Collection: Biography & Memoir

Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story.

For the first four years of his life, Prahlad didn't speak. But his silence didn't stop him from communicating--or communing--with the strange, numinous world he found around him. Ordinary household objects came to life; the spirits of long-dead slave children were his best friends. In his magical interior world, sensory experiences blurred, time disappeared, and memory was fluid. Ever so slowly, he emerged, learning to talk and evolving into an artist and educator. His journey takes readers across the United States during one of its most turbulent moments, and Prahlad experiences it all, from the heights of the Civil Rights Movement to West Coast hippie enclaves to a college town that continues to struggle with racism and its border state legacy.

Rooted in black folklore and cultural ambience, and offering new perspectives on autism and more, The Secret Life of a Black Aspie will inspire and delight readers and deepen our understanding of the marginal spaces of human existence.

Pura Belpré Illustrator Award Honor - American Library Association (ALA)

With vibrant illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner David Diaz, The Pot that Juan Builtis sure to enlighten all who are fascinated by traditional art forms, Mexican culture, and the power of the human spirit to find inspiration from the past.

Juan Quezada is the premier potter in Mexico. With local materials and the primitive methods of the Casas Grandes people - including using human hair to make brushes and cow manure to feed the flames that fire his pots - Juan creates stunning pots in the traditional style. Each is a work of art unlike any other.

This is the pot that Juan built.
These are the flames so sizzling hot
That flickered and flared and fired the pot,
The beautiful pot that Juan built.

The text is written in the form of "The House That Jack Built" and accompanied by a comprehensive afterword with photos and information about Juan's technique as well as a history of Mata Ortiz, the northern Mexican village where Juan began and continues to work. This celebratory story tells how Juan's pioneering work has transformed Mata Ortiz from an impoverished village into a prosperous community of world-renowned artists.

With vibrant illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner David Diaz, The Pot that Juan Built is sure to enlighten all who are fascinated by traditional art forms, Mexican culture, and the power of the human spirit to find inspiration from the past.

Bob Bell's lived a long and colorful life, but there were times when it looked like it might be cut short. Join Bob, his eccentric group of friends, and his long-suffering family as he tells the tales of how Alaska's weather, geography, and wildlife all tried to kill him and other people.

Working Girl meets What Remains in this New York Times bestselling, behind-the-scenes story of an unlikely friendship between America's favorite First Son, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his personal assistant, a blue-collar girl from the Bronx. Featured in the documentary I Am JFK Jr.!

From the moment RoseMarie Terenzio unleashed her Italian temper on the entitled nuisance commandeering her office in a downtown New York PR firm, an unlikely friendship bloomed between the blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.

Many books have sought to capture John F. Kennedy Jr.'s life. None has been as intimate or as honest as Fairy Tale Interrupted. Recalling the adventure of working as his executive assistant for five years, RoseMarie portrays the man behind the icon--patient, protective, surprisingly goofy, occasionally thoughtless and self-involved, yet capable of extraordinary generosity and kindness. She reveals how he dealt with dating, politics, and the paparazzi, and describes life behind the scenes at George magazine. Captured here are her memories of Carolyn Bessette, how she orchestrated the ultra-secretive planning of John and Carolyn's wedding on Cumberland Island--and the heartbreak of their deaths on July 16, 1999, after which RoseMarie's whole world came crashing down around her. Only now does she feel she can tell her story in a book that stands as "a fitting personal tribute to a unique boss . . . deliriously fun and entertaining" (Kirkus Reviews).

Profiles in Mental Health Courage portrays the dramatic journeys of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions.

Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction--and the nation's--in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others--a special group who agreed to talk about their illnesses, treatments, and struggles for the first time.

When Kennedy's uncle, President John F. Kennedy, published his classic book Profiles in Courage, he hoped to inspire "political courage" by telling the stories of brave U.S. senators who changed America.

In Profiles in Mental Health Courage, former Congressman Kennedy adapts his uncle's idea to inspire the "mental health courage" it takes for those with these conditions to treat their illnesses, and risk telling their stories to help America face its crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets. The resounding silence surrounding these illnesses remains persistent, and this book takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction that inspires profound connection, empathy, and action.

In this book, you'll meet people of all ages, backgrounds, and futures, across politics and government, Hollywood and the arts, tech and business, sports and science--some recovering, some relapsing, some just barely holding on, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You'll also meet those trying to help them through--parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness.

The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential reading for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public--just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves.

Learn how a young girl who loved being in the water became one of the greatest Olympic swimmers of all time in this exciting addition to the Who HQ Now series featuring newsmakers and trending topics.

Katie Ledecky began swimming competitively at age six after watching her mother and brother in the pool. By age fifteen, she was setting records and winning gold medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics. And with each year, Katie improved her skills and her times in the water! The Summer 2024 Olympics in Paris will be Katie's fourth, and the world will be watching.

With over seven Olympic gold medals, nineteen World Championship gold medals, and twenty-two overall medals at the World Aquatics Championships to her name, Katie has become the most decorated female swimmer in the world. Her charming spirit and impressive athletic skills have made Katie a popular role model for young swimmers, and everyone is eager to see what she achieves in the future.

Monumental tells, for the first time, the incredible story of Oscar James Dunn, a New Orleanian born into slavery who became America's first Black lieutenant governor and acting governor. A champion of universal suffrage, civil rights, and integrated public schools, Dunn fought for radical change during the early years of Reconstruction in Louisiana, a post-Civil War era rife with corruption, subterfuge, and violence.

A graphic history informed by newly discovered primary sources, Monumental resurrects, in vivid detail, Louisiana and New Orleans after the Civil War--and presents an iconic American life that never should have been forgotten. Contextual essays and a map and timeline add layers of depth to the narrative. Monumental is a story of determination, scandal, betrayal, and how one man's principled fight for equality and justice may have cost him everything.

Meet Composer Johann Sebastian Bach!

Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers series combines a delightful mix of full-color historical reproductions, photos, and hilarious cartoon-style illustrations that bring to life the works of renowned composers, combining poignant anecdotes with important factual information for readers (Ages 8-9).

Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House was first published in 1868 and is considered one of the most candid and poignant slave narratives. Author Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley writes about her teenage years, working as a slave for the Rev. Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, NC. He is thought by many historians to have been Keckley s half-brother. The Burwells had twelve children and ran an academy for girls. She writes about mistreatment and violence visited upon her by Rev. and Mrs. Burwell, and the unwelcome sexual advances and eventual rape by one of the town s white citizens. After Keckley gave birth to a son, she and her baby were sent to live with Burwell s sister.

Born into slavery, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley endured untold hardships at the hands of her master and half-brother Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She eventually purchased freedom for herself and that of her son in the 1850s and is now remembered as an entrepreneur, fashion designer, abolitionist, educator, writer, and community activist. Self-reliant and educated, Keckley used her dressmaking skills to set up a successful business in the pre-Civil War Washington D.C., where she became the modiste of choice for many of the most fashionable women in the nation s capital. Her talents and enterprising nature eventually led her to become seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln and confidante to both Mary and Abraham Lincoln. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Keckley s friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln eventually shifted into one of caretaker, as the former first lady s financial troubles mounted and her mental health declined. In an effort to buoy their financial fortunes and to balance Lincoln s battered public image, Keckley wrote Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the While House. It is considered both a slave narrative and, in the words of historian Williams Andrews, the first major text to represent the interests and aims of this nascent African American leadership class the postwar era.

From the award-winning New York Times-bestselling
author of Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller, comes a
career defining memoir about grieving the sudden loss of her
twenty-one-year-old child

"Fair to say,
I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday." And so begins
Alexandra Fuller's open, vivid new memoir, Fi. It's midsummer in Wyoming and
Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home
country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing
her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman,
Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.And
then--suddenly and incomprehensibly--her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in
his sleep.

No stranger
to loss--young siblings, a parent, a home country-- Alexandra is nonetheless
leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and
abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a
sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico
to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and
down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve
herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers--in poetry,
in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as
a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly,
blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving
a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.

Named One of The Hollywood Reporter's "100 Greatest Film Books of All Time"

Famed independent screenwriter and director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids, Machete) discloses all the unique strategies and original techniques he used to make his remarkable debut film El Mariachi on a shoestring budget.

This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget. Also included is the appendix, "The Ten Minute Film Course," a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.

A perfect gift for the aspiring filmmaker.

In September of 2022, twenty-five years after Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents, the DNC unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden to release him. Peltier has affirmed his innocence ever since his sentencing in 1977--his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse--and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted.

Prison Writings is a wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicling his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him. He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices.

Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

In The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to move to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers, reads her work at the Harlem Writers Guild, and begins to take part in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world. In the meantime, her personal life takes an unexpected turn. She leaves the bail bondsman she was intending to marry after falling in love with a South African freedom fighter, travels with him to London and Cairo, where she discovers new opportunities.

The Heart of a Woman is filled with unforgettable vignettes of such renowned people as Billie Holiday and Malcom X, but perhaps most importantly chronicles the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America and how the son she has cherished so intensely and worked for so devotedly finally grows to be a man.

"In this remarkable memoir, the qualities that have long distinguished Francine Prose's fiction and criticism--uncompromising intelligence, a gratifying aversion to sentiment, the citrus bite of irony--give rigor and, finally, an unexpected poignancy to an emotional, artistic, and political coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s--the decade, as she memorably puts it, when American youth realized that the changes that seemed possible in the '60s weren't going to happen. A fascinating and ultimately wrenching book."--Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

The first memoir from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose, about the close relationship she developed with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers--and the year when our country changed.

During her twenties, Francine Prose lived in San Francisco, where she began an intense and strange relationship with Tony Russo, who had been indicted and tried for working with Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon papers. The narrative is framed around the nights she spent with Russo driving manically around San Francisco, listening to his stories--and the disturbing and dramatic end of that relationship in New York.

What happens to them mirrors the events and preoccupations of that historical moment: the Vietnam war, drugs, women's liberation, the Patty Hearst kidnapping. At once heartfelt and ironic, funny and sad, personal and political, 1974 provides an insightful look at how Francine Prose became a writer and artist during a time when the country, too, was shaping its identity.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER (The Globe and Mail)
A Globe and Mail Best Book [2011]
A Quill & Quire Book of the Year [2011]
A National Post Best Book [2011]
A BBC Radio Book of the Week [October 2011]
One of the CBC's 15 Memoirs by Canadian Women Worth Reading [2015]

Six-year-old Carmen Aguirre fled to Canada with her family following General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile. Five years later, when her mother and stepfather returned to South America as Chilean resistance members, Carmen and her sister went with them, quickly assuming double lives of their own. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

Something Fierce takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile in the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989. Dramatic, suspenseful and darkly comic, it is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting.

"Profound, funny ... wild and moving ... heartbreaking accounts of a lonely black childhood.... Brown sees racial oppression in national and global context; every political word she writes pounds home a lesson about commerce, money, racism, communism, you name it ... A glowing achievement." --Los Angeles Times

Elaine Brown assumed her role as the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party with these words: "I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?" It was August 1974. From a small Oakland-based cell, the Panthers had grown to become a revolutionary national organization, mobilizing black communities and white supporters across the country--but relentlessly targeted by the police and the FBI, and increasingly riven by violence and strife within. How Brown came to a position of power over this paramilitary, male-dominated organization, and what she did with that power, is a riveting, unsparing account of self-discovery.

Brown's story begins with growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Philadelphia and attending a predominantly white school, where she first sensed what it meant to be black, female, and poor in America. She describes her political awakening during the bohemian years of her adolescence, and her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers, who seemed to hold the promise of redemption. And she tells of her ascent into the upper echelons of Panther leadership: her tumultuous relationship with the charismatic Huey Newton, who would become her lover and her nemesis; her experience with the male power rituals that would sow the seeds of the party's demise; and the scars that she both suffered and inflicted in that era's paradigm-shifting clashes of sex and power. Stunning, lyrical, and acute, this is the indelible testimony of a black woman's battle to define herself.