This is the continuation and in-depth view of my previous book, An Interruption That Lasted a Lifetime: My First Eighty Years.

On a terrible day in December 1958, one of the deadliest fires in American history took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago. On the fiftieth anniversary of the fire, Kuenster talks with children, parents, firemen, reports, clergy, nurses, policemen, school officials, and others who were in some way connected with the disaster.

Passed and Present is a one-of-a-kind guide for discovering creative and meaningful ways to keep the memory of loved ones alive. Inspiring and imaginative, this bona fide "how-to” manual teaches us how to remember those we miss most, no matter how long they’ve been gone. Passed and Present is not about sadness and grieving. It is about happiness and remembering. It is possible to look forward, to live a rich and joyful life, while keeping the memory of loved ones alive. This much-needed, easy-to-use roadmap shares 85 imaginative ways to celebrate and honor family and friends we never want to forget. Chapter topics include: Repurpose With Purpose: Ideas for transforming objects and heirlooms. Discover ways to reimagine photographs, jewelry, clothing, letters, recipes, and virtually any inherited item or memento. Use Technology: Strategies for your daily, digital life. Opportunities for using computers, scanners, printers, apps, mobile devices, and websites. Not Just Holidays: Tips for remembrance any time of year, day or night, whenever you feel that pull, be it a loved one’s birthday, an anniversary, or just a moment when a memory catches you by surprise. Monthly Guide: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other special times of year present unique challenges and opportunities. This chapter provides exciting ideas for making the most of them while keeping your loved one’s memory alive. Places to Go: Destinations around the world where reflecting and honoring loved ones is a communal activity. This concept is called Commemorative Travel. Also included are suggestions for incorporating aspects of these foreign traditions into your practices at home. Being proactive about remembering loved ones has a powerful and unexpected benefit: it can make you happier. The more we incorporate memories into our year-round lives as opposed to sectioning them off to a particular time of year, the more we can embrace the people who have passed, and all that’s good and fulfilling in our present. With beautiful illustrations throughout by artist Jennifer Orkin Lewis,Passed and Present also includes an introduction by Hope Edelman, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters.

Reminiscences of life and work of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 1892- 1956, Indian statesman, by his private secretary and close associates.

The Nobel Prize–winning author of Blindness recalls the days of his youth in Lisbon and the Portuguese countryside in this charming memoir. José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Small Memories traces the formation of a man who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world’s most respected writers. Shifting between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this mosaic of memories looks back into the author’s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family’s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago’s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read to poring over a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Republicans and Democrats who advocated conflicting visions of American citizenship could agree on one thing: the rhetorical power of Abraham Lincoln’s life. This volume examines the debates over his legacy and their impact on America’s future. In the thirty-five years following Lincoln’s assassination, acquaintances of Lincoln published their memories of him in newspapers, biographies, and edited collections in order to gain fame, promote partisan aims, champion his hardscrabble past and exalted rise, and define his legacy. Shawn Parry-Giles and David Kaufer explore how style, class, and character affected these reminiscences. They also analyze the ways people used these writings to reinforce their beliefs about citizenship and presidential leadership in the United States, with specific attention to the fissure between republicanism and democracy that still exists today. Their study employs rhetorical and corpus research methods to assess more than five hundred reminiscences. A novel look at how memories of Lincoln became an important form of political rhetoric, this book sheds light on how divergent schools of U.S. political thought came to recruit Lincoln as their standard-bearer.

Veteran airmen from both the European and Pacific theaters recount their recollections of the Second World War in the Air. From attacks on Japanese cities to intercepting the Luftwaffe the airmen recall the deeds of the “Greatest Generation”.

A Bouquet of Memories is a heart warming account of Mary Goodhind's life from her early years in pre-war London-including her vivid recollections of her wartime experiences of being an evacuee-to her family's move to a new house in Barnehurst to escape the Blitz. She recounts the wartime privations, including rationing, with good humour, but her strong Catholic faith and close family ties to her parents and brother, Rory, were great sources or strength during the war years and beyond. German air-raids, both from conventional bombs, and later on with the V-1 and V-2 rockets, required a spirit of fortitude and endurance, and it seems that for the most part, people shrugged their shoulders and got on with life as well as they could. Her experiences of childhood, school, and her local church, reveal a world which has largely disappeared, a time before television, when there was a much greater sense of community. Similarly, her years at Convent school and her first job in a bank after the War provide fascinating insights into a very different way of life. A Bouquet of Memories also recounts Mary's love of horses and the friendships she established both during and after the War, as well as her numerous holidays and pilgrimages. This book will help the children of today to realise some of the things that their own relatives went through in the turbulent first half of the twentieth century. And while it will be a trip down memory lane for those who have lived through similar experiences, it will be an eye opener for those to whom World War II and its aftermath are mainly part of a fading historical remembrance.