Staff Picks
New in Biography and Memoir
- Bland L.
- Monday, December 12, 2022
Collection
New and noteworthy titles include You Don’t Know What War Is, the diary of twelve-year-old Yeva Skalietska, who had to flee Ukraine with her grandmother at the outset of the current war, and Neil Baldwin's Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern. Among several new celebrity memoirs is Paul Newman’s The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, assembled from taped interviews left at the time of his death in 2008.
Savor
A Chef's Hunger for More
Published in 2022
"An aspiring young chef explores food and adventure, illness and mortality, coming of age and coming out in an inspiring memoir and family story that sweeps from Pakistan to New York City and beyond. Fatima Ali won the hearts of viewers as the season fifteen "Fan Favorite" of Bravo's Top Chef. After the taping wrapped and before the shows aired, Fati was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, which eventually became terminal. Not one to ever slow down or admit defeat, she vowed to spend her final year traveling the world, eating delicious food, and making memories with her loved ones. But when her condition abruptly worsened, her plans were sidelined. She pivoted, determined to make her final days count as she worked to tell the story of a queer brown girl chef who set out to make a name for herself, her food, and her culture. The result is this stunning and lyrical ode to the food, family, and countries Fatima loved so much. Written both during Fati's last weeks and posthumously, this deftly woven memoir integrates the perspectives of Fatima at its core, with supporting chapters from her mother Farazeh's perspective. Flashing between past and present, readers will be transported back to Fatima's childhood, unfurling alongside that of her mother, as both were deeply affected by the cultural barriers they faced, shaping the course of their lives. At the same time, food plays an important role throughout, from the rustic stalls of the outdoor markets of Lahore to the kitchen and dining room of Meadowood, the acclaimed 3-Michelin-Star restaurant where Fatima apprenticed. Fati reflects on her life and her identity--as a chef, a daughter, a queer woman--exploring and defining her sexuality, oftentimes butting up against the more conservative and traditional views of those in her native Pakistan. This triumphant memoir is at once an exploration into the sense of wonder that made Fatima so special, and a shining testament to the resilience of the human spirit. It is, at its core, an exploration into what it means to truly live, a profound and exquisite portrait of a life that will resonate for many years to come"-- Provided by publisher.
The King
The Life of Charles III
Published in 2022
"Since the day Charles Philip Arthur George was born, he has been groomed to be King. After more than seventy years of waiting, he finally ascends the throne. The King examines the private life of this historically important and controversial figure, setagainst the grand, thousand-year sweep of the British monarchy. This richly detailed biography covers it all, from his military training to his marriage to Lady Diana, through their separation and her tragic death to his marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles.In the process, it provides a balanced but fully honest look into the life of the new monarch"-- Provided by publisher.
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
Published in 2022
"A successful young social media director at a publishing house chronicles her ten years of psychiatric treatment for depression and she fought back against the harmful behaviors that kept her locked in a cycle of self-abuse"-- Provided by publisher.
Martha Graham
When Dance Became Modern
Published in 2022
"A biography of the legendary dancer and choreographer"-- Provided by publisher.
Barkley
A Biography
Published in 2022
The definitive biography of Charles Barkley exploring his early childhood, his storied NBA career, and his enduring legacy in American pop culture.
Surrender
40 Songs, One Story
Published in 2022
"Bono, artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2, has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. 'When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress... with a fair amount of fun along the way." - Bono. As one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it's Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life, and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him. Surrender's subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book's forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which will appear throughout the book."-- Provided by publisher.
The Forerunner
A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America
Published in 2022
Embodying a new chapter in progressive politics that prioritizes the lives and stories of the most politically vulnerable, the first black woman to represent the state of Missouri in Congress presents a powerful and empowering memoir that is both a personal account and a fierce call to action.
Faith, Hope and Carnage
Published in 2022
"Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave's inner life created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O'Hagan"-- Provided by publisher.
Fatty Fatty Boom Boom
A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family
Published in 2022
"A memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family"-- Provided by publisher.
Vigilance
The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad
Published in 2022
"The remarkable and inspiring story of William Still, an unknown abolitionist who dedicated his life to managing a critical section of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia--the free state directly north of the Mason-Dixon line--helping hundreds of people escape from slavery"-- Provided by publisher.
Getting Lost
Published in 2022
"Getting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered. In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying "his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of." She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death. Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. Getting Lost is as strong a book as any that she has written, a haunting, desperate view of strong and successful woman who seduces a man only to lose herself in love and desire"-- Provided by publisher.
Nero
Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome
Published in 2022
"The Roman emperor Nero has long been the very image of a bad ruler--cruel, vain, and incompetent. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. He supposedly set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. Afterward he cleared the charred ruins of the city center and, in their place, built a vast palace. Historians of his day despised him, and it's their recollections that have been passed down through the ages. But, in all of thehorror, there is a mystery. For a long time after his deposition and suicide, anonymous hands laid flowers on his grave. The monster was loved. In this nuanced biography, Anthony Everitt, the celebrated biographer of classical Greece and Rome, reveals the contradictions inherent in the reign of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus and offers a reappraisal of his life. Everitt also brings ancient Rome to life, showing the crowded streets that made the city prone to fires, political intrigues that could turn deadly in an instant, and vast building projects that continuously remade the Roman landscape. In this teeming and politically unstable world, Nero did terrible things, but the larger empire was also well managed under his rule. He presided over a diplomatictriumph with the rival Parthian empire, and Everitt teams up with investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth to tell the epic story of Rome's conquest of Britain and British queen Boudica's doomed revolt against Nero's legions. Nero was also a champion of arts and culture whose own great love was music, and he won the loyalty of the lower classes with great spectacles. In many ways he was ahead of his time, particularly in the way he looked to Greece and the eastern half of the empire as crucial to Rome's future. Nero had a vision for Rome, but, wracked by insecurity and guilt-ridden over assassinations he ordered, perhaps he never really had the stomach to rule it"-- Provided by publisher.
Ted Kennedy
A Life
Published in 2022
"Ted Kennedy is a biography of one of modern America's most fascinating and consequential political figures, drawing on important new sources, by the biographer who covered Kennedy closely for many years"-- Provided by publisher.
G-man
J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
Published in 2022
"A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage's monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover's life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Rooseveltand Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism towhite supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots,wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party. G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century"-- Provided by publisher.
The Pirate's Wife
The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd
Published in 2022
In work of narrative nonfiction filled with romance and high seas adventure, a historian and journalist charts the life of Sarah Kidd, who secretly aided and abetted her infamous husband, pirate Captain Kidd, from within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York.
The Black Period
On Personhood, Race, and Origin
Published in 2022
"Hafizah Augustus Geter disrupts the myths of America's origins and contemporary America through her experiences as the queer Nigerian-born daughter of a Muslim Nigerian woman and a Black American man from a Southern Baptist family in Jim Crow Alabama. A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, The Black Period follows Hafizah on a journey that tells her at every turn she's not worthy. At the same time, she manages to sidestep shame, confront disability, embrace forgiveness, and emerge from the erasures America imposes to exist proudly and unabashedly as herself. Penetrative and heartening, The Black Period captures a world brimming with potential, art, music, hope, and love despite the lasting effects of white supremacy"-- Provided by publisher.
Have I Told You This Already?
Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember
Published in 2022
"Candid, insightful, and wildly entertaining essays about life, love, and lessons learned as an actress in Hollywood, from the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and New York Times bestselling author of Talking as Fast as I Can. With her signature sense of humor and down-to-earth storytelling, Lauren Graham opens up about her years working in the entertainment business-from the sublime to the ridiculous-and shares personal stories about everything from family and friendship to the challenges of aging gracefully in Hollywood. In "RIP Barneys New York," she writes about an early job as a salesperson at the legendary department store-and the time she inadvertently shoplifted; in "Ne Oublie" she warns us about the perils of coming from an extremely forgetful family; and in "Actor-y Factory" she recounts what a day in the life of an actor looks like (unless you're Brad Pitt). Filled with surprising anecdotes, sage advice, and laugh-out-loud observations, Graham's latest collection of all-new, original essays showcases the winning charm and wit that she's known for"-- Provided by publisher.
A Worthy Piece of Work
The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight for Black History in Schools
Published in 2022
"This book follows the little-known story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a Black social studies teacher in migration era Chicago, who fought for and won the first inclusion of Black history in the curriculum of the Chicago schools a decade before the height of Civil Rights Movement educational activism"-- Provided by publisher.
Mr. B
George Balanchine's 20th Century
Published in 2022
"The New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." He appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century. His radical approach to choreography reinvented the art of dance and his richly imaginative ballets made him a legend. Yet, Balanchine's life was as dramatic as his art, coinciding with some of the biggest historical events of his time. Born in Russia under the last Czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, World War II, exile, and the Cold War. He co-founded the New York City Ballet and revolutionized dance in America, pressing it to the forefront of modernism and making it serious and popular art. A man of many muses, Balanchine was married five times and consumed by other loves in between. Both the passions that animated him and the difficulties of his life--personal losses, bouts of ill health, and dark moods of despair--resonate in his more than 100 ballets, which speak of love, loss, mortality, and the transformative power of art. Nearly forty years after his death the full scale of Balanchine's achievement remains unexplored. Jennifer Homans, who studied with Balanchine and has had unprecedented access to his papers and many of those who knew him, has researched every facet of Balanchine's life and times. As much a biography as a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists, Mr. B is the definitive biography by ballet's definitive writer"-- Provided by publisher.
The Rebel and the Kingdom
The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime
Published in 2022
"A gripping account of an Ivy League activist-turned-fugitive and his clandestine effort to subvert the North Korean regime, a heart-pounding tale of a self-taught operative and his high-stakes attempt to change the world. In the early 2000s, Adrian Hong was a soft-spoken Yale undergraduate looking for his place in the world. After reading a harrowing account of life inside North Korea, he realized he had found a cause so pressing that he was ready to devote his life to it. What began as a trip down the safe and well-worn path of organizing soon morphed into something more dangerous. Hong journeyed to China, outwitting Chinese security services as he helped ferry asylum-seeking North Korean escapees to safety. Meanwhile, Hong's secret organization, Cheollima Civil Defense (later renamed Free Joseon), began tracking the North Korean government's activities, and its volatile third-generation ruler, Kim Jong Un. Free Joseon targeted North Korean diplomats who might be persuaded to defect, while drawing up plans for a government-in-exile. After the shocking broad-daylight assassination in 2017 of Kim Jong Nam, the dictator's older brother, Hong, along with Marine veteran Christopher Ahn, helped ferry Nam's family to safety. Then Hong took the group a step further. He initiated a series of high-stakes direct actions, culminating in an armed raid at the North Korean embassy in Madrid-an act that would put Ahn behind bars and turn Hong into one of the world's most unlikely fugitives. In the tradition of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, The Rebel and the Kingdom is an exhilarating account of a man who turns his back on the status quo-to instead live boldly by his principles. Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Bradley Hope-who broke numerous details of Hong's operations in The Wall Street Journal-now reveals the full contours of this remarkable story of idealism and insanity, hubris and heroism, all set within the secret battle for the future of the world's most mysterious and unsettling nation"-- Provided by publisher.
His Masterly Pen
A Biography of Jefferson the Writer
Published in 2022
"In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson's genius with language and his ability to use the power of words to inspire and shape a nation. A man renowned for many talents, writing was one of the major activities of the statemen's life, though much of his best, most influential writing--with the exception of the letters he wrote up to his death, numbering approximately 100,000--was done by 1789, when Jefferson was just forty-six. All of his works--from his earliest correspondence; his essays and proclamations, including A Summary View of British America, The Declaration of Independence, and Notes on the State of Virginia; his religious and scientific writings; his inaugural addresses; his addresses to Indian nations; and his exchanges with Washington, Madison, Hamilton, John and Abigail Adams, and dear friends such as Maria Cosway--demonstrate his remarkable intelligence, prescient wisdom, and literary flair and reveal the man in all his complex and controversial brilliance. In His Masterly Pen, readers will find a new appreciation of Jefferson as a whole, of his strengths and weaknesses, and particularly of the degree to which his writing skills--which James Madison admired as "the shining traces of his pen"--are key to his personality and public career. Though Jefferson could wield his pen with unrivaled power, he was also a master of using words to both reveal and conceal from others and himself the complications, the inconsistencies, and the contradictions between his principles and his policies, between his head and his heart, and between his optimistic view of human nature and the realities of his personal situation and the world he lived in."-- Provided by publisher
You've Been Chosen
Thriving Through the Unexpected
Published in 2022
"A relentlessly optimistic memoir by one of the most influential Black business leaders in America today, offering hope and practical guidance for navigating life's most difficult challenges, inspired by the author's cancer journal that went viral "Focus. Pray. Act. Serve. And we'll get through this together." Cynthia "Cynt" Marshall has spent her life beating the odds. Growing up in the public housing projects of Richmond, California, Cynt never wondered why her mother didn't sit down to dinner every night, realizing only later that she sometimes sacrificed her own meal so her six children could eat. Cynt's father, meanwhile, had a terrifying temper and physically abused his wife and children for years. But Cynt didn't let her background deter her. Instead, she focused on her education, propelling herself through college and into her first job in corporate America. As a rising professional, Cynt overcame overt and subtle racism to become one of the first Black, female officers at AT&T by age forty, while surviving multiple miscarriages and family tragedies. As her husband helped her see a new way of creating a family, she started to see that her plan was not always God's plan. Cynt was president of AT&T North Carolina when, at fifty-one, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer, just one lymph node from Stage 4. Overnight, her life changed from managing corporate strategy to managing an aggressive chemotherapy schedule, her best hope for survival. Instead of giving up, Cynt got on her knees. Her lifelong spiritual foundation and faith in the power of prayer carried her forward as she shared her journey online through heartfelt posts that chronicled the challenges and unexpected blessings of cancer, transforming her diagnosis from a death sentence into a chance to serve people around the world. With positivity and deep faith, Cynt Marshall reminds us that we are each uniquely equipped for the challenges life presents us. In sharing her deeply inspiring story, she helps ensure that we will not just survive but thrive through trials, celebrate challenges, and laugh at what life brings us"-- Provided by publisher.
Number One is Walking
My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions
Published in 2022
"Number One Is Walking is Steve Martin's cinematic legacy-an illustrated memoir of his legendary acting career, with stories from his most popular films and artwork by New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. Steve Martin has never written about his career in the movies before. In Number One Is Walking, he shares anecdotes from the sets of his beloved films-Father of the Bride, Roxanne, The Jerk, Three Amigos, and many more-bringing readers directly into his world. He shares charming tales of antics, moments ofinspiration, and exploits with the likes of Paul McCartney, Diane Keaton, Harrison Ford, and Chevy Chase. Martin details his forty years in the movie biz, as well as his stand-up comedy, banjo playing, writing, and cartooning, all with his unparalleled wit. With gorgeously illustrated cartoons and single-panel "diversions" in Steve and Harry's signature style, Number One Is Walking is full of the everyday moments that make up a movie star's life, capturing Steve Martin's singular humor and acclaimed career in film. The perfect gift from the team who brought you the #1 New York Times bestseller A Wealth of Pigeons"-- Provided by publisher.
Bad Vibes Only
(and Other Things I Bring to the Table)
Published in 2022
In a series of essays that span her childhood to present, Nora introduces us to her mind and her world while inviting us to more closely observe our own. This collection is a response to a society that tells us to live, laugh, and love. It reminds us that we don't have to be oppressively optimistic or obsessed with self-improvement.
And There Was Light
Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Published in 2022
"A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen in popular minds as the greatest of American presidents--a remote icon--or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln--an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment was essential to the story of justice in America. Here is the Lincoln who, as a boy, was steeped in the sermons of emancipation by Baptist preachers; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him light to see the right. This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination at Ford's Theater on Good Friday 1865: his rise, his self-education through reading, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans of the nineteenth century, Lincoln's story illuminates the ways and means of politics, the marshaling of power in a belligerent democracy, the durability of white supremacy in America, and the capacity of conscience to shape the maelstrom of events"-- Provided by publisher.
Mussolini's Daughter
The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
Published in 2022
"Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce's Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy's fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy's aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling Fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Caroline Moore's fascinating history. The issues that emerge reveal not only a great deal about the power of fascism, but also the ease with which dictatorship so easily took hold in a country weakened by war and a continent mired in chaos and desperate for peace. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, some newly released, along with memoirs and personal papers, Mussolini's Daughter paints a portrait of a woman in her twenties whose sheer force of character and ruthless narcissism helped impose a brutal and vulgar movement on a pliable and complicit society. Yet as Moorehead shows, not even Edda's colossal willpower, her scheming, nor her father's avowed love could save her husband from Mussolini's brutal vengeance." -- Publisher marketing.
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man
A Memoir
Published in 2022
"The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon Several years before he died in 2008, Paul Newman commissioned his best friend to interview actors and directors he worked with, his friends, his children, his first wife, his psychiatrist, and Joanne Woodward, to create an oral history of his life. After hearing and reading what others said about him, Newman then dictated his own version of his life. Now, this long-lost memoir-90% Newman's own narrative, interspersed with wonderful stories and recollections by his family, friends, and such luminaries as Elia Kazan, Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill, Martin Ritt-will be published. This book will surprise and even shock people, it reveals unknown sides of Paul Newman: funny and tragic, charming and insightful, personal and professional. Newman's traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed: his terrible relationship with his mother (he says she always considered him purely a decoration, not an actual child), his complicated relationship with his father (who once insisted eight-year-old Paul walk home several miles with a broken leg). He talks with extraordinary honesty, insight and humor, about his insecurities as a teenager, his lack of success with women, his feelings of failure. Tales of his army years feel like a movie in itself. His college years, his early yearnings to be an actor, learning his craft, his acting rivals at the beginning of his career (Brando and Dean), his films (good and bad) - he spares no one, including himself. He discusses the complicated relationship he had with his first wife, his son Scott's death, and his guilt about that death. Perhaps the most moving material in the book comes when he discusses Joanne Woodward-their love for each other, his dependence on her, even their sexually charged life together"-- Provided by publisher
The Last Folk Hero
The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson
Published in 2022
Drawing on 720 original interviews, a New York Times best-selling sportswriter captures as never before the elusive truth about the greatest athlete of all time who took the world by storm from the mid-1980s into the early 1990s--and then, almost overnight, disappeared.
Come Back in September
A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan
Published in 2022
"One of the most esteemed critics and writers of our time recalls his friendship and apprenticeship with Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein and the introduction they offered him to the New York literary world in the 1970s"-- Provided by publisher.
Token Black Girl
A Memoir
Published in 2022
"Token Black Girl unpacks the adverse effects of insidious white supremacy in the media--both unconscious and strategic--to tell a personal story about recovery from damaging concepts of perfection, celebrating identity, and demolishing social conditioning"--Book jacket flap.
A Billion Years
My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology
Published in 2022
Mike Rinder's parents began taking him to their local Scientology center when he was five years old. After high school, he signed a billion-year contract and was admitted into Scientology's elite inner circle, the Sea Organization. Brought to founder L. Ron Hubbard's yacht and promised training in Hubbard's most advanced techniques, Mike was instead put to work swabbing the decks. Still, Rinder bought into the doctrine that his personal comfort was secondary to the higher purpose of Hubbard's world-saving mission, swiftly rising through the ranks. In the 1980s, Rinder became Scientology's international spokesperson and the head of its powerful Office of Special Affairs. He helped negotiate Scientology's pivotal tax exemption from the IRS and engaged with the organization's prominent celebrity members, including Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, and John Travolta. Yet Rinder couldn't shake a nagging feeling that something was amiss--Hubbard's promises remained unfulfilled at his death, and his successor, David Miscavige, was a ruthless and vindictive man who did not hesitate to confine many top Scientologists, Mike among them, to a makeshift prison known as the Hole. In 2007, at the age of fifty-two, Rinder finally escaped Scientology. Overnight, he became one of the organization's biggest public enemies. He was followed, hacked, spied on, and tracked. But he refused to be intimidated and today helps people break free of Scientology. In A Billion Years, the dark, dystopian truth about Scientology is revealed as never before. Rinder offers insights into the religion that only someone of his former high rank could provide and tells a harrowing but fulfilling story of personal resilience.
Shy
The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
Published in 2022
"The memoirs of Mary Rodgers--writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and "a woman who tried everything.""-- Provided by publisher.
Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body
A Marine's Unbecoming
Published in 2022
"An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone. When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the "war on terror" was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact. In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of conquest that constitute the machinery of U.S. imperialism. The result is a searing analysis and the story of one man's personal and political conversion, told in beautiful prose by an essayist, historian, and veteran transformed"--Amazon.
Do Let's Have Another Drink!
The Dry Wit and Fizzy Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Published in 2022
This collection of one hundred and one anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, features amusing and fascinating vignettes from her long life, including her coming of age during World War I and the 1936 abdication of her brother-in-law.
The Revolutionary
Samuel Adams
Published in 2022
"Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, "Samuel Adams was the man." With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams's improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies"-- Provided by publisher.
Charlie's Good Tonight
The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones
Published in 2022
"The fully authorized and official biography of legendary Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, one of the world's most revered and celebrated musicians of the last half century. Charlie Watts was one of the most decorated musicians in the world, having joined the Rolling Stones, a few months after their formation, early in 1963. A student of jazz drumming, he was headhunted by the band after bumping into them regularly in London's rhythm and blues clubs. Once installed at the drum seat, he didn't miss a gig, album or tour in his 60 years in the band. He was there throughout the swinging sixties, the early shot at superstardom and the Stones' world conquest; and throughout the debauchery of the 1970s, typified by 1972's Exile on Main St., considered one of the great albums of the century. By the 1980s, Charlie was battling his own demons, but emerged unscathed to enhance his unparalleled reputation even further over the ensuing decades. Watts went through band bust-ups, bereavements and changes in personnel, managers, guitarists and rhythm sections, but remained the rock at the heart of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years--the thoughtful, intellectual but no less compelling counterpoint to the raucousness of his bandmates Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood. And this is his story."-- Publisher marketing.
You Don't Know What War is
The Diary of a Young Girl from Ukraine
Published in 2022
An important, harrowing and ultimately hopeful memoir about the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war as told through the diary entries of a young Ukrainian girl.
Chuck Berry
An American Life
Published in 2022
"The definitive biography of Chuck Berry, legendary performer and inventor of rock and roll and author of classics like "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene," "You Never Can Tell," and "Roll Over Beethoven." Chuck Berry long ago earned a reputation as a personwho gave nothing away. Best known as the groundbreaking innovator of rock and roll and the artist behind classics ranging from "Johnny B. Goode" and "Maybellene" to "You Never Can Tell" and "Roll Over Beethoven," he could be a difficult man to be around off-stage, and was extremely closed off in interviews. There was the work, and then there was the man, who was not easily given to describing the work-and definitely not interested in talking about himself. Though the major events of his life are known andhave been described in the hundreds of tributes that marked his passing, the secretive complexity that encapsulated his life and underscored his music has never been fully explored-until now. In Chuck Berry, biographer RJ Smith crafts a comprehensive portrait of one of the great American artists, entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century, bringing Chuck Berry to life in vivid detail. Based on interviews, archival research, legal document analysis, and a deep understanding of Berry's St.Louis (the place where he was born, the place he never left, and the place he died in March 2017), Smith sheds new light on a man that few people have ever really understood. By studying his life, especially within the context of the American culture hemade and eventually sought to withdraw from, we better understand how he became such a groundbreaking figure in music, erasing racial boundaries and paying a great price for his success. While celebrating his accomplishments, the book also does not shy away from troubling aspects of his public and private life, and asks profound questions about how and why we separate the art from the artist. Should we? Berry always said that what he did was make money. He often declined to describe himself as an artist only admitting he was good at what he did to get reporters off his back. But the man's artistry was the rarest kind, the kind that had social and political resonance, the kind that made America want to get up and dance. At long last, Chuck Berry brings theman and the music together"-- Provided by publisher.
Marked for Life
One Man's Fight for Justice from the Inside
Published in 2022
"Marked for Life is the incredible memoir of a wrongfully imprisoned man's epic journey to free himself and others like him. Isaac Wright Jr. was wrongly accused of drug charges in New Jersey and sentenced to life in prison in 1991. He was arrested, tried, and convicted under a draconian "kingpin" statute even though he never dealt drugs a day in his life. Even though the prosecutor knew he was innocent, as did the detectives who investigated and arrested him. Even though the judge subverted legal procedure and coerced jurors. Even though his co-defendants-some of whom were guilty of the very things pinned on Isaac-were given freedom in exchange for their lies about what he did and who he was. He used the prison library to educate himself in the law and helped overturn the wrongful convictions of dozens of his fellow inmates before representing himself, proving his own innocence, and bringing down the powerful and corrupt men that had aligned against him"-- Provided by publisher.
Making a Scene
Published in 2022
"Through raw and relatable essays, Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she "made it" in Hollywood. Her stories offer a behind-the-scenes look at being Asian American in the entertainment industry and the continuing evolution of her identity and influence in the public eye"-- Provided by publisher.