Childhood Biography

Jonathan Starr is not your traditional do-gooder, and in 2009, when he decided to found Abaarso, a secondary school in Somaliland, the choice seemed crazy to even his closest friends. Why, they wondered, would he turn down a life of relative luxury to relocate to an armed compound in a breakaway region of the world's number one failed state? To achieve his mission, Starr would have to overcome profound cultural differences, broken promises, and threats to his safety and that of his staff.

Don’t Expect Me to Cry is a powerful story of the horrors Janet experienced at the hands of multiple abusers, including her father, and the courageous journey of healing that brought her to a life that is inspirational to other survivors. Janet’s resilience is evident as she tells her story in three parts, reflecting her thoughts and experiences at critical stages of her life. She explains how, from that place of despair, she learned that it is possible to heal from the dark shame and trauma and live a steadier and more content life.

That afternoon was the last time the high-school Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart. Hurricane Season is the story of a great football coach, his team, his family, and their school - and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy.

From a preeminent King scholar, the origin story of the man, minister, and civil rights hero who would lead the nation and change the world. We know who Martin Luther King, Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and his approach to activism...

Dangerous and disregarding people don't simply drop out of the sky. Nor are they born bloodthirsty and cruel. When looking at the developmental years of adult criminals and juvenile delinquents or the selfish patterns of anyone that we must rub shoulders with, the question is asked "How does one get this way?" Typically we can see the answers within their genetic mental health history which may hint of possible concern and their first 5 years after birth which is their most impressionable social training ground.

Fans of Augusten Burroughs and Jo Ann Beard will enjoy this kaleidoscopic, universal memoir in which Elissa Altman explores the tradition, religion, family expectations, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her Queens, New York, childhood. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1970s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities. It is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite and in honor to your past.

From the bestselling author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, a big-hearted memoir told in three parts: about growing up in the wake of the destructive choices of an extremely unconventional mother. “Extraordinary ... An audacious, boundary-shattering work.” —Los Angeles Times Glen...

Brittany Means’s childhood was a blur of highways and traumas that collapsed any effort to track time. Riding shotgun as her mother struggled to escape abusive relationships, Brittany didn’t care where they were going—to a roadside midwestern motel, a shelter, or The Barn in Indiana, the cluttered mansion her Pentecostal grandparents called home—as long as they were together. But every so often, her mom would surprise her—and leave.

To Fred Archer, born in the village of Ashton-under-Hill in 1915 and growing up in the 1920s, nothing seemed to change except the seasons. This was the age of paraffin lamps, earth closets, and the last train from Evesham at 7 o’clock in the evening. The village was a self-sufficient community with its own hierarchy, strong Church and Chapel, fierce politics and home-made entertainment.

At age four, Diana manages her family's banking, grocery shops alone, and befriends the town drunk. Her father is too busy chasing skirts and throwing fits to notice what she does. And her mom is too mentally absent to properly parent. While Diana's narcissistic dad terrorizes and exploits her, she works harder to please him. Estill, an award-winning humor author, shares an honest and comedic look at her dysfunctional childhood. As an adult, she struggles to reclaim her power while caring for her dementia-impaired dad.

A vibrant, moving memoir of prizewinning journalist and New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito and her departure from Cuba in the Mariel boatlift—an enduring story of a family caught up in the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century. Mirta Ojito was one teenager among more than a hundred...

First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy’s passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy’s wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father’s early death and a son’s exhilarating escape into manhood.

This audiobook reveals the main facts about the magical childhood and teenage years of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the youngest son of a humble farmer, born in a remote Tibetan village, who became the political and spiritual leader of his homeland when he was only a kid. Its surprising content sheds light on the main facts and events that shaped his amazing early life, including: the Tibetan prophecy that announced his reincarnation; the magic lake that described the place where he was born; how the high lamas found him in a small farming village when he was two; and more!

Nearly 15 million girls, including many in the U.S., are forced into marriage each year. Each of these girls has a price tag—and a story. Sonita Alizada was almost sold twice. Her price tag was $9,000. The money her family received for selling her would pay for her brother’s wife. The first...

Kitty Baxter was born in London in 1930, the daughter of a road sweeper and a cleaner and one of five children. War broke out just as Kitty turned nine and she became one of thousands of children evacuated to the countryside. This would be the first of three times that she was rehoused far from home over the course of the war. Sometimes treated more like a servant than a small child, Kitty endured gruelling years cut off from her parents rather than a safe haven from war.

Reuben woke up with a start. His sleepy eyes probed the quiet, dark bedroom; then he heard the eerie noise again. Though he had no idea what it could be, he did know one thing for sure: He NEVER wanted to meet whatever could make that chilling sound. Mystery and adventure abound on this Amish Holmes County, Ohio farm. Join young Reuben as he discovers the source of the noise in the night, tries to track down the phantom of the forest, and goes on his first deer hunt.

Born to a violently dysfunctional home in working-class Denmark, Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her three older brothers were bounced between foster care and state-run institutions, then back again to their chemically dependent mother and sadistic stepfather. For Lisbeth, it was a childhood without perimeters. It was blighted by poverty, sexual abuse, neglect, betrayal, and further victimization by the broken Danish social services system that forced Lisbeth to live where and how it saw fit.

From the daughter of the bestselling author of Father Joe: the poignant and ultimately hopeful memoir of a young girl’s struggle to live a normal childhood in the chaotic seventies, and to overcome sexual abuse by her famous father Earlier this year, Tony Hendra’s memoir, Father Joe: The Man...

There are really two games, the one you see and the one you don't. The way I see it, the best way to use access to both worlds is to illuminate and reveal, not idolize and adore. It's better to be wrong than to be played for a fool. – Colin Cowherd In this age of billion dollar athletic...

What does it really mean to be a good father? What did your father tell you, that has stayed with you throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are? Is there a special memory that makes you smile when you least expect it? After the...