Autobiography: general Books
The University of Chicago Press An Invitation to Laughter A Lebanese
Book SynopsisAn autobiography of Fuad I Khuri, both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in Middle East, and in West Africa. It provides insights into such issues as mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of Arab world, impact of Islam on West Africa, and extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and more.Trade Review"Fuad I. Khuri was one of the most thoughtful and insightful anthropologists working on the Middle East. His published work always exhibited two very special qualities: he chose bold issues and he had an extraordinary eye for the small yet revealing detail. No one should be surprised that An Invitation to Laughter captures and extends those traits so well." - Lawrence Rosen, Princeton University"
£999.99
Hachette Books Some New Kind of Kick
Book Synopsis
£23.20
Legacy Lit Sipping DOM Pérignon Through a Straw
Book SynopsisApple's Best Books of August 2023 A memoir penned with one good finger, Ndopu writes about being profoundly disabled and profoundly successful. Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his mobility. He was told that he wouldn’t live beyond age five and yet, Ndopu thrived. He grew up loving pop music, lip syncing the latest hits, and watching The Bold and the Beautiful for the haute couture, and was the only wheelchair user at his school, where he flourished academically. By his late teens, he had become a sought after speaker, travelling the world to address audiences about disability justice. Ndopu was ecstatic when he was later accepted on a full scholarship into one of the world's most prestigious schools, Oxford University. But he soon learns that it's not just the medical community he must thwart— it's the educational one too. In Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw, we follow Ndopu, sporting his oversized, bejewelled sunglasses, as he scales the mountain of success, only to find exclusion, discrimination, and neglect waiting for him on the other side. Like every other student, Ndopu tries to keep up appearances—dashing to and from his public policy lectures before meeting for cocktails with his squad, all while campaigning to become student body president. Privately, however, Ndopu faces obstacles that are all too familiar to people with disabilities, yet remain unnoticed by most people. With the revolving door of care aides, hefty bills, and a lack of support from the university, Ndopu feels alienated by his environment. As he soars professionally, sipping champagne with world leaders, he continues to feel the loneliness and pressure of being the only one in the room. Determined to carve out his place in the world, he must challenge bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige. But as the pressure mounts, Ndopu must find his stride or collapse under the crushing weight of ableism. Written with his one good finger, this evocative, searing, and vulnerable prose will leave you spellbound by Ndopu’s remarkable journey to reach beyond ableism, reminding us of our own capacity for resilience.
£23.20
Hachette Books The Big Hurt A Memoir
Book Synopsis This complex memoir shows what it was like growing up in the shadow of a literary father and a neglectful mother, getting thrown out of boarding school after being seduced by a teacher, and all of the later-life consequences that ensue.In 1982, Erika Schickel was expelled from her East Coast prep school for sleeping with a teacher. She was that girl—rebellious, precocious, and macking for love. Seduced, caught, and then whisked away in the night to avoid scandal, Schickel’s provocative, searing, and darkly funny memoir, The Big Hurt, explores the question, How did that girl turn out?Schickel came of age in the 1970s, the progeny of two writers: Richard Schickel, the prominent film critic for TIME magazine, and Julia Whedon, a melancholy mid-list novelist. In the wake of her parents’ ugly divorce, Erika was packed off to a bohemian boarding school in the Berkshires.T
£19.79
Vintage Espanol Los sueños de mi padre Una historia de raza y
Book Synopsis
£17.00
Back Bay Books Theft by Finding
Book Synopsis
£16.14
Not Stated Left on Tenth
Book SynopsisThe beloved writer of romantic comedies like You''ve Got Mail tells her own late-in-life love story in her New York Times bestselling resplendent memoir, complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone). Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She?d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry?s death, she decided to make one small change in her life?she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell. She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love. But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia. In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 byTIME,Bustle,Parade,Publishers Weekly,Boston.com A Best Memoir of 2022 by Marie Claire A Best Memoir of April by Vanity Fair
£16.14
Hachette Books Shrill
Book Synopsis
£15.20
Back Bay Books Like a Rolling Stone
Book SynopsisIn this New York Times bestseller, Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner offers a 'touchingly honest' and 'wonderfully deep' memoir from the beating heart of classic rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen). Jann Wenner has been called by his peers “the greatest editor of his generation.” His deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history. Wenner writes with the clarity of a journalist and an essayist. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, full-throated backing. From Jerry Garcia to the Dalai Lama, Aretha Franklin to Greta Thunberg, the people Wenner chose to be seen and heard in the pages of Rolling Stone tried to change American culture, values, and morality.Like a Rolling Stone is a beautifully written portrait of one man’s life, and the life of his generation.
£999.99
Back Bay Books The Only Girl in the World
Book Synopsis
£14.44
Little Brown and Company Notes on a Silencing
Book SynopsisA 'powerful and scary and important and true' memoir of a young woman's struggle to regain her sense of self after trauma, and the efforts by a powerful New England boarding school to silence her—at any cost (Sally Mann, author of Hold Still). Shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing When Notes on a Silencing hit bookstores in the summer of 2020, even amidst a global pandemic, it sent shockwaves through the country. Not only did this intimate investigative memoir usher in a media storm of coverage, but it also prompted the elite St. Paul's School to issue a formal apology to the author, Lacy Crawford, for its handling of her report of sexual assault by two fellow students nearly thirty years ago. In this searing book, Crawford tells the story of coming forward during the state investigation of the elite New England prep school decades after her assault, only to find for the first time evidence that corroborated her memories. Here were depictions of the naïve, hardworking girl she’d been, as well as astonishing proof of an institutional silencing. The slander, innuendo, and lack of adult concern that Crawford had experienced as a student hadn't been imagined; they were the actions of a school that prized its reputation above anything, even a child. This revelation launched Crawford on an extraordinary inquiry deep into gender, privilege, and power, and the ways shame and guilt are used to silence victims. Insightful, arresting, and beautifully written, Notes on a Silencing wrestles with an essential question for our time: what telling of a survivor's story will finally force a remedy?“Erudite and devastating… Crawford's writing is astonishing… Notes on a Silencing is a purposefully named, brutal and brilliant retort to the asinine question of 'Why now?'… The story is crafted with the precision of a thriller, with revelations that sent me reeling…” —Jessica Knoll, New York TimesA Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, People, Real Simple, Marie Claire, The Lineup, LitHub, Library Journal, BookPage, and Shelf Awareness A New York Times Book Review Notable Book A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceOne of People Magazine’s 10 Best Books of the YearSemifinalist for a Goodreads Choice Award
£18.04
Back Bay Books Going There
Book Synopsis
£17.09
Back Bay Books The World According to Fannie Davis
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Little Brown and Company A Carnival of Snackery
Book Synopsis
£25.60
Little, Brown Spark Thicker Than Water
Book Synopsis
£25.60
Vintage Canada Where Beauty Survived
Book Synopsis“Powerful.” —Toronto Star A vibrant, revealing memoir about the cultural and familial pressures that shaped George Elliott Clarke’s early life in the Black Canadian community that he calls Africadia, centred in Halifax, Nova Scotia.As a boy, George Elliott Clarke knew that a great deal was expected from him and his two brothers. The descendant of a highly accomplished lineage on his paternal side—great-grandson to William Andrew White, the first Black officer (non-commissioned) in the British army—George felt called to live up to the family name. In contrast, his mother''s relatives were warm, down-to-earth country folk. Such contradictions underlay much of his life and upbringing—Black and White, country and city, outstanding and ordinary, high and low. With vulnerability and humour, George shows us how these dualities shaped him as a poet and thinker.At the book’s heart is George’s turbulent relationship with his father, an autodidact who valued art, music and books but worked an unfulfilling railway job. Bill could be loving and patient, but he also acted out destructive frustrations, assaulting George’s mother and sometimes George and his brothers, too.Where Beauty Survived is the story of a complicated family, of the emotional stress that white racism exerts on Black households, of the unique cultural geography of Africadia, of a child who became a poet, and of long-kept secrets.
£15.30
Mariner Books Learning America
Book Synopsis“[From] an influential educational leader and activist…an impassioned, penetrating critique and inspiring model for progress.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewIt was a wrong turn that changed everything. When Luma Mufleh—a Muslim, gay, refugee woman from hyper-conservative Jordan—stumbled upon a pick-up game of soccer in Clarkston, Georgia, something compelled her to join. The players, 11- and 12-year-olds from Liberia, Afghanistan, and Sudan, soon welcomed her as coach of their ragtag but fiercely competitive group. Drawn into their lives, Mufleh learned that few of her players, all local public school students, could read a single word. She asks, “Where was the America that took me in? That protected me? How can I get these kids to that America?”Learning America traces the story of how Mufleh grew a group of kids into a soccer team and then into a
£19.94
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc People Who Eat Darkness
Book SynopsisLucie Blackmantall, blond, twenty-one years oldstepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000, and disappeared forever. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, covered Lucie''s disappearance and followed the massive search for her, the long investigation, and the even longer trial. Over ten years, he earned the trust of her family and friends, won unique access to the Japanese detectives and Japan''s convoluted legal system, and delved deep into the mind of the man accused of the crime, Joji Obara, described by the judge as unprecedented and extremely evil. The result is a book at once thrilling and revelatory, In Cold Blood for our times (Chris Cleave, author of Incendiary and Little Bee).The People Who Eat Darkness is one of Publishers Weekly''s Top 10 Best Books of 2012
£16.15
Random House USA Inc Cancer Vixen
Book SynopsisThe groundbreaking graphic memoir that inspires breast cancer patients to fight back—and do so with style. • “Powerful … A vibrant, neon chronicle with plenty of attitude … A triumph of imagination and spirit.” —Los Angeles Times“What happens when a shoe-crazy, lipstick-obsessed, wine-swilling, pasta-slurping, fashion-fanatic, about-to-get-married big-city girl cartoonist with a fabulous life finds ... a lump in her breast?” That’s the question that sets this powerful, funny, and poignant graphic memoir in motion. In vivid color and with a taboo-breaking sense of humor, Marisa Acocella Marchetto tells the story of her eleven-month, ultimately triumphant bout with breast cancer—from diagnosis to cure, and every challenging step in between.
£17.10
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc The Autobiography of Saint Therese
Book SynopsisFirst published more than a century ago, the autobiography of the nineteenth-century French saint shares the Little Flower''s insightful lessons into how to achieve goodness through the performance of the humblest and simplest of tasks and is accompanied by a new introduction by Patrick Ahern, an auxiliary bishop in New York. Reprint.
£13.50
Random House Canada Close to the Bone A Memoir
Book Synopsis“A thrilling journey. . . . A must-read.” Freida Pinto “How fortunate a thing it is, when life alters you without warning.” Lisa Ray is one of India’s first supermodels. She’s also an acclaimed actor, a cancer survivor, a mother of twins born through surrogacy, a lifelong student, and a person of no fixed address. She is a woman who has lived many lives. And this is her story.Unflinching and deeply moving, Close to the Bone traces Lisa Ray’s serendipitous life, from her childhood in Canada as the biracial daughter of an Indian man and Polish woman, to her rise as a Bollywood star; from her battle with a rare and incurable cancer, to her journey to find identity and belonging, both in the world and in her own body. Transporting and atmospheric, it takes readers across the globe: Toronto in the 1970s, when Lisa was searching for place and purpose; the intense, frenetic streets of B
£16.20
WW Norton & Co Our Revolution A Mother and Daughter at
Book SynopsisA daughter’s memoir of her mother evolves beautifully into a narrative of the far-reaching changes in women’s lives in the twentieth century.Trade Review"In Moore’s supremely capable hands, what began as a labor of love and filial duty expands into a dazzling epic portrait of a fascinating American family and a mother-daughter story unlike any other. A superb feat of empathetic imagination and meticulous historical reconstruction, full of drama, passion, and the deepest wisdom." -- Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend"Our Revolution begins with the sudden, catastrophic death of a mother and ends only when that mother has been returned to vibrant, textured life by her memoirist and poet daughter. Here is that emergence, beautifully recorded, documented, and envisioned as feminist art and American history." -- Margo Jefferson, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Negroland"Our Revolution is a tour de force of a memoir, one that describes Honor Moore’s upper-crust background and difficult relationship with her mother with equal parts tenderness and rigor. It will have something to say to anyone who has wondered at the mysteries of family lineage and the vexed journey to becoming an individual while holding on to a larger identity as a sibling and daughter." -- Daphne Merkin, author of This Close to Happy"The revolutionary insight of this remarkable book arises from the discovery that for Honor Moore and her mother, turning in to their writer selves was also a turning to each other. Gripping and profoundly moving, Our Revolution is also a signal contribution to feminism." -- Carol Gilligan, coauthor of Why Does Patriarchy Persist?"Honor Moore’s vivid, compassionate, scrupulously honest portrait of her mother deftly charts the complex entanglements of family love, need, and pain. But this memoir-biography is also an intimate history of the ideas and events that jolted America during the three decades that followed the Second World War. The gaping rifts of class, race, and sex that set the country on fire then are still burning. Our Revolution is a book about those times for our times." -- Siri Hustvedt, author of Memories of the Future"Our Revolution is the poignant book that Honor Moore was destined to write: a passionate biographical memoir that uncovers, almost five decades after her mother’s death, a tale of family, faith, and fortitude—and of human rights, religion, and women, of mothers and daughters struggling to find themselves and each other against a midcentury backdrop of tumultuous change, uncertainty, and abiding love. Compassionate, genuine, hard to put down, it’s also a tale for today, not to be missed." -- Brenda Wineapple
£21.84
WW Norton & Co His Promised Land
Book Synopsis"Surpasses all previous slave narratives…Usually we need to invent our American heroes. With the publication of Parker's extraordinary memoir, we seem to have discovered the genuine article." —Joseph J. Ellis, CivilizationTrade Review"John P. Parker was an extraordinary man…He seems to have been that true American rarity, a person who spent much of his life facing racial battles yet saw the world through colorblind eyes…He lived a perpetual Perils of Paul and did so with unending zest…Now he can be given his due." -- Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post Book World"Riveting…Astonishing and believable." -- Nell Irvin Painter"A rip-roaring adventure yarn…History of the best kind." -- Kirkus Reviews
£12.09
WW Norton & Co SelfPortrait in Black and White
Book SynopsisA Time “Must-Read” Book of 2019 “[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him.” —Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (front page)Trade Review"Challenges us to think beyond America’s racial binaries." -- Zaid Jilani - The Guardian"An elegant and sharp-eyed writer.… In a publishing environment where analyses of race tend to call out white fragilities and catalogue historical injustices, Self-Portrait in Black and White is a counterintuitive, courageous addition." -- Carlos Lozada - The Washington Post"A fluent, captivating, if often disquieting story.… We witness Williams on a journey of both self-discovery and self-creation, and his memoir is most valuable as a way deeper into, as opposed to a way out of, race talk." -- Emily Bernard - Harper’s"Williams has the essential things a writer needs—command of language, complexity and depth of thought, and, maybe above all, courage. In Self-Portrait in Black and White he sticks his neck way out in pursuit of unfashionable, necessary truths. This book brings a blast of fresh air that will change your thinking about race in America." -- George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America"Thomas Chatterton Williams’ Self-Portrait in Black and White is a gorgeously written and deeply knowledgeable account of fatherhood, identity, and race. Tender and probing, respectful of intellectual disagreement and of the raw emotions these subjects can stir, it nevertheless proceeds fearlessly and rigorously toward his own original and challenging conclusions. This is a book that will surely provoke, inform, and move readers, regardless of where they stand on the political and philosophical divide." -- Phil Klay, author of Redeployment"This small book poses a very large question: How to become a self? Williams uses his own story to remind us that inner freedom depends on escaping the insidious categories of history and the suffocating clichés of the present. It is a stirring call to genuine liberation." -- Mark Lilla, author of The Once and Future Liberal"In fifty years, smart students will be writing senior theses seeking to understand why anyone in the early twenty-first century found anything in Self-Portrait in Black and White at all controversial. For now, curl up with this book to join a conversation on race about progress rather than piety, thought rather than therapy." -- John McWhorter, author of The Creole Debate"This moving and engrossing memoir is unfashionable in the best of ways. At a time when even purportedly optimistic visions of the future seem to assume that Americans will always be defined by the color of their skin, Thomas Chatterton Williams makes us dream of a future in which the importance of race will recede, and we are finally able to love each other for who we truly are. An energizing book by one of the greatest writers of our time." -- Yascha Mounk, author of The People vs. Democracy"With Self-Portrait in Black and White Thomas Chatterton Williams has given us an elegantly rendered and trenchantly critical reflection on ‘race’ and identity—one that is perfectly suited to our time. This is a subtle, unsettling, and brave book. Using his own journey through life as point of departure, Williams launches a major assault on the conventional wisdom about racial categorization in America. Not only does he envision a New World; he dares to point the way toward how we all might yet arrive on those uncharted shores." -- Glenn Loury, professor of economics and faculty fellow, Watson Institute, Brown University"Thomas Chatterton Williams has written a brave and powerful book that I could not put down. At a time when white supremacy is resurgent in many countries, should we fight it by insisting on the equality of the races or the elimination of race as a social and biological category? It is a question that needs to be asked and a debate that needs to be had." -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Our Revolution A Mother and Daughter at
Book SynopsisA daughter’s “tender and unflinching portrait of her complex, privileged, wildly talented mother” (Louise Erdrich) evolves beautifully into a narrative of the far-reaching changes in women’s lives in the twentieth century.Trade Review"A dazzling, epic portrait of a fascinating American family." -- Sigrid Nunez"Searching.… The process of understanding a parent, perhaps like memoir writing, never ends. The writer and the child return repeatedly to a collection of fragments, rearranging and reconsidering them in the shifting light of age." -- Janny Scott - New York Times Book Review"[Moore] evokes the turbulence of the women’s rights movement in this elegiac account of her mother’s trek from Social Register to social justice activist." -- O, The Oprah Magazine"A monumental and loving excavation of a life so richly promising, and quenched so early.… It’s a victory of awareness and self-distancing, the task of writing in order to see the self.… [Moore] makes sense of a complex history and of complex and intimate relationships in clear, nuanced, and strategically paced prose. The culmination comes in the form of the mutual understanding she and her mother were granted, or rather, granted each other, through remarkable powers of moral imagination—in both women. The daughter writer has made her writer mother live again." -- Rosanna Warren - Literary Matters"A sharp portrait of two women who struggled to shape their lives as their world changed.… A deeply insightful, empathetic family history." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Moore shares intimate glimpses of her family life and coming-of-age story, beautifully integrating excerpts from her mother’s writing among her own recollections and research.… [A] rich exploration of an individual whose life and family were dramatically altered by second-wave feminism." -- Library Journal"Our Revolution begins with the sudden, catastrophic death of a mother and ends only when that mother has been returned to vibrant, textured life by her memoirist and poet daughter. Here is that emergence, beautifully recorded, documented, and envisioned as feminist art and American history." -- Margo Jefferson, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Negroland"Our Revolution, Honor Moore’s tender and unflinching portrait of her complex, privileged, wildly talented mother, has been my book companion for a week. I could not hope for better. Jenny McKean through her daughter’s eyes is a deeply loving presence. Moore seamlessly blends her own voice with her mother’s writings to create a compelling world of 1960s and ’70s male idealism that rested upon the invisible labor of women." -- Louise Erdrich, via the Birchbark Books Instagram"Honor Moore’s vivid, compassionate, scrupulously honest portrait of her mother deftly charts the complex entanglements of family love, need, and pain. But this memoir-biography is also an intimate history of the ideas and events that jolted America during the three decades that followed the Second World War. The gaping rifts of class, race, and sex that set the country on fire then are still burning. Our Revolution is a book about those times for our times." -- Siri Hustvedt, author of Memories of the Future"Our Revolution is the poignant book that Honor Moore was destined to write: a passionate biographical memoir that uncovers, almost five decades after her mother’s death, a tale of family, faith, and fortitude—and of human rights, religion, and women, of mothers and daughters struggling to find themselves and each other against a midcentury backdrop of tumultuous change, uncertainty, and abiding love. Compassionate, genuine, hard to put down, it’s also a tale for today, not to be missed." -- Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers
£14.24
WW Norton & Co Half Broke A Memoir
Book SynopsisWinner of a 2020 Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award “Truly transcendent.” —Jessica Lustig, New York Times Book ReviewTrade Review"You will remember [these] tenacious and utterly winning people… for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses." -- Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek"[Half Broke] shows a side of New Mexico that is seldom seen?the poverty and the struggle, but also the hopefulness and odd beauty of spirit within the people and the horses." -- Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony"Half Broke—with its painful candor and spare, incisive prose—is captivating." -- Michael Upchurch - Seattle Times"Fascinating.… Some of the most compelling characters here don’t speak in words: They are horses. And in Gaffney’s story, they come alive." -- Deborah Hopkinson - BookPage"With sensitive, soul-bearing prose, Gaffney weaves together her personal experiences as a horse trainer with the struggles of damaged humans and damaged horses. I was also moved by the depth of vulnerability and intuition of the horses. As Lorin Lindner’s Birds of a Feather reveals for traumatized parrots and soldiers, so Half Broke reveals for horses and parolees." -- Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows"Ginger Gaffney is a bold and original talent.… Savor this book, and then buy a copy for your best friend." -- Anne Hillerman, New York Times best-selling author"Gaffney pulls off the impressive feat of translating horses and humans. She creates lyricism through experience, landscape, and empathy." -- Gretchen Lida - Washington Independent Review of Books"This marvelous memoir, peopled with folks in serious trouble of one kind or another, and the horses they care for, creatures with their own sophisticated ways of communicating, taught me as much about language as have my seventy-seven years on the planet." -- Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It"Half Broke is the rare gift of a story exquisitely told, a book that shows us how to save ourselves by saving what we’ve left behind." -- Nickole Brown, author of To Those Who Were Our First Gods"Heartfelt and healing, Half Broke asks us to look at horses and ourselves in a new way. A very moving book for all animal lovers from a true horse whisperer." -- Brenda Peterson, author of Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves
£12.34
WW Norton & Co SelfPortrait in Black and White
Book SynopsisA meditation on race and identity from one of our most provocative cultural critics.Trade Review"[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him. At a time of increasing division, his philosophizing evinces an underlying generosity. He reaches both ways across the aisle of racism, arguing above all for reciprocity, and in doing so begins to theorize the temperate peace of which all humanity is sorely in need." -- Andrew Solomon - New York Times Book Review (cover)"An elegant and sharp-eyed writer....In a publishing environment where analyses of race tend to call out white fragilities and catalogue historical injustices, Self-Portrait in Black and White is a counterintuitive, courageous addition." -- Carlos Lozada - Washington Post"A fluent, captivating, if often disquieting story....We witness Williams on a journey of both self-discovery and self-creation, and his memoir is most valuable as a way deeper into, as opposed to a way out of, race talk." -- Emily Bernard - Harper's"Thomas Chatterton Williams has the essential things a writer needs—command of language, complexity and depth of thought, and, maybe above all, courage. In Self-Portrait in Black and White he sticks his neck way out in pursuit of unfashionable, necessary truths. This book brings a blast of fresh air that will change your thinking about race in America." -- George Packer, author of Our Man and The Unwinding"A gorgeously written and deeply knowledgeable account of fatherhood, identity, and race. Tender and probing, respectful of intellectual disagreement and of the raw emotions these subjects can stir, it nevertheless proceeds fearlessly and rigorously toward his own original and challenging conclusions. This is a book that will surely provoke, inform, and move readers, regardless of where they stand on the political and philosophical divide." -- Phil Klay, author of Redeployment"An elegantly rendered and trenchantly critical reflection on ‘race’ and identity—one that is perfectly suited to our time. This is a subtle, unsettling, and brave book. Using his own journey through life as point of departure, Thomas Chatterton Williams launches a major assault on the conventional wisdom about racial categorization in America. Not only does he envision a New World; he dares to point the way toward how we all might yet arrive on those uncharted shores." -- Glenn Loury, professor of economics and faculty fellow, Watson Institute, Brown University"A brave and powerful book that I could not put down. At a time when white supremacy is resurgent in many countries, should we fight it by insisting on the equality of the races or the elimination of race as a social and biological category? It is a question that needs to be asked and a debate that needs to be had." -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America"How does anyone confront a history that demands what they believe about themselves is different from what’s required to love their children? The answer, and path to it, is complicated. But here is a son embodying the lessons of a father. Some will walk away from this believing that black, like white, is a social construct that needs to be abandoned—but all will walk way knowing that a father’s love cannot be quantified by anything as whimsical as skin complexion." -- Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon and A Question of Freedom"This small book poses a very large question: how to become a self? Williams uses his own story to remind us that inner freedom depends on escaping the insidious categories of history and the suffocating clichés of the present. It is a stirring call to genuine liberation." -- Mark Lilla, author of The Once and Future Liberal"In fifty years, smart students will be writing senior theses seeking to understand why anyone in the early 21st century found anything in Self-Portrait in Black and White at all controversial. For now, curl up with this book to join a conversation on race about progress rather than piety, thought rather than therapy." -- John McWhorter, author of The Creole Debate
£18.89
WW Norton & Co The Outrun A Memoir
Book Synopsis“The Outrun will no doubt sit alongside . . . Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk—the sheer sensuality of Liptrot’s prose and her steely resolve immediately put her right up there with the best of the best.”—New StatesmanTrade Review"[A] gorgeous debut. . . . Full of lucid self-discovery and shimmering prose." -- New York Times Book Review"Contains unflinching interrogation of [Liptrot’s] self-destructive impulses, but also sharp observations about the metaphysical qualities of her surroundings. . . . The Outrun is slow and lyrical, transitioning from the rush of drinking into the raw sensations of island life." -- Elle"[Liptrot’s] prose is spare, lean, and beautiful, much like the country about which she writes." -- Booklist (starred)"Spectacular. . . . This magnificent memoir is a record of transformation in its truest sense" -- Publishers Weekly"The Outrun is an astonishingly beautiful book… Her account of her addiction and recovery is electric, sexy, immediate, and raw, leaving the reader reeling in her wake. And yet she’s also elegant, thoughtful, and controlled… A luminous, life-affirming book, and I have no doubt that I’ll be pressing it into people’s hands for years to come." -- Olivia Laing"Uncompromising and lyrical…Liptrot’s writing is strong and sure… The Outrun is a bright addition to the exploding genre of writing about place and our place in the natural world." -- Observer"A lyrical, brave memoir… [Liptrot] walks the hills and dances between the standing stones of Stenness; she joins a wild swimming club and, hauling herself from the gelid waters, ‘naked on the beach, I am a selkie slipped from its skin.’ It’s this aptitude Liptrot has for marrying her inner-space with wild outer-spaces that makes her such a compelling writer—and one to watch." -- Will Self - Guardian"Liptrot is an Orcadian warrior with the breeze in her blood and poetry in her fingers, and The Outrun equals works by fellow islanders such as George Mackay Brown and Peter Maxwell Davies. It may even be a future classic. Wherever she journeys next, you will want to go with her." -- New Statesman
£17.99
WW Norton & Co The Critics Daughter
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Loss, grief, criticism, and love mix and mingle in this moving, literary memoir, one of the best father/daughter memoirs around." -- Zibby Owens - Good Morning America"A penetrating, plangent memoir, electric with emotional urgency and alive with self-awareness... Gilman has the gumption to look at her father, her mother and herself with clarity and without apology. She wonders if she can make radical honesty 'an act of love.' Her efforts are brave, and bracing." -- Nneka McGuire - Wall Street Journal"This revealing and clearly heartfelt memoir—a love letter to her father that doesn’t obscure the difficult and frustrating aspects of their relationship—works precisely because Gilman delivers a detailed portrait of her father, proverbial warts and all... She certainly provides the rest of us with a daughter’s thoughtful and empathetic profile of her dad." -- Daneet Steffens - Boston Globe"With bracing honesty, The Critic’s Daughter, Priscilla Gilman’s perspicacious memoir, unmasks the privilege and the burden of her beloved father’s life and his literary legacy...The Critic’s Daughter spotlights an era of formidable criticism accomplished with conscious clarity. It’s a reminder that criticism is a necessary art form. But the book is even more than that...Gilman’s skills as a memoirist, playwright, poet, critic, dramaturge, and family historian set a high bar." -- Yvonne Conza - BOMB Magazine"Priscilla Gilman tells a fascinating story about her dynamic parents and the literary world that they inhabited... While The Critic’s Daughter concerns itself with her parents’ marriage and its aftermath, it’s very much a book about the way one develops and nurtures a fascination with the arts through enthusiasm, criticism, and commerce." -- Lauren LeBlanc - LitHub"The Critic’s Daughter is about the complex love between a parent and a child... The memoir genre...pumps out innumerable rote tales of becoming, of breaking free, of learning to 'direct' one’s own life. It offers few stories of being and remaining entangled... The Critic’s Daughter is an account of a love that’s neither takeoff strip nor landing pad, a child’s confounding adoration for her parent that’s neither really resolved nor extinguished." -- Eve Fairbanks - Washington Post"One of the reasons I loved Gilman’s book is that through her father she makes a case for criticism as a worthwhile practice... The Critic’s Daughter is a book about a lot of things, but one of them is this: that a fierce and powerful voice, a voice that some people were afraid to hear, can disguise an awful lot of trouble and pain. The critic’s daughter—the writer, as opposed to the book—has the tenderness, the acuity, and the facility to explore her father and her relationship to him in ways that cannot help but resonate. Maybe this is because all of us are the children of critics, in one way or another." -- Nick Hornby - The Believer"Intimate, thoughtful... For me, this memoir read as a rare confluence of things—not so much a 'Daddy Dearest' settling of scores, but a sincere attempt to untangle a father-daughter knot of love, hurt, and grief... [S]earing." -- Misha Berson - American Theatre"In capturing the essence of its challenging subject, The Critic's Daughter is a rare combination of honesty, warmheartedness and exquisite writing... Richard Gilman would be proud of the eloquence and grace with which she has done it." -- Harvey Freedenberg - BookReporter"The Critic’s Daughter hits home not just as an insider’s chronicle of a notable literary family, but as a depiction of the pain a broken marriage inflicts... Gilman’s memoir is testament to an upbringing infused with a love of language and literature." -- Alice Sparberg Alexiou - Lilith"The Critic’s Daughter is an exquisite and rare example of how the memoir needs as much inventiveness in scope and form as our most lush fiction and poetry. Priscilla Gilman writes sentences I never see coming, and those sentences splinter into a textured model of how to write about—and through—art, perpetual discovery, and parenting. I’ve read few books in my life as skillfully executed and willfully conceived as The Critic’s Daughter. This should not work. But my goodness, it just does." -- Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy"The Critic’s Daughter holds so many joys in store for you: The joy of disappearing into a finely crafted world—in this case, of Gilman’s mind, heart, and personal history. The joy of encountering a text sprinkled with insights, like so many pearls. But most of all, the joy of basking in Priscilla Gilman’s capacious love—for her father, for her family, and for you, her reader." -- Susan Cain, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and Quiet"Gilman delightfully weaves the television shows, plays, and movies of her childhood into the story... [T]he heart of this memoir is the unusually powerful, fraught, and enduring father-daughter relationship. Gilman creates an emotional map of the catastrophic disruption of divorce and the devotion of a child for her parent despite his failings." -- Jane Constantineau - New York Journal of Books"A brilliant, gorgeous, miracle of a book." -- Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club and We Should Not Be Friends"Passionate, resonant, and beautifully written…Evokes both a uniquely brilliant and troubled man and the poignantly relatable essence of the father-daughter connection." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Gilman writes with resplendent clarity, meticulous candor, and incandescent love forged in the fire of extraordinarily demanding family dynamics... Gilman incisively charts her remarkable father’s intense ups-and-downs and lucidly analyzes her own struggles in a richly involving chronicle gracefully laced with literary allusions, compassion, and wisdom." -- Booklist (starred review)"Poignant... Bibliophiles will enjoy the literary cameos (Joan Didion, Toni Morrison) and reflections on literature, but Gilman’s wrenching recollections of marital, and familial, dissolution are near-universal. This is an eye-opening testament to the lasting wounds of divorce." -- Publishers Weekly"The Critic’s Daughter is first and foremost a very touching love story about a father, a daughter, and their unbreakable bond. Priscilla Gilman writes with eloquence and absolute candor of her late father Richard Gilman, the esteemed, brilliant, but deeply troubled drama and literary critic.… An unforgettable read, The Critic’s Daughter is as entertaining as it is moving." -- James Lapine, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright"The Critic's Daughter is an exquisite love song, a riveting story, a book for our time. Any daughter with a father, anyone who has been part of a family, anyone who has struggled with loving, anyone interested in literary criticism, or the theater, or life, this is a book for you." -- Andre Gregory, theater director, writer, and star of My Dinner With Andre"The daughter of an unsparing critic, Priscilla Gilman has written a book her father would have deeply admired: a tender, unflinching memoir that is also a searching reflection on the relationship between criticism and love. The father she lost is vividly captured in this moving, gracefully written, bracingly honest book." -- Eyal Press, author of Dirty Work"Captivating and heartfelt... Gilman’s reflections on her father’s work, as well as her own struggles with identity, are both heartbreaking and inspiring... The Critic’s Daughter is an honest and moving exploration of family, identity, and the human experience. It is a must-read for anyone looking for an intimate and honest look into the life of a literary family." -- EU Times
£21.84
WW Norton & Co The Madwoman and the Roomba
Book SynopsisA comic exploration of a year in the life of an “imaginatively twisted and fearless” (Los Angeles Times) best-selling author.Trade Review"Hilarious, snarky, insightful, and compassionate." -- Julia Sweeney"Loh’s comic appraisal of life at middle age also offers an acerbic reckoning of how the burdens of parenting and housekeeping continue to fall most heavily on women." -- New York Times Book Review"[Loh’s] frank, self-deprecating wit is built on a foundation of acute observation of the ridiculous hypocrisies and foibles that give everyday life its texture." -- Shana Nys Dambrot - LA Weekly"[Sandra Tsing] Loh’s tone is chatty and self-deprecating—like having a glass of wine or a long phone call with your favorite witty, goofy friend." -- Sarah McCraw Crow - BookPage"Hilarious.… [Loh’s] warm, chatty, stream-of-consciousness style will attract book clubs as well as those looking for reassurance that they, too, are doing OK despite unsuccessful stabs at homemaking and dealing with hot flashes." -- Booklist"Loh’s voice is laugh-out-loud hilarious, and her fun house perspective on the foibles of middle age are intelligent and effervescent. Fans of her previous memoir and her NPR program The Loh Down on Science will delight in this outing." -- Publishers Weekly"This wildly funny book proves that the more of life’s indignities that are heaped on Sandra Tsing Loh, the more we will thrill to her brilliant wit and rock-solid resilience. I laughed about seventy times, welled up twice, and cried at the end. Spectacular." -- Henry Alford, author of Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?"If humor will save us from these times—and if not, nothing will—Sandra Tsing Loh should be president. Or, better, queen. I devoured this perceptive, of-the-moment book, about midlife love, work, motherhood, peer pressure, and more, with tears of hilarity running down my face. Sandra Tsing Loh could write an oven manual, and I’d laugh. I think she might be the funniest writer writing today." -- Cathi Hanauer, editor of The Bitch in the House"The Madwoman and the Roomba is so funny it woke up my husband. He couldn’t fall back to sleep with all the cackling, so he told me to read it aloud, and then we were both laughing. It’s a year in the life of a very particular family: Mom wants to write The Angry Divorced Mother’s Cookbook; her live-in boyfriend is more interested in the New York Times’ barbecue recipes than in finding a full-time job; her brother strips to his underwear to give their father’s eulogy.… In other words, they’re just like the rest of us: trying to get by without killing each other. Do you like laughing? Do you like reading? Buy this book!" -- Caitlin Flanagan, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Girl Land
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Free A Child and a Country at the End of History
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Ypi is a beautiful writer and a serious political thinker, and in just a couple hundred readable pages, she takes turns between being bitingly, if darkly, funny (she skewers Stalinism and the World Bank with equal deadpan) and truly profound...Free is meant to inspire." -- Max Strasser - New York Times"A young life unfolding amid great historical change: ideology, war, loss, uncertainty. This is history brought memorably and powerfully to life." -- Tara Westover, author of Educated"Free is astonishing. Lea Ypi has a natural gift for storytelling. It brims with life, warmth, and texture, as well as her keen intelligence. A gripping, often hilarious, poignant, psychologically acute masterpiece, and the best book I’ve read so far this year." -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road"Illuminating and subversive, Free asks us to consider what happens to our ideals when they come into contact with imperfect places and people, and what can be salvaged from the wreckage of the past." -- Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran"Written by an intellectual with storytelling gifts, Free makes life on the ground in modern-day Albania vivid and immediate." -- Vivian Gornick, author of The Odd Woman and the City"A new classic that bursts out of the global silence of Albania to tell us human truths about the politics of the past hundred years… revelation after revelation—both familial and national—as if written by a master novelist. As if it were, say, a novella by Tolstoy. That this very serious book is so much fun to read is a compliment to its graceful, witty, honest writer. A literary triumph." -- Amy Wilentz, author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti"Lea Ypi is a pathbreaking philosopher who is also becoming one of the most important public thinkers of our time.… This extraordinary book is both personally moving and politically revolutionary. If we take its lessons to heart, it can help to set us free." -- Martin Hägglund, author of This Life"Free is one of those very rare books that shows how history shapes people’s lives and their politics. Lea Ypi is such a brilliant, powerful writer that her story becomes your story." -- Ivan Krastev, coauthor of The Light That Failed"Written by one of Europe’s foremost left-wing thinkers, this is an unmissable book for anyone engaged in the politics of resistance." -- Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism"This extraordinary coming-of-age story is like an Albanian Educated, but it is so much more than that." -- David Runciman, author of How Democracy Ends"A lyrical memoir, of deep and affecting power, of the sweet smell of humanity mingled with flesh, blood, and hope." -- Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline"Ypi’s beguiling memoir of innocence and experience in Albania’s communist era and its aftermath is told through intimate stories of a taken-for-granted life devolving into uncertainty. It serves as a profound primer on how to live when old verities turn to dust." -- Washington Post Best Books of 2022"Utterly engrossing . . . Ypi's memoir is brilliantly observed, politically nuanced and - best of all - funny." -- Stuart Jeffries - Guardian"A uniquely engaging and illuminating account of a young life during a period of intense turmoil... Free offers gem after gem of the bizarre reality that Hoxhaism produced.....Detailing the absurdities of Hoxha’s regime from a child’s perspective, Ypi pulls off the remarkable feat of emphasizing their cruelty with a light and often humorous touch... Free concludes with important lessons about sustaining the ability to ‘reflect, apologize and learn,’ given that ‘people never make history under circumstances they choose.’" -- Misha Glenny - Times Literary Supplement"Precious little was known about life in communist Albania under Enver Hoxha. That strange world and its legacy is now stunningly brought to life in Lea Ypi’s Free. From protective doublespeak round the kitchen table to the uncertain, and unfulfilled promises of post-communism, Ypi offers a moving and compelling memoir of growing up in turbulent times, as well as a frank questioning of what it really means to be 'free.'" -- Frederick Studeman - Financial Times"Free is much more than a historical account of a country we know or care little about, except as a punchline for jokes about poverty and atavism. Just as Ypi and her family watched empires crumble, taking whole realities with them, we too are living in catastrophic times, with the geopolitical certainties that have sheltered us for the past century, for better or worse – the US, UK and more recently, the EU – all in various stages of collapse or decay. This, Ypi warns us, is how it will feel when the levee breaks." -- Ed O'Loughlin - Irish Times"Lea Ypi's Free is the first book since Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend that I have pressed on family, friends and colleagues, insisting they read it. . . a truly riveting memoir and a profound meditation on what it means to be free." -- Ruth Scurr - Spectator"Ypi's deliciously smart memoir of her Albanian girlhood at the end of the Cold War is a brilliant disquisition on the meanings of freedom - its lures, false hopes, disappointments and possibilities - in our time." -- Lyndsey Stonebridge - New Statesman"Essential reading. Lea Ypi's gorgeously written text - part memoir, part bildungsroman - tells a very personal story of socialism and postsocialism. Poignant and timely." -- Kristen Ghodsee - Jacobin"An astonishing and deeply resonant memoir about growing up in the last days of the last Stalinist outpost of the 20th century. . . What makes it so unforgettable is that we see this world, one about which we know so little, through the eyes of a child... It is more fundamentally about humanity, and about the confusions and wonders of childhood. Ypi weaves magic in this book: I was entranced from beginning to end." -- Laura Hackett - Sunday Times"Riveting. . .A wonderfully funny and poignant portrait of a small nation in a state of collapse. . . gloriously readable. . .One of the nonfiction titles of the year, it is destined for literary accolades and popular success" -- Luke Harding - Observer"The author’s narrative voice is stunning, expertly balancing humor, pathos, and deep affection for the characters and places that defined her past. She is adept at immersing readers in her childhood experiences of unquestioned loyalty to “The Party” while also maintaining a tongue-in-cheek, critical distance from what she now recognizes as a tyrannical regime." -- Kirkus Reviews
£20.89
WW Norton & Co The Lost Café Schindler
Book SynopsisAn extraordinary memoir of a Jewish family spanning two world wars and its flight from Nazi-occupied Austria.Trade Review"Affecting.... Ms. Schindler’s insight-filled reckoning with the past can’t help but leave behind a bitter taste that no amount of Sacher torte can disguise." -- Diane Cole - Wall Street Journal"Intimate and often moving." -- Glenn C. Altschuler - Jerusalem Post"An extraordinary and compelling book of reckonings—a journey across a long, complex, and deeply painful arc of history, grippingly told—a wonderful melding of the personal and the political, the family and the historical." -- Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline"Meriel Schindler takes us on a journey that spans 150 years and threads across countries and continents as she uncovers her family’s history. Weaving her relatives’ personal lives into the turbulent frame of European history, Schindler moves back and forth between the public and the private realms. Lovingly written and astutely observed, The Lost Café Schindler is a meditation on loss: personal loss and loss of historic significance." -- Debórah Dwork, coauthor of Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946"This almost unbearably touching book traces an extraordinarily diligent and sensitive process of family rediscovery. Meriel Schindler shows us how short the window of opportunity for Central European Jews was and how lasting an imprint they nonetheless left behind." -- Peter Hayes, author of Why? Explaining the Holocaust"Meriel Schindler’s research is prodigious, her writing compelling, and her discoveries large and small reunite her with her far-flung family and with the community that exploited them, impoverished them, persecuted them, and even murdered some of them. Through the history of one family, the entire history of the Holocaust and the struggle to rebuild after the Holocaust unfolds.…I was moved to take this journey with her." -- Michael Berenbaum, professor of Jewish studies and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, American Jewish University, Los Angeles"An extraordinary story—so cadenced and so moving." -- Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes"The Lost Café Schindler seamlessly melds two riveting histories, the tumultuous story of Jewish life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the gripping tale of a remarkable family. Meriel Schindler’s account is a powerful personal journey of discovery. This extremely well-researched and beautifully written story is one that will linger long after the last page." -- Gerald L. Posner, coauthor of Mengele: The Complete Story"Powerful.... Beyond the compelling personal details, the author chillingly documents how the livelihoods of Austrian Jews were destroyed, ‘systematically stripped of their assets, at bargain-basement prices’.... Throughout, Schindler writes vividly about representation, memory, and the aftermath of atrocity. A significant addition to the literature on the Holocaust." -- Kirkus, starred review"Skillfully crafted.... reads like a novel.... A must-read work of narrative nonfiction that's highly recommended for readers of memoirs or 20th-century European history." -- Library Journal, starred review"Vividly rendered.... Schindler seamlessly weaves together the historical and personal, offering fresh revelations." -- Booklist"Rigorously researched, The Lost Café Schindler successfully weaves together a compelling and at times deeply moving memoir and family history that also chronicles the wider story of the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.…It distinguishes itself through its combination of mystery and reconciliation." -- Anne Joseph - The Times (UK)"The most fascinating—and devastating—family history.… not just a genealogical exploration.… it sets out the wider experiences of the Jewish population of the Austro-Hungarian empire, weaving in the story of how antisemitism took root.… The stories could scarcely be more powerful." -- The Sunday Times (UK)
£21.84
Random House USA Inc Tell Me More Stories about the 12 Hardest Things
Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A story-driven collection of essays on the twelve powerful phrases we use to sustain our relationships, from the bestselling author of Glitter and Glue and The Middle Place “Kelly Corrigan takes on all the big, difficult questions here, with great warmth and courage.”—Glennon DoyleNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE AND BUSTLEIt’s a crazy idea: trying to name the phrases that make love and connection possible. But that’s just what Kelly Corrigan has set out to do here. In her New York Times bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences, showcasing a warm, easy storytelling style. Now, in Tell Me More, she’s back with a deeply personal, unfailingly honest, and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life. In “I D
£20.80
Random House USA Inc My Broken Language
Book Synopsis
£16.20
Random House USA Inc Crux
Book SynopsisA daughter’s quest to understand her charismatic and troubled father, an immigrant who crosses borders both real and illusory—between sanity and madness, science and spirituality, life and death—now with a new afterwordPEN America Literary Award Winner • “The kind of memoir that seems to redefine the genre.”—Los Angeles Review of Books From renowned journalist Jean Guerrero, here is the haunting story of a daughter’s mission to save her father from his demons and to save herself from destruction. Marco Antonio was raised in Mexico, then migrated to California, where he met Jean’s mother, Jeannette, a Puerto Rican woman just out of med school. Marco is a self-taught genius at building things—including mythologies about himself and the hidden forces that drive us. When he goes on the run, Jean follows and embarks on an investigative journey between cultures and languages, the earthly and the mystical, truth and fiction. A distinctive memoir about the search for an elusive parent, Crux is both a riveting adventure story and a profoundly original exploration of the mysteries of our world, our most intimate relationships, and ourselves.“[Guerrero] writes poetically about borders as a metaphor for the boundary of identity between father and daughter and the porous connective tissues that bind them.”—The National Book Review
£16.14
Random House USA Inc Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An
Book SynopsisBorn a slave in Maryland circa 1817, Frederick Douglass went on to become the most influential and distinguished African American of the nineteenth century. As an abolitionist, newspaper publisher, orator and statesman, Douglass dedicated his life to the triumph of freedom over oppression for all black Americans.Published shortly after his escape from slavery, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave became an immediate bestseller in 1845 and is still the most widely read slave narrative in American history. A piercing denounciation of slavery, the Narrative mobilized masses of people for the abolitionist cause. But the Narrative is also a deeply personal memoir in which Douglass chronicles his childhood years of deprivation and brutality, his efforts to teach himself to read (teaching a slave to read was illegal in the South), and his dangerous flight to freedom in 1838.In his insightful introduction, Professor Henry Louis
£6.99
Broadway Books Girl Who Smiled Beads
Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war and rape. I would not—could not—live in that tale.” Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive. When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States; there, in Chicago, their lives diverged. Though their bond remained unbreakable, Claire, who had for so lo
£15.30
Random House USA Inc The Clothing of Books
Book Synopsis
£8.50
Random House USA Inc Parisian Lives
Book SynopsisA PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTA Publishers Weekly Best Book of the YearNational Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art.In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written—or even read—a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other—and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair’s own feminist beliefs. Parisian Lives draws on Bair’s extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.
£14.41
Random House USA Inc Call Me American A Memoir
Book SynopsisAbdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Desperate to make a living, Abdi used his language skills to post secret dispatches, which found an audience of worldwide listeners. Eventually, though, Abdi was forced to flee to Kenya. In an amazing stroke of luck, Abdi won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America did not come easily. Parts of his story were first heard on the BBC World Service and This American Life. Now a
£14.24
Penguin Putnam Inc More Than Enough
Book Synopsis
£15.30
Random House USA Inc Constructing a Nervous System
Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ? From one of our most nuanced thinkers on the intersections of race, class, and feminism (Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings) comes a memoir as electric as the title suggests (Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom).A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Vulture, Buzzfeed, Publishers WeeklyThe Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson has lived in the thrall of a cast of others?her parents and maternal grandmother, jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes, and stars. These are the figures who thrill and trouble her, and who have made up her sense of self as a person and as a writer. In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise and occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics. In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters her self into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author?s alter egos. The sounds of a jazz LP emerge as the intimate and instructive sounds of a parent?s voice. W. E. B. Du Bois and George Eliot meet illicitly. The muscles and movements of a ballerina are spliced with those of an Olympic runner, becoming a template for what a black female body can be. The result is a wildly innovative work of depth and stirring beauty. It is defined by fractures and dissonance, longing and ecstasy, and a persistent searching. Jefferson interrogates her own self as well as the act of writing memoir, and probes the fissures at the center of American cultural life.
£14.40
Diversified Publishing Becoming
Book SynopsisAn 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 history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harr
£24.99
Alfred A. Knopf Working
Book Synopsis“One of the great reporters of our time and probably the greatest biographer.” —The Sunday Times (London)From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply moving recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books.Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ's mi
£21.25
Random House USA Inc 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
Book SynopsisThe ?intimate and expansive? (Time) memoir of?one of the most important artists working in the world today? (Financial Times),telling a remarkable history of China over the last hundred years while also illuminating his artistic process ?Poignant . . . An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallelsAitraces between his life and his father?s.??The New York Times Book Review (Editors? Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BookPage, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation?s most celebrated poet,AiWeiwei?s father,AiQing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as ?Little Siberia,? whereAiQing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets.AiWeiweirecounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warholand the artworks of Marcel Duchamp. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist?and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. AiWeiwei?s sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird?s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time,AiWeiweiexplores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his life story and that of his father, whose creativity was stifled.At once ambitious and intimate,AiWeiwei?s 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.
£17.00
Random House USA Inc Diary of a Misfit
Book SynopsisPart memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life.Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit. —The New York Times Book ReviewWhen Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man, and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the sto
£15.30
Random House USA Inc Stepping Back from the Ledge
Book SynopsisIn this “seismically moving memoir” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice), one woman asks a seemingly impossible question in the aftermath of her mother’s suicide: How do you mourn a loved one as you repair the injuries they inflicted? “Laura Trujillo resurfaces from the dark ‘sub-basement’ of despair with assurances for us all: There is hope. There is healing. Always, there is love. This book will save lives.”—Connie Schultz, author of The Daughters of ErietownONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New YorkerLaura Trujillo had been close to her mother for most of her adult life, raising her four children within a few miles of their beloved grandmother’s Phoenix home. But just three months after moving her young family to Cincinnati for a new job, Laura receives shocking news: Her mother had taken her own life—by jumping off a le
£21.60
Random House USA Inc Dilettante
Book SynopsisA witty, insightful, and delightfully snarky blend of pop culture meets memoir meets real-life Devil Wears Prada as readers learn the stories behind twenty-five years at Vanity Fair from the magazine’s former deputy editor“Dilettante offers the best seat in the house into the workings of one of the great cultural institutions of our time.”—Buzz Bissinger, New York Times bestselling author of Friday Night LightsDana Brown was a twenty-one-year-old college dropout playing in punk bands and partying his way through downtown New York’s early-nineties milieu when he first encountered Graydon Carter, the legendary editor of Vanity Fair. After the two had a handful of brief interactions (mostly with Brown in the role of cater waiter at Carter’s famous cultural salons he hosted at his home), Carter saw what he believed to be Brown’s untapped potential, and on a whim, hired him as h
£20.70
