Bøger udgivet af Full Court Press

CAROLETURBIN’S SOUVENIR COMBINES vivid writing, photographs, and art to tell the arresting story of growing up in Queens, New York, in the1940s and ‘50s with a distant mother and a mercurial father who sold souvenirs of New York to retail shops in Times Square and Chinatown. Finagler,practical jokester, gambler, and later magician—he could swing from angry rejector to loving parent. The author escaped for two decades to Europe and California,becoming an artist, feminist, and historian. Much later, when he was an old man and she was middle-aged, she realized that he’d encouraged her art by advising, “If you’re afraid, draw it,” and that she shared his strong emotions and determination. She drew images of plumbing that conveyed her visceral childhood fears and made peace with him, drawing his portrait on his deathbed.

David Jones has lived a rich and varied life, the highlights of which are beautifully presented in this wry and irresistibly intelligent collection. Not many people can saythey’ve had a successful career as a structural engineer, boxed andcompeted in swimming and track-and-field tournaments, lived andworked in Tanganyika and Uganda, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, soldprograms at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, acted and sungprofessionally—and written a book about all of it.Of his entertainment career in particular, he says ,“The big reward of performing has been the great people and brilliant musicians I have met over the years. I have had good times, interspersed with disappointments and, sometimes, failure. Failure in performance isusually self-inflicted, mostly due to lack of preparation. . . . I  have had some minor success in theater and have been well reviewed. One reviewer said, ‘David Jones is a lusty old goat.’ How can you beat that?” It is precisely this amalgam of sober irreverence that informsthe memorable moments in the author’s life and makes them so readable. 

The searing first-person account of how the author's family escaped the unrestrained extermination of the Bahá'í community in Iran during and after the revolution that brought the current regime to power.

This concise exploration of the ways in which Kabbalah, the Medicine Wheel, and Taiji have enabled the author to find—through sustained devotional practice—her own path to wholeness offers tools for successfully pursuing any path to wholeness.  Organized around the kabbalistic Tree of Life, the shamanic Medicine Wheel, and the Taoist principles behind Taiji, the book describes in intimate detail how the author gradually overcame her own doubts, insecurities, and resistances.