This book is a biography of the actress Ashley Judd.  She talks about her emotional suffering from her childhood and her inability to cope with clinical depression.  She felt lonely as a child and grew up in the shadow of her mother and sister’s fame.  This is not a very flattering book to her mom, dad and sister, who frequently neglected and forgot about her.  They come across as selfish, manipulative and callous.  Ashley has learned to recover and survive her past by doing humanitarian work.  She has taken breaks from her acting career to travel as a world ambassador and is an advocate for Population Services International.  This is now her passion.  Ashley Judd comes across as a very sensitive and thoughtful person, who is happy in her marriage.  She has healed the wounds from her childhood and is working on better relationships with her family.

This is an inspiring book by a former Homeless teen who lives in New York City.  Liz's parents were both drug addicts and alcoholics who never encouraged their two daughters.  Lisa, Liz's sister, at least went to school, graduated and got a job.  Liz was never encouraged to go to school.  Her parents hardly had clothes or food for her and she often went to school without bathing or combing her hair, only to be made fun of by her classmates.  She pretty much left school for good in her teens, left home and lived with friends and boyfriends for several years.  After her mother's death from AIDS, her dad's AIDS dignosis and a cruel encounter with a boyfriend, Liz decided to go back to school. 

She found an alternative high school, finished 4 years of work in 2 years, applied for and won a New York Times Scholarship, applied to Harvard and was accepted.  She graduated in 2007 and founded Manifest Living, an advocate organization that fights homelessness and the problems associated with being homeless. 

I admire her very much for what she has accomplished.   

This is probably the only work I've read recently on the topic of Islam by a western author that actually makes sense. Rather than lump all our problems with the Muslim world under "It's Islam's fault," Mr. Fuller shows quite convincingly that's not necessarily the case. He points out the long history of grievances the East has against the West, predating the foundation of Islam and shows how our current world would be pretty much the same even if Islam never existed. Given the current state of affairs between east and west, this is book that not only deserves, but needs to be more widely read. Well-written, without the copious footnotes so many other books have, this is a relatively easy book to take in. If your library doesn't have a copy, they should. The author, Graham Fuller, is formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, and has frequently lived in the Middle East.