Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Translation In March 2015, Naja Marie Aidt's twenty-five-year-old son, Carl, died in a tragic accident. When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back chronicles the few first years after that devastating phone call. It is at once a sober account of life after losing a child and an exploration of the language of poetry, loss, and love. Intensely moving, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back explores what is it to be a family, what it is to love and lose, and what it is to treasure life in spite of death's indomitable resolve.... View More...
"A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style."--Maya Angelou "In America, we have a tradition of black writers whose autobiographies and memoirs come to define an era. . . . Buck may be this generation's story."--NPR A coming-of-age story about navigating the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family, Buck shares the story of a generation through one original and riveting voice. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: his mother a dancer, his father a revered professor. But as a teenager, MK was alone on the streets of Nort... View More...
The Russian writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940) is acknowledged to be one of the great masters of 20th century literature, hailed as a genius by such critics as Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. The work for which he is best known is a cycle of stories called Red Cavalry, which depicts the exploits of the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and is based on Babel's experiences as he rode with the Cossacks during the campaign. Babel kept a diary during this period, in which he recorded the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike towards the ... View More...
A dramatic narrative account of the life of William Juneboy Outlaw III, whose journey from housing-project youth to ruthless gangland kingpin to change-making community advocate represents a vital next chapter in the ongoing conversation about race and social justice in AmericaWhen he was in his early twenties, William Juneboy Outlaw III was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a ... View More...
An NPR Best Book of the YearA Daily Candy Best Book of the Year Julian Barnes, author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Sense of an Ending, gives us his most powerfully moving book yet, beginning in the nineteenth century and leading seamlessly into an entirely personal account of loss--making Levels of Life an immediate classic on the subject of grief. Levels of Life is a book about ballooning, photography, love and loss; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded Barnes the 2011 Booker Prize described him as "an unp... View More...
In the tradition of The Glass Castle, two sisters confront schizophrenia in this New York Times bestselling poignant memoir about family and mental illness. Through stunning prose and original art, The Memory Palace captures the love between mother and daughter, the complex meaning of truth, and one family's capacity for forgiveness. *A Washington Post Best Book of the Year * *The National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Best Autobiography* "People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you've been through," Mira Bart k is told at her mother's memorial service. It is a poignan... View More...
" A] spirited and deeply researched project.... Benkemoun's] affection for her subject is infectious. This book gives a satisfying treatment to a woman who has been confined for decades to a Cubist's limited interpretation." -- Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar through a serendipitous encounter with the artist's address book. In search of a replacement for his lost Herm s agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun's husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens... View More...
"Bialosky's erudite and instructive approach to poetry is] itself a refreshing tonic." --Chicago Tribune "Wisdom and deep compassion...make Bialosky's book] a tremendous asset both to readers and other writers." --The Washington Post An unconventional and inventive coming-of-age memoir organized around fifty-one remarkable poems by poets such as Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath, from a critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author and poet. For Jill Bialosky, certain poems stand out like signposts at pivotal moments in a life: the death of a father, ad... View More...
A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.Richard Blanco's childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents' nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba and his imagined America, the country he saw on reruns of The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver--an "exotic" life he yearned for as much as he yearned to see "la patria."Navigating the... View More...
Now a major motion picture, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, and Michael Cera--the true story of Hollywood's poker princess who gambled everything, won big, then lost it all.When Molly Bloom was a little girl in a small Colorado town, she dreamed of a life without rules and limits, a life where she didn't have to measure up to anyone or anything--where she could become whatever she wanted.She ultimately got more than she could have ever bargained for. In Molly's Game, she takes you through her adventures running an exclusive high-st... View More...
The bestselling, seminal work of trans literature: a story of love, sex, selfhood, and understanding from Jennifer Finney Boylan When she changed genders, she changed the world. It was the groundbreaking publication of She's Not There in 2003 that jump-started the transgender revolution. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Boylan - a cast member on I Am Cait; an advisor to the television series Transparent, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times -- explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of ... View More...
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year 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 s... View More...
From the #1 bestselling author of Running with Scissors and Dry--a contagiously funny, heartwarming, shocking, twisted, and absolutely magical collection. True stories that give voice to the thoughts we all have but dare not mention. It begins with a Tang Instant Breakfast Drink television commercial when Augusten was seven. Then there is the contest of wills with the deranged cleaning lady. The execution of a rodent carried out with military precision and utter horror. Telemarketing revenge. Dating an undertaker and much more. A collection of true stories that are universal in their appeal ye... View More...
From the number one New York Times bestselling author comes another stunning memoir that is tender, touching...and just a little spooky. Here's a partial list of things I don't believe in: God. The Devil. Heaven. Hell. Bigfoot. Ancient Aliens. Past lives. Life after death. Vampires. Zombies. Reiki. Homeopathy. Rolfing. Reflexology. Note that 'witches' and 'witchcraft' are absent from this list. The thing is, I wouldn't believe in them, and I would privately ridicule any idiot who did, except for one thing: I am a witch. For as long as Augusten Burroughs could remember, he knew things he shou... View More...
A new, fully restored edition of the essential Canadian classic. An unflinchingly honest memoir of her experience as a M tis woman in Canada, Maria Campbell's Halfbreed depicts the realities that she endured and, above all, overcame. Maria was born in Northern Saskatchewan, her father the grandson of a Scottish businessman and M tis woman--a niece of Gabriel Dumont whose family fought alongside Riel and Dumont in the 1885 Rebellion; her mother the daughter of a Cree woman and French-American man. This extraordinary account, originally published in 1973, bravely explores the poverty, oppression... View More...
The 40th anniversary edition of the classic Vietnam memoir--featured in the PBS documentary series The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick--with a new foreword by Kevin Powers In March of 1965, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone. A Rumor of War is far more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifferen... View More...
In 2009, Raquel Cepeda embarked on an exploration of her genealogy using ancestral DNA testing to uncover the truth about her family and the tapestry of races and ethnicities that came together in an ambiguous mix in her features, resulting in "a beautiful story of reconciliation and redemption" (Huffington Post) with her identity and what it means to be Latina. Digging through memories long buried, Cepeda journeyed not only into her ancestry but also into her own history. Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, she was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in the Para so (Paradise) distric... View More...
As a child, Elias Chacour lived in a small Palestinian village in Galilee. The townspeople were proud of their ancient Christian heritage and lived at peace with their Jewish neighbors. But early in 1947, their idyllic lifestyle was swept away as tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed and nearly one million forced into refugee camps. An exile in his native land, Elias began a years-long struggle with his love for the Jewish people and the world's misunderstanding of his own people, the Palestinians. How was he to respond? He found his answer in the simple, haunting words of the Man ... View More...