Someone’s Daughter is the author’s own true account of how, as an adult, she learned that she is not her parents’ biological child, but was adopted by them as a baby in a closed adoption. The book tells of the profound and permanent impact this discovery had on her life and that of her family. It documents the search for her birth mother, their reunion and the development of their relationship thereafter. Someone’s Daughter relates how the author found emotional healing and learned to embrace her dual identity. Concurrently with telling her story, the author deals with the ongoing, complex dynamics that surround adoption. Adoption is viewed by most as a happy, joyous event in which a childless couple takes an unwanted baby into their home, selflessly raises it as their own and everybody lives “happily ever after.” Sadly, this perception is far removed from the truth. The very act of adoption necessitates rejection, loss and considerable emotional pain. Few people, including many adoptees, birth mothers and adoptive parents fail to realize that without rejection or loss there can be no adoption. Someone’s Daughter is primarily aimed at adoptees who are struggling to find healing from the never-ending barrage of emotional issues they encounter throughout their lives as a direct result of their adoption. The book provides them with the information they need to conduct their own legal search for their birth parents. Birth mothers, adoptive parents, immediate families and depression sufferers will also benefit from reading Someone’s Daughter. It is not a self-help book, but a deeply personal account of the author’s own experience and how se came to find true healing. Whether readers decide to follow the same path is up to them.

From the Dust Jacket: When asha bandele, a young poet, fell in love with a prisoner serving a twenty-to-life sentence and became pregnant with his daughter, she had reason to hope they would live together as a family. Rashid was a model prisoner and expected to be paroled quickly. But soon after Nisa was born, asha’s dreams were shattered. Rashid was denied parole and told he would be deported to his native Guyana once released. asha became a statistic: a single black mother in New York City.

On the outside, asha kept it together. She had a great job at a high-profile magazine and a beautiful daughter whom she adored. But inside, she was falling apart. She began drinking and smoking and eventually stumbled into another relationship, one that opened new wounds. This lyrical, astonishingly honest memoir tells of her descent into depression when her life should have been filled with love and joy. Something Like Beautiful is not only asha’s story, but the story of thousands of women who struggle daily with little help and much against them, and who believe they have no right to acknowledge their pain. Ultimately, drawing inspiration from her daughter, asha takes account of her life and envisions for herself what she believes is possible for all mothers who thought there was no way out—and then discovered there was.

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About the Author: Asha Bandele is an award-winning author and journalist. A former features editor for Essence magazine, asha is the author of two collections of poems, the award-winning memoir The Prisoner’s Wife, and the novel Daughter. She lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.

The experiences of people who have been personally affected by adoption or being in care are seldom heard. Rarely are they given a voice to say what this experience means to them and to describe their experience of seeking renewed contact with relatives—sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers—or being contacted by a relative from whom they have lost all contact. Through poetry, art, memoir and autobiography, over thirty contributors tell it like it is. Something that never went away brings together the powerful and poignant testimonies of birth mothers, a birth father, adopted children, adopted adults, adults who have grown up in foster and residential care, and adoptive mothers. The poetry, artwork and prose are tender and touching, uplifting and, at times, heart-rending. This highly original anthology brings together established writers, emerging writers and those who have never been published before, plus contributions from a range of celebrities including Kriss Akabusi, Jo Brand, Tracey Emin, David Gower, Lenny Henry, Richard Rogers, Alan Sillitoe, Clare Short, Meera Syal, Joanna Trollope, Gok Wan and Benjamin Zephaniah. A number of established writers who are adopted or have been in care can also be found here. They include Nicole J Burton, Vanessa Gebbie, Valerie Mason-John, Zara H Phillips, Jacqueline Walker and Alex Wheatle. The artwork on the front cover is by birth mother, Lynne Byron, and inspired by her experience of relinquishing her baby to adoption. Something That Never Went Away is an important, informative and thought-provoking book for birth relatives, adopted adults, adults who have grown up in care, adoptive relatives and professionals providing adoption support and an access to in care or adoption records service.

The true story of an adopted girl growing up in small town Texas and her eventual search for her birth parents. The author is a Licensed Professional Counselor and provides insight into not only growing up adopted, but also the psychological effects.

One of life’s greatest roller-coaster rides is the ride of childbirth and childcare. This process can include the unique world of adoption. Just what is adoption and who is affected by this awesome and detailed process? Should we tell the child or keep it a secret? Do we really want children to meet and get to know their biological family? And the question of the day is what happens when a child that has been adopted meets their biological family? There are a lot of things that float within the minds of adopted children. If you are a parent that has adopted a child, you must read this book. If you were adopted, you must read this book. A descendant of Harriet Ross Tubman was given up for adoption and found his way back to his roots, and now has two loving mothers to show for it.

From the Back Cover: In this charming, warmhearted memoir, Bill Marx shares what it was like growing up as the son of a Marx brother. Harpo Marx, most famous as the silent jokester in one of America’s most beloved comedy teams, was a true renaissance man—a talented actor, artist and musician. Along with his wife, Susan Fleming, Harpo gave adoptee Bill a home and the influence that would set him on his own creative journey to become a consummate musician and composer. Harpo Marx, a world-renowned harpist, and Bill Marx collaborated as professional musicians for years. Bill documents both his working and creative relationship with Harpo, as well as their father-son bond. He describes growing op in an orbit of many talented creative forces—actors, producers, musicians and artists—and their lasting impressions on his life. He coven his existence in two worlds—that of a normal boy at home with his family and that of a child exposed to extraordinary talent, culture and, of course, the infectious energy of his beloved, legendary father, Harpo.

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About the Author: Bill Marx has been a musician almost his entire life. At sixteen, he became musical conductor/arranger for his father, Harpo Marx. Bill has studied composition at the Juilliard School and has written numerous concertos, including a first-of-its-kind double harp concerto. He has scored for motion pictures, television, theater and ballet; concertized for years as a jazz pianist; and recorded many albums, including two with his father. His autobiography, Son of Harpo Speaks!, is the sequel to his father’s autobiography Harpo Speaks! (1961, Bernard Geis). He lives in Rancho Mirage, California.

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Compiler’s Note: Bill Marx was one of the Marxes’ four children, all of whom were adopted.

From the Dust Jacket: This is the incredible story of how a single man terrorized the twelve million citizens of the metropolis of New York.

It is also the story of the greatest manhunt in the history of the New York Police Department—the intimate narrative of the men assigned to tracking down a lone killer who prowled supposedly safe neighborhoods and, at random, shot pretty young girls with a .44-caliber revolver. The police task force investigated 3,167 suspects (some of them cops) before they arrested the killer. Politicians watched a city writhe in panic. Newspapers played upon the fears of their readers. And the criminal justice system showed itself incapable of coping with the man who committed such horrendous crimes.

It all began with a young boy setting fires. Then David Berkowitz committed his first act of wanton violence on Christmas Eve, 1975, when he stabbed two women with a hunting knife. He next bought a gun and became Son of Sam, the demon-haunted .44-caliber killer. Within the next two years he fired his weapon thirty-two times, killing six victims and wounding seven in eight known attacks. Most of the victims were women, young and pretty, good students, and from loving families. There were other crimes, too.

The book is based on more than 300 tape recordings of David Berkowitz’s conversations with psychiatrists, police, district attorneys, defense counsel, plus his never-before-revealed handwritten notes and diaries. It is the story of a psychotic killer. It tells the public what it has never known, the facts that would have been exposed if Son of Sam had ever stood trial. It tells of David Berkowitz’s boyhood, his hopes, his fears, his deepening despair, the demons that demanded he kill for them, his initial sense of disgust, his increasing sense of infallibility.

Beyond that, the author has interviewed everyone intimately connected with the case and has woven their previously untold stories into the book. There are the accounts of the surviving victims and their families. the families of young women and men who were killed, politicians and police, detectives and their families, district attorneys. psychiatrists, and defense counsel—all the people who were touched by the horror of Son of Sam.

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About the Author: Lawrence D. Klausner has written two novels and is working on a third. Two of his books will be made into full-length movies. He lives in Cedarhurst. Long Island, New York.

David Berkowitz, who became infamously known as the “Son of Sam,” first struck on the morning of 29 July 1976. It was the beginning of many brutal attacks that were to terrorize New York City’s citizens over a one-year period. During the summer of 1977 at the height of the killer’s notoriety and with the city in a collective panic over who was going to be his next victim, bars and nightclubs were deserted. It seemed that the efforts of the NYPD and special task teams couldn’t bring the serial killer, who indiscriminately shot his victims with a 44-caliber handgun, to justice. Today, Berkowitz, former Son of Sam and now devout Christian, languishes behind bars and is unlikely ever to be released.

In 1971, Lee Myonghi, aged five, was taken from her family and placed in a Korean orphanage. Six months later, she was flown to the United States, where she and two other Korean girls were adopted by a Minnesota couple. They renamed her Kelly Jean. Eleven years later, Kelly found herself at the doorstep of a Minnesota agency, although this time as a teen mother giving her own child up for adoption. Kelly later married and had two more children. Then, in 2007, Kelly’s husband found her original, Korean family, and so began a journey that reunited Kelly with the family whom she thought had abandoned her, and brought her face to face with the daughter she herself had lost twenty-five years before. Told with refreshing honesty, Songs of My Families is the moving story of two generations of women forced to make agonizing choices as they coped with harsh economic realities and personal crises. It is also an affirmation of the strength of family, the importance of one’s cultural heritage, and the enduring power of love.

From the Publisher: Thomas Bunn, known as “Bunny Thomas,” embarks on a reflection of a life lived with a companion of 36 years, Dennis Docherty, whose support never wavered.

Life in showbiz, psychiatry and his beginnings in the Black Country from adoption, growing up in the 1950s and the adjustments that had to be made. A personal journey, not done on the back of instant celebrity, but on reflection of good times and bad. Moving accounts of patients in his care and the progression from institution to community life. A simple but heartfelt story of both comedy and tragedy that may move you, shock or just simply make you laugh. The fun and heartache that we can all share and feel where infidelities and loyalties combined with love and pain are explored and revealed.

Amazing friendships with Larry Grayson, Joan Turner, Dorothy Squires, Peter Wingarde and Bob Monkhouse. Meetings with contemporary stars and times together including Paul O’Grady, Sir Terry Wogan, Sir Norman Wisdom, Jean Ferguson, Isla St. Clair and countless showbiz stories of personal insight and reflection. Memories of Alan Leighton, Dame Thora Hird, The amazing Mrs. Shufflewick (who was Rex Jameson), Britain’s top piano entertainer Bobby Crush all crop up in this personal journey and reflection, together with the artist Sarah Jane Szikora who painted the cover original picture for the book.

Anger rage, infidelities, a story we all have inside. The need to excorcise it for the memory of friends past and present. Weaving a tale not ghost written. The need and motivation to tell a tale before the memory fails and decays, and motivation lost forever.

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By the Same Author: Worse Than Death (1989, Henry Holt & Co.), among others.

Sydney Harrison is a native son of Prince George’s County Maryland, early in life Mr Harrison had a difficult start to life. He was in the foster social service system for four years waiting to be adopted by a loving family that would ultimately be the foundation block where hopes and dreams would rest on the foundation of love. Mr Harrison attended and graduated from Prince Georges County public school system, as he was thrusting himself into the real world. As Mr Harrison made travel down the road of finding his special and true purpose in life, he stumbled across a rewarding career that would give his place into a hard working a productive member to society. The career chosen at the time was plumbing, it gave him the opportunity not to only fix things but problem solve always looking for the best possible permanent solution. He was also blessed with the good lord by having his one and only son through this time period which gave him more of a opportunity to word harder and harder towards that rewarding career in life gave him the opportunity to serve his community for over twelve years, and as he pursued the American dream of owning his own business. It was a natural fit, where through the hard works of his profession gave him the opportunity to be featured on a TV show HGTV, where the bathroom he remodeled was featured. This time period was a pivotal time period in more ways than one, because it truly gave Mr. Harrison the opportunity to serve his community in way that would in rich the lives of so many youth for several years to come. Serving the community in a way where he was the Head coach of South Bowie Sharks Boys Soccer Team that lead them to three county championships which he had the greatest blessing to coach and eighteen other boys about the principles of the game and life. As time progressively move forwarded Mr Harrison became in his middle age adult years, he thrusted himself into a whole new career which was the family business of Real estate started, and served on several committees with the Prince Georges County Association of Realtors as he served as chair of the cultural diversity committee, as a member of the legislative committee, and the Realtors Political Action Committee. He found great solace in this rewarding career helping people obtain home ownership, and meeting clients expectations. Sydney truly believed though there where opportunities that yet he hand not walked down the path of, and started to think about his true calling and what God had in store for him. He realized that he was going to have to challenge himself if he was going to walk through the doors that will of the master opened for him. Mr Harrison not only changed careers, but challenged his soul to heighten his spiritual walk, and how to become a better person in life. Mr Harrison new occupational pursuits that provided the financial prosperity to provide the means to travel abroad and pursue mission work in Africa. In that primary mission was to serve Gods children of the world. He served two months in Africa, raising awareness for orphans in Africa and a pediatric aid for the fight against AIDS. That life experience opened his heart and gave him the perspective that the greatest thing you can do in life is serve others. That single experience opened his heart and gave him the opportunity to run for public office as a candidate for County Council in Prince George’s County Maryland. Even though Mr Harrison may have lost his first election, he truly accomplished something greater, he accomplished building and fortifying long health partnerships and relationships with constituents, and community leaders. Today Sydney serves on several non-profit foundations in his community, Saving Our Children Organization which has a mission of Peer to Peer mediation, conflict resolution, and safeguarding our youth against bullying, and Whalers foundation which supports adoption and foster care in the Washington DC Area.

From the Back Cover: When children are kept in the dark regarding their origins, nobody wins...

Only rarely does a memoir come along that taps into the heart of the human condition. The Sound of Hope is such a story, told by Anne Bauer, an adoptee who cannot pretend that she had another life and another family before being adopted.

Anne spent much of her childhood wondering about her birth mother. She desperately wanted to know where she was, what she looked like, and most importantly, why she placed Anne up for adoption. Living in the closed-adoption system of the 1960s, Anne’s questions were met with a wall of silence. But this aura of secrecy only intensified her determination to discover her own story. Faced with anger and contempt, secrets and revelations, Anne set out to uncover the truth--and found more than she could have imagined.

The Sound of Hope will capture your heart and take you on a remarkable journey into the world of the closed adoption system. Traversing family and relationships, this powerful memoir carries the unforgettable message that no one should be cut off from their origins.

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About the Author: Anne Bauer is a registered nurse and Reiki energy healer turned author. She lives in Northern New Jersey with her husband and their three children.

From the Dust Jacket: A woman’s relationship with her mother is her first and most complex personal tie. Both a tribute to women as mothers and to women as writers, this unique anthology offers stories about the emotion and experience of being your mother’s daughter.

Created in partnership with Barnard College, this literary look at the mother-daughter relationship by thirty leading American women writers consists of essays and short stories written by Barnard alumnae and high-school students who have been winners in the Barnard College Essay Contest.

Through a wide cross-section of age and cultural background, The Source of the Spring explores how our perceptions of mothers in women’s lives have changed over the generations. In prose that ranges from beautifully memorable and heartwarming to searingly honest and moving, this anthology is a tour-de-force from some of today’s most formidable writers, taking on a topic at once tender and challenging.

With contributions from Zora Neale Hurston and Margaret Mead to Joyce Johnson and June Jordan, from Rosellen Brown and Erica Jong to Anna Quindlen and Edwidge Danticat, among others, this anthology is the perfect book for all mothers and their daughters.

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About the Author: Judith Shapiro—one of the leading voices in women’s education today—is president of Barnard College. A distinguished anthropologist specializing in gender differentiation, she has been published widely in scholarly journals. Before arriving at Barnard in 1994, she was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and at Bryn Mawr College, where she also served as provost for eight years. A New York native, she received her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. She has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is past president of the American Ethnological Society.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “The Adoptee’s Two Mothers” by Betty Jean Lifton (adapted from her book, Journey of the Adopted Self [1994, HarperCollins]).

From the Back Cover: James Mulholland tells the extraordinary story of how he met his birth mother 29 years after being given up for adoption, and the effect this had on him and his adoptive family.

Both biography and psychological journey, Special & Odd takes the reader back to hi childhood in order to investigate what it means to grow up knowing you are adopted. Is he really special and odd or does he just act that way?

A humorous clash of cultures, upbringing and DNA!

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About the Author: James Mulholland lives with his wife in London. After pursuing a career in journalism, he became a teacher. He has completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, during which he wrote his second novel. Special & Odd is his first published book.

If you are an adoptee, have you felt alone in the world with no one to talk to; wondered how other adoptees deal with their emotions; or wondered WHY you were placed for adoption? If you are a birth parent, have you ever wondered how your child might feel towards you; what their life was like growing up; or how you would react if they ever showed up on your doorstep? If you are an adoptive parent, are you puzzled with how to deal with your child’s feelings towards adoption but don’t know what to say; thought about helping them search for their birth parents; or how you would handle the situation if they contacted their birth mom? If you are someone who knows someone who is adopted, have you ever been curious what it was like to be adopted; you don’t know what to say to them about being adopted; or you don’t know how to support them if they are searching? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then this book, The Special Chosen One, is for you. An adopted woman’s journey back to her roots. This memoir peers into the mind and emotions of an adoptee who wonders about her birth parents. The torment of being questioned by physicians as to your medical history, when all an adoptee can answer is, “I don’t know.” The eventual fear of hurting adoptive parents when deciding to search for birth parents. The difficult aspect of searching for records about yourself, but they are sealed forever. This book is helpful to all members of the adoption triad; the adoptee, adoptive parents and birth parents, or anyone thinking of adoption or in the process of adopting. This book brings forth the theme that adoptees are not alone. The author never knew another adoptee until age 24. Her self-imposed feelings of guilt were always associated with being adopted. What the author didn’t know until later in life is that other adoptees went through the same emotions. Also included is valuable information and suggestions for adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents, tips for beginning a search, other books recommended for reading, helpful links, and reading group questions.

From the Dust Jacket: Her mother noted in the baby book: “Dorothea is such a good baby.” But later, under the heading FIRST TIME BABY CREEPS she wrote “never did.”

Eventually Dorothea Waitzmann did creep, and stand alone, and even walk. But by that time she had outgrown the baby book.

Nowadays doctors recognize cerebral palsy as soon as they see it. Forty years ago they just shook their heads.

A Special Way of Victory is the autobiography of a woman who has been handicapped since birth with this incurable physical affliction. It is also the story of family, friends, church, and community, who in their love and patience have taught her to live as normally as possible.

During her childhood in Chicago, Dorothea was educated at home. (One private school refused to admit her because she “might embarrass some of the other children.”) Although Protestant, she later attended high school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and graduated with honors.

As time went on, Dorothea’s world fell apart. Her father had died when she was twelve. Now her mother was becoming progressively senile. Dorothea was forced to make all the decisions in a new locality—Waupaca, Wisconsin. After her mother’s death she was alone.

Left on her own, she discovered that she could not earn a living by selling greeting cards or making potholders. For Dorothea, a college education seemed to be the way to self-fulfillment and service to others.

Though in her early forties, she enrolled at St. Norbert, a Roman Catholic college in West De Pere, Wisconsin. In June, 1963, she graduated.

Dorothea Waitzmann has struggled up mountains all her life. Her story of courage will inspire men and women everywhere in their own struggle to reach the summit of their hopes.

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About the Author: When Dorothea Waitzmann was writing a number of devotional articles some years ago, her minister encouraged her to send them for criticism to Georgia Harkness, the well-known theologian and author.

The ensuing correspondence, says Dr. Harkness, “opened up to me not only a fresh understanding of the victim of this type of handicap, but a most enriching friendship.” Concerning Miss Waitzmann’s religious background, she adds: “No finer example of practical ecumenical fellowship in the Spirit of Christ has come to my attention.”

Dr. Harkness suggested that Miss Waitzmann write her life story. A Special Way of Victory is the result. Dr. Harkness has provided an introduction, as well as a concluding chapter to carry the story up to the present.

Sperm Donor Offspring: Identity and Other Experiences explores the universal life experiences of adult donor offspring, people conceived from the use of anonymous sperm donation. The knowledge we gain from the sperm donor descendants themselves about their life experiences is relevant for donor offspring and families, medical personnel, counselors, educators, and for policy and regulation of donor insemination and other reproductive technologies.

Not everyone that has been given away for adoption ever finds out about their roots, it was only a twist of fate that I found the start of the road that lead me to say Che Guevara is still alive. The more I read and studied the films that have been made, wade through the information that has been released on the Internet portals, the more I find that leads me towards the strange conclusion that “maters were manipulated.” [sic] I did not want to find a lost hero; I want to find a lost father. Compiler’s Note: This seems to be a prime example of the sort of thing that the self-publishing industry enables. Caveat emptor.

Written by a 55-year-old woman in New York reflecting on her own extraordinary life experiences, Spiritual Journey: Story of an Adopted Child creatively uses narrative, illustrations, photos, and poetry to convey a message of universal hope and joy extending far beyond Christine Guardiano’s own struggles and triumphs. Reading the book is an emotional and spiritual learning adventure that well exceeds even the broad boundaries of its title words. If you enjoy stories that effectively use flashbacks, vivid description, and many specific personal examples to reveal an individual’s most personal history and to demonstrate human feelings across the entire socio-emotional spectrum, then this is a book for you. It is hard to walk away from reading (and viewing) this work, without feeling a heightened connection to All That Is. About the Author: Christine Guardiano is a divinely and emotionally inspired writer. Her love and compassion for life has no boundaries. Christine’s many talents—or as some would say “gifts” from Spirit—extend far beyond her writing ability: She is an artist, dancer, poet, choreographer, director, stage prop and scenery designer, and so much more. It seems her talents are endless as is her kind and friendly personality. She is also a nature-lover and on many occasion, she and I have communicated with nature on a physical and spiritual level. Christine’s spiritual corona not only glows in this, her latest work, but in every facet of her being. It seems that many incarnations could explain her diverse spiritual persona and achievements in this present lifetime and only Spirit knows what new challenges lay ahead for her. — Bob Guardiano, Christine’s husband

From the Publisher: I wrote this book for all of us—we souls who have been adopted for one reason or the other. There are over six million adopted people in the U.S.A. alone. I wrote this as part of my own healing process. It is the self-observation and revelations that I have experienced in attempting to make sense of the adoption masquerade.

For many years I denied that I ever wanted to probe deeper into the mystery and secrecy of my birthright. As I grew older, I realized that I really had no other choice. I needed to find my roots in order to feel whole and secure as a human being. I desperately needed to open myself up to love and trust again on a deeper level.

I am a university educated nurse with about 40 years experience in the profession as of this writing. Throughout the years I have studied and lived holistic health principles. Mind—Body—Spirit connections. I have studied spiritual law. Unity; Science of Mind; A Course in Miracles; Buddhism; Sufism to coin but a few of the spiritual teachings.

I have also studied metaphysics as well as other disciplines. I self-describe myself as a spiritualist. I love comedy and have performed stand-up comedy. As Ashleigh Brilliant so brilliantly said, “I was educated once and it took me years to get over it.” I belong to the Church of Divine Comedy.

I am writing from my heart and my feelings. I do not subscribe to societal thinking on how they think that I should feel as an adoptee. My feelings are just that—my feelings. I know that if you are an adoptee reading these words—everything that I write will strike a deep chord in you.

Let the healing process begin now. Get in touch with what you are feeling ... not what your mother, father, brother or sister is feeling ... ask yourself, “How am I feeling?” Know that whatever comes up, whatever answer that you receive—know that it is the right feeling and the right answer.

I found this manuscript when I was doing some deep cleaning in some of my old files that I have been carting around for years. Quite frankly, I completely forgot that I wrote this. I wrote this in my 40s soon after I met my German birth mother. I am into my 60s now. I do believe that now is the time to share my story written more that 20 years ago.

Perhaps people who are/were in the same boat will identify with an adoptee’s unique inner struggle. Life, even without being adopted is a bumpy expedition. I sincerely hope that you will share this book with friends, families, adoptees, birth parents—all involved in the Adoption Masquerade.

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About the Author: Micheline Birger is a novelist, playwright, humorist, nurse and an adoptee. She has lectured about laughter and health. She believes in healing one’s life on a deep level. What else is there to do?

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By the Same Author: Bittersweet Birthright: Finding My Birthmother (2011).

In this memoir, the author explores questions of race, adoption, and identity, not as the professor of cultural studies she became, but as the Black child of German settlers in Guatemala. Her journey into the mystery that shrouded her early years begins in the US when she realized it was not just her foreign accent that alienated her from Blacks. Under layers of privilege (private schools, international travel, the life of a fashion model and actress in Europe) she discovered that her most important story is one of disinheritance. The author’s determination to find out who her parents really were and why she was taken from them, tests the love of her White husband and their son, and returns her to Guatemala to find a family that kept her memory alive as legend. In the end, she learns truths about the women who were her mothers, and the disrespect committed long ago against a birth mother and her child in the name of love.

From the Dust Jacket: Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

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About the Author: Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography, and is the coauthor, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He and his wife live in Washington, D.C.

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By the Same Author: Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007); American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane (2009); and The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014).

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Chapter One: Childhood: Abandoned and Chosen.

From the Publisher: Through the eyes of one of its sons, Stewing in the Melting Pot will touch the hearts of all who have lived between two cultures and who have never felt completely accepted by the mainstream American culture. It is the true story of a Mexican-American family struggling to survive in pre- and post-World War II America.

Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrants in 1931, Robert Sanabria was four years old when his mother took her four children and fled from an abusive husband to Los Angeles. There, unable to care for her children, she was forced to place them in an orphanage, founded by the Methodist Church in Sierra Madre, California. In “The Home,” Robert learned that his heritage as a Mexican was not welcome and he was required to abandon his language, his religion, and his culture to become a “real” American.

Robert Sanabria tells a powerful story of “The Home,” its policy of assimilation and how it led to his own development as a confused and identity-starved adult. Through the experience, he became estranged from his siblings and even his mother. Robert Sanabria, a retired Army officer and successful sculptor, is still searching for his identity, as are all Americans in our increasingly diverse society.

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About the Author: Robert Sanabria is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. His military decorations include two awards of the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars and three Air Medals. Born during the Great Depression in El Paso, Texas, to immigrant parents, he received in Bachelor of Arts in political science and economics from the University of Maryland in 1965 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland. He has been a professional sculptor for the past 25 years with works in museums, universities and public spaces in Lexington, Kentucky; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Prince George’s County, Maryland and Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Sanabria is founder of the Touchstone Gallery and the Loudoun Arts Council and has served as President of the Artist Equity Association in Washington, DC. He and his wife, painter Sherry Zvares Sanabria, live and work near Hamilton, Virginia.

From the Dust Jacket: In Still Waters, Jennifer Lauck continues the riveting true story begun in her critically acclaimed memoir, Blackbird.

Clutching her pink trunk filled with secret treasures, the last relics of a lost childhood, twelve-year-old Jenny steps off a bus in Reno and straight into the wide-open future, where no path is certain except - that of her own heart....Separated from her brother, Bryan, and passed from caretaker to caretaker, Jenny endures as she always has: by following the inner compass of the survivor. But when Bryan chooses a shocking, tragic destiny, Jenny must at last confront the secrets, lies, and loneliness that have held her prisoner for years. Embarking on a search for answers, the adult Jenny discovers that the past cannot be locked away forever—even when unraveling one’s own anger and pain seems an impossible feat. Now, in the warmth and understanding of her marriage, in the eyes of her child, and in powerful conversations with a dynamic young priest, Jennifer finds her own miracles. A hardened heart learns to love. A damaged soul finds peace. And life, once merely a matter of survival, becomes rich with the joys of truly living.

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About the Author: Jennifer Lauck lives with her husband and son in Portland, Oregon, where she is a full-time writer. Her acclaimed memoir, Blackbird, was a national and New York Times bestseller, and is currently available from Washington Square Press.

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By the Same Author: Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (2000); Show Me the Way: A Memoir in Stories (2004, Atria); and Found: A Memoir (2011, Seal Press), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: With the arrival of Europeans in the New World, aboriginal children became the focus of large-scale assimilation attempts: religious indoctrination, forced enrollment in residential schools and seizure by social workers, who arranged the adoption of thousands of children by non-native families. Today, the devastating effects of these cultural experiments are all too apparent. But as Stolen from Our Embrace documents, a growing number of First Nations communities across Canada have begun a successful recovery process through a return to traditional healing methods and initiatives in education and social services.

Many voices speak their truths in these pages. Among the people who tell their life stories are a N’laka’pamux woman, her white adoptive mother and the birth mother she found twenty years later; a Plains Cree artist who was raised in a white foster home and regained cultural awareness, and his family, only as an adult; a Gitksan teenager with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; and a man who survived abuse at residential school only to abuse his children in turn. Community workers and political activists talk about the difficulties and joys of the healing process. And Sto:lo leader Ernie Crey relates how four generations of his own family were torn apart by residential schools and the placement of his siblings in foster care.

Stolen from Our Embrace draws examples from all across North America to provide a remarkable window on the present-day restoration of aboriginal lives and communities. Unsparing yet hopeful, it shows without a doubt that in the stories of the children lies the promise of the future.

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About the Author: Suzanne Fournier is a journalist who has worked with and written about aboriginal people for twenty years. A reporter for the Vancouver Province, she has also written for the Globe and Mail, magazines and broadcast media.

Ernie Crey is the executive director of the fisheries program for the Sto:lo Nation, eight thousand people in twenty-five communities along B.C.’s Fraser River. He is the former president of the United Native Nations and has had a lengthy career in social work and as a high-profile political activist on behalf of aboriginal children and families.

From the Dust Jacket: In the spring of 1703, a young African boy stepped off a slave ship in Constantinople, the gateway between East and West. Huddling in chains, with other frightened captives, the seven-year-old claimed to be a prince of Abyssinia, a “noble Moor” kidnapped and stolen out of Africa. His tragedy was shared by millions of black people caught up in the Islamic slave trade, but his destiny was unique: rescued by Peter the Great, the young African became Abram Petrovich Gannibal.

Russia’s westernizing tsar adopted the child and, in a bizarre nature-and-nurture experiment, lavished on him the best education available in the new “European” capital of Saint Petersburg. Gannibal, the “Negro of Peter the Great,” soared to dizzying heights as a soldier, diplomat, mathematician and spy. He was fêted in glittering salons, from the Winter Palace to the Louvre, and came to know Voltaire and Montesquieu, who praised him as the “dark star of Russia’s enlightenment.” At the same time, his military exploits, from northern Spain to the icy wastes of Siberia—to say nothing of his marital problems—sealed Gannibal’s reputation as the Russian Othello.

African prince or not, the ex-slave founded a dynasty of his own in Russia, where he came to embody the strengths and weaknesses of the country itself—volatile, courageous, handsome, gifted and always astonishing. His descendants included not only Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, but also, in England, several Mountbattens and others close to the royal family.

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About the Author: Hugh Barnes, a journalist and Russian specialist educated at Cambridge and Oxford, covered the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan for newspapers in the UK and abroad.

From the Dust Jacket: In 1975, Molyda Szymusiak (her adoptive name), the daughter of a high Cambodian official, was twelve years old and leading a relatively peaceful life in Phnom Penh. Suddenly, on April 17, Khmer Rouge radicals seized the capital and drove all its inhabitants into the countryside. The chaos that followed has been widely publicized, most notably in the recent movie The Killing Fields. Murderous brutality coupled with raging famine caused the death of more than two million people, nearly a third of the population. What has not been adequately documented is the unalleviated horror Cambodians experienced in daily life, told for the first time in this remarkable memoir.

From the start, the author kept her identity a secret, assuming a “revolutionary” name to avoid being branded as an aristocrat. Her father, mother, aunt, and uncle struggled to save the twenty members of their two families, but one by one they starved or were executed, until only Molyda and three younger cousins survived. Through it all, she watched and remembered, and her child’s-eye view—unencumbered by doctrine or statistics—vividly communicates the total breakdown of her society. Perhaps most striking is Molyda’s ability to retain her humanity despite the innumerable atrocities she witnessed. By continuing to care about human feeling at a time when all that seems to matter is survival, Molyda puts the lie to those who nearly destroyed her country and its heritage. Cambodia’s nightmare is far from over, but the courage and resiliency of its people are preserved in this extraordinary recollection.

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About the Author: Molyda Szymusiak was born in Phnom Penh on October 19, 1962. After the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover, she and her family were driven from the capital into the Cambodian countryside. Molyda and the three surviving members of her family reached the Kao I Dang refugee camp on the Thai border in 1980. In 1981 they went to Paris, where Molyda and two of her cousins were adopted by Polish exiles Jan Szymusiak, an academic historian, and his wife, Carmen, a psychiatrist. Molyda is presently studying photography.

From the Publisher: This book reveals compelling personal stories by adoptees, birth mothers and fathers, and adoptive parents who experience reunions. The individuals in this book are of varying ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles, but they share similar emotional mazes characteristic of the adoption triangle. these are stories of profound loss, as well as joyful reunions and resolution. Stories of Adoption acknowledges that there are no easy answers to this complex situation and honors the diversity of experience for each individual in the adoption triangle.

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About the Author: Eric Blau, M.D., who combines his skills and sensitivities as a professional photographer and a physician, spent three years interviewing and photographing individuals for this book. Blau was drawn to a book on adoption because he feels adoptees are “...one of the last groups in mainstream society whose needs and desires are not being recognized.” Blau’s previous work includes Common Heroes: Facing a Life Threatening Illness (New Sage Press, 1989). The son of a professional photographer, Blau has been making photographs since he was a child. His photographs have been exhibited nationally. Blau also practices internal medicine and is an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California School of Medicine, San Diego.

Annette Baran, M.S.W. is regarded as one of the foremost experts in the field of adoption and child welfare. Her work on adoption has brought her international attention, and she has been an expert witness in national cases on issues ranging from surrogate motherhood to adoption and child abuse, among others. Baran’s books include The Adoption Triangle (1978) and Lethal Secrets (1989). Baran has a private psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles.

About the Author: Hope Louise Fowler (Oct. 12, 1921-May 7, 2016) was born Hope Louise Brown in Hamilton, IL, the fourth child of Franklin B. Brown and Millie (Ensign) Brown. During the depression she and her siblings were placed in The Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Home in Davenport and from there, she and her sister, Mary Lou, were adopted by Daniel C. and Clara (Burrows) Gibbs. She married Harold Stanton Fowler in Dubuque, IA. Hope graduated Valedictorian of her class in 1941 from Earlville High School, and went on to the University of Dubuque where she earned her Bachelor’s of Science Degree, majoring in Home Economics and Business. She taught in the Winslow, IL, High School until it was consolidated, and then took classes and became a grade school teacher there in Winslow until her retirement in 1985, ending 35 years in the same building. She was renting a room in Winslow from a widow, Enid Debell, and when her son, Harold, came home from the war and they fell in love; they married and the new couple made their life in Winslow until he retired. Then they traveled and also bought a winter home in Zephryhills, FL. They were “snowbirds” for many years until Harold’s failing health made them decide to move closer to family in Missouri. After retiring she took a writing class and decided to write her autobiography. She finished and self-published A Story of Hope: The Autobiography of an Adopted Kid in 1995. —Excerpted from the author’s obituary, published in The Journal-Standard on May 8, 2016

From the Preface: For those whom Nature loves, the Story of Opal is an open book. They need no introduction to the journal of this Understanding Heart. But the world, which veils the spirit and callouses the instincts, makes curiosity for most people the criterion of interest. They demand facts and backgrounds, theories and explanations, and for them it seems worth while to set forth something of the child’s story undisclosed by the diary, and to attempt to weave together some impressions of the author.

Last September, late one afternoon, Opal Whiteley came into the Atlantic’s office, with a book which she had had printed in Los Angeles. It was not a promising errand, though it had brought her all the way from the Western coast, hoping to have published in regular fashion this volume, half fact, half fancy, of The Fairyland Around Us, the fairyland of beasts and blossoms, butterflies and birds. The book was quaintly embellished with colored pictures, pasted in by hand, and bore a hundred marks of special loving care. Yet about it there seemed little at first sight to tempt a publisher. Indeed, she had offered her wares in vain to more than one publishing house; and as her dollars were growing very few, the disappointment was severe. But about Opal Whiteley herself there was something to attract the attention even of a man of business—something very young and eager and fluttering, like a bird in a thicket.

—Ellery Sedgwick, The Atlantic, June 1920