This is a mass market paperback with striking cover.

This fully updated edition of The Happy Life Story tells the history of an inspiring children's home project near Nairobi, Kenya. It is told through the eyes of Sharon Emecz, who after twenty years on the corporate treadmill in London, took a career break and spent a month in Africa including volunteering at Happy Life. The Children's Home was founded in 2002 to "Provide the abandoned children of Kenya with a Home and a Hope for adoption." This is the heart-warming story of a small group of people saving the lives of hundreds of Children and arranging for many of these children to be adopted into "Forever Homes". Since 2002 over 500 children have been rescued with 300 being adopted. Happy Life Children's Home now has 3 missions: To rescue and enable adoptions; to provide a Christian education, and to provide pediatric care in the Jesse Kay Children's Hospital. To accomplish this mission there are 2 Campuses: one campus is for infants to 3 years of age and the Hospital while the other campus is for the children who are 3 years and older. At this campus there is a church, Happy Life Christian School, and 3-bedroom homes for the children. The first edition was completed when Sharon and her husband, Steve, returned from their 2nd Christmas at Happy Life. This new edition shares the great progress from 2014-2018. There are new stories, case studies, and news about the School and the Children's Hospital. All royalties from the book go to Happy Life Children's Home. More information is available at the Web Site: "happylifechildrenshome.com". Enjoy the "STORY" and come to visit!

Kept in a bird-coop by his parents, Sunny McCreary endured a childhood of neglect, abuse and being bullied by pigeons, only to find it was all downhill from there. In the course of the most painful life ever, he survived tragedy and maiming, a savage convent school education, being pimped out in pink-satin hot pants, a degrading addiction to helium, and having a baboon's arse grafted onto his face. Then things got really bad. More horrible than A Child Called It, more heartrending than Ugly, more repulsive than the Alastair Campbell diaries, My Godawful Life is the misery memoir to end all misery memoirs and the feel-bad book of the year.

The implications of early experience for children's brain development, behavior, and psychological functioning have long absorbed caregivers, researchers, and clinicians. The 1989 fall of Romania's Ceausescu regime left approximately 170,000 children in 700 overcrowded, impoverished institutions across Romania, and prompted the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of institutionalization on children's well-being. Romania's Abandoned Children, the authoritative account of this landmark study, documents the devastating toll paid by children who are deprived of responsive care, social interaction, stimulation, and psychological comfort. Launched in 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) was a rigorously controlled investigation of foster care as an alternative to institutionalization. Researchers included 136 abandoned infants and toddlers in the study and randomly assigned half of them to foster care created specifically for the project. The other half stayed in Romanian institutions, where conditions remained substandard. Over a twelve-year span, both groups were assessed for physical growth, cognitive functioning, brain development, and social behavior. Data from a third group of children raised by their birth families were collected for comparison. The study found that the institutionalized children were severely impaired in IQ and manifested a variety of social and emotional disorders, as well as changes in brain development. However, the earlier an institutionalized child was placed into foster care, the better the recovery. Combining scientific, historical, and personal narratives in a gripping, often heartbreaking, account, Romania's Abandoned Children highlights the urgency of efforts to help the millions of parentless children living in institutions throughout the world.

A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence "[Flyn] captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, 'all the stranger and more valuable for its resilence.'" --The New Yorker Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ. Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists. Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.

Based on a true story, The Forgotten Child is a heart-breaking memoir of an abandoned newborn baby left to die, his tempestuous upbringing, and how he came through the other side.

How did a former mob enforcer become a compassionate advocate for animals in need of loving homes? How did his hardened heart open up to the plight of abused and abandoned pets? James "Head" Guiliani was an unlikely candidate to become a passionate animal rescuer. Raised in a religious family in a blue-collar neighborhood, James became involved in street gangs at a young age. By his mid-twenties, he'd become a 6'2" 250-pound enforcer for the Gambino crime family during the reign of infamous mob boss John Gotti. But after years of worsening alcohol and drug use and a stretch in the Riverhead Correctional Facility, James finally hit bottom. It was then that he met Lena Perrelli, who helped turn his life around, providing the love and support he'd rejected in the past. And when the couple rescued an abandoned and abused shih tzu, the second phase of James's salvation began. Lovingly named Bruno, the small dog opened the former enforcer's hardened heart, and James discovered a new purpose in life as a devoted animal rescuer. Dogfella tells how this onetime altar boy from Queens became a gang member, a mob confidante, an an addict and convicted felon -- and how he found redemption by dedicating his life to animals. Alongside his personal journey, James shares stories from his rescue missions with Keno's Animal Rescue Shelter in Brooklyn: saving pit bulls from a dogfighting ring, driving through six-foot snowdrifts to reach 200 cats stranded in a blizzard, taking in homeless ducks from Staten Island, and many more. Sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and often poignant, James's story shows how the love of an animal can bring even the most hopeless cases a new purpose and a path to redemption.

Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the "dictionary" she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. An instant classic, Vita has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarina’s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerod’s return to Vita. Anthropology at its finest, Vita is essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world.

A Beautiful Paradox is the continuation of the love story between the writer and her muse in Crazy Beautiful. Can the love between them forge the ties after betrayal? The writer soon begins to emerge into something more than just a writer. Her true story unfolds as she becomes one, but two, ultimately, revealing another layer of who she is.

When the evening news reported a dead baby abandoned in a local dumpster, Linda Znachko's comfortable life changed. She was suddenly convicted—-God was asking her to provide a dignified burial for this tiny lost child. Linda said yes. She had no idea where that first small yes would lead. Linda found herself in places she never dreamed she would be: at the graveside of the child of an abused mother; by the side of a mother fighting for her lost child; and at the funeral of a Texas stripper who died two days before her baptism but left a legacy of love behind. When Linda stepped out of her comfort zone and into these implausible places with people she was unlikely to otherwise encounter, she discovered the life she never knew she wanted—-a life of saying yes to God whenever He asks. Today, Linda has a ministry that gives children a name in life, and dignity and honor in death. When she shares her stories of broken lives redeemed, other broken people respond, and so the ripple effects of that long-ago yes continue to spread, touching lives that yearn for healing, and underscoring the fact that every life matters to God.