Survivor Biography

Miracle Survivors provides that lifeline with a collection of stories of cancer survivors who were given a terminal diagnosis but shocked everyone by thriving years past their prognoses. These miracle survivors have different cancers and circumstances, but share a poor prognosis and incredible drive to overcome it.

Billy Wayne Sinclair was only 21 when he heard the Louisiana judge pronounce these words: "I hereby sentence you to death in the electric chair." It was the culmination of a botched holdup committed the year before in which Billy had accidentally shot and killed a man. Billy spent the next 40 years in Angola Prison - one of the country’s worst - six of those years on death row. When in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as arbitrary and capricious, Billy was re-sentenced to life without parole.

Brought to you by Penguin. One of the last great untold stories of the Holocaust, The Survivor is an astonishing account of one man's unbreakable spirit, unshakeable faith, and extraordinary courage in the face of evil. At only sixteen years old, Josef Lewkowicz became a number, prisoner 85314...

Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that in war there are innocents on all sides who suffer. German citizens who had no connection to the atrocities committed by their countrymen nonetheless endured great hardships because of them.

Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest cast a spotlight on the unspoken horrors of family violence and exorcised the demons of her childhood. But in the years following the controversial best seller’s publication, the author’s resilience was tested in ways she never expected. Crawford was forced to brave a stunning backlash intended to shame her, a film adaptation that bastardized her story and compounded the trauma, a descent into alcoholism, a divorce, and a massive stroke that left her paralyzed. Staying true to her fighting spirit, she made a remarkable comeback.

Holocaust survivor and licensed therapist Karmela Waldman shares brutally honest advice about life and death—often deploying brutally sharp wit—with her son and podcast co-host, Joel Waldman.

The bestselling author of Shakey: Neil Young's Biography presents the first in-depth biography of the legendary soul singer Al Green. Al Green has blessed listeners with some of the biggest hits of the past fifty years. "Love and Happiness," "I'm Still in Love with You," "Let's Get Married," and...

“Sobering, unforgettable reading. This is a standout of its kind.” – Publishers Weekly “A riv­et­ing, deeply mov­ing mem­oir. The writ­ing is descrip­tive and dra­mat­ic, pre­serv­ing Lewkowicz’s deep emo­tions.” – Jewish Book Council This is the remarkable story of...

Tom Crean was the farmer’s son from Kerry who sailed on three major expeditions to the unknown Antarctic over a century ago. He served with both Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, spent longer on the ice than either and outlived them both. But Tom Crean returned to Ireland and never spoke about his exploits, taking his incredible story to the grave - until the publication of An Unsung Hero, which unearthed his story and saw him rightfully placed amongst the annals of the great explorers.

Dark skies and barbed wire fences were all Bluma Plaskovsky saw as she stepped down from the train onto the main platform of Auschwitz-Birkenau. After surviving the Wehrmacht’s decimation of her hometown, Bluma and what remained of her family were finally put on the long, harsh train ride through inhuman conditions that seemed to last an eternity.

"I want you to like me, to think I am the most beautiful, the smartest, the thinnest...." With these words, Abby Kelly encapsulates the overwhelming struggle of her 15-year bout with anorexia. Beginning in her teenage years when the predatory lies of the disease took root in her psyche as she felt pressured from family and peers for not being "enough", Abby lays bare the reality of anorexia.

True Grit by Bear Grylls is read by Eliot Fitzpatrick, with an introduction read by the author. Bear Grylls knows what it takes to survive. But he’s not the first. Take the American bombardier Louis Zamperini, who survived 47 days stranded at sea by catching and killing hungry sharks and...

From the nationwide satanic panic in the 1980s to local political cover-ups, shocking kidnappings, unsolved child murders, and scandalous pedophile rings, this book takes you behind the deceptive headlines and, finally, reveals what was going on in Omaha when all hell broke loose. Rich and well-connected members of Omaha's elite carried out unspeakable acts of abuse and even murder on innocent children.

Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis.

“Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in America, and for the ‘lucky’ stroke victims who don’t die, about half will spend the rest of their lives trying to recover.” Roughly 700,000 American suffer a stroke each year and around 140,000 of them are fatal. Different Strokes is an in-depth look at what surviving, or not surviving, a stroke can mean.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The shocking true story of the USS Houston, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of the survivors who faced one of World War II’s most brutal ordeals—from the acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “Captivating [and]...

The shocking true story of a bizarre kidnapping and the victims’ re-victimization by the justice system. DON’T MISS THE DOCUMENTARY AMERICAN NIGHTMARE−NOW STREAMING ON NETFLIX In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn awoke from a sound sleep into a nightmare. Armed men...

On August 9, 1945, an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing tens of thousands of people in the blink of an eye, while fatally injuring and poisoning thousands more. Among the survivors was Takashi Nagai, a pioneer in radiology research and a convert to the Catholic Faith. Living in the rubble of the ruined city and suffering from leukemia caused by over-exposure to radiation, Nagai lived out the remainder of his remarkable life by bringing physical and spiritual healing to his war-weary people.

There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.

It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.