New English Memoires

In August 2009, Colin Hagendorf set out to review every regular slice of pizza in Manhattan, and his blog, Slice Harvester, was born. Two years and nearly 400 slices later, he'd been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News (New York), and on radio shows all over the country. Suddenly, this self-proclaimed punk who was barely making a living doing burrito delivery and selling handmade zines had a following.

Arthur Taylor is New Zealand's best known, most influential and colourful career criminal. A household name, he was paroled from prison in 2019 after more than 38 years behind bars. His life story is nothing short of remarkable. He has more than 150 convictions ranging from bank robberies to fraud, theft, escaping and having weapons and explosives.

In 2001, Paul Bacon was a typical young New Yorker: hip, liberal, overeducated, a little aimless. But then 9/11 happened. Hearing a call to duty and lacking any better employment options, he joined the NYPD, with the earnest hope of making his hometown a safer place. Silly him.

This riveting biography of a Massachusetts slave boy who fought in the Revolutionary War illuminates race relations in the Northern colonies, early battles of the revolution, and the experiences of Black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

In The Tao of the Side Hustle, Don shares this martial arts wisdom, blends Buddhist Martial Arts stories with strategic business, tax and legal principles, and explains how anyone interested in a side hustle or small business can follow in his footsteps.

At once disturbing and fascinating, Women Who Love Men Who Kill is a compelling psychological study of prison passion in the new millennium. Through extensive research and interviews with women who seek relationships with convicted killers through snail and email, and through conversations with psychiatrists, social workers, and prison officials, Isenberg sheds light on why these women are drawn into relationships with incarcerated outcasts.

The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious - and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of broke writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a rich and beguiling series of guidebooks to the 48 states. All this fell within the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project - a division of the Works Progress Administration founded to employ jobless writers, from best-selling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified.

On the 14th of August 1941, a Polish monk named Maximilian Maria Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz. Kolbe's life had been remarkable. Fiercely intelligent and driven, he founded a movement of Catholicism and spent several years in Nagasaki, ministering to the 'hidden Christians' who had emerged after centuries of oppression. A Polish nationalist as well as a monk, he gave sanctuary to fleeing refugees and his death was no less remarkable: he volunteered to die, saving the life of a fellow prisoner. It was an act that profoundly transformed the lives of two Japanese men.

If David Goethel were a cat, he would be in the market for more lives. But David is a small boat fisherman, an endangered species, who works tirelessly for himself and others like him to survive. Follow along on that journey with sea stories and autobiography mixed with twists and turns of science and management as David and his family work relentlessly to feed America sustainable seafood.

In this delightful memoir, Jared Gulian describes the first four years of their new life in the country, its disasters, small triumphs, surprises, and pleasures. But most of all, he describes the warmth of the local community that welcomed them, saved them from certain peril, taught them how to cook, how to care for animals, and how to understand and love the land.

There is a need for a new generation of politicians to change the world, and Emmanuel Macron could very well be a prototype. Macron Unveiled examines Macron's first four years as France's president, scrutinizing Macron's personality, his way of solving problems, his sources of inspiration, his mistakes, his difficulties, as well as the impact he may already have had in his country, Europe, and the world.

As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now.

Grant Muller was nearly killing himself – quite literally. A desperate quest to get rich had made him a millionaire before the age of 30 but then taken him to the brink: homeless, living on drugs and hustle. If his lifestyle didn’t end him, one of the thugs he owed money to would surely do the job. So when he finally got off the streets and got clean, he knew everything had to change. He reinvented himself, and along the way came to understand that real success in sales isn’t just about the hustle, or about being top of mind. It’s about the human connections you create.

Why did Winthrop Rockefeller, scion of one of the most powerful families in American history, leave New York for an Arkansas mountaintop in the 1950s? In this richly detailed biography of the former Arkansas governor, John A. Kirk delves into the historical record to fully unravel that mystery for the first time. Kirk pursues clues threaded throughout Rockefeller’s life and casts a powerful new light on his relationship with his adopted state, where his legacy continues to be felt more than half a century after his governorship.

In While I Have Your Attention, an updated memoir, Lucille shares her struggles, disappointments, memories, and proudest accomplishments. Lucille's remarkable life is the story of a woman who prevailed despite enduring a host of obstacles and trials. And as she shares her incredible story of stepping from poverty and loss into hope and a renewed faith, she will inspire you to keep moving forward even when you come up against seemingly insurmountable challenges in life.

Leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate brings her fierce, fearless spirit, new perspective, and superstar bona fides to the biggest issue of our time. In A Bigger Picture, her first book, she shares her story as a young Ugandan woman who sees that her community bears disproportionate consequences to the climate crisis. At the same time, she sees that activists from African nations and the global south are not being heard in the same way as activists from white nations are heard.

A surreal, high-wire act of narrative nonfiction that redefines the genre, Avoid the Day is part detective story, part memoir, and part meditation on the meaning of life - all told with a dark pulse of existential horror. What emerges is an unforgettable study of mortality and the artist’s journey.

When Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori arrived on British shores in 1985, aged just 14, he couldn’t speak a word of English. Having left school just a year earlier, he was eager to become a stable boy and apprentice jockey, following in the footsteps of his father. This was his first, but certainly not his last, leap of faith. Despite his slight size, Frankie’s impact upon the British racing scene was immediate and significant.

Old houses share their secrets only if they survive. Trading the corporate ladder for a stepladder, Lee McColgan commits to preserving the ramshackle Loring House, built in 1702, using period materials and methods and on a holiday deadline. But his enchantment withers as he discovers the massive repairs it needs. A small kitchen fix reveals that the structure’s rotten frame could collapse at any moment. In a bathroom, mold appears and spreads. He fights deteriorating bricks, frozen pipes, shattered windows, a punctured foundation, and even an airborne chimney cap.

In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored deep into America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna.