Walking Memoirs

From his earliest days growing up in Canada, Deryck Whibley was a punk who loved music and couldn’t wait to achieve something bigger and better than the humble path that lay before him. Whibley was raised by a single mom and their small family constantly moved from place to place, so he was used to being the new kid, starting fights (or finishing them), and connecting with people who shared his sensibility for chaotic fun and loud music. Sum 41 was born of a group of friends who loved to jam, shared a DIY ethos, and were determined to be rock stars one day.

In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?

A transformative 300-mile walk along Japan’s ancient pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages inspires a heartrending remembrance of a long-lost friend, documented in poignant, imaginative prose and remarkable photography.

Que Son Valley is actually a large area of hills and valleys just to the west of Da Nang, Viet Nam. During the 1960s, units from the US Marines and US Army engaged the 2nd North Vietnamese Division in heavy and close combat. Our mission was to keep the enemy from capturing the cities of Da Nang, Tam Ky, and Chu Lai and to pacify the area. We did prevent the enemy from capturing these vital cities, but the area was far from pacified.

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors.

Bored and fed up with life, staring down a 50th birthday, Mike Tyler was looking for a change. Life had become routinized and unexciting. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis, or maybe just a yearning for one last big adventure. Mike decides to try hiking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, just to see what happens. Mike convinces his wife, Margo, to join him. Together, they embark on a five-month hike full of anticipation. They hike through some of the most stunning and remote places in the country on a trail full of unique, offbeat characters.

When award-winning actor, producer, and international icon Gabriel Byrne was a young boy, his grandmother brought him to the cinema for the first time. There, Byrne fell in love with the transporting power of the big screen. Growing up in 1950s and 60s Dublin within a family of eight, Byrne's formative childhood years were both carefree and challenging, spent between home, the church, school, and the streets of his ever-changing city.

By the time Brittany Penner is seven years old, she has loved and lost twenty-one foster siblings who have come into her family and left—all of them Indigenous like her. "When will it be my turn?" she asks her mother time and time again. "When will I be taken away?" You won't be, she is told. You're adopted. You're here to stay. You're the lucky one.

Walking with Buddha is a moving-meditation set along Japan's stunning Shikoku 88-Temple Trail. The ancient 1,200-kilometer path around the island of Shikoku serves as a reflective backdrop for cultural immersion and introduction into the Buddha-Nature. - Wearing her heart on her sleeve, Lockhart sets off on a walking-pilgrimage to nourish her soul and contemplate her next fifty years. While learning to embrace her own Buddha-nature, she discovers the wisdom, courage, and grace to accept change and re-create a life she truly desires.

In her enchanting memoir, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian, tells the remarkable story from her animal-loving childhood to her career protecting endangered mountain gorillas and other wild animals. In the face of discrimination and a male dominated world, one woman’s passion and determination to build a brighter future for the local wildlife and human community offers inspiration and insights into what is truly possible for our planet when we come together.

Vaneetha Risner contracted polio as an infant, was misdiagnosed, and lived with widespread paralysis. She lived in and out of the hospital for 10 years and, after each stay, would return to a life filled with bullying. When she became a Christian, though, she thought things would get easier, and they did: carefree college days, a dream job in Boston, and an MBA from Stanford where she met and married a classmate. But life unraveled. Again.

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known, a new one opened. As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal”, Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost....

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute - men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.

James Beard is a speaker on topics such as traditional living and natural spirit teachings. His topics address many concerns to do with wellness and balance in life. He is a student of native teachings from Ojibwe Elders, Algonquin language based people, living throughout the Great Lakes Region of the US and Canada. The audiences for his presentations vary from youth to elderly. His work is dedicated to telling anyone who has interest about his native brothers.

In Walking with Ghosts in Papua New Guinea, Antonson shares a journey of physical and mental endurance in his inimitable way, in the company of a mixed band of resolute adventurers, blending fascinating historical context with the tribulations of unexpected discoveries in faraway lands.

The unbelievably true story of a 40-day fast, beating cancer, dying, coming back to life, and ego death. This audiobook begins the Hard Times series, which follows up on the success of Stefan Aarnio's best-selling book, Hard Times Create Strong Men.

You don’t need to walk across Italy to find meaning. But it sure doesn’t hurt. What started as a long-distance walk along the Via Francigena turned into something more human—mountains crossed, vineyards wandered, and strangers turned friends. This isn’t a guidebook. It’s the story of what happens when you stop rushing: broken sandals, golden hour moments, and a version of Tuscany you won’t find on a postcard. We thought we were just walking. Turns out, we were writing the story of our lives.

In Walking through Fire, Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and one of the Arab world’s greatest writers, tells the story of the later years of a life which shaped an iconic voice in global feminism. Covering her life in Nasser’s then Sadat’s and Mubarak’s Egypt, we learn about Saadawi’s experience of marriage and motherhood, and we travel with her into exile after her life was threatened by religious extremists. Filled with warmth as well as critical reflection, this book reveals the later years of a remarkable life dedicated to the fight for justice and equality.

In 2006, Kate MacDougall was working a safe but dull job at the venerable auction house Sotheby’s in London. After a clumsy accident nearly destroyed a precious piece of art, she quit Sotheby’s and set up her own dog-walking company. Kate knew little about dogs and nothing about business, and no one thought being a professional dog walker was a good use of her university degree. Nevertheless, Kate embarked upon an entirely new and very much improvised career walking some of the city’s many pampered pooches, branding her company "London's Number One Dog Walking Agency".

From the halls of the Philadelphia City Council to the challenges of single motherhood, Blondell Reynolds-Brown's memoir Walking a Tightrope Backward in High Heels offers an unflinching look at what it takes to succeed in the bruising arena of big-city politics. As one of Philadelphia's most influential councilwomen, Reynolds-Brown shattered glass ceilings and championed transformative legislation for women, children, and families during her remarkable twenty-year tenure.