How is the American spirit holding up in these difficult times? Peter Funt, syndicated columnist and host of TV’s “Candid Camera,” looks beyond the headlines to find out. In his book “Cautiously Optimistic,” a collection of six dozen essays, Funt uses a light but penetrating touch to take the nation’s temperature. Funt’s canvas is very much like the real world we deal with every day. Sure, Americans are concerned about taxes, education and crime. But we…
What happens when a middle-aged mum from England decides to drive eighteen-wheelers across North America, instead of just dreaming about it? Ask Carolyn Steele. She did it, and wrote about it, in her book “Trucking in English.” From early training, when it becomes apparent that negotiating eighteen wheels and thirteen gears involves slightly more than just learning how to climb in, this rookie overcomes self-doubt, infuriating companions and inconsiderate weather to become a real trucker.…
Christy Potter is a Midwesterner who moved to New York almost 20 years ago – she calls herself a “displaced hayseed” – to pursue a career as a journalist and creative writer. Her love of talking to people is second only to her love of writing. And all of that comes through in her book”The World is My Oyster But I Didn’t Know How to Cook.” It’s a compendium of humorous and thought-provoking essays on…
Who’s telling the story of your life, you or your brain? Searching for reasons her promising life had crumbled into obsessive thoughts and deep depression, Karen Lawrence uncovered an enigmatic past filled with deception, religious fanaticism and abuse. Now in her book “What My Heart Saw,” Karen merges fragments of childhood memory, current scientific research and insights gleaned from practicing mindfulness.to produce a deeply personal account of how our brain-stories can run our lives without…
In 1999, T.R. Locke was a successful college administrator and real estate investor in Chicago who had dreams of pursuing his lifelong passion of screenwriting. The following year he wrote a screenplay that nearly won the Chesterfield Film Festival Writer’s Film Project sponsored by Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Paramount Pictures. Within weeks he was flying out to Hollywood for meetings with agents and negotiating deals with producers to buy his screenplay. Fired up by…
“Look at me and I’ll kill you!” Those are the words Jennifer Wheatley-Wolf heard as she entered her bedroom on the morning of August 21, 1988. An unknown assailant had climbed onto the balcony and entered a sliding glass door, waitingfor her in the dark. When he grabbed her and pulled something tight around her throat, Jennifer was sure her life was over. Assaulted and raped, Jennifer lived through every woman’s worst nightmare. Having never…
