Collection: Biography & Memoir

Some summers are destined to generate cherished memories. For married high school sweethearts Don and Nancy Hammond, they happened in 1972 and 1973, when Don's lifelong dream of being a United States Forest Service fire lookout came true.

Don's first post, the Dunn Peak Lookout, was located eight miles northwest of Avery in Idaho's St. Joe National Forest. Once they arrived, they breathlessly lugged provisions and water up steep stairs to its fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cab two stories above the forest floor. Furnishings included a single bed, small bookcase, cabinet, and table, and a wood stove. There was no electricity or running water. A battery powered two-way Motorola radio would be their only connection to the outside world. That night--engulfed by lightning strikes and filled with adrenalin--they faced their first storm.

Unless it was foggy or raining, the Forest Service required Don to conduct binocular searches from the catwalk at least twenty minutes of every hour while he was on duty. He watched for smoke during the day and the glow of fire at night, and learned to distinguish between blue smoke plumes and white wisps of fog. Despite the primitive conditions, Don, Nancy, and their Dalmatian, Misty, settled in and came to love their lookout life. They spotted wildfires, were startled by their first cougar scream, encountered a wide variety of human and animal visitors, discovered delectable huckleberry patches, and simply enjoyed the enchanting beauty all around them.

The Forest Service decided to close the Dunn Peak Lookout, so the couple spent the summer of 1973 at the Middle Sister Peak tower, ten miles southeast of Avery. In The Last Lookout, Nancy shares stories from those two exciting, magical fire seasons, along with their return as volunteers 37 years later. Interspersing regional fire history as well as dangers and details of the work, she journeys back to the narrow catwalks and stunning panoramas--a place where storms are building, the forest is dry, and any lightning strike could ignite a raging wildfire.

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it?

In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons.

Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

Raul Ramos brings you his emotional, raw, and inspiring autobiography. Follow along on his uplifting journey from street gang life in South Central Los Angeles to earning the rank of Master Chief in the United States Navy. His one-of-a-kind story is certain to motivate and remind you that you control your destiny - no matter what hand you were dealt.

Raul's story reminds us that we are in control of our lives - and success is not pre-determined. As a young boy, Raul joined a hardcore street gang and faced profound adversity and obstacles. Yet, he never let his past destroy his future. In fact, he managed to rise to the top of military ranks. Throughout his book, he shares his trials and tribulations, along with his moments of success and gratification, all while elaborating on the memories of each step. Filled with inspiration, motivation, and truth, this is a must-read for people of all backgrounds. Get ready to follow one man's journey like no other as he goes from "Ese to Master Jefe".

Newly expanded, this gripping memoir is hailed as essential by the likes of Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, and ELLE magazine.

Bad Indians--part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir--is essential reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Widely adopted in classrooms and book clubs throughout the United States, Bad Indians--now reissued in significantly expanded form for its 10th anniversary--plumbs ancestry, survivance, and the cultural memory of Native California.

In this best-selling, now-classic memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen family and the experiences of California Indians more widely through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. This anniversary edition includes several new poems and essays, as well as an extensive afterword, totaling more than fifty pages of new material. Wise, indignant, and playful all at once, Bad Indians is a beautiful and devastating read, and an indispensable book for anyone seeking a more just telling of American history.

An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change breaking over today's world, creating both opportunity and peril--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Truth.

"In this dazzling and brilliant book, Michiko Kakutani explains the cascading chaos of our era and points to ways that we can regain some stability."--Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk

The twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment defined by chaos and uncertainty, as one emergency cascades into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices--once regarded as radical, unorthodox, or marginal--are disrupting the status quo in politics, business, and culture. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation.

Writing with a critic's understanding of cultural trends and a journalist's eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders--those who have sown chaos and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky). At the same time, she situates today's multiplying crises in context with those that defined earlier hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the transition between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era at the end of the nineteenth century.

Kakutani argues that today's crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe's profound vulnerabilities, but also stress tests pointing to the essential changes needed to survive this tumultuous era and build a more sustainable future.

As a kid, Jackie Robinson loved sports. And why not? He was a natural at football, basketball, and, of course, baseball. But beyond athletic skill, it was his strength of character that secured his place in sports history. In 1947 Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the long-time color barrier in major league baseball. It was tough being first- not only did "fans" send hate mail but some of his own teammates refused to accept him. Here is an inspiring sports biography, with black-and-white illustrations throughout.

The fascinating continuation of the best-selling Persepolis, "one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day" (Los Angeles Times). Marjane Satrapi dazzles with her heartrending graphic memoir about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of belonging.

Finding that she misses her home more than she can stand, Marjane returns to Iran after graduation. Her difficult homecoming forces her to confront the changes both she and her country have undergone in her absence and her shame at what she perceives as her failure in Austria. Marjane allows her past to weigh heavily on her until she finds some like-minded friends, falls in love, and begins studying art at a university. However, the repression and state-sanctioned chauvinism eventually lead her to question whether she can have a future in Iran.

As funny and poignant as its predecessor, Persepolis 2 is another clear-eyed and searing condemnation of the human cost of fundamentalism. In its depiction of the struggles of growing up--here compounded by Marjane's status as an outsider both abroad and at home--it is raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

Relive the moments when African Americans fought for equal rights, and made history.

Even though slavery had ended in the 1860s, African Americans were still suffering under the weight of segregation a hundred years later. They couldn't go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, or even use the same bathrooms as white people. But by the 1950s, black people refused to remain second-class citizens and were willing to risk their lives to make a change.

Author Sherri L. Smith brings to life momentous events through the words and stories of people who were on the frontlines of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

This book also features the fun black-and-white illustrations and engaging 16-page photo insert that readers have come love about the What Was? series!

El 13 de octubre de 1972, un avión de la Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya, que llevaba al equipo de rugby Old Christians--y muchos de sus amigos y familiares-- se estrelló en medio de la cordillera de los Andes. Tenía que sobrevivir es el relato cautivante y desgarrador de esa larga experiencia con la muerte que impulso a uno de sus sobrevivientes, Roberto Canessa, a convertirse en uno de los cardiólogos infantiles más conocidos en el mundo.Cuando atendía a sus compañeros heridos en medio de la carnicería devastadora que produjo el accidente, Roberto Canessa, que en aquel entonces tenía diecinueve años y era un estudiante de segundo año de medicina, se sintió la persona más afortunada del planeta: estaba vivo-- y por eso mismo, debía estar eternamente agradecido. Mientras el grupo famélico luchaba por sobrevivir, más allá de los límites de lo imaginable, Canessa jugó un rol fundamental para salvar a los demás sobre-vivientes, atravesando, con un compañero, la cordillera de los Andes, examines y sin ningún tipo de equipo, en busca de ayuda. Esta delgada línea entre la vida y la muerte se transformó en un catalizador para el resto de su vida. Tenía que sobrevivir trata de un iluminador relato de esperanza y determinación, solidaridad e ingenio, que aporta une nueva perspectiva a una historia mundialmente concocia. Canessa traza un paralelismo único u fascinante entre su trabajo diagnosticando cardiopatías congénitas muy complejas en niños recién nacidos u fetos, y las decisiones difíciles de vida o muerte que fue forzado a tomar en los Andes. Con ternura y humanismo, Canessa nos incita a preguntarnos: Que hacer cunado todo está tu contra?

How do otherwise decent people become mesmerized by a doctrine of hate? How can its grip be broken? In seeking answers to these pressing questions for our times, Barbara Leimsner confronts the past to discover how one ordinary man-her adored German papa-became thoroughly indoctrinated with Nazi ideology during the Hitler years. Its hateful tentacles reached into her young life as he filled her head with beliefs about Aryan superiority, racist stereotypes, and conspiracy theories.

Leimsner sweeps the reader from immigrant working-class life in 1960s suburban Ontario, back to fascism's rise in her father's former Sudeten homeland and into war. As she weaves together the roots of her shameful inheritance, she also discovers deeper truths about herself-and the cure for hate.

This thoughtful, compelling story will appeal to anyone concerned about the resurgence of racism, nationalism, and far-right ideologies today, and those interested in the Nazi legacy and Second World War. It will speak to all readers with German ancestry grappling with the past, and those interested in the immigrant experience, issues of inter-generational memory, identity, and trauma.

A Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book

From the New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, a biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler, author of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.

Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.

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Once books kick-start their brains, girls change history. Discover the foundation of reading that empowered some of the world's most influential women in this informative and inspirational illustrated middle grade collection of twenty biographies.

What do Cleopatra, Audre Lorde, and Taylor Swift have in common? They're all influential women who grew up doing one very important thing: reading.

This collection of short-form biographies tells the story of twenty groundbreaking women and how their childhood reading habits empowered them to change the world. From Cleopatra to Sally Ride to Amanda Gorman, the women featured in this collection are from all throughout history and all kinds of backgrounds. They are women who have and who continue to change the game in STEM, literature, politics, sports, and more. Most importantly, they are women who were born to read.

For some, reading was forbidden, but they taught themselves to read anyway. For some, reading was a struggle, but they practiced and grew to love it. For some, reading was an escape from difficult realities. For all, reading was empowering.

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Another masterpiece of remembering from Annie Ernaux, the Man Booker International Prize-shortlisted author of The Years.

In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season 50 years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another's will and desire. In the summer of 1958, 18-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man's, and then he moves on, leaving her without a "master," bereft.

Now, 50 years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life.

"A loving testament to the work and reward of the best friendships, the kind where your arms can't distinguish burden from embrace." -- People

New York Times Bestselling author Ann Patchett's first work of nonfiction chronicling her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Gealy's critically acclaimed and hugely successful memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined...and what happens when one is left behind.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and being uplifted by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe.

But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a nonrepresentational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the institution.

Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint--until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint's life--not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.