Rambling Thoughts From The Top Of My Head

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir about finding meaning in life through acts of creativity and imagination. As seen on PBS American Masters "Unintended Memoir." In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals the ways that our memories and personal experiences can inform our creative work. Drawing on her vivid impressions of her upbringing, Tan investigates the truths and inspirations behind her writing while illuminating how we all explore, confront, and process complex memories, especially half-forgotten ones from childhood. With candor, empathy, and humor, Tan sheds light on her own writing process, sharing her hard-won insights on the nature of creativity and inspiration while exploring the universal urge to examine truth through the workings of imagination—and what that imaginative world tells us about our own lives. Where the Past Begins is both a unique look into the mind of an extraordinary storyteller and an indispensable guide for writers, artists, and other creative thinkers.

In pursuing what would be next after graduating from the National University of Rwanda (Clementine). Now Ivania got a Visa, which allowed her to immigrate to the US. This was a dream come true! When she set her feet in the US, she realized every step was a challenge to achieving the American Dream. Despite her naivety and vulnerability due to the sheltered culture she grew up in, she learned to remain true to herself in a new world. In this witty yet honest, Ivania shares stories on undertaking Aspirations, Friendship, Sex, and dating. In her everyday life, she shows us what means Love, Loneliness, and Racism while being far from her roots. From learning to navigate L.A. traffic to enjoying showing someone a middle finger, she is stepping forward to embrace this new culture but wonders what may become of her. This book promises to excite a desire in every reader to travel the world to have a first-hand taste of the advantages of multicultural life. If diversity in nationality, civilization, sexuality, and quality of life is a pool we need to dive in to refresh our humanity, then let Ivania Inyange’s story be your diving board. Her adventure in her new home country will make just you, and I appreciate the concept of cultural sensitivity.

If the medical profession you'd devoted your life to was completely taken over by liability concerns and insurance regulations, would you stay a physician? The Color of Atmosphere tells one doctor's story and the route of her medical career with warmth, humor, and above all, honesty. As we follow Maggie Kozel from her idealistic days as a devoted young pediatrician, through her Navy experience with universal health coverage, and on into the world of private practice, we see not only her reverence for medical science, and her compassion for her patients, but also the widening gap between what she was trained to do and what is eventually expected of her. Her personal story plays out against the backdrop of our changing health-care system, and demonstrates the way our method of paying for health care has reached its way into the exam room, putting a stranglehold on how doctors practice, and profoundly influencing the doctor-patient relationship. The stories she shares illustrate the medical, economic, and moral complexities of US health care. To understand Dr. Kozel's ultimate decision to leave medicine is to better comprehend the disconnect between our considerable medical resources and how our health-care system falls short of delivering them.

Through the thoughts and memories of K. A. Leer comes a series of poems that show both the ups and downs in life. Though a young author, Leer captures the simple parts of the world with pen and paper. Leer's poems cover a wide range of topics including love, growing up, the past, future, and more, relating to a wide range of audiences.

When Grace Dawson and Mason Hamilton meet, sparks fly. Grace meets the love of her life the day he is leaving for basic training. The feeling is mutual and is just as deep for Mason. They write letters to one another, getting to know each other on a whole new intensity and neither knowing this kind of love existed until it was theirs. It’s 1972, and the Vietnam War is still raging on, full of danger and sorrow. Mason promises he’ll be back, and Grace promises she’ll be waiting. But is it a promise Mason can keep? Grace never believed in love at first sight, but she now knows, without a doubt, it’s real. It’s strong, and it’s pure. Her heart will never be the same, and she wouldn’t have it any other way—for true-love stories never end.

Silent Orchestra is a collection of my newest poetry and artwork, which I have created over the past year. This is my fifth book- I have published four others which are entitled Take Five Seroquel and Call Me in the Morning, Far Out, Time Lapse and Thought Broadcasting. I am happy to continue to share my journey of self expression with others who may read this book. I was born in Washington DC and have lived abroad during many of my childhood years as my father was in the foreign service- now I reside in Silver Spring, Maryland. Claudia A. Krizay Silent Orchestra

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry