Of All Things


Robert Benchley - 2000
    It is just one of those facts which never get bruited about.Since that time I have practically lived among the newtsI first became interested in the social phenomena of newt life early in the spring of1913, shortly after I had finished my researches in sexual differentiation among amoeba. Since that time I have practically lived among newts, jotting down...

Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie


Mark St. Amant - 2004
     As seen on ESPN's Cold Pizza Fantasy football -- one of America's most popular, and profitable, virtual pastimes -- became a way of life for sports humorist and author Mark St. Amant. Utterly fed up with never having won his league championship, St. Amant abandoned a successful advertising career to make fantasy football his full-time job, embarking on a sprawling reconnaissance mission to discover what really makes this game, and its 20 million players, tick. Committed is the result of St. Amant's ranting, relentless, and strategic pursuit of his own obsession. In this wickedly funny and deeply informative work, St. Amant offers readers an all-access sideline pass to his wild, unprecedented fantasy football season, and to the hobby itself. From its humble beginnings in a New York hotel in 1962 to a multibillion-dollar business today, from local and online leagues to high-stakes, cutthroat Las Vegas competitions, St. Amant lays bare the facts, figures, and fanaticism of fantasy football in all its multidimensional glory.

James Taylor Long Ago and Far Away: His Life and His Music


Timothy White - 2001
    This new edition has been updated by his friend and former Rolling Stone comrade Mitch Glazer and includes an epilogue about the memorial concerts for Timothy that James Taylor helped organize.

My Story


Jo Malone - 2015
    Jo Malone began her international fragrance and scented candle business in 1983 from her kitchen, where she made bath oils as thank-you gifts for her facial clients. She opened her first store in London in 1994, and in 1999 she sold the Jo Malone London brand to Estee Lauder Companies. Recently, she launched a new brand, Jo Loves, igniting the excitement of fashion and beauty converts all over the world. Raised in government-subsidized housing in Kent in the early 1960s, Jo Malone left school as a teenager to care for her mother after she had a stroke. Jo had not been successful in school because of her dyslexia, but she had the ability to see and feel everything in scent. Her at-home beauty business and hand-made products became popular, and word of her talent spread until an international brand was born. After the sale of her company and the birth of her son, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment in New York. Thus began the second chapter of her life, and in this memoir, Jo tells her full amazing and inspiring personal story.

Clearly Now, the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Other Trips


Eli Hastings - 2013
    She wore saris and ate delicately from plates of curry at family events; elsewhere she wore a lip ring, designer shades, and a cowboy hat and ordered bloody steaks. She wrote volumes of poetry, made amateur films, singlehandedly ran a chapter of Food Not Bombs, and ended up as a fierce advertising agency executive. She often slept less than five hours per week and would, at the slightest excuse, drive from L.A. to New York in a cool 50 hours. In some moments of danger, she split the lips of menacing strangers. And she gave herself over to the casual knives and fists of others for nothing more than another bag of heroin that she had plenty of money for anyway. Clearly Now, the Rain traces the decade-long relationship of Eli Hastings and his friend Serala: from ill-advised quests for narcotics in Mexican border towns through summer road trips, from southern California to Tennessee and on to New York City and Seattle, from 1996 to the very last days of 2004, when Serala’s journey concluded tragically at age 27.

Ten Minutes from Home: A Memoir


Beth Greenfield - 2010
     In this searing, sparely written, and surprisingly wry memoir, Beth Greenfield shares what happens in 1982 when, as a twelve-year-old, she survives a drunk-driving accident that kills her younger brother Adam and best friend Kristin. As the benign concerns of adolescence are re­placed by crushing guilt and grief, Beth searches for hope and support in some likely and not-so-likely places (General Hospital, a kindly rabbi, the bottom of a keg), eventually discovering that while life is fragile, love doesn’t have to be.  Ten Minutes from Home exquisitely captures both the heartache of lost innocence and the solace of strength and survival.

In the Country of Women


Susan Straight - 2019
    After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at weekly driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight―and eventually her three daughters―learned the stories of Dwayne’s ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post-slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and gumption of women pushing onward―from Switzerland, Wisconsin, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan―those who become your family. She and Sims divorced after their third daughter was born, but he lives nearby and the family has remained close. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women.

Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife


Lin Pardey - 2011
    First there were the rats in the pantry, then the floods, then the fires, then the visiting cougar. Life in Bull Canyon was daunting and dangerous. Often Lin wondered just what in the world they were doing so far from their customary home on the open seas. Bull Canyon joins the canon of great tales of homesteading, told in the warm, funny, and insightful voice of a true storyteller.

Miles Away... Worlds Apart


Alan Sakowitz - 2010
    The saga of Rothstein's rise and fall which included a Warren Yacht, two Bugattis, Governor Crist, the former Versace mansion, The Eagles, and even the murder of a law partner, is the stuff that Hollywood movies are made from.

You Don't Look Your Age...and Other Fairy Tales


Sheila Nevins - 2017
    Women need this kind of honest excavation of the process of living.” —Meryl StreepAn astonishingly frank, funny, poignant book for any woman who wishes they had someone who would say to them, “This happened to me, learn from my mistakes and my successes. Because you don’t get smarter as you get older, you get braver.”Sheila Nevins is the best friend you never knew you had. She is your discreet confidante you can tell any secret to, your sage mentor at work who helps you navigate the often uneven playing field, your wise sister who has “been there, done that,” your hysterical girlfriend whose stories about men will make laugh until you cry. Sheila Nevins is the one person who always tells it like it is. In You Don’t Look Your Age, the famed documentary producer (as President of HBO Documentary Films for over 30 years, Nevins has rightfully been credited with creating the documentary rebirth) finally steps out from behind the camera and takes her place front and center.In these pages you will read about the real life challenges of being a woman in a man's world, what it means to be a working mother, what it’s like to be an older woman in a youth-obsessed culture, the sometimes changing, often sweet truth about marriages, what being a feminist really means, and that you are in good company if your adult children don’t return your phone calls.So come, sit down, make yourself comfortable, (and for some of you, don’t forget the damn reading glasses). You’re in for a treat.