Collection: Biography & Memoir

The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti's powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings--from the ant, the fish, and the worm to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god--while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself.

Canetti famously refused to die before he'd read all his obituaries and corrected them.

"I accept no death."--Elias Canetti (1905-1994)

An illuminating, insider's journey through the world of Little House on the Prairie and beyond, from Dean Butler, who starred as Almanzo Wilder, the man Laura "Half Pint" Ingalls married--on the iconic show still beloved by millions of fans as it reaches its 50th anniversary.

With a foreword from Melissa Gilbert (Laura) and Alison Arngrim (Nellie)!

Cast just before his twenty-third birthday, Dean Butler joined Little House on the Prairie halfway through its run, gaining instant celebrity and fans' enduring affection. Ironically, when the late, great Michael Landon remarked that Little House would outlive everyone involved in making it, Butler deemed it unlikely. Yet for four decades and counting, Butler has been defined in the public eye as Almanzo Wilder--a role he views as the great gift of his life.

Butler had been cast as a romantic lead before, notably in the made-for-TV movie of Judy Blume's Forever, opposite Stephanie Zimbalist. But Little House was, and remains, one of the most treasured shows in television history. As the eventual husband of Laura "Half-pint" Ingalls--and the man who would share actress Melissa Gilbert's first real-life romantic kiss--Butler landed as a central figure for the show's devoted fans.

Now, with wit and candor, Butler recounts his passage through the Prairie, sharing stories and anecdotes of the remarkable cast who were his on-screen family. But that was merely the beginning of a diverse career that includes Broadway runs and roles on two other classic shows--Moondoggie in The New Gidget and Buffy's ne'er-do-well father, Hank, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Coming of age during a golden era of entertainment, Butler has evolved along with it, and today enjoys success and fulfillment as a director and producer--notably of NBC Golf's Feherty--while remaining deeply loyal to Little House.

The warmth, heart, and decency that fans of Laura and Almanzo fell in love with on Little House echo through this uplifting memoir, a story, in Butler's words, about "good luck, good television, and the very good--if gloriously imperfect--people who made it so."

America's quilter, Jenny Doan, shows how to stitch a legacy for every stage of life.

Quilters often use the milestones of our lives to bless others with a gift from the heart that is made with their own hands. The number of occasions that mark these passages are virtually endless and occur throughout our lives. We look up and once again see the opportunity to create something new to pass on to a friend, a loved one, or ourselves.

Whether it be for a new addition to the family, a graduation, a celebration of love, warming a new home, or capturing the memory of someone who has passed, a quilt or quilting project stitched with love is the perfect way to show the people you're closest to that you're thinking about them during this transitional time.

Within these pages, you'll find some of Jenny Doan's favorite quilt ideas for the important milestones of life. Each project has a pattern with detailed instructions so you can make it yourself! No doubt your loved ones will also enjoy receiving these as gifts in the near future. Starting today, make some powerful memories and celebrate your milestones!

Life Stages include:

• Babies
• Raising kids
• Graduations
• Marriages
• Loss/Grief
• New Starts
• Sports
• Landscapes
• Death and Moving On

Through multiple patterns and stories for each stop along the way, Quilting Through Life gives you all the tools you need to stitch a legacy of love.

Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron's frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son.

Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, Lori's younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."

C.J. is gender variant or gender nonconforming, whichever you prefer. Whatever the term, Lori has a boy who likes girl stuff--really likes girl stuff. He floats on the gender-variation spectrum from super-macho-masculine on the left all the way to super-girly-feminine on the right. He's not all pink and not all blue. He's a muddled mess or a rainbow creation. Lori and her family choose to see the rainbow.

Written in Lori's uniquely witty and warm voice and launched by her incredibly popular blog of the same name, Raising My Rainbow is the unforgettable story of her wonderful family as they navigate the often challenging but never dull privilege of raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader's guide and bonus content

'I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity.'

This is the remarkable story of the twelfth-century recluse Christina, who became prioress of Markyate, near St Albans in Hertfordshire. Determined to devote her life to God and to remain a virgin, Christina repulses the sexual advances of the bishop of Durham. In revenge he arranges her betrothal to a young nobleman but Christina steadfastly refuses to consummate the marriage and defies her parents' cruel coercion. Sustained by visions, she finds refuge with the hermit Roger, and lives concealed at Markyate for four years, enduring terrible physical and emotional torment. Although Christina is supported by the abbot of St Albans, she never achieves the recognition that he intended for her.

Written with striking candour by Christina's anonymous biographer, the vividness and compelling detail of this account make it a social document as much as a religious one. Christina's trials of the flesh and spirit exist against a backdrop of scheming and corruption and all-too-human greed.

Bette Midler today is a beloved legacy star, best known for her comic witch in Disney's Hocus Pocus (1993) and its 2022 sequel. She has also gained prominence for sentimental, anthemic ballads like "Wind Beneath My Wings," her initiation of green space projects in New York City, and tussling with Donald Trump on Twitter. Her profile is that of an articulate, civic-minded matriarch enjoying thoroughly mainstream stardom. But more than fifty years earlier she emerged from the steam of the subterranean Continental Baths as the Divine Miss M, the bawdy, campy, fearless alter ego she created in front of an audience of towel-clad gay men who came to the baths seeking not just sex, but a sense of community and safety from an often-harrowing outside world. "I was able to take chances on that stage that I could not have taken anywhere else," she later wrote. "Ironically, I was freed from fear by people who, at the time, were ruled by fear. And for that I will always be grateful." Overnight, Bette Midler became a much-loved icon of the gay community.

The Divine Miss M coalesced gay, Jewish, feminist, and show business sensibilities into an outrageously funny and emotionally compelling persona that travelled with surprising ease from the cultural margins to the entertainment mainstream. Her embrace by mom-and-pop audiences, rock fans and critics, and the guardians of middle-of-the-road show business demonstrates just how deeply the tastes and sensibilities of her original audience have been absorbed into popular culture. On Bette Midler: An Opinionated Guide traces the early development of Midler's performing ethos from New York's downtown experimental theater scene and examines her impact across media, with chapters on the soaring highs (and occasional cringe-worthy lows) of her stage work, movies, recordings, and television appearances, and considers her influence as an environmental activist and social media presence.

On Bette Midler features performance analysis and deeply researched background information, all of it supporting informed--and divinely opinionated--consideration of Midler the artist. It judges her work by the highest standards: those she established for herself.

See the world through Paul Cézanne's eyes and be inspired to produce your own masterpieces.

Have you ever wondered exactly what your favorite artists were looking at to make them draw, sculpt, or paint the way they did? In this charming illustrated series of books to keep and collect, created in full collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can see what they saw and be inspired to create your own artworks, too. In What the Artist Saw: Paul Cézanne meet the famous French painter.

In this series, follow the artists' stories and find intriguing facts about their environments and key masterpieces. Then see what you can see and make your own art. Take a closer look at landscapes, or even yourself, with Vincent van Gogh. Try crafting a story in fabric like Faith Ringgold, or carve a woodblock print at home with Hokusai. Every book in this series is one to treasure and keep--perfect for budding young artists to explore exhibitions with, then continue their own artistic journeys.

(c) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Arguably the most influential Christian of her generation" (The Guardian) Vicky Beeching chronicles her rise at the heights of Christian music and her brave decision to come out as gay--leading to self-acceptance and acknowledgment which changed her relationship with God and the practice of her faith.

From a young age, Vicky Beeching loved to write songs and lead worship in church. In singing, she experienced the fullest expression of herself, what God had uniquely blessed her to do. After college, Vicky quickly achieved stardom, touring with some of Christian music's biggest names.

But Vicky's success was threatened by a terrifying secret. She was gay. There was no room in Christian music for a gay worship leader. For ten years, Vicky rejected who she really was--a denial that damaged her in body and soul. After leaving music behind to enroll in a theology program at Oxford University, Vicky discovered that she could not worship God with a pure heart if she did not accept who she was. When she courageously came out publically in 2014, Vicky lost the support of her Christian community. But she gained much more: the truth had set her free.

Focusing on her speaking and writing instead of music, Vicky leads worship in a new way now, emphasizing God's inclusive love and faithfulness. Undivided is the story of her transformation, a joyous tale of God's love, and a call for all Christians to worship God in authentic ways.

New York Times Bestseller

Now in paperback, the dishy, rollicking, and deeply personal story of what really happened in the 2016 election and since, as seen through the eyes of the New York Times reporter who gave eight years of her life to covering the First Woman President who wasn't.

"The Devil Wears Prada meets The Boys on the Bus."--New York Times

For nearly a decade, award-winning New York Times journalist Amy Chozick chronicled Hillary Clinton's pursuit of the presidency. Chozick's assignments, covering Clinton's imploding 2008 campaign and then her front-row seat to the 2016 election on "The Hillary Beat," set off a years-long journey in which the author's formative twenties and thirties became, both personally and professionally, intrinsically intertwined with Clinton's presidential ambitions. As Mrs. Clinton tried, and twice failed, to shatter "that highest, hardest glass ceiling," Chozick was herself trying, with various fits and starts, to scale the highest echelons of American journalism.

In this rollicking, hilarious narrative, Chozick takes us through the high- (and low-) lights of the most noxious and dramatic presidential race in American history. Chozick's candor and clear-eyed perspective--from her seat on the Hillary bus and reporting from inside the campaign's Brooklyn headquarters to her run-ins with Donald J. Trump--provide fresh intrigue and insights into the story we thought we all knew. This is the real story of what happened, with the kind of dishy, inside details that repeatedly surprise and enlighten.

But Chasing Hillary is also the unusually personal and moving memoir of how Chozick came to understand Clinton not as an unknowable enigma and political animal, but as a complete, complex person full of contradictions and forged in the crucible of political battles that had long predated Chozick's years covering her. And as Chozick gets engaged, married, buys an apartment, climbs the professional ladder, and inquires about freezing her eggs so she can have children after the 2016 campaign, she dives deeper into decisions Mrs. Clinton had made at similar points in her early career. In the process, Chozick develops an intimate understanding of what drives Clinton, how she accomplished what no woman had before, and why she ultimately failed.

Clinton's shocking defeat would mark the end of the almost imperial hold she'd had on Chozick for most of her professional life. But the results also make Chozick question everything she'd worked so hard for in the first place. Illuminating, poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, Chasing Hillary is a campaign book unlike any other that reads like a fast-moving political novel.

The bad*ss story of the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary skaters who charted a path to the Olympics and changed the face of skateboarding.

Who gets to tell the story of skateboarding? Drop In is the first book to recognize and historicize the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary humans who blazed the path that led to today's more equitable skate culture. It wasn't easy getting here.

Like the rest of the world, skateboarding has long been patriarchal. In the 70s, it personified the punk rock, lock-up-your-daughters, middle-finger-to-the-man ethos. In the 80s, it was Miami Vice soundtracks and parachute pants, neon graphics and fingerless gloves. In the 90s it was New York City--graffiti, hip-hop, and skating in the street. Rarely did you see a woman's name in a skate video--either on a deck or behind the lens.

The four skateboarders at the heart of Drop In defied expectations of gender, talent, physical ability, and mental capacity to fight the status quo: Alana as the first openly nonbinary athlete in Olympic history; Vanessa as a record breaking runaway; Marbie as an accidental boundary-breaking trans icon; and Victoria as the skate rookie turned social media sensation. Drop In spotlights their paths from rebellious outsiders to recognized pioneers on the historic stage of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where skateboarding made its debut. Their experiences reveal a side of skateboarding that's never been recorded, amplifying voices that have, for too long, gone unheard.

Susan Pope's memoir Rivers and Ice, follows five generations of one Alaskan family evolving with the rapidly changing landscape of the North. A rafting disaster, a failed canoe journey, a dash to reach a summit while deserting her daughter in bear country. She struggles to reconcile the competing forces in her life: the lure of travel with the safety of home; the love of family with the desire for independence; and the image of who she aspires to be with the reality of her faltering attempts at marriage, career, motherhood, grandmother-hood, and physical competence. Suicide, near-death experiences, a tumbledown inheritance, the miracle of the Arctic caribou migration. Few memoirs combine love of nature with love of family so eloquently, while at the same time acknowledging that each carries the potential for so much loss and pain. Through it all, this is the story of one woman's quest to carve a place for herself in a rapidly changing land and claim her own unique power.

Introduce your little ones to the "Queen of Tejano Music" and a cross-cultural icon, Selena Quintanilla, with this commemorative edition of The Life of / La vida de Selena.

This special edition of The Life of / La vida de Selena celebrates the life of the "Queen of Tejano Music", Selena Quintanilla. Introduce your little ones to the most recognizable Latina music artist of our time. Born on April 16, 1971 in Lake Jackson, Texas, Selena Quintanilla was destined to be a star. Her career started at a young age when she became the lead singer in her family's band, Selena Y Los Dinos. As her popularity soared, so did her gift for fashion, and she soon began to design and manufacture her own line of clothing. To this day, her music and fashion continue to bloom in our hearts.

Parents will want to get their hands on this best-selling board book with a celebratory twist of spot gloss glitter and a larger trim size in honor of the icon life of Selena Quintanilla.

In the late 19th century, there wasn't much hope for premature babies--until Dr. Couney developed the incubator. The device was so new and strange, hospitals rejected it. So Dr. Couney set up a sideshow at Coney Island, taking care of the tiniest newborns as part of a display to convince the public that incubators worked. Thousands of babies grew into healthy children as Boardwalk Babies, including Dr. Couney's own premature daughter. Many of those babies came back as adults to thank the doctor for his miracle cures. Science meets magic show in this fascinating true story.

'Many of you know that I am a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, and, by daily actualizing my potentiality through soulful discoveries and daily exercising, I hope to become also an artist of life.' - Bruce Lee'I venture that 95% of people have heard of Bruce Lee. They might not know everything about him, but they know his name. Isn't that just incredible? And what excites me about this book is that it's an opportunity for the reader to have a better understanding of why you continue to know his name.' - Shannon Lee
'Bruce draws you in with his martial strength and prowess, fascinates you with his aggression and superlative masculinity, and then you go deeper and learn about his philosophy, his depth as a thinker and a scientist, and that really hooks you.' - Ang Lee'Bruce Lee exemplified discipline and finding your own path to success while committed to doing something you love.' - Tony Hawk'Every time he spoke I would shudder because it was like poetry. He was like the first Asian rapper without a beat!' - Steve AokiBruce Lee's blockbuster movies, pioneering martial arts practice and motivational philosophy continue to inspire millions worldwide. Published in the fiftieth year of his passing, In My Own Process celebrates Lee's legacy as a martial artist, actor and philosopher, offering readers the definitive book of his spectacular career.Collating rare photographs, drawings and writings, In My Own Process opens up the Bruce Lee family archives. A wealth of fascinating items are shared, including handwritten poems; personal affirmations and diary entries; movie scripts; workout regimes; teaching notes; martial arts drawings and philosophical observations. Hundreds of photographs reveal Bruce Lee in action, starring in classic movies such as Enter the Dragon, as well as during private moments away from the spotlight.Reflecting on key areas of his life, in 1973 Bruce Lee wrote a series of letters titled 'In My Own Process'. Lee's writings introduce the chapters of his career, from developing his philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, to his first screen test, to his big Hollywood breakthrough. Alongside an extensive commentary in Lee's own words, contributions from today's leading figures in music, film, and sport examine Lee's work and legacy, including Oscar-winning movie director Ang Lee, prolific actor and martial artist Jackie Chan, world-renowned skateboarder Tony Hawk, basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more. Exclusive interviews with Lee's associates and family members, such as his close friend and training partner, Dan Inosanto, add further personal insight.In partnership with the family of Bruce Lee, Genesis Publications is proud to present In My Own Process, the official book documenting the life and work of one of the most significant cultural icons of all time.

Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz is an act of self-discovery and the resuscitation of historical memory. At its heart is the intersection of a genocidal political moment in 20th century history and the author's own family history. Told from the perspectives of four generations of the author's family, spanning pre-war Germany to post-Trump America, it is both a celebration of Jewish cultural resilience and a warning of democracy's fragility in the face of the seductive forces of authoritarianism. Part travelogue, part memoir, part historic retelling, author Ari Richter recreates his family's journey leading up to and extending beyond the Holocaust.

Relying on extensive genealogical research and his family's archiving, Richter illustrates the lives of his grandparents while reflecting on the burden of a storyteller to carry on these legacies. It is a rare glimpse into the firsthand stories of both Holocaust survivors and their descendants, told as an intertwined tapestry of faith, grief, and ultimately, survival. Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz is an intimate reflection on coming to grips with the past. Harrowing and humorous in equal measure, this evocatively drawn graphic novel will be discussed for generations to come.

A gripping biography of the English ship pilot who would become one of the most influential Westerners in feudal Japan.

In 1600, English helmsman William Adams washed ashore in Japan and was interrogated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan's most powerful warlord and soon-to-be shogun. Far from executing Adams as a pirate, Ieyasu made him one of his most trusted advisers. This biography traces Adams's rise from a humble pilot to a position of immense influence in Japan's foreign relations. It unravels the subsequent diplomatic maneuvers of the Western powers in the Shogun's empire and Adams's eventual downfall. The first full biography of Adams based on original Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese sources, In the Service of the Shogun includes much previously unknown information. Frederik Cryns tells the authentic story of Adams's checkered life in its historical context, taking us on a compelling journey into Adams's complex inner feelings and cosmopolitan heart.