Ruby is determined to have a better life when she leaves her bitter childhood behind for post-World War II Washington, D.C. A job as a Navy secretary soon blossoms into love and marriage. The life of a military wife turns out to be harsher and lonelier than Ruby bargained for, but though it destroys her illusions, it cannot overcome her determination to succeed and find happiness. She raises two children, creates a home, and begins baking cookies in hope of starting a business. After years of struggle, her cookies start to bring in more money than she ever dreamed of. But closest to her heart is the memory of the man she longs for in her soul, a man no cookie can replace . . . "From the Paperback edition.

Are you afraid that . . you'll never reach the end of dirty diapers? You'll never be free of carpool duty? Your teenager's rebellion will never end? The empty nest is just a little too empty? Fear not, seasons change. You blink twice and find yourself in another situation. Maybe longing for the "old days" or maybe grateful for the freshness of a new season. But like it or not, the seasons will come, each in its sequence and each in its own time. Using lively examples from her own life and those of other women - including Esther - Lois Evans challenges you to to discover the purpose of your life and to depend on Him as He teaches the lessons of each season. In this book, you will find helpful priniciples, recognize familiar emotions, and take to heart encouraging promises from the pages of God's Word. In this edition a new chapter on the grandparenting season has been added. And to help you dig deeper - whether alone or with friends - chapter study questions are included.

The bestselling inspirational book in which the author reunites with a childhood football hero, now a minister and coach, and witnesses a revelatory demonstration of the true meaning of manhood—Season of Life is a book that “should be required reading for every high school student in America and every parent as well” (Carl Lewis, Olympic champion). Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL football star and volunteer coach for the Gilman high school football team, teaches his players the keys to successful defense: penetrate, pursue, punish, love. Love? A former captain of the Baltimore Colts and now an ordained minister, Ehrmann is serious about the game of football but even more serious about the purpose of life. Season of Life is his inspirational story as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jeffrey Marx, who was a ballboy for the Colts when he first met Ehrmann. Ehrmann now devotes his life to teaching young men a whole new meaning of masculinity. He teaches the boys at Gilman the precepts of his Building Men for Others program: Being a man means emphasizing relationships and having a cause bigger than yourself. It means accepting responsibility and leading courageously. It means that empathy, integrity, and living a life of service to others are more important than points on a scoreboard. Decades after he first met Ehrmann, Jeffrey Marx renewed their friendship and watched his childhood hero putting his principles into action. While chronicling a season with the Gilman Greyhounds, Marx witnessed the most extraordinary sports program he’d ever seen, where players say “I love you” to each other and coaches profess their love for their players. Off the field Marx sat with Ehrmann and absorbed life lessons that led him to reexamine his own unresolved relationship with his father. Season of Life is a book about what it means to be a man of substance and impact. It is a moving story that will resonate with athletes, coaches, parents—anyone struggling to make the right choices in life.

When Madeleine Korbel Albright was sworn in as secretary of state in January 1997, she made headlines around the world. She was the first woman to rise to the top tier of American government and had a reputation for defining foreign policy in blunt one-liners that voters could understand. When her Jewish heritage was disclosed, people were intrigued by her personal story and wondered how it was possible -- if it were possible -- that she truly could have been ignorant of her past. Veteran Time magazine correspondent Ann Blackman has written the first comprehensive biography of Madeleine Albright. The book reveals a life of enormous texture -- a lonely, peripatetic childhood in war-ravaged Europe; two harrowing escapes from her homeland, once from the Nazis, then from the Communists; her arrival in America; Madeleine's unhappiness as a teenager in Denver, always the outsider, the little refugee; her marriage into an old American newspaper family with great wealth. When, after twenty-three years, the marriage failed, Albright was devastated. But in many ways, divorce liberated her to pursue a lifelong interest in government and international affairs. From Senator Edmund S. Muskie's office to President Carter's White House to a professorship at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Albright gained experience and contacts. As a foreign affairs advisor to Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and, later, presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, Albright positioned herself to return to government as President Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and eventually to claim her ultimate prize -- the office of secretary of state. With both insight and compassion, Blackman shows how the changing cultural mores of the last four decades affected Albright and other women of her generation: the self-doubt she experienced when, as a young mother in an era when real mothers didn't work, she decided to take a job on Capitol Hill; the problems she faced as a female professor who was not always taken seriously in the white man's world of foreign policy; the psychological transformation from spending most of her professional life as a staffer who wrote talking points for others to becoming a woman of consequence in her own right; the ups and downs of an ambitious, driven woman who still carries her share of insecurities, now concealed by a veneer of power and celebrity. In writing this landmark book, Blackman drew on archival material in the United States, Britain, and the Czech Republic, as well as interviews with almost two hundred friends and colleagues of Albright and her family, including President Clinton, Czech Republic President Václav Havel, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, She also spent many hours with Albright herself who, feet up in her Georgetown living room, offered startlingly frank and poignant comments on her life, past and present. The book is enhanced with twenty-five photos, many from the Secretary's personal collection.

The classic and much-loved memoir by Hannah Hauxwell about life in remote Yorkshire in the 1970s. Hannah Hauxwell first came to the nation's attention on Yorkshire television's award-winning documentary TOO LONG A WINTER, when she captured the hearts and imaginations of millions who were captivated by her ability to single-handedly run her family's farm in an isolated area in Yorkshire. Since the age of 35, following the deaths of her parents and uncle, she lived a self-sufficient life without electricity or running water at Low Birk Hatt Farm. What most enchanted people about Hannah was that she survived sixty years of gruelling work and weather with unimpaired serenity and good humour. Her love of the countryside, her passion for animals and her appreciation of the right values make Hannah a remarkable woman and in this classic book she tells her unique and inspiring story. SEASONS OF MY LIFE is an enduring and affectionate look at rural life in a world where everything is changing.

Seminary president Jeff Iorg looks at the life of Peter in the Bible to explain and inspire the seasons in a leader's life: learning, leading, and leaving a legacy.

Firmly grounded in scientific research, this book reveals that women follow a predictable developmental course through adulthood. Work and marriage relationships, personal crisis, emotional states, and behavior can all be related to this grand pattern. But in the case of women, the situation is made far more complicated by gender biases.