Breaking Night

In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.

The statistics are powerful and alarming: Perhaps as many as 6 million Americans suffer from night eating syndrome, or NES, a newly identified eating disorder which describes behavior patterns in which an individual obsessively consumes more than half of his or her daily caloric intake after eight o'clock in the evening. More significant is the further finding that more than 33 percent of morbidly obese individuals, persons who are 100 or more pounds overweight, are affected by this disorder. Experts agree that NES shares characteristics of not only eating disorders but also sleep and mood disorders. Sufferers tend to exhibit symptoms such as feelings of anxiety and guilt, insomnia, or interrupted sleep. Typical NES behaviors include absent appetite during the day, a consistent pattern of eating more food after dinner than during the meal itself, and recurrent episodes of waking and eating throughout the night. This book offers a step-by-step strategy for managing and overcoming this disorder. From this book, you will first learn to identify the signs of NES, and then use journaling exercises to discover what automatic thoughts surround your night eating. Having identified the problematic behaviors, you'íll find out how to break theses patterns with healthier food choices, more structured mealtimes, and a series of relaxation and visualization techniques.

The current running boom has led to growing interest in running books. This daring volume combines the best of writing on running with the appeal of the best kind of literary writing, essays that take in a healthy dose of the outdoors, the sights and sounds and smells of real life, of real risk, of real pain and of real elation. Emphasizing female voices to reflect the preponderance of women among runners, this collection of personal essays set in different countries around the world offers a deep but accessible look at the power of running in our lives. From acclaimed novelist Emily Mitchell to ESPN reporter Bonnie Ford to UC Santa Cruz student Kelsey Eiland, a diverse lineup of writers captures a variety of perspectives on running at night.

Tens of thousands of children are removed from home each year due to some form of child maltreatment, usually physical neglect, physical abuse, or sexual abuse, although sometimes for emotional abuse as well. An additional significant number of children are victims of child maltreatment but remain in their home. Extensive research reveals the far reaching and long lasting negative impact of maltreatment on child victims, including on their physical, social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. One particularly troubling and complicated aspect is how the child victim forms (and maintains) a “traumatic bond” with his abuser, even becoming protective and defensive of that person despite the pain and suffering they have caused. This book will provide the reader with the essential experience of understanding how children make meaning of being maltreated by a parent, and how these traumatic bonds form and last. Through an examination of published memoirs of abuse, the authors analyze and reveal the commonalities in the stories to uncover the ways in which adult victims of childhood abuse understand and digest the traumatic experiences of their childhoods. This understanding can inform interventions and treatments designed for this vulnerable population and can help family and friends of victims understand more fully the maltreatment experience “from the inside out.”

“Breaking Night” Urban slang for: staying up through the night, until the sun rises “Breaking Night reads more like an adventure story than an addiction-morality tale. It’s a white-knuckle account of survival. . . . Murray’s stoicism has been hard-earned; it serves her well as a writer. Breaking Night itself is full of heart, without a sliver of ice, and deeply moving.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “From runaway to Harvard student, Murray tells an engaging, powerfully motivational story about turning her life around. . . . In this incredible story of true grit, Murray went from feeling like ‘the world was filled with people who were repulsed by me’ to learning to receive the bountiful generosity of strangers who truly cared.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The admirable story of a teen who overcame homelessness through sheer grit and the kindness of friends. . . . An uplifting story of survival.” —Kirkus Reviews “Education was the miracle that saved Murray’s life. . . . Her story is inspirational, and her description of [her high school], and its role in her life, should be read by everyone concerned about education.” —Washington Post Book World “Truly uplifting. . . . Liz Murray has shown us the worst, and the very best, of America.” —Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch