Three years after his best friend Patrick was found hanging in his bedroom, Adam still can’t let go. Believing there’s a hidden message behind Patrick’s cryptic suicide note, he writes to ease his guilt and finally reveal what he knows. In his book, A World Alone, Adam attempts to solve the mystery of his best friend’s death by revealing the secrets of the people from his past, including his own. Born to a middle-class family in a country like the Philippines, Adam knows there’s no greater shame than admitting you’re depressed. After spending six months in a psychiatric ward, he attends public school for the first time. But just when Adam believed things were finally looking up for him, fate makes other plans. What happens after is an unpredictable ride down the rabbit hole, filled with humor, mystery, and like most teenage love stories, heartbreak.

From the Introduction: Sudden and unexpected loss of communication is a terrifying, dehumanizing experience that tears away at the essence of life itself. For decades, speech and language pathologists have sought to better understand it. The term aphasia is used to generally describe a condition whereby speech and language skills are partially or totally lost. Aphasia is the result of damage to or disturbance of those areas in the brain responsible for speech and language functions. A tremendous variety of specific impairments can occur to plague the individual with aphasia. Impairments of comprehension, reading disturbances, writing difficulties, and confusion with numerical processes can accompany oral language problems such as word loss, loss of sentence structure, and confusion in utilizing word forms. . . To understand aphasia at this level alone is to miss the full nature of this terribly debilitating condition. For the effect that aphasia has on the person who must bear its consequences is a profound area of interest that is not always understood and. . . seldom considered. Aphasia, My World Alone has been written to help open this often closed door. . . Helen Wulf has put down on paper a depth of feeling, thought, and analysis concerning the aphasic experience that personalizes the disorder in a gripping, readable manner. She delves so deeply into her aphasia that the reader is actually drawn up into the agony and frustration that is the daily burden of the aphasic individual. Speech pathologists who actively work with aphasic patients will immediately recognize the value of Helen Wulf's analysis of her aphasia. Her reactions to various forms of treatment will also be beneficial, especially to those who are allowing certain aphasics to determine which speech and language deficits are most debilitating and, consequently, which area should be emphasized in the initial stages of treatment. Family and friends of the aphasic will be warmly introduced to those inner thoughts so long hidden from their ears. . . This book. . . should be extremely useful in family counseling. . . As many speech pathologists have indicated, the need for "family treatment" is immediate, real, and often of critical importance. . . As the field of aphasia rehabilitation continues its growth ... our ability to help the aphasic and his family will expand. It is felt that in its small way, this book will help make aphasia less of a world alone. A new chapter has been added to this revised edition in which Helen Wulf assesses her feelings and the progress she has made six to eight years post-stroke.

Recounts the voyage of a California sixteen-year-old who spent nearly five years sailing alone around the world.

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. “An urgent invitation to care for all children as our own.” —Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family In this “moving condemnation of the U.S. penal system and its effect on families”, award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein takes an intimate look at parents and children—over two million of them—torn apart by our current incarceration policy (Parents’ Press). Described as “meticulously reported and sensitively written” by Salon, the book is “brimming with compelling case studies . . . and recommendations for change” (Orlando Sentinel). Our Weekly Los Angeles calls it “a must-read for lawmakers as well as for lawbreakers.” “In terms of elegance, breadth and persuasiveness, All Alone in the World deserves to be placed alongside other classics of the genre such as Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family. But to praise the book’s considerable literary or sociological merit seems beside the point. This book belongs not only on shelves but also in the hands of judges and lawmakers.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Well researched and smoothly written, Bernstein’s book pumps up awareness of the problems, provides a checklist for what needs to be done and also cites organizations like the Osborne Society that provide parenting and literacy classes, counseling and support. The message is clear: taking family connections into account ‘holds particular promise for restoring a social fabric rent by both crime and punishment.’” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the almshouses of the 1800s to the foster home programs of the present, find out about our country's evolving attitudes toward its neediest children.

Examining five world religions in order to demonstrate that each is a particular expression of one, common world theology.

"Mark Steyn is a human sandblaster. This book provides a powerful, abrasive, high-velocity assault on encrusted layers of sugarcoating and whitewash over the threat of Islamic imperialism. Do we in the West have the will to prevail?" - MICHELLE MALKIN, New York Times bestselling author of Unhinged "Mark Steyn is the funniest writer now living. But don't be distracted by the brilliance of his jokes. They are the neon lights advertising a profound and sad insight: America is almost alone in resisting both the suicide of the West and the suicide bombing of radical Islamism." - JOHN O'SULLIVAN, editor at large, National Review IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT..... Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world.

Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume the extent of his work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The essays presented reflect on the nature of metaphysics, with two of the essays featured being published for the first time.

In a world of Power, Lies and Deception I find myself breathing a sigh of relief. To be told as a child we can trust our Leaders in Churches, Schools, Government, Community Groups and the list goes on, finally, everyone now has the pleasure of reaping exactly what they sowed. Children of my generation were all survivors of crimes that have become unspeakable. The Adults sadly enough were very sick individuals who took their Dysfunctional minds and expected our generation to put up with it. There is no excuse for the immoral acts in this country and thank God our children are fed up with all of it. Thank You to all young people who are out there making a future for my children and grandchildren. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR! For all Survivors like myself you have reinforced to us older people that yes we were telling the truth when we asked for help and now we can finally live in Peace. Never be Scared to tell, it does not matter what position in life they hold. Now the world through so much destruction is on the healing end. Life was given to us to enjoy and now the Criminals are slowly being caught, we can all finally live in PEACE.

These short stories are set primarily in the farmland of County Antrim in Northern Ireland during the author’s youth in the nineteen forties and fifties, though there are related stories set in the U.S. and Canada. County Antrim has strong residual connections to Scotland that are reflected in the manner of speech and in the social values that the author experienced during his youth - hard work, religious belief and valuing family connections. Long before television entered the home, family and neighborhood get-togethers were common, often around a hearth-fire, especially in winter. An exchange of comment kept everyone abreast of happenings in the area though that often tripped into friendly gossip, especially of those whose life’s escapades set them apart from the accepted norm. The very human lives of these wholesome people, their sorrow, happiness, humor and futility are picturesquely captured in the author’s sensitive, homespun stories.