Possible Memoirs to Consider
*Memoir must be a minimum of 200 pages (and you must NOT have read it yet!)
Notice: The following excerpts have been taken from Goodreads.com, a website dedicated to match readers to books of interest.
Please look up your book interests on Goodreads.com and Amazon.com to learn more about the books. Be sure to read the
personal reviews and use Amazon’s “look inside” feature (if available) to read a page or two of the text (check and see if you
like the author’s writing style). Keep in mind that these books have not been pre-screened for content. Be aware that most
memoirs delve into the author’s soul, exposing the deepest and darkest experiences and emotions.
Memoirs are structured differently from formal autobiographies which tend to encompass the writer's entire life span, focusing
on the development of his/her identity. The chronological scope of memoir is determined by the work's context and is,
therefore, more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to childhood to old age as found in an autobiography. A
memoir is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex
and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns,
camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching
them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the
responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in
fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the
romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls
had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of
the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered
their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. 288 pages
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A harrowing story of breakdowns, suicide attempts, drug therapy, and an eventual journey back to living, this poignant & often
hilarious book gives voice to the high incidence of depression among America's youth. A collective cry for help from a
generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely
personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen & fallen like the lines of a sad ballad. 384 pages
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants:
a twenty-something guy, nice suit, works in advertising. Regular. Ordinary. But when the ordinary person had two drinks,
Augusten was circling the drain by having twelve; when the ordinary person went home at midnight, Augusten never went home
at all. Loud, distracting ties, automated wake-up calls, and cologne on the tongue could only hide so much for so long. At the
request (well, it wasn't really a request) of his employers, Augusten landed in rehab, where his dreams of group therapy with
Robert Downey, Jr., are immediately dashed by the grim reality of fluorescent lighting and paper hospital slippers. But when
Augusten is forced to examine himself, something actually starts to click, and that's when he finds himself in the worst trouble of
all. Because when his thirty days are up, he has to return to his same drunken Manhattan life—and live it sober. 320 pages
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Before Barack Obama became a politician he was, among other things, a writer. Dreams from My Father is his masterpiece: a
refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a black African
father and a white American mother, Obama recounts an emotional odyssey. He retraces the migration of his mother's family
from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth
of his father's life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. 464 pages
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Some say that the first hints that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came from his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen
jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football
sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this
innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear
his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman. Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, “I come
from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird
and wonderful world of 1950s America. 288 pages
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson, whose previous travelogues The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There, and Notes from a Small Island have
garnered the author quite a following, now returns to his native United States after more than two decades of living abroad. In
order to rediscover America by, as he puts it, "going out into an America that most people scarcely know is there," he set out to
walk, in the company of Stephen Katz, his college roommate and sometime nemesis, the length of the Appalachian Trail. His
account of that adventure is at once hilarious, inspiring, and even educational. 400 pages
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison
Even without medical diagnoses, John Elder Robison's youth was abnormal. His father was an abusive alcoholic; his mother was
deeply mentally disturbed. Not surprisingly, John's grades foundered. Teachers and classmates were puzzled by his detachment
and odd, almost mechanical responses. However atypical, Robison's behavior had a significant upside: he was exceptionally
proficient with machines, circuits, and other systems. At the time, however, nobody recognized that he had Asperger's syndrome,
a still controversial condition on the autistic spectrum. In fact, it was not until he was 40 that Robison was properly diagnosed.
This unconventional, sometimes hilarious memoir reveals Asperger's as a fascinating human condition, not a horrifying
psychological malady. 288 pages
Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein , Paula Bernstein
Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for
her biological mother. What she found instead was shocking: She had an identical twin sister. What’s more, after being separated
as infants, she and her sister had been, for a time, part of a secret study on separated twins. Paula Bernstein, a married writer and
mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a
call from her adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula’s life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time
before and the time after she learned the truth. As they reunite, taking their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula
and Elyse are left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. And when they investigate their birth
mother’s past, the sisters move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives. 288 pages
Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
In this memoir, the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is borne out, and readers are taken for a joyride through the elite
social whorl of San Francisco's elite. "It was 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty' and Danielle Steel come to life." So writes Sean Wilsey, who
spent his childhood as the neglected son of what F. Scott Fitzgerald called the "careless people," adults distilled to a state of
complete self-absorption. Wilsey's sporadically unhinged mother tries to convince Sean to join her in a suicide pact -- in
retaliation for his father's abandonment of the two in favor of her former best friend, Dede. For her part, Dede takes on the task
of eliminating Sean from his father's life, convincing the child that he was unwanted, unloved, and a perpetual embarrassment to
his successful dad. The man at the center of all this high-maintenance female attention is Al Wilsey, a butter magnate and no
model of maturity and solid values. He regularly escapes to the skies in his private helicopter and sends his troubled son off to a
series of boarding schools rather than allow him to annoy his malevolent and manipulative new wife. 496 pages
Driving with Dead People by Monica Holloway
Small wonder that, at nine years old, Monica Holloway develops a fascination with the local funeral home. With a father who
drives his Ford pickup with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies
feature more footage of disasters than of his children, Monica is primed to become a morbid child. Yet in spite of her father's
bouts of violence and abuse, her mother's selfishness and prim denial, and her siblings' personal battles and betrayals, Monica
never succumbs to despair. Instead, she forges her own way, thriving at school and becoming fast friends with Julie Kilner,
whose father is the town mortician. She and Julie prefer the casket showroom, where they take turns lying in their favorite
coffins, to the parks and grassy backyards in her hometown of Elk Grove, Ohio. In time, Monica and Julie get a job driving the
company hearse to pick up bodies at the airport, yet even Monica's growing independence can't protect her from her parents'
irresponsibility, and from the feeling that she simply does not deserve to be safe. Little does she know, as she finally strikes out
on her own, that her parents' biggest betrayal has yet to be revealed. 336 pages
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in "the best place in the world"--the Old Colony projects of South Boston--where 85% of
the residents collect welfare in an area with the highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S. In All Souls,
MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where
residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community.
MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma
MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster
and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs,
murder, or suicide. 304 pages
Growing Up by Russell Baker, Gilbert Riswold
When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three
children to raise. These were depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was
determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell. He did everything from delivering papers
to hustling subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post. As is often the case, early hardships made the man. 352 pages
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in World War I is among the bitterest autobiographies
ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors,
and the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity & petty cruelties
endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal Graves's bonechilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses & even more appalling
confrontations with the callousness & arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling.
Graves is a superb storyteller, & there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when it was
first published in 1929). 288 pages
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl
Garlic and Sapphires is Ruth Reichl's account of her experience undercover in her position as food critic for The New York
Times. She throws back the curtain on the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world to reveal the comic absurdity,
artifice and excellence there, giving us (along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews) her remarkable reflections on role
playing and identity. 328 pages
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip-Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve Dublanica
In this book, the pseudonymous Steve Dublanica (a.k.a. Dan John Miller) achieves for waiters what Anthony Bourdain did for
cooks in Kitchen Confidential. By the evidence of Waiter Rant, not even his seminary classes or job as a psychiatric worker
could prepare Dublanica adequately for what he would experience pulling shifts at an upscale restaurant outside New York City.
He tells story after entertaining story about customers, co-workers, and bosses who range individually from the imperious to the
clinically insane. Along the way, the author-waiter delivers sound advice on proper tip etiquette and the art of getting good
service. 302 pages
Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach
Finding her identity increasingly tied to her settled, routine life, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alice Steinbach sought to
rediscover herself, to leave everything behind for a while. Impulsively, Steinbach decided to fly to Europe, alone, to "get back
into the narrative" of her life. In her wonderful book, Without Reservations, Steinbach tells the story of her adventures as an
independent woman traveler in France, England, and Italy. Capturing her trip in beautiful, insightful postcards written to herself,
which are included in the book, Steinbach reaches toward an understanding of her long-lost inner self. Delving into the historical
background of each place she visits and evoking literary spirits at every turn, Steinbach is a great writer and tour guide rolled
into one. 295 pages
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson ,David Oliver Relin
"One day in 1993, high up in the world's most inhospitable mountains, Greg Mortenson wandered lost and alone, broken in body
and spirit, after a failed attempt to climb K2, the world's deadliest peak. When the people of an impoverished village in
Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya took him in and nursed him back to health, Mortenson made an impulsive promise: He would
return one day and build them a school. Although he was a homeless "climbing bum" living out of his aging Buick in Berkeley,
California, Mortenson sold what few possessions he had to launch one of the most remarkable humanitarian campaigns of our
time." "Three Cups of Tea traces Mortenson's decade-long odyssey to build schools, especially for girls, throughout the region
that gave birth to the Taliban and sanctuary to Al Qaeda. While he wages war with the root causes of terrorism - poverty and
ignorance - by providing both girls and boys with a balanced, nonextremist education. Mortenson must survive a kidnapping,
fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, death threats from Americans who consider him a traitor, and wrenching separations from his
family." Today, as the director of the Central Asia Institute, Mortenson has built fifty-five schools serving Pakistan and
Afghanistan's poorest communities. And as this real-life Indiana Jones from Montana crisscrosses the Himalaya and the Hindu
Kush fighting to keep these schools functioning, he provides not only hope to tens of thousands of children, but living proof that
one passionately dedicated person truly can change the world. 349 pages
Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian by Scott Douglas
For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional “shush,” vanish into the
background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeney’s contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and
center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon
is Julia Roberts’s latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective
research into library history-from Andrew Carnegie’s Gilded Age to today’s Afghanistan-Douglas gives us a surprising (and
sometimes hilarious) look at the lives which make up the social institution that is his library. 330 pages
Somebody Else's Kids by Torey Hayden
A small seven-year-old boy who couldn't speak except to repeat weather forecasts and other people's words...A beautiful little
girl of seven who had been brain damaged by terrible parental beatings and was so ashamed because she couldn't learn to
read...A violently angry ten-year-old who had seen his stepmother murder his father and had been sent from one foster home to
another ...A shy twelve-year-old from a Catholic school which put her out when she became pregnant...They were four problem
children-put in Torey Hayden's class because no one else knew what to do with them. Together, with the help of a remarkable
teacher who cared too much to ever give up, they became almost a family, able to give each other the love and understanding
they had found nowhere else. 352 pages
Fried Eggs with Chopsticks: One Woman's Hilarious Adventure into a Country and a Culture Not Her Own by Polly Evans
Polly Evans’s itinerary for China was simple: travel by luxurious high-speed train and long-distance bus, glide along the Grand
Canal and hike up scenic mountains. Instead, the linguistically impaired adventurer found herself on a primitive sleeper-minibus
where sleep was out of the question; perched atop a tiny mule on a remote mountain pass; and attempting a dubious ferry ride
down the Yangtze River. Polly was getting to know China in a way she’d never expected–and would never, ever forget. From
battling six-year-olds in kung-fu class to discovering Starbucks in Hangzhou, Polly relives her Asian adventure with humor,
enthusiasm, frustration, and determination. Whether she’s viewing the embalmed cadaver of Chairman Mao or drinking yakbutter tea, this is Polly’s eye-opening account of a culture torn between stunning modern architecture and often bizarre ancient
mysteries…and of her attempt to solve the ultimate gastronomic conundrum: how exactly does one eat a soft-fried egg with
chopsticks. 320 pages
Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland
Julie Holland thought she knew what crazy was. Then she came to Bellevue. New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the oldest
public hospital in the United States, has a tradition of “serving the underserved” that dates back to 1736.
For nine eventful years, Dr. Holland was the weekend physician in charge of Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room, a onewoman front line charged with assessing and treating some of the city’s most vulnerable and troubled citizens, its forgotten and
forsaken — and its criminally insane. Deciding who gets locked up and who gets talked down would be an awesome
responsibility for most people. For Julie Holland, it was just another day at the office. In an absorbing memoir laced with
humor, Holland provides an unvarnished look at life in the psych ER, recounting stories from her vast case files that are
alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving: the serial killer, the naked man barking like a dog in Times
Square, the schizophrenic begging for an injection of club soda to quiet the voices in his head, the subway conductor who
watched a young woman pushed into the path of his train. As Holland comes to understand, the degree to which someone can
lose his or her mind is infinite, and each patient’s pain leaves a mark on her as well—as does the cancer battle of a fellow doctor
who is both her best friend and her most trusted mentor. 312 pages
Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS by Rick Yancey
"Plug anyone's name - yes, yours - into the computer at the Internal Revenue Service, add a Social Security number, and within
three minutes, they know this about you: every place you've ever worked, how much money you make, who your spouse is, and
where your investments are. And that's just the beginning." "Confessions of a Tax Collector is the story of how being granted
virtually unlimited power over other people's lives can radically alter one's own. Twelve years ago, Richard Yancey needed a
job. He answered a blind ad in the newspaper offering a starting salary higher than what he'd made over the three previous years
combined. It turned out that the job was as a field officer with the Internal Revenue Service, the most hated and feared
organization in the federal government. It also turned out that Yancey was brilliant at it." "In this secretive, paranoid culture,
built around the premise of war, Yancey became a revenue officer, the man who gets in his car, drives to your house, knocks on
the door, and makes you pay. Never mind that his car is littered with candy wrappers, his palms are sweaty, and he can't
remember where he stashed his own tax records. He's there on the authority of the federal government." 400 pages
Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States (P.S.) by Pete Jordan
Dishwasher is the true story of a man on a mission: to clean dirty dishes professionally in every state in America. Part
adventure, part parody, and part miraculous journey of self-discovery, it is the unforgettable account of Pete Jordan's
transformation from itinerant seeker into "Dishwasher Pete"—unlikely folk hero, writer, publisher of his own cult zine, and the
ultimate professional dish dog—and how he gave it all up for love. 384 pages
All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India by Rachel Manija Brown
In 1980, when she was seven, the author's parents, 60s-holdover hippies, leave California for an ashram in a cobra-ridden,
drought stricken spot in India. Rachel is the only foreign child in a hundred-mile radius. The ashram is devoted to Meher Baba,
best known as the guru to Pete Townsend and thus for having inspired some songs by the Who, for having kept a lifelong vow of
silence, and for having coined the slogan, "Don't worry, be happy." Cavorting through these pages are some wonderfully
eccentric characters - including a holy madman permanently doubled over from years of stooping to collect invisible objects; a
senile librarian who nightly sings scales outside Rachel's window, only with grunts instead of notes; and a middle-aged male
virgin who begs Rachel to critique his epic spiritual poems. Somehow, Rachel manages to keep her wits and humor about her
when everyone else seems to have lost touch with reality. Astutely observed and laugh-out-loud funny, this astonishing debut
memoir marks the arrival of a major new literary talent. 352 pages
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir by E. Lynn Harris
“In many ways writing saved my life. It’s my hope that sharing my experience will give hope to others who are learning to deal
with their “difference.” I want them to know they don’t have to live their lives in a permanent “don’t ask, don’t tell” existence.
Truth is a powerful tool. “But my hope for this book doesn’t stop there. I think there is a message here for anyone who has ever
suffered from a lack of self-esteem, felt the pain of loneliness, or sought love in all the wrong places. The lessons I have learned
are not limited to race, gender, or sexual orientation. Anyone can learn from my journey. Anyone can overcome a broken
heart.”—E. Lynn Harris 288 pages
Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin
"Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she's come to know all too well the many ways
this police state can be described as "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. The
connection between George Orwell and Burma is not simply metaphorical, of course; George Orwell's mother was born in
Burma, and he was shaped by his experiences there as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. Both his first novel,
Burmese Days, and the novel he left unfinished upon his death were set in Burma. And then there is the place of Orwell's work
in Burma today: Emma Larkin found it a commonplace observation in Burma that Orwell did not write one book about the
country but three - the other two being Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. When Larkin quietly asked one Burmese man if
he knew the work of George Orwell, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, "Ah, you mean the prophet."" Finding
George Orwell in Burma is the story of the year Emma Larkin spent traveling across this shuttered police state using the life and
work of Orwell as her guide. Traveling from Mandalay and Rangoon to poor delta backwaters and up to the old hill-station
towns in the mountains of Burma's far north, Larkin visits the places Orwell worked and lived, and the places his books live still.
She brings to life a country and a people cut off from the rest of the world, and from one another, by the ruling military junta and
its network of spies and informers. 304 pages
Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back by Claire Fontaine, Mia Fontaine
This powerful mother-daughter memoir chronicles 15-year-old Mia Fontaine's descent into a harrowing world of drugs and neoNazi culture and her mother, Claire's, desperate efforts to save her. Unfolding in alternating first-person accounts, the book
reveals the tragic roots of Mia's "sudden" rebellion and illuminates the dramatic struggle of mother and daughter to breach a
great divide. Intense, shocking, and ultimately triumphant, Come Back is the tale of two lives in turnaround. 311 pages
Native Stranger: Black American's Journey into the Heart of Africa by Eddy L. Harris
The black American author of Mississippi Solo chronicles his personal odyssey through Africa, detailing the people and diverse
landscapes of the continent and reflecting on his feelings of alienation from the land of his ancestors. 320 pages
The Bread of Angels: A Memoir of Love and Faith in Damascus by Stephanie Saldana
A gorgeous, romantic memoir of a young woman's year in Damascus, where she studied the Muslim Jesus, fled to an ancient
desert monastery to heal her past, and unexpectedly found herself in love with a French novice monk. In 2004, twenty-sevenyear-old Stephanie Saldaña traveled to Damascus, Syria, on a Fulbright fellowship to study the role of the prophet Jesus in
Islam. She was also fleeing a broken heart. It was not an ideal time to be an American in the Middle East-the United States had
recently invaded Iraq, refugees were flooding into Damascus, and dark rumors swirled that Syria might be next to come under
American attack. Miserable and lonely, Stephanie left Damascus to visit an ancient Christian monastery carved into the desert
cliffs. In that beautiful, austere setting, she confronted her wavering faith and met Frederic, a young French novice monk. As
they set out to explore the mysteries entwining Christianity and Islam, Stephanie slowly realized that she had found God againand that she was in love with Frederic. But would Frederic choose God or Stephanie? 320 pages
A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story by Elaine Brown
Brown's account of her life at the highest levels of the Black Panther party's hierarchy. More than a journey through a turbulent
time in American history, this is the story of a black woman's battle to define herself. 464 pages
A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean by Melinda Blanchard, Robert Blanchard
This is the true story of a trip to the beach that never ends. It's about a husband and wife who escape civilization to build a small
restaurant on an island paradise -- and discover that even paradise has its pitfalls. It's a story filled with calamities and comedy,
culinary disasters and triumphs, and indelible portraits of people who live and work on a sliver of beauty set in the Caribbean
Sea. It's about the maddening, exhausting, outlandish complications of trying to live the simple life -- and the joy that comes
when you somehow pull it off. As the Blanchards learn to adapt to island time, they become ever more deeply attached to the
quirky rhythms and customs of their new home. Until disaster strikes: Hurricane Luis, a category-4 storm with two-hundredmile-an-hour gusts, devastates Anguilla. Bob and Melinda survey the wreckage of their beloved restaurant and wonder whether
leaving Anguilla, with its innumerable challenges, would be any easier than walking out on each other. 304 pages
It's Good to Be Alive by Roy Campanella
If Jackie Robinson was the heart of the Dodger teams of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Roy Campanella, the Brooklyn
backstop, was its backbone. A powerful man with a powerful will, he won a trio of National League MVP honors in the 10
seasons before his Major League career, which began late because of his skin color, ended early as a result of a car crash.
Campy's autobiography, originally published in 1959, is as gritty as the Hall of Famer was. It weaves its way from the Negro
Leagues to the Majors, then digs in to detail the catcher's post-crash rehabilitation with honest inspiration. 314 pages
Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of
Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned
morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into
the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery—a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri
was sent to prison for shooting a cop. As he recounts the journey that took him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in
Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence, Piri Thomas gives us a book that is as
exultant as it is harrowing and whose every page bears the irrepressible rhythm of its author's voice. 352 pages
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels--A Love Story by Ree Drummond
I recount the rip-roaring details of my unlikely romance with a chaps-wearing cowboy, from the early days of our courtship
(complete with cows, horses, prairie fire, and passion) all the way through the first year of our marriage, which would be filled
with more challenge and strife—and manure—than I ever could have expected. 304 pages
Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III
After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in
a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence,
Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed—or killing
someone else. He signed on as a boxer. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out
on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn’t have been more stark—or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by
becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself. His memoir is a riveting, visceral, profound
meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love. 387 pages
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.) by Marya Hornbacher
This vivid and emotionally wrenching memoir of the author's lifelong love affair with bulimia and anorexia offers a devastating
critique of the American obsession with food and body image. 320 pages
Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo
"Her book is among the least political, and most intimate and valuable, to have come out of the Iraq war… There are many good
reasons to read “Day of Honey.” It’s a carefully researched tour through the history of Middle Eastern food. It’s filled with
adrenalized scenes from war zones, scenes of narrow escapes and clandestine phone calls and frightening cultural
misunderstandings. Ms. Ciezadlo is completely hilarious on the topic of trying to please her demanding new Lebanese in-laws.
400 pages
It's All Relative by Wade Rouse
Family is truly the only gift that keeps on giving—namely, the gifts of dysfunction and eccentricity—and Wade Rouse’s family
has been especially charitable: His chatty yet loving mother dresses her son as a Ubangi tribesman, in blackface, for Halloween
in the rural Ozarks; his unconventional engineer of a father buries his children’s Easter eggs; his marvelously Martha Stewart–
esque partner believes Barbie is his baby; his garage-sale obsessed set of in-laws are convinced they can earn more than Warren
Buffett by selling their broken lamps and Nehru jackets; his mutt Marge speaks her own language; and his oddball collection of
relatives includes a tipsy Santa Claus with an affinity for showing off his jingle balls. In the end, though, the Rouse House gifted
Wade with love, laughter, understanding, superb comic timing, and a humbling appreciation for humiliation. 320 pages
Becoming Alice: A Memoir by Alice Rene
Six-year-old IIse watches Nazi soldiers march down her street in Vienna. She does not understand the threat to her Jewish family
nor the harrowing escape that follows which will bring her to Riga, Latvia, through Russia and Japan, over the Pacific Ocean,
and finally end in Portland, Oregon. Although the family is safe at last, author Alice Rene tells us in this book about the
emotional impact of Nazi tyranny on a young child, just how it effected her personally. Ilse is ashamed of herself for being
different and becomes anxious and withdrawn. The antics of an outrageous aunt and uncle, though comical, only add to her
humiliation. Changing her name to Alice does not alter her feelings of isolation. She realizes that she must somehow make peace
with her history and identity. With both pathos and humor, Becoming Alice showcases Alice’s triumph over adversity, identity
crisis and the sometimes debilitating power of family ties. 284 pages
The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley
Susan Conley, her husband, and their two young sons say good-bye to their friends, family, and house in Maine for a two-year
stint in a high-rise apartment in Beijing, prepared to embrace the inevitable onslaught of new experiences that such a move
entails. But Susan can’t predict just how much their lives will change. While her husband is consumed with his job, Susan
works on finishing her novel and confronting the challenges of day-to-day life in an utterly foreign country: determining the
proper way to buy apples at a Chinese megamarket; bribing her little boys to ride the school bus; fielding invitations to
mysterious “sweater parties” and tracking down the faux-purse empire of the infamous Bag Lady; and getting stuck in an
elevator, unable to call for help in Mandarin. Then Susan learns she has cancer. After undergoing treatment in Boston, she
returns to Beijing, again as a foreigner—but this time, it’s her own body in which she feels a stranger. Set against the eternally
fascinating backdrop of modern China and full of insight into the trickiest questions of motherhood—How do you talk to
children about death? When is it okay to lie?—this wry and poignant memoir is a celebration of family and a candid exploration
of mortality and belonging. 304 pages
The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid
In January 2001 Shauna Reid was twenty-three years old and 351 pounds. Determined to turn her life around, she created the
hugely successful blog "The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl" and hiding behind her Lycra-clad roly-poly alter-ego, her
transformation from couch potato to svelte goddess began. Today, 8,000 miles, seven years and 175 pounds later, the gloriously
gorgeous Shauna is literally half the woman she used to be. There are travel tales from Red Square to Reykjavik, plus romance
and intrigue as she meets the man of her dreams during a pub quiz in Edinburgh. 400 pages
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose
As a sophomore at Brown University, Kevin Roose didn't have much contact with the Religious Right. Raised in a secular home
by staunchly liberal parents, he fit right in with Brown's sweatshop-protesting, fair-trade coffee-drinking, God-ambivalent
student body. So when he had a chance encounter with a group of students from Liberty University, a conservative Baptist
university in Lynchburg, Virginia, he found himself staring across a massive culture gap. But rather than brush the Liberty
students off, Roose decided to do something much bolder: he became one of them. Liberty University is the late Rev. Jerry
Falwell's proudest accomplishment - a 10,000-student conservative Christian training ground. At Liberty, students (who call
themselves "Champions for Christ") take classes like Introduction to Youth Ministry and Evangelism 101. They hear from guest
speakers like Mike Huckabee and Karl Rove, they pray before every class, and they follow a 46-page code of conduct called
"The Liberty Way" that prohibits drinking, smoking, R-rated movies, contact with the opposite sex, and witchcraft. Armed with
an open mind and a reporter's notebook, Roose dives into life at Bible Boot Camp with the goal of connecting with his
evangelical peers by experiencing their world first-hand. Roose's semester at Liberty takes him to church, class, and choir
practice at Rev. Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. He visits a support group for recovering masturbation addicts, goes to
an evangelical hip-hop concert, and participates in a spring break mission trip to Daytona Beach, where he learns how to convert
bar-hopping co-eds to Christianity. Roose struggles with his own faith throughout, and in a twist that could only have been
engineered by a higher power, he conducts what would turn out to be the last in-depth interview of Rev. 324 pages
One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow
One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school introduces and a best-seller when it was first published in 1977, has
gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and
issues that are the stuff of legal education; it brings alive the anxiety and competiveness—with others and, even more, with
oneself—that set the tone in this crucible of character building. Turow's multidimensional delving into his protagonists' psyches
and his marvelous gift for suspense prefigure the achievements of his celebrated first novel, Presumed Innocent, one of the bestselling and most talked about books of 1987. Each September, a new crop of students enter Harvard Law School to begin an
intense, often grueling, sometimes harrowing year of introduction to the law. Turow's group of One Ls are fresh, bright,
ambitious, and more than a little daunting. Even more impressive are the faculty: Perini, the dazzling, combative professor of
contracts, who presents himself as the students' antagonist in their struggle to master his subject; Zechman, the reserved
professor of torts who seems so indecisive the students fear he cannot teach; and Nicky Morris, a young, appealing man who
stressed the humanistic aspects of law. 288 pages
The Year of Living Like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do by Edward G. Dobson
Evangelical pastor Ed Dobson chronicles his year of living like Jesus and obeying his teachings. Dobson’s transition from
someone who follows Jesus to someone who lives like Jesus takes him into bars, inspires him to pick up hitchhikers, and
deepens his understanding of suffering. As Dobson discovers, living like Jesus is quite different from what we imagine. 304
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are
short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided
to dedicate a year to her happiness project. Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she
focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find
more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts,
from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't. Her
conclusions are sometimes surprising—she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge
are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve
them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference—and they range from the practical to the profound.320
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs
"Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A. J. Jacob's hilarious,
enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z." The Know-It-All recounts the
unexpected and comically descriptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs' life - from his newly minted
marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job
as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs' project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of
intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. 369 pages
Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith by Suzanne Strempek Shea
A spirited, spiritual pilgrimage to different Christian churches for a year of Sundays—from storefronts to mega-churches, from
Massachusetts to Maui. When Pope John Paul II died, Suzanne Strempek Shea, who had turned away from the Catholic Church
of her childhood, recognized in his mourners a faith-filled passion that she wanted to recapture. She set out on a yearlong to visit
a different church every Sunday for a year—a journey that would take her through the broad spectrum of contemporary
Christianity lived in this country, from her New England home to the West Coast, the Deep South, the Midwest, and even to
Hawaii. Beginning with a rousing Baptist Easter service in Harlem, including a sing-along at the Cowboy Church in Colorado's
Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and a multimedia experience at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, the largest church in the country, Shea
approaches each congregation with the curiosity of a newcomer and with respect for each unique expression of faith. 324 pages
Song Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway through Life by Gerald Shea
Much has been written about the profoundly deaf, but the lives of the nearly 30 million partially deaf people in the United States
today remain hidden. Gerald Shea’s witty and candid memoir of how he compensated—through sheer determination and an
amazing ability to translate the melody of vowels—brings fascinating new insight into the nature and significance of language,
the meaning of deafness, the fierce controversy between advocates of signing versus those who favor oral education, and the
longing for full communication that unites us all. 320 pages
The Whiteboard Jungle - A Year in the Life of an Angry Middle School Teacher by D. Chase
After teaching school for over twelve years, Denise Chase has written a hilarious, insightful and astonishingly candid journal
chronicling one of her years as a middle school teacher. In The Whiteboard Jungle, we meet the students (good and well, not so
good), the administrators (well intentioned, not so good, and well … even worse), and parents (okay, you get the picture).
Though comedic, her journal has a serious side as well. It gives vivid and often appalling vignettes of students hopelessly
preoccupied with themselves and pop culture, officials presiding over a dysfunctional and foundering system, teachers grappling
with frustrations and sometimes leaving the profession, and parents deluded into thinking their kids are blameless angels whose
poor grades must be the fault of teachers. 356 pages
My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope by L. Paul Bremer, Malcolm McConnell
As the American diplomat chosen by President Bush to direct the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, L. Paul Bremer arrived in
Baghdad in May of 2003. For fourteen danger-filled months, he worked tirelessly to realize the vision he and President Bush
share of a free and democratic New Iraq. MY YEAR IN IRAQ: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope is a candid and vital
account of this world-shaping task and the daunting challenges lying in wait. With his unique insider perspective, Bremer takes
us from the ancient lanes in the holy city of Najaf to the fires of a looted and lawless Baghdad; from the White House Situation
Room to the Pentagon E-Ring; from making the case for more U.S. troops to helping Iraq's new leaders write a liberal
constitution to unify a traumatized and divided Iraqi people. 432 pages
A Rip in Heaven by Jeanine Cummins
A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins's story of a night in April 1991, when her two cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, and her
brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Chain of Rocks Bridge that spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When,
after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be
over. He couldn't have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific
odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It
was a trial by fire from which no one would emerge unscathed. 302 pages
Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore
Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own
death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the
stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their
father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime,
adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother,
gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has]
never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the
story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. 416
Dante's Cure: A Journey Out of Madness by Daniel Dorman
Catherine, nineteen years old and suffering from schizophrenia, sat in a mental hospital-- mute, catatonic, and hearing voices.
Her psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Dorman, was convinced that his patient's psychotic behavior was rooted not merely in chemical
imbalances but rather in the dramatic circumstances of her family history. He was therefore determined to avoid the mindnumbing medications that had been so detrimental to Catherine's well-being. Dorman fought adamant opposition and criticism
from his peers and superiors for a chance to guide Catherine out of madness. As much the story of a young doctor finding his
own path in a controversial new world of antipsychotic drugs, where patients' advocates have nowhere to turn, Dante's Cure is
the true account of a therapeutic process that took place six days a week, for seven years. 280 pages
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony
Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine--now with all-new, never-before-published
material. 312 pages
After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story by Michael Hainey
Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family’s back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob
Hainey, Michael’s father, was found alone near his car on Chicago’s North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five
years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive,
hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone,
leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family—and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that
would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father’s age when he died, and a
seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died “after visiting friends,” the obituaries said.
But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael’s all-too-silent, opaque
mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity—and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives,
and working through a network of his father’s buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond
the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he’d imagined with the one he comes to know—and in the journey
discovers new truths about his mother. 320 pages
Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani
Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond
friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private
haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a
photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and
further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs
and a shocking early death. A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the
cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin,"
she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was
struggling to keep herself alive. 320 pages
Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head by Jen Larsen
Jen Larsen always thought that if she could only lose some weight, she would be unstoppable. She was convinced that once she
found a way to not be fat any more, she would have the perfect existence she’d always dreamed of. When diet after diet failed,
she decided to try bariatric surgery, and it worked better than she ever could have dreamed: she lost 180 pounds. As the weight
fell away, though, Larsen realized that getting skinny was not the magical cure she thought it would be—and suddenly, she
wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Stranger Here is the brutally honest, surprisingly hilarious story of one woman’s journey
from one extreme of the weight spectrum to the other, and of the unexpected emotional chaos it created. Insightful and unsparing
in her self-examination, Larsen depicts the exhilarating highs and devastating lows she experienced as a result of her weight
loss—the incredible joy of finally beginning to look like the image of herself she’s always carried inside her head, and the
crushing pain and confusion of feeling like a stranger in her own body after losing the weight that has always defined her. 256 p
Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy by John Wood
In his acclaimed first book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, Wood explained his vision and the story of his start-up.
Now, he tackles the organization’s next steps and its latest challenges—from managing expansion to raising money in a
collapsing economy to publishing books for children who literally have no books in their native language. At its heart, Creating
Room to Read shares moving stories of the people Room to Read works to help: impoverished children whose schools and
villages have been swept away by war or natural disaster and girls whose educations would otherwise be ignored. People at the
highest levels of finance, government, and philanthropy will embrace the opportunity to learn Wood’s inspiring business model
and blueprint for doing good. And general readers will love Creating Room to Read for its spellbinding story of one man’s
mission to put books within every child’s reach. 320 pages
Death Grip: A Climber's Escape from Benzo Madness
by Matt Samet
Death Grip chronicles a top climber's near-fatal struggle with anxiety and depression, and his nightmarish journey through the
dangerous world of prescription drugs. Matt Samet lived to climb, and craved the challenge, risk, and exhilaration of conquering
sheer rock faces around the United States and internationally. But Samet's depression, compounded by the extreme diet and
fitness practices of climbers, led him to seek professional help. He entered the murky, inescapable world of psychiatric
medicine, where he developed a dangerous addiction to prescribed medications—primarily "benzos," or benzodiazepines—that
landed him in institutions and nearly killed him. After a difficult struggle with addiction, Samet slowly makes his way to a life
in recovery through perseverance and a deep love of rock climbing. Conveying both the exhilaration of climbing in the
wilderness and the utter madness of addiction, Death Grip is a powerful and revelatory memoir. 320 pages
Lucky Me: My Life With--and Without--My Mom, Shirley MacLaine
by Sachi Parker
Shirley MacLaine is an Academy Award winning actress who has graced Hollywood with her talent for decades, known for her
roles in The Apartment, Terms of Endearment, and recently the BBC/PBS smashDownton Abbey. Yet—as her daughter Sachi
Parker can attest—growing up with the movie star was far from picture perfect. The only child of MacLaine and her husband
of thirty years, Steve Parker, Sachi’s surreal childhood began when she was sent to Japan at the age of two—though her mother
would sometimes claim Sachi was six—to live with her mercurial father and his mistress. She divides her time being raised by a
Japanese governess and going back and forth to L.A. to be with her mother, hamming it up on movie sets, in photo shoots, and
Hollywood parties, even winning—and then abruptly losing—the role of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. As she gets older and
attends boarding school in England and Switzerland, becomes a Qantas stewardess, and becomes involved in a series of abusive
relationships she tries to unravel the mysteries of her childhood and her parents’ unconventional marriage. 368 pages
Shouting Won't Help: Why I--and 50 Million Other Americans--Can't Hear You by Katherine Bouton
For twenty-two years, Katherine Bouton had a secret that grew harder to keep every day. An editor at The New York Times, at
daily editorial meetings she couldn’t hear what her colleagues were saying. She had gone profoundly deaf in her left ear; her
right was getting worse. As she once put it, she was “the kind of person who might have used an ear trumpet in the nineteenth
century.” Shouting Won’t Help is a deftly written, deeply felt look at a widespread and misunderstood phenomenon. In the style
of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, and using her experience as a guide, Bouton examines the problem personally,
psychologically, and physiologically. She speaks with doctors, audiologists, and neurobiologists, and with a variety of people
afflicted with midlife hearing loss, braiding their stories with her own to illuminate the startling effects of the condition.288 p
Chanel Bonfire
by Wendy Lawless
A stunning memoir about an actress's unconventional, heartbreaking childhood with an unstable alcoholic and suicidal mother
— a real-life Holly Golightly turned Mommie Dearest — and the unusual strength that allowed her to rise above it all. Georgann
Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette
holder. She had slept with too many men, and some women, and she didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen
beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match. In this evocative, darkly humorous memoir, Wendy deftly charts the
highs and lows of growing up with her younger sister in the shadow of an unstable, fabulously neglectful mother. Georgann, a
real-life Holly Golightly who constantly reinvents herself as she trades up from trailer-park to penthouse, suffers multiple
nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts, while Wendy tries to hide the cracks in their fractured family from the rest of the
world. 304 pages
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
With startling candor and intimacy, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a
progress that is testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. She writes of her precarious
childhood and the refuge she took with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. She describes her resolve as a young girl
to become a lawyer, and how she made this dream become reality: valedictorian of her high school class, summa cum laude at
Princeton, Yale Law, prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s office, private practice, federal district judge before the age of forty.
She writes about her deeply valued mentors, about her failed marriage, about her cherished family of friends. Through her stillastonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic
of self-discovery and self-invention, alongside Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. 336 pages
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White
White bought into the modern American Dream, hook, line, and sinker. By the time he was in his early 30s, he had it all: a
successful business, a mansion, luxury cars, designer clothing, fancy meals, a beautiful wife and children. The problem was he
didn't have the money to pay for it. So he began kiting checks, a strategy not lost on the FBI. White soon found himself
sentenced to a year and a half in prison, and all evidence of the good life vanished. Justice, it turned out, would be more than
skin deep. White, who had worshipped the superficial manifestations of wealth and prided himself on dating the most beautiful
women in school, was assigned to Carville, a prison that doubled as a leper colony. Everything about Carville was tailor-made to
Make White rethink his priorities, but he didn't change overnight. He merely counted his sentence as a minor setback in his rise
to fame and fortune. Then he met Ella, an 80-year-old double amputee who was ripped from her family as a child and lived her
entire life at Carville. In the victims of leprosy he met at Carville, White found dignity, the kind of wisdom money can't buy, and
friendship without strings attached. 336 pages
Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang
Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohaus—the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students
come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night—and one of the food world’s brightest and most
controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie
wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own. Eddie grew up in theme-park America, on a could-beanywhere cul-de-sac in suburban Orlando, raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) hustlers and hysterics from
Taiwan. While his father improbably launched a series of successful seafood and steak restaurants, Eddie burned his way
through American culture, defying every “model minority” stereotype along the way. He obsessed over football, fought the AllAmerican boys who called him a chink, partied like a gremlin, sold drugs with his crew, and idolized Tupac. His anchor through
it all was food—from making Southern ribs (and scoring drugs) with the Haitian cooks in his dad’s restaurant to preparing
traditional meals in his mother’s kitchen to haunting the midnight markets of Taipei when he was shipped off to the homeland.
After misadventures as an unlikely lawyer, street fashion renegade, and stand-up comic, Eddie finally threw everything he
loved—past and present, family and food—into his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the
shards of global culture he’d melded into his own identity. 288 pages
Jungleland: A True Story of Adventure, Obsession, and the Deadly Search for the Lost White City by Christopher S. Stewart
Deep inside “the little Amazon,” the jungles of Honduras’s Mosquito Coast—one of the largest, wildest, and most impenetrable
stretches of tropical land in the world—lies the fabled city of Ciudad Blanca: the White City. For centuries, it has lured
explorers, including Spanish conquistador Herman Cortes. Some intrepid souls got lost within its dense canopy; some
disappeared. Others never made it out alive. Then, in 1939, an American explorer and spy named Theodore Morde claimed that
he had located this El Dorado-like city. Yet before he revealed its location, Morde died under strange circumstances, giving
credence to those who believe that the spirits of the Ciudad Blanca killed him. In this absorbing true-life thriller, journalist
Christopher S. Stewart sets out to find answers—a white-knuckle adventure that combines Morde’s wild, enigmatic tale with
Stewart’s own epic journey to find the truth about the White City. 256 pages
The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet--A Memoir by Dara-Lynn Weiss
When a doctor pronounced Dara-Lynn Weiss’s daughter Bea obese at age seven, the mother of two knew she had to take action.
But how could a woman with her own food and body issues—not to mention spotty eating habits—successfully parent a little
girl around the issue of obesity? In this much-anticipated, controversial memoir, Dara-Lynn Weiss chronicles the struggle and
journey to get Bea healthy. In describing their process—complete with frustrations, self-recriminations, dark humor, and some
surprising strategies—Weiss reveals the hypocrisy inherent in the debates over many cultural hot-button issues: from processed
snacks, organic foods, and school lunches to dieting, eating disorders, parenting methods, discipline, and kids’ self-esteem. She
was criticized as readily for enabling Bea’s condition as she was for enforcing the rigid limits necessary to address it. Never
before had Weiss been made to feel so wrong for trying to do the right thing. 256 pages
Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story
by Rebecca Dana
A child who never quite fit in, Rebecca Dana worshipped at the altar of Truman Capote and Nora Ephron, dreaming of one day
ditching Pittsburgh and moving to New York, her Jerusalem. After graduating from college, she made her way to the city to
begin her destiny. For a time, life turned out exactly as she’d planned: glamorous parties; beautiful people; the perfect job,
apartment, and man. But when it all came crashing down, she found herself catapulted into another world. She moves into
Brooklyn’s enormous Lubavitch community, and lives with Cosmo, a thirty-year-old Russian rabbi who practices jujitsu on the
side. While Cosmo, disenchanted with Orthodoxy, flirts with leaving the community, Rebecca faces the fact that her religion—
the books, magazines, TV shows, and movies that made New York seem like salvation—has also failed her. As she shuttles
between the world of religious extremism and the world of secular excess, Rebecca goes on a search for meaning. 288 pages
Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau
At the age of twenty-three, award-winning writer Emily Raboteau traveled to Israel to visit her childhood best friend. While her
friend appeared to have found a place to belong, Raboteau could not yet say the same for herself. As a biracial woman from a
country still divided along racial lines, she’d never felt at home in America. But as a reggae fan and the daughter of a historian of
African-American religion, Raboteau knew of "Zion" as a place black people yearned to be. She’d heard about it on Bob
Marley’s Exodus and in the speeches of Martin Luther King. She understood it as a metaphor for freedom, a spiritual realm
rather than a geographical one. Now in Israel, the Jewish Zion, she was surprised to discover black Jews. More surprising was
the story of how they got there. Inspired by their exodus, Raboteau sought out other black communities that left home in search
of a Promised Land. Her question for them is same she asks herself: have you found the home you’re looking for? Uniting
memoir with historical and cultural investigation, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement and
dispossession, citizenship and country in a disarmingly honest and refreshingly brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.
320 pages
Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior by Rorke Denver
Denver takes you inside his personal story and the fascinating, demanding SEAL training program he now oversees. He recounts
his experience evolving from a young SEAL hopeful pushing his way through Hell Week, into a warrior engaging in dangerous
stealth missions across the globe, and finally into a lieutenant commander directing the indoctrination, requalification programs,
and the "Hero or Zero" missions his SEALs undertake. From his own SEAL training and missions overseas, Denver details
how the SEALs' creative operations became front and center in America's War on Terror--and how they are altering warfare
everywhere. In fourteen years as a SEAL officer, Rorke Denver tangled with drug lords in Latin America, stood up to violent
mobs in Liberia, and battled terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. 352 pages
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though
it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even
when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes
hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an
extraordinary time. 315 pages
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
When it was published in 1995, Mary Karr's The Liars Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an
entirely new level, as well as bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr's comic childhood in an east Texas oil town
brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger's—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff
at twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new introduction that
discusses her memoir's impact on her family, this unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is
as "funny, lively, and un-put-downable" (USA Today) today as it ever was. 320 pages
A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you.
Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For
eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I
survived an impossible situation. On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of
myself as a victim. I survived. 273 pages
Burn Down the Ground: A Memoir by Kambri Crews
In this powerful, affecting, and unflinching memoir, a daughter looks back on her unconventional childhood with deaf parents in
rural Texas while trying to reconcile her present life—in which her father is serving a twenty-year sentence in a maximumsecurity prison. As a child, Kambri Crews wished that she’d been born deaf so she, too, could fully belong to the tight-knit Deaf
community that embraced her parents. Her beautiful mother was a saint who would swiftly correct anyone’s notion that deaf
equaled dumb. Her handsome father, on the other hand, was more likely to be found hanging out with the sinners. But if
Kambri’s dad was Superman, then the hearing world was his kryptonite. The isolation that accompanied his deafness unlocked a
fierce temper—a rage that a teenage Kambri witnessed when he attacked her mother, and that culminated fourteen years later in
his conviction for another violent crime. With a smart mix of brutal honesty and blunt humor, Kambri Crews explores her
complicated bond with her father—which begins with adoration, moves to fear, and finally arrives at understanding—as she tries
to forge a new connection between them while he lives behind bars. 352 pages
All the Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith
An intensely stirring coming-of-age memoir by Alison Smith, All the Animals brilliantly explores the power and limitations of a
family's faith. Smith was 15 when her older brother, Roy, was killed in a car accident, and her memoir follows her family as they
attempt to put their lives back together. Her parents try to take comfort in their strong Catholic faith but are nonetheless
shattered. For her part, Smith wonders why God has abandoned her. She finds cold comfort in Catholic symbols and rituals,
feeling a connection to Roy only when she enters the old fort they had built together. An engaging storyteller, Smith crafts her
memoir to read like a novel, interspersing moving flashbacks of the times she spent with her brother with amusing portraits of
the nuns at her parochial school, who sneak out of the infirmary to play cards and make autumnal visits to a secret swimming
pool. 352 pages
Truth and Beauty
by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, began a
friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography
of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless
reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This
is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to
book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are
intertwined . . . and what happens when one is left behind. 257 pages
Wait Till Next Year
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in
love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and
neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. We meet the people who most influenced
Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her
father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese,
Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers' leaving Brooklyn in 1957,
and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood. 272 pages
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
by A.J. Jacobs
From the bestselling author of "The Know-It-All" comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.Raised in
a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst
and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful
and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of
mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers. Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section
of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania
Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient
biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century
brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. 388 pages
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren
Jeffs
by Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer
In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect
leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing
and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community
and the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect's women. Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the
incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints
(FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the
FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and
identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Once she was married, Wall's childhood shattered as she
was obligated to follow Jeffs's directives and submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." With little money and no
knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which
eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed. More than a tale of
survival and freedom, "Stolen Innocence" is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her
life. 438 pages
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane
glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades-but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural
and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to
enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of
style we Americans find so elusive. As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a
foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of
rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly
delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We
went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we
were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education." 368 pages
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir, James Kirkup
A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful
Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the
conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare
in a young woman in the 1920s. She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most
important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time. 384
A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle
by Liza Campbell
We grew up with the same parents in the same castle, but in many ways we each had a moat around us. Sometimes when visitors
came they would say, 'You are such lucky children;' 'it's a fairytale life you live.' And I knew they were right, it was a fairytale
upbringing. But fairy tales are dark and I had no way of telling either a stranger or a friend what was going on; the abnormal
became ordinary. Liza Campbell was the last child to be born at the impressive and renowned Cawdor Castle, the family seat of
the Campbells, as featured in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Liza's father Hugh, the twenty-fifth Thane, inherited dashing good looks,
brains, immense wealth, an ancient and revered title, three stately homes, and 100,000 acres of land. A Charmed Life tells the
story of Liza's idyllic childhood with her four siblings in Wales in the 1960s, until Hugh inherited Cawdor Castle and moved his
family up to the Scottish Highlands. It was at the historical ancestral home that the fairytale began to resemble a nightmare.
Increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh tipped into madness fuelled by drink, drugs, and extramarital
affairs. Over the years, the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless extravagance and terrifying domestic violence,
leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years. 336 pages
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no
firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon
followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’s wonderfully
engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las
Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to);
her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and
Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met
and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot. 240 pages
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in "the best place in the world"--the Old Colony projects of South Boston--where 85% of
the residents collect welfare in an area with the highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S. In All Souls,
MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where
residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community.
MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma
MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster
and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs,
murder, or suicide. By turns explosive and touching, All Souls ultimately shares a powerful message of hope, renewal, and
redemption. 263 pages
Escape by Carolyn Jessop, Laura Palmer
When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two
years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s
heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical
offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen
years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who
were locked in a constant battle for supremacy. Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where
she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they
had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much
status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she
tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the
FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight
children. She had $20 to her name. 413 pages
Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent
by Anthony Rapp
Anthony had a special feeling about Jonathan Larson's rock musical from his first audition, so he was thrilled when he landed a
starring role as the filmmaker Mark Cohen. With his mom's cancer in remission and a reason to quit his newly acquired job at
Starbucks, his life was looking up. When Rent opened to thunderous acclaim off Broadway, Rapp and his fellow cast members
knew that something truly extraordinary had taken shape. But even as friends and family were celebrating the show's success,
they were also mourning Jonathan Larson's sudden death from an aortic aneurysm. By the time Rent made its triumphant jump to
Broadway, Larson had posthumously won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. When Anthony's mom began to lose her battle with cancer, he
struggled to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family. Here, Anthony recounts the show's
magnificent success and his overwhelming loss. He also shares his first experiences discovering his sexuality, the tension it
created with his mother, and his struggle into adulthood to gain her acceptance. 320 pages
All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew
up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous
temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most. But at the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's
mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton
so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives--and the country that shaped and nourished them-with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The
result is unforgettable. 329 pages
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most
dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s
lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just
because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life. An all-A student
whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her
junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and
sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs,
billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it. 432 pages
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim
For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most
beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to
love her character—and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her. In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch , Arngrim
describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose
appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the
Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael
Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura
Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine
MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack
them. 302 pages
A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey
This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and
courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural
worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his
beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate. 331 pages
Bat Boy: Coming of Age with the New York Yankees by Matthew Mcgough
Most of us have dreamed of sitting in the dugout with our favorite baseball team, and at sixteen Matt McGough was no different.
A few months after sending a blind application letter to George Steinbrenner, on Opening Day 1992 Matt found himself walking
into the legendary Yankee clubhouse. There, amid the chaos and excitement, he was greeted by none other than his idol Don
Mattingly — who promptly played a prank on him.Thus began two years of adventures and misadventures, from being set up on
a date by the bullpen to playing blackjack on the team plane to studying for an exam at 3 am in Yankee Stadium. Through these
often hilarious experiences, and especially through his friendships with the ballplayers, Matt learned priceless lessons about
honor, responsibility, and the importance of believing in oneself. A magical tale of what happens to a young man when his
fondest dream comes true, Bat Boy wonderfully evokes that twilight time just before adulthood, ripe with possibility,
foolishness, and hard-won knowledge. 288 pages
Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt by Butch Walker, Matt Diehl
From his days with his band the Marvelous 3 to his current work producing some of today's hottest talent - from Weezer and
Katy Perry to Pink and The Donnas - Butch Walker has been a major influence in contemporary pop music. But the road to
success wasn't easy. "Drinking with Strangers" takes readers beyond the studio for a rare glimpse into a life that has been defined
by raw talent, adversity and a drive for perfection. As a teenager, Walker and his band left Cartersville, Georgia for the mean
streets of Los Angeles to try to make it in the rock world. When the fairy tale label dream never quite materialized after many
false starts - including a really bad video from the guy who did all the Aerosmith videos - Walker and his band quickly
converted to the DIY (do it yourself) approach, touring the country and doing over 250 gigs a year, selling his merch, records,
and even tapes out of any van that he happened to be driving that day. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned while out on
the road trying to make it as a musician, and Walker is no exception - and here he shares his anecdotes and tales with insight and
candor and what it's really like to spend a life of drinking with strangers. Almost a primer for anyone who wants to make it in the
music business, "Drinking with Strangers" will be interspersed with lots of Butchisms, including "the world's most depressing
pie chart about music publishing"; how in 1984 his production "studio" consisted of a boom box, while today it's a Studer and
Pro Tools; how to make a really bad music video and spend 3x what the album cost to make; and of course what all musicians
need to know - how and why their A&R guy (or gal) could get fired and leave you and your band in the dust. 253 pages
Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America by Francis
Bok, Edward Tivnan
May 1986: Seven-year-old Francis Bok was selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan when Arab
raiders on horseback burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and gathering the women and young children into a group.
Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers.
For ten years, Francis lived in a shed near the goats and cattle that were his responsibility. After two failed attempts to flee--each
bringing severe beatings and death threats--Francis finally escaped at age seventeen. He persevered through prison and refugee
camps for three more years, winning the attention of United Nations officials who granted passage to America.
Now a student and an antislavery activist, Francis Bok has made it his life mission to combat world slavery. His is the first voice
to speak to an estimated 27 million people held against their will in nearly every nation, including our own. Escape from
Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have
survived to tell. 304 pages
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir, Michèle Fitoussi
Born into a proud Berber family in 1953, the eldest daughter of the King of Morocco's closest aide, Malika Oufkir was adopted
at the age of five by King Muhammad V to be brought up as the companion of his daughter, Princes Amina. When he died, his
son Hassan II became King and took charge of rearing the two girls as well as his own children. Malika spent eleven years living
at the court, in the seclusion of the harem, until she left the palace, at the age of 16, as one of the most eligible heiresses in the
kingdom and tasted a couple of years of a heady jet-set lifestyle. On August 16th, 1972, her father, General Muhammad Oufkir,
was arrested and executed after an attempt to assassinate the king. Malika, her mother, and four siblings were imprisoned in a
penal colony. 294 pages
Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson
Sultana is a Saudi Arabian princess, a woman born to fabulous, uncountable wealth. She has four mansions on three continents,
her own private jet, glittering jewels, designer dresses galore. But in reality she lives in a gilded cage. She has no freedom, no
control over her own life, no value but as a bearer of sons. Hidden behind her black floor-length veil, she is a prisoner, jailed by
her father, her husband, her sons, and her country.Sultana is a member of the Saudi royal family, closely related to the king. For
the sake of her daughters, she has decided to take the risk of speaking out about the life of women in her country, regardless of
their rank. She must hide her identity for fear that the religous leaders in her country would call for her death to punish her
honesty. Only a woman in her position could possibly hope to escape from being revealed and punished, despite her cloak and
anonymity.Sultana tells of her own life, from her turbulent childhood to her arranged marriage--a happy one until her husband
decided to displace her by taking a second wife--and of the lives of her sisters, her friends and her servants. Although they share
affection, confidences and an easy camaraderie within the confines of the women's quarters, they also share a history of appaling
oppressions, everyday occurrences that in any other culture would be seen as shocking human rights violations; thirteen-year-old
girls forced to marry men five times their age, young women killed by drowning, stoning, or isolation in the "women's room," a
padded, windowless cell where women are confined with neither light nor conversation until death claims them.By speaking out,
Sultana risks bringing the wrath of the Saudi establishment upon her head and te heads of her children. But by telling her story to
Jean Sasson, Sultana has allowed us to see beyond the veils of this secret society, to the heart of a nation where sex, money, and
power reign supreme. 304 pages
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott claims the two best prayers she knows are: "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
She has a friend whose morning prayer each day is "Whatever," and whose evening prayer is "Oh, well." Anne thinks of Jesus as
"Casper the friendly savior" and describes God as "one crafty mother." Despite--or because of--her irreverence, faith is a natural
subject for Anne Lamott. Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book
that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction
books. The people in Anne Lamott's real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers--her friend Pammy,
her son, Sam, and the many funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome
return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness.
288 pages
Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory
From early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that
was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse,
in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of
medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her
mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it
re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving
confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror
and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's
happiness. 244 pages
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck
To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home -- the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of
Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a
kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a
child's will to survive takes flight.... 432 pages
Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood
by Jennifer Traig
Devil In The Details announces Jennifer Traig as one of the most hilarious writers to emerge in recent years and one of the
strangest! Recalling the agony of growing up obsessive compulsive and a religious fanatic, Traig fearlessly confesses the most
peculiar behavior like tirelessly scrubbing her hands for a full half hour before dinner, feeding her stuffed animals before herself,
and washing everything she owned because she thought it was contaminated by pork fumes. The result is a book so relentlessly
funny and frank, its totally refreshing. 242 pages
Just Kids by Patti Smith
In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her
remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the ChelseaHotel in
the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality
to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and
poetry. 279 pages
Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
For Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother David, "Jesus Land" stretched from their parents' fundamentalist home, past the
hostilities of high school, and deep into a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. For these two teenagers - brother
and sister, black and white - the 1980's were a trial by fire. In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land
of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials
of adolescence - high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere - under
the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off
to Escuela Caribe. This brutal, prison-like "Christian boot camp" demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins - sins that few
of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David's determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here
with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page, a keenly moving ode to the
sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family. 384 pages
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong
In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun,
she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside
world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness–diagnosed only years later as
epilepsy–marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failure: as a nun, as an academic, and as a
normal woman capable of intimacy. Her future seemed very much in question until she stumbled into comparative theology.
What she found, in learning, thinking, and writing about other religions, was the ecstasy and transcendence she had never felt as
a nun. Gripping, revelatory, and inspirational, The Spiral Staircase is an extraordinary account of an astonishing spiritual
journey. 336 pages
Reversible Skirt by Laura McHale Holland
When the mother of three little girls commits suicide, their father wants more than anything to keep his family together. He
remarries in haste and tells his daughters his new wife is their mother. The youngest, Laura, believes her mother must have gone
through a kind of magical transformation. Reversible Skirt is written from Laura's perspective as a child sifting through remnants
of her mother's existence and struggling to fit into a community where her family's strict rules are not the norm. When Laura's
father dies, her stepmother grows increasingly abusive, which propels Laura and her sisters into a lasting alliance. Their father's
wish that they stay together comes true, although not in the way he'd imagined. 268 pages
Dancing on My Grave by Gelsey Kirkland, Greg Lawrence
The shattering story of a dream which became a heartbreaking nightmare for one of America's most famous ballerinas, Gelsey
Kirkland, who chronicles her brilliant start as a dancer with George Balanchine, her legendary partnership with Mikhail
Baryshnikov, her agonizing descent into drugs, and her struggles to rise again. 363 pages
Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi
Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first
leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work—first as a child model in Australia, then as a
cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and
successful. On the inside, she was literally dying. In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the
complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or
action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie
intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this
wasn't enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
320 page
If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation by Janine Latus
In April 2002, Janine Latus's youngest sister, Amy, wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer. "Today Ron Ball
and I are romantically involved," it read, "but I fear I have placed myself at risk in a variety of ways. Based on his criminal past,
writing this out just seems like the smart thing to do. If I am missing or dead this obviously has not protected me..."That same
spring Janine Latus was struggling to leave her marriage -- a marriage to a handsome and successful man. A marriage others
emulated. A marriage in which she felt she could do nothing right and everything wrong. A marriage in which she felt afraid,
controlled, inadequate, and trapped. Ten weeks later, Janine Latus had left her marriage. She was on a business trip to the East
Coast, savoring her freedom, attending a work conference, when she received a call from her sister Jane asking if she'd heard
from Amy. Immediately, Janine's blood ran cold. Amy was missing."If I Am Missing or Dead" is a heart-wrenching journey of
discovery as Janine Latus traces the roots of her own -- and her sister's --victimization with unflinching candor. 308 pages
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of
Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family
to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to
labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet
hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by
courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality. 288 pages
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt
Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had
come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother,
and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying
and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has
become a classic. 336 pages
Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High by Melba Pattillo Beals
In 1957, Melba Pattillo turned sixteen. That was also the year she became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm.
Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education,Melba was one of nine teenagers chosen to
integrate Little Rock's Central High School.Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their
parents, threatened by a lynch mob's rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But
through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down. 336 pages
They Cage the Animals at Night by Jennings Michael Burch
Burch was left at an orphanage and never stayed at any one foster home long enough to make any friends. This is the story of
how he grew up and gained the courage to reach out for love. 304 pages
Twenty Chickens For A Saddle by Robyn Scott
In this brilliant, hilarious memoir, Robyn Scott recounts the years living in Botswana while her dad works as a flying doctor. At
first she thinks her parents don't have the best ideas, but soon she begins to realize the importance of her father's work. Botswana
has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world, but still no one wants to talk about it and, for once, Scott is proud that her
parents are willing to be unconventional. 320 pages
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her
own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life:
to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—-and to do it alone.
She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of
promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black
bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style,
sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all
odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her. 315 pages
Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago
In her new memoir, the acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican continues the riveting chronicle of her emergence from
the barrios of Brooklyn to the theaters of Manhattan. "Negi," as Santiago's family affectionately calls her, leaves rural Macún in
1961 to live in a three-room tenement apartment with seven young siblings, an inquisitive grandmother, and a strict mother who
won't allow her to date. At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico.
Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York's prestigious Performing Arts High
School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto
Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of
challenges. 336 pages
The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, Ingrid Christopherson (Translator)
In spring 2002, following the fall of the Taliban, Asne Seierstad spent four months living with a bookseller and his family in
Kabul. For more than twenty years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they communist or Taliban - to supply books to the
people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn
piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock - almost ten thousand books - in attics all over
Kabul. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and
the role of women. As an outsider, Asne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private,
restricted sphere of the women - including Khan's two wives - and the freer, more public lives of the men. 320 pages
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even
though most girls were uneducated. We see her studying with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university
department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government. She makes clear the political and
personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa and
which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. We see how
Maathai’s extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya’s government into the democracy in which she now
serves as assistant minister for the environment and as a member of Parliament. And we are with her as she accepts the Nobel
Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her “contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace.” 352 pages
Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America by Jennifer Storm \
“Where the hell am I? How did I get here?" Beginning at the age of 12, Jennifer Storm asked herself these questions many
times after waking from alcohol-induced blackouts. During her teens and early twenties, Storm turned to alcohol to deal with the
traumas in her life. In addition to alcohol, she also experimented with drugs, and eventually began using crack to deal with the
deep black hole of sadness, loss, and unworthiness that she felt inside herself. That is, until she awoke in a hospital psych ward
and saw bandages on her wrists. "The doctor came in and said I was a very lucky girl to be alive," she explains, "and for the first
time in my life, I believed it." She agreed to transfer to a rehabilitation center, though she wondered how life would be without
alcohol and drugs. 280 pages
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of
shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with
Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder. In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing
voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own
desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and selfmutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult
and sometimes beautiful life and marriage -- where bipolar always beckons -- is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping
memoir. 299 pages
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir by Jacki Lyden
As an adult, National Public Radio foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden has spent her life on the front lines of some of the world’s
most dangerous war zones. As a child, she lived in a war zone of a different kind. Her mother, Dolores, suffered from what is
now called manic depression; but when Jacki was growing up in a small Midwestern town, Dolores was simply called crazy. In
her manic phases, Dolores became Marie Antoinette or the Queen of Sheba, exotically delusional and frightening, yet to young
Jacki also transcendent, even inspiring. In time, Jacki grew to accept, even relish, Dolores?s bizarre episodes, marveling at her
mother?s creative energy and using it to fuel her own. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and lyrical, this memoir of a mother-daughter
relationship is a testimony to obstinate devotion in the face of bewildering illness. 288 pages
Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer
Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in becoming the second wife to her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron. When the
government raided their community-the Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona-seeking to enforce the penalties for practicing
polygamy, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's family ranch in Mexico. Here they lived in squalor and desolate conditions with
Verlan's six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and children. This appalling and astonishing tale has captured the attention
of readers around the world. Irene's inspirational story reveals how far religion can be stretched and abused and how one woman
and her children found their way out, into truth and redemption. 385 pages
The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood by Elspeth Huxley
In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of
grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases, and discovered—the hard way—the world of the African. With an
extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense of humor, Huxley recalls her childhood on the small farm at a time when
Europeans waged their fortunes on a land that was as harsh as it was beautiful. For a young girl, it was a time of adventure and
freedom, and Huxley paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up among the Masai and Kikuyu people, discovering both the
beauty and the terrors of the jungle, and enduring the rugged realities of the pioneer life. 288 pages
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors by John Densmore
Here is the book that Rolling Stone called "the first Doors biography that feels like it was written for the right reasons, and it is
easily the most informed account of the Doors' brief but brilliant life as a group". 336 pages
Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha N. Beck
As “Mormon royalty” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by
the Church’s high elders in an existence framed by the strictest code of conduct. As an adult, she moved to the east coast, outside
of her Mormon enclave for the first time in her life. When her son was born with Down syndrome, Martha and her husband left
their graduate programs at Harvard to return to Utah, where they knew the supportive Mormon community would embrace them.
But when she was hired to teach at Brigham Young University, Martha was troubled by the way the Church’s elders silenced
dissidents and masked truths that contradicted its published beliefs. Most troubling of all, she was forced to face her history of
sexual abuse by one of the Church’s most prominent authorities. The New York Times bestseller Leaving the Saints chronicles
Martha’s decision to sever her relationship with the faith that had cradled her for so long and to confront and forgive the person
who betrayed her so deeply. 352 pages
Change Me into Zeus's Daughter: A Memoir by Barbara Robinette Moss
Change Me into Zeus's Daughter is a haunting and ultimately triumphant memoir about growing up poor and undaunted in the
South. With an unflinching voice, Barbara Robinette Moss chronicles her family's chaotic, impoverished survival in the red-clay
hills of Alabama. A wild-eyed, alcoholic father and a humble, heroic mother along with a shanty full of rambunctious brothers
and sisters fill her life to the brim with stories that are gripping, tender, and funny. Moss's early fascination with art coincides
with her desire to transform her "twisted mummy face," which grew askew due to malnutrition and lack of medical care. Gazing
at the stars on a clear Alabama night, she wishes to be the "goddess of beauty, much-loved daughter of Zeus." Against all odds,
the image of herself surfaces at last as she learns to believe in the beauty she brings forth from inside. 320 pages
Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland
Borderline Personality Disorder. "What the hell was that?" raged Rachel Reiland when she read the diagnosis written in her
medical chart. As the 29-year old accountant, wife, and mother of young children would soon discover, it was the diagnosis that
finally explained her explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, and self-destructive episodes- including bouts of anorexia,
substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity. With astonishing honesty, Reiland's memoir reveals what mental illness feels like and
looks like from the inside, and how healing from such a devastating disease is possible through intensive therapy and the support
of loved ones. 436 pages
Where Is the Mango Princess?: A Journey Back From Brain Injury by Cathy Crimmins
"Alan's brain got run over by a speedboat," Cathy Crimmins writes. "That last sentence reads like a bad country-western song
lyric, but it's true. It was a silly, horrible, stupid accident." And so begins the harrowing tale of a family vacation gone awry
when a speedboat collides with her husband's small craft, changing their lives forever. Crimmins takes readers inside the drama
with all the right details and interior feelings to keep us fully mesmerized: her 7-year-old daughter's ashen face, her husband's
twitching body, the paramedic's alarming question, "Is your husband one of these people that ordinarily has large pupils?" As
deftly as she takes readers inside this personal story of not-quite recovery -- more like discovery -- she is also able to pan back
and show readers the comedic silver lining (the self-important doctors, the moments of mishaps, and of course, the whereabouts
of the mysterious Mango Princess) that lies within the cloud of her family's tragedy. Anyone who has endured a head trauma or
loved someone who has will be engrossed by this wise and knowledgeable storyteller. The rest of us will have a captivating
lesson about the rejuvenation of the brain as well as the human heart. --Gail Hudson 272 pages
Dream Catcher: A Memoir by Margaret A. Salinger
In her much-anticipated memoir, Margaret A. Salinger writes about life with her famously reclusive father, J.D. Salinger -offering a rare look into the man and the myth, what it is like to be his daughter, and the effect of such a charismatic figure on
the girls and women closest to him. With generosity and insight, Ms. Salinger has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding,
and wise, yet at the same time retains the intimacy of a novel. Her story chronicles an almost cultlike environment of extreme
isolation and early neglect interwoven with times of laughter, joy, and dazzling beauty. Ms. Salinger compassionately explores
the complex dynamics of family relationships. Her story is one that seeks to come to terms with the dark parts of her life that,
quite literally, nearly killed her, and to pass on a life-affirming heritage to her own child. 464 pages
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House by Valerie Plame Wilson
On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed,
"What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in "The New York Times." A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in
his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that
secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of
staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Much has been written about the
"Valerie Plame" story, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now. Some of what has been reported about her has been
frighteningly accurate, serving as a pungent reminder to the Wilsons that their lives are no longer private. And some has been
completely false -- distorted characterizations of Valerie and her husband and their shared integrity.Valerie Wilson retired from
the CIA in January 2006, and now, not only as a citizen but as a wife and mother, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and the
sister of a U.S. marine, she sets the record straight, providing an extraordinary account of her training and experiences, and
answers many questions that have been asked about her covert status, her responsibilities, and her life. As readers will see, the
CIA still deems much of the detail of Valerie's story to be classified. As a service to readers, an afterword by national security
reporter Laura Rozen provides a context for Valerie's own story. 320 pages
The Third Sunrise: A Memoir of Madness by Natalie Jeanne Champagne
"Psychiatrists and I-we do not get on well. They have failed to cure me. I am still damaged and it is for this reason that I am
cheeky and certainly not pleasant. I am hurting. I just want them to fix me. Fix Me." The Third Sunrise takes the reader into a
world that is as terrifying as it is exhilarating: it depicts the life of a young woman who, at the age of twelve, was diagnosed with
early-onset bipolar disorder and spent many years in a psychiatric hospital where she was prescribed cocktails of medications
promising recovery. Recovery never found her, and frightened, she found something else: drugs and alcohol. At the age of
twenty she had devoted her life to addiction and it nearly killed her in the process. Escape wasn't possible: she bathed in the
darkness of cocaine, shook hands with heroin, and relished in the comfort of alcohol. She ceased to exist. The seizures she
suffered at the hands of drugs, the abuse caused by those she invited into her life, and the pain she inflicted on herself and her
family were lost to the underworld of drugs. The Third Sunrise is a confessional, darkly humored, account of life through the
eyes of a woman fighting to find it. 275 pages
The Hospital by the River: A Story of Hope by Catherine Hamlin
When gynecologists Catherine and Reg Hamlin left their home in Australia for Ethiopia, they never dreamed that they would
establish what has been heralded as one of the most incredible medical programs in the modern world. But more than forty years
later, the couple has operated on more than 20,000 women, most of whom suffer from obstetric fistula, a debilitating childbirth
injury. In this awe-inspiring book, Dr. Catherine Hamlin recalls her life and career in Ethiopia. Her unyielding courage and solid
faith will astound Christians worldwide as she talks about the people she has grown to love and the hospital that so many
Ethiopian women have come to depend on. She truly is the Mother Teresa of our age. 308 pages
But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous by Jancee Dunn
The second I stepped through the doors of "Rolling Stone" as a real employee, I wanted to shake off my old personality like the
rigid husk of a cicada. But how could I cultivate a new, hip persona when I lived with my parents in a New Jersey suburb and
wore black leggings as pants? New Jersey in the 1980s had everything Jancee Dunn wanted: trips down the shore, Bruce
Springsteen, a tantalizing array of malls, and, especially, her family. Barreling down the Turnpike in her parents' Buick LeSabre,
her perm brushing the ceiling of the car, she felt ragingly alive. But one night she met a girl who worked at "Rolling Stone"
magazine in New York City. Soon Jancee found herself backstage and behind the scenes, interviewing a countless (and nerveracking) parade of some of the most famous people in the world, among them Madonna, Cameron Diaz, and Beyonce. She
trekked to the Canadian Rockies to hike with Brad Pitt, was chased by paparazzi who mistook her for Ben Affleck's new
girlfriend, snacked on Velveeta with Dolly Parton, and danced drunkenly onstage with the Beastie Boys. She even became a TV
star as a pioneering VJ on MTV2. As her life spun faster, she plunged into the booze-soaked rock-and-roll life, trading her
good-girl suburban past for late nights and hipster guys. But then a chance meeting turned Jancee's life in an unexpected
direction and helped her to finally learn to appreciate where she came from, who she was, and what she wanted to be. 288
Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Raymond Manchester
The nightmares began for William Manchester 23 years after WW II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of a battleweary youth (himself), "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms."
To find out, Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese, and in this book
examines his experiences in the line with his fellow soldiers (his "brothers"). He gives us an honest and unabashedly emotional
account of his part in the war in the Pacific. "The most moving memoir of combat on WW II that I have ever read. A testimony
to the fortitude of man...a gripping, haunting, book." --William L. Shirer 401 pages
Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters by Dick Winters, Cole C. Kingseed
They were called Easy Company—but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered 150%
casualties while liberating Europe—an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters was their commander—"the best
combat leader in World War II" to his men. This is his story—told in his own words for the first time. On D-Day, Dick Winters
parachuted into France and assumed leadership of the Band of Brothers when their commander was killed. He led them through
the Battle of the Bulge and into Germany, by which time each member had been wounded. They liberated an S.S. death camp
from the horrors of the Holocaust and captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat. After briefly serving during the Korean
War, Winters was a highly successful businessman. Beyond Band of Brothers is Winters's memoir—based on his wartime
diary—but it also includes his comrades' untold stories. Virtually all this material is being released for the first time. Only
Winters was present from the activation of Easy Company until the war's end. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, only
he could pen this moving tribute to the human spirit. 320 pages
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer by Nathaniel Fick
If the Marines are “the few, the proud,” Recon Marines are the fewest and the proudest. Nathaniel Fick’s career begins with a
hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth. He leads a platoon in Afghanistan just after 9/11 and advances to
the pinnacle—Recon— two years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such
legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between military ideals and military practice, which can
mock those ideals. In this deeply thoughtful account of what it’s like to fight on today’s front lines, Fick reveals the crushing
pressure on young leaders in combat. Split-second decisions might have national consequences or horrible immediate
repercussions, but hesitation isn’t an option. 400 pages
Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper by Jack Coughlin, Donald A. Davis, Casey Kuhlman
With more than sixty confirmed kills, Jack Coughlin is the Marine Corps' top-ranked sniper. Shooter is his harrowing firstperson account of a sniper's life on and off the modern battlefield. Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin is a divorced father of two who
grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb. At the age of nineteen, although he had never even held a gun, he joined the Marines and
would spend the next twenty years behind the scope of a long-range precision rifle as a sniper. In that time he accumulated one
of the most successful sniper records in the Corps, ranging through many of the world's hotspots. During Operation Iraqi
Freedom alone, he recorded at least thirty-six kills, thirteen of them in a single twenty-four-hour period. Now Coughlin has
written a highly personal story about his deadly craft, taking readers deep inside an invisible society that is off-limits to
outsiders. This is not a heroic battlefield memoir, but the careful study of an exceptional man who must keep his sanity while
carrying forward one of the deadliest legacies in the U.S. military today. 320 pages
The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL by Eric Greitens
The Heart And The Fist shares one man’s story of extraordinary leadership and service as both a humanitarian and a warrior. In a
life lived at the raw edges of the human experience, Greitens has seen what can be accomplished when compassion and courage
come together in meaningful service. As a Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL, Greitens worked alongside volunteers who taught
art to street children in Bolivia and led US Marines who hunted terrorists in Iraq. He’s learned from nuns who fed the destitute in
one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the dying in India, from aid workers who healed orphaned children in Rwanda, and from
Navy SEALs who fought in Afghanistan. He excelled at the hardest military training in the world, and today he works with
severely wounded and disabled veterans who are rebuilding their lives as community leaders at home. 320 pages
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education by Craig M. Mullaney
One haunting afternoon on Losano Ridge in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Captain Craig Mullaney and his infantry platoon were
caught in a deadly firefight with Al Qaeda fighters, when a message came over the radio: one of his soldiers had been killed by
the enemy. Mullaney’s education,the four years he spent at West Point, and the harrowing test of Ranger School, readied him
for a career in the Army. His subsequent experience as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford couldn’t have been further from the Army
and his working-class roots, and yet the unorthodox education he received there would be surprisingly relevant as a combat
leader. Years later, after that excruciating experience in Afghanistan, he would return to the United States to teach history to
future Navy and Marine Corps officers at the Naval Academy. He had been in their position once, not long ago. How would he
use his own life-changing experience to prepare them? 400 pages
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
Weiner spent a decade as a foreign correspondent reporting from such discontented locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.
Unhappy people living in profoundly unstable states, he notes, inspire pathos and make for good copy, but not for good karma.
So Weiner, admitted grump and self-help book aficionado, undertook a year's research to travel the globe, looking for the
"unheralded happy places." The result is this book, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and philosophical, a journey into both the
definition of and the destination for true contentment. But the question remains: What makes people happy? Is it the freedom of
the West or the myriad restrictions of Singapore? The simple ashrams of India or the glittering shopping malls of Qatar?
From the youthful drunkenness of Iceland to the despond of Slough, a sad but resilient town in Heathrow's flight path, Weiner
offers wry yet profound observations about the way people relate to circumstance and fate. 329 pages
Trucking in English by Carolyn Steele
Almost Ice Road Truckers, except for the tulip bulbs... "So here's the plan. I'm going to train to drive a truck and go long-haul. I
can get paid and maybe write a book at the same time. What do you reckon?" "Go for it Mum, how bad can it be?" This is the
tale of what happens when a middle-aged mum from England decides to actually drive 18-wheelers across North America
instead of just dreaming about it. From early training (when it becomes apparent that negotiating 18 wheels and 13 gears
involves slightly more than just learning how to climb in) this rookie overcomes self-doubt, infuriating companions and
inconsiderate weather to become a real trucker. She learns how to hit a moose correctly and how to be hijacked. She is almost
arrested in Baltimore Docks and survives a terrifying winter tour of The Rockies. Nothing goes well, but that's why there's a
book. 354 pages
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota by Chuck Klosterman
Empirically proving that -- no matter where you are -- kids wanna rock, this is Chuck Klosterman's hilrious memoir of growing
up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakotoa (population: 498). With a voice like Ace Frehley's guitar, Klosterman
hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Mötley
Crüe's Shout at the Devil. The fifth-grade Chuck wasn't quite ready to rock -- his hair was too short and his farm was too quiet -but he still found a way to bang his nappy little head. Before the journey was over, he would slow-dance to Poison, sleep
innocently beneath satanic pentagrams, lust for Lita Ford, and get ridiculously intellectual about Guns N' Roses. C'mon and feel
his noize. 288 pages
I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell
The New York Times bestselling, darkly funny memoirof a young New Yorker's daring dual life--advertising art director by day,
glitter-dripping drag queen and nightclub beauty-pageant hopeful by night--was asmash literary debut for Josh Kilmer-Purcell,
now known for his popular PlanetGreen television series The Fabulous Beekman Boys.His story begins here--before the
homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gatheredhoneys, before his memoir of the city mouse's move to the country, TheBucolic
Plague--in I Am Not Myself These Days, with "plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight"
(WashingtonPost). 305 pages
The Aqua Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town by Jennifer Niven
Jennifer Niven quit her job as a television producer to write the true story of a doomed 1913 Arctic expedition in her first book,
The Ice Master, which was named one of the top ten nonfiction books by Entertainment Weekly, and won the Barnes & Noble
Discover Award. She received high praise for her follow- up arctic adventure, Ada Blackjack, which detailed the life of one
woman who overcame enormous odds to survive. Now, Niven tells a survival tale of a different kind; her own thrilling,
excruciating, amazing, and utterly unforgettable adventure in a midwestern high school during the 1980s. Richmond, Indiana,
was a place where people knew their neighbors and went to church on Sundays. It also had only one high school with 2,500
students, and for both the students and the townspeople, it was the center of the universe. In The Aqua-Net Diaries, Niven takes
readers through her adolescent years in full, glorious—and hilarious—detail, sharing awkward moments from the first day of
school, to driver’s ed, and her first love, against a backdrop of bad 1980s fashion and big hair 336 pages
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto
In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his
gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine -- and a total failure. "As Nature Made Him" tells
the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male.
A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's -- and one family's -- amazing survival
in the face of terrible odds. 320 pages
Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein
While she is pregnant with twins, one sentence uttered by her doctor sends Stephanie Klein reeling: "You need to gain fifty
pounds." Instantly, an adolescence filled with insecurity and embarrassment comes flooding back. Though she is determined to
gain the weight for the health of her babies--even if it means she'll "weigh more than a Honda"--she can only express her deep
fear by telling her doctor simply, "I used to be fat." Klein was an eighth grader with a weight problem. It was a problem at
school, where the boys called her "Moose," and it was a problem at home, where her father reminded her, "No one likes fat
girls." After many frustrating sessions with a nutritionist known as the fat doctor of Roslyn Heights, Long Island, Klein's parents
enrolled her for a summer at fat camp. Determined to return to school thin and popular, without her "lard arms" and "puckered
ham," Stephanie embarked on a memorable journey that would shape more than just her body. It would shape her life. Calling
upon her childhood diary entries, Klein reveals her deepest thoughts and feelings from that turbulent, hopeful time, baring her
soul and making her heartache palpable. 320 pages
Living with Evil by Cynthia Owen
Cynthia Owen grew up in Ireland, went to the local convent school, said her prayers and took her first communion with all the
other girls in her class. But behind the façade of respectability lurked a hideous reality. Cynthia was just eight years old when
she was sexually abused by her father amongst others. Shortly before her eleventh birthday she was made pregnant and, minutes
after giving birth to the baby, Cynthia watched in horror as her own mother murdered the tiny infant, named Noleen, by
repeatedly stabbing her with a knitting needle. Cynthia’s mother then wrapped the baby girl in a plastic bag, dumped her in an
alleyway and made her daughter go back to school and pretend nothing had ever happened. After enduring many more years of
rape and violence, Cynthia came forward and reported her abuse and Noleen’s death. Finally, in 2007, after a fifteen-year legal
fight to have her baby girl formally identified, the jury at the ‘Dun Laoghaire Baby’ inquest declared that the baby found dead in
an alleyway thirty-four years previously was Noleen Murphy, the daughter of Cynthia Owen. Cynthia’s is a horrific story of
brutality and loss, but ultimately, it is an account of love, immense bravery and her fight for justice in Noleen’s name. 312 pages
Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein
At just twenty-four, Amy Silverstein was your typical type-A law student: smart, driven, and highly competitive. With a budding
romance and a heavy academic schedule, Silverstein did not have time for illness—even one that caused her to black out and
suffer temporary blindness. When her family doctor suggested her symptoms were due to stress and diet, she was happy to think
calm thoughts and eat fistfuls of salt. At such a young age, how could she have guessed that her heart was about to give out?
Silverstein presents a patient’s perspective that is fierce, provocative, and sometimes controversial, allowing readers to live her
nightmare from the inside—an unforgettable experience that is both painfully disturbing and utterly compelling. 304 pages
Tales from the Teachers' Lounge: What I Learned in School the Second Time Around—One Man's Irreverent Look at Being
a Teacher Today by Robert Wilder
Wilder was twenty-six when he found his true calling. Leaving a lucrative advertising career in New York, he got a job as an
assistant first-grade teacher at a Santa Fe alternative school—and never looked back. Now he brings his unique perspective—as
a teacher, parent, and former student—to a series of laugh-out-loud essays that show teaching at its most absurd…and most
rewarding. With brutal candor he chronicles his own lively adventures in modern education, from navigating cutthroat
kindergarten sign-ups to subbing for a class experiment gone wrong–and dares to tell about it. He shares the surprising lessons
he’s learned in the trenches of his profession, including how to bribe a four-year-old (his own) to stop swearing in a Lutheran
preschool and the best way to teach moody teenagers…manage “helicopter” parents…and cope with bullies—whether of the
school-yard, Internet, or parental kind. 320 pages
Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things) by Abby Sher
Until the age of ten, Abby Sher was a happy child in a fun-loving, musical family. But when her father and favorite aunt pass
away, Abby fills the void of her loss with rituals: kissing her father's picture over and over each night, washing her hands,
counting her steps, and collecting sharp objects that she thinks could harm innocent pedestrians. Then she begins to pray. At first
she repeats the few phrases she remembers from synagogue, but by the time she is in high school, Abby is spending hours
locked in her closet, urgently reciting a series of incantations and pleas. If she doesn't, she is sure someone else will die, too. The
patterns from which she cannot deviate become her shelter and her obsession. In college Abby is diagnosed with obsessivecompulsive disorder, and while she accepts this as an explanation for the counting and kissing and collecting, she resists labeling
her fiercest obsession, certain that her prayers and her relationship with G-d are not an illness but the cure. She also discovers a
new passion: performing comedy. She is never happier than when she dons a wig and makes people laugh. Offstage, however,
she remains unable to confront the fears that drive her. She descends into darker compulsions, starving and cutting herself,
measuring every calorie and incision. It is only when her earliest, deepest fear is realized that Abby is forced to examine and
redefine the terms of her faith and her future. 303 pages
Yes Man by Danny Wallace
Recently single, Danny Wallace was falling into loneliness and isolation. When a stranger on a bus advises, "Say yes more,"
Wallace vows to say yes to every offer, invitation, challenge, and chance. In Yes Man, Wallace recounts his months-long
commitment to complete openness with profound insight and humbling honesty. Saying yes takes Wallace into a new plane of
existence: a place where money comes as easily as it goes, nodding a lot can lead to a long weekend overseas with new friends,
and romance isn't as complicated as it seems. Yes eventually leads to the biggest question of all: "Do you, Danny Wallace, take
this woman . . ." 371 pages
Gonville: A Memoir by Peter Birkenhead
In powerful and spirited prose, Peter Birkenhead recounts a childhood spent trying to make sense of his father, a terrifying,
charismatic presence who brutalized his family physically and emotionally at the same time that he enchanted them with his
passion and whimsy. An avid gun collector yet an anti-war activist, a popular economics professor and a wife-swapping nudist, a
leftist and a lifelong fan of the British Empire who would occasionally don an authentic pith helmet and imitate Michael Caine’s
performance as the heroic Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in the bloody war film Zulu, he was a man who could knock his young
son down the stairs one day and the next cry about putting the family’s aged dog to sleep. Such is the contradictory figure at the
center of this astonishingly candid and shocking memoir. As a young adult, Birkenhead reacted to his volatile childhood by
forgetting its worst moments. He adopted all the trappings of normalcy, threw himself into a career as an actor, landing parts in
Broadway plays like Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, both by Neil Simon, and found himself often playing
characters who were angry at their fathers. Yet he discovered that he was sleepwalking through life, on occasion falling into
rages that reminded him of his father. Then at thirty-one, eleven years after his parents’ divorce, Birkenhead told his mother
about his recurring dream of flying down the stairs of their house as a young boy. She revealed that it wasn’t a dream, but a
memory from his early childhood of being carried rapidly down the stairs by his mom after his father had pointed a gun at them.
The revelation about the dream sparked the painful yet necessary process of examining his childhood and of ultimately moving
beyond it, forcing Birkenhead to finally confront his father in a way that released him and his family from this complicated
legacy. 272 pages
Long Past Stopping: A Memoir by Oran Canfield
Oran Canfield--son of self-help guru and Chicken Soup for the Soul "creator Jack Canfield--tells his surreal story of growing up
in Long Past Stopping. "In this remarkable memoir, writing with a wry and cutting edge, Canfield relates tales of a childhood in
flux--being buffeted about among family friends, relatives, rebels, and born-again circus clowns, in an anarchist private school,
communes, and libertarian enclaves--and of a young adulthood spent among the ruins of heroin addiction. Long Past Stopping
"is Oran Canfield's often hilariously harrowing tale of surviving life in the strange lane. 336 pages
Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania by Andy Behrman
Electroboy is an emotionally frenzied memoir that reveals with kaleidoscopic intensity the terrifying world of manic depression.
For years Andy Behrman hid his raging mania behind a larger-than-life personality. He sought a high wherever he could find
one and changed jobs the way some people change outfits: filmmaker, PR agent, art dealer, stripper-whatever made him feel like
a cartoon character, invincible and bright. Misdiagnosed by psychiatrists and psychotherapists for years, his condition exacted a
terrible price: out-of-control euphoric highs and tornado-like rages of depression that put his life in jeopardy. Ignoring his
crescendoing illness, Behrman struggled to keep up appearances, clinging to the golden-boy image he had cultivated in his
youth. But when he turned to art forgery, he found himself the subject of a scandal lapped up by the New York media, then
incarcerated, then under house arrest. And for the first time the golden boy didn’t have a ready escape hatch from his unraveling
life. Ingesting handfuls of antidepressants and tranquilizers and feeling his mind lose traction, he opted for the last resort:
electroshock therapy. 304 pages
Swallow the Ocean by Laura M. Flynn
Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters' imaginations, particularly Laura's. Without warning, life as
they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Whether it was accusing Laura’s father of trying to win her over
to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter
as Laura’s early years passed. Once her husband left the family and filed for divorce, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest, and
the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother had taught them in order to deflect danger. Set in 1970s San
Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is a searing, beautifully written memoir of a childhood under siege and three young girls
determined to survive. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic
childhood. 304 pages
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks
Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she's an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould
School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis -and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life. Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in
sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she
reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and
terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital. Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night,
during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken
to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent
the next five months in a psychiatric ward. 352 pages
The Hypocrisy of Disco by Clane Hayward
Born in San Francisco just before the Summer of Love, Clane Hayward grew up on hippie communes throughout the west. Her
poignantly funny, sometimes melancholy, and always riveting memoir recounts her extraordinary life up until her thirteenth
birthday. School was a particularly happy eventit meant a hot lunch and clothes that matched! But Clane's mother warned her
that schools are just zoos run by the government. From a world of complex relationships, uncertain rules and constant surprises,
Clane forged a childhood, sometimes with, sometimes without her bong-puffing, Buddha-quoting,macrobiotic mother and her
wild-haired, redneck father. The Hypocrisy of Disco is an honest, direct, and truly unforgettable tale, and a tribute to the
resilience of youth. 256 pages
My Sister from the Black Lagoon : A Novel of My Life by Laurie Fox
"I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts."So begins My Sister
from the Black Lagoon, Laurie Fox's incandescent novel of growing up absurd. Lorna Person's tale is wrested from the shadows
cast by her sister, Lonnie, whose rages command the full attention of her parents. Their San Fernando Valley household is offkey and out of kilter, a place where Lonnie sees evil in the morning toast and runs into the Burbank hills to join the animals that
seem more like her kin. Lorna, on the other hand, is an acutely sensitive girl who can't relate to Barbie. "Could Barbie feel
sorrow? Could Barbie understand what it's like to be plump, lonely, Jewish?"My Sister from the Black Lagoon is a wisecracked
bell jar, a heartbreaking study of sane and crazy. Laurie Fox's delightful voice is knowing yet wide-eyed, lyrical, and witty. 336
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute.
A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told
that he had throat cancer and was expected to die. Small, a prize-winning children’s author, re-creates a life story that might have
been imagined by Kafka. Readers will be riveted by his journey from speechless victim, subjected to X-rays by his radiologist
father and scolded by his withholding and tormented mother, to his decision to flee his home at sixteen with nothing more than
dreams of becoming an artist. Recalling Running with Scissors with its ability to evoke the trauma of a childhood
lost, Stitches will transform adolescent and adult readers alike with its deeply liberating vision. 329 pages
Hell Bent for Leather: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict by Seb Hunter
Seb Hunter wasn't just a heavy metal fan. He was a blind devotee who threw away his education and future prospects to become
a rock star. In Hell Bent for Leather, he reaches into the most embarrassing depths of the family photo album to reveal his
Wayne's World-esque teen years, taking readers on a (very loud) musical journey from his first guitar to his first gig and on,
through groupies, girlfriends, too many drugs, spiraling egos, musical differences, and finally, the end of the dream -- and a
much-needed haircut.In this nostalgic look at heavy metal culture, Seb Hunter has given us a moving portrait of adolescence and
chasing your dream, reminding us all that it's better to have lost in rock than never to have rocked at all.This P.S. edition features
an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. 352 pages
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield
The author of the national bestseller Love is a Mix Tape returns, with a different-but equally personal and equally universal- spin
on music as memory. "No rock critic-living or dead, American or otherwise-has ever written about pop music with the
evocative, hyperpoetic perfectitude of Rob Sheffield." So said Chuck Klosterman about Love is a Mix Tape, Sheffield's paean to
a lost love via its soundtrack. Now, in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield shares the soundtrack to his eighties
adolescence. When he turned 13 in 1980, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music and himself, and in Talking
to Girls About Duran Duran we get a glimpse into his transformation from pasty, geeky "hermit boy" into a young man with his
first girlfriend, his first apartment, and a sense of the world. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies; the era of
big dreams and bigger shoulder pads; and, like any all-American boy, this one was searching for true love and maybe a cooler
haircut. It's all here: Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Members Only jackets. Girls, every last one of
whom seems to be madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. Sheffield's coming-of-age story is one that we all know, with
a playlist that any child of the eighties or anyone who just loves music will sing along with. These songs-and Sheffield's writingwill remind readers of that first kiss, that first car, and the moments that shaped their lives. 288 pages
My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music by Leon Fleisher, Anne Midgette
The pianist Leon Fleisher—whose student–teacher lineage linked him to Beethoven by way of his instructor, Artur Schnabel—
displayed an exceptional gift from his earliest years. And then, like the hero of a Greek tragedy, he was struck down in his
prime: at thirty-six years old, he suddenly and mysteriously became unable to use two fingers of his right hand. It is not just
Fleisher’s thirty-year search for a cure that drives this remarkable memoir. With his coauthor, celebrated music critic Anne
Midgette, the pianist explores the depression that engulfed him as his condition worsened and, perhaps most powerfully of all,
the sheer love of music that rescued him from complete self-destruction. Miraculously, at the age of sixty-six, Fleisher was
diagnosed with focal dystonia, and cured by experimental Botox injections. In 2003, he returned to Carnegie Hall to give his first
two-handed recital in over three decades, bringing down the house. 325 pages
Mrs. Bland’s Recommendations of Titles Held at the PR Library: DOUBLE
CHECK FOR LENGTH
Abeel, Samantha, 1977-. My thirteenth winter : a memoir. 1st ed. New York : Orchard Books, 2003.
A memoir in which Samantha Abeel discusses her life before and after being diagnosed with the math-related learning disability
discalculia in seventh grade.
Angelou, Maya. All God's children need traveling shoes. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York : Vintage Books, 1987, c1986.
Relates the author's personal narrative of the time she spent in Ghana with other Black American expatriates.
Barron, Judy. There's a boy in here. Arlington, Tex. : Future Horizons, 2002.
Judy Barron chronicles her son's battle with autism, discussing how she and the other members of the family learned to deal with
his outbursts and special challenges.
Blunt, Judy. Breaking clean. 1st ed. New York : Knopf :, 2002.
The author recalls her Montana homesteader childhood, which involved hard physical labor and the stifling of female opinions,
and describes her departure to study writing and her eventual return home, explaining how she managed to reconcile the two
worlds.
Cox, Lynne, 1957-. Swimming to Antarctica : tales of a long-distance swimmer. 1st ed. New York : A.A. Knopf :, 2004.
Distance swimmer Lynne Cox describes her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the mythical act of swimming itself,
and chronicles some of her more memorable swims.
Digges, Deborah. The Stardust Lounge : stories from a boy's adolescence. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books,
2002, 2001.
A mother recalls her son Stephen's turbulent adolescence--filled with gangs, crime, and instability--and describes the steps she
took to understand his thoughts, feelings, and actions and bring him back into a safe realm.
Fox, Paula. Borrowed finery : a memoir. 1st ed. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
A memoir in which Paula Fox recalls her youth, telling of how she was rescued from an orphanage by her Cuban grandmother
after being placed there shortly after her birth, discussing her stable early life with a bachelor minister, and tracing the ensuing
years moving from home to home at the whim of her unstable, mostly absent parents.
Franks, Tommy, 1945-. American soldier. 1st ed. New York : Regan Books, 2004.
Presents a memoir in which Tommy Franks, Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000
through July 2003, recalls his life, discussing his childhood and military career, and providing a behind-the-scenes look at the
War on Terrorism.
Glenn, John, 1921-. John Glenn : a memoir. New York : Bantam Books, 1999.
A memoir in which John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, tells the story of his life, from his childhood in
New Concord, Ohio, to his return to space in 1998 at age seventy-seven as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle.
Golabek, Mona. The children of Willesden Lane : beyond the Kindertransport : a memoir of music, love, and survival.
New York : Warner Books, 2002.
World-renowned concert pianist Mona Golabek shares her mother's journey through World War II and of the extraordinary gift
that became her enduring legacy to her daughter, the gift of music.
Gottlieb, Lori. Stick figure : a diary of my former self. Berkley trade pbk. ed. New York : Berkley Books, 2001, 2000.
The author shares her childhood diaries, chronicling her experiences as an eleven-year-old anorexic.
Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a face. 1st Perennial ed. New York : Perennial, 2003, 1994.
A memoir in which award-winning poet Lucy Grealy recalls her experiences with a potentially terminal cancer that required she
have a third of her jaw removed when she was nine years old, and discusses the suffering she endured as she was growing up
from classmates, strangers, and other people because of her looks.
Greene, Bob. Duty : a father, his son, and the man who won the war. 1st ed. New York : Morrow, 2000.
While visiting his dying father, the author meets Paul Tibbets, the man who flew the "Enola Gay" and dropped the atomic bomb
on Hiroshima, and learns about his father's generation's sense of honor and duty.
Griffith, Gail, 1950-. Will's choice : a suicidal teen, a desperate mother, and a chronicle of recovery. 1st ed. New York :
HarperCollins, 2005.
Gail Griffith chronicles her efforts to save her teenage son from the throes of teen depression, sharing how her son's suicide
attempt impacted their family and her own feelings of self-worth.
Hamilton, Bethany. Soul surfer : a true story of faith, family, and fighting to get back on the board. 1st MTV
Books/Pocket Books hardcover ed. New York : Pocket Books/MTV Books, 2004.
Bethany Hamilton shares the story of her lifelong love of surfing, and tells how she was able to recover and return to
competition with the help of her family, friends, and faith, after losing her arm in a shark attack at the age of thirteen.
Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, 1969-. Infidel. 1st Free Press trade pbk. ed. New York : Free Press, 2008.
Raised in a strict Muslim family, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout
believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries ruled largely by despots. Today
she is a distinguished political superstar and champion of free speech.
Jacobs, A. J., 1968-. The know-it-all : one man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world. New York :
Simon & Schuster, 2004.
National Public Radio contributor A.J. Jacobs chronicles his seemingly impossible quest to read the "Encyclopaedia Britannica"
from A to Z and discusses how his quest impacted every aspect of his life.
Kahn, Sy Myron, 1924-. Between tedium and terror : a soldier's World War II diary, 1943-45. Urbana : University of
Illinois Press, 1993.
The personal journal of a young American soldier relating his wartime experiences in the South Pacific.
Kincaid, Jamaica. My brother. 1st ed. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.
A memoir in which the author recounts the death of her brother at the age of thirty-three from AIDS, and recalls incidents from
his life, and the lives of other family members on the island of Antigua.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The woman warrior : memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts. Vintage International ed. New York :
Vintage International, 1989, 1976.
A memoir of the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants who lived within the traditions and fears of the Chinese past as
well as the realities of the alien modern American culture.
Lobel, Anita. No pretty pictures : a child of war. 1st ed. New York : Greenwillow Books, 1998.
The author, known as an illustrator of children's books, describes her experiences as a Polish Jew during World War II and for
years in Sweden afterwards.
McBride, James, 1957-. The color of water : a black man's tribute to his white mother. New York : Riverhead Books, 1996.
An African-American male tells of his mother, a white woman, who refused to admit her true identity.
McCain, John, 1936-. Faith of my fathers. 1st Perennial ed. New York : Perennial, 2000, 1999.
Congressman John McCain explains how he learned about life and honor from his grandfather and father, both four-star
admirals in the U.S. Navy.
McCourt, Frank. Teacher man : a memoir. New York : Scribner, 2005.
Celebrated American author Frank McCourt recounts his thirty-year teaching career, and describes some of his unconventional
teaching methods that have left an impact of his students.
McCourt, Frank. 'Tis : a memoir. New York : Scribner, 1999.
Frank McCourt, author of the childhood memoir "Angela's Ashes," shares the story of his life as an American immigrant,
discussing his experiences from the age of nineteen when he landed in New York, to his eventual success as a teacher and writer.
Michener, Anna J., 1977-. Becoming Anna : the autobiography of a sixteen-year-old. Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago
Press, 1998.
The author tells the story of her childhood of extreme physical and mental abuse at the hands of her parents and grandmother,
discussing the years she was forced to live in the garage, her stays at mental institutions after being committed by her mother,
and her eventual placement with loving, accepting guardians.
Myers, Walter Dean, 1937-. Bad boy : a memoir. 1st ed. New York : HarperCollins, 2001.
Author Walter Dean Myers describes his childhood in Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s, discussing his loving stepmother, his
problems in school, his reasons for leaving home, and his beginnings as a writer.
Novac, Ana. The beautiful days of my youth : my six months in Auschwitz and Plaszow. New York : Henry Holt, 1997.
Diary of Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps survivor Ana Novac written in 1944 from June to November.
Opdyke, Irene Gut, 1921-. In my hands : memories of a Holocaust rescuer. 1st ed. New York : A. Knopf :, 1999.
Recounts the experiences of the author who, as a young Polish girl, hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust.
Paulsen, Gary. Guts : the true stories behind Hatchet and the Brian books. New York : Dell Laurel-Leaf, [2002], 2001.
The author relates incidents in his life and how they inspired parts of his books about the character, Brian Robeson.
Paulsen, Gary. Pilgrimage on a steel ride : a memoir about men and motorcycles. 1st ed. New York : Harcourt Brace &
Co., 1997.
A memoir in which the author describes the mid-life catharsis he experienced when he purchased a Harley-Davidson at the age
of fifty-seven and embarked upon a long ride from his home in New Mexico to Alaska.
Paulsen, Gary. Woodsong. New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1990.
For a rugged outdoor man and his family, life in northern Minnesota is a wild experience involving wolves, deer, and the sled
dogs that make their way of life possible. Includes an account of the author's first Iditarod, a dogsled race across Alaska.
Poitier, Sidney. The measure of a man : a spiritual autobiography. 1st ed. [San Francisco, Calif.] : HarperSanFrancisco,
2000.
Recounts actor Sidney Poitier's public and private life as he broke racial barriers to launch a pioneering acting career playing
characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition. Includes photographs.
Rio, Linda M. The anorexia diaries : a mother and daughter's triumph over teenage eating disorders. [Emmaus, Pa.] :
Rodale ;, 2003.
Presents selections from the diaries of mother and daughter Linda and Tara Rio that provide insights into their thoughts and
feelings in the years before Tara developed an eating disorder and continuing through her treatment and therapy, and includes
advice and commentary from Craig Johnson, Ph.D., president of the National Eating Disorders Association.
Runyon, Brent. The burn journals. 1st ed. New York : Knopf :, 2004.
Presents the true story of Brent Runyon, who at fourteen set himself on fire and sustained burns over eighty percent of his body
and describes the months of physical and mental rehabilitation that followed as he attempted to pull his life together.
Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967. Always the young strangers. 1st Harvest/HBJ ed. San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.
Carl Sandburg recalls his childhood in Galesburg, Illinois.
Shah, Saira. The storyteller's daughter. 1st American ed. New York : Alfred A. Knopf :, 2003.
Saira Shah reflects on how being the English-born daughter of an Afghan aristocrat impacted her life and led her to rediscover
the history of her people.
Shyer, Marlene Fanta. Not like other boys : growing up gay : a mother and son look back. Boston : Houghton Mifflin,
1996.
Mother and son memoir discussing how each dealt with the issue of the son's homosexuality.
Siegal, Aranka. Upon the head of the goat : a childhood in Hungary, 1939-1944. New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, c1981.
Nine-year-old Piri describes the bewilderment of being a Jewish child during the 1939-1944 German occupation of her
hometown (then in Hungary and now in the Ukraine) and relates the ordeal of trying to survive in the ghetto.
Simon, Rachel, 1959-. Riding the bus with my sister : a true life journey. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Rachel Simon chronicles the experiences she had and shares the lessons she learned during the year she spent riding the bus
which her mentally handicapped sister rides on each day.