This is Not for You is a memoir which vividly describes the memories of growing up in a dysfunctional environment and how these circumstances developed a spirit within the narrator. This is a story of resiliency and drive to overcome the extreme adversities that addiction and poverty can create in the life of a young child.

    The next, I was marching in lockstep through the dark, snow-strewn streets of Sweden. Clad in an ill-fitting cheap blue suit—a Book of Mormon in my pocket—I was tasked with nothing less than saving the country of "godless fornicators from certain moral destruction." You've seen us. We are impossible to miss. We are iconic, and now even celebrated in a nine times over, Tony Awarding winning Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon. Most are boys, some girls. We always travel in pairs. Impeccably groomed, always smiling and polite, you can’t mistake us for anyone else. And, if you haven't met us already, we will soon be coming to knock on a door near you. I know. I was one of them. This is my story. Although raised in the LDS faith, nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced. My world was turned upside down. Nothing was as I expected: the country, the work, my fellow missionaries, and most of all, the Church. Had I not gone through the experience myself, I honestly would not believe a word of what follows. And yet, it’s true. Every last bit.

    Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?“October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. “December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested [they] not tell Howard anything about it.”Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

    She just knew she felt her best when she was empty, "like a straw", as she says "something you could blow through."For almost thirty years, Susan Burton has hidden her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success--she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse--she'd binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again--and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to "quit food."Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of story; brings to life an indelible cast of characters; and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.

    Though she is determined to gain the weight for the health of her babies—even if it means she'll "weigh more than a Honda"—she can only express her deep fear by telling her doctor simply, "I used to be fat."Klein was an eighth grader with a weight problem. It was a problem at school, where the boys called her "Moose," and it was a problem at home, where her father reminded her, "No one likes fat girls." After many frustrating sessions with a nutritionist known as the fat doctor of Roslyn Heights, Long Island, Klein's parents enrolled her for a summer at fat camp. Determined to return to school thin and popular, without her "lard arms" and "puckered ham," Stephanie embarked on a memorable journey that would shape more than just her body. It would shape her life.In the ever-shifting terrain between fat and thin, adulthood and childhood, cellulite and starvation, Klein shares the cutting details of what it truly feels like to be an overweight child, from the stinging taunts of classmates, to the off-color remarks of her own father, to her thin mother's compulsive dissatisfaction with her own body. Calling upon her childhood diary entries, Klein reveals her deepest thoughts and feelings from that turbulent, hopeful time, baring her soul and making her heartache palpable.Whether Klein is describing her life as a chubby adolescent camper—getting weighed on a meat scale, petting past curfew, and "chunky dunking" in the lake—or what it's like now as a fit mother, having one-sided conversations with her newborn twins about the therapy they'll one day need, this hilarious yet grippingly vulnerable book will remind you what it was like to feel like an outsider, to desperately seek the right outfit, the right slang, the best comeback, or whatever that unattainable something was that would finally make you fit in.

    As he recounts his journey, he opens up about the pivotal role his faith has played in his life and career, and he shares his time-tested secrets to success, both on and off the field."All In" is an inspirational must-read for football fans everywhere and for anyone who has ever struggled to overcome their own 5-19 season of life.

    And like ink in water, that idea spread until it reached every corner of her being. This is the true story of Lacy’s journey into the self-destructive world of multiple eating disorders. It starts with a young and positive Lacy, trying to grapple with our culture’s body-image obsession and stay true to her riot grrrl roots. And while she initially succeeds in overcoming a nagging rumination about her body, a break up with a recovering addict starts her on a collision course with anorexia, health food obsession, and compulsive exercise addiction. At the request of her last real friend, she starts going to a twelve-step Overeaters Anonymous course, only to find that it conflicts with her punk feminist ideology.Blending bold humor, a healthy dose of self-deprecation, vulnerability, literary storytelling, and dynamic and provocative artwork by illustrator Jim Kettner, Ink in Water is an unflinching, brutally honest look into the author’s mind: how she learned to take control of her damaging thoughts, redirect her perfectionism from self-destructive behaviors into writing and art, and how she committed herself to a life of health, strength, and nourishment.

    Now, seven years later, Gloria Vanderbilt is finally able to set down the terrible events of that afternoon— to which she was a witness— in a book of overwhelming intensity, feeling, and beauty.

    writes with humor, dripping Southern charm that you can’t miss.” (The Greenville Examiner). A collection of short stories from the author of Sean of the South, and Lyla. Columnist, humorist, and novelist, Sean Dietrich, is known for his commentary on life in the American South. In his newest work, Small Towns, Labradors, Barbecue, Biscuits, Beer, and Bibles, he delivers a set of quirky tales filled with smiles and a hefty dose of heart.

    But behind the successful, glamorous career was a story that many of her friends and colleagues knew nothing about—her ongoing struggle with severe depression and alcoholism. Brampton's is a candid, tremendously honest telling of how she was finally able to "address the elephant in the room," and of a culture that sends the overriding message that people who suffer from depression are somehow responsible for their own illness. She offers readers a unique perspective of depression from the inside that is at times wrenching, but ultimately inspirational, as it charts her own coming back to life. Beyond her personal story, Brampton offers practical advice to all those affected by this illness. This book will resonate with any person whose life has been haunted by depression, at the same time offering help and understanding to those whose loved ones suffer from this debilitating condition.

    Daily they endure destructive self-talk such as “I can’t eat that or I’ll get fat” or “If I could just lose a few more pounds everything would be better.” Chronic dieters may be any shape or size but they have one thing in common: They are often left to suffer alone with an undiagnosed “sub-clinical” eating disorder. Such sub-clinical disorders include eating habits that are unusual, even unhealthy, but do not fit the technical classifications of anorexia or bulimia. Addressing the many dimension of “chronic dieting,” Life Inside the “Thin” Cage offers a wake-up call and practical steps to those who need healing. Readers will find personal stories, insights into their secret patterns and habits, reassurance that they are not alone, checklists, self-tests, and, best of all, a new road to emotional, physical, mental and spiritual freedom.

    In 2008, Hammond was struck with bipolar disorder at age 51. Just imagine: almost overnight, she flipped from being a researcher and public health consultant to a locked-ward patient. She shares everything she learned along the way about how to reclaim your own mental health and maintain stability, and does so in an accessible, readable, often humorous way.Her fearless honesty in vividly retelling events helps to demystify this much-misunderstood mental illness, and to humanize the people it affects. The book is proof that hope and recovery are possible, and a poignant salute to her family who stood by her through the pain and triumph of their shared saga. This is an essential resourcefor patients working towards recovery, for families who need insight into what it is truly like to have bipolar disorder, and for therapists, nurses, and psychiatrists. Readers and reviewers have raved: mesmerizing, captivating, riveting, compelling, elucidating, enlightening, inspiring, remarkable, deeply personal, stunningly sincere, a must-read, beautifully written, powerfully honest, a bullseye. For videos, photos and media links about the author, her family and the book, please visit www.merrylhammond.com.If you enjoyed Kay Jamison's classic 1996 memoir, "An Unquiet Mind" or Marya Hornbacher's 2009 triumph, "Madness: A Bipolar Life," you're going to devour this latest bipolar memoir! Hammond says her mission is now to fight the stigma against all forms of mental illness, in all age groups. She hopes that you'll join that undertaking once you've read her book.

    This is the hilarious and touching real-life diary she kept during that fateful year - with characters like her evil friend Bethany, Bethany's besotted boyfriend, and the boys from the grammar school up the road (who have code names like Haddock and Battered Sausage).My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary evokes a vanished time when Charles and Di are still together, the Berlin wall is up, Kylie is expected to disappear from the charts at any moment and it's £1 for a Snakebite and Black in the Vaults pub. My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary will appeal to anyone who's lived through the 1980s. But it will also strike a chord with anyone who's ever been a confused, lonely teenager who clashes with their mother, takes themselves VERY seriously and has no idea how hilarious they are.

    I thought for sure she would know what I was doing to myself. How could a mother not know the terrible things her daughter was doing?""Tara seems fine these last few days. The questions she asked me the other night scared me. But now I think she's just curious. Maybe one of her friends is having a problem with something."Mother and daughter, living in the same house, yet at times it seems as though they are on different planets. Tara, growing obsessive about the way she looks, feels her mom no longer understands her. Linda, while concerned about the changes her teenage daughter is going through, is focused on making a career for herself as a family therapist. Neither knows how to reverse the terrible path that Tara is heading down.Tara's and Linda's side-by-side diaries of this difficult time, only shared with each other years later, show both sides of their maddening ordeal and inspiring victory to keep their family together.In addition to sharing their actual diaries, Tara and Linda look back on the drama of those years to offer the wisdom and perspective that can only come with hindsight. Craig Johnson, Ph.D., an international leader in the research and treatment of eating disorders, offers useful advice and fascinating commentary on the Rios' story to inform today's families who may be going through similar situations.

    Kim Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that she spent her childhood hiding behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house, navigating between teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room—the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding. In this coming-of-age story, Kim brings to life her experience of growing up in a rat-infested home, concealing her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and of the emotional burden that ultimately led to an attempt to take her own life. And in beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents that has thrived in spite of the odds. Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where we come from and the relationships that define us—and about finding peace in the homes we make for ourselves.