Part memoir, part travelogue, part spiritual journey, A Secret Core of Joy is, more than anything, an inspirational manual for living. In spare, honest prose, Ellin Randel examines the people, places, and things that have made her life worth living. In doing so she elicits the essence of what gives every life its bitter and its sweet, gently serving up wisdom and insight that stay with her reader. It is the rare memoir that escapes self-indulgence. This one is it.

A Secret Core of Joy

Randel, Ellin

Religion & Spirituality

Small Batch Books

Born in Hungary just before Adolf Hitler came to power, Agnes Biro Rothblatt managed to survive the Nazi regime, the Arrow Cross (the national socialist pro-Nazi government in Hungary that murdered 15,000 Jews and sent 80,000 more to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps), and, following the war, the iron rule of the Hungarian Communist party under Stalinist henchman Matyas Rakosi. Together with her sister, Ann, she was smuggled out of Hungary as a teenager and traveled to the United States, where she began a new life. Agnes Rothblatt's tale is both unique in the perseverance and tenacity she drew upon to survive, and typical of a generation of immigrants who were torn from their roots, separated from their families, and who re-created themselves in the New World.

A Journey from the Chain Bridge to the Golden Gate

Rothblatt, Agnes Biro

Growing up in the Depression, a young girl lives in Yonkers, New York, in the 1930s. Her family tries to maintain a middle-class lifestyle when they can barely afford their basic needs. Her father goes bankrupt. Dotsy, an artistic child, feels the stress. Her only hope comes from the radio, hearing the inspiring voice of President Roosevelt. This is the untold story of the vast American middle class in the Great Depression.

F.D.R. and Me

Doris Goran Newman

From Neighborhood to Manhood

In the 1940s and 1950s Boston's Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods were an enclave of working-class Jewish families, whose social and cultural lives revolved around the synagogue, Jewish home life, and institutions such as the AZA, a youth group, sponsored by B'nai B'rith. In this collection of personal essays, the Boys of Blue Hill Avenue, now in their early to mid-seventies, take the time to reflect on their lives and their friendships, looking at the themes of their common origins as working-class kids in Boston: the drives and ambitions of first- and second-generation immigrant offspring; the role of great educational institutions in the making of these men (Boston Latin School and Harvard University); the routes their lives have taken over the last five decades; and, especially, the Haym Salomon Chapter of B'nai B'rith AZA that brought them together in the first place and that, as it turns out, provided an everlasting glue.

Arthur Bloom

History

In the 1940s and 1950s Boston&#8217;s Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods were an enclave of working-class Jewish families, whose social and cultural lives revolved around the synagogue, Jewish home life, and institutions such as the AZA, a youth group, sponsored by B&#8217;nai B&#8217;rith. In this collection of personal essays, the Boys of Blue Hill Avenue, now in their early to mid-seventies, take the time to reflect on their lives and their friendships, looking at the themes of their common origins as working-class kids in Boston: the drives and ambitions of first- and second-generation immigrant offspring; the role of great educational institutions in the making of these men (Boston Latin School and Harvard University); the routes their lives have taken over the last five decades; and, especially, the Haym Salomon Chapter of B&#8217;nai B&#8217;rith AZA that brought them together in the first place and that, as it turns out, provided an everlasting glue.

Mabel's Journey is a tale of the immigrant experience and the American spirit. Beginning in poverty-scarred Ayre, in southwest Scotland, and landing in the tiny western-New York hamlet of Busti, this true story spans five generations, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, following the evolution of our nation as it emerges from the ashes of the Civil War, weathers the Great Depression, and endures two World Wars. But most of all, Mabel's Journey is the story of the people who built that nation: common people with uncommon resilience&mdash;people who worked hard, came to the aid of their neighbors, served their church, and fostered love and integrity in their children. 
Mabel's Journey unfolds as a series of more than one hundred separate but intertwined stories based on real-life accounts anchored in American history and local culture. Despite the challenges of indentured servitude, poverty, deadly fire, personal tragedy, endless farm toil, and economic ruin, Mabel and her family survive and thrive on faith, love, learning, and judicious doses of strawberry-rhubarb pie. Their story is one of hope, perseverance, and inspiration for anyone whose ancestors came to America as immigrants in search of a better life and who survived the challenges of getting a foothold in a new world. In the words of one reader, "It took me there and made me cry."

Mabel's Journey

David Philip Mack

Personal Brand Planning for Life is not the typical book on how to find your brand. It is the recipe book for building a better career and life by using your brand. Personal Brand Planning is the first book to walk you step-by-step through a well-defined process of defining, managing, marketing and monetizing your brand.  The book spends very little time telling you how important branding is and dives right into showing you how to assess your brand.  Then, the authors take you on a marketing journey to build your strategy on and off line from the perspective of the job seeker and an entrepreneur. The book ends with lessons on monetizing your brand and expanding it into new marketplaces.  Personal Brand Planning for Life provides the ultimate method for branding, which was created by a 20 year professor of entrepreneurship and a career coach for high achievers.

Personal Brand Planning for Life: The guide to promoting yourself, attracting opportunity and building a stand out career

Business & Money

Donnelly, Robert M.

Personal Finance

Haiku to Nurse By celebrates the charms and challenges of new motherhood with grace and humor. The poems link together moments in the lives of a mother and her two young children. Readers will laugh out loud, cringe in empathy, and perhaps even shed a tear or two. Expectant mothers, new mothers, and their friends and families will recognize many of the timeless stories told and are sure to feel the ever-present magic-unconditional love.

Haiku to Nurse By

Literature & Fiction

Lewis, Melanie S.

Poetry

In An Entrepreneurial Journey Through Life: Learning, Loving, and Laughing, Ralph Z. "Bud" Sorenson, former president of Babson College, shares his own experiences to illustrate an important truth: "being entrepreneurial" goes far beyond starting new businesses--though that is certainly a part of it. In fact, the entrepreneurial mindset applies to all aspects of life, from choosing a career to finding a place to live to making the most out of your retirement. 
Sorenson takes us on a life journey full of twists and turns, "roads less traveled," exhilarating victories, and stinging defeats. He has applied the strong, simple midwestern values he learned from family, friends, and schooling to life in the eastern and western United States and exotic international locations. 
If you want an entrepreneurial education without going to school for it, this is the book for you!

An Entrepreneurial Journey Through Life: Learning, Loving, and Laughing

Biographies & Memoirs

Sorenson, Ralph Z.

Professionals & Academics

In Do You Know Things I Don't Know? a book of prose poems and pen-and-ink drawings, Ellin Randel explores the literal, the metaphorical, and the mystical in a stream-of-consciousness narrative and visual style. The result is almost hallucinogenic, but at the same time visceral, palpable, true.

Do You Know Things I Don't Know?

Arts & Photography

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Small Batch Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Small Batch Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Small Batch Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Secret Core of Joy

A Journey from the Chain Bridge to the Golden Gate

F.D.R. and Me

From Neighborhood to Manhood

From Neighborhood to Manhood

Mabel's Journey

Personal Brand Planning for Life: The guide to promoting yourself, attracting opportunity and building a stand out career

Haiku to Nurse By

An Entrepreneurial Journey Through Life: Learning, Loving, and Laughing

Do You Know Things I Don't Know?