A sweeping portrait of motherhood, loss, and redemption in war-torn Sarajevo.

When a breach birth leaves Paulo severely disabled, his father, the articulate, unsentimental Professor Frigerio, struggles to come to terms with his son’s condition. Face to face with his own limitations, Frigerio confronts the strange way society around him handles Paolo’s handicaps and observes his surprising gifts. In spare, deeply affecting episodes, the professor of language explores the nuanced boundaries between “normal” and “disabled” worlds. A remarkable memoir of fathering, winner of the 2001 Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary honor, Born Twice is noted Italian author Guiseppe Pontiggia’s American debut. Sometimes meditative, often humorous, and always probing, Pontiggia’s haunting characters linger and resound long after the book is done.

In The Twice-Born, Aatish Taseer embarks on a journey of self-discovery in an intoxicating, unsettling personal reckoning with modern India, where ancient customs collide with the contemporary politics of revivalism and revenge When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition. Known as the twice-born—first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation—the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. In a globalized world, to be modern is to renounce India—and yet the tide of nationalism is rising, heralded by cries of “Victory to Mother India!” and an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence. From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, among the blossoming cotton trees and the bathers and burning corpses of the Ganges, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.

The classic memior of Betty Jean Lifton's search for her secret past that helped open the way for so many others. Betty Jean Lifton, acclaimed author of several books on the psychology of the adtoped that have helped open the field, tells her own story of growing up adtoped in the closed adoption system. Calling Twice Born both an autobiography and a psychological journey into the past, Lifton takes the reader with her as she describes the loneliness and islolation of an adopted child cut off from the knowledge of her heritage. She explores the ambivalence and guilt that she feels toward her adoptive parents when she awakens as an adult to her need to ask: Who am I? With the mounting suspense of a detective novel, Twice Born explores not only the difficulty of searching for one's past when one's records are sealed, but also the complexity of trying to reunite with the birth mother from whom one has been separated by social taboos--and by time. More than a vivid and poinant memior, Lifton has given hs a story of mothering and mother-loss attachment and bonding, secrets and lies, and the human need for origins. Important reading for anyone touched by these issues and by the experience of adoption--which is everyone.

Why is this happening? Why him? Why us? I can't count the number of times those words echoed through my mind over the course of the summer of 2017. There is no more powerless feeling for a parent than being forced to watch as their child battles for his health & well being. At my wife's 20 week ultrasound, we expected to learn the sex of our second munchkin, but instead our world was crumbled. Words like Spina Bifida, Arnold Chiari Malformation, Myelomeningocele & Hydrocephalus destroyed the excitement we held and replaced it with more uncertainty than we knew existed. The next weeks & months were a whirlwind as we met with specialists and flew across the country so that my wife could undergo fetal surgery to close the opening in my son's back, as well as give him the best chance for a life of worthwhile quality. We would remain there for 4 months, away from our oldest son & our home. Our little Loxley Poet had our hearts from the beginning, so it was never a question as to if we would do all in our power to give him the best chance. It was only a matter of how and when? The amazing people in our lives, our friends & family, made sure we had everything we needed, support in all shapes and sizes. Our journey being what it was, I decided that I could look at it as a burden or as an opportunity. Instead of asking ourselves 'why, ' perhaps we should have been asking ourselves, 'why not?' So, thats what we did. We would handle this and we would thrive, because thats what families do. That's how we survive. That's how we live. This book is for my little warrior, all of his twice born brothers & sisters, as well as their selfless families willing to sacrifice some so that their children may have it all.

'Once-Born, Twice-Born Zen' is a fresh treatment of the two major Zen schools of Japan. Its biographical and comparative approach is both original and very readable. The use of William James' typology, along with other phenomenological categories, provides the reader with helpful handles for distinguishing the schools, as well as similar tendencies in other religious traditions. The book should make an excellent text for introductory and middle-level courses in which one is trying to get students to develop categories for understanding religious experience and behavior. Readers will see something of themselves in the range of biographical examples given, and will detect their own tendencies through the use of this method. -- Bardwell Smith

Born Twice Die Once is about the commencement of our journey toward God by considering with new eyes what Jesus said regarding a second birth - a spiritual birth. Born Twice Die Once takes the reader from uncertainty to certainty; from the unknown to the starting line and then blazes the trail to the finish line of assurance. Join the many around the world who have found the wonder of new life in Jesus Christ and embark on a path laid out for ou by Jesus Himself.New Life and joy await those who dare to inquire and who discover the wonder of being born a second time.It is time to awake, arise and be become twice born!

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of growing up, falling in love, getting married, having a house full of children and living happily ever after. To my surprise, the blueprint I was born with had other surprises in store for me. As the years went by, one door after another opened and I learned how magically even the most devastating experiences fit into the large plan. I am grateful for having received every single blessing and challengethey made my life absolutely awesome.