Cultural Memoir

Candid and moving, The Face Pressed Against a Window charts the life of one of our most celebrated business leaders. Tim Waterstone is one of Britain's most successful businessmen, having built the Waterstones empire that started with one small bookshop in 1982. In this charming and evocative memoir, he recalls the childhood experiences that led him to become an entrepreneur and outlines the business philosophy that allowed Waterstones to dominate the book-selling business throughout the country.

In her senior year of college, asha bandele and a group of other writers went to a prison to read their works for a Black History Month program. There, she met Rashid, a man who was serving 20 to life for murder, a man who spoke softly and wisely, a man who would become asha’s soul mate. This is her account of a relationship that has thrived despite terrific odds.

Tracing the four days from the moment she gets the call that every immigrant fears to the burial of her mother, Elizabeth Nunez tells the haunting story of her lifelong struggle to cope with the consequences of the 'sterner stuff' of her parents' ambitions for their children and her mother's seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use. But Nunez sympathizes with her parents.

A major, best-selling novelist and former magazine editor, long married to a handsome and successful stockbroker with whom she has a beautiful daughter and son, Benilde Little once had every reason to feel on top of the world. But as illness, the aging of her parents, and other hurdles interrupted her seemingly perfect life, she took a tailspin into a pit of clinical depression. Told in her own fearless and wise voice, Welcome to My Breakdown chronicles a cavern of depression so dark that Benilde didn't know if she'd ever recover.

The first in-depth cultural history of one of the most famous American contemporary musicals featuring archival research and first-hand accounts from its creators and collaborators.

In Oakland Hills, Milwaukee Rivers: A Memoir of Survival, Identity, and Purpose, Dr. Keyimani L. Alford opens the door to his most vulnerable truths. From the quiet knock that changed his life to the fractured moments of family, faith, and identity, this second edition goes deeper than ever before—expanded with new chapters, fresh reflections, and the lasting legacy of Aunt Grace. You’ll walk through his hills—the weight of struggle, abandonment, and silence—and cross his rivers—the grace of healing, resilience, and purpose.

One of crime's most colourful and idiosyncratic leaders is examined in crime writer Nate Hendley's fast-paced book. A treat for fans of true-crime and bizarre mob stories. Nate Hendley brings to the lexicon of gangster profiles a meticulously researched, very human examination of this legendary figure.

My parents were born about 56 and 54 years before me. They were born and raised in a much different world, an entirely separate cultural and technological time period. Their 1950’s childhood differs immensely from my early 2000’s childhood.

Sabor Del Cañaveral son páginas arrancadas del libro de las vivencias del humilde trabajador del cañaveral. El propósito de esta obra es traer al recuerdo vivencias pasadas que son parte de nuestra cultura puertorriqueña. A través de relatos sencillos pero llenos de alma, este libro recoge las memorias del trabajador del cañaveral —ese hombre de manos curtidas y mirada firme que, sin hacer ruido, dejó una huella profunda en nuestra historia. Su jornada era dura, pero aun así encontraba el modo de saborear la vida… aunque a veces supiera a sacrificio.

Not Without Hope is the true story of the headline-making tragedy that took the lives of three football players: NFL stars Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, and Will Bleakley from the University of South Florida. Told by the sole survivor of the ill-fated fishing trip, Nick Schuyler, with New York...

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

The mixed population is the fastest-growing group in the UK today, but the mainstream conversation around mixedness is stilted, repetitive and often problematic. At a time when ethnically ambiguous models fill our Instagram feeds and our high street shop windows, and when children of interracial relationships are lauded as heralding in the dawn of a post-racial utopia, journalist Natalie Morris takes a deep dive into what it really means to be mixed in Britain today.

In honest, confessional prose, Born on the Bayou - a roller-coaster rags-to-riches story - transports us to a pocket of the South where Lourd learns how to be a man from the two people he looks up to the most: his larger-than-life father, "Puffer", a prominent figure in the oil business; and his successful older brother, Bryan.

هذا أوّل كتابٍ أُفرد للمرأة في حياة "طه حسين" وأدبه. فبرغم ما عرف عنه من أنّه كان نصير المرأة والدّاعي قولاً وفعلاً إلى تعليمها، إلّا أنّنا لا نجد سوى بحثٍ يتيمٍ هنا أو مقالٍ صحفيٍّ هناك عن علاقة "طه حسين بالمرأة". تتبّعتُ حضور المرأة في حياته سواءً أكان حضوراً طاغياً مثل زوجته سوزان، أم حضوراً خافتاً مثل أمّه وابنته، وعرضتُ لنساءٍ كان لهنّ تماسٌّ معه مثل حبّه الأول وتلميذته وحتى اللواتي اختلفن معه. واستقصيتُ النماذجَ النسوية التي وردت في أدبه من نساءٍ خاضعاتٍ ضعيفاتٍ إلى نساءٍ متعلّماتٍ متحدّيات، ومن مشرقيّاتٍ مستسلماتٍ لأقدارهنّ إلى أوروبيّاتٍ متحرّرات متحضّرات، في صوَرٍ متعدّدة الجوانب للمرأة عند "طه حسين"، عساها تعطي فكرةً لا أزعمها شاملةً، ولكنها كافيةٌ لتوضيح دور المرأة في حياته وانعكاس هذا الدّور على أدبه.

The book opens with one of the author's earliest memories in Haiti—his mother waking him from an afternoon nap so they could leave their house before dark and spend the night in a church, seeking refuge from armed gangs that broke into homes in the early 1990s. Set in both Haiti and the United States, Light Beneath Ashes follows his journey from a childhood shaped by political instability to the difficult decision to leave for the US, and the complexities of adapting to a new world.

This book is a raw, unflinching exploration of what it means to grow up in rural Prince Edward Island in the shadow of unspoken rules, generational silence, and emotional survival. Told through layered narratives, lived experience, and cultural insight, it uncovers the quiet tragedies and ordinary dysfunction that shaped a generation. From cold kitchens to rigid mothers, from rooms without doors to voices that never softened, this is not just a memoir, it is a mirror for every adult who walked through childhood learning to shrink.

From a celebrated figure of the food world comes a poignant, provocative memoir about being young and gay during the 1970s punk revolution in America Long before James Oseland was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the pre–Silicon Valley, California, suburbs...

Here is a memoir about the seafaring culture of the West Coast of Scotland and the significance of the Gaelic language. The practice of architecture in Edinburgh and work in foreign fields, some up-roaring poetry and intriguing artistic collaborations follow. It will tell you tales, make you laugh, and also help you to understand what Scotland is now, and how we got here. It reads well, it looks beautiful, and it will last.

Many tales of horror about German occupation have been told through the ages. Some stories are well-known, the history books and television programs documenting them in wretched detail; others are more obscure: the painful separation of families as they attempted to escape an inevitable future, children snatched at a tender age and hidden, everyone wary and vigilant - and afraid. Those years were heavy and their victims mostly silent.

This collection of short essays, written over a period of years, pictures the true Ozarks and its people as Ellen Gray Massey has experienced them. While it captures the scene it also shows how the area has influenced her personal and professional life. From her childhood attending school in Washington, DC, and living all her adult years in the Ozarks, came the material and background to become a writer, her life-long ambition.