Product ASIN:
0374280606Product Description
For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively. Héctor Tobar was the person they chose to hear, and now to tell, that story.
The result is a masterwork or narrative journalism—a riveting, at times shocking, emotionally textured account of a singular human event. Deep Down Dark brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. In its stirring final chapters, it captures the profound way in which the lives of everyone involved in the disaster were forever changed.
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #109 in Books
- Published on: 2014-10-07
- Released on: 2014-10-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.26" h x 1.11" w x 6.33" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Before Karen and I opened Parnassus, I read a lot of Henry James. Now, thanks in large part to the First Editions Club and the fact that we’re always reading like mad trying to find the best book to pick every month, I am reading all over the place. I am especially grateful to the First Editions Club for bringing me to the best book I’ve read all year. I know 2014 still has three months left to go, but I don’t expect to find anything I liked better than Héctor Tobar’s Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. It is a masterpiece of compassion. I read it on vacation and I kept pacing around wishing that there was someone I could talk to about this book. I seriously considered trying to track down Héctor Tobar, whom I don’t know, just to tell him how extraordinary I thought it was. (Does Héctor Tobar need to hear this from me? No, no he does not.) You know the story – 33 men were buried in a spectacular mine collapse, stayed underground for two months, and then were rescued, all of them unharmed. But how do you write that book? We know what happens in the end and not much happens in the interim, and yet somehow Tobar makes the story riveting. He puts us down there with those men. He examines all the big questions: the value of life, faith, hope, despair, and resurrection. This is a quieter, deeper book than Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, but it is a more than worthy successor. It happens a lot in the bookstore, someone comes in and says, "My dad loved Unbroken. What should I get him next?" As of October 7, the answer is going to be Deep Down Dark." —Ann Patchett, Musings
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
A COMPANY MAN
In the San José Mine, sea level is the chief point of reference. The five-by-five-meter tunnel of the Ramp begins at Level 720, which is 720 meters above sea level. The Ramp descends into the mountain as a series of switchbacks, and then farther down becomes a spiral. Dump trucks, front loaders, pickup trucks, and assorted other machines and the men who operate them drive down past Level 200, into the part of the mountain where there are still minerals to be brought to the surface, working in passageways that lead from the Ramp to the veins of ore-bearing rock. On the morning of August 5, the men of the A shift are working as far down as Level 40, some 2,230 vertical feet below the surface, loading freshly blasted ore into a dump truck. Another group of men are at Level 60, working to fortify a passageway near a spot where a man lost a limb in an accident one month earlier. A few have gathered for a moment of rest, or idleness, in or near El Refugio, the Refuge, an enclosed space about the size of a school classroom, carved out of the rock at Level 90. As its name suggests, the Refuge is supposed to be a shelter in the event of an emergency, but it also serves as a kind of break room because fresh air is pumped into it from the surface, offering a respite from the humidity and heat, which often reaches 98 percent and 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit) in this part of the mine. The San José is said by the men who work there to be like hell, and this is a description with some basis in scientific fact, since it’s the geothermal heat emanating from the bowels of the Earth that makes the mine hotter the deeper they go.
The mechanics led by Juan Carlos Aguilar find respite from the heat by setting up a workshop at Level 150, in a passageway not far from the vast interior chasm called El Rajo, which translates loosely as “the Pit.” Air circulates through the Pit and the faintest hint of a breeze flows from that dark abyss into the makeshift workshop. The mechanics have decided to start their workweek by asking Mario Sepúlveda to give them a demonstration of how he operates his front loader. They watch as he uses the clutch to bring the vehicle to a stop, shifting from forward directly to reverse without going into neutral first.
“Who taught you to do that?” the mechanics ask. “That’s wrong. You’re not supposed to do it that way.” He’s mucking up the transmission by doing this, wearing out the differential.
“No one ever showed me,” Sepúlveda answers. “I just learned from watching.” The mechanics work for a company that contracts maintenance services to the mine, and they are not surprised to learn that an employee of the San José is operating an expensive piece of equipment without having received any formal training. The San José is an older, smaller mine known for cutting corners, and for its primitive working conditions and perfunctory safety practices. Among other things, it has vertical escape tunnels that will be useless in an emergency because they lack the ladders necessary for the miners to use them.
Newly informed as to the proper use of the clutch, Sepúlveda leaves the mechanics to work down at Level 90.
Throughout the morning, the mountain has continued its intermittent thundering wail, the sound of a distant explosion followed by a long whining sound. Carlos Pinilla, the general manager of the San Esteban Mining Company, hears this noise as he travels in a pickup truck between the levels of the San José Mine. He has an office on the surface, but is now deep inside the mountain to impose some discipline on a workplace that’s much too casual for his liking. “I had to reprimand everyone from the shift supervisor on down,” he says. “None of these guys was a little white dove. I didn’t want them to be afraid of me. But if I’d go down there and find six guys sitting around chatting, I wanted them to at least stand up when they saw the boss. Without that, everything would start to fall apart…”
Pinilla is a jowly man of about fifty who’s worked his way up from lowly office jobs in mining companies to one in which he’s the general manager of the two mines run by the San Esteban Mining Company. He’s described by his underlings as imperious, the kind of a man who will bark an order and who treats the miners as if their sweating, helmeted presence were offensive to him somehow. In a country of rigid class distinctions, such as Chile, laborers are often subjected to bald condescension by the salaried classes. Even in this context, to the miners Pinilla stands out as an especially domineering “white helmet,” particularly in contrast to the soft-spoken white helmet beneath him in the mining hierarchy, the shift supervisor Urzúa. In recent weeks, one of the members of the A shift, Daniel Herrera, had asked Pinilla several times for replacement air filters for the masks the men wear, until, he claims, the general manager finally replied, sarcastically: “Yeah, I’m going to get you a whole truck filled with filters!” Pinilla is “el amo de la mina,” the miner Jorge Galleguillos says, lord and master of the mine. Galleguillos is fifty-six, and older men like him are afraid of Pinilla because he can fire a man in an instant, leaving him in the unenviable position of looking for work in an industry where youth and a stout constitution are especially prized. At the same time, it’s only the older, most experienced miners who have dared to speak out in the face of the mounting evidence of the San José Mine’s structural weakness.
After 121 years in which men and machines have emptied and hollowed the mountain, the San José Mine is still intact thanks to the hard, gray diorite stone that makes up most of the mountain’s mass. In mining slang, the diorite is “good” rock in the sense that it holds together when you drill through it. If the ore-bearing rock is like a crumb cake that begins to disintegrate as soon as you poke it, the diorite is more like a stiff custard. Generally speaking, the diorite provides an excellent, stable structure for a tunnel, requiring relatively little reinforcement. The Ramp has been carved through this stone, and is the only true way in and out of the mine. Until recently, no one who works in the San José believed it was in danger of collapsing. Then, several months back, a finger-wide crack was discovered in the Ramp at Level 540.
Mario Gómez showed the crack to his shift supervisor as soon as he saw it. Gómez is a sixty-three-year-old miner who drives a thirty-ton-capacity truck into the mine. “I’m pulling my truck out of this mine,” Gómez said then. “And I’m not going back in, and no one else will, until you get the mine manager and the engineers here from Copiapó, and make them look at this and evaluate it.” A few hours later, the engineer and the general manager arrived. They placed mirrors inside the half-inch-wide crack: If the mountain was still shifting and splitting, then the movement would break the mirrors. But the mirrors are still intact.
“Look, the Ramp is the safest thing in this mine,” the manager said to the miners. “All that cracking is coming from the Pit. The walls of the Pit can collapse up to five meters away and nothing will happen to the Ramp.” More mirrors were placed in the crack when water began to leak through it, but they all remained in place and intact for weeks and months. Galleguillos studied the mirrors every time he drove past one. He wrote down other troubled observations in a notebook: “Falling material is felt at Level 540 … tunnel walls detached at Level 540.” Then he forced the mine manager to sign a copy of these notes. Later, he confronted the manager again.
“How do we know you’re not going in and replacing those mirrors when we’re not looking?” Galleguillos asked.
“What are you?” the manager snapped back. “A coward?”
Now Pinilla crosses paths several times with the workers as he patrols the interior of the mine in his pickup truck. At midmorning, Yonni Barrios and his crew of fortifiers see him at Level 60, and tell him the mountain is making noises you ordinarily can’t hear that far down. “Don’t worry,” he tells them, “the mountain is just settling” (“el cerro se está acomodando”). Higher up, at Level 105, another group of workers has a similar conversation. The thunder can be heard in every corner of the mine, and it’s causing a sense of worry to spread through the passageways—and also a sense of denial. Mining is an inherently dangerous occupation, and those who have decades of experience working underground take pride in facing its risks. The men of the A shift have made it a habit of complaining to their wives and girlfriends about the San José, using the preferred euphemism that conditions in the mine are “complicated,” and then brushing off the danger when pressed for details.
Luis Urzúa, too, has told his wife the San José is “complicated,” and when he took the job there a few months ago, it was in full knowledge of the mine’s recent accidents. This morning he’s hearing the complaints about the thunder from his crew, including a few who insist they should all go to the surface. Urzúa says to wait. Urzúa is fifty-four years old, and despite his degree as a mining topographer, he freely admits that he’s intimidated by people who are “bigger” than he is. He could confront his boss, Pinilla, and demand that all his men be pulled out: In fact, a few of the men of the A shift are starting to think he’s weak for failing to do so. But at this moment none of those men complain very loudly either, nor do they announce that they will simply refuse to work a minute longer and leave the mine immediately, a step men at the San José have taken before.
Mario Gómez, the oldest man in the A shift, has two missing fingers on his left hand as a reminder of what can happen underground from one moment to the next. At about 12:00 p.m., he, too, is given a warning of the impending disaster: There’s “smoke” coming from Level 190, the driver Raúl Villegas tells Gómez as the two men and their dump trucks pass each other on the Ramp. But Gómez listens to the tough, gruff voice in his head that tells him he should be careful but not fearful. When he drives past the “smoke” and takes a look he concludes: It’s just dust, and dust is normal in the mine.
Still, the reports of unusual noises and explosions keep coming, and by late morning the boss of all the bosses, Carlos Pinilla, is, according to several of his underlings, starting to act strangely. Urzúa and his second-in-command, the foreman Florencio Avalos, spot him in his pickup at Level 400. Pinilla stops to shine a large flashlight at the stone walls of the Ramp, and another worker who spots him at this moment says: “His flashlight was huge, so much bigger than the ones we carried, that it made me nervous to see him using such a thing.” Later, other workers see him going into one of the corridors that lead off the Ramp to shine the same flashlight inside the cavernous, excavated space of the Pit. They also see him standing next to the pickup truck, as if he were listening for something, or trying to feel movement inside the mountain. He seems to be listening, too, when he stops at the entrance to corridors near Level 400, to wipe clean the blue-and-white placards reading “DO NOT ENTER” and “BYPASS.” “I thought that was strange,” Urzúa says, “to see my jefe cleaning the traffic signs.” When Florencio Avalos comes upon Pinilla a little bit after noon, the general manager tells him he has a flat tire and needs to get a spare as quickly as possible. “He seemed nervous,” Avalos says. “As soon as we changed the last bolt, he took off, and we never saw him again.”
As Pinilla drives toward the surface at around 1:00 p.m., he crosses paths on the Ramp with Franklin Lobos, a tall, balding onetime soccer star and minor local celebrity whose chief fame underground is that he’s a grouch. Lobos drives the personnel truck that ferries the men in and out of the mine, and at that moment he’s headed down to pick up the men for lunch.
“Franklin, I’d like to make two observations to you,” Pinilla says. “First, I want to congratulate you, because you have the Refuge nice and clean.” The Refuge is stocked with two metal cabinets with food, supposedly enough to keep an entire shift alive for two days. As the driver of the personnel truck, Lobos holds the keys to those cabinets and is responsible for keeping the Refuge in order. “And second,” Pinilla continues, “as soon as you can, I want you to go and talk to the supply master. Because we’re getting a box ready with more provisions for the Refuge.” More food, blankets, and a first-aid kit, that sort of thing, Pinilla says.
Pinilla seems to be in a hurry to leave the mine, and is making preparations for an emergency, but he says it isn’t because he thinks the mine is about to collapse. His biggest concern isn’t an accident in the mine, but rather that the Chilean government agency in charge of mining safety will close down the mine. The big flashlight was required for a routine inspection of the excavated cavern of the Pit: Given that it’s as much as six hundred feet tall in places, he needs an especially powerful beam. And he’s just ordered that more emergency supplies be taken to the Refuge because the miners are always stealing the food inside (he’d finally bought a lock and an aluminum band to keep them from doing so), and if an inspector finds the supplies lacking he’ll shut down the mine.
In 2007, the Chilean government had ordered the San José Mine closed after an underground explosion of rock killed the geologist Manuel Villagrán. The mine owners promised the government they would take a series of steps to improve safety, and the San José was allowed to be reopened. (The men built a shrine of votive candles to Villagrán at the spot where he died and where the vehicle he was driving remains buried.) Unlike other mines in the Copiapó region, the San José is not owned by a big foreign conglomerate, but rather by two sons of the late Jorge Kemeny, an exile from Communist Hungary who settled in this part of Chile in 1957. Marcelo and Emérico Kemeny did not, unfortunately, inherit their father’s passion and skill for the mining business. Emérico left his share of the work of owning the mine to his brother-in-law, Alejandro Bohn. The Kemenys and Bohn struggled to keep the San Esteban Mining Company profitable while complying with the Chilean government’s demands. The company was required to install ladders inside the ventilation tunnels as an alternate emergency escape to the Ramp, and also new fans to increase air circulation and lower the temperature at the bottom of the mine, which at times neared 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit). As if in recognition of their previous shortcomings on safety, the owners then contracted with a company called E-Mining to take charge of the mine’s daily operations. E-Mining recommended a seismic monitoring system designed to detect potentially catastrophic shifting of the mountain’s internal structure; it was never purchased. The contractor also recommended other movement-detection devices known as geophones, but after a month they stopped working because the mine’s trucks kept running over their fiber-optic cables. Eventually the San Esteban fell behind in its payments to E-Mining, and the company canceled its contract and withdrew its employees. The San Esteban then hired a former San José employee, Carlos Pinilla, to take the contractor’s place. The San Esteban company doesn’t have enough money to pay for the seismographs, or to keep the geophones operational, nor has it installed the ladders or the ventilation systems the government ordered. Basically, it’s impossible to do those things and still keep their medium-size mine profitable. Among other things, the company is $2 million in debt to ENAMI, a government-owned company that processes ore for small- and medium-size mines. Just like the workers who know how dangerous the San José is and work there anyway, the owners know how dangerous it is and keep it open nonetheless. To keep the company and its financial ambitions and responsibilities afloat, they’re gambling with the miners’ lives.
As he drives to the surface, Carlos Pinilla is doing exactly what the owners have always asked him to do: keep the mine running, with the cash-producing ore coming out, while cutting corners to keep costs down, hoping for the best, trusting that the very hard diorite of the Ramp will hold together and allow the men to escape, even if the internal structure of the mountain, weakened after more than one hundred years of digging and blasting, causes the rest of the mine to crumble.
If Pinilla closes the mine and orders everyone out, and the mine doesn’t collapse, it might cost him his job. And besides, he believes at this moment that the San José Mine has at least another twenty years left in it.
Just after 1:00 p.m., two men cross paths on a road carved out of stone: One is headed up, the other down. Carlos Pinilla, the man in the white helmet who worked his way up from warehouse clerk to general manager, revs the engine of his pickup to begin to climb to the surface and daylight. Franklin Lobos, a man whose fortunes have been in a precipitous decline, watches from beneath a blue helmet as the jefe drives away. Lobos reaches over and releases the emergency brake on his truck, so that gravity does the first bit of the work of sending him on his journey downward. He turns on the fog lamps—the main beams of the truck’s headlights have never worked—and heads down to the Refuge, below Level 100, where the men are starting to gather and wait for him for the ride up for lunch.
Descending a bit more, at Level 500, Lobos sees a truck coming up, and since uphill traffic has the right of way, he lets it pass: It’s Raúl Villegas, the driver who’s just complained about “smoke,” driving a big dump truck filled with tons of ore.
The men wave hello and goodbye to each other and soon Lobos is on his way down again. He reaches Level 400, where the signs gleam a little brighter thanks to Pinilla’s polish job. The older miner Jorge Galleguillos is riding in the cab alongside Lobos, going down to check on the system of tanks and hoses that brings water from the surface down into the mine. The drive is slow and tedious, following the ground-hugging beam of the truck’s fog lamps along a single gray tunnel, sinuous and repetitive, as if they were entering the dark, dank, and vacant landscape of a miner’s subconscious. A half hour longer they drive, one rocky turn following another, in passageways with a million ragged, serrated edges blasted from rock. They are at about Level 190 when they see a white streak move past the truck’s windshield from right to left.
“Did you see that?” Galleguillos says. “That was a butterfly.”
“What? A butterfly? No, it wasn’t,” Lobos answers. “It was a white rock.” The mine’s ore-rich veins are thick with a translucent, milky quartz that glimmers when it catches the light.
“It was a butterfly,” Galleguillos insists.
Lobos believes that it’s pretty much impossible to think that a butterfly could flutter down in the dark to more than a thousand feet below the surface. But for the moment he surrenders the argument.
“You know what, you win. It was a butterfly.”
Lobos and Galleguillos continue driving for about twenty more meters. And then they hear a massive explosion, and the passageway around them begins to fill with dust. The Ramp is collapsing directly behind them, near the spot where a rock or a butterfly passed before their windshield.
* * *
The sound and the blast wave interrupt thirty-four men laboring inside stone corridors. Men using hydraulic machines to lift stone, men listening to stone crash against the metal beds of dump trucks, men waiting for the lunch truck in a room carved from stone, men drilling into stone, men driving diesel-fed machines down a stone highway, and men wearing eroded stone on their clothes and their faces.
The truck driver Raúl Villegas is the only one of the thirty-four men underground at the moment of the collapse who manages to escape. He watches in horror as a dust cloud gathers in his rearview mirror and quickly overtakes his truck. He speeds through the cloud toward the exit, and when he reaches the mouth at which the Ramp opens to the surface, the dust follows him outside. A gritty brown cloud will continue flowing out of that malformed orifice for hours to come.
Inside the personnel truck at Level 190, Lobos and Galleguillos are the two men closest to the collapse, which hits them as a roar of sound, as if a massive skyscraper were crashing down behind them, Lobos says. The metaphor is more than apt. The vast and haphazard architecture of the mine, improvised over the course of a century of entrepreneurial ambition, is finally giving way. A single block of diorite, as tall as a forty-five-story building, has broken off from the rest of the mountain and is falling through the layers of the mine, knocking out entire sections of the Ramp and causing a chain reaction as the mountain above it collapses, too. Granitelike stone and ore are knocked loose, pulled downward to crash against other rocks, causing the surviving sections of the mine to shake as if in an earthquake. The dust created and propelled by the explosions shoots sideways, upward, and downward, ejected from one passageway and gallery in the mine’s maze of corridors to the next.
In an office about one hundred feet above the mine opening, Carlos Pinilla, the hard-driving general manager, hears the thunder crack and his first thought is: But they’re not supposed to be blasting today. He concludes that it’s probably another collapse of rock inside the Pit, which is nothing to be worried about. But the sound of rolling thunder doesn’t stop. His phone rings, and the voice on the line says, “Step out your door and look at the mine entrance.” Pinilla walks into the midday sun and sees a billowing cloud of dust bigger than any he’s seen before.
Copyright © 2014 by Héctor Tobar
Love You Forever
Product ASIN:
0920668372Product Description
A young woman holds her newborn son
And looks at him lovingly.
Softly she sings to him:
"I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be."
So begins the story that has touched the hearts of millions worldwide. Since publication in l986, Love You Forever has sold more than 15 million copies in paperback and the regular hardcover edition (as well as hundreds of thousands of copies in Spanish and French)
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #74 in Books
- Brand: Firefly Books
- Model: 9780920668375
- Published on: 1995-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .13" w x 8.00" l, .25 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 32 pages
Features
- Great product!
Editorial Reviews
BooksCatalog.com Review
The mother sings to her sleeping baby: "I'll love you forever / I'll love you for always / As long as I'm living / My baby you'll be." She still sings the same song when her baby has turned into a fractious 2-year-old, a slovenly 9-year-old, and then a raucous teen. So far so ordinary--but this is one persistent lady. When her son grows up and leaves home, she takes to driving across town with a ladder on the car roof, climbing through her grown son's window, and rocking the sleeping man in the same way. Then, inevitably, the day comes when she's too old and sick to hold him, and the roles are at last reversed. Each stage is illustrated by one of Sheila McGraw's comic and yet poignant pastels. (Ages 4 to 8) --Richard Farr
Review
There are certain books about a parent's unconditional love for a child that are timeless--and this is one of them. (Baltimore's Child 2010-01-20)
One of my all-time favorites. I cry every time I read it.... [The book] is a beautiful script about parenthood, a poignant parable about life and death, a testimony to when the roles of child and parent become blurry. The story reminds you that no matter how grown up you are, you're always someone's child; that no matter how "adult" you are, you're never too old to be loved by your parents. It makes me appreciate even more how my mother still calls me and my brother (despite us being 32- and 22-years-old, respectively) by our childhood nicknames, Pussycat and Tchotchke (Yiddish for "knickknack"). Pigeonholing this as a children's book is like saying "Romeo & Juliet" is merely a cautionary tale about drug abuse. I dare anyone to read this story and not shed at least one tear by the end. It's even more poignant when you learn that Munsch wrote the book as a memorial to two still-born children he and his wife had in 1979 and 1980. (Dana Lenetz Forbes 2010-04-20)
The one book that has the most meaning to me. (David Maloof Boston Globe 2002-09-15)
There is a powerful, age-old resonance to the story, centered on that intangible, steadfast bond between mother and child. (Shelley Fralic National Post 2006-05-15)
No one can read this without the tears falling. (Sharon Owen Madera Tribune 2003-05-08)
The best of Munsch's many storybooks... it'll give you a new song to sing... and maybe a bit of perspective down the road. (Leanne Dohy Calgary Herald 2003-09-25)
The starting point for a first-rate library for your grandchildren... a tender ode to the life cycle of a family. (John Lownsbrough Outlook Magazine 2004-06-00)
Sentimental story that has long been a favorite gift at baby showers. (Karen T.Bilton Bridgewater Courier News 2005-04-26)
#5 on Instructor's "Teachers Pick the Top 50 Kids Books Ever", chosen by 200 teachers, authors, and children's literature experts. (Instructor 2006-11-01)
This best-selling classic of a parent's enduring love is available in a gift edition: slipcased with a laminated box and a clothbound book. (BookPage 2006-11-00)
A humorous, sentimental page-turner that rarely -- let's say never -- leaves a reader with a dry eye. (Gayle MacDonald Globe and Mail 2005-12-01)
My children and I enjoyed it, night after night, for years... It is a charmer. The simple story touches the heart. (Jeith L. Runyon Louisville Courier-Journal 2005-11-13)
Robert Munsch's beloved tale is gentle affirmation of the love a parent feels for her child -- forever. Nurtured by the unconditional love of his parent, a boy grows happily through the stages of childhood to become, in turn, a loving adult. (BookPage 2008-01-04)
This book is beyond emotional. I dare any mother out there, or any child with an aging parent, to read this story and not have a lump in your throat... Should definitely be apart of your child's book collection. (community.cafelibri.com 2010-07-01)
From the Publisher
Reviewed and selected by Lamaze(tm) International as a leading resource in childbirth and early parenting.
Killing Jesus
Product ASIN:
0805098542Product Description
Millions of readers have thrilled by bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history.
Now the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor details the events leading up to the murder of the most influential man in history: Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly two thousand years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. Killing Jesus will take readers inside Jesus’s life, recounting the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable – and changed the world forever.
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #66 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Henry Holt and Co.
- Published on: 2013-09-24
- Released on: 2013-09-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.47" h x 1.11" w x 6.39" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- Great product!
Editorial Reviews
Review
“O’Reilly is the natural choice to narrate this work… he carries the work along and the audiobook is a good introduction to the Synoptic Gospels.” – AudioFile Magazine
About the Author
Bill O'Reilly is the anchor of The O'Reilly Factor, the highest-rated cable news show in the country. He also writes a syndicated newspaper column and is the author of several number-one bestselling books.
Martin Dugard is the New York Times bestselling author of several books of history. His book Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone has been adapted into a History Channel special. He lives in Southern California with his wife and three sons.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
BOOK I
THE WORLD OF JESUS
MARCH, 5 B.C.
MORNING
The child with thirty-six years to live is being hunted.
Heavily armed soldiers from the capital city of Jerusalem are marching to this small town, intent on finding and killing the baby boy. They are a mixed-race group of foreign mercenaries from Greece, Gaul, and Syria. The child’s name, unknown to them, is Jesus, and his only crime is that some believe he will be the next king of the Jewish people. The current monarch, a dying half-Jewish, half-Arab despot named Herod, is so intent on ensuring the baby’s death that his army has been ordered to murder every male child under the age of two years in Bethlehem.* None of the soldiers knows what the child’s mother and father look like, or the precise location of his home, thus the need to kill every baby boy in the small town and surrounding area. This alone will guarantee the extermination of the potential king.
It is springtime in Judea, the peak of lambing season. The rolling dirt road takes the army past thick groves of olive trees and shepherds tending their flocks. The soldiers’ feet are clad in sandals, their legs are bare, and they wear the skirtlike pteruges to cover their loins. The young men sweat profusely beneath the plates of armor on their chests and the tinned bronze attic helmets that cover the tops of their heads and the sides of their faces.
The soldiers are well aware of Herod’s notorious cruelty and his penchant for killing anyone who would try to threaten his throne. But there is no moral debate about the right or wrong of slaughtering infants.† Nor do the soldiers question whether they will have the nerve to rip a screaming child from his mother’s arms and carry out the execution. When the time comes, they will follow orders and do their jobs—or risk being immediately killed for insubordination.
The sword’s blade is how they plan to dispatch the babies. All soldiers are armed with the Judean version of the razor-sharp pugio and gladius preferred by the Roman legions, and they wear their weapons attached to the waist. Their method of murder, however, will not be restricted to the dagger or sword. Should they wish, Herod’s soldiers can also use a skull-crushing stone, hurl the baby boys off a cliff en masse, or just wrap their fists around the infants’ windpipes and strangle them.
The cause of death is not important. What matters most is one simple fact: king of the Jews or not, the infant must die.
✝ ✝ ✝Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, King Herod gazes out a palace window toward Bethlehem, anxiously awaiting confirmation of the slaughter. In the cobbled streets below him, the Roman-appointed king sees the crowded bazaars, where vendors sell everything from water and dates to tourist trinkets and roast lamb. The walled city of some eighty thousand residents packed into less than a single square mile is a crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean. With one sweep of his eyes, Herod can see visiting Galilean peasants, brightly dressed Syrian women, and the foreign soldiers he pays to wage his battles. These men fight extremely well but are not Jews and don’t speak a word of the Hebrew language.
Herod sighs. Back in his youth, he would never have stood in a window and worried about the future. A great king and warrior such as he would have ordered that a bridle be thrown over his favorite white charger so that he might gallop to Bethlehem and murder the child himself. But Herod is now a man of sixty-nine. His massive girth and incessant medical problems make it physically impossible for him to leave his palace, let alone mount a horse. His bloated face is wreathed in a beard that extends from the bottom of his chin to just below his Adam’s apple. On this day, he wears a royal purple Roman-style mantle over a short-sleeved white silk tunic. Normally Herod prefers soft leather leggings that have been stained purple. But today even the gentlest bristle of fabric against his inflamed big toe is enough to make him cry out in pain. So it is that Herod, the most powerful man in Judea, hobbles through the palace barefoot.
But gout is the least of Herod’s ailments. The king of the Jews, as this nonpracticing convert to the religion likes to be known, is also suffering from lung disease, kidney problems, worms, a heart condition, sexually transmitted diseases, and a horrible version of gangrene that has caused his genitals to rot, turn black, and become infested with maggots—thus the inability to sit astride, let alone ride, a horse.
Herod has learned how to live with his aches and pains, but these warnings about a new king in Bethlehem are scaring him. Since the Romans first installed him as ruler of Judea more than thirty years ago, Herod has foiled countless plots and waged many wars to remain king. He has murdered anyone who would try to steal his throne—and even executed those only suspected of plotting against him. His power over the locals is absolute. No one in Judea is safe from Herod’s executions. He has ordered deaths by hanging, stoning, strangulation, fire, the sword, live animals, serpents, beating, and a type of public suicide in which victims are forced to hurl themselves off tall buildings. The lone form of execution in which he has not engaged is crucifixion, that most slow and humiliating of deaths, where a man is flogged and then nailed naked upon a wooden cross in plain sight of the city walls. The Romans are the masters of this brutal art, and they almost exclusively practice it. Herod would not dream of enraging his superiors in Rome by appropriating their favorite form of murder.
Herod has ten wives—or had, before he executed the fiery Mariamme for allegedly plotting against him. For good measure, he also ordered the deaths of her mother and of his sons Alexander and Aristobulus. Within a year, he will murder a third male offspring. Small wonder that the great Roman emperor Caesar Augustus was rumored to have openly commented, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than to be his son.”
But this newest threat, though it comes from a mere infant, is the most dangerous of all. For centuries, Jewish prophets have predicted the coming of a new king to rule their people.‡ They have prophesied five specific occurrences that will take place to confirm the new Messiah’s birth.
The first is that a great star will rise.
The second is that the baby will be born in Bethlehem, the small town where the great King David was born a thousand years before.
The third prophecy is that the child must also be a direct descendant of David, a fact that can easily be proven by the temple’s meticulous genealogical records.
Fourth, powerful men will travel from afar to worship him.
Finally, the child’s mother must be a virgin.§
What troubles Herod most deeply is that he knows the first two of these to be true.
He might be even more distressed to learn that all five have come to pass. The child is from the line of David; powerful men have traveled from afar to worship him; and his teenage mother, Mary, swears that she is still a virgin, despite her pregnancy.
He also does not know that the child’s name is Yeshua ben Joseph—or Jesus, meaning “the Lord is salvation.”
Herod first learns about Jesus from the travelers who have come to worship the baby. These men are called Magi, and they stop at his castle to pay their respects en route to paying homage to Jesus. They are astronomers, diviners, and wise men who also study the world’s great religious texts. Among these books is the Tanakh,¶ a collection of history, prophecy, poetry, and songs telling the story of the Jewish people. The wealthy foreigners travel almost a thousand miles over rugged desert, following an extraordinarily bright star that shines in the sky each morning before dawn. “Where is the one who has been born the king of the Jews?” they demand to know upon their arrival in Herod’s court. “We see his star in the east and have come to worship him.” **
Amazingly, the Magi carry treasure chests filled with gold and the sweet-smelling tree resins myrrh and frankincense. These priests are learned, studious men. Theirs is a life of analysis and reason. Herod can conclude only that either the Magi are out of their minds for risking the theft of such a great fortune in the vast and lawless Parthian desert or they truly believe this child to be the new king.
A furious Herod summons his religious advisers. As a secular man, he knows little about Jewish prophecies. Herod insists that these high priests and teachers of religious law tell him exactly where to find the new king.
The answer comes immediately: “In Bethlehem, in Judea.”
The teachers whom Herod is interrogating are humble men. They wear simple white linen caps and robes. But the bearded Temple priests are a far different story. They dress elaborately, in white-and-blue linen caps with a gold band on the brow, and blue robes adorned in bright tassels and bells. Over their robes they wear capes and purses adorned in gold and precious stones. On a normal day their garb distinguishes them from the people of Jerusalem. But even in his dissipated state, King Herod is the most regal man in the room by far. He continues to hector the teachers and priests. “Where is this so-called king of the Jews?”
“Bethlehem, in the land of Judah.” They quote verbatim from the words of the prophet Micah, some seven centuries earlier. “Out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”
Herod sends the Magi on their way. His parting royal decree is that they locate the infant, then return to Jerusalem and tell Herod the child’s precise location so that he can venture forth to worship this new king himself.
The Magi see through this deceit. They never come back.
So it is that time passes and Herod realizes he must take action. From the windows of his fortress palace, he can see all of Jerusalem. To his left rises the great Temple, the most important and sacred building in all Judea. Perched atop a massive stone platform that gives it the appearance of a citadel rather than a simple place of worship, the Temple is a physical embodiment of the Jewish people and their ancient faith. The Temple was first built by Solomon in the tenth century B.C. It was leveled by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., and then the Second Temple was built by Zerubbabel and others under the Persians nearly seventy years later. Herod recently renovated the entire complex and expanded the Temple’s size to epic proportions, making it far larger than that of Solomon’s. The Temple and its courts are now a symbol not just of Judaism but of the evil king himself.
So it is ironic, as Herod frets and gazes toward Bethlehem, that Jesus and his parents have already traveled to Jerusalem twice and paid visits to that great stone fortress, built atop the site where the Jewish patriarch Abraham nearly sacrificed his own son, Isaac. The first visit came eight days after Jesus’s birth,†† so that he might be circumcised. There the child was formally named Jesus, in keeping with the prophecy. The second visit came when he was forty days old. The baby Jesus was brought to the Temple and formally presented to God, in keeping with the laws of the Jewish faith. His father, Joseph, a carpenter, dutifully purchased a pair of young turtledoves to be sacrificed in honor of this momentous occasion.
Something very strange and mystical occurred as Jesus and his parents entered the Temple on that day—something that hinted that Jesus might truly be a very special child. Two complete strangers, an old man and an old woman—neither of whom knew anything about this baby called Jesus or his fulfillment of prophecy—saw him from across the crowded place of worship and went to him.
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were traveling in complete anonymity, avoiding anything that would draw attention to them. The old man’s name was Simeon, and he was of the belief that he would not die until he laid eyes upon the new king of the Jews. Simeon asked if he might hold the newborn. Mary and Joseph agreed. As Simeon took Jesus into his arms, he offered a prayer to God, thanking him for the chance to see this new king with his own eyes. Then Simeon handed Jesus back to Mary with these words: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
At that very moment, a woman named Anna‡‡ also approached. She was an eighty-four-year-old widowed prophetess who spent all her waking hours in the Temple, fasting and praying. Simeon’s words were still ringing in Mary’s and Joseph’s ears when Anna stepped forth and also praised Jesus. She loudly thanked God for bringing this very special baby boy into the world. Then she made a most unusual claim, predicting to Mary and Joseph that their son would free Jerusalem from Roman rule.
Mary and Joseph marveled at Simeon’s and Anna’s words, flattered for the attention as all new parents would be, but also unsure what all this talk about swords and redemption truly meant. They finished their business and departed from the Temple into the bustling city of Jerusalem, both elated and fearful for the life their son might be destined to lead.
✝ ✝ ✝If only Herod had known that Jesus had been so close—literally, less than six hundred yards from his throne room—his torment could have been relieved. But Jesus and his parents were just three more bodies making their way through the noisy bazaars and narrow, twisting streets en route to the Temple that day.
It is a temple that will stand forever as a monument to Herod’s greatness—or so he believes. Ironically, he is barely welcome inside its walls, thanks to his utter lack of devotion or faith and his ruthlessness in subjugating the Jewish people.
Beyond the Temple, on the far side of the Kidron Valley, rises the steep Mount of Olives, where shepherds tend their flocks on the grasses of the limestone-flecked hillsides. Soon will come the Passover feast, bringing with it tens of thousands of Hebrew pilgrims from all around Herod’s kingdom, eager to pay good money to purchase those sheep for a sacrificial slaughter in the great Temple.
In many ways, the slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem is no different. They are being sacrificed for the good of Herod’s rule—which is the same as saying they are being murdered in the name of the Roman Empire. Herod is nothing without Rome, a puppet who owes his kingdom completely to that brutal and all-powerful republic. It is his right and duty to propagate its oppressive ways. For Herod’s kingdom is different from any other under Rome’s iron fist. The Jewish people are an ancient civilization founded upon a belief system that is at odds with Rome’s, which worships many pagan deities instead of the one solitary Jewish god.
Herod is the intermediary in this precarious relationship. The Romans will hold him accountable for any problems caused by an alleged new king of the Jews. They will not tolerate a ruler they have not themselves chosen. And if the followers of this new “king” foment revolution, it is certain that the Romans will immediately step in to brutally crush this voice of dissent. Better that Herod handle it himself.
Herod cannot see Bethlehem from his palace, but it is roughly six miles away, on the far side of some low green hills. He cannot see the blood flowing in its streets right now, nor hear the wails of the terrified children and their parents. As Herod gazes out from his palace, he does so with a clean conscience. Let others condemn him for murdering more than a dozen infants. He will sleep well tonight, knowing that the killings are for the good of his reign, the good of Judea, and the good of Rome. If Caesar Augustus hears of this slaughter, he will surely understand: Herod is doing what must be done.
✝ ✝ ✝Jesus and his family barely get out of Bethlehem alive. Joseph awakes from a terrifying dream and has a vision of what is to come. He rouses Mary and Jesus in the dead of night and they escape. Herod’s soldiers arrive too late. They butcher the babies in vain, fulfilling a prophecy made five hundred years earlier by the contrarian prophet Jeremiah.§§
There are many more prophecies about the life of Jesus outlined in Scripture. Slowly but surely, as this child grows to manhood, those predictions will also come true. Jesus’s behavior will see him branded as a revolutionary, known throughout Judea for his startling speeches and offbeat teachings. He will be adored by the Jewish people but will become a threat to those who profit from the populace: the high priests, the scribes, the elders, the puppet rulers of Judea, and, most of all, the Roman Empire.
And Rome does not tolerate a threat. Thanks to the examples of empires such as those of the Macedonians, Greeks, and Persians that came before them, the Romans have learned and mastered the arts of torture and persecution. Revolutionaries and troublemakers are dealt with in harsh and horrific fashion, in order that others won’t be tempted to copy their ways.
So it will be with Jesus. This, too, will fulfill prophecy.
All of that is to come. For now, Jesus is still an infant, cared for and loved by Mary and Joseph. He was born in a stable, visited by the Magi, presented with their lavish gifts, and is now on the run from Herod and the Roman Empire.¶¶
* There were actually two cities named Bethlehem, and both can make a claim for being the true site of the Nativity. The city of King David’s birth is located just a few miles from Jerusalem. Archaeological investigations have shown that it was either a very small village or relatively uninhabited at the time of Jesus’s birth. The second location is in Galilee, four miles from Nazareth. Supporters of that site believe that Mary’s full-term pregnancy would have made it very difficult for her to walk a hundred miles to the other location. Supporters of the traditional site point to the biblical prophecy that Jesus would be born in the City of David, which is the Bethlehem located near Jerusalem. The fact that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem eight days after his birth, and then again on the fortieth day, would seem to tip the scales in favor of the traditional site.
† Genocide was replete throughout the Classical world. “He slits the wombs of pregnant women; he blinds the infants,” goes an ancient Assyrian poem. Genocide often was considered ethically justifiable if the killing was done to inflict revenge or thwart an aggressor.
‡ The Jewish homeland was first known as Israel, a “promised land” that God offered to his followers. The northern portion of this kingdom fell in 722 B.C. to the Philistines, while the Babylonians later conquered the southern half. The Roman conquest in 63 B.C. led to the area around Jerusalem being referred to as Judea. The whole region, including Galilee, was administratively part of the Roman province of Syria, and the terms Israel and Palestine were not used in Jesus’s time. Israel was once again put into use when the independent Jewish state was founded on May 14, 1948—almost four thousand years after the first Jews crossed into the Promised Land.
§ In order, the prophecies are Numbers 24:17, Micah 5:2–5, Jeremiah 23:5 and Isaiah 9:7, Psalms 72:10–11, and Isaiah 7:13–14.
¶ There are three dominant texts in the Jewish tradition: the Tanakh, the Torah, and the Talmud. The Tanakh constitutes the canonical collection of Jewish Scriptures and appears to have been compiled five hundred years before the birth of Christ. The Tanakh is also known as the Jewish Bible, while Christians refer to it as the Old Testament. The Torah is comprised of the first five books of the Tanakh: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Talmud was written almost six hundred years later, after the fall of the Temple in A.D. 70. Rabbinical teachings, commentaries, and philosophies were compiled so that they might be passed on in written, rather than oral, form.
** In 1991, The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society (volume 32, pages 389–407) noted that Chinese astronomers had observed a long-tailed, slow-moving comet in their skies during March of 5 B.C. This sui-hsing, or “star,” hung in the Capricorn region for more than seventy days. This same comet would have been visible in the skies over Persia, home of the Magi, in the hours just before dawn. Due to the earth’s orbital motion, the comet’s light would have been directly in front of the Magi during their journey—hence, they would have truly followed the star.
†† The month of March coincides with Gospel descriptions of shepherds tending their flocks on the hillside, as this is also lambing season. December 25, which we now celebrate as the date of Jesus’s birth, was chosen and named Christmas—a shortening of Christ’s Mass, or the mass in honor of Jesus’s birth—by the Romans once their empire became Christian in the fourth century. For the Romans, that date was once the conclusion of an orgiastic pagan holiday known as Saturnalia. Once they set aside their more lascivious ways, it made sense to replace that celebration with a day commemorating the birth of their new savior.
‡‡ Anna is referred to as a “prophetess” in the Gospel of Luke. This makes her the only female in the New Testament so honored. This designation meant she saw things that were hidden from ordinary people. This also means that she held a higher calling than Simeon, who is merely praised by the same author as being “righteous and devout.” Luke also mentions the name of Anna’s tribe, that of Asher, which makes her a rarity among New Testament characters.
§§ The exact number of years that Jesus lived is widely debated, but the conclusion that he was born sometime in the spring of either 6 or 5 B.C. is based on clear historical evidence, as Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. The date of Jesus’s death was on the fourteenth day of Nisan. The annual start of Passover is dependent upon lunar charts, so his death can be pinpointed to have occurred on a Friday in the years a.d. 27–30. History shows that Jesus was executed when Pilate and Caiaphas both ruled in Judea, which occurred A.D. 26–37, making the date of A.D. 30, and his age at the time of death, logical—though still the subject of great discussion.
¶¶ The most insightful facts, quotes, and stories about Jesus that we know come from the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Many today challenge these writings, but thanks to scholarship and archaeology, there is growing acceptance of their overall historicity and authenticity. Many scholars believe that Matthew was written in Greek by the disciple and former tax collector, sometime between A.D. 50 and 70. Mark was written by John Mark, a close friend of Peter’s who most likely learned of Jesus through the preaching of Peter. Matthew and Mark are incredibly similar, leading many to wonder if Matthew used Mark as a reference—or vice versa. Luke was a friend of Paul, the former Pharisee who became a convert to Christianity and preached even more zealously than the disciples. The Gospel of Luke was written for a Gentile audience, with a theme of salvation at its center. John was written by the disciple, and its focus is evangelism. John’s Gospel is written in Greek, and is long believed to have been the last Gospel written. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels, due to the many ways in which they agree with one another. All four Gospels together are known as the Canonical Gospels, as they form the essential canon of the Christian faith. John wrote independently of the other Gospel writers, using his unique eyewitness testimony in the same manner as Matthew. If he did, indeed, write his Gospel last, then John would have had the final say on the life of Jesus—not just confirming what the others had written but adding the definitive chronology and sequence of events. The fact that John not only was there at every pivotal moment in Jesus’s ministry, and thus able to describe many scenes with vivid first-person imagery, but was also Jesus’s closest confidant among the disciples (“the disciple whom Jesus loved,” he boasts in John 20:02, in yet another example of the disciples grappling for prestige and power in the eyes of their leader) only adds to the power of his narrative.
Copyright © 2013 by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Jeter Unfiltered
Product ASIN:
1476783667Product Description
The only authorized full-color book commemorating Derek Jeter’s iconic baseball career with the New York Yankees, featuring archival images and original photos of his final 2014 season from renowned photographer Christopher Anderson.
Derek Jeter’s twentieth and final season in Major League Baseball truly marks the end of a sports era. The New York Yankees’ shortstop—a five-time World Series victor, team captain since 2003, and one of the greatest ballplayers of all time—is a beloved and inspiring role model who displays the indefinable qualities of a champion, on and off the field.
Jeter Unfiltered is a powerful collection of never-before-published images taken over the course of Derek’s final season. Fans will have unprecedented access to “The Captain,” as the famously private baseball legend takes us behind the scenes—inside his home, the stadium, the gym, at his Turn 2 Foundation events, fortieth birthday party, and more—as he looks back with candor and gratitude on his baseball career. The result is an intimate portrait bursting with personality, professionalism, and pride.
Jeter Unfiltered is Jeter as you have never seen him before: unguarded, unapologetic…unfiltered.
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #86 in Books
- Brand: Christopher Anderson
- Published on: 2014-10-28
- Released on: 2014-10-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.12" h x .90" w x 7.37" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Derek Jeter is a fourteen-time All-Star and five-time World Series winner who has played for one team—the storied New York Yankees—for all twenty seasons of his major league career. His grace and class on and off the field have made him an icon and role model far beyond the world of baseball.
Christopher Anderson is an internationally recognized photographer who is a member of Magnum Photos and Photographer in Residence at New York magazine.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Jeter Unfiltered
SPRING TRAINING
This spring training was different, because more than ever before, I focused on trying to enjoy it. When everyone shows up for spring training, all they look forward to is the end of it. Most guys just can’t wait to get out there on Opening Day and start playing. A countdown begins—thirty days left, twenty days left, and so on—it’s all the guys talk about. I’ve done that, too, in the past, but not this time. I went in and tried to enjoy every day, without thinking about the end of it. The end would come soon enough.
Minecraft: Combat Handbook: An Official Mojang Book
Product ASIN:
0545685168Product Description
In Minecraft, you're never alone and the threat of attack is constant. How will you survive? The Official Combat Handbook will teach you everything you need to know to defend yourself from hostile monsters and enemy players. You can learn how to build a fort, craft armor and weapons, set mob traps, defeat your enemies in one-on-one combat, and battle your way out of the Nether and the End. With tips from Minecraft experts, developer Jeb, and creator Notch himself, you'll be a Minecraft warrior in no time!
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #108 in Books
- Size: One Size
- Color: multi-colored
- Brand: Minecraft
- Model: K1A0C
- Published on: 2014-08-26
- Released on: 2014-08-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 5.50" w x .25" l, .63 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 80 pages
Features
- * User guide for the popular Minecraft game
- * With this guide you'll be a Minecraft Warrior in no time
- * Officially licensed
- * Brand new
If I Stay
Product ASIN:
014241543XProduct Description
Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Chloe Moretz!
In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.
Product Details
- BooksCatalog Sales Rank: #103 in Books
- Brand: Speak
- Published on: 2010-04-06
- Released on: 2010-04-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .81" w x 5.50" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Editorial Reviews
BooksCatalog.com Review
An Interview with Gayle Forman
Q: You started your career as a journalist and your first book is a travelogue about going around the world. Is YA literature a departure for you?
Gayle Forman: Actually, it’s more of a homecoming. My first writing job was at Seventeen, where I spent five years on staff and as a contributor reporting the magazine’s social-issues stories. I loved writing for teens then because—contrary to popular opinion—they really care about serious issues (from child soldiers in Africa to kids embroiled in the drug war here) and the engage in their reading with such passion. So, now that I’m writing young-adult literature, it feels like I’ve come full circle.
Q: This book explores some serious themes. Why is this a book for kids and not adults?
GF: It’s a book for kids precisely because it explores serious themes. Teenagers are grappling with choices about life and love as much as adults, so why shouldn’t their reading reflect that? I don’t set out to write YA. It just seems like I’m drawn to stories about young people. That said, I think If I Stay is for adults, too. I love the idea of teens reading this book and then handing it off to their parents.
Q: Many key characters are serious musicians, and songs are referenced throughout the book. Are you a musician?
GF: No. Except for piano lessons when I was a kid and a brief spate of guitar playing in my teens, I’ve never played an instrument. I am, however, a huge music fan. And my husband is a musician; he was playing in a punk band when we met, so I’ve spent a lot of my life ensconced in that scene. I seem drawn to writing about musicians, though I’ve never been all that interested in the cello until Mia popped into my head.
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
GF: Music. Oregon. People I have loved. And unfortunately, the book is inspired by a real-life tragedy that happened several years ago.
Q: This is a book about death, but it’s not depressing. Why is that?
GF: Maybe because it’s really about the power of love—of family, friends, music—and therefore it ultimately affirms life.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents' corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (Am I dead? I actually have to ask myself this), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. Via Mia's thoughts and flashbacks, Forman (Sisters in Sanity) expertly explores the teenager's life, her passion for classical music and her strong relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend, Adam. Mia's singular perspective (which will recall Alice Sebold's adult novel, The Lovely Bones) also allows for powerful portraits of her friends and family as they cope: Please don't die. If you die, there's going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, prays Mia's friend Kim. I know you'd hate that kind of thing. Intensely moving, the novel will force readers to take stock of their lives and the people and things that make them worth living. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up—Forman creates a cast of captivating characters and pulls readers into a compelling story that will cause them to laugh, cry, and question the boundaries of family and love. While out on a drive with her family, 17-year-old Mia is suddenly separated from her body and forced to watch the aftermath of the accident that kills her parents and gravely injures her and her younger brother. Far from supernatural, this shift in perspective will be readily accepted by readers as Mia reminisces about significant events and people in her life while her body lies in a coma. Alternating between the past and the present, she reveals the details and complexities of her relationships with family and friends, including the unlikely romance with her punk-rock boyfriend, Adam. An accomplished musician herself, Mia is torn between pursuing her love for music at Julliard and a future with Adam in Oregon. However, she must first choose between fighting to survive and giving in to the resulting sadness and despair over all she has lost. Readers will find themselves engrossed in Mia's struggles and will race to the satisfying yet realistic conclusion. Teens will identify with Mia's honest discussion of her own insecurities and doubts. Both brutal and beautiful, this thought-provoking story will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.—Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
