This collection showcases over 40 timeless stories that make you feel deeply and stick with you, along with cartoons, jokes, and readers' warm and funny true anecdotes. From everyday heroes to larger-than-life characters, small moments to historic events, the unforgettable stories in Reader's Digest come alive as never before in this keepsake book. Our editors have combed the archives for the narratives that thrill your senses, warm your heart, lift your spirits and leave you amazed or simply grateful for your connection with fellow humans, including: *Pilot Down: The Rescue of Scott O'Grandy--An Air Force captain policing a NATO "No Fly Zone" is struck by a missile and must use his ejection seat and parachute down into enemy territory. *The Pig That Changed My Life--The author agrees to take in what he's told is a mini pig. At first he hides the pig in his office, but his partner finds out and is upset. Nevertheless, they keep the pig and call it Esther. Esther grows up to be 650 pounds, sleeps with them along with 2 cats and 2 dogs, and wins the whole family over with her antics. The humans become vegan. *To My Daughter on Acquiring Her First Car--This is a lovely letter written by a father to his daughter as he gets her a car. It is a fond but serious plea that she not take lightly the responsibility of working this machine, that her and many others’ lives depend on her good judgement and care.

In the farthest wilds of northeastern Minnesota, back in the Gunflint Range, the author of this book and her artist-husband have a two-room cabin home in the bush country. Beginning one Christmas Day when they first watched the starving deer they later named Peter, the Hoovers had many opportunities, a passionate inclination, and the nature skills to observe this whitetail buck—joined later by his mate, and finally by several of their offspring—through the changing seasons of four years. Close as their relationship was to the generations of beautiful animals, the Hoovers did not consider them pets but fellow inhabitants of that wild country. Their observations reveal the rewards of living close to wild creatures; but more than that, they add valuable information to our knowledge of the cycle of life of the deer and other creatures native to the same world. For although the deer are the chief characters of this book, they are by no means the only wild creatures Mrs. Hoover writes of. Her naturalist’s eye is just as sharp and her affection just as great for the antics of a curious chickadee or a flying squirrel. Mrs. Hoover’s identification with nature knows no favoritism. The Hoovers’ world—the bush country of the United States-Canadian border—is farther removed from civilization than “Mr. Emerson’s woodlot,” but the close relationship of The Gift of the Deer to Walden is evident for all to enjoy. Adrian Hoover’s drawings are from life, and they add another level of understanding to his wife’s vivid prose.

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The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that is forcibly taken to the Klondike gold fields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack. . -- Calm, stoic captain Mac Whirr has just been given command of a new steamship, the Nan-Shan. He and his crew are transporting Asian workers across the China Sea when a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure alerts Mac Whirr of, "some uncommonly dirty weather knocking about."

A collection of sixty-nine well-known fairy tales from around the world, translated and gathered by recognized contributors to the field of folklore.

“Once an Eagle is simply the best work of fiction on leadership in print.” —General Martin E. Dempsey, 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Required reading for West Point and Marine Corps cadets, Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self-interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power. Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War—Vietnam. Now reissued with a new foreword by acclaimed historian Carlo D'Este, here is an unforgettable story of a man who embodies the best in our nation—and in us all.

In "Kidnapped" (1886) and later fiction such as "The Master of Ballantrae" (1888), Stevenson examined some of the extreme and contrary currents of Scotland's past, often projecting a dualism of both personality and belief. This dualism is most famous in "Kidnapped", whose two central characters are David Balfour, a Lowland Whig, and Alan Breck Stewart, a Highland Jacobite. The novel revolves around their friendship and their differences, suggesting a metaphor for Scotland itself. Stevenson wrote the sequel "Catriona" with the title David Balfour, but during serialisation in England the public became confused, thinking it might be a reprint of "Kidnapped". At publisher Cassell's request, the title was changed to "Catriona", after Balfour's daughter.