The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for storytelling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. At the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives—and the country that shaped and nourished them—with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.

‘Locked-in syndrome: paralysed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.’

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless, but entirely conscious, trapped by what doctors call ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he began dictating this remarkable story, painstakingly spelling it out letter by letter.

His book offers a haunting, harrowing look inside the cruel prison of locked-in syndrome, but it is also a triumph of the human spirit.

Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs: Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting, and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him—and on the reader.

Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off three wives: the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs. Panofsky; and finally Miriam, who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris, and London, his outrageous exploits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback—the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.

Moab Is My Washpot is a number one bestseller in Britain, written by the astonishingly frank, funny, and wise Stephen Fry. This memoir is the book that fans everywhere have been eagerly waiting for.

Stephen Fry, known for his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, has seen his American profile grow steadily, especially after his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action.

Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar. Now, he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, Fry survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction, and imprisonment.

By the age of eighteen, Fry was ready to start over in a world where he had always felt like a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry emerges as a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy, and real devotion.

'Tuesdays with Morrie' is a poignant memoir by Mitch Albom that recounts the time spent with his former sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, during the final stages of Schwartz's battle with ALS. This book captures the essence of their weekly meetings, every Tuesday, where Morrie imparted wisdom on various aspects of life.

Albom presents Morrie's insights on the importance of love, the value of forgiveness, and the significance of forging one's own culture against the societal currents. These lessons are presented as a final 'class' from Morrie, offering guidance on how to live a meaningful life.

The author delves into the profound impact of these conversations on his life, as Morrie's teachings helped him understand the virtues of aging and the necessity to embrace vulnerability. Mitch Albom shares these invaluable lessons with readers, allowing them to benefit from Morrie's wisdom and the transformative power of their Tuesdays together.

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion--and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain.

In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college--and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self-realization and professional success.

The Complete Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, is a profound narrative that recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe. This volume includes both Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II, presenting the complete story.

Through the unique medium of cartoons—with Nazis depicted as cats and Jews as mice—Spiegelman captures the everyday reality of fear and survival during the Holocaust. This artistic choice not only shocks readers out of any sense of familiarity but also draws them closer to the harrowing heart of the Holocaust.

More than just a tale of survival, Maus is also an exploration of the author's complex relationship with his father. The narrative weaves together Vladek's harrowing story with the author's own struggles, framing a life of small arguments and unhappy visits against the backdrop of a larger historical atrocity. It is a story that extends beyond Vladek to all the children who bear the legacy of their parents' traumas.

Maus is not only a personal account of survival but also a broader examination of the impact of history on subsequent generations. It is an essential work that studies the traces of history and its enduring significance.

An Unquiet Mind is a deeply powerful memoir about bipolar illness that has both transformed and saved lives. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness, has also experienced it firsthand.

Throughout her life, even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients. Her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide.

In this memoir, Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.

Angela's Ashes begins with a stark reflection: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Thus starts the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, struggles to provide for her children as Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and his wages usually end up at the pub.

Despite Malachy's flaws—his exasperating nature and irresponsibility—he instills in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can offer: a story. Frank becomes enthralled with his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Enduring poverty, near-starvation, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, Frank's narrative is one of resilience and survival, told with eloquence, exuberance, and a remarkable capacity for forgiveness. His story is one that touches on the universal truths of the human spirit, underscored by a persistent sense of humor and compassion.

This book was first published in 1898 in a highly edited version and quickly became a modern spiritual classic, read by millions and translated into over fifty-five languages. John Clarke's acclaimed translation, first published in 1975, is now accepted as the standard throughout the English-speaking world.

Two and a half years before her death in 1897 at the age of 24, Thérèse Martin began writing down her childhood memories at the request of her blood sisters in the Lisieux Carmel. Few could have guessed the eventual outcome. Yet, this "story of my soul" became a beacon of confidence and love, the "little way," and abandonment to God's merciful love. Discover her "mission" in the church and world today.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography by C.S. Lewis that describes his conversion to Christianity. Unlike typical autobiographies, this book contains less detail about specific events because Lewis's primary aim was not historical documentation. Instead, he sought to identify and describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of, and consequent search for, the phenomenon he labeled "Joy." This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, or longing.

Although the book is not devoid of information about Lewis's life, the principal theme is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good and so high up that it couldn't be explained with words. Throughout his life, he was struck with "stabs of joy" and finally finds what it's for at the end.

Lewis recounts his early years with a mix of amusement and pain, including his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. He described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" but defended the practice as "the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in."

The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism and then from theism to Christianity, ultimately discovering the true nature and purpose of Joy and its place in his life.

It is important to note that the book is not connected with his unexpected marriage later in life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking that he'd really been "Surprised by Joy."

The title also alludes to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy - Impatient As The Wind," which relates an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

Dave Pelzer's remarkable journey from a child who lived in terror of his unstable, violently unpredictable mother's every move, to his emergence as an inspiration the world over is a remarkable tale of survival and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Dave Pelzer's three volumes of memoirs - A Child Called 'It', The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave - brought this story of courage and triumph against all odds to the world, becoming global bestsellers.

My Story brings these volumes together, following Dave from a childhood spent in fear, his tempestuous teenage years haunted by the spectre of his mother, through to his adulthood, and his great achievement of not only understanding and reconciling the story of his own life, but his dedication to helping others overcome similar adversity.

It is a remarkable story of courage and survival, already embraced by millions and destined to inspire millions more.

A Child Called "It" is a memoir by Dave Pelzer that recounts the harrowing details of his childhood, marked by extreme abuse at the hands of his alcoholic mother. The story is a testament to one child's resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. Dave's mother subjected him to a series of tortuous and unpredictable games that almost cost him his life. Stripped of his identity, he was regarded not as her son, but as a slave, and he was referred to as an "it" rather than a boy.

With his bed being an old army cot in the basement and his clothes nothing but tattered rags, Dave's existence was a living nightmare. Food was a luxury, often just spoiled scraps that even dogs would refuse. Isolated and alone, Dave's dreams and determination to find a loving family kept him alive. This memoir is not just a tale of suffering, but also a story about the power of hope and the will to survive.

Desolation Angels is a vivid, semi-autobiographical novel by the renowned Beat Generation author, Jack Kerouac. This book is part of his celebrated Duluoz Legend series.

Kerouac takes us on a journey through a key year of his life, starting from his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state. The story follows his fictional self, Jack Duluoz, as he transitions from the isolation of the mountains to the vibrant life of bars, jazz clubs, and parties in San Francisco.

The novel captures Kerouac's travels across the world, from Mexico City to New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London, in the company of his thinly disguised Beat cohorts like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs. Through their poetry, parties, mountain vigils, and spiritual contemplation, Kerouac presents a tale filled with energy and humanity.

Desolation Angels reflects Kerouac's own psychological struggles and his disillusionment with the Buddhist philosophy he once embraced. It’s a story about living, traveling, adventuring, and embracing life without regrets.

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod is an exhilarating tale of endurance and adventure. Join Gary Paulsen and his team of dogs as they face the brutal challenges of the Iditarod race. This gripping story immerses you in a world where snowstorms, frostbite, and dogfights are just the beginning.

Experience the thrill of moose attacks, the struggle against sleeplessness, and the surreal nature of hallucinations as Paulsen pushes himself and his dogs to their limits. This journey is filled with moments of humor, unexpected camaraderie, and the relentless push to go on.

Winterdance is not just a story about a race; it's a testament to the bond between humans and animals, and the sheer willpower required to survive in the harshest conditions.

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories."

Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors - tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother's stories with stories of her own, engaging her family's past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present.

In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

Ecce Homo is an extraordinary autobiography penned by the renowned philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in late 1888, just weeks before his final descent into madness. This remarkable work stands as one of the most intriguing and bizarre examples of the genre ever written.

In this compelling narrative, Nietzsche provides a profound exploration of his life, philosophical journey, and intellectual development. He examines the heroes he has identified with, struggled against, and ultimately overcome, including Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, and Christ. Through this examination, Nietzsche predicts the cataclysmic impact of his forthcoming revelation of all values.

Both self-celebrating and self-mocking, penetrating and strange, Ecce Homo offers the final, definitive expression of Nietzsche's main beliefs and serves as his last testament.

This essential reading challenges traditional morality, encourages the establishment of autonomy, and promotes a commitment to creativity.

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories like Scheherazade. In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century."

In the spring of 1983, Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by.

One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.

Darkness Visible tells the story of William Styron's recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. In the summer of 1985, Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.

His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.”

When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Her tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps-with the help of her inspired teacher, Anne Sullivan-is one of the great stories of human courage and dedication. In this classic autobiography, first published in 1903, Miss Keller recounts the first 22 years of her life, including the magical moment at the water pump when, recognizing the connection between the word "water" and the cold liquid flowing over her hand, she realized that objects had names. Subsequent experiences were equally noteworthy: her joy at eventually learning to speak, her friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edward Everett Hale and other notables, her education at Radcliffe (from which she graduated cum laude), and-underlying all-her extraordinary relationship with Miss Sullivan, who showed a remarkable genius for communicating with her eager and quick-to-learn pupil.

A woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder reveals her harrowing journey from abuse to recovery in this #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography written by her own multiple personalities.

Successful, happily married Truddi Chase began therapy hoping to find the reasons behind her extreme anxiety, mood swings, and periodic blackouts. What emerged from her sessions was terrifying: Truddi’s mind and body were inhabited by the Troops—ninety-two individual voices that emerged to shield her from her traumatizing childhood.

For years the Troops created a world where she could hide from the pain of the ritualized sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her own stepfather—abuse that began when she was only two years old. It was a past that Truddi didn’t even know existed, until she and her therapist took a journey to where the nightmare began...

Written by the Troops themselves, When Rabbit Howls is told by the very alter-egos who stayed with Truddi Chase, watched over her, and protected her. What they reveal is a spellbinding descent into a personal hell—and an ultimate, triumphant deliverance for the woman they became.

Desert Solitaire is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.

Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.

In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.

Fully corrected, this edition also includes Jung's VII Sermones ad Mortuos.

El libro de los abrazos es una síntesis perfecta del imaginario más inspirado de su autor. Celebraciones, sucedidos, profecías, crónicas, sueños, memorias y desmemorias, deliciosos relatos breves en los que hasta las paredes hablan.

Un libro ilustrado por partida doble: a la mirada luminosa de Galeano se suman sus grabados.

“Lea una historia por día y será usted feliz la mitad del año. Lea una historia por día y estará usted triste la otra mitad. Cada página es tan hermosa como el libro.” (Koos Hageraats, HP/De Tijd, Holanda.)

An American Childhood is the electrifying memoir of the wide-eyed and unconventional upbringing that influenced the lifetime love of nature and the stunning writing career of Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard. From her mother's boundless energy to her father's low-budget horror movies, jokes, and lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away, the events of Dillard's 1950s Pittsburgh childhood loom larger than life.

An American Childhood fizzes with playful observations and sparkling prose, illuminating the seemingly ordinary and yet always thrilling, dizzying moments of a childhood and adolescence lived fearlessly. This poignant and vivid memoir captures the hearts of readers across the country, resonating with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.

In August 1966, a group of Red Guards ransacked the home of Nien Cheng. Her background made her an obvious target for the fanatics of the Cultural Revolution: educated in London, the widow of an official of Chiang Kai-Shek's regime, and an employee of Shell Oil, Nien Cheng enjoyed comforts that few of her compatriots could afford.

When she refused to confess that any of this made her an enemy of the state, she was placed in solitary confinement, where she would remain for more than six years. "Life and Death in Shanghai" is the powerful story of Nien Cheng's imprisonment, of the deprivation she endured, of her heroic resistance, and of her quest for justice when she was released.

It is the story, too, of a country torn apart by the savage fight for power Mao Tse-tung launched in his campaign to topple party moderates. An incisive, rare personal account of a terrifying chapter in twentieth-century history, "Life and Death in Shanghai" is also an astounding portrait of one woman's courage.

Iron and Silk captures the essence of post-cultural revolution China through the eyes of a young American English teacher. Mark Salzman takes us on a journey filled with adventure, cultural exploration, and personal growth.

Through his unique shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship with China's foremost martial arts teacher, Salzman not only learns the art of martial combat but also gains profound insights into the rich tapestry of Chinese tradition and philosophy.

This memoir is a compelling blend of humor, wisdom, and poignant moments that reflect the transformative power of cross-cultural exchanges.

The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth.In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit.

The Solace of Open Spaces is a collection of transcendent, lyrical essays on life in the American West, capturing both its otherworldly beauty and its cruelty. Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make documentaries when her partner died. She stayed on, finding she couldn’t leave.

This book is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists.

Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning”, Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us.

A Fortunate Life is the extraordinary life story of an ordinary man, Albert Facey. He lived with simple honesty, compassion, and courage. Starting as a parentless boy who began work at the age of eight on the rough West Australian frontier, Facey faced numerous challenges. He struggled as an itinerant rural worker and survived the gore of Gallipoli. He endured the loss of his farm during the Depression, the tragic death of his son in World War II, and the passing of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years together. Yet, despite these hardships, he felt that his life was fortunate.

Facey's life story, published when he was eighty-seven, has inspired many as a play, a television series, and a book that has sold over half a million copies. It is a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that transforms a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God. It is as penetrating and powerful as The Diary Of Anne Frank, awakening the shocking memory of evil at its absolute. This unforgettable narrative carries with it a poignant message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

The heartbreaking, iconic true story of an abandoned little boy’s horrific journey through the American foster care system. On a misty evening in Brooklyn, Jennings Michael Burch’s mother, too sick to care for him, left her eight-year-old son at an orphanage with the words, “I’ll be right back.” She wasn’t. Shuttled through a bleak series of foster homes, orphanages, and institutions, Jennings never remained in any of them long enough to make a friend. Instead, he clung to a tattered stuffed animal named Doggie, his sole source of comfort in a frightening world.

Here, in his own words, Jennings Michael Burch reveals the abuse and neglect he experienced during his lost childhood. But while his experiences are both shocking and devastating, his story is ultimately one of hope—the triumphant tale of a forgotten child who somehow found the courage to reach out for love, and found it waiting for him.

Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.

Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her life.

Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page, revealing the evolution of a strong and remarkable character.

Borstal Boy is a miracle of autobiography and prison literature that begins with a gripping scene:

"Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs: 'Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart, Boy, there's two gentlemen here to see you.' I knew by the screeches of her that the gentlemen were not calling to inquire after my health . . . I grabbed my suitcase, containing Pot. Chlor., Sulph Ac, gelignite, detonators, electrical and ignition, and the rest of my Sinn Fein conjurer's outfit, and carried it to the window . . ."

The men were, of course, the police, and seventeen-year-old Behan. He spent three years as a prisoner in England, primarily in Borstal (reform school), and was then expelled to his homeland, a changed but hardly defeated rebel.

Once banned in the Irish Republic, Borstal Boy is both a riveting self-portrait and a clear look into the problems, passions, and heartbreak of Ireland.

The third volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series, All Things Wise and Wonderful continues the delightful memoirs of Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriot. In this volume, readers are treated to another dose of Herriot's humor, insight, and wisdom.

In the midst of World War II, James is training for the Royal Air Force, while going home to Yorkshire whenever possible to see his very pregnant wife, Helen. Musing on past adventures through the dales, visiting with old friends, and introducing scores of new and amusing characters--animal and human alike--Herriot enthralls with his uncanny ability to spin a most engaging and heartfelt yarn.

Millions of readers have delighted in the wonderful storytelling and everyday miracles of James Herriot in the over thirty years since his delightful animal stories were first introduced to the world.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol is a loosely formed autobiography by the enigmatic Andy Warhol. Told with his trademark blend of irony and detachment, this compelling memoir offers riffs and reflections on various aspects of life.

Warhol shares his thoughts on love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, and success. He also delves into his experiences in New York, America, and his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The narrative captures his good times and bad in New York, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and his life among celebrities.

Discover the world of Andy Warhol through his own words, as he invites readers to experience his unique perspective on life and art.

Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff's delightful travelogue about her "bucket list" trip to London.

When devoted Anglophile Helene Hanff is invited to London for the English publication of 84, Charing Cross Road—in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller who became a dear friend—she can hardly believe her luck. Frank is no longer alive, but his widow and daughter, along with enthusiastic British fans from all walks of life, embrace Helene as an honored guest.

Eager hosts, including a famous actress and a retired colonel, sweep her up in a whirlwind of plays and dinners, trips to Harrod's, and wild jaunts to their favorite corners of the countryside. A New Yorker who isn't afraid to speak her mind, Helene Hanff delivers an outsider's funny yet fabulous portrait of idiosyncratic Britain at its best.

And whether she is walking across the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to tread, visiting Windsor Castle, or telling a British barman how to make a real American martini, Helene always wears her heart on her sleeve. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is not only a witty account of two different worlds colliding but also a love letter to England and its literary heritage—and a celebration of the written word's power to sustain us, transport us, and unite us.

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall is Volume One of Spike Milligan's outrageous, hilarious, and legendary War Memoirs. "At Victoria station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked 'This is your enemy'. I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train . . ."

In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitis, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway').

Filled with bathos, pathos, and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.

The classic multimillion copy bestseller

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For over forty years, generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation. This work exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society.

Drawing on his own experiences, Solzhenitsyn reveals with torrential narrative and dramatic power the entire apparatus of Soviet repression. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims, we encounter the secret police operations, the labor camps, and the prisons. The uprooting or extermination of whole populations is also depicted.

Yet we also witness astounding moral courage and the incorruptibility with which individuals or scattered groups, all defenseless, endured brutality and degradation. Solzhenitsyn's genius has transmuted this grisly indictment into a literary miracle.

Twenty-five years ago, a volume of memoirs by an unknown Scottish veterinarian was first published--All Creatures Great and Small. Within a year, the book had become recognized as a masterpiece. It went on to sell millions of copies and began the marvelous series of books, beloved of readers all over the world, which have so far sold over 20 million copies in English alone. Here, for the first time, the first two books in this series are being published together.

These pages, now as then, are full of humor, warmth, pathos, drama, and James Herriot's unique and richly justified love of life. His journeys across the Yorkshire dales, his encounters with humans and dogs, cows and kittens, are illuminated by his infinite fascination and affection, and rendered with all the infectious joy of a born storyteller.

Whether struggling mightily to position a calf for birthing, or comforting a lonely old man whose beloved dog and only companion has died, Herriot's heartwarming and often hilarious stories perfectly depict the wonderful relationship between man and animal. His wonderful stories make us laugh and cry, as we marvel at the everyday miracles he creates.

This unusual fictional memoir - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-outs of two great cities. The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and of society.

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is a superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir. It offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.

Beauvoir vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time in France.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished.

Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose.

He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contemptible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in The Periodic Table and The Wrench, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him.

He was himself a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known.