Cultural Memoir

A revised edition of the candid, sometimes shocking, biography of Rupert Brooke revealing the very different reality behind the golden-boy façade of an English literary icon. Paragon of youthful beauty, romantic symbol of a lost England, and precociously gifted poet, Rupert Chawner Brooke died in a hospital ship off the Aegean island of Skyros in April 1915, aged just 27. All England mourned his passing. But behind the glow of myth lies a darker reality.

I'll Take Your Questions Now has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

Tras el fallecimiento de su padre, Rodrigo González, en el terremoto de 1985, Amanda Lalena Escalante, de seis años, se embarca junto con su madre en un avión con destino a la Ciudad de México, dando inicio a esta narración autobiográfica en la que Amanda, desde una profunda intimidad y honestidad, comparte su vida en momentos conmovedora y en otros dolorosa. En estas páginas, recorreremos su infancia marcada por la muerte de su padre y la compleja relación con su madre; las carencias económicas y emocionales que padeció.

Set in a world of luxury and power, this is the tell-all story of two remarkable women and a friendship that changed both their lives forever. For more than two decades, Mariana Pasternak and Martha Stewart were nearly inseparable. They first met in Westport, Connecticut, two suburban wives with...

Warm, feisty, and intelligent, the Delany sisters speak their mind in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two remarkable women who continued to love, laugh, and embrace life after over a hundred years of living side by side. Their sharp memories show us the post-Reconstruction South and Booker T. Washington, Harlem’s Golden Age and Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Bessie breaks barriers to become a dentist; Sadie quietly integrates the New York City system as a high school teacher.

Dear America has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet...

Ice-T here offers his hip-hop generation’s Horatio Alger story: the narrative of an orphaned child who, drawn inexorably into a harrowing life of crime, ultimately turns away from the streets and, through self-discipline and a single-minded work ethic, forges a path to international fame as a musician and film-and-television star.

Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....

From the winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics’ Circle Award—and one of the most original thinkers of our time—“Andrew Solomon’s magisterial Far and Away collects a quarter-century of soul-shaking essays” (Vanity Fair). Travel narrative and global cultures...

This singular memoir from one of Ukraine’s new literary lights tracks her journey from a little girl toiling in the potato fields of the Soviet Union to the shiny but sometimes foreign new world of America. Ruslana’s From Borsch to Burgers elegantly and humorously captures her gleeful yet puzzling journey through new foods, customs, language, and love. Her message of cross-cultural discovery presents enlightening insights into understanding the nuances found in spanning two worlds.

An enlightening and entertaining inside look at the lifestyles of America's extremely wealthy from the bestselling author of Our Crowd. It's no secret that the rich are different from the rest of us. But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There's Society, and then there's Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter.

Being a Christian has nothing to do with being Chinese American—that's what Kristin T. Lee learned as a child. A fissure between her identity and what she was told to believe opened wide. In We Mend with Gold, she asks: What if we can bridge the divide? Lee describes both the breaking of her young faith and the sacred art of repair. She examines how immigrant churches often assimilate to Western theology, even as they offer crucial spaces of belonging.

Överstelöjtnant Kim Yong har oerhörda privilegier med nordkoreanska mått mätt. Han äger en importerad bil och kan åka var han vill i landet. Men förräderianklagelser raserar hela Yongs tillvaro. Han döms till Nordkoreas mest ökända arbetsläger, nr 14 i Hamgyong-provinsen–en värld av våld och tortyr. Medan han tvångsarbetar i en gruva två kilometer under marken blir dagsljus Kims enda lyx. Allt eftersom månaderna går blir han bekant med politiska fångar, omänskliga lägervakter och en apokalyptisk hungersnöd.

It'd been a long time since I claimed some solitude in this blessed landscape; since I've done without life's little props. Here I have no friend, no dog, no radio, no clock, no phone, no roof, no body pollutants.

Somewhere Inside is the electrifying, never-before-told story of Laura Ling’s capture by the North Koreans in March 2009, and the efforts of her sister, journalist Lisa Ling, to secure Laura’s release by former President Bill Clinton. This riveting true account of the first ever trial of an...

From a young age, Victor Steffensen has had a passion for traditional cultural and ecological knowledge. This was further developed after meeting two Elders, who were to become his mentors and teach him the importance of cultural burning. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire. Steffensen's story is unassuming and honest, while demonstrating the incredibly sophisticated and complex cultural knowledge that has been passed down to him, which he wants to share with others.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

From brass knuckle beatdowns on the schoolyard to showdowns with the SEC on the national news, every second of Deaton’s life has been a fight for survival. This book is the raw, wild John Deaton story, straight from the source. Born in one of the worst neighborhoods in Detroit--the kind of place the city cordoned off with warning signs--and growing up surrounded by hustlers, addicts, abusers, gang bangers, and the downtrodden, Deaton became a fighter, with violence becoming second nature.

"I saw many killed. I almost starved. But I escaped to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually made it to the U.S." Thus begins Leth Oun's poignant and vivid memoir. A survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields—having spent a torturous three years, eight months, and ten days imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge—Oun thrived in America, learning English, becoming a citizen, and working as an officer in the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. In A Refugee's American Dream, Oun shares hard memories of Cambodia, where his father was executed, and his family enslaved in labor camps.