It is fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey. In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.

    Yet almost nothing in our culture prepares us for reflection on the great themes of existence: courage, friendship, listening, dignity—those everyday virtues that can transform our world. Because AARP believes it’s never too late (or too early) to learn, they, together with Sterling Publishing, have created the About Living series to address these crucial issues. Each entry will be written by only the best authors and thinkers.Thinking About Memoir, the first of these volumes, helps adults look back at their past and use writing as a means of figuring out who they used to be and how they became who they are today. It’s written by Abigail Thomas, whose own memoir A Three Dog Life was selected as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the LA Times and the Washington Post and called “perfectly honed” (Newsweek), “bracingly honest” (Vanity Fair), and “stunning” by the Los Angeles Book Review. Thomas writes that memoir can consist of looking back at a single summer or the span of a whole life. Through her experience as a writing teacher, she knows how difficult that can be; this book is about the habit of writing as a way to keep track of what’s going on in the front and the back of your mind. It inspires different ways for us to look at the moment we’re in right now and will help would-be memoirists find their own “side door” into a subject. Thomas writes eloquently about how to get started and find that jumping-off point for your work, and provides exercises that liberate our creativity, enable us to get the distance and perspective we need, and open our eyes to possibilities that may not at first seem obvious.Whether your words are for publication, for your loved ones, or for you alone, Thomas makes the process fulfilling, thoughtful, and even fun.

    Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless readers to hitchhiking cowgirls, born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads.In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, weaving together stories of his unconventional life–from his Appalachian childhood to his globe-trotting adventures–told in his unique voice, which combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become, over the course of half a century, a poet interruptus, a soldier, a meteorologist, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counterculture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters.Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the sixties' psychedelic revolution, international roving before Homeland Security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees.Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which Robbins is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend.

    Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, “the covers become a part of me.”

    Inspired by her example, Beha vows to read the entire Five-Foot Shelf, one volume a week, over the course of the next year. As he passes from St. Augustine's Confessions to Don Quixote, from Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast to essays by Cicero, Emerson, and Thoreau, he takes solace in the realization that many of the authors are grappling with the same questions he faces: What is the purpose of life? How do we live a good life? What can the wisdom of the past teach us about our own challenges? Beha's chronicle is a smart, big-hearted, and inspirational mix of memoir and intellectual excursion—and a powerful testament to what great books can teach us about how to live our own lives.

    They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and co-wrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well-known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and non-fiction. Some of her most-notable work includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Run River, and The Year of Magical Thinking, a National Book Award winner and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, it dealt with the grief surrounding Didion after the loss of her husband and daughter. Daugherty takes readers on a journey back through time, following a young Didion in Sacramento, through to her adult life as a writer interviewing those who know and knew her personally, while maintaining a respectful distance from the reclusive literary great. The Last Love Song reads like fiction; lifelong fans, and readers learning about Didion for the first time will be enthralled with this impressive tribute.

    By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels. Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia—the real reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother—and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and characteristic humor, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer’s mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning.

    A fascinating collection of six essays, written for the William Empson Lectures in Oxford, each exploring an aspect of writerly contemplation.

    He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria and personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, a library of books never written.

    There was no immediate response on my part, only a deep sense of fear entombed by a completely paralyzed inner spirit. Much to my surprise, he spoke again: "Sir, you've waited too long to get here. You're not going to make it." And he continued: "If you believe in God, this is the time to make peace." In that very moment, I said to myself, "What do you mean, 'If you believe in God?' Of course I believe in God! I'm a man of faith and a Catholic priest!" Fr. John Tourangeau, O. Praem., a Norbertine priest who had an afterlife experience following a major heart attack, emphatically states, "Heaven is for real!" Within this enlightening and hope-filled book, Fr. John weaves a powerful and dynamic tapestry of the Kingdom of God at hand through the exploration of Christian tradition, Sacred Scripture, Catholic teaching, as well as his own lived experiences. "While the fullness of heaven cannot be fully experienced in our life here on earth," Father explains, "we are able to more fully experience God's love for us through our relationships with others. For it is in and through these relationships that we draw closer to Christ and his promise for us."

    A collection of humorous hospital stories and events as witnessed by a frequently incarcerated patient and told from a patient's point of view while secured and gagged in a hospital bed.Stories and tales from a lifetime of hospital admissions, showing that hospital life as a patient is not all doom and gloom.

    It includes tales of living through a lifetime of dysfunction, violence and terror at the hands of both her father and other nefarious individuals who would seek to perpetuate the cycle. More importantly though, it is also a story of how they did not succeed in this hateful quest, as Jvonne struggled on and through to the other side to embrace love, laughter and the pursuit of personal happiness. Part of this amazing transformation even led to her adoption of a biracial infant, an event that served both as a healing elixir to her soul and a grandiose “!#%& you” to all the ugliness that hate brings.

    

     1988 would prove to be the worst drought since the ‘dustbowl’ of the 1930’s.  Yellowstone would burn,  Ronald Reagan would shake his fist at the 'Evil Empire', and the author, oblivious to it all, hit the road and never looked back. That trip would consume the entire summer, logging over twelve thousand miles from sea to sea and back.  “Alone In The Wind” is the account of that trip, with pictures, maps, historical & geographical notes, and rolling narrative. A few selected excerpts: The early evening sun is bright red and except for wind slapping the tents, all is quiet.  Other campers are talking in subdued tones.  The  scene has a timeless quality I can’t explain.  Maybe it’s how I’d picture an Oregon Trail  camp.  Everybody too exhausted to do more than whisper, anticipating the day ahead, trying to forget the ones behind. Kurt Vonnegut might have written that the Custer annihilation occurred solely to provide me with a ranger to give advice on the coming storms.  That irony rattled around in my helmet for the next forty miles. Chewing mindlessly I stare at passing trucks with red eyes.  This has been an endless, grueling day.  A far cry from the mystical experience that other writers claim.  The bone numbing reality of motorcycle touring is exhaustion, dehydration, disorientation. Vacant eyes seem to be nothing more than rubber stoppers that keep my liquefied brains from spilling out over my face. Carved out by the tides, the cave is probably underwater for most of the day.  At the entrance is a rock with a well-formed depression at the top.  Without thinking I dump both bottles of Atlantic Ocean into that shallow basin, move deeper into the cave and sit.  There’s a lot on my mind, and it all seems to be demanding immediate attention.  The mission will be accomplished.  The oceans will unite.  It will take a few hours, and I won’t be here to see it, but this is a better way.  Letting the sea take it on its own terms seems more fitting. Heat was the real problem.  Both the heat of a western summer day and the heat thrown off an air-cooled engine that's being pushed to its limits.   While it was never transcendental, the passage was always very real, very immediate, and unforgettable.  Thinking back to the other riders that I met, it seemed the same for them as well.  They were all worn down with fatigue and loneliness - while at the same time brimming over with confidence and satisfaction. I won't forget them.

    Her first husband, and then her second husband end up abusing her also. Later on, both her surviving children were abused, one by her ex husband, another by a trusted boyfriend. Michelle finally manages to free herself from this cycle of abuse. This is her true story of her escape. It is Michelle's hope that her story will encourage others who are trapped in abuse to seek freedom.