Best of
Memoir

1994

Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod


Gary Paulsen - 1994
    For seventeen days, he and his team of dogs endured blinding wind, snowstorms, frostbite, dogfights, moose attacks, sleeplessness, hallucinations--and the relentless push to go on. Winterdance is the enthralling account of a stunning wilderness journey of discovery and transformation (Chicago Tribune), lived and told by the best author of man-against-nature adventures writing today (Publishers Weekly).

No Disrespect


Sister Souljah - 1994
    Now she uses that voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any African American woman determined to keep her heart open and her integrity intact in 1990s America.

My Own Country: A Doctor's Story


Abraham Verghese - 1994
    Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But when the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, a crisis that had once seemed an urban problem had arrived in the town to stay. Working in Johnson City was Abraham Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases. Dr. Verghese became by necessity the local AIDS expert, soon besieged by a shocking number of male and female patients whose stories came to occupy his mind, and even take over his life. Verghese brought a singular perspective to Johnson City: as a doctor unique in his abilities; as an outsider who could talk to people suspicious of local practitioners; above all, as a writer of grace and compassion who saw that what was happening in this conservative community was both a medical and a spiritual emergency."

Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass


Frederick Douglass - 1994
    Here in this Library of America volume are collected his three autobiographical narratives, now recognized as classics of both American history and American literature. Writing with the eloquence and fierce intelligence that made him a brilliantly effective spokesman for the abolition of slavery and equal rights, Douglass shapes an inspiring vision of self-realization in the face of monumental odds.Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), published seven years after his escape, was written in part as a response to skeptics who refused to believe that so articulate an orator could ever have been a slave. A powerfully compressed account of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture into which Douglass was born, it brought him to the forefront of the anti-slavery movement and drew thousands, black and white, to the cause.In My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), written after he had established himself as a newspaper editor, Douglass expands the account of his slave years. With astonishing psychological penetration, he probes the painful ambiguities and subtly corrosive effects of black-white relations under slavery, then goes on to recount his determined resistance to segregation in the North. The book also incorporates extracts from Douglass’s renowned speeches, including the searing “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, first published in 1881, records Douglass’s efforts to keep alive the struggle for racial equality in the years following the Civil War. Now a socially and politically prominent figure, he looks back, with a mixture of pride and bitterness, on the triumphs and humiliations of a unique public career. John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe all feature prominently in this chronicle of a crucial epoch in American history. The revised edition of 1893, presented here, includes an account of his controversial diplomatic mission to Haiti.This volume contains a detailed chronology of Douglass’s life, notes providing further background on the events and people mentioned, and an account of the textual history of each of the autobiographies.

The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying


Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - 1994
    Beginning with the groundbreaking publication of the classic psychological study On Death and Dying and continuing through her many books and her years working with terminally ill children, AIDS patients, and the elderly, Kübler-Ross has brought comfort and understanding to millions coping with their own deaths or the deaths of loved ones. Now, at age seventy-one facing her own death, this world-renowned healer tells the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she now offers a lesson on how to live well. Her story is an adventure of the heart -- powerful, controversial, inspirational -- a fitting legacy of a powerful life.

Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High


Melba Pattillo Beals - 1994
    Board of Education.Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob’s rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down.

Shot in the Heart


Mikal Gilmore - 1994
    Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

Bunny, Bunny: Gilda Radner : A Sort of Love Story


Alan Zweibel - 1994
    With tenderness and intimacy, Alan Zweibel recounts a deeply devoted friendship that endured from 1975 until Gilda's tragic, untimely death. "A funny, sad, smart book".--Jane Curtin.

Sastun: One Woman's Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer and Their Efforts to Save the Vani


Rosita Arvigo - 1994
    The compelling drama of American herbologist Rosita Arvigo's quest to preserve the knowledge of Don Elijio Panti, one of the last surviving and most respected traditional healers in the rainforest of Belize.

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America


Nathan McCall - 1994
    Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun and embarking on a criminal career that five years later would land him in prison for armed robbery.In these pages, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard--and, later, to the newsrooms of The Washington Post and ultimately to the faculty of Emory University. His story is at once devastating and inspiring, at once an indictment and an elegy. Makes Me Wanna Holler became an instant classic when it was first published in 1994 and it continues to bear witness to the great troubles--and the great hopes--of our nation. With a new afterword by the author

Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business


Dolly Parton - 1994
    She has never before talked openly about her life, until now. In her unique Tennessee twang, Dolly tells her rags-to-riches story, as only she can--with integrity, insight and her unfailing sense of humor. 32 pages of photos.

Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag


Henry Rollins - 1994
    Rollins's observations range from the wry to the raucous in this blistering account of a six-year career with the band - a time marked by crazed fans, vicious cops, near-starvation, substance abuse, and mind numbing all-night drives. Rollins decided to revise this edition by adding a wealth of new photographs, a new foreword, and an afterword to include some "where-are-they-now" information on the people featured in the book. This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon. Called "a soul-frying experience not to be undertaken by lightweights" by Wired magazine, Get in the Van perfectly embodies what one critic called the "secular gospel" of one of punk and post-punk's most respected and controversial figures.

Condition Critical


Echo Heron - 1994
    She then goes on to illustrate that statement with 18 chapters of amusing and moving true stories of her career in critical care and in the emergency room."--Chicago Tribune"Heron gives a voice to her fellow nurses (a savvy, wisecracking, take-no-guff voice) and turns them into real people."--Seattle Post-Intelligencer"Although Heron provides enough personal detail to make the book a very good read, its importance lies in her depiction of how sick people really function, what nurses do to help them, and how little physicians, hospitals and our society understand or value that work."--The Washington Post Book WorldAN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD(c)

Writing Home


Alan Bennett - 1994
    This revised and updated edition includes new material from the author, including more recent diaries and his introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Writing Home is a classic history of a life in letters.

Reba: My Story


Reba McEntire - 1994
    Country music superstar Reba McEntire describes her Oklahoma childhood as a member of a cattle ranching family, her early days as a performer, her award-winning musical achievements, the tragic loss of her eight band members, and her marriages.

Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise


Paul Monette - 1994
    Brimming with outrage yet tender, this is a “remarkable book” (Philadelphia Inquirer).Puck --Gert --My priests --3275 --The politics of silence --Mustering --A one-way fare --Getting covered --Sleeping under a tree --Mortal things --Some afterthoughts

The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir


Benjamin Jacobs - 1994
    His possession of a few dental tools and rudimentary skills saved his life. Jacobs helped assemble V1 and V2 rockets in Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau; spent a year and a half in Auschwitz, where he was forced to remove gold teeth from corpses; and survived the RAF attack on three ocean liners turned prison camps in the Bay of Lubeck. This is

In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War


Tobias Wolff - 1994
    Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.

Literature or Life


Jorge Semprún - 1994
    He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Literature or Life, a bestseller in France, is a deeply personal account not only of Semprun's time at Buchenwald, but also of the years before and after, of his painful attempts to write this book...created out of obsessions that returned him again and again like themes in a nightmarish rhapsody.His long reverie on life-as-death, now translated with the mesmerizing power of fiction. It is a profound contribution to Holocaust literature.? Semprun was awarded the Jerusalem prize at the 1997 Jerusalem International Book Fair. ? Semprun's first novel, The Long Voyage, won Europe's prestigious Formentor Prize.

All Rivers Run to the Sea


Elie Wiesel - 1994
    In this first volume of his two-volume autobiography, Wiesel takes us from his childhood memories of a traditional and loving Jewish family in the Romanian village of Sighet through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and the years of spiritual struggle, to his emergence as a witness for the Holocaust's martyrs and survivors and for the State of Israel, and as a spokesman for humanity.  With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs."From the abyss of the death camps Wiesel has come as a messenger to mankind--not with a message of hate and revenge, but with one of brotherhood and atonement."--From the citation for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness


Lori Schiller - 1994
    Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived. Now in this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.In this new edition, Lori Schiller recounts the dramatic years following the original publication -- a period involving addiction, relapse, and ultimately, love and recovery.Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, THE QUIET ROOM is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage.

Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: the Zen journal & letters of Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran


Maura O'Halloran - 1994
    Today she is revered as a Buddhist saint, and a statue in her honor stands at the monastery where she lived. This is the story of her journey.

Mercury and Me


Jim Hutton - 1994
    Even when they first slept together Hutton had no idea who Mercury was, and when the star told him his name it meant nothing to him. Hutton worked as a barber at the Savoy Hotel and retained his job and his lodgings in Sutton, Surrey, for two years after moving in with Mercury, and then worked as his gardener. He was never fully assimilated into Mercury's jet-setting lifestyle, nor did he want to be, but from 1985 until Mercury's death in 1991 he was closer to him than anyone and knew all Mercury's closest friends: the other members of Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, Phil Collins to name a few. Ever present at the countless Sunday lunch gatherings and opulent parties, Hutton has a wealth of anecdotes about as well as a deep understanding of, Mercury's life. He also nursed Mercury through his terminal illness, often held him throughout the night in his final weeks, and was with him as he died. No one can tell the story of the last few years of Mercury's private life - the ecstasies and the agonies - more accurately or honestly than Jim Hutton.

An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field


Terry Tempest Williams - 1994
    Williams weaves her observations in the naturalist field and her personal experience--as a woman, a Westerner, and a Mormon--into a resonant manifesto on behalf of the landscapes she loves, making clear as well that, through our disregard of this world, we have lost an essential connection to our deepest selves.

Colored People


Henry Louis Gates Jr. - 1994
    From an American Book Award-winning author comes a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection that ushers readers into a now-vanished "colored" world and extends and deepens our sense of African-American history, even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling.

Chickenhawk: Back in the World Again: Life After Vietnam


Robert Mason - 1994
    Follow-up to _Chickenhawk_ covers his post-Vietnam struggles with PTSD and civilian life.

The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom


Sarah L. Delany - 1994
    Now they offer their fans a treasury of grandmotherly good sense: memorable aphorisms, engaging anecdotes, rules for managing money, practical advice on staying active in old age, and some favorite recipes, too. It's a book filled with the secrets of living well, from two women who did it for more than a century.

Memoir of a Race Traitor


Mab Segrest - 1994
    bell hooks called it a “courageous and daring [example of] the reality that political solidarity, forged in struggle, can exist across differences.” Adrienne Rich wrote that it was “a unique document and thoroughly fascinating.”Juxtaposing childhood memories with contemporary events, Segrest described her journey into the heart of her culture, finally veering from its trajectory of violence toward hope and renewal. Now, amid our current national crisis driven by an increasingly apocalyptic white supremacist movement, Segrest returns with an updated edition of her classic book. With a new introduction and afterword that explore what has transpired with the far right since its publication, the book brings us into the age of Trump—and to what can and must be done.Called “a true delight” and a “must-read” (Minnesota Review), Memoir of a Race Traitor is an inspiring and politically potent book.

Gal: A True Life


Ruthie Bolton - 1994
    Then she met a man who offered her something she'd never known, something she thought was a dirty word: love. The only challenge left was to accept it.

Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America


Mel White - 1994
    He penned the speeches of Ollie North. He was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, worked with Jim Bakker, flew in Pat Robertson's private jet, walked sandy beaches with Billy Graham. What these men didn't know was that Mel White—evangelical minister, committed Christian, family man—was gay. In this remarkable book, Mel White details his twenty-five years of being counseled, exorcised, electric-shocked, prayed for, and nearly driven to suicide because his church said homosexuality was wrong. But his salvation—to be openly gay and Christian—is more than a unique coming-out story. It is a chilling exposé that goes right into the secret meetings and hidden agendas of the religious right. Told by an eyewitness and sure to anger those Mel White once knew best, Stranger at the Gate is a warning about where the politics of hate may lead America … a brave book by a good man whose words can make us richer in spirit and much wiser too.

To War with Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939-1945


Hermione Ranfurly - 1994
    Dan Ranfurly, with his faithful valet Whitaker, were sent to North Africa. When her husband was taken prisoner, his wife bluffed her way to the Middle East and stayed there, against all the rules, until her husband escaped. Meanwhile she gained a foothold in officialdom and rose from one confidential position to the next, with her only ally the indomitable Whitaker. Countess Ranfurly's diaries of this time give a witty, charming and compulsive insight into the problems of a young woman at war.

Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949


Doris Lessing - 1994
    Or they were scrubbed off me by...robust and efficient hands."The experiences absorbed through these "skins too few" are evoked in this memoir of Doris Lessing's childhood and youth as the daughter of a British colonial family in Persia and Southern Rhodesia Honestly and with overwhelming immediacy, Lessing maps the growth of her consciousness, her sexuality, and her politics, offering a rare opportunity to get under her skin and discover the forces that made her one of the most distinguished writers of our time.

The Disappearance


Geneviève Jurgensen - 1994
    A book of letters to a friend, in which Jurgenson discusses different aspects of her bereavement after her two young daughters are killed in a car accident, The Disappearance combines raw honesty with the solidly balanced craft of the French epistolary novel.

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?: From the Projects to Prep School


Charlise Lyles - 1994
    . . Highly recommended." -- Small Press ReviewA memoir of race and education, this is the story of a girl who grew up and out of the Cleveland projects in the 1960s and '70s.While growing up in Cleveland, young Charlise Lyles experienced turbulent events including race riots and a neighborhood murder. Yet she was inspired to appreciate literature at a young age, and she spent her days reading--and also often searching for the estranged father who taught her that love of learning.Despite starting in the "slow class" at an aging school on Cleveland's east side, Lyles had a thirst for knowledge and drive for success that would open a door to new opportunities. Granted a scholarship to a prestigious prep school in a wealthy suburb, the vibrant teenager finds herself presented with a bewildering set of new challenges--and a new direction in life.

Not All of Us Are Saints: A Doctor's Journey with the Poor


David Hilfiker - 1994
    David Hilfiker's award-winning first book, Healing the Wounds, broke the silence surrounding the everyday practice of medicine and established him as a unique figure within the medical profession, "strikingly honest, courageous, and clear-sighted" (Oliver Sacks). In 1983, Dr. Hilfiker took on the greatest challenge of his career: he left his practice in rural Minnesota, moved with his wife and three young children to an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and entered the world of poverty medicine. Not All of Us Are Saints vividly depicts what it means for a physician to confront the health problems of ravaged ghetto communities, for a middle-class white man to face the stark contrasts between poverty and privilege, and for a human being to admit his own spiritual limitations. Through dramatic accounts of his own cases, Dr. Hilfiker shows us a medical universe in which doctors are almost as powerless as their patients, where even the most commonplace medical solutions - bed rest, daily dosages, diet - are of little use to people without homes or family or food. This unflinching, deeply moving story is about the painful limits of care and caregivers, but it is also about the limitless rewards of faith and compassion - a moving testament to what is possible here and now.

50 Years of Silence


Jan Ruff-O'Herne - 1994
    She was interned in Ambarawa Prison Camp, along with her mother and two younger sisters.In February 1944, when Jan was 21, her life was torn apart. Along with nine other young women, all of them virgins, she was plucked from the camp and her family, and enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army.Her searing account of her time in 'The House of the Seven Seas', the Japanese Officers' Club and brother in Semarang, uncovers one of the worst human rights abuses to come out of the war--abuse that affected thousands of young women who were forcibly removed from their families to provide sexual services as 'comfort women' for the Japanese army between 1929 and 1945.50 Years of Silence is Jan's story. As the first European 'comfort woman' to speak out, it is a story of tremendous courage, that unfolds with the deeper meaning of a fable.Shining over all, is the radiance of Jan Ruff-O'Herne's faith and love, illuminating one of the darkest and best kept secrets of World War II.

Faithfull


Marianne Faithfull - 1994
    She recalls her love and life with Mick Jagger, how Bob Dylan wooed her, the Rolling Stones courted her and finally, how drugs trapped her into a world where nothing else mattered but the next fix. She also reveals the contradictions of life as a "star", first as the pop confection she was packaged as, and later as the hard-edged artist who co-authored "Sister Morphine" and shocked the world with "Broken English".

Another Heart in His Hand: A Spiritual Anomaly


J. Jaye Gold - 1994
    The author's remarkable relationship involves the reader in deep philosophical and spiritual questions through a myriad of interesting circumstances perceived in far from ordinary ways. The depth of insight revealed into the human predicament is unparalleled in current literature.

On Fire


Larry Brown - 1994
    . . If you are among the tens of millions who have never read Brown, this is a perfect introduction.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, Larry Brown quit the Oxford, Mississippi, fire department to try writing full-time. In On Fire, he looks back on his life as a firefighter. His unflinching accounts of daily trauma—from the blistering heat of burning trailer homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes—catapult readers into the hard reality that drove this award-winning novelist. As a firefighter and fireman-turned-author, as husband and hunter, and as father and son, Brown offers insights into the choices men face pursuing their life’s work. And, in the forthright style we expect from Larry Brown, his narrative builds to the explanation of how one man who regularly confronted death began to burn with the desire to write about life.

Stand Before Your God: An American Schoolboy in England


Paul Watkins - 1994
    He was greeted by a delegation of bullies who, in time, would become his friends and whose rules would become his own. For at Dragon, and later at Eton, "there was no middle ground. You could not go here and come out not caring one way or the other. You had to stand before your God and commit."In this enthralling and sometimes harrowing memoir, the acclaimed author of The Promise of Light gives us a masterly companion to such classics as Brideshead Revisited and A Separate Peace. Here are the masters who paddle boys for small infractions and then offer them sweets; the seniors who pamper pretty favorites and subject all others to humiliating servitude; the deep friendships and sudden, devastating betrayals. Above all, here is the exhilaration of a boy discovering own capacities for learning and creativity, in a book that conveys with astonishing insight the pangs of growing up.

When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore: A Father and a Son, a Team and a Time


William Gildea - 1994
    A. Tittle, and others. Recalling his relationship with his father and the love they shared for a team, Gildea evokes the spirit of 1950s America, when professional athletes were workaday neighbors and community was more than a political slogan. This is a story, too, about the geography of the heart: why something so simple as a team can arouse such emotional attachments, how a group of players with horseshoes on their helmets could have been part of the generational glue between parent and child. Written with feeling and insight, this is an affecting tribute to a team and a time etched in memory.

Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary


Nelson Peery - 1994
    The author describes his childhood in rural Minnesota, his encounters as a teenage adventurer on freight trains, and his tour of duty as a soldier in the all-black 93rd Infantry Division.

Bus Ride To Justice


Fred D. Gray - 1994
    He returned to his hometown in 1954 and became one of two black lawyers in the city. He was, he writes, determined to destroy everything segregated that I could find. He did not have to wait long. When Gray's friend Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated seating ordinance on a Montgomery bus, 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and 24-year-old Fred Gray became his--and the movement's--lawyer. Gray's legal victory in the federal courts ended the boycott 381 days later. Over the four decades since, Gray has won scores of civil rights cases in education, voting rights, transportation, health, and other areas. He represented the Freedom Riders, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and many more. Bus Ride to Justice is the exciting story of a courageous life in the courtrooms of America and in the pulpits of churches where Fred Gray began as a child preacher and continues today, and of a strong human being filled with love and admiration for his fellow man.

Entombed: My True Story: How Forty-Five Jews Lived Underground and Su[r]vived the Holocaust


Bernard Mayer - 1994
    A memoir of how Bernard and his family went into hiding when the Nazi invaded his homeland.

Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket's Odyssey in World War II


Alvin Kernan - 1994
    Kernan served in many battles and was aboard the Hornet when it was sunk by torpedoes in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.“One of the most arresting naval autobiographies yet published.”—Sir John Keegan“An honest story of collective courage, evocative, well-written, and fixed before the colors fade.”—Kirkus Reviews“[Kernan] recounts a wonderful and exciting American story about a poor farm boy from Wyoming who enlisted in the Navy. . . .[He] has written eight other books. I will go back and read them all.”—John Lehman, Air & Space“Details . . . make the moment vivid; that is what it was like, on the Hornet in its last hours.”—Samuel Hynes, New York Times Book Review

Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Quest for the Sacred Feminine


Jean Shinoda Bolen - 1994
    Jean Shinoda Bolen's extraordinary memoir celebrates the pilgrimage that heralded her spiritual awakening and leads readers down the path of self-discovery. In this account of her journey to Europe in search of the sacred feminine, she unveils the mythological significance of the midlife search for meaning and renewal."[Bolen] charts a path that will lead many readers to the heart of their own emotional and spiritual pilgrimages."- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"This wise and challenging work, the most personal of Jean Shinoda Bolen's books, is an absorbing often uncannily perceptive, and useful companion for the soul journeys of our time, which is The Time of the Goddess Returning.- Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple"In Crossing to Avalon, Jean Shinoda Bolen turns her acute and brilliant eye toward the interconnectedness of women's mysteries, sacredness of the body, the effect of pilgrimage on soul, and deep feminine friendships."- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., author of Women Who Run with the WolvesJean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., is a Jungian analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, and The Tao of Psychology.

Drinking the Rain: A Memoir


Alix Kates Shulman - 1994
    On a windswept beach, in a cabin with no plumbing, power, or telephone, she found that she was learning to live all over again.In this luminous, spirited book, she charts her subsequent path as she learned not simply the joys of meditative solitude, but to integrate her new awareness into a busy, committed, even hectic mainland life.“A ten-year voyage of discovery . . . Shulman's honesty and sense of inquiry carry us with her all the way--could even, if we were willing, change our lives.” —San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle

Letters Of Malcolm Lowry


Malcolm Lowry - 1994
    

Love, Alice: My Life as a Honeymooner


Audrey Meadows - 1994
    The book is full of many personal stories never told or published before. 16-page photo insert.

Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey


Anne Taylor Fleming - 1994
    Unable to conceive naturally, and heading toward forty, journalist Anne Taylor Fleming availed herself of a veritable alphabet soup of the latest, cutting-edge fertility procedures: GIFT, ZIFT, IVF... Spurred by her present consuming desire to bear a child, Fleming's thoughts return to the past - her heady college days, her 1950s youth - in an effort to discover how she has arrived at this juncture in her life. Alternating between an insightful probe of those volatile years when the personal became political, and a harrowing account of her often surreal forays into extrasexual procreation, Motherhood Deferred is an unsparing portrait of a generation of women born to one set of gender-inspired expectations, who were then expected to flourish under an entirely different set. The result is a braid of powerful and telling testimonies - the author's and those of her contemporaries - chronicling the vicissitudes in opportunities, dreams, and realities for women whose lives were movement-forged. With understanding, sensitivity, and self-deprecating humor, Anne Taylor Fleming has written a tour de force: a sometimes irreverent account of what it has meant to be female in the last half of the twentieth century.

Dunwoody Pond: Reflections on the High Plains Wetlands and the Cultivation of Naturalists


John Janovy Jr. - 1994
    Indeed, the mysteries ripple well beyond the pond's edge, where budding scientists stoop over their specimens, and one question in particular intrigues John Janovy: What makes these otherwise normal young people want to study parasites? The parasites that Janovy peers at in Dunwoody Pond, living their intricate lives on or in beetles, damselflies, frogs, toads, fish, and tiny crustaceans, are no less interesting and involved than the lives of the young scientists he observes in their pursuit of these microorganisms. An exploration of a small farm pond in Nebraska, the creatures that inhabit it, and the people who study them, this engaging book captures the spirit of scientific inquiry at its source. Janovy, a celebrated scientist, naturalist, and teacher, introduces us to five of his most gifted students at critical junctures in their scientific careers. As we watch these young people at work and learn about the fascinating microscopic universe that preoccupies them, we also learn firsthand about the curiosity, wonder, and excitement that animate scientific practice. As closely observed and warmly written as all of John Janovy's works, Dunwoody Pond is, above all, a highly original and insightful meditation on the nature of science itself.

Portraits of Sarajevo


Zlatko Dizdarević - 1994
    In this new work, the author turns his focus on his sisters and brothers, the women, men, and children of Sarajevo who have, for various reasons, remained in their beloved yet troubled city and watched it fall around them as they attempt to live their lives as normally as possible. The book is composed of vignettes, accounts of the everyday lives of real people living in an unreal situation. Told in their own words, they reveal the courage of a people and the brotherhood that this war has taught them.

Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White


Shirlee Taylor Haizlip - 1994
    Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, in an effort to reconcile the dissonance between her black persona and her undeniably multiracial heritage, started on a journey of discovery that took her over thousands of miles and hundreds of years. While searching for her mother's family, Haizlip confronted the deeply intertwined but often suppressed tensions between race and skin color. We are drawn in by the story of an African-American family. Some members chose to "cross over" and "pass" for white while others enjoyed a successful black life. Their stories weave a tale of tangled ancestry, mixed blood, and identity issues from the 17th century to the present. The Sweeter the Juice is a memoir, a social history, a biography, and an autobiography. Haizlip gives to us the quintessential American story, unveiling truths about race, about our society, and about the ways in which we all perceive and judge one another.

Scarlet Tunic: Inside our Cars - Inside our Hearts: On Patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police


Robert Gordon Teather - 1994
    Teather was a 28-year veteran of the RCMP who won the Commissioner's Commendation, the Force's highest honour, and the Canadian Cross of Valour, Canada's highest award, for bravery.

Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness


Tim Brookes - 1994
    Here, he explores his illness with passion and humor, along the way talking with doctors, drug and insurance companies, and others.

Behind the Border


Nina Kossman - 1994
    Nina wants to become a heroine by awakening Grandfather Lenin during a class trip to his tomb, or by painting Red Square really red. But she also finds herself fascinated with life in the forbidden world "behind the border". B&W photos.

Minor Heresies, Major Departures: A China Mission Boyhood


John Jenkins Espey - 1994
    The boy lived two lives, one within the pious church compound, the other along the canal and in the alleys of a traditional Chinese city. There he faced the alley brats' Lady Bandit, heard the shrill screams of a child's foot-binding, learned rank obscenities from passing boatmen, and, while still in short pants, chewed Sen-Sen and ogled snake-charmers in the old Native City. He sailed up the Yangtze to attend boarding school, and along with his Boy Scout patrol, met Chiang Kai-shek. And when John Espey grew up, he wrote about his years in China.This memoir is the story of those years, and while it is a wry, affectionate account, it also conveys an often overlooked picture of China in the years before communism. Seen through the eyes of a child, the interplay of religion, commerce, and American colonialism that took place during this period is revealed more tellingly—and more lightheartedly—than in many an analysis by an "old China hand."Espey's bent is to use a "Chinese" approach to his subject, that is, to hide a second meaning within his words, to speak in parables. This he learned from both his single-minded missionary father and the family's Chinese cook. The result is that the reader of Minor Heresies, Major Departures will learn a great deal about the Pacific Rim while having a rollicking good time.

Tlemcen or Places of Writing


Mohammed Dib - 1994
    Memoir. Translated from the French by Guy Bennett. TLEMCEN OR PLACES OF WRITING is an unusual, hybrid work: part memoir of the author's coming of age and coming to writing in his native Algeria, and part meditation on the nature of writing itself as well as on the task and responsibility of the writer. The text is complimented by some fifty photographs taken by the author in the Tlemcen of his youth, images of a past that has vanished and which the text seeks to reveal. The original French edition of this work was awarded the Grand prix de la Francophonie de l'Academie francaise on its publication in 1994.

Cowboy Tales: Featuring the Debut of Hank the Cowboy!


John R. Erickson - 1994
    Hank is on the case immediately, but before he can put an end to the digging robot's antics, he gets blamed for the crime. Can Hank dig his way out of this mess, or has he burrowed too deep? Find out in the newest adventure starring everyone's favorite Head of Ranch Security.

Alone among the Living: A Memoir of the Floyd Hoard Murder


G. Richard Hoard - 1994
    Summoning the memories of the events surrounding the August 7, 1967, car bombing of Jackson County, Georgia, prosecutor Floyd "Fuzzy" Hoard, Alone among the Living is G. Richard Hoard's remembrance of the father he lost that day and his subsequent struggle to come to terms with the murder.

A Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young


Andrew W. Young - 1994
    Filled with eyewitness anecdotes, this is a vivid account of the civil rights struggle, told from a faith perspective.

Enchanted Boy


Richie McMullen - 1994
    In his 'journey through abuse to prostitution', Richie McMullen tells the story of his childhood, growing up in Liverpool in the early postwar years. His account is often harrowing, yet even here, childhood has its irrepressible magic, in a world of street gangs, school and first fragile friendships.

Flat Rock Journal: A Day in the Ozark Mountains


Ken Carey - 1994
    His memoir of a day-long spiritual journey through the Ozark forest brings a renewed sense of wonder for the natural environment.

Restless Mind, Quiet Thoughts: A Personal Journal


Paul Eppinger - 1994
    Although gifted and sensitive, his life contained a great deal of pain, and the book ends with Paul's death by suicide.

Living Life's Circle: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision


Claire R. Farrer - 1994
    Urged by her friend and mentor, the remarkable singer and medicine man Bernard Second, to Pay attention, Farrer began to recognize a powerful primary metaphor based on acute astronomical observation and its direct relevance to all aspects of Mescalero life.Should be read by every student of culture.--M. Jane Young

Pushing the Envelope: The Career of Fighter Ace and Test Pilot Marion Carl (Bluejacket Books)


Marion E. Carl - 1994
    His combat duty included the momentous battles at Midway and Guadalcanal. Not one to rest on his laurels, however, he participated in photoreconnaissance operations over Red China in 1955 and flew missions in Vietnam. In peacetime he gamed fame for "pushing the envelope" as a test pilot, adding the world's altitude and peace records to his wartime feats and becoming the first U.S. military aviator to wear a full pressure suit. Such achievements also led to Carl's being the first living Marine admitted to the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor, as well as the first Marine to be named to the Navy Carrier Aviation Test Pilots Hall of Honor. This very readable memoir is as forthright and compelling as the man it chronicles.

Inheritance of Horses


James Kilgo - 1994
    In these essays, James Kilgo seeks the common ground between his roles as a man, as husband and father, and as heir to his family legacy. Pausing at mid-life to make an eloquent, understated stand against our era's rootlessness, he honors friendship, kinship, nature, and tradition.In the opening section, Kilgo focuses on the tension between his need for ritualistic male camaraderie and his familial obligations. Searching the woods for arrowheads, sitting around the dinner table at a hunting lodge, or careening down an abandoned logging road in a pickup, he seems ever-prone to the intrusions of domesticity and civilization: a sudden memory of miring the family station wagon in the sand on a beach trip, an encounter with a couple on their sixtieth wedding anniversary, a stream littered with trash and stocked with overbred hatchery trout.Restlessness and responsibility converge and again clash in the second series of essays, in which domestic themes are explored in settings that range from Kilgo's own living room to Yellowstone Park and the deep waters off the Virgin Islands. Through such images as a hornet's nest, a gale-force storm, a grizzly bear, and a marlin, Kilgo gauges the strengths and vulnerabilities of his family and moves toward an existence that is part of, not apart from, the women in his life.The long title essay composes the book's final section. Reading through a cache of letters exchanged between his two grandfathers, Kilgo recovers and revises his memories of them. What he learns of their open, passionate friendship reveals an essentially feminine aspect of their patriarchal natures, enriching, but also confusing, Kilgo's earlier understanding of who they were. As some of the more unhappy or unpleasant details of his grandfathers' lives come to light, they first heighten, then assuage, Kilgo's ambivalence about a family heritage built as much on myth as on truth.The manner in which Kilgo makes such intensely personal concerns so broadly relevant accentuates what might be called the "told," rather than the "written," quality of Inheritance of Horses. He is foremost a storyteller, working in a style that is classically southern in its pacing and its feel for the land, but all his own in its restrained humor and lack of self-absorption. Guided by a storyteller's respect for common people and common feelings, Kilgo never prescribes or moralizes but rather brings us to places where principled choices can be made about what we need and value most in our lives.