Staff Picks
New in Biography and Memoir
- Bland L.
- Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Collection
Check out this varied slate of new biographies and memoirs recently added to our collection. Standout titles include a new graphic-novel adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Alexis Coe’s irreverent look at the life of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First. Also receiving a lot of buzz are memoirs from In Living Color alumnus Tommy Davidson and Prince protégé Morris Day.
These Fevered Days
Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson
Published in 2020
"An engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America's greatest and most-mythologized poets, that sheds new light on her groundbreaking poetry. On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready"-and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home" (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson's life through ten decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet. Ackmann follows Dickinson through her religious crisis while a student at Mount Holyoke, her startling decision to ask a famous editor for advice, her anguished letters to an unidentified "Master," her exhilarating frenzy of composition, and her terror in confronting possible blindness. Together, these ten days provide new insights into Dickinson's wildly original poetry and render a concise and vivid portrait of American literature's most enigmatic figure"-- Provided by publisher.
Spirit Run
A 6,000-mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land
Published in 2020
"Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who "slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives." A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Dené, Secwépemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono O'odham, Seri, Purépecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala that pushed him to his limits. He writes not only of overcoming hunger, thirst, and fear--dangers included stone-throwing motorists and a mountain lion--but also of asserting Indigenous and working-class humanity in a capitalist society where oil extraction, deforestation, and substance abuse wreck communities. Running through mountains, deserts, and cities, and through the Mexican territory his parents left behind, Álvarez forges a new relationship with the land, and with the act of running, carrying with him the knowledge of his parents' migration, and--against all odds in a society that exploits his body and rejects his spirit--the dream of a liberated future."--Amazon.com.
The Man in the Red Coat
Published in 2020
"From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending-a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon, Samuel Pozzi. In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people (Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, James Whistler, among many others), place, and time, we see not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but, surprisingly, one of violence, prejudice, and nativism-with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The Man in the Red Coat is, at once, a fresh portrait of the Belle Époque; an illuminating look at the longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France; and a life of a man who lived passionately in the moment but whose ideas and achievements were far ahead of his time"-- Provided by publisher.
You Never Forget Your First
A Biography of George Washington
Published in 2020
"In a genre overdue for a shakeup, Alexis Coe takes a closer look at our first--and finds he's not quite the man we remember Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, chased rich young women, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. Coe focuses on his activities off the battlefield--like espionage and propaganda. After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War, Washington once again shocked the world by giving up power, only to learn his compatriots wouldn't allow it. The founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. He established enduring norms but left office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created. Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty finally confronted his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the hundreds of men, women, and children he owned--before succumbing to a brutal death. Alexis Coe combines rigorous research and unsentimental storytelling, finally separating the man from the legend."-- Provided by publisher.
Living in Color
What's Funny About Me
Published in 2020
In 1990, Tommy Davidson burst onto the scene in the Emmy Award-winning show In Living Color, a pioneering sketch comedy show, featuring a multi-racial cast of actors and dancers who spoke to an underrepresented new generation created by Hip Hop Nation. In this memoir, Tommy shares his unique perspective on making it in Hollywood, being an integral part of television history, on fame and family, and on living a life that has never been black and white--just funny and true.
On Time
A Princely Life in Funk
Published in 2019
A memoir by Morris Day of The Time centering around his lifelong relationship and association with Prince.
Ernesto
The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba
Published in 2019
"Ernest Hemingway first visited Cuba in 1928, and the experience would change the course of his entire life. He settled in Cojimar--a tiny fishing village east of Havana--in 1940, and came to think of himself as Cuban. What he discovered there, a new world counterpart to his beloved Spain, provided him the material for the novel that would rescue his uncertain career. The Old Man and the Sea won him a Pulitzer Prize and, one year later, earned literature's highest honor--the Nobel Prize. Recognizing his debt, Hemingway announced to the press that he had won the prize "as a citizen of Cojimar." This is the Hemingway story that has never been told: the full story of Papa as an expatriate in Cuba, an ingenuous American opportunist whose natural openness and curiosity connected with the distinctive warmth of the Cuban character. In Cuba he formed key artistic relationships -- including a longstanding affair with a previously undiscovered Cuban lover, Leopoldina Roderiguez -- and became the Nobel Prize-winning literary legend we know today"-- Provided by publisher.
The Survivors
A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing
Published in 2019
"A memoir of family, the Holocaust, trauma, and identity, in which Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, must come to terms with the legacy of his family's painful past and discover who he is in the wake of a life-changing revelation about his own origins. Adam Frankel's maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines--a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam's mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam's entire understanding of who he is. In the midst of piecing together a story of inherited familial trauma, Adam discovered he was only half of who he thought he was, knowledge that raised essential questions of identity. Who was he, if not his father's son? If not part of a rich heritage of writers and public servants? Does it matter? What defines a family's bonds? What will he pass on to his own children? To rewrite his story in truth and to build a life for his own young family, Adam had to navigate his pain to find answers and a way forward. Throughout this journey into the past, his family's psyche, and his own understanding of identity, Adam comes to realize that while the nature of our families' traumas may vary, each of us is faced with the same choice. We can turn away from what we've inherited--or, we can confront it, in the hopes of moving on and stopping that trauma from inflicting pain on future generations. The stories Adam shares with us in The Survivors are about the ways the past can haunt our future, the resilience that can be found on the other side of trauma, and the good that can come from things that are unspeakably bad"-- Book jacket.
Rust
A Memoir of Steel and Grit
Published in 2020
"A debut memoir of grit and tenacity, as one young woman returns to the conservative hometown she always longed to escape to earn a living in the steel mill that casts a shadow over Cleveland. Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill... To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In Rust, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love. The people she sees as the unsung backbone of our nation. Faced with the financial promise of a steelworker's paycheck, and the very real danger of working in an environment where a steel coil could crush you at any moment or a vat of molten iron could explode because of a single drop of water, Eliese finds unexpected warmth and camaraderie among the gruff men she labors beside each day. Appealing to readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Educated, Rust is a story of the humanity Eliese discovers in the most unlikely and hellish of places, and the hope that therefore begins to grow"-- Provided by publisher.
18 Tiny Deaths
The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
Published in 2020
"Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dioramas that appear charming-until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, a blood-spattered comforter. And then, of course, there are the bodies-splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs-clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with sewing pins. Lee developed a system that used the Nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate violent crimes, and her methods are still used today. 18 Tiny Deaths is the story of a woman who overcame the limitations and expectations imposed by her social status and pushed forward an entirely new branch of science that we still use today"-- Provided by publisher.
Rebel Cinderella
From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes
Published in 2020
"From the bestselling author of King Leopold's Ghost and Spain in Our Hearts comes the astonishing but forgotten story of an immigrant sweatshop worker who married an heir to a great American fortune and became one of the most charismatic radical leaders of her time"-- Provided by publisher.
Minor Feelings
An Asian American Reckoning
Published in 2020
"Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition--if such a thing exists? Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively confronts this thorny subject, blending memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth"-- Provided by publisher.
Shadow on the Mountain
A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance, and Hope
Published in 2020
Recounts the story of Shaker Jeffrey, a young Yazidi interpreter for the US military in Iraq, and what happened after ISIS sentenced the Yazidi people to extermination. The Yazidis fled to Mount Shingal, where they had no food and no water. Shaker went behind enemy lines, relaying their precise locations to CENTCOM in Washington and even infiltrating their ranks to rescue the taken; but he would come to risk everything in the search for his beloved. Soon, he established a cross-border, underground rescue network that would save the lives of thousands of civilians, all while feeding intelligence to the US military--and landing him at the top of ISIS's execution list.
Brother & Sister
Published in 2020
"A memoir by the award-winning actress about her younger brother, Randy, and the ways in which siblings' lives can diverge and then come back together"-- Provided by publisher.
A Delayed Life
The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz
Published in 2020
"Dita Kraus grew up in Prague in an intellectual, middle-class Jewish family. She went to school, played with her friends, and never thought of herself as being different--until the advent of the Holocaust. Torn from her home, Dita was sent to Auschwitz with her family. From her time in the children's block of Auschwitz to her liberation from the camps and on into her adulthood, Dita's powerful memoir sheds light on an incredible life--one that is delayed no longer."-- Publisher marketing.
Dorothy Day
Dissenting Voice of the American Century
Published in 2020
"The first full-length biography of its subject in forty years, this book separates the myths from the facts about America's most radical pacifist, critic of US foreign policy, Catholic activist. Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century is the life story of the American icon Pope Francis I mentioned alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln for her revolutionary aspirations to a more humane and sustainable future." front book flap.
We Are the Luckiest
The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
Published in 2020
""A memoir of alcohol addiction and recovery, written by a successful career woman who describes the joys and challenges of staying sober in a culture permeated by drinking."--Provided by publisher"-- Provided by publisher.
In the Land of Men
A Memoir
Published in 2020
"At twenty-two, a naïve Midwesterner, Adrienne Miller got a lucky break when she was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ. The mid-nineties were still the golden age of print journalism, and a publication like GQ then seemed the red-hot center of the literary world, even if their sensibilities were manifestly mid-century-the martinis, the male egos, and the unquestioned authority of kings. Still, Adrienne learned to hold her own in a man's world, and three years later she forged her own path, becoming the first woman to hold the role of literary editor at Esquire. She was at Esquire during a unique moment in history that simultaneously saw the last days of the old guard of literary titans, and the rise of a new movement, as exemplified by David Foster Wallace, who would become her closest friend, confidant-and antagonist. Here is the untold story of an intellectual and artistic exchange that grew into a highly charged relationship, and Miller presents a candid portrait of the mercurial man behind the spotlight. It is also an account of the guarded literary world, which asks the question: How does a young woman fit into this culture and at what cost? With wit and deep intelligence, Miller presents a moving portrayal of a young woman's education in a land of men"-- Provided by publisher.
The Dalai Lama
An Extraordinary Life
Published in 2020
"The first definitive biography of the Dalai Lama-a story by turns inspiring, surprising-from an acclaimed Tibetan scholar with exceptional access to his subject"-- Provided by publisher.
We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders
A Memoir of Love and Resistance
Published in 2020
"Women's March co-organizer Linda Sarsour shares how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized and celebrated activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country"-- Provided by publisher.
82 Days on Okinawa
One American's Unforgettable Firsthand Account of the Pacific War's Greatest Battle
Published in 2020
Frida in America
The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist
Published in 2020
"The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit. Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn't always understand. But it's precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo"-- Provided by publisher.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Published in 2020
"Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written, now illustrated by Maira Kalman"-- Provided by publisher.
The Unexpected Spy
From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists
Published in 2020
"A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs. When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists-men who swore they'd never speak to a woman-until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn't a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate-and thus change the world"-- Provided by publisher.
The Watergate Girl
My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President
Published in 2020
"It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women's movement stood a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and in charge of some of the most important prosecutions of high-ranking White House officials. Called "the mini-skirted lawyer" by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts- and prevailed. In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside this troubled time in American history, and it is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today's headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own that kept her on a knife-edge. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through. At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and our society"-- Provided by publisher.