Author: Liz Murray File Type: mobi *Breaking Night* reads more like an adventure story than an addiction-morality tale. Its a white-knuckle account of survival. . . . By age 6, Murray knew how to mainline drugs (though she never took them) and how to care for her strung-out parents. She showed uncanny maturity, even as a child, and later managed to avoid that malady of teenagers and memoir writers, self-pity. . . . Murrays stoicism has been hard-earned it serves her well as a writer. *Breaking Night* itself is full of heart, without a sliver of ice, and deeply moving. (*The New York Times Book Review*) Liz Murray shows us that the human spirit has infinite ability to grow and can never be limited by circumstance. *Breaking Night* is a beautifully written, heartfelt memoir that will change the way you look your community, the obstacles in your own life and the American Dream. An inspiration, a must read. (Robert Redford) [Liz Murray] reminds us that the greatest acts of love and failure can occur side by side that isolation and loss can give way to accomplishment and promise. She offers the awesome hope that, regardless of its past, a life can go beyond endurance and reach for triumph. She leave us with the memory of a child who clung to and refused to surrender the dignity of her soul. (Andrew Bridge, author of the *New York Times* bestseller *Hopes Boy*) As much as it is a memoir, *Breaking Night* is a primer on how poverty and drug abuse create a heartbreaking underclass of children, one that goes largely unnoticed. By the truly uplifting ending, Liz Murray has shown us the worst, and the very best, of America. (Haven Kimmel, author of *A Girl Named Zippy* and *She Got Up Off the Couch*) In the vein of *The Glass Castle, Breaking Night* is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Lizs mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless won a *New York Times* scholarship and made it into the Ivy League. *Breaking Night* is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young womans indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds. From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. From runaway to Harvard student, Murray tells an engaging, powerfully motivational story about turning her life around after growing up the neglected child of drug addicts. When Murray was born in 1980, her former beatnik father was in jail for illegally trafficking in prescription painkillers, and her mother, a cokehead since age 13, had just barely missed losing custody of their year-old daughter, Lisa. Murray and her sister grew up in a Bronx apartment that gradually went to seed, living off government programs and whatever was left after the parents indulged their drug binges Murray writes that drugs were the wrecking ball that destroyed her family-- prompting her mothers frequent institutionalization for drug-induced mental illness and leading to her parents inviting in sexual molesters. By age 15, with the help of her best friend Sam and an elusive hustler, Carlos, she took permanently to the streets, relying on friends, sadly, for shelter. With the death of her mother, her runaway world came to an end, and she began her step-by-step plan to attend an alternative high school, which eventually led to a New York Times scholarship and acceptance to Harvard. In this incredible story of true grit, Murray went from feeling like the world was filled with people who were repulsed by me to learning to receive the bountiful generosity of strangers who truly cared. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistWhile reading Murrays memoir, you cant help but continuously wonder how the young woman narrated on the page could be the same woman who survived to become her author. In the harrowing tale of her childhood in the Bronx, Murrays straightforward and no-frills prose hits hard. These are the facts, and they are not pretty Murray watched her parents mainline cocaine at the kitchen table from before she could speak, and the family often spent 25 days a monththe time after her parents blew the welfare check to feed their blazing drug habitstarving. Regarding her parents addiction with the utmost benevolence, Murray tells of bearing the weighty burden of young protector to her obviously flailing parents, and eventually living on the streets when it was less unhappyand perhaps saferthan staying at home. With no resources to speak of, she ultimately commits to high school and finds her prospects can be great. Neither sensationalizing nor soliciting pity, Murrays generous account of and caring attitude toward her past are not only uplifting, but also a fascinating lesson in the value of dedication. --Annie Bostrom

Author: Kevin Glynn Md File Type: pdf Breathing is a continuous battle between our need for oxygen and forces in nature that attack our lungs. Three hundred thousand Americans will die of respiratory diseases this year. Gasping for Air is the dramatic story of how infections, toxins, carcinogens, and air pollution strike against one of our basic body functions. The book also describes how we come into the struggle with diseases like asthma, cystic fibrosis, and sleep apnea, which make us vulnerable to assaults on breathing from without and within. We have powerful weapons to defend breathing. Medical science, public health, engineering, and business, all play important roles in the effort to support breathing. Yet, Gasping for Air also reminds readers how breathing support has been at the eye of the storm in many ethical dilemmas of modern healthcare. Here, Kevin Glynn, an experienced pulmonologist and lifelong asthma sufferer tells stories about the third most common cause of premature deaths in the developed world, describes lethal forces in Nature (infections, genetic predispositions) and from human activities (dusty occupations, tobacco smoking, chemical toxins, drug overdoses) that threaten to suffocate us, and offers sage advice for how to prevent and address those threats and the damage they cause.