Archives for May 2019

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

Filed Under: Books Read

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster by Sarah Krasnostein
Published by St. Martin's Press on April 10, 2018
Pages: 288
Format: ebook
Genres: Biography
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner:
One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster
 is the fascinating biography of one of the people responsible for tidying up homes in the wake of natural—and unnatural—catastrophes and fatalities.

Homicides and suicides, fires and floods, hoarders and addicts. When properties are damaged or neglected, it falls to Sandra Pankhurst, founder of Specialized Trauma Cleaning (STC) Services Pty. Ltd. to sift through the ashes or sweep up the mess of a person’s life or death. Her clients include law enforcement, real estate agents, executors of deceased estates, and charitable organizations representing victimized, mentally ill, elderly, and physically disabled people. In houses and buildings that have fallen into disrepair, Sandra airs out residents’ smells, throws out their weird porn, their photos, their letters, the last traces of their DNA entombed in soaps and toothbrushes.

The remnants and mementoes of these people’s lives resonate with Sandra. Before she began professionally cleaning up their traumas, she experienced her own. First, as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home. Then as a husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, and trophy wife. In each role she played, all Sandra wanted to do was belong.

The Trauma Cleaner is the extraordinary true story of an extraordinary person dedicated to making order out of chaos with compassion, revealing the common ground Sandra Pankhurst—and everyone—shares with those struck by tragedy.

How Nancy Pelosi’s Tactics Affirm the Trumpian Style of Politics

Filed Under: Pocket

The President of the United States is erratic, illiterate, and doesn’t want to know what he doesn’t know. The President has alienated former allies, befriended or courted murderous dictators, and has repeatedly brought the country to the brink of nuclear confrontation.

read the complete article:
http://bit.ly/2MbrRPe
May 26, 2019 at 03:05PM

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between

Filed Under: Books Read

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between by Michael Dobbs
Published by Knopf Publishing Group on April 2, 2019
Pages: 368
Genres: European World History, Nonfiction
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

The powerfully told story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape Nazi Germany, and an illuminating account of America's response to the refugee crisis of the 1930's and 40's. This book complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC

In October 1940 the Gestapo expelled 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany, creating the first official "Jewish free zone" in the Third Reich. Interned in concentration camps in Vichy France, the deportees set out on a multi-year quest to acquire American visas. One in four eventually managed to gain entry to the U.S. or to other foreign countries; the remainder perished in French camps or, later, in Auschwitz.Among these "unwanted" refugees were Jews from the village of Kippenheim, whose stories are at the heart of this book. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, and visa records, Michael Dobbs provides a vivid picture of what it was like to live among increasingly hostile neighbors, waiting for "the piece of paper with a stamp" that meant the difference between life and death. And he recounts the debates over the fate of these refugees occurring simultaneously at the highest levels of the American government at a time when the public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic and antisemitic. Here is the riveting narrative of a small community struggling to survive amid tumultuous events and reach a safe haven despite the odds stacked against them.