Cultural Memoir

Peter Godwin’s mother is dying. Born in England, and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister’s London home. Peter has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that does not diminish as he reflects on his time as a journalist on the frontlines of combat around the world, or life in New York with his English wife and transatlantic children. In his mother’s final months, he must come to terms with everything his family was and wasn’t.

From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens is a violent and introspective memoir that reveals not only 50 Cent's story but the story of a generation of youth faced with hard choices and very little options. It is a tale of sacrifice, transformation, and redemption, but it is also one of hope, determination, and the power of self. Told in 50's own unique voice, the narrative drips with the raw insight, street wisdom, and his struggle to survive at all costs.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens: A Life, the major new biography from the highly acclaimed Claire Tomalin, published for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Read by the actor Alex Jennings.

Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do "more in dreams than Napoleon," yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or "heteronyms," under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this "most multifarious of writers" (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match.

It's a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons and advertising jingles that they'll be humming all day. A father - one of 3M's greatest and last eight-track-salesman fathers - traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home.

Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.

A shockingly frank memoir from a prize-winning economist, reflecting on his remarkable personal odyssey and his changing positions on identity, race, and belief.

A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.

Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes.

In this groundbreaking audiobook, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

Few people can justify a memoir at the age of 33. Gregory Scofield is the exception, a young man who has inhabited several lives in the time most of us can manage only one. Born into a Métis family of Cree, Scottish, English, and French descent but never told of his heritage, Gregory knew he was different. His father disappeared after he was born, and at five he was separated from his mother and sent to live with strangers and extended family. There, began a childhood marked by constant loss, poverty, violence, and self-hatred.

After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.

What has been called the most famous photograph in the world, and a symbol of the 20th century, began as a spur of the moment snapshot by a Cuban photographer. Alberto Korda transformed a simple photo into a world famous portrait of a larger than life revolutionary.

In 1971, Robin Green had an interview with Jann Wenner at the offices Rolling Stone magazine. Green thought she was interviewing for a clerical job like the other girls in the office, a "real job". Instead, she was hired as a journalist. Brutally honest and bold, Robin Green reveals what it was like to be the first woman granted entry into an iconic boys' club. Pulling back the curtain on Rolling Stone magazine in its prime, The Only Girl is a stunning tribute to a bygone era and a publication that defined a generation.

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua—by the author of Annie John.

Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning of a love story that could have happened anywhere. Except for one difference: this romance was unfolding in history’s most notorious death camp, between two young prisoners whose budding intimacy risked dooming them if they were caught.

After 64 years, Mezzabotte Coletta, a retired truck driver for a Toronto macaroni factory, is retuning to his native Italia. In his native village of Supino is a rundown villa bought sight unseen by Mezzabotte Coletta 's daughter Maria - an olive branch after years of family struggle. While she and her husband breathe in the chatter of local tradesmen, the fragrant offerings of well-wishing neighbors, and the aroma of fine wine, her father awaits in Canada, anticipating the day he will again touch Italian soil.

The epic, rollicking, up-and-down life of Muddy Waters—who went from Mississippi farmhand to musical legend, invented electric blues, and created the template for the rock-and-roll band and its wild lifestyle—is chronicled with rare vividness in Robert Gordon’s widely praised biography.

Picking up where he left off in his acclaimed memoir Sting-Ray Afternoons, Steve Rushin brilliantly captures a bygone era, and the thrills of new adulthood in the early 80s. It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace the cover of a book jacket. And it ends at a desk in the legendary Time & Life building, with that same boy - now in his early 20s and writing professionally - reflecting on how the hell he got there from what seems like a distant universe.