Armstrong writes about her experience as one of only a few people to participate in an experimental treatment for depression involving ten rounds of a chemically induced coma approximating brain death.For years, Heather B. Armstrong has alluded to her struggle with depression on her website. But in 2016, Heather found herself in the depths of a depression she just couldn’t shake, an episode darker and longer than anything she had previously experienced. This book recalls the torturous eighteen months of suicidal depression she endured and the month-long experimental study in which doctors used propofol anesthesia to quiet all brain activity for a full fifteen minutes before bringing her back from a flatline. Ten times. The experience wasn’t easy. Not for Heather or her family. But a switch was flipped, and Heather hasn’t experienced a single moment of suicidal depression since. The Valedictorian of Being Dead brings to light a groundbreaking new treatment for depression.

    Named after the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, the book-length lyric essay explores sexual violence, gendered illness, chronic pain, and patriarchy through the lenses of lived experience and pop culture (Twin Peaks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, noise music, etc.). Teaching Guide (or Book Club Guide) here: bit.ly/2aqJV2X

    These pieces thus explore, with quiet grace, the unexpected pleasures that are gleaned from an appreciation of the ordinary - a sleeping cat, a blooming garden, a well-cooked meal. Such familiar - even ostensibly mundane - details of our lives, Steinbach maintains, play a far more important part in shaping our identities and our sense of our relationship to the world than do the exotic encounters or momentous events to which we attach much significance. Alternately poignant and humorous, sedately contemplative and bristling with emotional energy, Steinbach's various musings on the daily rhythms of her own moods and experiences transform everyday life into a rich and meaningful journey.

    town, an adolescent girl is unwittingly handed a one-way ticket by her mother to allegedly "visit" her estranged father in Florida. Young and vulnerable, Lockey Maisonnueve has no idea she is being abandoned and sent to live with a vile and dangerous pedophile who would spend the next several years violently raping, abusing and mercilessly selling his daughter's body into childhood prostitution to other adult men. After being rescued by her naive, but well-intentioned, grandparents, her troubled life is further devastated by cancer and ravaged by the subsequent brutal murder of her mother, in which Lockey is briefly considered a suspect. "A Girl Raised by Wolves' is the inspirational memoir of a survivor of the darkest circumstances one can endure in a single lifetime and still emerge with a sense of humor and to defiantly proclaim "they didn't break me!"

    All his life Don had been too shy, too deeply pained to ask his father or grandparents to tell him the story of the lovely girl named Peggy Snyder--what delighted or troubled her, who her friends were, how she fell in love, what cut short her brief life.But then, nearing his fiftieth birthday and compelled by his father's failing health, Snyder embarked on a quest to find his mother. He traveled many times from his home in Maine down to his mother's small Pennsylvania town to trace her childhood and adolescence. He tracked down Peggy's high school friends, spent time with her teachers, probed the memories of the girls--now elderly women-- who had been her bridesmaids. Detail by detail, Don pieced together the harrowing story of Peggy's final year--her passionate love affair with her husband, the unexpected pregnancy, the sudden illness that consumed her, and the impossible choice she was forced to make.A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering--and reclaiming--the fragile mystery of a beloved life.

    Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by female physicians, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome"—a long-held secret belief that she was not smart enough or good enough to be a “real” doctor. Accessed by thousands of readers around the world, Koven’s “Letter to a Young Female Physician” has evolved into a deeply felt reflection on her career in medicine.Koven tells candid and illuminating stories about her pregnancy during a grueling residency in the AIDS era; the illnesses of her child and aging parents during which her roles as a doctor, mother, and daughter converged, and sometimes collided; the sexism, pay inequity, and harassment that women in medicine encounter; and the twilight of her career during the COVID-19 pandemic. As she traces the arc of her life, Koven finds inspiration in literature and faces the near-universal challenges of burnout, body image, and balancing work with marriage and parenthood.Shining with warmth, clarity, and wisdom, Letter to a Young Female Physician reveals a woman forging her authentic identity in a modern landscape that is as overwhelming and confusing as it is exhilarating in its possibilities. Koven offers an indelible account, by turns humorous and profound, from a doctor, mother, wife, daughter, teacher, and writer who sheds light on our desire to find meaning, and on a way to be our own imperfect selves in the world.

    There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David’s past emerges once again—and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.

    From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people.As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples' rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann's memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

    Join author Shawn Inmon and his twenty year old Subaru Outback on his epic solo road trip through British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. Part personal odyssey, part travel memoir, take an expedition into one of North America's last remaining wildernesses. If you dream of packing up your four-wheeler, your snow boots and camera, and setting off to explore the wilderness, A Lap Around Alaska will give you a rare glimpse into the Land of the Midnight Sun, of moose, bear, and bald eagles, of monumental glaciers and scenery so staggering it brings tears to your eyes. If you hunger for adventure and want to discover untouched beauty and to experience the majesty of the pristine North for yourself-Shawn saved the passenger seat just for you. This book also includes two bonus memoirs of life in Alaska in the 1970s-My First Alaskan Summer and My Matanuska Summer.

    Dr. Pietro Bartolo, who runs the lone medical clinic on the island, has been caring for many of them—both the living and the dead—for a quarter century.Tears of Salt is Dr. Bartolo’s moving account of his life and work set against one of the signal crises of our time. With quiet dignity and an unshakable moral center, he tells unforgettable tales of pain and hope, stories of those who didn’t make it and those who did. Tears of Salt is a lasting work of literature and an intimate portrait of a remarkable man whose inspiring message rings clear: "We can’t and we won’t be governed by our fears."

    But more than forty years later, the couple has operated on more than 20,000 women, most of whom suffer from obstetric fistula, a debilitating childbirth injury. In this awe-inspiring book, Dr. Catherine Hamlin recalls her life and career in Ethiopia. Her unyielding courage and solid faith will astound Christians worldwide as she talks about the people she has grown to love and the hospital that so many Ethiopian women have come to depend on. She truly is the Mother Teresa of our age.

    Revenge of the Nerds. Better Off Dead. Moonlighting. Supernatural. American Dad. New Girl. What do all of these movies and television shows have in common?Curtis Armstrong.A legendary comedic second banana to a litany of major stars, Curtis is forever cemented in the public imagination as Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. A classically trained actor, Curtis began his incredible 40-year career on stage but progressed rapidly to film and television. He was typecast early and it proved to be the best thing that could have happened. But there’s more to Curtis’ story than that. Born and bred a nerd, he spent his early years between Detroit, a city so nerdy that the word was coined there in 1951, and, improbably, Geneva, Switzerland. His adolescence and early adulthood was spent primarily between the covers of a book and indulging his nerdy obsessions. It was only when he found his true calling, as an actor and unintentional nerd icon, that he found true happiness. With whip-smart, self-effacing humor, Armstrong takes us on a most unlikely journey—one nerd’s hilarious, often touching rise to the middle. He started his life as an outcast and matured into…well, an older, slightly paunchier, hopefully wiser outcast.In Hollywood, as in life, that counts as winning the game.

    In the depths of the jungle—alone with the Jaguar Man—compassion was her only defense.Lara’s survival and journey of healing is poignant, compelling, and exceptional—it runs against the grain of what we’re taught and how we speak about crime and victimhood. Bending the limits of reality, she uses myth to process her experience and further explore the power of compassion. What she comes to is authentic, unorthodox, and fresh, and could serve as a groundbreaking path for trauma survivors to find their own peace and healing.

    The day the babies are born—in an operating room bustling with 30 doctors, nurses and technicians—is the first jolt in a physical and emotional roller-coaster ride. And every day following continues to reveal one unpredictable twist after another. Just going to the supermarket and keeping the kids—and the store—safe from disaster is like an episode from an adventure story. When the triplets start to walk, and explode in three directions at once, they quickly learn to exploit their newfound freedom at every possible turn.

    He had no idea this little label, first run out of his solar powered cabin in the Northern California mountains, then a cramped room in the backstreets of Berkeley, would rise to international prominence, introducing the world to the likes of Green Day, Operation Ivy, and a host of other artists. How To Ru(i)n A Record Label documents the author’s experiences from Gilman Street to Bialystok, Poland, as he built Lookout from the ground up, only to find himself losing control of the label a mere ten years later, and abruptly walking away from the multi-million dollar company when it was at its peak of success. Throughout that time, however, he was central to the influential scene that gave birth to Gilman Street, Maximum Rocknroll, and a new generation of independent music that has had an everlasting effect on both the underground and mainstream. In the process, he just might even have found himself. Larry Livermore was the co-founder of Lookout Records, the editor and publisher of Lookout magazine, and a longtime columnist for Maximum Rocknroll and Punk Planet. His first memoir, Spy Rock Memories, was published in 2013 by Don Giovanni Records. He lives in Brooklyn.