Showing results by narrator "Pam Ward" in All Categories

Nelson Mandela led a long and remarkable life. From his earliest days herding cows in a South African village, he became a child of privilege, a rebellious runaway, a successful lawyer, a political dissident, a rising star in the African nationalist movement, an underground saboteur, a political prisoner, a secret negotiator with South Africa's rulers, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, president of his country, and a statesman who held South Africa together long enough to find reconciliation and the path to prosperity.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was born to parents determined to overcome obstacles and achieve success. She married Bill Clinton, a man from humble roots who rose to serve two terms as President of the United States. She ran for office against, and then worked for, President Barack Obama. She is not defined by those relationships, but rather by her intellect, ambition, and peerless work ethic. Clinton has served as first lady, senator, and secretary of state.

A woman goes about certain rituals of sex with her second husband, sharing the bed with the ghosts of her sexual past. A beautiful young art student embarks on an affair with a much older, married, famous artist. A middle-aged woman struggles with the decline of her mother, once glamorous and still commanding; their fraught relationship causes unexpected feelings, both shaming and brutal. A man finds that his father has died while in the midst of extramarital sex and wonders what he should do with the body.

When Mel Miskimen's mother dies, her tough, retired-cop father withdraws into his sadness, and his broken grief is more than Mel can handle on her own. Enter Seamus: a rowdy, hapless Labrador devoted to chaos. In a spark of inspiration, Mel ropes her father into training the wayward hound for a local contest. As the seasons change, Mel finds herself connecting with her last surviving parent more than she'd ever dreamed.

Discover how each figure of the nativity can lead your family closer to Christ this Christmas season. Learn the tradition of the tinkling bell, whip up a batch of French cocoa, create a tender mercy tree, and find ways to make your gift giving more meaningful as Celebrating a Christ-Centered Christmas guides you through seven meaningful traditions inspired by the nativity setting.

Christians are supposed to be “the light of the world.” Yet we seem to spend most of our time stumbling in the dark. We want answers carved in stone, and instead we get uncertainty. We want a clearly marked path and a panoramic view of the future, and God gives us only fleeting glimpses of what lies ahead—and just enough light to take the next step. So what do we do? We take the next step.

Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But as Kathryn Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process.

The Big Ratchet is the story of the ratchets: the technologies and innovations, big and small, that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened.

In the summer of 1916, a big twister brings destruction to the land around Boynton, Oklahoma. Alafair Tucker's family and neighbors are not spared the ruin and grief spread by the storm. But no one is going to mourn for Jubal Beldon, who made it his business to know the ugly secrets of everyonei n town. It doesn't matter if Jubal's insinuations are true or not. In a small town like Boynton, rumor is as damaging as fact.

For Brenda Spahn, entrepreneur and businesswoman, wealth was a lifestyle - until a brush with the law threatened to send her to prison. In those dark moments, Brenda made a promise to God.

Spared incarceration, a renewed Brenda glimpsed into the lives of women serving time in one of the worst places in America - the JuliaTutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. What she saw prompted a God-inspired vision. With a heart to help and a will that couldn't be crushed, Brenda fought the system and overcame tremendous obstacles to take ex-cons into her home.

When former Congressman Mark Stedman throws in the towel on his presidential campaign, his only choice is to return to his home state and decide how to spend the rest of his life … until he meets Josiah Stoltzfus, an Amish farmer from Pennsylvania. Stedman learns more from Josiah in a few...

Ann Meyers Drysdale is one of the greatest stars in the history of basketball. But her rise wasn't without controversy. Her 1979 NBA bid to play with the Indiana Pacers brought a barrage of criticism. But Ann simply wanted to play among the best. She had always competed with the guys. A female first in many categories, Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first woman ever signed to a four-year athletic scholarship to UCLA, where she remains the only four-time Bruin basketball All American, male or female.

Roman Catholic sisters first traveled to the American West as providers of social services, education, and medical assistance. In Across God’s Frontiers, Anne M. Butler traces the ways in which sisters challenged and reconfigured contemporary ideas about women, work, religion, and the West; moreover, she demonstrates how religious life became a vehicle for increasing women’s agency and power.

The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's musical talent sets her apart from her contemporaries. Driven by her determination to satisfy her artistic impulse, she moves to Chicago, where she falls in love with a wealthy married man. Her ability to resolve the tensions between her personal and professional lives and to communicate through her art makes her an unusual and thoroughly modern heroine.

A response to all those grandmother books with flowers and puppies on the cover, Grandma Rules is a book for the hip, baby boomer grandma who realizes that after all the work she put into her own kids, she can take a break and have fun with her grandkids. A perfect gift for the greatest grandmothers you know, this book is laugh-out-loud funny while offering useful insights and tips on how to embrace the world’s greatest job.

Kathy McNeely, a marine biologist and environmentalist, and a Russian scientist investigate a mysterious oil spill in pristine Antarctica despite storms, tourists, a reporter, and a series of so-called accidents at various research stations.

Embrace Your Inner Mrs. Potato Head! She’s so much more real and full of fun than Barbie ever could be. And she knows how to laugh like only those who have discovered the humor, heart, and wisdom of true womanhood can laugh. Give her room to romp with this hilarious collection of zany...

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.

A classic work of English mysticism, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love is an account of 16 divine visions and her meditations on them. She puts forth her ideas of God as a lover or divine love. Julian's revelations, experienced while suffering from a serious illness, may be dismissed as simple hallucinations or could be regarded as true divine visions from God. Regardless of what one might believe, "Revelations of Divine Love" is an important historical work of Christian theology.

You won't hear these stories in the local news, but Jesus Christ is doing miracles in some of the most unlikely places around the world. His faith propelled Dois Rosser out of the boardroom and into villages in Mongolia, India, Congo, Cuba, and dozens of other needy nations to invest his earthly fortune in building churches and broadcasting the gospel.