as reluctant speakers for a heartbroken social-justice movement. As she recounts her grief and the struggle to forgive the killer, Risher learns to trust God's timing and lean on God's loving presence to guide her steps. Where her faith journey leads her is surprising and inspiring, as she finds a renewed purpose to her life in the company of other survivors. Risher has been interviewed by Time Magazine, Marie-Claire, Essence, Guardian-BCC Radio, CNN, and other media sources. She regularly shares her story on American college campuses and racial-reconciliation events. "To Forgive a Killer," her essay as told to Abigail Pesta published in Notre Dame Magazine, won the 2018 Front Page Award for Essay published in a Magazine, awarded by the Newswomen's Club of New York.
Gilded Age cities offered extraordinary opportunities to women--but at a price. As clerks, factory hands, and professionals flocked downtown to earn a living, they alarmed social critics and city fathers, who warned that self-supporting women were just steps away from becoming prostitutes. With in-depth research possible only in a mid-sized city, Sharon E. Wood focuses on Davenport, Iowa, to explore the lives of working women and the prostitutes who shared their neighborhoods. The single, self-supporting women who migrated to Davenport in the years following the Civil War saw paid labor as the foundation of citizenship. They took up the tools of public and political life to assert the respectability of paid employment and to confront the demon of prostitution. Wood offers cradle-to-grave portraits of individual girls and women--both prostitutes and "respectable" white workers--seeking to reshape their city and expand women's opportunities. As Wood demonstrates, however, their efforts to rewrite the sexual politics of the streets met powerful resistance at every turn from men defending their political rights and sexual power.
Let's Make Money, Honey: The Couple's Guide to Starting a Service Business is about a baby boomer couple who start a small service business as a second career. As much as it is a good story, Let's Make Money, Honey is also a how-to guide that covers planning, financing, outfitting, and launching a service business, as well as operations, marketing, sales, customer service, and managing growth. Included are useful tools to help couples assess their business interests and compatibility. Inspiring and instructional, Let's Make Money, Honey will help couples consider whether to start a service business together - or provide those ready to move forward with a blueprint for success. Packed with detailed how-to advice based on real-world experience, Let's Make Money, Honey is a must-read for self-starter couples of all ages and especially those exploring encore careers.Barry Silverstein and Sharon Wood have worked together in one capacity or another for over three decades. They have also been married to each other for nearly that long. After lengthy careers in marketing and sales, Silverstein and Wood relocated to Asheville, North Carolina where they started a small service business together. They ran it successfully and sold it six years later. They proved without question that couples can not only successfully work together, they can start and run a business together. Silverstein and Wood continue to collaborate as volunteers for Asheville Humane Society. Wood, a retired dog groomer, donates her time and expertise grooming shelter dogs. Silverstein is a freelance writer, brand marketing consultant, and the author of several business books, including Business-to-Business Internet Marketing (the first book written on the subject) and The Breakaway Brand. The couple resides in the Asheville, North Carolina area.
Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing is a collected volume of twenty-one essays written by Morante specialists and international scholars. Essays gather attention on four broad critical topics, namely the relationship Morante entertained with the arts, cinema, theatre, and the visual arts; new critical approaches to her four novels; treatment of body and sexual politics; and Morante’s prophetic voice as it emerges in both her literary works and her essayistic writings. Essays focus on Elsa Morante’s strategies to address her wide disinterest (and contempt) for the Italian intellectual status quo of her time, regardless of its political side, while showing at once her own kind of ideological commitment. Further, contributors tackle the ways in which Morante’s writings shape classical oppositions such as engagement and enchantment with the world, sin and repentance, self-reflection, and corporality, as well as how her engagement in the visual arts, theatre, and cinematic adaptations of her works garner further perspectives to her stories and characters. Her works—particularly the novels Menzogna e sortilegio (House of Liars, 1948), La Storia: Romanzo (History: A Novel, 1974) and, more explicitly, Aracoeli (Aracoeli, 1982)—foreshadowed and advanced tenets and structures later affirmed by postmodernism, namely the fragmentation of narrative cells, rhizomatic narratives, lack of a linear temporal consistency, and meta- and self-reflective processes.
Did you remember your goggles? There used to be a time when pretty much every high school offered Shop class, where students learned to use a circular saw or rewire a busted lamp- all while discovering the satisfaction of being self-reliant and doing it yourself. Shop Class for Everyone now offers anyone who might have missed this vital class a crash course in these practical life skills. Packed with illustrated step by step instructions, plus relevant charts, lists, and handy graphics, here’s how to plaster a wall, build a bookcase from scratch, unclog a drain, and change a flat tire (on your car or bike). It’s all made clear in plain, nontechnical language for any level of DIYer, and it comes with a guarantee: No matter how simple the task, doing it with your own two hands provides a feeling of accomplishment that no app or device will ever give you.
The big & awesome bridges of Portland & Vancouver is a book that gets young people excited about science and engineering and provides teachers a comprehensive resource for developing engaging elementary school units of study, all through an exploration of one of the most diverse and historic collections of big river bridges in the world.
Sometimes you feel like a bystander when it comes to your own health. Everyone tells you what to do and it seems you have no say. Being well informed about your many choices and well prepared is the best way to feel like you're in charge. This book brings together a lifetime of reading and personal experience with alternative health practitioners from a wide variety of fields to provide an overview of many of the things you can do to soothe everyday aches and pains and be an active participant in health decisions for yourself and your loved ones. If you've ever been curious about complimentary medicine, including chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, massage therapy, exercise or occupational therapy, nutritional supplements, aromatherapy, homeopathy, Reiki, hypnotherapy, yoga and meditation or many other ways to make your life healthier and ease daily discomforts, "Whose Health is it Anyway?" is for you. It's a primer for people who are looking for something other than prescription drugs or surgery. It touches on things you can do for yourself or with an alternative health practitioner.Sometimes, surgery or a prescription drug is the only choice that makes sense, but that doesn't mean that other methods can't be used to improve healing, reduce side effects, control pain and increase comfort. We've included stories of real people who have had excellent results, using yoga and other body work, acupuncture, massage, exercise or other supportive therapies in conjunction with conventional medical treatment.A healthy lifestyle serves as the cornerstone of your plan to regain and maintain your health, incorporating diet, exercise, stress reduction techniques and more. Many books provide detailed descriptions of every morsel you should put in your mouth and every step you need to take. "Whose Health is it Anyway?" is more like sitting down with a knowledgeable friend and discovering ideas that may be new to you that you can use to feel better. You may find some self care and mome remedy ideas that are perfect for you, but not be convinced about others. You get to make your own decisions.In addition to all of the contributing authors who are alternative health practitioners, Linda Fostek, often known as The Crisis Planner, has provided a chapter on all the policies and documents you need to have to make any health crisis go more smoothly, Ilene Corina, Founder of the Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education and Advocacy tells us how to improve the safety level of our interactions with the health care system. Her advice goes far beyond the basic bill of pateints' rights. Richard M. Brodsky, Founder of the Richard M. Brodsky Foundation shares tips on how he has managed to not only survive, but thrive and run marathons with diagnoses of brain cancer and HIV.Often, when people receive a diagnosis of a chronic or terminal condition, they lose hope and may not even do the things that are within their power to get the most out of life, given their circumstances. Richard's story serves as an inspiration to all of us. He blends lifestyle choices and alternative health care with his modern Western medical treatment to continue to maintain a quality of life that might make others envious.
The stars have shifted and the Earth is rapidly moving into the throes of chaos. Four god-like beings known as the Zodiac High Council, send their winged herald, Syrie, out with twelve sealed envelopes. His mission? To bring a chosen group of thirteen future Zodiac Keepers, including a set of mesmerizing twins, to the Isle of Oriba for training. Syrie never could have imagined that he would fall in love along the way--ultimately forcing him to choose between betrayal and death."--From publisher description.
A DEVOTIONAL JOURNEY THROUGH EXODUS is the product of the author's conviction that we do not need to be theologians or Bible scholars to read and understand the Bible. It is her belief that we simply need to read God's Word and let Him speak to us personally through those pages. The devotional is unique in that it is a New Testament look at an Old Testament book. The study offers a balanced approach -not rushing ahead into the New Testament and missing the wisdom of God's intervention in the lives of the people of the Old Testament and its relevance to us today. It is not an in depth study of Exodus. Using only the Bible, a NEW KING JAMES VERSION, a WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY and an ordinary concordance, this devotional is purposefully not propped up by any commentaries or other studies on the book of Exodus.
The Adventures of Acorn Woods" is about a Christian community who centers their entire world around God. They are a very close community and serve each other daily. Grandpa Lawrence is the eldest squirrel in the community and he teaches the squirrel children Christian principles to live by from the Creator's Book (BIBLE).
These little animal children represent life and how we treat each other. Hattie Hedgehog and Polly Porcupine treat everyone with God-given love and respect. And by their example, they can change the hearts of others. And God willing, so can we.
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