New Memoirs

Betsy LaQuanda Ross is a self-proclaimed “Peculiar Patriot”, who makes regular visits to penitentiaries in order to boost the morale of her loved ones. When she is not sharing neighborhood updates and gossip, Betsy illuminates our country’s cruel and unjust criminal justice system and its impact not only on the 2.3 million people behind bars, but also their family and friends.

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. This luminous translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's classic offers brilliant inspiration to all people who seek to know and express their inner truth.

In 1986, fresh out of college, Paul Downs opened his first and last business: a small company that built custom furniture. With no idea how to run a business or how to build custom furniture, Downs spent a year teaching himself the business, and in 1987 he hired his first employee. That was when things got complicated.

At the age of twenty-seven, Gerad suffered a life-altering breakdown. When conventional treatments failed to help, he sought an alternative solution and immersed himself in the teachings of ancient Chinese philosophy and acupuncture. According to this system of medicine, we are all made up of the five elements of Nature (wood, fire, earth, metal, water). When they are in balance, we thrive; when they are not, chaos ensues. Sceptical at first, but desperate to feel well, Gerad took a leap of faith—one that was to open his eyes to a new way of being.

The Age Of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan’s incomparable reckoning with the contemporary financial world, channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Following the arc of his...

At 53, Kevin Nealon thought he had it all: a massive international celebrity with legions of loyal fans; a fabulous modeling career; hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank; and the most recognizable face on the planet. Nealon had accomplished the impossible: a 30-year career in show business with only limited trips to rehab. But just like every other celebrity, he felt that was not enough. The perpetually insatiable Nealon wanted more, and for him "more" meant a little addition that drooled, burped, and pooped (no, not a Pomeranian).

The first comprehensive collection of writings by the Black Panther Party founder and revolutionary icon of the Black liberation era, The Huey P. Newton Reader combines now-classic texts ranging in topic from the formation of the Black Panthers, African Americans and armed self-defense, and FBI infiltration of civil rights groups with never-before-published writings from the Black Panther Party archives and Newton’s private collection, including articles on President Nixon, prison martyr George Jackson, Pan-Africanism, affirmative action, Cuba, and more.

Consulting with internationally known CEOs and participating in high-stakes projects with millions of dollars and thousands of jobs on the line, Rich Moran knew the rule: there’s no room for error—no fumbling, misgivings, or delays. While attempting to lull a crying son to sleep, a wrong turn on a drive through Sonoma County sets him and his family on a life-changing adventure. They can’t resist a promise-laden 19th century home, looking past its rotting wraparound porch and leaky roof.

Now featuring exclusive new material including excerpts from Desi Arnaz’s unpublished second memoir and commentary by daughter Lucie Arnaz, here is the expanded edition of the New York Times bestselling memoir of Cuban American entertainment legend, TV pioneer, and I Love Lucy star Desi Arnaz...

For fans of Anne Lamott, Abigail Thomas, and Ayelet Waldman, a postdivorce memoir, one woman's story of starting over at 60-in youth-obsessed, beauty-obsessed Hollywood. After the death of her best friend, the loss of her life's savings, and the collapse of her once-happy marriage, Meredith Maran - whom Anne Lamott calls "insightful, funny, and human" - leaves her San Francisco freelance writer's life for a 9-to-5 job in Los Angeles.

One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker magazine has met this challenge more often and more successfully than any other modern American journal. Starting with its light fantastic evocations of the glamorous and the idiosyncratic in the '20s and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor, The New Yorker's Profiles have presented readers with a vast and brilliant portrait gallery.

In 1902, newly-married Jeannie Gunn (Mrs Aeneas Gunn) left the security and comfort of her Melbourne home to travel to the depths of the Northern Territory, Australia, where her husband had been appointed manager of 'The Elsey', a large cattle station. One of the very few white women in the area, she was at first resented by people on and around the station, till her warmth and spirit won their affection and respect. This is her moving and simple account of her life amidst the beauty and cruelty of the land.

Commoning was a way of life for most of our ancestors. In Reclaiming the Commons for the Common Good, author Heather Menzies journeys to her roots in the Scottish Highlands, where her family lived in direct relation with the land since before recorded time.

In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.

For over twenty-five years, actor Jassa Ahluwalia described himself as 'half Indian, half English'. His fluent Punjabi always prompted bewilderment, medical staff questioned the legitimacy of his name, and the world of casting taught him he wasn't 'the right kind of mixed-race'. Feeling caught between two worlds, it wasn't long before Jassa embarked on a call to action: we need to change how we think and talk about mixed identity.

Poised on the brink of success, the dizzying heights of the unknown lying ahead, Ian Curtis had taken his own life. Grieving yet determined, Stephen Morris emerged from the wreckage of Joy Division to the dawn of something new: a new band, a new tour, a new beginning. Under the name New Order, Morris and his bandmates set their sights on America, only to encounter new disasters. Yet, in true northern spirit, not even this sudden tragedy could dissuade them from following their haphazard path to greatness.

THE MAKING AND MEANING OF RADIOHEAD'S GROUNDBREAKING, CONTROVERSIAL, EPOCHDEFINING ALBUM, KID A. In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a...

Elaine's was a world-famous New York restaurant that became home to writers and celebrities. Owner Elaine Kaufman was known to be "New York feisty", controversial, often rude, always blunt, with the flare of Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker. Elaine was highly respected and frequently feared, and Elaine's the restaurant received the public's love and praise time and time again. Woody Allen held a regular table there, and Elaine's was even featured in Allen's Manhattan and Billy Joel's song "Big Shot".

In the fugue of deep meditation, Jaya Devi tumbles outdoors into a muggy south Florida dawn. Sliding on a pair of orange flip-flops, she cuts across a dirt path skirting the ashram lawn. She glances down as a fat black snake slithers up her bare leg, wrapping itself tight. Astonished, she pauses, exemplifying the yogi’s art of non-reaction, breathing and assessing. Here, we enter into the wild wisdom-experience of a modern yogi who uses each moment as fuel for personal transformation.

At a distance of 20 centuries, the figure of Jesus of Nazareth can seem impossibly obscure - indeed, some skeptics even question whether he existed. And yet we have an eyewitness account of his life, death, and resurrection from one of his closest companions, the sherman Simon Bar-Jonah, better known as the Apostle Peter. Peter's disciple Mark wrote down the apostle's account of the life of Jesus as he told it to the first Christians in Rome. The vivid, detailed, unadorned prose of the Gospel of Mark conveys the unmistakable immediacy of a firsthand account.