The Song Of Father Son

As a son, what words did you desperately want your father to say to you? As a father, what words from you would change your son's life? Putnam's struggle with the life and death of his own powerful father, his extensive reading of Jung, Bly, and other profound chroniclers of men's lives, and his work in the New Warrior Training Adventure and the Mankind Project enable him to offer a portrait of the Unblessed son-and a path to The Blessing. The Song of Father-Son moves sons beyond their addictions, their old roles, and their deadened emotions to their birthright as strong, loving men. "The time has never been more right for telling the story of the Unblessed son Peter Putnam offers his hard won wisdom to fathers everywhere: the legacy of a Blessed son." -Rich Tosi, co-founder of the Mankind Project and the New Warrior Training Adventure "The Song of Father-Son should be read by every son who has ever ached for his father's unconditional love and approval, and by every father who has ever found himself somehow unable to convey the depth of his love to his son." -Phil Taylor, Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated

In this deeply moving memoir, one of Canada’s most respected singer-songwriters traces his difficult, often tumultuous relationship with his father. From the time Dan Hill picked up a guitar at age 11, he tried to win the approval of Daniel Hill Sr., a man who has been called Canada’s father of human rights. But Hill Sr. set impossibly high standards for himself and his family, especially for his eldest son, leading to conflict and alienation even as young Dan achieved international fame and success. Through vivid family stories, letters, memories and his own award-winning lyrics, Dan Hill tells the story of two parallel lives—his father’s in mid-20th-century America and his own as a young black man coming of age in suburban Canada—and the stormy but ultimately loving way each of those lives affected the other.

Written with clarity and grace, this memoir of an adolescent boy's four-year struggle with leukemia, his untimely death at sixteen, and the aftermath is presented from three perspectives. Using journals and recollection, Noe's father Phil Wolfson recalls the events chronologically. His son's chemotherapy journal offers a stricken teenager's private view of illness, his wrestling with such enormous stress while striving to live within the framework of "normal" expectations for adolescence. The third perspective derives from the author's realization that his intimate relationship with Noe continues after death. Channeling his son's spirit, the author writes in his place, sharing with readers a near-adult view of living with illness and losing the battle to survive it. Noe reveals the inner world of familial love and discord, Noe's own remarkable coping, and the extraordinary stress Noe's illness had on his younger brother. It describes the quest for emotional and spiritual support through therapy, contact with renowned alternative healers, and the use of the drug MDMA for enhancing relationships. With poignant descriptions of an assisted dying process, Noe moves beyond a model of bereavement to offer a reminder of love's transcendence.

From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER At the pinnacle of a soaring career in the U.S. Army, Lt. Col. Mark M. Weber was tapped to serve in a high-profile job within the Afghan Parliament as a military advisor. Weeks later, a routine physical revealed stage IV intestinal cancer in the thirty-eight-year-old father of three. Over the next two years he would fight a desperate battle he wasn’t trained for, with his wife and boys as his reluctant but willing fighting force. When Weber realized that he was not going to survive this final tour of combat, he began to write a letter to his boys, so that as they grew up without him, they would know what his life-and-death story had taught him—about courage and fear, challenge and comfort, words and actions, pride and humility, seriousness and humor, and viewing life as a never-ending search for new ideas and inspiration. This book is that letter. And it’s not just for his sons. It’s for everyone who can use the best advice a dying hero has to offer. Weber’s stories illustrate that in the end you become what you are through the causes to which you attach yourself—and that you’ve made your own along the way. Through his example, he teaches how to live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. Praise for Tell My Sons “A gift to us all . . . Every page exudes courage, honesty, and an indomitable spirit. Mark Weber’s story has touched me in such a profound way.”—Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie “Tell My Sons is a deeply moving, personal account of a soldier’s journey into an ultimate frontier. As I read Mark Weber’s book, I was astonished by its honesty, courage, and discipline. This book offers one of the most profound and detailed descriptions of the strange world of cancer and should be essential reading for all of us who seek to understand that topsy-turvy terrain.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies “Tell My Sons is one of the most profound and inspirational stories I have ever read. It may have been written for Mark’s children, but it may as well be a treatise for all of us about honest parenting and leadership with character in love, family, faith, and politics. For a man who is facing profound health issues, Mark is doing a remarkable job showing us all how to live with courage and integrity.”—Walter F. Mondale, former vice president of the United States “This book is why I have always been proud to call Mark Weber my son. His ability to reach across complex boundaries and write and speak with such depth and beauty makes him a modern day Lawrence of Arabia. Mark’s passion, attitude, and thoughts about life are what is best about America.”—General Babakir S. Zibari, chief of defense, Republic of Iraq “A poignant illustration of what being a hero is all about . . . Heroes exemplify invincible courage, character, and perseverance in times of insurmountable odds. Mark embodies these attributes. Tell My Sons will empower the reader with profound lessons of living life with hope and determination.”—John Elway, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback

When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by criticizing the landowning way of life and by his outspoken determination to sweep away traditional values of contemporary Russian society. Turgenev's depiction of the conflict between generations and their ideals stunned readers when Fathers and Sons was first published in 1862. But many could also sympathize with Arkady's fascination with its nihilist hero whose story vividly captures the hopes and regrets of a changing Russia.

"A man's relationship with his father: every boy, every man lucky enough to have a father in his life has to figure that out. My own father? I thought I knew him- even though he seldom talked about himself. And what I knew I hated - really, really hated. Cold, ill-tempered, thin-skinned, my father always seemed on the brink of erupting. Scared to death of him, I kept telling myself to find the courage to 'stand up to him.' When I was fifteen, I did. We did not speak to each other for ten years. And then we did- for eight hours. 'Dear Father, Dear Son' takes a journey of American history through the eyes of a father- from his dirt-poor Jim Crow Southern childhood, to the segregated Marine Corps of World War II, to a janitor turned California business man. Hard memories. One man discovered a son he never really knew. And the son found a man, a friend, a father who had really been there all along."--p.[4] of dust jacket.