Review of An Ordinary Life (Paperback)

From the first page, till the last An Ordinary Life is a wonderful book to read.I have someone in my own family struggling with cancer and I felt better knowing if a child of 15 had such courage so can I.I recommend this book to everyone of all ages. It is a touching story about a young man who cared so much for his grandparents and loved them dearly.

Product Description

'Bye Nonna,' I whispered again, and touched her arm just above the bed sheet. I gazed at her one final time, and like those summer days I spent memorizing her features and the sound of her voice, I studied her this time too. I felt I would soon need all those memories. I left the room not fully realizing this was the last time I would see her alive.

An Ordinary Life occurs between birth and death.

As he experiences the final days of his grandfather's life, author Charles J. Alaimo relives another painful chapter in his memory-the death of his grandmother, Nonna Maria, nineteen years earlier. Through her life, faith, and the courage with which she battles cancer, this simple Sicilian grandmother has a profound effect on her young grandson, changing his life forever.

An Ordinary Life gives us hope that, despite death, our loved ones remain with us, guiding us through life's journey.

About the Author
Charles J. Alaimo is an accomplished executive in the human resources field. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife and two children.

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Review of My Life Closed Twice: Surviving a Double Loss (Paperback)

"My Life Closed Twice" is one of the best books I have read dealing with the anguish of loss of loved ones.In Ms. Schocket's case, the loss was a double one: husband and son within 24 hours.How anyone could cope with such a one-two punch is almost beyond comprehension.But Ms. Schocket does it superbly well - with courage, honesty, candor and completely devoid of self pity.What she has achieved is a book that provides great comfort to those who need both support and inspiration as they, too, travel a simliar road.There is very little in grief literature on double loss.Ms. Schocket's book is an important and essential contribution on that subject.
It is a "must" read for anyone who seeks a path to a meaningful life without their loved one.Having lost my own 36 year old son, I felt that someone had taken me by the hand and put a comforting arm around my shoulder after reading "My Life Closed Twice".Life goes on, albeit differently.Ms. Schocket's book shows us how and somehow puts it all in perspective.

Marcia T. Seifert, CLU
Director, Corporate Services
Society of Financial Service Professionals

Product Description
My Life Closed Twice is a non-fiction work of great depth and emotion chronicling the life of one woman following the deaths of her husband and son within 24 hours of each other. Told with hope and humor, this inspirational story says something about how an ordinary person survives extraordinary tragedy-without drugs, psychiatry, or a nervous breakdown. Interweaving episodes from her past, author Sandra Klamkin Schocket speaks to readers who must build new lives, not just in response to death, but after divorce, illness, or loss of job or home.

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Review of The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance (Hardcover)

I LOVED this book.Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down.

I grew up in the same Boston suburb as the author, in a family spiraling in similar downward economic mobility, and I'm about the same age as the author, so many of her experiences mirrored my own.Her mirror brought me surprising clarity and compassion with regard to my parents' struggles and the impact their struggles had on my own growing up.

I'm a psychologist now.When I look at this book from my professional viewpoint, as someone who treats and writes about depression, I also feel that it's a terrific resource.I will be recommending it to adults I treat for recurrent depressive episodes.

The author's depressions started when she was an adolescent, and continued intermittently through much of her adult life.Watching her gain understanding and mastery over this depressive tendency gave me a deeper understanding of how I can help the depressed individuals with whom I work.

BRAVO to the author, and thanks!

Product Description
Finding herself struggling with depression ("like a rude houseguest, coming and going of its own accord"), Sharon O'Brien set out to understand its origins beyond the biochemical explanations and emotional narratives prevailing in contemporary American culture. Her quest for her inheritance took her straight into the pressures and possibilities of American culture, and then to the heart of her family-the generations who shaped and were shaped by one another and their moment in history. In The Family Silver, as O'Brien travels into her family's past, she goes beyond depression to discover courage, poetry, and grace.

A compassionate and engaging writer, O'Brien uses the biographer's methods to understand her family history, weaving the scattered pieces of the past-her mother's memo books, her father's reading journal, family photographs, tombstones, dance cards, hospital records, the family silver-into a compelling narrative. In the lives of her Irish-American relatives she finds that the American values of upward mobility, progress, and the pressure to achieve sparked both desire and depression, following her family through generations, across the sea, from the Irish famine of the 1840s to Harvard Yard in the late 1960s.

"Many people who write stories of depression or other chronic illnesses tell tales of recovery in the upward-mobility sense, the 'once I was ill, but now I am well' formula that we may find appealing, but doesn't match the messiness of our lives," she writes. "Mine is not such a tale. But it is a recovery tale in another sense-a story of salvage, of rescuing stories from silence." Told with humor and honesty, O'Brien's story will captivate all readers who want to know how they, and their families, have been shaped by the past.

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Review of Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI (Hardcover)

This is the most inspiring book I have read about a woman's career since I became familiar with Ms. Jane Goodall's books about her pioneering work in Africa with chimpanzees.

Many people will see Ms. Candice ("don't call me Candy") De Long as a real-life Clarice Starling (the FBI agent in Hannibal).I think she is more impressive than that.This fascinating book recounts her three lives as a psychiatric nurse who worked with violent patients and did home health care for poor people, an FBI special agent (specializing in profiling of repeated, sexually violent offenders) from 1980 through 2000, and as a divorced mother raising a son alone.Each side of her life is equally impressive, and she is the kind of person we all should admire.She has always done her duty, and we are all the better for that.While many pioneering women in "men's" professions often were given "token" roles, Ms. De Long wanted and went to where the action was.During her career, she rescued a child from a pedophile abductor, captured a terrorist who had murdered three men, and caught a Class A fugitive.She was also present and part of many famous investigations.Her memoir will give you a much better idea about crime and how the FBI and DEA combat it.The book also contains many lessons for how women and children can avoid becoming crime victims.

When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, there were no women field agents.By 1980, around 4 percent of the agents were women.At her retirement in 2000, this had risen to 15 percent.Ms. De Long sacrificed a lot to become an agent.She had to leave her young son for 16 weeks for the initial training.She missed a lot of evenings and weekends with him to do surveillance.The training included a lot of harrassment (female and general).For example, she was made to fire a shotgun so often in one day that she developed a permanent injury that kept her from being able to use that shoulder for firing a shotgun again.Another time, she had to box a large man who knocked her out cold.Her starting salary was half what she had made as a nurse.She could accept that."I wanted to lead a heroic life."She certainly did succeed in that objective.She took the men on at their own game, and was proud of being called one of the "b_____s with badges."Her signature was the fedora she always wore at the Bureau.

Some of the famous cases she worked on included the Tylenol tampering, being part of the surveillance team on the Unabomber leading up to the arrest of Ted Kaczynski, and the brothel closings in Chicago.

She correctly says relatively little about her personal life.But some of the anecdotes will keep you laughing for days.When she was asked to be a hot dog mother in her son's third grade class, the children noticed that she was packing.She got a lot more respect after that, and was invited back to talk about her work.Another time, she accidentally noticed a surveillance suspect while driving around and tailed her.The team had lost the suspect.Only well into the chase did she realize that her son was in the back seat.She kept him safe while her eye was peeled on the suspect.

The profiling work will intrigue you.You will learn about all of the different kinds of creeps who victimize women and children.It was amazing how well the profiles predicted who the guilty party was.Using the profiles allowed the FBI and local police to find the suspects much faster than would otherwise have occurred.Since these are repeat offenders, lives were saved and injuries were avoided as a result.Part of the worst of this was that many times the women could have been saved if someone had called the police."If you are ever assaulted, never count on help."

The stories of the harrassment she endured from insecure males in the FBI will amaze you.She indicates that conditions improved over time.One of the most ridiculous examples was when she was sent to the home of an informant to babysit his child while the bust went down.She put up with this only because the safety of an innocent child was involved.

I was even more impressed by her work as a psychiatric nurse.Shooting tranquilizers into writhing, distrubed patients being held down by 7 orderlies was probably more dangerous than any of the arrests she did for the FBI.There she had a gun and usually lots of backup.

Her courage was most impressive.When she arrested the terrorist, she kept waiting for her partner to put the cuffs on while she had the drop on the suspect.Eventually, she looked around and realized that her partner was sheepishly waiting in the car calling for back-up.In her haste to make the bust, she didn't take time to put on her bullet-proof vest.Fortunately, the error did not lead to harm, but she took a grave risk in the process.She was astonished to find that the terrorist was more frightened of her than she was of him.

Money problems eventually caused to need to moonlight as a nurse.The moonlighting stories are very entertaining.At first, she kept bumping into agents while she was working the wards.To avoid this, she started doing home nursing in the poorest neighborhoods.This dual career eventually led to her needing to retire in the middle of administrative hearings about whether she was being unprofessional in her moonlighting.Someone should have cut her more slack.

I was impressed by her courage, her idealism, her persistence, and her commitment to doing the right thing.I hope that all young women (and their parents) who are thinking about taking on a dangerous career will read this book.You will be very inspired.

My hat's off to you, Ms. De Long!You're way more than a five star person.

Ms. De Long and Ms. Petrini have done a fine job of writing about this fascinating life, and you will enjoy what they have to say.

After you finish reading this book, I suggest that you rethink your ideas about what women and men can and cannot do.This book once again proves that anyone can do anything, if they want to badly enough.

Live up to your potential to serve others!



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