Running To The Fire

In the streets of Addis Ababa in 1977, shop-front posters illustrate Uncle Sam being strangled by an Ethiopian revolutionary, parliamentary leaders are executed, student protesters are gunned down, and Christian mission converts are targeted as imperialistic sympathizers. Into this world arrives sixteen-year-old Tim Bascom, whose missionary parents have brought their family from a small town in Kansas straight into Colonel Mengistu's Marxist "Red Terror." Running to the Fire focuses on the turbulent year the Bascom family experienced upon traveling into revolutionary Ethiopia. The teenage Bascom finds a paradoxical exhilaration in living so close to constant danger. At boarding school in Addis Ababa, where dorm parents demand morning devotions and forbid dancing, Bascom bonds with other youth due to a shared sense of threat. He falls in love for the first time, but the young couple is soon separated by the politics that affect all their lives. Across the country, missionaries are being held under house arrest while communist cadres seize their hospitals and schools. A friend's father is imprisoned as a suspected CIA agent; another is killed by raiding Somalis.

An Essential Book for Runners of All Abilities All of the Author's Proceeds Go to Shoes4Africa to Support the Construction of Children's Hospitals in Kenya Kenya has produced the greatest concentration of world-class runners, and fellow athletes have long been intrigued by their remarkable success. Toby Tanser has devoted much of his professional career living and training among Kenyan runners in order to better understand the unique status of East African athletes. In More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way, the author builds upon the success of his acclaimed Train Hard, Win Easy, the first book to provide insights into the Kenyan "magic" that so many runners and coaches had sought. Instead of special foods or secret techniques, Tanser found that Kenyan runners simply trained incredibly hard, much harder than anyone had realized. By adapting their training regime--which includes three workouts a day--and following their example, runners, whether novices or champions, are able to improve both their performance and enjoyment in running. For those training for a marathon or any other distance race, this book is both practical and inspirational. Divided into four parts, the book begins with a description of running in Kenya, the landscape, the physical conditions, and the people; the second part concentrates on details of Kenyan training camps, training methods, and their typical training diet; the third profiles individual runners and coaches from the past and present, with each explaining their approach to running so that readers can gain further insight into their methods. The book ends with a discussion on how the reader can adapt Kenyan training practices for their own running requirements. More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way is essential reading for runners of all levels and experience.

"Du solst starben zwischem goyem!" A fellow Jew within the Warsaw Ghetto, offended by Zosia Goldberg's Polish of no Yiddish accent, spat at her in Yiddish: "May you die amongst the goyem!" Zosia took this 'curse' instead as a message from God. Her dramatic tale begins with her escaping the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewer, whereafter she survived the Holocaust posing as a Gentile. Zosia did not die amongst the goyem, and yet along her dangerous journey she should have died on numerous occasions. She was a 'débrouillarde', someone who could run through fire without getting burned. Hers is a story of resistance at every turn, of continual attempts at sabotage, of perpetually escaping and defeating the enemy. Her account is filled with unique energy and a wonder at the strangeness of human behaviour. For not only did she suffer bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, she also encountered the unexpected sympathies of Nazis, and was at many times aided by her very tormentors. This is not just a story of the Holocaust, but of a woman struggling to make sense of human folly and depravity.

Immortalised in the film ‘Chariots of Fire’, Harold Abrahams remains one of the all-time-great British Olympians. But his true story, told for the first time in this official biography, is in many ways even more dramatic and moving than the distorted version previously seen on the big screen. Although it is true that Abrahams overcame anti-Semitism to become Britain's first 100 metres Olympic champion in 1924, Mark Ryan's powerful book reveals just how much more Harold suffered - and had to sacrifice - on a personal level before he reached the top. His book reveals what Abrahams really thought of sprint-rival Eric Liddell, and later how disgracefully Harold was treated by his own side in the build-up to Hitler's Berlin Olympics of 1936. Two remarkable love stories provide the back-drop to Abrahams' struggle to reach these two historic Games, first as an athlete and then as a pioneering broadcaster. Both romances highlight the mental fragility usually masked by Harold's physical prowess and apparent confidence. As the story races on, the reader is able to share Abrahams' excitement as he realises that Roger Bannister has what it takes to break the four-minute-mile barrier, and befriends the runner who soon begins his assault on the "Everest of athletics." And finally, Ryan shows how Harold not only helped to shape the modern-day rules of the sport as an influential administrator, but also did more than any man to make athletics popular in this country. In the build-up to London 2012, there has never been a better time to celebrate Harold Abrahams' unique story.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: “The terrifying story of the worst disaster in the history of the US Forest Service’s elite Smokejumpers.” —Kirkus Reviews A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in this extraordinary book. Alongside Maclean’s now-canonical A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized today as a classic of the American West. This edition of Maclean’s later triumph—the last book he would write—includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul. “A moving account of humanity, nature, and the perseverance of the human spirit.” —Library Journal “Haunting.” —The Wall Street Journal “Engrossing.” —Publishers Weekly

Describes the experiences of a newcomer to the Yukon when he attempts to hike through the snow to reach a mining claim.

After her helicopter is shot down while on a rescue mission, Leah Mackenzie hides in a labyrinth of Afghanistan caves with Navy SEAL Kell Ballard, where they find comfort in each other's arms despite the enemy who waits outside.

"In Running Into the Fire, Terri Hasdorff draws from her more than twenty years in politics to reveal how people of faith can effectively influence government and push back against the liberal socialist agenda. In addition to revealing how the rise of super PACs and massive marketing machines are getting unqualified and corrupt candidates elected, this book gives clear-cut direction for how people of conscience can get involved in politics, whether they are soccer moms with limited resources or multimillionaires capable of making sizeable campaign contributions. s or multimillionaires capable of making sizeable campaign contributions"--

NOW WITH A FOREWORD BY RON RASH AND AN APPRECIATION BY DWIGHT GARNER “One of the finest books I know about blue-collar work in America, its rewards and frustrations . . . If you are among the tens of millions who have never read Brown, this is a perfect introduction.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, Larry Brown quit the Oxford, Mississippi, fire department to try writing full-time. In On Fire, he looks back on his life as a firefighter. His unflinching accounts of daily trauma—from the blistering heat of burning trailer homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes—catapult readers into the hard reality that drove this award-winning novelist. As a firefighter and fireman-turned-author, as husband and hunter, and as father and son, Brown offers insights into the choices men face pursuing their life’s work. And, in the forthright style we expect from Larry Brown, his narrative builds to the explanation of how one man who regularly confronted death began to burn with the desire to write about life.

The story of the Brontë family is one of incredible romance, immense genius and haunting sadness. From humble beginnings in Ireland the Rev. Patrick Brontë rose to the very heart of the reforming evangelical movement of the 19th century; he was sponsored at Cambridge University in England by its great leader William Wilberforce. Patrick's daughters Emily, Charlotte and Anne came onto the pages of literary history with, amongst other work, their novels Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which now grip the imagination of millions of people in the 21st century. Branwell, the most promising of Patrick's children is mourned for the wreck of his talent. All had the fire of deep emotions running in their veins. In this book Derick Bingham seeks to trace the influence of Patrick Brontë's unfaltering evangelical faith on the lives and work of all his children. Here is faith in the face of unremitting tragedy, imagination soaring out of pitiful sadness and doubt vying with hope for dominance. The world will truly never see such a literary family again whose life story is every bit as fascinating as their fiction.