Henry Kissinger and the American century

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Ben Carson with Cecil Murphey

In 1987, Dr. Benjamin Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. The extremely complex and delicate operation, five months in the planning and twenty-two hours in the execution, involved a surgical plan that Carson helped initiate. Carson pioneered again in a rare procedure known as hemispherectomy, giving children without hope a second chance at life through a daring operation in which he literally removed one half of their brain. But such breakthroughs aren't unusual for Ben Carson. He's been beating the odds since he was a child. Raised in inner-city Detroit by a mother with a third grade education, Ben lacked motivation. He had terrible grades. And a pathological temper threatened to put him in jail. But Sonya Carson convinced her son that he could make something of his life, even though everything around him said otherwise. Trust in God, a relentless belief in his own capabilities, and sheer determination catapulted Ben from failing grades to the top of his class --- and beyond to a Yale scholarship . . . the University of Michigan Medical School . . . and finally, at age 33, the directorship of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Today, Dr. Ben Carson holds twenty honorary doctorates and is the possessor of a long string of honors and awards, including the Horatio Alger Award, induction into the 'Great Blacks in Wax' Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, and an invitation as Keynote Speaker at the 1997 President's National Prayer Breakfast. Gifted Hands is the riveting story of one man's secret for success, tested against daunting odds and driven by an incredible mindset that dares to take risks. This inspiring autobiography takes you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world --- and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others. Through it all shines a humility, quick wit, and down-to-earth style that make this book one you won't easily forget.

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Ann Donegan Johnson

Focuses on Helen Keller's determination to hear, see, and speak and her equal determination to help others with handicaps similar to her own.

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Tony Myers

"Slavoj Zizek is no ordinary philosopher. Approaching critical theory and psychoanalysis in a recklessly entertaining fashion, Zizek's critical eye alights upon a bewildering and exhilarating range of subjects, from the political apathy of contemporary life, to a joke about the man who thinks he's a chicken, from the ethicial heroism of Keanu Reeves in speed, to what toilet designs reveal about the national psyche. Tony Myers provides a clear and engaging guide to Zizek's key ideas, explaining the main influences on Zizek's thought, most crucially his engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis, using examples drawn from popular culture and everyday life." "Slavoj Zizek is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the thought of the critic whom Terry Eagleton has described as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.""--Jacket.

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Mary Ann Wells

"Before I had heard of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or even Jesus, I knew who William Weatherford was. He was Red Eagle, the icon implanted in my heart as an example of what a truly noble human being should be," Mary Ann Wells says of her distant kinsman. Red Eagle, the child of a Scottish trader and a mixed-blood Muscogean mother, became a notable leader among the Red Stick Creeks and was the unyielding adversary of the American government during the Creek War of 1813-14. He stands accused in traditional accounts of having masterminded one of the worst massacres of whites in American history. This book, for the first time, gives an Indian perspective to the narrative. To find the real Red Eagle, Wells has probed the published records and combined them with stories she had heard from family members. Her true encounter with Red Eagle occurs, however, in mystic experiences. She finds him not in the processes of linear thought of European history but through the thought world of Native American narrative. Wells, who identifies herself both as a mystic and a revisionist, acknowledges that she has inherited both Billy Weatherford's bloodline and his ethnic identity. Shifting between historical episodes and the present, Wells pursues the true story. Her suspenseful prose gives a visceral sense of how Indians felt as victims of the American government and of how they had no recourse but to fight.