My Parents Died and It Sucks

My Parents Died and It Sucks is a call to anyone who has experienced parental loss or who became an orphan before the age of 18. This book is from the heart of an orphan, exploring grief and how to cope with its pervasive intrusion into daily life. The author offers honest and practical advice, accessible for everyone. The book is honest and raw, just like parental loss is for kids, but also tender and supportive, motivating readers with tools to navigate the pain of grief. It offers a positive narrative that aims to inspire those struggling with parental loss and provides a welcoming space for anyone at any age.

Gift of Failure

So, what do you do when everything in life falls apart? What about those still, small moments when you helplessly watch your dreams shattered by an unexpected calamity? You work hard to make a living for yourself and for your loved ones and then boom! It’s shattered like a bad dream. When you finally come to, you find yourself in brokenness and despair.

I once read that economic hardship happens to most successful people at least once in their lives; those who dedicate their lives to a worthy pursuit can, instantly, find their hearts ripped out by adversity. Suddenly, they find themselves in an abyss of darkness and nakedness, stripped down to nothing!

Perhaps, then, we realise we are not merely what we accumulate or achieve. In such moments, stripped bare, what we are is our essential consciousness, like a disembodied spirit, painfully wondering what to do to alleviate the pain.

“In Him who is the source of my strength, I have strength for everything.”

– Philippians 4:13

New Jersey Brewery Guide

In the last 10 years, the micro-brewery industry has exploded in New Jersey. The New Jersey Brewery Guide provides first-hand insight into the well over 150 breweries and brew pubs across the Garden State.

Each brewery is reviewed in detail as are the beers they serve. There is space to provide your own ratings so you can begin your own tour of the New Jersey brewery scene.

It’s a trip worth taking and the book serves as an invaluable guide for that journey.

Duty Before Love

Fred Carspecken (1914–2003) lived most of his life in a time when society constrained individuals like him. Though he was a closeted gay man until the age of 62, Fred remained true to the responsibilities and expectations placed upon him, often putting duty before his personal desires and needs. This biography explores Fred’s struggle between fulfilling societal duties and pursuing personal happiness. His story is a testament to the many men and women of his era who sacrificed love to meet societal expectations.

Duty Before Love highlights the generational challenges of being a gay man during a time when societal acceptance was not an option. Fred’s life story reveals the emotional and psychological impact of remaining closeted for decades, only to finally embrace his true self in later years. This biography offers an intimate look at a man who quietly lived a life filled with integrity, compassion, and deep relationships, despite having to conceal an essential part of himself for so long.

Unforced Errors: 15 Bad Decisions That Changed American History

Americans often use terms such as “To err is human,” or “nobody’s perfect,” or “we all make mistakes.” Of course, this is true, as it is for all of America’s leaders through the years.

This book is about decisions made in politics or public policy that may be considered unwise; bad decisions that had unintended negative consequences for the decision-maker. This will not include personal decisions like deciding who to marry or whether to get divorced but rather to look at those political and policy decisions that can be considered, at the very least, unwise. Similarly, Kennedy’s decision to visit Dallas in November 1963 led to his death but doesn’t really qualify as a decision of real political or policy calculation. Lincoln going to Ford’s theatre would be in that same category.

Instead, Unforced Errors lists 15 political calculations made by political figures, often at the pinnacle of their own success, which changed American history.

Concrete Flower

This memoir recounts a childhood marked by maternal abandonment, a mentally ill father’s emotional torment, and an alcoholic stepfather’s physical abuse. Left to raise younger siblings with scarce resources or adult guidance, the author navigated profound neglect. Despite these circumstances, relentless determination led to financial independence and homeownership by her early twenties, establishing a foundation built against difficult odds.

Yet, hardships persisted through challenging romantic and family relationships, resulting in several crises throughout her life. Faith and self-belief provided the strength to endure, even when faced with losing her home to her mother and an attempted physical attack by her father.

This account details a journey toward forgiveness, breaking cycles of abuse, and finding positivity, resilience, and love, embodying the author’s description of herself as a ‘concrete flower,’ finding light amidst difficult ground.

Eyes Shut, Mouth Closed

This is the true story of my two-year journey to escape Vietnam, seven years after the end of the Vietnam War. At just nine years old, I was a naive village boy, knowing little beyond the only home I had ever known. Along with 27 others—including my father and older sister—I set sail on a small, overcrowded fishing boat, embarking on a perilous voyage that would ultimately lead me to America. The journey was marked by immense hardship, uncertainty, and sacrifice.

Our family was torn apart. My mother and two younger siblings remained in Vietnam, separated from us for 15 long years before we were finally reunited. The pain of that separation shaped me in ways I could never have imagined. Though I did not endure it alone, I learned to transform hardship into resilience, using each challenge as a stepping stone toward a better future. Along the way, strangers—some of whom I will never forget—offered help in ways I could never have expected.

My father’s courageous decision to flee with my sister and me was driven by hope—a belief in the promise of greater opportunities and a brighter future. But even after reaching America, our struggles were far from over. We battled language barriers, cultural isolation, and economic hardship, fighting to rebuild our lives from nothing. And after years of longing, we finally pieced our family back together.

I invite you to join me on this journey—a story of perseverance, hope, and the unbreakable human spirit. Through these pages, I seek to honor the voices of the countless Vietnamese "boat people" who perished at sea, never reaching their destination.

In sharing my experiences, I hope to inspire others to keep moving forward, to grow stronger with each challenge, and to uplift those who can no longer speak for themselves. No matter the obstacles, we must press on, turning pain into purpose and hardship into hope.

Danielle

In Danielle, the author invites readers into an intimate journey through the life of her seven-year-old daughter, who courageously battled cancer. Far from being just a heartbreaking narrative, this true story illuminates the transformative power of suffering when united with faith. Danielle, with her extraordinary spiritual maturity, finds strength and inspiration from her favorite saint, St. Therese of Lisieux, while navigating the complexities of illness.

This book transcends the usual narratives of tragedy and loss by offering a message of hope and grace. Through sharing the family’s experience – Danielle’s remarkable perspective on life, her deep relationship with God, and her steadfast resilience – the author aims to reveal the beauty that can be found even in immense suffering. Danielle serves as a poignant reminder that life’s hardships and joys are both cradled in the hands of God, and it challenges us to embrace them as such.

Gen. Park Chung-Hee and South Korea’s Han River Miracle

Gen. Park Chung-Hee was born to a poor family in rural Korea when Japan ruled the nation as a colony. After teaching at a rural elementary school for three years, he studied at three different military academies to become an army officer in the liberated Korea. Although he encountered a career-threatening crisis right before the outbreak of the Korean War, he returned to the service and served many key staff positions during the war and important command positions after the war with devoted professionalism. When the nation drifted rudderless in the 1960s, he led the military revolution as the last resort. Hence forth he headed the government that was steadfastly focused on rebuilding the nation. His administration laid the extensive, future-oriented foundation for the nation’s industrial development and advanced defense capability. Gen. Park lived his life aligned with, to the letter, his personal motto: ‘My Whole Life to Fatherland.’

The Secret Bombs of Iva Valley

This book is the first true and full account of the 34 months of weapons manufacturing activities of Biafra’s “Research and Armaments Production” (RAP).

RAP was secretly nucleated and named by an Arrowhead Troika of engineers in March 1967, following privileged information on Nigeria’s war preparations, goaded by Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister. The Troika’s mentor was a brave gentleman officer, Major Louis Chude Sokei, who established a Military Wing of the Troika’s RAP and named its only regular commissioned officer (this author) as the Head.

The university community and the organized private sector personnel joined the Troika four/five months later, and RAP’s weapons output soared exponentially. The Military Wing regularly deployed RAP’s weapons directly to the various field commands, along with its specialized weapon firing crews of soldiers. An account of the eight fiercest battles of the entire campaign is given in fair detail. Similarly, a brief description of twelve of the most intrepid Biafran officers and men is given.

The incredible mystery of the war is how the five-week-old Biafran Army, totally bereft of all ordnance and using its own manufactured weapons, without Navy or Air Force, managed to keep at bay, for thirty-four months, Nigeria’s gargantuan coalition with Britain and Soviet Russia, which was commanded by Britain’s General Alexander, until both sides became exhausted and a political gimmick of surrender was contrived by Gowon and Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first President. How Biafra achieved this incredible feat is what this book is about.

Land of the Brave

How did you become a sister? This is an overarching question that many people ask me. Behind becoming a sister is an amazing story.

Everyone in the world has a unique story. This book narrates the unique story of my life and the origins of my desire to become a sister.

My story started in Lirembe village in Kenya and continued on as I ventured to the new land of the United States of America for studies and work. In the book, I describe the places, people, religion, and events that shaped my social, religious, moral, and ethical perspectives.

This description intends to capture readers’ imaginations, emotions, and feelings about the origins of some of the African women religious, clergy, and brothers and, by extension, many people worldwide who resonate with my story. The thick description also illustrates what it means to be formed into and become a religious African woman living in Africa and abroad and how international students navigate their lives in US colleges and workplaces.

The book also compares and contrasts the African and American cultures, underscoring the nuances, dynamics, resonances, and consonances between the two cultures.

This is a Thanksgiving book.

Married to the Foreign Service

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1931, and orphaned at an early age, Evelyn Lee Dyer joined the US Foreign Service in the mid-1950s and soon found herself in the heart of the Cold War, among bustling diplomatic communities in Istanbul, Bonn, Prague, Leningrad, Moscow, and Geneva, as well as in Washington, DC, and often in crisis conditions. She tells her story in an unpretentious style, filled with vivid anecdotes and character descriptions, with a feeling for the grand sweep of history as lived through by ordinary people.

There are plenty of Cold War memoirs by public figures, most of them men. This memoir by a working-class Southern woman brings to life an entire generation of postwar Americans, whose destinies followed an upward arc from the regional into the global.