Collection: Biography & Memoir

Velma Wallis shares the love, loss, and struggle that mark her

coming of age in a two-room cabin at Fort Yukon, Alaska, where

she is born in 1960, the sixth of thirteen children. Family life is

defined by the business of survival: Haul water from the Yukon.

Kill a moose. Chop firewood. Feed the sled dogs staked around

the cabin. Run the trap line. Catch salmon. It is a time of innocence

and laughter, too, as the children escape into a world of

play under the midnight sun.

The once-migratory family has settled at the confluence of two

she is born in 1960, the sixth of thirteen children. Family life is

defined by the business of survival: Haul water from the Yukon.

Kill a moose. Chop firewood. Feed the sled dogs staked around

the cabin. Run the trap line. Catch salmon. It is a time of innocence

and laughter, too, as the children escape into a world of

play under the midnight sun.

The true story of Fauja Singh, who broke world records to become the first one hundred-year-old to run a marathon, shares valuable lessons on the source of his grit, determination to overcome obstacles, and commitment to positive representation of the Sikh community.

Every step forward is a victory.

Fauja Singh was born determined. He was also born with legs that wouldn't allow him to play cricket with his friends or carry him to school miles from his village in Punjab. But that didn't stop him. Working on his family's farm, Fauja grew stronger to meet his own full potential.

He never stopped striving. At the age of 81, after a lifetime of making his body, mind, and heart stronger, Fauja decided to run his first marathon. He went on to break records all around the world and became the first person over 100 to complete the grueling long-distance race.

With exuberant text by Simran Jeet Singh and exhilarating illustrations by Baljinder Kaur, the true story of Fauja Singh reminds us that it's both where we start and how we finish that make our journeys unforgettable.

Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, the acclaimed author of Happy All the Time delivers a beloved cookbook manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. - With a foreword by Ruth Reichl.

"As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking." --The New York Times Book Review

From the humble hotplate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Hilarious, personal, and full of Colwin's hard-won expertise, Home Cooking will speak to the heart of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover.

Meet the LGBTQ+ dealmakers, trailblazers, and glass-ceiling breakers in business, politics, and beyond.

The people who are creating national public policy, running billion-dollar tech enterprises, and winning Olympic medals. Andrew Gelwicks interviews the leaders who have forged their own paths and changed the world, showing how you can too.

From Troye Sivan to Margaret Cho, George Takei to Billie Jean King, Shangela to Adam Rippon, each person credits their queer identity with giving them an edge in their paths to success. Their stories brim with the hard-won lessons gained over their careers. You'll learn how to:

• Channel anger in a positive way -- using it as rocket fuel to succeed

• Leverage your difference to beget new ideas and strategies

• Bridge generational gaps

• Access resources to conquer denial, internalized homophobia, and doubt

• Use your sensitivity and attunement to read the room, deciding when to fit in and when to stand out

• Find a queer tribe and learn to help and lean on one another

Collecting incisive, deeply personal conversations with inspirational LGBTQ+ trailblazers about how they leveraged the challenges and insights they had as relative outsiders to succeed in the worlds of business, tech, politics, Hollywood, sports and beyond, The Queer Advantage celebrates the unique, supercharged power of queerness.

Essential reading from an expert voice our country needs: Luis Miranda's personal and political memoir reveals a deep understanding of Latino culture and building community to change our world for the better.

A veteran of New York and national politics, Luis Miranda embodies the relentless spirit of progress of American immigrants.

There is nobody on the Latino, New York, and national political scene with the breadth of experience, passion, and storytelling charm of Luis Miranda. In Relentless, he shares the poignant narrative of his life and career--from his early days as a radically minded Puerto Rican activist to his decades of political advice and problem solving.

We experience the thrill of the ascendency of Hamilton, created by his son Lin-Manuel. And we experience the suffering after the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Amid the triumphs, challenges, and ongoing hard work, Miranda examines what his experience reveals about our ever-changing politics, demographics, and society.

A carefully rendered portrait of a brilliant but troubled daughter of the Old South who struggled against the conventions of gender, class, family, and ultimately of sanity, yet survived to define a creative life of her own

Sara Mayfield was born into Alabama's governing elite in 1905 and grew up in a social circle that included Zelda Sayre, Sara Haardt, and Tallulah and Eugenia Bankhead. After winning a Goucher College short story contest judged by H. L. Mencken, Mayfield became friends with Mencken and his circle, then visited with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and hobnobbed with the literati while traveling in Europe after a failed marriage. Returning to Alabama during the Depression, she briefly managed the family landholdings before departing for New York City where she became involved in the theater. Inventing a plastic compound while working on theatrical sets, she applied for a patent and set her sights on a livelihood as an inventor and businesswoman. With the advent of World War II, Mayfield returned to her family home in Tuscaloosa where she expanded her experiments, freelanced as a journalist, and doggedly pursued a bizarre series of military and intelligence schemes, prompting temporary hospitalization. In 1945, she mingled with a host of cultural figures, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, and even a young John F. Kennedy, while reporting on the creation of the United Nations from Mexico and California. Back in Tuscaloosa after the war, however, she struggled to find her way with both work and family, becoming increasingly paranoid about perceived conspiracies arrayed against her. Finally, her mother and brother committed her to Bryce Hospital for the Insane, where she remained for the next seventeen years.

Throughout her life, Mayfield kept journals, wrote fiction, and produced thousands of letters while nursing the ambition that had driven her since childhood: to write and publish books. During her confinement, Mayfield assiduously recorded her experiences and her determined efforts--sometimes delusional, always savvy--to overturn her diagnosis and return to the world as a sane, independent adult. At 59, she was released from Bryce and later obtained a decree of "having been restored to sanity," enabling her to manage her own financial affairs and to live how and where she pleased. She went on to publish noteworthy literary biographies of the Menckens and the Fitzgeralds plus a novel based on the life of Mona Lisa, finally achieving her quest to become the author of books and her own life. In Odyssey of a Wandering Mind, noted writer Jennifer Horne draws on years of research and an intimate understanding of the vast archive Sara Mayfield left behind to sensitively render Mayfield's struggle to move through the world as the person she was--and her ultimate success in surviving to define the terms of her story.

A classic memoir that's gripping, funny, and ultimately unforgettable from the bestselling former National Ambassador of Books for Young People. A strong choice for summer reading--an engaging and powerful autobiographical exploration of growing up a so-called "bad boy" in Harlem in the 1940s.

As a boy, Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciously--he would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys' teasing. He aspired to be a writer (and he eventually succeeded).

But as his hope for a successful future diminished, the values he had been taught at home, in school, and in his community seemed worthless, and he turned to the streets and to his books for comfort.

Don't miss this memoir by New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers, one of the most important voices of our time.

Stephen Bright emerged on the scene as a cause lawyer in the early decades of mass incarceration, when inflammatory politics and harsh changes to criminal justice policy were crashing down on the most vulnerable members of society. He dedicated his career to unleashing social change by representing clients that society had long ago discarded, and advocated for all to receive a fair trial.

In Demand the Impossible, Robert L. Tsai traces Bright's remarkable career to explore the legal ideas that were central to his relentless pursuit of equal justice. For nearly forty years, Bright led the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit that provided legal aid to incarcerated people and worked to improve conditions within the justice system. He argued four capital cases before the US Supreme Court--and won each one, despite facing an increasingly hostile bench. With each victory, he brought to light how the law itself had become corrupted by the country's thirst for severe punishment, exposing prosecutorial misconduct, continuing racial inequality, inadequate safeguards for people with intellectual disabilities, and the shameful quality of legal representation for the poor.

Organized around these four major Supreme Court cases, each narrated in vivid and dramatic detail, Tsai's essential account explores the racism built into the criminal justice system and the incredible advancements one lawyer and his committed allies made for equal rights. An electrifying work of legal history, Demand the Impossible reveals how change can be won in even the most challenging times and how seemingly small victories can go on to have outsized effects.

Outdoor author and educator Kevin Callan (aka The Happy Camper) has always suffered from high anxiety. Where did Kevin go to escape this anxiety? He didn't find relief on a psychologist's couch or popping pills. Kevin found it by heading off on wilderness trips. Canoeing has always been the author's favourite mode of travel, but he's also tried other ways of low-impact travel. Backpacking, kayaking, snowshoeing, whatever. As long as he's outside in nature. Wilderness places are sacred; they need to be loved and protected. But they are also places we need to help ward off our growing issues with mental and physical health. This inspiring, often humorous memoir is full of stories of the ways that wilderness can magically transform and heal our lives. Illustrated throughout, this memoir includes sidebars that give camping, paddling and canoeing advice for staying safe in the great outdoors.

A collection of essential writings from the iconic foremother of Black intellectual history, feminism and activism

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual and community activist whose prescient insights and eloquent prose underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African-American social and political activism.

This volume brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois.

From renowned veterinarian Dr. Doug Mader comes a stirring account of his fight to protect his animal patients and human staff amid the dangerous realities of inner-city life and the Los Angeles riots--and a celebration of the remarkable human-animal bond.

The life of a veterinarian is challenging: keeping up with advances in medical care, making difficult decisions about people's beloved companions, and, in Dr. Doug Mader's case, navigating the social unrest in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. As one of the few exotic animal experts in California, he was just as likely to be treating a lion as a house cat.

The Vet at Noah's Ark: Stories of Survival from an Inner-City Animal Hospital follows Dr. Mader and his staff over the course of a year at Noah's Ark Veterinary Hospital, an inner-city LA area veterinary hospital where Dr. Mader treats not only dogs and cats, but also emus, skunks, snakes, foxes, monkeys, and a host of other exotic animals. This real life drama is set against the backdrop of the trial of four police officers in the Rodney King case, as well as the violent aftermath following their acquittal.

This is a book about survival, both of the pets that Dr. Mader and his staff try to save on a daily basis, as well as the staff themselves. Living in the harsh reality of the city, surrounded by gangs, drugs, violence, traffic, smog, and deadly riots, they must overcome and rise above, for their own survival and that of the animals who need them. This awe-inspiring account is told through Dr. Mader's riveting storytelling--as Carl Hiaasen writes, "Doug is fearless and dedicated," and "a damn good storyteller."

THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

Eleven years when Britain had no king.

In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution.

On a raw January afternoon, the Stuart king, Charles I, was executed for treason. Within weeks the English monarchy had been abolished and the 'useless and dangerous' House of Lords discarded. The people, it was announced, were now the sovereign force in the land. What this meant, and where it would lead, no one knew.

The Restless Republic is the story of the extraordinary decade that followed. It takes as its guides the people who lived through those years. Among them is Anna Trapnel, the daughter of a Deptford shipwright whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the King. Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet master of propaganda. Gerrard Winstanley, who strove for a Utopia of common ownership where no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious scientist whose mapping of Ireland prefaced the dispossession of tens of thousands. And the indomitable Countess of Derby who defended to the last the final Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man.

The Restless Republic ranges from London to Leith, Cornwall to Connacht, from the corridors of power to the common fields and hillsides. Gathering her cast of trembling visionaries and banished royalists, dextrous mandarins and bewildered bystanders, Anna Keay brings to vivid life the most extraordinary and experimental decade in Britain's history. It is the story of how these tempestuous years set the British Isles on a new course, and of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.

At 538 pounds, Rick Salewske lived a small life that consisted of his job, his house, and his car--and he was very close to no longer fitting into his car. His stomach rubbing on the steering wheel had already worn a threadbare line across his pants. Often ridiculed by total strangers, he felt humiliated and very much alone. Rick had been raised in a traditional Catholic family, but his relationship with God was more of a distant, respectful belief than an up-close and personal experience. He couldn't fit into a church pew and most definitely not into a confessional booth. What Rick didn't know was that even then, God was actively pursuing him, even when Rick was not pursuing God at all.

When Rick's weight cost him a chance at his dream job, God would lead him on a journey that would reach the mountaintops of national television appearances and even the New York Marathon, but his own poor choices would plunge him back down to a valley leading nowhere. It was in that valley that Rick eventually looked up and recognized God's hand in his life. When he learned to keep his eyes on God, the life God intended him to lead finally came into focus.

His path was not always smooth or straight. But learning to put his full trust in the Lord led Rick to be less than half and more than twice the man he used to be.

Simone Biles and Nadia Comaneci are gymnastics legends. Biles dominated the world championships, and Comaneci earned perfect Olympic scores. But was one gymnast better than the other? Compare their careers and make your own decision.

Unleash your inner artist and test your Swiftie knowledge with this brand new colouring and activity book! Featuring illustrations ready for you to customise with colour, plus fun puzzles and quizzes celebrating the amazing life and career of Taylor Swift.

Alicia Malone's Take on Influential Women in Film!

"Once again Alicia Malone champions women filmmakers, opening the floodgates to a great new wave of female voices and creative vision."―Maria Giese, filmmaker and activist

#1 Bestseller in Movies & Video Guides & Reviews

With the success of the Wonder Woman movies and the results following the outcry of the #MeToo movement, now is the time to highlight the female influences in film history previously left unheard!

The voices of powerful women in old Hollywood-told. You may have heard the term "male gaze," coined in the 1970s, about how art and entertainment have been influenced by the male's perspective. What about the opposite? Women have been making movies since the very beginning of cinema. In The Female Gaze, Alicia Malone explores the ideas, thoughts, and views we learn from women from behind the scenes. What does the world look like through the "female gaze"?

Learn about women who changed the world. Discover brilliantly talented and accomplished women directors, both world renowned and obscure, who have shaped the film industry in ways rarely fully acknowledged. Find mini-essays written by women like Alicia Malone and other diverse female film critics. Featuring past and present films, this behind the scenes guidebook is perfect for the Hollywood history fan in your life.

Inside, observe:

• How female directors' voices shaped films and the film industry
• The advancements and accomplishments of influential women in history and film
• The lives of these women and the struggles they faced throughout Hollywood history

If you liked Women in Art or Camera Man, you'll adore the powerful women in history found in Alicia Malone's The Female Gaze.