Collection: Biography & Memoir

REGIONAL BESTSELLER

Now a documentary narrated by Common, produced by Grant Hill, Dwyane Wade, and 9th Wonder, from filmmaker Mary Mazzio

The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-Black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives.

Growing up on Chicago's Westside in the 90's, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs, the hallways of his apartment complex are haunted by drug addicts he calls "zombies" with strung out arms, clutching at him as he passes by. His mother is a recovering addict, and his three siblings all sleep in a one room apartment, a small infantry against the war zone on the street below.

Arshay keeps to himself, preferring to write poetry about the girl he has a crush on, and spends his school days in the home-ec kitchen dreaming of becoming a chef. And then one day as he's walking out of school he notices a boat in the school lunchroom, and a poster that reads "Join the Crew Team".

Having no idea what the sport of crew is, Arshay decides to take a chance. This decision to join is one that will forever change his life, and those of his fellow teammates. As Arshay and his teammates begin to come together to learn how to row--many never having been in water before--the sport takes them from the mean streets of Chicago, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. But Arshay and his teammates face adversity at every turn, from racism, gang violence, and a sport that has never seen anyone like them before.

A Most Beautiful Thing is the inspiring true story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family, and forever change a sport and their lives for the better.

The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages: A unique supernatural detective story.

For a period of two years in the 1980s, Ken Webster found himself in the extraordinary position of corresponding directly with an individual who said they had lived on the site of his own cottage four centuries earlier. The correspondence began with messages left on his home computer on the kitchen table, and ended with communications scrawled directly onto paper. Fully prepared for some form of elaborate hoax, Webster found to his consternation that the language of the messages tallied precisely with 16th century English usage.

The Vertical Plane is a riveting personal experience of an inexplicable fault in the fabric of time - and a moving account of a the.relationships mediated across four hundred years.

This is the Second Edition with additional material and further thoughts by the author, after thirty-six years. All involved in the experience are still, to this day, trying to make sense of what happened back in 1984.

Between bodies and language. Between artist and survivor. Between aquí y allá. Straddling sacred spaces, Chicanx writer Michelle Otero claims deep roots in a mestiza landscape. Through memory, poems, dreams, and letters, Vessels: A Memoir of Borders is a mythical journey celebrating "Herencia" and "Ritual" as the presence of the past-her own as well as that of her ancestors. She evokes a deep sense of intentional healing while embracing and disrupting relationships. Recounting the vital lessons of her traumas with an open heart, she shapes a profound memoir as an offering for us to witness our own prayers.

--Richard Yañez, author of El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border

Do you think you're the ultimate Green Bay Packers superfan?

Do you have a buddy who bleeds green and gold for the Pack?

Do you want to learn about the history of your favorite fan-owned NFL franchise?

Even if that doesn't describe you, The Ultimate Green Bay Trivia Book is the best book to learn about the storied history of the Green Bay Packers. This trivia book is packed with interesting facts about the Packers from cover to cover, taking you from the playing fields of Wisconsin to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

In this book, you'll discover the answer to:

• What was the original name of historic Lambeau Field?
• Who was the first black quarterback to start for Green Bay?
• Who was the first NFL player to rush for 1,000 yards in each of his first three seasons?
• Which Packers linebacker was offered a contract to play pro baseball?
• Who was the first player to return an interception for a touchdown in the Super Bowl?

Whether you are a Packers fanatic hungry for more information about the team, an NFL superfan craving knowledge about one of the most storied teams in the league, or just someone who enjoys learning new, interesting facts to learn new things, this book is right up your alley. You will not be disappointed when reading about the fascinating history of the Green Bay Packers, so just crack open the book, sit back, relax, and enjoy the wave of knowledge.

The award-winning and bestselling classic memoir about a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles, now featuring a new introduction by the author.

Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, hailed as a New York Times notable book, and read by hundreds of thousands, Always Running is the searing true story of one man's life in a Chicano gang--and his heroic struggle to free himself from its grip.

By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests and then watched with increasing fear as gang life claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation.

Achieving success as an award-winning poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more--until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants.

At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

For readers of My Dark Places and I'll Be Gone in the Dark, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman's search for identity alongside her family's decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted--and murdered--her mother

Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.

In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp--from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding its way into her own fraught adolescence. In the process of both, she reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be--a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim--what a "true" victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.

Told fearlessly and poetically, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling.

Introduce your little ones in English and Spanish to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, known together as the Elephant and the Dove.

Who's your other half, your media naranja?

Medias naranjas: Diego & Frida will introduce your little ones to two of Mexico's iconic figures and the friendship that united them. Muralist Diego Rivera and artist Frida Kahlo were each other's muses and peculiar halves. This iconic, creative couple has left the art world ablaze with their murals, paintings and love stories. They will be forever known by their nicknames, of the Elephant and the Dove.

Parents will adore this bilingual English-Spanish hardcover as it introduces little ones to the iconic artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and the lasting impact they left in Mexico and beyond!

The New York Times bestselling memoir from the legendary Gucci Mane spares no detail in this "cautionary tale that ends in triumph" (GQ).

For the first time Gucci Mane tells his extraordinary story in his own words. It is "as wild, unpredictable, and fascinating as the man himself" (Complex).

The platinum-selling recording artist began writing his remarkable autobiography in a federal maximum security prison. Released in 2016, he emerged radically transformed. He was sober, smiling, focused, and positive--a far cry from the Gucci Mane of years past.

A critically acclaimed classic, The Autobiography of Gucci Mane "provides incredible insight into one of the most influential rappers of the last decade, detailing a volatile and fascinating life...By the end, every reader will have a greater understanding of Gucci Mane, the man and the musician" (Pitchfork).

"[Smith's] slim collection of essays captures this peculiar moment with startling clarity. . . . The personal and political intermingle for a powerful indictment of America's social systems." --TIME, The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020

"While quarantined amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith penned six dazzling, trenchant essays burrowing deep into our contemporary culture of disease and upheaval and reflecting on what was 'once necessary' that now 'appears inessential . . .'" --O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Books of 2020

"Smith does more than illuminate what we're going through right now. She offers a model of how to think ourselves through a fraught historical moment without getting hysterical or sanctimonious, without losing our compassion or our appreciation for what's good in other people. She teaches us how to be better at being human." --John Powers, Fresh Air

A New York Times Bestseller

Deeply personal and powerfully moving, a short and timely series of reflective essays by one of the most clear-sighted and essential writers of our time.

Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality--or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?

Suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these extraordinary times, Intimations is a slim, suggestive volume with a wide scope, in which Zadie Smith clears a generous space for thought, open enough for each reader to reflect on what has happened--and what should come next.

The author will donate her royalties from the sale of Intimations to charity.

How did Ben Franklin become an outspoken leader of the American Revolution? Learn all about it in seven (not-so-easy) steps in this humorous, accessible middle-grade chapter book that focuses on Ben's political awakening.

Famous founding father Benjamin Franklin was a proud subject of the British Empire--until he wasn't. It took nearly seventy years and seven not-so-easy steps to turn Benjamin Franklin from a loyal British subject to a British traitor--and a fired-up American revolutionary.

In this light, whimsical narrative, young readers learn how Franklin came to be a rebel, beginning with his childhood lesson in street smarts when he buys a whistle at an inflated price. Franklin is a defiant boy who runs away from his apprenticeship, and while he becomes a deep thinker, a brilliant scientist, and a persuasive writer when he grows up, he never loses that spark. As a community leader who tries his best to promote peace and unity both between the colonies and with Great Britain, he becomes more and more convinced that independence for the American colonies is the way forward.

Illustrated throughout with art by noted New Yorker cartoonist and illustrator John O'Brien and sprinkled with quotations from Franklin, this unfamiliar story of a familiar figure in American history will surprise and delight young readers.

As young boys, Orville and Wilbur Wright loved all things mechanical. As young men, they gained invaluable skills essential for their success by working with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and any sort of machinery they could get their hands on. As adults, the brothers worked together to invent, build, and fly the world's first successful airplane. This is the fascinating story of the two inventors and aviation pioneers who never lost sight of their dream: to fly, and to soar higher!

A suite of poems examining the myth and history of the legendary prizefighter Jack Johnson--a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--from the author, with Youssef Daoudi, of the graphic novel Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century

The legendary Jack Johnson (1878-1946) was a true American creation. The child of emancipated slaves, he overcame the violent segregationism of Jim Crow, challenging white boxers--and white America--to become the first African-American heavyweight world champion. The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka's third work of poetry, follows the fighter's journey from poverty to the most coveted title in sports through the multi-layered voices of Johnson and the white women he brazenly loved. Matejka's book is part historic reclamation and part interrogation of Johnson's complicated legacy, one that often misremembers the magnetic man behind the myth.

#1 New York Times bestselling Who HQ series brings you the stories behind the most beloved characters of our time.

Grab your golden ticket and learn how Willy Wonka became an internationally popular figure in literature and film.

The whimsical, wacky, and wondrous character of Willy Wonka made his first appearance in Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When the fictional factory owner opened up the doors of his company, readers were welcomed into his world of pure imagination...and chocolate! Wonka went on to dazzle a whole new set of fans in the 1971 film that brought Dahl's characters to life. Since then, there have been other movie adaptations, books, musicals, and even theme park rides that bring the world just a little bit closer to this fantastic chocolatier. Learn about the legacy of Wonka in this new book from the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR)

What does it means to lose your roots--within your culture, within your family--and what happens when you find them?

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up--facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from--she wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth.

With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets--vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

The first-hand account of life as a surfman by one of the most skilled boat handlers in the Coast Guard at one of the USCG's most dangerous stations, Cape Disappointment in the state of Washington.