Beautiful Unbroken

An unflinching memoir by a working nurse As a child, Mary Jane Nealon dreams of growing up to become a saint or, failing that, a nurse. She idolizes Clara Barton, Kateri Tekakwitha, and Molly Pitcher, whose biographies she reads and rereads. But by the time she follows her calling to nursing school, her beloved younger brother is diagnosed with cancer, which challenges her to bring hope and healing closer to home. His death leaves her shattered, and she flees into her work, and into poetry. Beautiful Unbroken details Nealon's life of caregiving, from her years as a flying nurse, untethered and free to follow friends and jobs from the Southwest to Savannah, to more somber years in New York City, treating men in a homeless shelter on the Bowery and working in the city's first AIDS wards. In this compelling and revealing memoir, Nealon brings a poet's sensitivity to bear on the hard truths of disease and recovery, life and death.

A Beauty Unbroken is a story of sorrow and despair, tragedy and loss, of intrigue and passion full of remarkable courage, love, and resilience. It happens in the majestic mountains and cliffs of Southern Italy in the Campania Region with views of the Bay of Naples, Sorrento, Positano, and the Mediterranean Sea. Born in 1948, thirteen-year-old Violetta Yanonne, a smart, noncompliant, and sassy Italian Catholic girl, lives on a farm with her grandparents and single mother in Benevento, Italy. While longing to be loved, she's a dreamer in search to know who her father is. Violetta has a belligerent mistrust of adults who insist she marry young, be a dutiful wife, and ignore her passion for a college degree and a career. Having been exposed to the effects of lies and deception, scandals, pedophilia, rape, and murder, Violetta is skeptical of the Catholic Church and its patriarchal teachings. In her discontent, she takes to the mountains and sea. She follows her intuition, feeling its presence deep within her heart. Determined to leave her home country for a better life, Violetta avoids a committed relationship with Julius, who is in love with her, even though they have a deep love for one another since childhood. Her biggest dream is to go to the United States as a singer-actress in New York City with aspirations of being a teacher of drama or a journalist, where she can use her voice as an advocate for female equality.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible true story of survival and salvation that is the basis for two major motion pictures: 2014’s Unbroken and the upcoming Unbroken: Path to Redemption. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit. Praise for Unbroken “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Marvelous . . . Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it’s told. . . . It manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety.”—Newsweek “Moving and, yes, inspirational . . . [Laura] Hillenbrand’s unforgettable book . . . deserve[s] pride of place alongside the best works of literature that chart the complications and the hard-won triumphs of so-called ordinary Americans and their extraordinary time.”—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air “Hillenbrand . . . tells [this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Unbroken is too much book to hope for: a hellride of a story in the grip of the one writer who can handle it.”—Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run

FAITH, REDEMPTION, AND A LOVE STORY "Suddenly, the back door was thrown off its hinges as the SWAT team swarmed our house in a chaotic frenzy, rifles drawn. I sat in the front room with my baby, as I looked down the hallway at Billy already on the floor, and knew they were coming for me." What do you expect from life? A warm bed and food to eat? A safe space free from harm? For Jodie Ballenger, those expectations were never a given. Raised in abuse and neglect by her mother, who had been a prostitute, and a father who chose his new wife over her, Jodie learned quickly that her body was a vessel for others to use. Suffering mental, physical, and sexual abuse; abandonment; and neglect; she knew at a young age that she would need to learn to survive on her own. Jodie grew tough as nails, learning to fight with her fists and mouth. She started taking pills, smoking pot, and partying hard at the tender age of nine. She spent her young life running the streets - she moved along like a feather in the wind, with no anchor, while her mom looked the other way. When she met Billy in reform school, he was another boy in a string of boys she'd turned to for sex and comfort. But what she didn't know was how he would change her life. SWAT raid, pregnancies, running from the law, drive-by shootings, the death of her first true love, and a prison sentence... Could she find her way out and find happiness and most of all freedom? Join Jodie through her thrilling and heartbreaking story of agony and redemption and where a road that seems hopeless can lead to all you ever need. Meet the people along the way that gave them a hand up. And finally, rejoice with them when they arrived at their destinies founding the organization, Break the Grey, inspiring over 330,000 students across the United States and Canada to live and not die, helping them discover their personal value and worth. Who will this book help? This book will help people of all ages who deal with addiction (Jodie started smoking pot and popping pills at 9 years old and meth by 14). This book is for friends and loved ones of those dealing with addiction, those who believe they can't change their lives because of the horrific circumstances they may be trapped in. Issues like criminal families, substance abuse addictions, prostitution, gangs, violence, jail and prison, sexual and domestic abuse, sex trafficking, depression, suicidal thoughts, poverty and shame. This book will show the light in a very dark tunnel, give a solution to escape to the other side of that tunnel and find your destinies. It will change lives forever, inspiring them to find hope, change, and restoration. This book may save your life or the lives of people you love and others. It's the lifeline you and your loved ones are looking for. Includes a quick start guide to help you heal.

Stanislavski’s ‘system’ has dominated actor-training in the West since his writings were first translated into English in the 1920s and 30s. His systematic attempt to outline a psycho-physical technique for acting single-handedly revolutionized standards of acting in the theatre. Until now, readers and students have had to contend with inaccurate, misleading and difficult-to-read English-language versions. Some of the mistranslations have resulted in profound distortions in the way his system has been interpreted and taught. At last, Jean Benedetti has succeeded in translating Stanislavski’s huge manual into a lively, fascinating and accurate text in English. He has remained faithful to the author's original intentions, putting the two books previously known as An Actor Prepares and Building A Character back together into one volume, and in a colloquial and readable style for today's actors. The result is a major contribution to the theatre, and a service to one of the great innovators of the twentieth century.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More people than ever before see themselves as addicted to, or recovering from, addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs, prescription meds, sex, gambling, porn, or the internet. But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment. Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and the notion of a simple "addictive personality," The New York Times Bestseller, Unbroken Brain, offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum -- and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no "addictive personality" or single treatment that works for all. Combining Maia Szalavitz's personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research,Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction. Her writings on radical addiction therapies have been featured in The Washington Post, Vice Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, in addition to multiple other publications. She has been interviewed about her book on many radio shows including Fresh Air with Terry Gross and The Brian Lehrer show.

Best-selling Heroine’s Journey author Maureen Murdock invites readers to explore their personal story within the rich tapestry of human experience by examining the craft of memoir alongside fresh writing advice and prompts. Maureen Murdock looks at thematic connections between ancient myths and contemporary memoirs to probe questions like: What is my journey? Where is home? Her background as a Jungian psychotherapist enriches her teaching—urging us to dig deep to identify our own universal archetypes. Writers who feel stuck or unworthy of writing about themselves will find thought-provoking inspiration and validation in this book, while those simply looking to use writing as a tool for self-exploration will examine their patterns and stories to reveal their true inner selves. And all will be left with a deeper understanding of the rich scope of the memoir genre by exploring contemporary favorites—like Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and David Carr’s The Night of the Gun—from a mythological perspective. Like myth, memoir reveals a unity to human experience that ultimately we all share similar hopes, dreams, and desires as well as fears, losses, and heartbreaks. Memoir helps writers understand the trajectory of their lives and helps readers better grasp our own place within the human experience.

Building a Character is one of the three volumes that make up Stanislavski’s The Acting Trilogy. An Actor Prepares explores the inner preparation an actor must undergo in order to explore a role to the full. In this volume, Sir John Gielgud said, this great director “found time to explain a thousand things that have always troubled actors and fascinated students.” Building a Character discusses the external techniques of acting: the use of the body, movement, diction, singing, expression, and control. Creating a Role describes the preparation that precedes actual performance, with extensive discussions of Gogol’s The Inspector General and Shakespeare’s Othello. Sir Paul Scofield called Creating a Role “immeasurably important” for the actor. These three volumes belong on any actor’s short shelf of essential books.