And some people have no sense of direction, are terrified of pigeons, and get motion sickness from tying their shoes. These people are meant to stay home and eat nachos. Geraldine DeRuiter is the latter. But she won't let that stop her. Hilarious, irreverent, and heartfelt, All Over the Place chronicles the years Geraldine spent traveling the world after getting laid off from a job she loved. Those years taught her a great number of things, though the ability to read a map was not one of them. She has only a vague idea of where Russia is, but she now understands her Russian father better than ever before. She learned that what she thought was her mother's functional insanity was actually an equally incurable condition called "being Italian." She learned what it's like to travel the world with someone you already know and love -- how that person can help you make sense of things and make far-off places feel like home. She learned about unemployment and brain tumors, lost luggage and lost opportunities, and just getting lost in countless terminals and cabs and hotel lobbies across the globe. And she learned that sometimes you can find yourself exactly where you need to be -- even if you aren't quite sure where you are.

    An avid gun collector yet an anti-war activist, a popular economics professor and a wife-swapping nudist, a leftist and a lifelong fan of the British Empire who would occasionally don an authentic pith helmet and imitate Michael Caine’s performance as the heroic Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in the bloody war film Zulu, he was a man who could knock his young son down the stairs one day and the next cry about putting the family’s aged dog to sleep. Such is the contradictory figure at the center of this astonishingly candid and shocking memoir. As a young adult, Birkenhead reacted to his volatile childhood by forgetting its worst moments. He adopted all the trappings of normalcy, threw himself into a career as an actor, landing parts in Broadway plays like Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, both by Neil Simon, and found himself often playing characters who were angry at their fathers. Yet he discovered that he was sleepwalking through life, on occasion falling into rages that reminded him of his father. Then at thirty-one, eleven years after his parents’ divorce, Birkenhead told his mother about his recurring dream of flying down the stairs of their house as a young boy. She revealed that it wasn’t a dream, but a memory from his early childhood of being carried rapidly down the stairs by his mom after his father had pointed a gun at them. The revelation about the dream sparked the painful yet necessary process of examining his childhood and of ultimately moving beyond it, forcing Birkenhead to finally confront his father in a way that released him and his family from this complicated legacy. Combining the terror and wit of Running with Scissors, the poignancy and sense of place of The Tender Bar, with the sparkling prose of Oh the Glory of It All, Gonville is light on its feet even as it deals in the darkest of family tales. A harrowing and often humorous story of a son coming to terms with his alternately charming, cruel, generous, and violent father.

    At ten she was a caregiver to her dying mother. As an adolescent, an All-Star high school, college, and professional softball player. As a young adult, a fitness competition winner, beauty pageant contestant, and model. And as a grown woman, a high-achieving Lieutenant in the Marines, in charge of an entire platoon while deployed in Iraq.Meanwhile, Theresa was battling bulimia nervosa, an internal struggle which ultimately cut short her military service when she was voluntarily evacuated from combat. Theresa’s journey to wellness required the bravery to ask for help, to take care of herself first, and abandon the idea of “perfect.” In Warrior, she lays bare all of these lives in intimate and vivid detail, examining extremely personal and sometime painful moments and how, by finally accepting the help of others, she learned to make herself whole. From growing up in a log cabin outside Seattle to facing down the enemy in Iraq, Theresa’s journey demonstrates that good health and happiness is a daily, intentional act that requires persistence and commitment.Theresa hopes that through sharing her story, she will help inspire others to empower themselves, embrace their inner warrior and re-define strength. Startling and funny, terrifying and triumphant, heartbreaking and inspirational, Warrior is at heart a story of perseverance and success—of a determined woman who is model for everyone struggling to conquer their own demons. Theresa shows that asking for help can be an act of courage, and that we are stronger than we think when faced with seemingly impossible odds.

    Through ten cleverly constructed essays, Ison explores how a lifetime of movie-watching has, for better or worse, taught her how to navigate the world and how to grapple with issues of career, family, faith, illness, sex, and love.Cinema is a universal cultural experience, one that floods our senses with images and sounds, a powerful force that influences our perspective on the world around us. Ison discusses the universal aspects of film as she makes them personal, looking at how certain films across time shaped and molded who she has become. Drawing on a wide ranging catalog of films, both cult and classic, popular and art-house, Reeling Through Life examines how cinema shapes our views on how to make love, how to deal with mental illness, how to be Jewish, how to be a woman, how to be a drunk, and how to die with style.Rather than being a means of escape or object of mere entertainment, Ison posits that cinema is a more engaging form of art, a way to slip into other identities and inhabit other realities. A way to orient oneself into the world. Reeling Though Life is a compelling look at one popular art form and how it has influenced our identities in provocative and important ways.

    Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn, Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homes—and of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Palmer's journey takes her from the ruins of kudzu-covered, airport-owned ghost towns to carefully preserved cemeteries wedged between the runways; into awkward confrontations with airport planners, developers, and even her own parents. Along the way, Palmer becomes an amateur detective, an urban historian, and a mother. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport’s fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for My Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there’s little home left.

    He never left. With an assortment of birds, dogs, snakes, and books, he took up residence in a ramshackle two-story house along US 60 and set out to live in the way of country people. "Querencia"--the Zen-like Spanish term means something like the tiny pocket of one's inner life where one is truly at home--details a decade of life there. Throughout the early pages of his memoir, Stephen finds himself tested by the locals for his knowledge of raptor birds, of snakes, of dogs. When he begins to pass the tests, his transformation is complete, earning him a home, a place in the heart. Querencia offers a fine brief on rural living, alternately reveling in country matters and acknowledging the difficulties involved in such exercises as luring cows home from the mountain wilderness into which they've strayed while steering clear of venomous reptiles and combative bull elk. It's a treasure. --Greg McNamee

    A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz, and the National Enquirer, Sedaris’s collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.David Sedaris made his debut on NPR’s Morning Edition with “SantaLand Diaries”, recounting his strange-but-true experiences as an elf at Macy’s, and soon became one of the show’s most popular commentators. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behavior. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life, and anything can happen.Parade --Music for lovers --The last you'll hear from me --My manuscript --Firestone --We get along --Glen's homophobia newsletter vol. 3, no. 2 --Don's story --Season's greeting to our friends and family!!! --Jamboree --After Malison --Barrel fever --Diary of a smoker --Giantess --The curly kind --SantaLand diaries

    Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help Maya on her quest to be popular? The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise—meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humor and grace, Maya’s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.

    But in this extraordinary autobiography, Shania reveals that she is so much more. She is Eilleen Twain, one of five children born into poverty in rural Canada, where her family often didn't have enough food to send her to school with lunch. She's the teenage girl who helped her mother and young siblings escape to a battered woman's shelter to put an end to the domestic violence in her family home. And she's the courageous twenty-two-year-old who sacrificed to keep her younger siblings together after her parents were tragically killed in a car accident.Shania Twain's life has evolved from a series of pivotal moments, and in unflinching, heartbreaking prose, Shania spares no details as she takes us through the events that have made her who she is. She recounts her difficult childhood, her parents' sudden death and its painful aftermath, her dramatic rise to stardom, her devastating betrayal by a trusted friend, and her joyful marriage to the love of her life. From these moments, she offers profound, moving insights into families, personal tragedies, making sense of one's life, and the process of healing. Shania Twain is a singular, remarkable woman who has faced enormous odds and downfalls, and her extraordinary story will provide wisdom, inspiration, and hope for almost anyone.

    Bang Bang’s work has taken him across the country and around the globe, to any and every locale a celebrity client may request. From Rihanna’s controversial gun tattoos, to inking Justin Bieber at 40,000 feet—a record—each of Bang Bang’s tattoos comes with its own epic story. Now, this creative genius invites readers along on his adventures, sharing amazing tales from his life and career.Named for the duel guns tattooed on his neck, Bang Bang began his career in his mom’s tiny Delaware kitchen. Self-taught, he practiced with a kit from an art store before eventually moving to New York. Over the past decade, Bang Bang’s talent and vision propelled his rise into the spotlight, and today, his fresh, accessible aesthetic draws men and women, tattoo vets and novices alike eager to experience his ultra-fluid and realistic designs created with the finest needles and inks. Bang Bang’s visual style transcends the clichés of the tattoo world; he creates a truly different form of art.Filled with engaging personal stories and striking photographs that bring his bold, vibrant designs into detail, Bang Bang is a must-have for Bang Bang fans and tattoo lovers everywhere.

    Doing so would be considered "unethical" and "a fireable offense." Lucky for you, ethics was never my strong suit.44 Chapters About 4 Men is a laugh-out-loud funny and brutally honest look at female sexuality, as told through the razor-sharp lens of domesticated bad girl BB Easton. No one and nothing is off limits as BB revisits the ex-boyfriends—a sadistic tattoo artist, a punk rock parolee, and a heavy metal bass player—that led her to finally find true love with a straight-laced, drop-dead-gorgeous . . . accountant. After settling down and starting a family with her perfectly vanilla "husbot," Ken, BB finds herself longing for the reckless passion she had in her youth. She begins to write about these escapades in a secret journal, just for fun, but when Ken starts to act out the words on the pages, BB realizes that she might have stumbled upon the holy grail of behavior modification techniques. The psychological dance that ensues is nothing short of hilarious as BB wields her journal like a blowtorch, trying to light a fire under her cold, distant partner. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but in the end, BB learns that the man she was trying so hard to change was perfect for her all along.

    matchmaker and her daily struggles to keep her self-esteem from imploding in a town where looks are everything and money talks. From juggling the demands of an insensitive boss… to the ups and downs of her own marriage to a Latin husband who doesn’t think that she is “domestic” enough, Marla writes with charm and self-effacement about the universal struggles that all women face in their lives. Readers will laugh, cringe and cry as they journey with her through outrageous stories about the indignities of dating in Los Angeles, dealing with overblown egos, vicariously hobnobbing with celebrities, and navigating the wannabe-land of Beverly Hills. In a city where perfection is almost a prerequisite, even Marla can’t help but run for the Botox every once in a while.

    DIVORCER is a collection of seven harrowing and hyperprecise short stories about ruinous relationships and their aftershocks.

    Conley, the first female tenured professor of neurosurgery in the country, made headline news when she resigned from Stanford University to protest the medical school's unabashed gender discrimination. In this controversial, forthright memoir, Conley portrays the world of academic medicine in which women are still considered inferior; she also explains why, as a consequence, the research and treatment of women's health problems lag far behind those of men. In assessing why women's careers and psyches are suffering, Conley provides a first-person look into what it is like to be an accomplished woman within this restrictive medical world, offering invaluable advice to patients and future doctors alike.

    After the birth of their first son, she and her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the star of The Walking Dead, decided to make a major change: they bought a working farm in Rhinebeck, New York, and began a new chapter in their lives.The Rural Diaries chronicles her inspiring story of farm life: chopping wood, making dandelion wine, building chicken coops. Burton looks back at her transition from urban to country living—discovering how to manage a farm while raising her son and making friends with her new neighbors. She mixes charming stories of learning to raise alpacas and buying and revitalizing the town’s beloved candy store, Samuel’s Sweet Shop, with raw observations on the ups and downs of marriage and her struggles with secondary infertility. Burton also includes delicious recipes that can be made with fresh ingredients at home, as well as home renovation and gardening tips.Burton’s charisma, wide eyed attitude, and fortitude—both internal and physical—propels this moving story of transformation and self-discovery. The Rural Diaries honors the values and lifestyle of small-town America and offers inspiration for anyone longing to embark on their own unconventional journey.