Book picks similar to
A Love Letter to Texas Women by Sarah Bird
non-fiction
nonfiction
texas
biography
You'll Grow Out of It
Jessi Klein - 2016
These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("Miss" sounds like you weigh ninety-nine pounds).Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.
Seven Days in the Art World
Sarah Thornton - 2008
Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture. 8 illustrations.
Creeker: A Woman's Journey
Linda Scott Derosier - 1999
More than fifty years later, Linda Scott DeRosier has come to believe that you can take a woman out of Appalachia but you can't take Appalachia out of the woman. DeRosier's humorous and poignant memoir is the story of an educated and cultured woman who came of age in Appalachia. She remains unabashedly honest about and proud of her mountain heritage. Now a college profe
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Annie Dillard - 1982
Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings.
The Widow's Son
Bruce Steinberg - 2001
Did you know that 2 days before the blizzard of 1967 that brought the Midwest to a halt, it was a balmy 65 degrees? Or that Wild Thing by the Troggs kicked the Beatle's Paperback Writer off the top of the pop charts? Or that Gomer Pyle USMC replaced the Dick Van Dyke Show? These details unique to 1966 and 1967 also include the Apollo 1 disaster, what young men did to avoid the draft and Vietnam, and President Johnson's conclusion in 1966 that the Vietnam War had been as good as won. All of this incredible history, accurately researched and woven into this incredible story without a seam, presents a historic backdrop for a powerful tale of survival - and the detemination of a neighborhood filled with beloved nuts and bolts who go beyond the call to save a broken family. And it all begins with these words of a child's lament - When I hear the news I want to jump on the dining room clock and make time go backwards . . . Based on the real life loss of the author's father, Bruce Steinberg brings his passionate tale home as told through the eyes of his oldest brother - a child on the cusp of manhood who does not easily take to wearing the crown of New Man of the House.The moment 12-year-old Jeremy Rosenberg witnesses his father's death, Jeremy loses the world he assumed would last forever. With a young brother expecting their father to yet come home, a sister blaming herself, and a mother falling toward isolation, Jeremy is sent fatherless into the world just as he enters adolescence. Beautifully and memorably set in mid-1960s Chicago suburbia, The Widow's Son is launched on a devastating moment. But this tale of misguided efforts and accidental triumphs of children forced into adult emotions creates a humorous, poignant novel. The reader's laughter and tears are sure to flow together to the last page as Jeremy battles to make his family into a family once again.Author Bruce Steinberg also writes under the name B.R. Robb, and is the author of River Ghosts, a critically acclaimed novel for your review under Amazon.com's Look Inside program.
Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am
Julia Cooke - 2021
Julia Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to life the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.
The Last Woman Standing
Thelma Adams - 2011
She leaves her San Francisco home to join Behan in Tombstone, Arizona, a magnet for miners (and outlaws) attracted by the silver boom. Though united by the glint of metal, Tombstone is plagued by divided loyalties: between Confederates and Unionists, Lincoln Republicans and Democrats.But when the silver-tongued Behan proves unreliable, it is legendary frontiersman Wyatt Earp who emerges as Josephine’s match. As the couple’s romance sparks, Behan’s jealousy ignites a rivalry destined for the history books…At once an epic account of an improbable romance and a retelling of an iconic American tale, The Last Woman Standing recalls the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral through the eyes of a spunky heroine who sought her happy ending in a lawless outpost—with a fierce will and an unflagging spirit.
What Would the Spice Girls Do?: How the Girl Power Generation Grew Up
Lauren Bravo - 2018
If you have ever sung into the lid of a can of Impulse body spray, you need to read this.' Daisy BuchananThe words 'girl power' conjure vivid memories of short skirts and platform boots. But it wasn't just about the look, it was about feminism. The Spice Girls gave a generation their first glimpse of the power of friendship, of staying true to yourself, of sheer bloody-mindedness. And the girl power generation went on to kick-start a new conversation around gender equality.We may have grown up asking What Would the Spice Girls Do?, but their particular brand of feminism is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago – we still need that fun and fearlessness, we still need accessible and all-embracing equality… we still need a zig-a-zig-ah.‘The Spice Girls’ arrival on the pop scene marked the gateway to a modern form of feminism, all dressed up as a riotously good time.’ StylistAs featured in Elle magazine's Best Feminist Gift Books
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
Beth Ann Fennelly - 2017
Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys.Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.
Life From Scratch
Melissa Ford - 2010
And so is her kitchen.Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn't even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong? She dives into the culinary basics. Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about life, love and her goal of an unburnt casserole. To her amazement, the blog's a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life. Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn't learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?
Southern Lady Code: Essays
Helen Ellis - 2019
While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.Making a marriage magically tidy --Topeka three-way --How to stay happily married --Free to be...you and me (and childfree) --Room of one's own (that's full of gay men) --Other woman's Burberry coat --Peggy Sue got marijuana --What every girl should learn from ABC's The bachelor --Ghost experience --Party foul --Today was a good day --Straighten up and fly right. --Halloween people --Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1979 --How to be the best guest --When to write a thank-you note --An Emily Post for the apocalypse --How I watch pornography like a lady --Dumb boobs --Young ladies, listen to me --Seven things I'm doing instead of a neck lift --Serious women --That kind of woman
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
Ronan Farrow - 2019
As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance that could not be explained - until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood, to Washington, and beyond.This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability and silence victims of abuse - and it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power - and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter
Loretta Lynn - 1976
The first woman to be named the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year, Lynn boasts sixteen #1 singles, fifteen #1 albums, and sixty other hits including “Honky Tonk Girl,” “Before I'm Over You, “ “The Pill,” and “After the Fire Is Gone. “ Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter, a bestseller and the basis of the Oscar-winning film, is the intimate, revealing story of her journey from eastern Kentucky to Nashville to stardom to legend—told in her own voice, which rings as clear, natural, and powerful as the best of her songs.
The Escape Artist
Helen Fremont - 2020
Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on, to both Helen and her older sister, a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.She delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her mother’s will. In scenes that are frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny, Fremont writes about growing up in such an intemperate household, with parents who pretended to be Catholics but were really Jews—survivors of Nazi-occupied Poland. She shares tales of family therapy sessions, disordered eating, her sister’s frequently unhinged meltdowns, and her own romantic misadventures as she tries to sort out her sexual identity.In a family devoted to hiding the truth, Fremont learns the truth is the one thing that can set you free. Scorching, witty, and ultimately redemptive, The Escape Artist is a powerful contribution to the memoir shelf.
The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan
Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller - 2019
But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.Thus begins an epic, reckless, and terrifying five-year journey of escape for Enjeela, her siblings, and their father to reconnect with her mother. In navigating the dangers ahead of them, and in looking back at the wilderness of her homeland, Enjeela discovers the spiritual and physical strength to find hope in the most desperate of circumstances.A heart-stopping memoir of a girl shaken by the brutalities of war and empowered by the will to survive, The Broken Circle brilliantly illustrates that family is not defined by the borders of a country but by the bonds of the heart.