Winner of the United Nations Human Rights Award for Nonfiction, HOLDING THE MAN has been adapted into a play opening in America in September 2007. The playwright who adapted the book for stage refers to this a a memoir of striking and unapologetic honesty.

    While there she was reunited with her sister Danka. Each day became a struggle to fulfill the promise Rena made to her mother when the family was forced to split apart--a promise to take care of her sister.One of the few Holocaust memoirs about the lives of women in the camps, Rena's Promise is a compelling story of the fleeting human connections that fostered determination and made survival a possibility. From the bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters, to the links between prisoners, and even prisoners and guards, Rena's Promise reminds us of the humanity and hope that survives inordinate inhumanity.

    The French turned them over to the Gestapo, who imprisoned them. Dudach was executed by firing squad in May; Delbo remained in prison until January 1943, when she was deported to Auschwitz and then to Ravensbruck, where she remained until the end of the war. This book - Delbo's vignettes, poems and prose poems of life in the concentration camp and afterwards - is a literary memoir. It is a document by a female resistance leader, a non-Jew and a writer who transforms the experience of the Holocaust into prose.

    I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years.                           A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.                          What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?                          This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.                           Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end."   When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of  tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."

    Dave Pelzer's remarkable journey from a child who lived in terror of his unstable, violently unpredictable mother's every move, to his emergence as an inspiration the world over is a remarkable tale of survival and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.Dave Pelzer's three volumes of memoirs - A Child Called 'It', The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave - brought this story of courage and triumph against all odds to the world, becoming global bestsellers.My Story brings these volumes together, following Dave from a childhood spent in fear, his tempestuous teenage years haunted by the spectre of his mother, through to his adulthood, and his great achievement of not only understanding and reconciling the story of his own life, but his dedication to helping others overcome similar adversity.It is a remarkable story of courage and survival, already embraced by millions and destined to inspire millions more.

    . . . Abu-Jamal offers expert and well-reasoned commentary on the justice system. . . . His writings are dangerous." –Village Voice"Resonates with the moral force of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail." –Boston GlobeAfter twenty years on death row, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been released from his death sentence . . .but not the conviction. This once prominent radio reporter was convicted for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1982, after a trial many have criticized as profoundly biased. Live from Death Row is a collection of his prison writings--and impassioned yet unflinching account of the brutalities and humiliations of prison life, and a scathing indictment of racism and political bias in the American judicial system.

    Orphaned, fostered, neglected, and "forgotten" in a household fire, Ben finally begins to respond to Annie in their intricate and revealing place therapy. But as Ben begins to explore the trauma of his past, Annie finds herself being drawn downward into her own mental anguish. Catastrophically failed by her own therapist, she is hospitalised with a breakdown that renders her unable to even speak. Then she and her gifted new analyst must uncover where her story of childhood terror overlaps with Ben's, and learn how she can complete her work with the child by creating a new story from the old - one that ultimately heals them both.

    The volume ends in 1949. Follows her through college years during the Depression; jobs including that of librarian; marriage; and writing and publication of her first book, Henry Huggins.

    Told through their son Lawrence, the memoir brings to life the reality of months spent hidden in a dank underground bunker unaware of the outside world. However, this is not just an account of stark survival. It is also the tale of an impossible love affair that has lasted more than 50 years, and an eloquent reminder that history is made up of the often deeply moving details of individual lives.

    She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

    It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games—games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it." Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive—dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.

    James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion--and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college--and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self-realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

    Now, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, she takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next.Illustrated with photographs from the author's personal collection, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure tells the story of the Gibson women -- sisters, cousins, daughters, and aunts -- and the men who loved them, often abused them, and, nonetheless, shared their destinies. With luminous clarity, Allison explores how desire surprises and what power feels like to a young girl as she confronts abuse. As always, Dorothy Allison is provocative, confrontational, and brutally honest. Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, steeped in the hard-won wisdom of experience, expresses the strength of her unique vision with beauty and eloquence.

    a searing book about race and prejudice in America... brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain."--Cleveland Plain Dealer "A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit."--Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents' marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black.In this extraordinary and powerful memoir, Williams recounts his remarkable journey along the color line and illuminates the contrasts between the black and white worlds: one of privilege, opportunity and comfort, the other of deprivation, repression, and struggle. He tells of the hostility and prejudice he encountered all too often, from both blacks and whites, and the surprising moments of encouragement and acceptance he found from each.Life on the Color Line is a uniquely important book. It is a wonderfully inspiring testament of purpose, perseverance, and human triumph.Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

    Superbly told, with the poet's gift for language and observation, Angelou's autobiography of her childhood in Arkansas - a world of which most Americans are ignorant.

    A biography by a New Jersey doctor tells how her parents, who held down multiple jobs and transmitted strong values to their six daughters, inspired them to reach success.

    One of the great women of American music, equally at home singing blues and jazz, Etta regales us with tales of her chaotic childhood, the stars she has known, and her troubled trip to stardom in this mesmerizing autobiography.

    The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments.

    Reprint. 35,000 first printing."

    Eavan Boland beautifully uncovers the powerful drama of how these lives affect one another; how the tradition of womanhood and the historic vocation of the poet act as revealing illuminations of the other.

    This beautifully written book makes us reckon anew with the deep costs of war."—Eva Hoffman.

    It chronicles her youth, her marriage, her eventual decision to come out as a lesbian, and her life with transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg.

    In these stirring recollections, Frankl describes how as a young doctor of neurology in prewar Vienna his disagreements with Freud and Adler led to the development of "the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," known as logotherapy; recounts his harrowing trials in four concentration camps during the War; and reflects on the celebrity brought by the publication of Man's Search for Meaning in 1945.

    Recreating his childhood world in the South Bronx and examining current crime legislation, the author offers an analysis of how a chain of events set in motion by 1960s drug laws has led to the child violence on the streets today.

    Recently discovered by the author's daughter, it tells the story of Adele "Kitty" Robertson, young and energetic, but unprepared by her Radcliffe education for the rigors of apple farming in those bitter times. Alone at the end of a country road, with only a Great Dane for company, plagued by debts, broken machinery, and killing frosts, Kitty revives the old orchard after years of neglect. Every day is a struggle, but every day she is also rewarded by the beauty of the world and the unexpected kindness of neighbors and hired workers.Animated by quiet courage and simple goodness, The Orchard stands as a deeply moving celebration of decency and beauty in the midst of grim prospects and crushing poverty.

    Or Aldo's, formerly Vito's, formerly Nunzio's. That was a tough joint. I looked at the menu. They had broken leg of lamb." For once, one of America's most beloved comic icons isn't kidding. Dangerfield has seen every aspect of the entertainment industry: the rough–and–tumble nightclubs, the backstage gag–writing sessions, the drugs, the hookers, the lousy day jobs – and the red–carpet star treatment. As he traces his route from a poor childhood on Long Island to his enshrinement as a comedy legend, he takes readers on a roller–coaster ride through a life that has been alternately touching, sordid, funny, raunchy, and uplifting – equal parts "Little Orphan Annie" and "Caligula." And unlike most celebrity autobiographers, he seems to have no qualms about delivering the unfiltered whole story, warts and all.Dangerfield's personal story is also a rollicking show business tale, full of marquee name–droppings (Adam Sandler, Sam Kinison, Jim Carrey, Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld) and good stories about same. Defying the old saws about the fleeting nature of fame and the dearth of second acts in American life, Dangerfield transformed himself from a debt–ridden aluminium–siding salesman named Jack Roy to a multimedia superstar – and stayed an icon for decades. His catchphrase – "I get no respect" – has entered the lexicon, and he remains a visible cultural presence and perennial talk–show guest.Dangerfield's hilarious and inspiring musings should thrill comedy fans and pop–culture watchers, and his second–act comeback will strike a chord with readers of all stripes. Maybe he'll even get some respect.

    . . reminding us of the fragility of childhood and the costs it exacts upon the adults we become.”—The Washington PostThe hardcover publication of this unflinching memoir resulted in the arrest of an alleged child molester and the following headline: “Author’s Writing on Abuse Brings New Victims Forward.” In a new afterword to this tenth-anniversary edition from New Rivers Press, Richard Hoffman writes about the events his book set in motion, the cries for help he received from men across the country, and the talk he had with an 11-year-old boy who thanked him “for making it stop.”But this autobiography, about a blue-collar family struggling to care for two terminally ill children as the third child, the author, is subjected at age 10 to sexual abuse by his coach, is also a moving work of literature and a testament to the healing power of truthtelling. It is a “spare, poignant” memoir (TIME) that “offers heartening evidence . . . of the human capacity to endure and prevail” (The Washington Post).Richard Hoffman’s work, both prose and verse, has appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. Half the House was awarded the Boston Athenaeum Readers’ Prize in 1996. His most recent book is Without Paradise (Cedar Hill), a collection of poems. He is currently writer-in-residence in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College; he also serves on the faculty of the Teachers as Scholars Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is currently a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow in fiction.

    It is a story of obstacles--physical, emotional, and psychic--overcome again, and again, and again. Whether riding a mule up a hillside in Iraq surrounded by mud-stained Kurdish refugees, navigating his wheelchair through intractable stretches of Middle Eastern sand, or auditioning to be the first journalist in space, John Hockenberry, ace reporter, is determined not only to bring back the story, but also to prove that nothing can hold him back from death-defying exploits. However, he will never be a poster boy for a Jerry Lewis telethon. A paraplegic since an auto accident at age nineteen, Hockenberry holds nothing back in this achingly honest, often hilarious chronicle that ranges from the Ayatollah's funeral (where his wheelchair is pushed by a friendly Iranian chanting "Death to all Americans"), to the problems of crip sex and the inaccessibility of the New York City subway system. In this immensely moving chronicle--so filled with marvelous storytelling that it reads like a novel--John Hockenberry finds that the most difficult journey is the one that begins at home, as he confronts the memories of his beloved one-armed grandfather, and finally meets his institutionalized Uncle Peter, whose very existence was long a secret buried in the family history.Moving Violations is a sometimes harrowing but ultimately joyful ride.

    Some 25 years after the poems were written Harp collaborated with clay artist Stephen Freedman to make the written poems visual in the form of sculpted, metaphorical clay vessels. This book is a catalogue which traveled with that exhibition.

    A first-hand account of one man's role in history, My War is a memoir from one of America's personalities. As a naive, young correspondent for The Stars and Stripes during World War II, Andy Rooney flew bomber missions, arrived in France during the D-Day invasion and crossed the Rhine with the Allied forces, traveled to Paris for the Liberation, and, as one of the first reporters into Buchenwald, witnessed the discovery of Hitler's concentration camps. Like so many of his generation, Rooney's life was changed forever by the war. Tom Brokaw featured Rooney's experiences in The Greatest Generation. Now, for the readers who would like to know the whole story, Rooney's own memoir, illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs, is now available again in a hardcover edition.

    Now a major motion picture form Warner Brothers, starring Kevin Bacon, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Frankie Muniz, and "Eddie" from the TV show Frasier (as Skip), and produced by Mark Johnson (Rain Man).In 1943 in a sleepy town on the banks of the Yazoo River, a boy fell in love with a puppy with a lively gait and an intellingent way of listening.  The two grew up together having the most wonderful adventures.  A classic story of a boy, a dog, and small-town America, My Dog Skip belongs on the same shelf as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Russell Baker's Growing Up.  It will enchant readers of all ages for years to come.

    Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a mysterious visit shortly before her death? How had she borne living so close to an illegitimate daughter without acknowledging her? The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family’s past, examining not only her grandmother's life, but also her mother’s and her own. The result is both a moving, evocative memoir and a fascinating commentary on how women’s lives have changed over the past century.

    It is powerful, shocking, and primitive, with the kind of appeal primary sources often attain without effort.... it is a strong addition to the literature of women's experience on the frontier." --Lillian Schlissel [asking for approval to use quote]In 1894, eighteen-year-old Rachel Bella Kahn travelled from Russia to the United States for an arranged marriage to Abraham Calof, an immigrant homesteader in North Dakota. Rachel Calof's Story combines her memoir of a hard pioneering life on the prairie with scholarly essays that provide historical and cultural background and show her narrative to be both unique and a representative western tale. Her narrative is riveting and candid, laced with humor and irony.The memoir, written by Rachel Bella Calof in 1936, recounts aspects of her childhood and teenage years in a Jewish community, (shtetl) in Russia, but focuses largely on her life between 1894 and 1904, when she and her husband carved out a life as homesteaders. She recalls her horror at the hardships of pioneer life--especially the crowding of many family members into the 12 x 14' dirt-floored shanties that were their first dewllings. "Of all the privations I knew as a homesteader," says Calof, "the lack of privacy was the hardest to bear." Money, food, and fuel were scarce, and during bitter winters, three Calof households--Abraham and Rachel with their growing children, along with his parents and a brother's family--would pool resources and live together (with livestock) in one shanty.Under harsh and primitive conditions, Rachel Bella Calof bore and raised nine children. The family withstood many dangers, including hailstorms that hammered wheat to the ground and flooded their home; droughts that reduced crops to dust; blinding snowstorms of plains winters. Through it all, however, Calof drew on a humor and resolve that is everywhere apparent in her narrative. Always striving to improve her living conditions, she made lamps from dried mud, scraps of rag, and butter; plastered the cracked wood walls of her home with clay; supplemented meagre supplies with prairie forage--wild mushrooms and garlic for a special supper, dry grass for a hot fire to bake bread. Never sentimental, Caolf's memoir is a vital historical and personal record.J. Sanford Rikoon elaborates on the history of Jewish settlement in the rural heartland and the great tide of immigration from the Russian Pale of Settlement and Eastern Europe from 1880-1910. Elizabeth Jameson examines how Calof "writes from the interior spaces of private life, and from that vantage point, reconfigures more familiar versions of the American West." Jameson also discusses how the Calofs adapted Jewish practices to the new contingencies of North Dakota, maintaining customs that represented the core of their Jewish identity, reconstructing their "Jewishness" in new circumstances.

    It is the story of a love, the love I shared with a man who came into my life almost surreptitiously, a man who loved me in the most complete way and then died. If he had not died, I would not be telling this story..."Writer and editor Edie Clark was not expecting love to enter her life with a young carpenter named Paul Bolton. She was facing the realities of a failing marriage, while Paul was a shy, gentle, but sometimes troubled man. Yet together they nurtured a love and built a married life as beautiful and enduring as the simple rustic cottage Paul restored for Edie. And in the time they shared, they would find extraordinary grace and strength, and see their lives transformed by the power of love.

    Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure (1995) under one cover.

    That was twenty-five years ago. Today, what began as the Gordons' seedling Bible study has become the Lawndale Community Church. It has a staff of 150, has renovated more than 100 local apartments, has helped more than 50 young people graduate from college, runs a medical clinic that treated 50,000 patients in 1994, and has become a vital part of rebuilding an inner-city neighborhood into a community of faith and hope. Real Hope in Chicago is Wayne Gordon's inspiring account of how people, white and black, rich and poor, old and young, worked together to transform a decaying neighborhood into a place where love is lived out in practical and miraculous ways. It offers an exciting model for interracial cooperation, urban-suburban church partnering--and real hope for the inner cities of our nation.

    There are recollections of the horrors and terror of enemy attack, the bitter ironical humour of the battlefield, despair and hopelesnes, and more palatable terror of stage-fright for a young actor "arriving" at the movies.

    In Living with the Dead, Scully gives a complete account of his outrageous experiences with the band, during years that saw the Grateful Dead transform from a folksy revivalist band to psychedelic explorers of outer space. In addition to close-up portraits of band members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Pigpen, Phil Lesh, Micky Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, Scully brings into the story many of the people the Dead encountered in their journeys across America's musical landscape, including Ken Kesey, Janis Joplin, Etta James, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and the Jefferson Airplane. Scully tells the story of the band with genuine feeling; the tour disasters, acid trips, and burnouts, but most importantly the exaltation of delivering fantastic music.

    From the 60?s to the 90?s she?s been the craziest, the most extreme queen ever to hit a rock ?n? roll stage. She?s known and worked with Warhol, Bowie and Derek Jarman, been an actress, a singer and a prostitute. She?s the world?s original and only rock ?n? roll transsexual, crossing the genders in the full glare of publicity. Man Enough to be a Woman is the wild, hilarious and shameless account of Jayne?s life from her cissy-boy childhood in Georgia to her current 90s renaissance, as a new wave of superstars claim her as their inspiration.

    So began Anne Bolander's five-year ordeal at an institution for retarded and unwanted children. Emotions were not allowed at the institution, where children were beaten bloody for laughing, crying, or even touching another child. Children lived a robotic existence, and like robots, were known by numbers instead of names. Anne was #87.She endured five years of this abuse before being removed and placed in St. Mary's of Providence Center, where teachers correctly assessed her as deaf, not retarded. After only one year, Anne returned home and there survived many more years of abuse. Her story calls for vigilance today and everyday.

    She is one of the hardest-working actresses of any era, and her sense of humor and perennial optimism have seen her through half a century of industry changes and delighted millions of fans.Now, during Betty's sixty-first year on screen, a year in which she has enjoyed a huge resurgence of popularity, her 1995 memoir makes a comeback too. Here We Go Again is a behind-the-scenes look at Betty's career from her start on radio to her first show, Hollywood on Television, to several iterations of The Betty White Show and much, much more. Packed with wonderful anecdotes about famous personalities and friendships, stories of Betty's off-screen life, and the comedienne's trademark humor, this deliciously entertaining book will give readers an entrée into Betty's fascinating life, confirming yet again why we can't get enough of this funny lady.

    But few are aware of Zandman's incredible personal story: as a teenager he spent a year-and-a-half in Nazi occupied Poland, and that harrowing experience gave him the drive, discipline, and generosity of spirit that made his later success possible.Taught by his grandmother Tema that the only measure of wealth is what you give away, Zandman lost his entire world in 1943 when the ghetto in his native city of Grodno was destroyed. Jammed with four others into a tiny pit beneath the cottage of a poor Polish peasant, he was left with nothing but his inner resources of imagination, intellect, and will to fend off insanity and find a reason to go on living.Lying next to him in the hole, his uncle taught him higher mathematics, lessons he later turned to good use in winning a doctorate in physics from the Sorbonne. In 1966 he came to the United States, where one of his breakthrough discoveries became the basis for a company he named for his grandmother's shtetl. Vishay revolutionized an industry and today employs sixteen thousand people worldwide, among them the grandson of the woman who saved him.

    John McCormack moved his wife and kids to Choctaw County, Alabama, to start his first practice. Choctaw folk never had a licensed vet before, and, with few exceptions, they welcomed the red-headed doctor and the tireless care he gave their animals.Fields and Pastures New is the heartwarming story of young Dr. McCormack's first years in this deeply rural country, where mule-drawn wagons still bumped down dirt roads . . . where the local barbershop was the best place to catch up on the news . . . and where nobody ever let Doc forget his most embarrassing moments."I am proud to say that my closest friendships, outside my family, have been with my clients, " Dr. McCormack writes. "I hope readers will get to know some of the workings of the small family farm, and how these down-to-earth people confront their hardships and disappointments with so much good humor."

    But now, surprisingly, he has turned his wit and elegant storytelling gifts to a candid memoir of the first forty years of his life. Palimpsest is written from the vantage point of Vidal's library in his villa on the Italian coast. As visitors come and go, his memory ranges back and forth across a rich history. Vidal's childhood was spent in Washington, D.C., in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T. P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St. Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome, and Paris in the forties and fifties; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. Vidal's famous skills as a raconteur, his forthrightness, and his wicked wit are brilliantly at work in these recollections of a difficult family, talented friends, and interesting enemies. The cast includes Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Jane and Paul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others. Beautifully rendered anecdotes are intermixed with meditations on writing, history, acting, and politics. Perhaps most surprising is the leitmotif of a great, lost love. "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life," Vidal says, "while an autobiography is history." Palimpsest is a true story, but also an extraordinary work of literary imagination.

    "A breathtaking accomplishment. To the extent that any words can convey the experience of dance, Jones does so here, eloquently and with disarming honesty."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. Illustrated throughout.

    Simultaneous. IP.

    Goa Freaks begins in the mid 1970s and tells of Cleo's love affair with Goa, a resort in India where the Freaks (hippies) of the world converge to partake in a heady bohemian lifestyle. To finance their astounding appetites for cocaine, heroin, and hashish, the Freaks spend each monsoon season acting as drug couriers, and soon cleo is running her own "scams" in Canada, Australis, and the United States. (She even gets her Aunt Sadie in on the action.) Wish her earnings she builds a veritable palace on the beach- the only Goa house with running water and a flushing toilet. Cleo becomes the hostess of Anjuna Beach, holding days-long poker games and movie nights and, as her money begins to run out, transforming the house into a for-profit drug den. Tracing Cleo's love affairs, her stint hiding out at the ashram of the infamous Bhagwan Rajneesh, and her sometimes-harrowing drug experiences, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India is candid and compelling, bringin to life the spirit of a now-lost era.

    Edward Robb Ellis' monumental diary has made news in Time magazine and on Good Morning America, the Today show, and NPR's Weekend Edition. Now in paper are the fascinating anecdotes, the firsthand encounters with celebrated men and women and the engaging self-portrait of a uniquely candid man. 35 photos.

    While Jean had faced Alaska's wilderness before — in a life-altering experience she chronicled in Arctic Daughter — this journey would be different. Dogged by sickness and hardships, cut off from the rest of the world, her family faced not only a test of endurance, but of its own well-being and survival....From a daily struggle against the elements to an encounter with a grizzly bear at arm's length, from moments of breathtaking beauty and self-realization to a harrowing, six-hundred-mile river passage back to civilization, Arctic Son chronicles fourteen remarkable months in the Arctic. At once a portrait of courage and a heart-pounding adventure story, Arctic Son portrays a family's extraordinary journey into America's last frontier.

    to write to her pretending to be her beau. This innocent request began an exchange of 700 courtship letters that formed their relationship and led to their marriage in 1929. 60 photos.

    Refusing to limit herself to standard animal-behavior explanations (sex and food, fight or flight), Lerman examines the actions of her dogs from a less deterministic points of view, always seeking to understand and to communicate with them. Under her gaze, actions that seemed puzzling, eccentric, or delinquent suddenly become understandable as intentional and meaningful attempts to behave and to bond. Lerman's observations and meditations startle us, revealing dog thinking and behavior in new and wonderful ways. Reading her book, it is hard to deny her belief that dogs want to commune with people, want to leave their feral selves and join our human community. A year in the life of Lerman's Newfies is a year of many victories and some losses, and it is through both that we experience the full sweep of the emotions dogs and humans share. By book's end, we will have laughed at the antics of the irrepressible Toby; admired the quiet strength and intelligence of the mother, Molly; delighted in the growing maturity of the pups Rosie and Silky; cheered as Ishtar takes her first championship ribbon; and wept for the death of Ben, the original backyard dog. We will have learned a great deal about Newfies in particular and dogs in general. We will have learned even more about love. Perhaps only a novelist of Rhoda Lerman's skill and sensitivity could have ranged so freely to tell us so much.

    Thrash returned to Indianapolis from the Los Angeles area, where she had lived following the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown on November 18, 1978.It is the result of 60 hours of interviews and is the only published first-person account of a poor, African-American, elderly, disabled woman survivor of the tragedy. Yet is not primarily a story of Jonestown. It is the life of one who, for various reasons (from her childhood in Alabama through her adulthood in Indiana) became attracted to Jim Jones' Peoples Temple and followed him to California and Guyana, but early enough realized the demonic character of the movement and was able to distance herself sufficiently from it psychologically, enabling her to survive physically.

    Connelly allows the reader private glimpses of her world, and the world at large with a new collection of letters and stories based on her travels in Spain, France and Greece.''. . . beautifully written . . . mixes -autobiography, fiction, poetry and wide open spaces."--The Calgary Herald

    Find out how these outpourings of soul are begun, nurtured, and fulfilled. Features Gemino Abad, Carlos Angeles, Cirilo Bautista, Ricaredo Demetillo, Ophelia Dimalanta, Marjorie Evasco, Alejandrino Hufana, Edith Tiempo, Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido, and Alfred Yuson."This book is about what went on in the writing of a poem--what problems arose, what resources were tapped, and what solutions were arrived at...This book underscores the importance of revision in wirting, which itself is an art who temptations the young writer would not find difficult to resist because of its stringent and exacting demands, but which must be eventually yielded to because it is good to do so, because it is where the art of good writing lies, and because it is productive of excellence--which is whart art as craft is about" --From the introduction

    In their fourth book, Williams and Breen, the authors of O Come Ye Back to Ireland, When Summer's in the Meadow, and The Pipes Are Calling chronicle their life and adventure in this beautiful country, where fewer and fewer Irish men and women are lucky enough to be able to live.

    In superbly rendered scenes from his life as an orphan, schoolboy, newspaper-boy, messenger, fledgling writer, family misfit, world famous writer, man-about-town, husband, and father, this book gives us the characteristic fluency of Saroyan at his best, and it introduces a new emotional depth that was to become a hallmark of the writer's later work.

    With eloquence and honesty, Legler's work documents a fascinating journey of self-discovery, graphically and intimately exploring the themes of hunting, sexuality, and landscape.

    The pain of his rejection of and by America is tempered by his own vitality and humor as an artist, making this important work not only a look at Chester Himes, but a sharp and often painful look at America itself.

    To longtime Giles fans and new readers alike, these reminiscences of family, friends, a river, and a roof offer a charming visit to rural Kentucky in the late 1950s.

    They drank wine in Transylvanian forests and, avoiding the Securitate, camped together beneath the Carpathian moon. When she returned home, George wrote her letters criticising the Romanian regime, and asked her to marry him and to help him escape. Abruptly the letters stopped. After the revolution in 1989 Helena Drysdale returned to Romania, a country trapped in a labyrinth of post-Communist paranoia, in search of George.

    Now Noomin is back at it with her second Twisted Sisters book, Drawing the Line. This collection features new work by Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Dame Darcy, Mary Fleener, Carol Lay, Penny Moran Van Horn, Krystine Kryttre, Carol Tyler, Carol Swain, and Noomin herself. The artists cover subjects ranging from sex, personality problems, rape, and miscarriages to cannibalism and the virgin birth.

    Nicole Gausseron experienced Jesus' presence both in church and the outside world, even entering dialogues with her. These dialogues form the basis of this notebook.

    Raga Mala is an unprecedented look at Ravi Shankar, master of the sitar and one of the most enduring and inspriational performers of the twentieth century.

    

    

    In a stunning literary debut that shares the generational outlook of Anna Quindlen with the sharp social observations of Joan Didion, Kaye offers her wry, sometimes biting perspective on entering mid-life, coming to terms with all the fullness of life and loss at its mid-point.

    His is a story of hope that reveals the spiritual meaning of living through a grueling and unjust, yet mysterious and redeeming captivity.

    Romantic notions of primitive life immediately faded in the harsh setting. The first night, she would have frozen without a willing husky pup who shared her bed. Humorous vignettes convey Jiles' reverence for native tradition and storytelling and her affection for colleagues and companions.

    With candor, humor, and generous detail, she reveals what it was like to work with the most accomplished and up-and-coming directors, playwrights, and fellow actors of her time. She gives us an intimate view of the day-to-day workings of the mind of Beckett as he devised his unique, intense theatrical style in plays like Footfalls, Play, and Happy Days.

    

    He repeatedly came down from the ivory tower of academic religion to build bridges between church and world, between gospel and society. His works followed both Protestant and Catholic theology, were discussed in dissertations and reviews, and published widely.In Notes from a Wayfarer, written shortly after his 75th birthday, Thielicke's narrative is filled reflections about suffering, death, and the poignancy of life as well as with a delightful humor that easily makes us part of every story and encounter. Without pretense or self-promotion, Thielicke introduces us to the figures whom he counted among his friends and acquaintances: Karl Barth, Konrad Adenauer, Romano Guardini, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eduard Spranger, Theodore Huss, and Helmut Kohl.Thielicke was a witness to many of the most significant events of our century; his life history is interwoven with the Kaiser period, the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Third Reich, a divided Germany, and the tumultuous 60s. From the perspective of this single life we are afforded a broad and clear vision of the moments that have shaped the generation leading us into the 21st century.

    Presented as first-person essays, the interviews are with contemporary writers who have studied, taught at, or cultivated other ties with the University of Chicago. The book provides an occasion for the writers to reflect on their Chicago experiences and on ideas about education in general. What education does a writer need? How can formal learning impel the writing life? What school stories or tales told out of school do Philip Roth, Hayden Carruth, Marguerite Young, George Steiner, Charles Simic, Susan Sontag, and Saul Bellow have in store and want to share.Interviews with:Saul Bellow, Paul Carroll, Hayden Carruth, Robert Coover, Leon Forrest, June Jordan, Janet Kauffman, Morris Philipson, M. L. Rosenthal, Philip Roth, Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Charles Simic, Susan Sontag, George Starbuck, George Steiner, Richard Stern, Nathaniel Tarn, Douglas Unger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Marguerite Young.

    He slept in their igloos, ate raw fish and seal meat, wore skin clothing, traveled by dog team, hunted walrus, learned how to build a snowhouse, and raised a family. While doing so, he helped change the Arctic. Impressed by the natural artistic skills of the people, he encouraged the development of exhibits and sales of Inuit art in the south - sales that have brought millions of dollars to its creators. Confessions of an Igloo Dweller, a wonderful piece of storytelling, recounts Houston's fascinating and often hilarious adventures among a confident, smiling people who spoke no English. Taking readers into the heart of Inuit culture, it joins the tradition established by Fridtjof Nansen, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and Farley Mowat. A book full of adventure and anecdote as well as the delights of art and the hazards of cold, it is illustrated with forty drawings by the author.

    

    While exploring the author’s growing up years in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, this coming of age collection of stories also reflects the romance of Upper Michigan’s history, its traditions, and the unique cultural backgrounds of its people.Ancient Ojibway burial grounds, Northern Lights, and the life of an iron miner’s family are looked at through the eyes of a spirited, sometimes somber girl searching out her wishes and dreams. Poignant and funny, The Wishing Years celebrates the mystery and miracles of growing up as it follows a small town family through times of laughter, tears, and triumph.

    

    You call the whole memoir "Byways," parts of which have begun to appear in literary journals. But one part stands alone in your affections. The section "Remembering William Carlos Williams" grows of its own accord and captures a relationship so perfectly that you decide to do it up as a little book and share it with a few friends who are enchanted. To reach a wider audience, "Remembering William Carlos Williams" is now available in this New Directions Paperbook Original edition.

    The simple, magical town of Sawyerton Springs does exist in the hearts of those who long to take a deep breath, relax and take the time to find the humor and meaning in everyday life..

    Fisher worked on before her death in 1992. Last House presents a frank, wry, and revealing portrait of Fisher's life, her loves, and herself. 304 pp.