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By Liana Finck. 2024
A wryly personal and deeply relatable graphic memoir skewering the &“traditional&” parenting book to chronicle the absurdities, frustrations, and soaring…
joys of new parenthood—from the acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and authorHow do you know if you&’re ready to have a baby? How do you know if you might be pregnant? And how do you deal with peeing all the time and being hungry all the time and fielding well-meaning but kind of insulting advice and finding a doula and being dropped by your old friends and learning why it&’s called mom brain and not dad brain and the tyranny of the milestones you&’re not meeting and negotiating boundaries with in-laws and realizing that your heart now exists outside of your chest and in the body of this tiny little being whose entire existence depends on the quality of your care? To tackle these questions and many others, award-winning cartoonist and memoirist Liana Finck began illustrating her early years of motherhood, giving images and language to her insecurities, frustrations, and wild joy. In How to Baby, Liana takes her witty and lacerating cartoons (&“Hobbies for Pregnant Women: Waiting on Hold with the Insurance Company&”) and weaves them together with comic essays (&“You Married a Brute. Worse. You&’re a Nag: Go Ahead and Argue with Each Other&”), handy lists (&“Nesting. The Comprehensive List of What to Buy and Why Getting Things Used Is Dangerous and Unamerican&”), and profound observations. Together, these brilliant pieces form an immersive and comprehensive narrative whole—a baby book, a resource, and an emotional balm—for our time.By Cait West. 2024
A gripping memoir about coming of age in the stay-at-home daughter movement and the quest to piece together a future…
on your own terms. Raised in the Christian patriarchy movement, Cait West was homeschooled and could only wear clothes her father deemed modest. She was five years old the first time she was told her swimsuit was too revealing, to go change. There would be no college in her future, no career. She was a stay-at-home daughter and would move out only when her father allowed her to become a wife. She was trained to serve men, and her life would never be her own. Until she escaped. In Rift, Cait West tells a harrowing story of chaos and control hidden beneath the facade of a happy family. Weaving together lyrical meditations on the geology of the places her family lived with her story of spiritual and emotional manipulation as a stay-at-home daughter, Cait creates a stirring portrait of one young woman&’s growing awareness that she is experiencing abuse. With the ground shifting beneath her feet, Cait mustered the courage to break free from all she&’d ever known and choose a future of her own making. Rift is a story of survival. It&’s also a story about what happens after you survive. With compassion and clarity, Cait explores the complex legacy of patriarchal religious trauma in her life, including the ways she has also been complicit in systems of oppression. A remarkable literary debut, Rift offers an essential personal perspective on the fraught legacy of purity culture and recent reckonings with abuse in Christian communities.&“A truly remarkable story . . . Marc Stevens has produced a fitting tribute to his father . . . who played a full…
part in the defeat of Nazi Germany.&” —HistoryOfWar.org Peter Stevens was a German-Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi persecution as a teenager in 1933. He joined the RAF in 1939 and after eighteen months of pilot training he started flying bombing missions against his own country. He completed twenty-two missions before being shot down and taken prisoner by the Nazis in September 1941. To escape became his raison d&’être and his great advantage was that he was in his native country. He was recaptured after each of his several escapes, but the Nazis never realized his true identity. He took part in the logistics and planning of several major breakouts, including The Great Escape, but was never successful in getting back to England. After liberation, when the true nature of his exploits came to light, he was awarded the Military Cross. He then served as a British spy at the beginning of the Cold War before emigrating to Canada to resume a normal life. This is the story of a heavily conflicted young man, alone in a world that is in the midst of destruction. He is afforded an opportunity to help his persecuted people to obtain a small measure of revenge. It is at once a sad yet uplifting tale of thankless and unheralded heroism.&“This is a wartime career that would make any son proud, but Steven&’s real triumph is in writing a biography that will satisfy the most discerning historian.&” —National Defence JournalBy Steven J Corvi, Ian F.W Beckett. 2009
The senior British generals of the Victorian era - men like Wolseley, Roberts, Gordon and Kitchener - were heroes of…
their time. As soldiers, administrators and battlefield commanders they represented the empire at the height of its power. But they were a disparate, sometimes fractious group of men. They exhibited many of the failings as well as the strengths of the British army of the late nineteenth-century. And now, when the Victorian period is being looked at more critically than before, the moment is right to reassess them as individuals and as soldiers. This balanced and perceptive study of these eminent military men gives a fascinating insight into their careers, into the British army of their day and into a now-remote period when Britain was a world power.By David Green. 2011
The author, a young conscript, fought with The Glorious Glosters at the legendary Imjin River battle. Heavily outnumbered by the…
Chinese and subjected to 'human-wave' infantry attacks, he and his colleagues suffered the trauma of being overrun and the vast majority of those who were not killed became POWs. This serious reverse of fortunes shocked postwar Britain but the bravery of the Battalion caught the public's imagination. The inhuman treatment suffered at their captors' hands by the survivors, including the author, has possibly never been fully realized. This memoir written from the perspective of a fighting soldier will surely bring home some most unpalatable truths.By Candice Bergen. 2015
In this New York Times bestseller, acclaimed actress Candice Bergen “shows how to do a memoir right...The self-possessed, witty, and…
down-to-earth voice that made Bergen’s first memoir a hit when it was published in 1984 has only been deepened by life’s surprises” (The New York Times Book Review).“Candice Bergen is unflinchingly honest” (The Washington Post), and in A Fine Romance she describes her first marriage at age thirty-four to famous French director Louis Malle; her overpowering love for her daughter, Chloe; the unleashing of her inner comic with Murphy Brown; her trauma over Malle’s death; her joy at finding new love; and her pride at watching Chloe blossom. In her decidedly nontraditional marriage to the insatiably curious Louis, Bergen takes readers on world travels to the sets where each made films. Pregnant with Chloe at age thirty-nine, this mature primigravida also recounts a journey through motherhood that includes plundering the Warner Bros. costume closets for Halloween getups and never leaving her ever-expanding menagerie out of the fun. She offers priceless, behind-the-scenes looks at Murphy Brown, from caterwauling with Aretha Franklin to the surreal experience of becoming headline news when Dan Quayle took exception to her character becoming a single mother. Bergen tackles familiar rites of passage with moving honesty: the rigors of caring for a spouse in his final illness, getting older, and falling in love again after she was tricked into a blind date. By the time the last page is turned, “we’re all likely to be wishing Bergen herself—funny, insightful, self-deprecating, flawed (and not especially concerned about that), and slugging her way through her older years with bemused determination—was living next door” (USA TODAY).By Yuri Sutiagin, Igor Seidov. 2009
This fascinating biography of a Russian flying ace offers a rare glimpse into the role of the Soviet Air Force…
during the Korean War. Nikolai Vasil'evich Sutiagin was the top-scoring Soviet flying ace of the Korean War. He flew his MiG-15 in lethal dogfights against American Sabres and Australian Meteors, winning twenty-two victories. For his distinguished service, he was named a Hero of the Soviet Union, the Soviet military&’s highest honor. Now, with the opening of the Russian archives, this authoritative biography presents a full account of Sutiagin&’s life and career. Beyond these official records, the authors draw from the reminiscences of Sutiagin's comrades and his wife's personal diary to present a nuanced and vividly detailed portrait of one of Russia&’s greatest fighter pilots.By Andrew Norman. 2011
Written by an authority on Adolf Hitler, this book charts new ground and shows how the writings of a deluded…
ex-monk, Lanz von Liebenfels and the pseudo-science of Liebenfels and other writers, convinced Hitler that Germanys destiny was to save the world from a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. It was this perverted sense of destiny that drove the Nazi Party and led to the outbreak of WWII and the deaths of some sixty million people as well as the destruction of much of Europe. Using the writings of Liebenfels from his magazine Ostara, Dr Andrew Norman demonstrates how the mass murders of Jews, Gypsies, mentally-ill people and those regarded as less than human had its roots in articles written by Liebenfels. An index of Ostara articles is included and their very titles indicate the malign influences that shaped Hitlers Germany.By Cat Marnell. 2017
From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a &“vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic&”…
(The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that&’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a &“doctor shopper&” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell&’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors&’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell &“treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist&” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can&’t say no. Combining &“all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer&’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity&” (Harper&’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.By Duane Chapman. 2024
In his riveting follow-up to two?New York Times?bestsellers, bounty hunter and reality television star Duane "Dog" Chapman reveals the story…
of how God redeemed his life and gave him renewed purpose—and along the way recounts the adventures and exploits that have made him a legend. After everything he had been through including escaping a Mexican prison, surviving the brutal world of bounty hunting with over 10,000 captures, and the ups and downs of being a TV star, Dog was unprepared for the despair he found himself in after his wife's death—and surprised by the miraculous events that would follow. "Everybody experiences loss," says Dog. "But the loss I felt after Beth's passing was especially hard because I was believing for a miracle. When the miracle didn't happen as I expected, I wrestled with the Lord. Little did I know He wasn't done with me yet." In one of his darkest moments, Dog found himself on a new journey of healing and redemption. Not only did he come to see God's hand in his life—from the prayers of a faithful mother when he was a child, to the way God guided his steps and protected him throughout his dangerous career—but he also found love and renewed purpose through a divine appointment. Now Dog has launched a ministry with his wife Francie, whom he married in 2021, and speaks and preaches all over the country with the purpose of introducing others to Jesus, using their miraculous story as proof that God is alive and working in the world.? Readers will be encouraged and inspired by Dog's stories of hope and healing even in the face of grief, loss, and brokenness; gain the behind-the-scenes insights into the real life of the world's most successful bounty hunter; and see the power of faith and prayer to change lives and reveal each person's unique, God-given purpose. For lifelong fans and those meeting Dog for the first time,?Nine Lives and Counting?is a powerful memoir that reveals a whole new side of a bounty hunter who is living proof that God loves each of his children, has a good purpose and plan for them, and will never stop tracking them down until they come homeBy Beth Nguyen. 2023
Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily Selected by Time , NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book…
of 2023 "This book...is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be." —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement. At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth's mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is "a portrait of things left unsaid" ( The New York Times ), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth's relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an "unforgettable" ( People ) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthoodBy Salman Rushdie. 2024
"Il était essentiel que j'écrive ce livre : une manière d'accueillir ce qui est arrivé, et de répondre à la…
violence par l'art." Pour la première fois, Salman Rushdie s'exprime sans concession sur l'attaque au couteau dont il a été victime le 12 août 2022 aux États-Unis, plus de trente ans après la fatwa prononcée contre lui. Le romancier lève le voile sur la longue et douloureuse traversée pour se reconstruire après un acte d'une telle violence ; jusqu'au miracle d'une seconde chance. "Le Couteau" se lit aussi comme une réflexion puissante, intime et finalement porteuse d'espoir sur la vie, l'amour et le pouvoir de la littérature. C'est également une ode à la création artistique comme espace de liberté absolue. Clément Bresson met tout son talent au service de la plume limpide et directe de Salman Rushdie, qui témoigne ici de l'attentat dont il a été victime. Couverture : d'après photos © Nenov / MirageC / Getty ImagesBy Ian Fritz. 2023
An &“essential&” (Kevin Maurer, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir of a young Air Force linguist coming-of-age in a…
war that is lost.When Ian Fritz joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so out of necessity. He hadn&’t been accepted into colleges thanks to an indifferent high school career. He&’d too often slept through his classes as he worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant to help pay the bills for his trailer-dwelling family in Lake City, Florida. But the Air Force recognizes his potential and sends him to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Dari and Pashto, the main languages of Afghanistan. By 2011, Fritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist and one of only a tiny number of people in the world trained to do this job on low-flying gunships. He monitors communications on the ground and determines in real time which Afghans are Taliban and which are innocent civilians. This eavesdropping is critical to supporting Special Forces units on the ground, but there is no training to counter the emotional complexity that develops as you listen to people&’s most intimate conversations over the course of two tours, Fritz listens to the Taliban for hundreds of hours, all over the country night and day, in moments of peace and in the middle of battle. What he hears teaches him about the people of Afghanistan—Taliban and otherwise—the war, and himself. Fritz&’s fluency is his greatest asset to the military, yet it becomes the greatest liability to his own commitment to the cause. Both proud of his service and in despair that he is instrumental in destroying the voices that he hears, What the Taliban Told Me is a &“fraught, moving&” (Kirkus Reviews) coming-of-age memoir and a reckoning with our twenty years of war in Afghanistan.By Brett Douglas. 2024
Mi nombre es Brett. Soy un hombre con educación universitaria que alguna vez fue esposo durante 26 años, con dos…
hijos, tres negocios y una gran casa con una cerca blanca de verdad. También soy un adicto a las drogas. Y tengo una historia que contar. Mi relato lo tiene todo: sexo, muerte, dolor, ateísmo, Dios, cárcel, matrimonio, divorcio, herejía, homosexualidad, física, accidentes de tráfico, ciencias de la computación, videojuegos, palillos de canela, Barry Manilow, Nine Inch Nails, pornografía, senos, tampones usados, strippers, enfermedades venéreas, aborto, prostitutas, SIDA, racismo, suicidio, infidelidad, desnudez pública, antisemitismo, marihuana, alcohol, casas de empeño, traficantes de drogas, agujas, ácido, éxtasis, crack, heroína, analgésicos, abstinencia, intervenciones, rehabilitaciones, manipulación de productos, furia en la carretera, vandalismo, abuso a ancianos, profanación de tumbas, incendio intencional, robo de identidad, allanamiento de morada, robo a mano armada y asesinato. Pero, lo más importante, se trata de la desesperación de la adicción y la certeza absoluta de que se puede superar. La recuperación no es simplemente abstinencia, sino un proceso de madurez. Pasé toda mi vida buscando la clave para la sobriedad a largo plazo. Me gustaría compartir contigo lo que he aprendido.By Rachel Lloyd. 2011
"Powerfully raw, deeply moving, and utterly authentic. Rachel Lloyd has turned a personal atrocity into triumph and is nothing less…
than a true hero.... Never again will you look at young girls on the street as one of 'those' women—you will only see little girls that are girls just like us." —Demi Moore, actress and activist With the power and verity of First They Killed My Father and A Long Way Gone, Rachel Lloyd’s riveting survivor story is the true tale of her hard-won escape from the commercial sex industry and her bold founding of GEMS, New York City’s Girls Education and Mentoring Service, to help countless other young girls escape "the life." Lloyd’s unflinchingly honest memoir is a powerful and unforgettable story of inhuman abuse, enduring hope, and the promise of redemption.By Steve Dublanica. 2008
According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty…
percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he's truly thrived.By Wayne Pacelle. 2011
“If the animals knew about this book they would, without doubt, confer on Wayne Pacelle, their highest honor.”—Jane Goodall“The Bond…
is the best overall book on animals I have ever read. Brilliant and moving.”—John Mackey, CEO and Co-founder of Whole Foods Market“The Bond is at once heart-breaking and heart-warming. No animal escapes Wayne Pacelle’s attention; nor should his book escape any human animal’s attention.”—Alexandra Horowitz, New York Times Bestselling Author of Inside of a Dog The president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, the world’s largest animal protection organization, Wayne Pacelle brings us The Bond, a heartfelt, eye-opening exploration of the special bond between animals and humans. With the poignant insight of Animals Make Us Human and the shocking reality of Fast Food Nation—filled with history, valuable insights, and fascinating stories of the author’s experience in the field—The Bond is an important investigation into all the ways we can repair our broken bond with the animal kingdom and a thrilling chronicle of one man’s extraordinary contribution to that effort.By Tippi Hedren. 2016
In this absorbing and surprising memoir, one of the biggest names of classic Hollywood—the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds…
and Marnie—tells her story, including never-before-revealed experiences on the set of some of the biggest cult films of all time . . . now with a foreword by Melanie GriffithFor decades, Tippi Hedren’s luminous beauty radiated from the silver screen, enchanting moviegoers and cementing her position among Hollywood’s elite—beauty and star power that continue to endure. For too long Hedren’s story has been told by others through whispered gossip and tabloid headlines. Now, Hedren sets the record straight, recalling how a young and virtuous Lutheran girl from small-town Minnesota became a worldwide legend—as one of the most famous Hitchcock girls, as an unwavering animal activist, and as the matriarch of a powerful Hollywood dynasty that includes her movie star daughter Melanie Griffith, and rising star Dakota Johnson, her granddaughter.For the first time, Hedren digs deep into her complicated relationship with the man who discovered her talent, director Alfred Hitchcock, the benefactor who would become a repulsive and controlling director who contractually controlled her every move. She speaks openly about the dark pain she endured working with him on their most famous collaborations, The Birds and Marnie, and finding the courage she needed to break away.Hedren’s incandescent spirit shines through as she talks about working with the great Charlie Chaplin, sharing the screen with some of the most esteemed actors in Hollywood, her experiences on some of the most intriguing and troubling film sets—including filming Roar, one of the most dangerous movies ever made—and the struggles of being a single mother—balancing her dedication to her work and her devotion to her daughter—and her commitment to helping animals. Filled with sixteen pages of beautiful photos, Tippi is a rare and fascinating look at a private woman’s remarkable life no celebrity aficionado can miss.By Bettye Kearse. 2020
&“A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history.&”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review&“A compelling saga that gives a…
voice to those that history tried to erase . . . Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read.&”—Booklist In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse—a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison—shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth. For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—&“Always remember—you&’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president&”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison&’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.By Michael Tonello. 2009
An insider's hilarious, whirlwind account of his years spent globe-trotting in search of the holy grail of handbags: the BirkinFor…
more than twenty years, the Hermès Birkin bag has been the iconic symbol of fashion, luxury, and wealth. Though the bag is often seen dangling from the arms of celebrities, there is a fabled waiting list of more than two years to buy one from Hermès, and the average fashionista has a better chance of climbing Mount Everest in Prada pumps than of possessing one of these coveted carryalls. Unless, of course, she happens to know Michael Tonello . . .Michael's newfound career started with an impulsive move to Barcelona, a vanished job assignment, no work visa, and an Hermès scarf sold on eBay to generate some quick cash. But soon the resourceful Michael discovered the truth about the waiting list and figured out the secret to getting Hermès to part with one of these precious bags. Millions of dollars worth of Birkins later, Michael had become one of eBay's most successful entrepreneurs—and a Robin Hood to thousands of desperate rich women.With down-to-earth wit, Michael chronicles the unusual ventures that took him to nearly every continent, from eBay to Paris auction house and into the lives of celebrities and poseurs. Flirting with danger, Michael recounts the heady rush of hand delivering his first big score to famed songwriter Carole Bayer Sager in Paris; how he had to hire thugs to rescue a bag that one of his "shoppers" held for ransom; and the story of the Oscar-worthy performances that allowed him to snag "reserved" bags from other, less dogged Birkin seekers. Whether he's relating his wining and dining, buying and selling, dodging and weaving, laughing and crying, or schmoozing and stammering, Michael is a master raconteur who weaves together tales of hunting Birkins in the world's most posh locales, memories of meals that would make any gastronome salivate, anecdotes of obsessed collectors with insatiable desires, and sweetly intimate stories about his family, friends, and finding true love. The result is a memoir that is distinctive, fun, page-turning, and as addictive as its namesake.