In her revealing family memoir, DeSalvo sifts through painful memories to give voice to all that remained unspoken and unresolved in her life: a mother's psychotic depression, a father's rage and violent rigidity, a sister's early depression and eventual suicide, and emerging memories of childhood incest. At times humorous and often brutally candid, DeSalvo also delves through the more recent conflicts posed by marriage, motherhood, and the crisis that started her on the path of her life's work: becoming a writer in order to excavate the meaning of her life and community.In Vertigo, Louise DeSalvo paints a striking picture of the easy freedom of the husband and fatherless world of working-class Hoboken, New Jersey, the neighborhood of her early childhood, where mothers and children had an unaccustomed say in the running of their lives while men were off defending their country, but were jolted back into submission when World War II ended. Hoboken was not a place where girls were encouraged to develop their minds, or their independent spirits, yet it is that tenement-dotted city with its pulse and energy, wonderful Italian pastry, and sidewalk roller-skating contests, and not suburban Ridgefield, where the family moves when Louise is seven, that claims Louise’s heart.Written with an honesty that is as rare as it is unsettling, Vertigo also speaks to broader truths about the impact of ethnicity, class, and gender in American life. Offering inspiration and a healthy dose of subversion, this personal story of a writer’s life is also a study of the alchemy between lived experience and creativity, and the life-transforming possibilities of this process.

    As he searches for the reason behind this sudden urge, Donaldson examines both the place where he was born and the life he’s building. The result is a hybrid—part memoir, part meditation on nostalgia, part catalog of Kentucky history and myth. Organized according to Kentucky geography, with one passage for each of the commonwealth’s 120 counties, On Homesickness examines whether we can ever return to the places we’ve called home.

    There couldn't be a better person to put together this tome than Hot Water Music's Chuck Ragan and here he's collected tales from members of the Gaslight Anthem, Rise Against, At The Drive-In and more, all of whom share their own unique perspective on travel. The road isn't always glamorous but for some of us it's in our blood. These are those stories.

    Whether he’s stalking frogs through the bogs of Tomah, Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, or sneaking into the theater to watch Saturday-afternoon Westerns, Benjamin is the kind of little kid who would have fallen in eagerly with the redoubtable Tom Sawyer.Traversing the nooks and crannies of kidhood, from ballfields to swimming holes, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked captures a time and a place in twentieth-century American life and celebrates the adventures and wanderlust that once made childhood such an exhilarating enterprise.

    Her life stripped bare, and armed with nothing but a death wish and a ton of attitude, Barbara pursues an unlikely method of coping. At the age of fifty she earns her motorcycle license, buys a Harley on eBay from two guys named Dave, and drives it alone from New York to Los Angeles on a circuitous trek loosely guided by her H.O.G. tour book and a whole lot of road whimsy. On the open highway—where she daily takes her speed to a hundred—Barbara battles physical limitations and inner demons on a journey that flows through the majestic Appalachian Mountains, the enchanting Turquoise Trail, and all along America’s iconic Route 66. She is awed by the battlefields in Gettysburg, stunned by the decadence of Graceland, and amused by a Cadillac graveyard in the middle of nowhere. She meets kind strangers, odd strangers, and a guy who pulls a gun on her for cutting him off. She is vulnerable but sassy, broken but determined to heal . . . or die trying.

    And she got one-coming at her at forty miles per hour. Hit by a car and suffering debilitating injuries, and with no health insurance, the fashionista attempts to bounce back into her (thrift store-purchased) Jimmy Choos even as she deals with short-term memory loss, stalker ambulance drivers, trying to stay vegan on food stamps, crazy judges, hot doctors, and unsympathetic government workers.Inspired by her acclaimed one-woman show, this is a bitingly funny and keenly observed account of the cracks in our medical and social welfare system and how one woman's resilience combined with a generous dollop of humor helped her fight her way to recovery.

    A critically acclaimed and prize-winning memoir

    And now, for the first time anywhere, he tells you how he does it -- and how you can, too. Making The Game -- Triple H's Approach to a Better Body is Triple H's verbal and visual blueprint for building your body. He discusses how "a Jones for bodybuilding and a love for wrestling" morphed a skinny, 135-pound fourteen-year-old into one of the biggest Superstars in World Wrestling Entertainment. But be warned -- the "Cerebral Assassin" has two words for anyone who's not serious about the craft: "Complacency sucks!" He's spent the past twenty years living by the philosophy that training results in improved strength and conditioning, self-discipline, and an ability to focus on setting goals. This book isn't for pantywaists who'd rather exercise their egos. Triple H had help along the way. He didn't get to be "that damn good" without the support of a loving family. And over the years several bodybuilders (including world-renowned trainer Charles Glass) worked with him to develop the best training regimens. Their advice, plus hardcore commitment, helped Paul Levesque survive "The Hard Way In" through Walter "Killer" Kowalski's wrestling school and become "Terra Rising" in Kowalski's International Wrestling Federation; enabled him to adjust to a difficult life on the road as "the French guy" in World Championship Wrestling; and gave "Hunter Hearst-Helmsley" the self-assurance he needed to succeed. Making The Game breaks down and demonstrates the split-training workout program Triple H has embraced to achieve new levels of success in sculpting his body. Between drilling you with reps and sets, he relates how training gave him the inner strength to shoulder the brunt of a controversial "Curtain Call" in the ring and, later, to elevate his position with Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock as one of the "Big Three" in WWE. Relive the fateful Raw events of May 2001 that left Triple H with a torn quadriceps muscle. Then you too can feel "The Triple H Burn," the series of exercises he endured through nine months of physical therapy so he could resume his wrestling career. Besides offering the lowdown with step-by-step exercises for both novice bodybuilders and those looking to radically advance their workout, Making The Game weighs in on the science behind progressive-training resistance and rest-pause techniques; the significance of exercise form over volume; the truth behind achieving "six-pack abs"; the dangers of overtraining and "skullcrushing" exercises that risk injury; and how creativity can go a long way in your workout. Triple H sees it as his mission to provide the guidelines for you to follow in the months and years ahead. And if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's succeed. It's time to stop playing The Game...and time to start Making The Game.

    No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight is a memory of his time in the iconic town, and one of the finest works of Indian non-fiction in recent years.Parimal evocatively describes his arrival, through drizzle and impenetrable fog, at a place that was at odds with the grand picture of it he had painted for himself. And his first night there was spent sleepless in a ramshackle hotel above a butcher's shop. Yet, as he tramped its roads and winding footpaths, Darjeeling grew on him. He sought out its history: a land of incomparable beauty originally inhabited by the Lepchas and other tribes; the British who took it for themselves in the mid-1800s so they could remember home; the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway--once a vital artery, now a quaint toy train--built in 1881; and the vast tea gardens with which the British replaced verdant forests to produce the fabled Orange Pekoe.In the enmeshed lives of his neighbours--of various castes, tribes, religions and cultures--lived at the measured pace of a small town, Parimal discovered a richly cosmopolitan society which endured even under threat from cynical politics and haphazard urbanization. He also found new friends: Benson, a colleague whose death from AIDS showed him the dark underbelly of the hill station; Pratap and Newton, whose homes and lives reflected the irreconcilable pulls of tradition and upward mobility; and Julia and Hemant, with whom he trekked the forests of the Singalila mountains in search of a vanished Lepcha village and a salamander long thought extinct.With empathy, and in shimmering prose, No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight effortlessly merges travel, history, literature, memory, politics and the pleasures of ennui into an unforgettable portrait of a place and its people.

    He was struck with denial, fear, depression, and anger, and now he's battling back. Graced with strong values, courage, and hard-won wisdom, he shares his insights in this powerful book on the divergent roads a life can take, and recounts how he rose to meet the challenges he's faced. Surprising, searing, and deeply personal, Climbing Higher is as honest and inspiring as its author.

    It is a candid retrospective of the extraordinary success achieved, and the prices that had to be paid.“After ‘Snowbird’ hit, I was swept up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and catapulted into a strange new universe … If I thought for a moment that I was really in control of events, I was deluded.” Anne MurrayAn unflinching self-portrait of Canada’s first great female recording artist, All of Me documents the life of Anne Murray, from her humble origins in the tragedy-plagued coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, to her arrival on the world stage. Anne recounts her story: the battles with her record companies over singles and albums; the struggle with drug- and alcohol-ridden band members; the terrible guilt and loneliness of being away from her two young children; her divorce from the man who helped launch her career, Bill Langstroth; and the deaths of two of her closest confidantes. The result is a must-read autobiography by Canada’s beloved songbird.

    Although by now, not such a green graduate, the animals and their owners keep her challenged in a way never described in the text books.

    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

    At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.

    A memoir in essay form, with the body as its central reference point.