Climbing the Mountain: My Search For Meaning [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Fine unread condition gray boards, dark gray spine, and silver spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped photographic dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Kirk Douglas; Acknowledgments; Author Dedication; Preliminary Page Quote by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning; Epilogue and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. "With the simple power and astonishing candor that made his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, a number one international bestseller, Kirk Douglas now shares his quest for spirituality and Jewish identity - and his heroic fight to overcome crippling injuries and a devastating stroke. On February 13, 1991, at the age of seventy-four, Kirk Douglas, star of such major motion-picture classics as Champion, Spartacus and Paths of Glory, was in a helicopter crash, in which two people died and he himself sustained severe back injuries with debilitating long-term effects. As he lay in the hospital recovering, haunted by the tragedy, he kept wondering: Why had two younger men, whose lives were in front of them, died while he, who had already lived his life fully, survived? The question drove this son of a Russian-Jewish ragman to a search for his roots and on a long journey of self-discovery - a quest not only for the meanng of life and his own relationship with God, but for his own identity as a Jew. Through the study of Torah, Kirk Douglas found a new spirituality and purpose to life. His newfound faith deeply enriched his relationship with his own children and taught him - a man who has always been famously demanding and impatient - to listen to others and, above all, to hear his own inner voice. With the narrative skill that has made him a successful novelist, Kirk Douglas not only takes the reader through his own near-death experience but tells the story of his stubborn struggle to make sense of his own life, to come to terms with the reality of death, and to answer the "big questions" that eventually confront us all: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Who is God? It is a story that takes him from his harsh childhood of poverty in Amsterdam, New York, through a life of unexpected blessings - fame, success, artistic achievement, love, wealth - to Israel, in search of the deeper meaning of his heritage, and into his own heart and soul, to discover who he is and why he is still alive. His story is rich with wonderful anecdotes about those who have shared his life, from the famous, like his old friend Burt Lancaster, to the many unknown strangers who came forward to help him, teach him, and support him during his physical struggle to regain movement and speech. It is a story about a man who has everything and discovers, in old age, that there is much more - a story about human courage, divine grace, and the real blessings of life, and a story that has meaning for every one of us, man and woman, Jew and Gentile, young and old. Unsparing, frank, deeply passionate, Climbing the Mountain is also an unflinching, moving, and intimate account of Douglas's courageous fight to recover from a stroke that left him unable to speak. He tells the reader just what it is like for a great actor to lose his vehicle of self-expression, and of the long, difficult task of learning to talk again, by means of laborious exercises - a struggle that he made public in his triumphant appearance at the 1996 Academy Awards ceremony to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award before an audience of millions. Told with warmth, wit, much humor, and deep passion, Climbing the Mountain is inspirational in the very best sense of the word." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.…