Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was 9) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life.With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of 40.She speaks with warmth and candor about her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.

    But now Inukuns only exist in rumors and whispers. Until an actor-turned-fugitive named Teddy Kyle Smith had an encounter that brought Iñukuns from myth to reality. Smith was an aspiring actor with a promising career, but it all came crashing down one night in September with a gunshot, followed by a manhunt, bloodshed, and then stranger things. This story has long haunted James Dommek Jr., the great-grandson of the last of the Inupiaq storytellers. Midnight Son is his journey to who Teddy Kyle Smith was, what he did, and what he really saw. It’s a true story that takes listeners from the Alaskan wilderness to Hollywood and to the courtroom. A story that pits Inupiaq folklore against American justice in a battle over the nature of reality and the soul of the real Alaska.

    But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, and Kate Bender? The narrative we're comfortable with is one where women are the victims of violent crime-not the perpetrators. In fact, serial killers are thought to be so universally male that, in 1998, FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood infamously declared that There are no female serial killers. Inspired by Telfer's Jezebel column of the same name, Lady Killers disputes that claim and offers fourteen gruesome examples as evidence. Although largely forgotten by history, female serial killers rival their male counterparts in cunning, cruelty, and appetite. Each chapter explores the crimes and history of a different female serial killer and then proceeds to unpack her legacy and her portrayal in the media as well as the stereotypes and sexist cliches that inevitably surround her.

    At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her class at law school in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O'Connor's story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings--doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.She became the first-ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona State Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the Supreme Court, appointed by Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer's, O'Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.Women and men today will be inspired by how to be first in your own life, how to know when to fight and when to walk away, through O'Connor's example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family and believed in serving her country, who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for the women who followed her.

    These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the concept of difference—difference according to sex, race, and economic status. The title Sister Outsider finds its source in her poetry collection The Black Unicorn (1978). These poems and the essays in Sister Outsider stress Lorde's oft-stated theme of continuity, particularly of the geographical and intellectual link between Dahomey, Africa, and her emerging self.

    Part of Audible’s rapidly expanding Words + Music series, blending storytelling, music, and performance to create exceptional listening experiences, Crow’s session is marked by gorgeously stripped-down versions of the songs that made her a household name (exclusively recorded for these sessions). The tunes punctuate rich storytelling, as she dives deep into the history of her career, reexamining the personal experiences and relationships that impacted her artistic journey.“My journey is my own”, Crow says. “I mean, it's definitely not without some detours and definitely not without some hard lessons”. True to form, Crow leads us through her winding road to success - maybe more accurately defined as a series of jolting roller-coaster rides, as she recounts all the fits and starts, the feverish highs and lows, that have come to define a career now in its fourth decade. Featuring stunningly crisp, yet lo-fi renditions of eight songs including, “If It Makes You Happy”, “All I Wanna Do”, “Leaving Las Vegas”, “Strong Enough”, “My Favorite Mistake”, and George Harrison’s soulful “Beware of Darkness”, Sheryl Crow lays herself bare. From her early days in small-town Missouri where she sought salvation from her melancholy by turning to mystical rockers (Stevie Nicks and Zeppelin, most notably); to pursuing her dreams, and in quick fashion landing the spectacular gig as one of Michael Jackson’s featured solo vocalists on tour. (A career catapult that quickly became a cautionary tale.)From the crushing weight of perfectionism and loneliness, to the joys of finally finding kindred musical spirits - only to have it all crumble, just as the music was skyrocketing, the toll of her volatile ascent to stardom comes into focus. In a particularly fascinating section, she revisits the total sense of peer disconnect during the height of her records’ success as her style was painfully incongruent with the greater musical landscape at the time. This, subsequently leading to an “adoption” of sorts by an older, more simpatico class of musicians - luckily for her, they doubled as her heroes: Nicks, Keith Richards, and Dylan among them. In another poignant moment, Sheryl lets listeners in on the dysfunction and emotional reckoning that came after her well-publicized romances with Eric Clapton and a few years later Lance Armstrong.In just an hour and a half, Sheryl Crow manages to transform before our ears: from a well-known artist to human being we now know pretty damn well. That’s not easy to accomplish. And perhaps most extraordinarily, we are left with a lasting gift: beautiful songs we entered knowing become beautiful songs we now understand.

    Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn't have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn't it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it's like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies.Divided into two sections, "The Top Half" and "The Bottom Half," with cartoons scattered throughout, Altman's book takes the reader on a wild and relatable journey from head to toe—as she attempts to strike up a peace accord with our grody bits.With a combination of personal anecdotes and fascinating research, Gross Anatomy holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and body parts and shows us the naked truth: that there is greatness in our grossness.

    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.

    But just who was this remarkable woman? To John Brown, leader of the Harper's Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tubman. For the many slaves she led north to freedom, she was Moses. To the slaveholders who sought her capture, she was a thief and a trickster. To abolitionists, she was a prophet.Now, in a biography widely praised for its impeccable research and its compelling narrative, Harriet Tubman is revealed for the first time as a singular and complex character, a woman who defied simple categorization."A thrilling reading experience. It expands outward from Tubman's individual story to give a sweeping, historical vision of slavery." --NPR's Fresh Air

    In Olio Live - a very special one-night performance recorded live at the Minetta Lane Theater in February 2019 - poet Tyehimba Jess introduces listeners to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Olio. He is joined on stage by writer, editor, and Literaryswag founder Yahdon Israel, as well as a stellar cast of actors interpreting a selection of the poems from the collection. You’ll meet William "Blind" Boone, Sissieretta Jones, and a host of other characters, all based on real historical figures from the ragtime scene at the turn of the 20th century. As you listen, Jess’s poetry asks you to consider the nature of identity, performance, and ever-present history. Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Olio won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Yahdon Israel is a writer, editor, and creator of Literaryswag. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, Brooklyn Magazine, LitHub, and Poets and Writers. He is the host of the Literaryswag Book Club, and the host of LIT, a weekly web series about books and culture.

    On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most baffling murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Reenactments of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio — a hard-luck cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor — all raced to solve the crime.What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim whom the police couldn't identify with certainty, and who the defense claimed wasn't even dead. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale — a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.

    Even when we had a black president! Now that we have a new set of overlords, with President Trump at the head, wouldn’t it be nice to get a little advice on how not to get shot?"From the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump to the tragic events of Ferguson and Charlottesville, the subject of race has come to the forefront of American consciousness. Legendary satirist D. L. Hughley offers his own cutting observations on this contentious issue that continues to traumatize the nation, a wound made more painful by the ongoing comments and actions of the 45th president.Hughley uses humor to draw attention to injustice, sardonically offering advice on a number of lessons, from "How to make cops feel more comfortable while they’re handcuffing you" and "The right way to wear a hoodie" to "How to make white food, like lobster rolls" and "Ten types of white people you meet in the suburbs."Filled with illustrations and pictures that illuminate these "lessons," How Not to Get Shot is a much-needed antidote in these distressing times.

    Critics have called her "sweet, adorable, and vicious." But there is so much more to be said about Samantha Bee. For one, she's Canadian. Whatever that means. And now, she opens up for the very first time about her checkered Canadian past. With charming candor, she admits to her Lennie from "Of Mice and Men"-style love of baby animals, her teenage crime spree as one-half of a car-thieving couple (Bonnie and Clyde in Bermuda shorts and braces), and the fact that strangers seem compelled to show her their genitals. She also details her intriguing career history, which includes stints working in a frame store, at a penis clinic, and as a Japanese anime character in a touring children's show.Samantha delves into all these topics and many more in this thoroughly hilarious, unabashedly frank collection of personal essays. Whether detailing the creepiness that ensues when strangers assume that your mom is your lesbian lover, or recalling her girlhood crush on Jesus (who looked like Kris Kristofferson and sang like Kenny Loggins), Samantha turns the spotlight on her own imperfect yet highly entertaining life as relentlessly as she skewers hapless interview subjects on "The Daily Show." She shares her unique point of view on a variety of subjects as wide ranging as her deep affinity for old people, to her hatred of hot ham. It's all here, in irresistible prose that will leave you in stitches and eager for more.

    In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union—a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic ’90s movies—instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real." In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

    why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude, and needed space to step back and hit the reset button. As she spent time in each city and town on her way to Los Angeles, she mulled over the big questions -- What do I really want? What is the worst possible scenario in which I could run into my ex? How has the decision to wear my shirts tucked in been pivotal in my adulthood? In this collection of anecdotes, observations and reflections--all told in the sharp, wildly funny, and relatable voice that has endeared Abbi to critics and fans alike--readers will feel like they're in the passenger seat on a fun and, ultimately, inspiring journey. With some original illustrations by the author.