In the tradition of The Promise of a Pencil and Kisses from Katie comes an inspirational memoir by the founder of Comfort Cases about his turbulent childhood in the foster care system and the countless obstacles and discrimination he endured in adopting his four children. Rob Scheer never thought that he would be living the life he is now. He's happily married to his partner and love of his life, he's the father of four beautiful children, and he's the founder of an organization that makes life better for thousands of children in the foster care system. But life wasn't always like this. Growin... View More...
This is a beautifully ragged, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable book. --San Francisco Chronicle National Bestseller Pulitzer Prize Finalist A book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together. A ... View More...
A Man Named Dave, which has sold over 1 million copies, is the gripping conclusion to Dave Pelzer's inspirational and New York Times bestselling trilogy of memoirs that began with A Child Called It and The Lost Boy.All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself. These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality, denying him food and clothing, torturing him i... View More...
A Man Named Dave, which has sold over 1 million copies, is the gripping conclusion to Dave Pelzer's inspirational and New York Times bestselling trilogy of memoirs that began with A Child Called It and The Lost Boy.All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself. These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality, denying him food and clothing, torturing him i... View More...
He has been called the most trusted man in America. His 60-year-long journalistic career has spanned the Great Depression, several wars, and the extraordinary changes that have engulfed our nation over the last two-thirds of the 20th century. When Walter Cronkite advised his television audience in 1968 that the war in Vietnam could not be won, President Lyndon B. Johnson said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Now, at the age of eighty, Cronkite has written his life story--the personal and professional odyssey of the original "anchorman" for whom that very word was coined. As ... View More...
Mike Kersjes always believed that his students could do anything--even attend the prestigious Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where some of America's best and brightest high school students compete in a variety of activities similar to those experienced by NASA astronauts training for space shuttle missions. The challenge was convincing everyone else that the kids in his special education class, with disabilities including Tourette's syndrome, Down's syndrome, dyslexia, eating disorders, and a variety of emotional problems, would benefit from the experience and succeed. In A Smile as Big as... View More...
All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separ... View More...
Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Irelan... View More...
" "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."" So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Y... View More...
Take Indiana Jones, mix in a dash of Marlon Perkins, a bit of Jack Hanna, and a pinch of Dr. Dolittle, and you get Dr. William Karesh, wildlife veterinarian and adventurer extraordinaire. From the jungles of the Amazon, to the golden savannas of Africa, to the rocky shores of Patagonia, Dr. Karesh plies an extraordinary craft. A healer of international renown, his patients are often as ferociously toothed as riley are difficult to subdue. A man whose commitment to conservation is as fierce as the landscapes and animals he encounters, his exploits put fictional characters to shame. Whether comb... View More...
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY - OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK - NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER - ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America--the first African American to serve in that role--she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in his... View More...
In her powerful and inspiring memoir, Cookie Johnson, wife of NBA legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson, shares details of her marriage, motherhood, faith, and how an HIV diagnosis twenty-five years ago changed the course of their lives forever. On November 7, 1991, basketball icon Earvin "Magic" Johnson stunned the world with the news that he was HIV-positive. For the millions who watched, his announcement became a pivotal moment not only for the nation, but for his family and wife. Twenty-five years later, Cookie Johnson shares her story and the emotional journey that started on that day--from life ... View More...
In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out. This wonderfully frank and perceptive memoir describes the perils and ambiguities of that double role, in which failing calculus and winning a student election could both be interpreted as betrayals of one's skin... View More...
A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure -- the sober life she never wanted.For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was the gasoline of all adventure. She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened twenty-first-century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life. What did I s... View More...
Christopher (Kit) Lukas's mother committed suicide when he was a boy. He and his brother, Tony, were not told how she died. The family's history of depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide stretched back years, but no one spoke of it. The legacy of guilt and grief haunted Kit and Tony throughout their lives. Both brothers achieved remarkable success, Tony as a gifted journalist, Kit as an accomplished television producer and director. After suffering bouts of depression, Kit was able to confront his family's troubled past, drawing on his experience to write Silent Grief, an invaluable guide t... View More...
Whoopi pulls no punches in this hilarious and thought-provoking volume of wit, wisdom and outrageous personal observations.Here's the world according to Whoopi, as the beloved performer treats her multitude of fans to her views on everything from fame to welfare reform to the presidency; from growing up to the Pope to Hollywood to sex. View More...
In her revealing bestseller Call Me Anna, Patty Duke shared her long-kept secret: the talented, Oscar-winning actress who won our hearts on The Patty Duke Show was suffering from a serious-but-treatable-mental illness called manic depression. For nearly twenty years, until she was correctly diagnosed at age thirty-five, she careened between periods of extreme euphoria and debilitating depression, prone to delusions and panic attacks, temper tantrums, spending sprees, and suicide attempts. Now in A Brilliant Madness Patty Duke joins with medical reporter Gloria Hochman to shed light on this po... View More...
After a heart and lung transplant operation, dancer Claire Sylvia discovered that new organs were not the only thing she inherited. Never having liked such foods as beer and chicken nuggets, she suddenly started craving them. After an extraordinary dream, she seeks out the family of her donor -- a teenaged boy who died in a motorcycle accident -- and learns that it is indeed possible for two souls to merge in one body. This is a story that must be told and heard...a fascinating example of how cellular memory can outlive physical death. -- Deepak Chopra, M.D. View More...
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with... View More...
The #1 New York Times bestselling follow-up to Eat Pray Love--an intimate and erudite celebration of love from the author of Big Magic and City of Girls. At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous bad divorces. Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form... View More...
You've heard the stories about the dark side of the internet -- hackers, #gamergate, anonymous mobs attacking an unlucky victim, and revenge porn -- but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you. Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. She is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts; stole nude p... View More...
The bestselling author of Shadow Divers returns with a riveting story of exploration, mystery, and the discovery of an unknown world--this time about one man's incredible odyssey from blindness into sight. View More...
A MIDLIFE QUEST FOR THE GRAIL AND THE GODDESSDr Jean Shinoda Bolen's extraordinary memoir celebrates the pilgrimage that heralded her spiritual awakening and leads readers down the path of self-discovery. In this account of her journey to Europe in search of the sacred feminine, she unveils the mythological significance of the midlife search for meaning and renewal. Bolen] charts a path that will lead many readers to the heart of their own emotional and spiritual pilgrimages.SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEWThis wise and challenging work, the most personal of Jean Shinoda Bolen's books, is a... View More...
Es kia Mphahlele s seminal memoir of life in apartheid South Africa available for the first time in Penguin Classics Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969, Es kia Mphahlele is considered the Dean of African Letters and the father of black South African writing. Down Second Avenue is a landmark book that describes Mphahlele s experience growing up in segregated South Africa. Vivid, graceful, and unapologetic, it details a daily life of severe poverty and brutal police surveillance under the subjugation of an apartheid regime. Banned in South Africa after its original 1959 publication for its pr... View More...
Along with Pound, Eliot, and Joyce, Edward Estlin Cummings is one of the leading American poets who revolutionized literary expression in the twentieth century. He was also a Cubist painter, a champion of the little man, a brilliant conversationalist, a romantic idealist, a famous irrational curmudgeon, and husband to three of the most beautiful women of his time. This critical biography merges these various selves into one fascinating life story, many chapters of which could be mistaken for a great romantic novel. In following Cummings's development as a poet, it also includes a large number ... View More...
This wonderful and enchanting memoir tells the revelatory true story of one Muslim girl's life in her family's French Moroccan harem, set against the backdrop of World War II (The New York Times Book Review). I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco . . . So begins Fatima Mernissi in this illuminating narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth -- women who, without access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer i... View More...
