Collection: Biography & Memoir

Becoming who you are is a journey, and all journeys start somewhere. In a collection of stories from across the spectrum of real-life experience, nine members of the trans community share their inspirational childhood stories. These are tales of questioning, affirming, transitioning, and growing up; courageous, gripping accounts from musicians, actors, teachers, scientists, forest rangers, and activists of how they overcame their unique challenges to become who they truly are. Featuring work by HAZEL NEWLEVANT, LILAH STURGES, CYNTHIA YUAN CHENG, KAMERON WHITE, SUNMI, and many more!

An excellently researched historical novel about Abraham Lincoln's family and formative years with particular emphasis on his mother, Nancy, and stepmother, Sally. "All that I am," said Lincoln, "I owe to my angel mother." "Which mother?" he was once asked. "Both," he replied. This is a story crafted in such a life-like manner that it allows the reader to be intricately drawn into Lincoln's family situations, to see and hear everything that occurred in the little cabins that the Lincolns called home. Nancy Hanks fell in love with Tom Lincoln at an early age and, after their marriage, followed him uncomplainingly from one farm to another and from state to state. After Abraham (Abe) was born, Nancy encouraged his interest in book learning recognizing early on that Abe was destined to be more than just a farmer. But the many moves and primitive life of the frontier took its toll and Nancy died when Abe was just nine-years-old. A year later after Sally's death, Tom Lincoln married Sally Bush. Though Sally was unable to read or write, with great pride and determination, she helped her stepson live up to his true potential: the presidency of the United States.

Lionel Messi ha vuelto a ser feliz. Y para qué jugar al fútbol si no es para ser feliz? Con cuatro Champions League, la Copa América 2021, el récord de goles de un jugador para una selección sudamericana y el pase al PSG, el mejor futbolista del planeta ya le había insuflado nueva vida a su carrera, pero ahora además ha conquistado el único gran trofeo que le faltaba: la Copa del Mundo.

Para conocer y comprender a esta figura extraordinaria, Sebastián Fest y Alexandre Juillard recorrieron el mundo: de Qatar a Brasil, pasando por Sudáfrica, Alemania, China, Suiza, Rusia, el Reino Unido y, por supuesto, España y Argentina. Hablaron con su familia, con quienes lo vieron crecer en Rosario y Barcelona, con sus compañeros de equipo, con los responsables de su preparación física, con sus exrepresentantes y médicos, con los periodistas que lo siguen obsesivamente y con sus rivales.

Messiánico desmenuza las razones futbolísticas que hacen de Messi un jugador único, pero también las disputas entre los agentes y la familia, algunos mitos de su historia oficial, el papel de Antonela, el polémico manejo de su fortuna y su imagen, y esta nueva y gloriosa etapa después de su gran triunfo con la selección argentina.

Una biografía completa y reveladora, con aspectos desconocidos e intimidades inesperadas de una vida y una carrera inigualables. Un personaje que en lo más alto de su recorrido se ha abierto al mundo y que, por encima de todo, ha recuperado la alegría y hoy se divierte y divierte jugando al fútbol.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Lionel Messi is happy again. Why else would he keep playing soccer? With four Champions League victories, Copa América 2021, the record for goals scored for a South American national team, and a transfer to PSG, the world's best soccer player had already breathed new life into his career even before winning the last big trophy missing from his collection: the World Cup.

To learn more about and understand this extraordinary athlete, Sebastián Fest and Alexandre Juillard traveled the world, from Qatar to Brazil, South Africa, Germany, China, Switzerland, Russia, the United Kingdom and, of course, Spain and Argentina. They spoke with family members who watched him grow up in Rosario and Barcelona, his teammates, trainers, former agents and physicians, the reporters who dog his steps, and opposing players.

Messianic analyzes the reasons that make Messi a great player, but also the disputes between his agents and his family; the myths that have become part of his official story; the role of his wife, Antonela; the controversial handling of his image and fortune; and the latest glorious phase in his career following his big win with Argentina's national team.

A complete and surprising biography that reveals new and unexpected facets of a unique life and career. A figure who, at the peak of his powers, has opened up to the world and, most important, rediscovered the joy of the game.

George was one of those kids. You know, the kind that never stays still. And then one day, the doctor said he was going blind. Did that slow George down? Not for a single second. In fact, he was so fast, he went on to break a world record for blind runners. And now he's breaking more barriers-because ironically, George Mendoza, blind painter, paints what he sees.

George Mendoza started going blind at age 15 from a degenerative eye disease. It wasn't the sudden onset of blindness that many people experience. George lost his central vision and started seeing things that weren't there-eyes floating in the air, extraordinary colors, objects multiplied and reflected back. George describes this condition as having "kaleidoscope eyes." He triumphed over his blindness by setting the world record in the mile for blind runners, and later competing in both the 1980 and 1984 Olympics for the Disabled. Now a full-time artist, Mendoza's collection of paintings, also titled Colors of the Wind, is a National Smithsonian Affiliates traveling exhibit.

Illustrated with George Mendoza's colorful paintings, accompanied by black and white line drawings by Hayley Morgan-Sanders.

"Engaging biographies alongside showstopping photos [...] A book that's both enlightening and beautiful" - LoveReading

In this stunning jacketed hardback, award-winning architecture writer Ike Ijeh introduces 50 of the world's most influential architects and a selection of their most celebrated buildings, showcased with full-color photography.

The architects selected here have designed buildings that are as dramatic as their impact on the world of architecture. From familiar modern era names such as Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster to geniuses from history such as Nicholas Hawksmoor and Andrea Palladio, Ike Ijeh reveals his top 50 list of the architects deserving of the description 'greatest'. Two double-page spreads are dedicated to each architect, outlining their influences, the legacy of their ideas and revealing the glorious designs that have made them famous.

Includes:
- Full-color photographs and illustrations of famous buildings around the world
- Concise professional biographies of the architects listed
- Plans from great architecture projects
- Entries arranged in chronological order for easy reference

With this wonderful hardback reference guide you can discover the true breadth of the creative achievements that lie within the careers of these architectural giants and enjoy their beautiful creations through images and illustrations.

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 2021 STONEWALL HONOR BOOK

Meet Kimberly, a regular suburban housewife and mother, whose discovery later in life that she was born intersex fuelled her to become an international human rights defender and globally-recognised activist.

Charting her intersex discovery and her journey to self-acceptance, this book movingly portrays how being intersex impacted Kimberly's personal and family life, as well as her career. From uncovering a secret that was intentionally kept from her, to coming out to her family and friends and fighting for intersex rights, her candid and empowering story helps breakdown barriers and misconceptions of intersex people and brings to light the trauma and harmful impact medical intervention continues to have on the intersex community.

Written from a non-queer perspective, and filled with much-needed, straightforward information and advice about what it means to be intersex, this is a vital and timely resource for intersex people and their families, as well as the general reader.

An intimate portrait of a mysterious and misunderstood animal.

"Tjernshaugen writes in an easy-to-read style that is full of insight and understanding. I felt like I was sitting beside him as he described fox behavior." --Rick McIntyre, Yellowstone wolf researcher and author of The Rise of Wolf 8

If you look into the fox's amber eyes, you'll notice vertical pupils. With such feline eyes in a slender canine body, the fox is a relative of the dog and the wolf, but it hunts alone, like a cat. The fox lives close to people, both in the city and in the country, but it's wild, shy, and secretive.

Taking long walks in the early morning, equipped with wildlife cameras--and sometimes with his dog Topsy by his side--Andreas Tjernshaugen journeys into the forest hoping to encounter the foxes living just outside his small town in Norway. He knows the telltale signs of how to find a fox den, how to identify a pawprint in the snow, and the smells that foxes leave behind. He meets a vixen he named Blackback, and he watches carefully as she and other foxes hunt, play, and live together as families.

Throughout this captivating book, Tjernshaugen investigates the fox's place in our own cultural history--such as Reynard the Fox, the Scandinavian inspiration for Disney's Robin Hood, and the fables of Aesop, which depict foxes as sly and cunning, a reputation that may not be fully earned, Tjernshaugen argues. What is true is "the fox is wilder than other wildlife...and largely survives in spite of our plans and regulations, like an outlaw, so I see it as a symbol of freedom and independence."

What if you discovered the entire concept of a gender binary is nothing more than an illusion? The idea that humans fall into one of two gender categories is largely a construct created by those who benefit from that belief. More expansive ideas of gender have always existed.

In the second book of the Queer History Project, The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie: Infinite Identities around the World, author Lee Wind uses historical evidence and primary sources--poetry, ancient burial sites, firsthand accounts, and news stories--to explore gender roles and identities. Gender is as diverse as the human experience. Get ready to shatter those preconceived notions of a gender binary and dive deep into expressions of gender--both past and present--that reveal that the gender binary really is a big lie.

Discover the incredible story of a young daughter of immigrants who would grow up to be the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian American ever elected Vice President of the United States in this moving picture book biography of Kamala Harris.

When Kamala Harris was young, she often accompanied her parents to civil rights marches--so many, in fact, that when her mother asked a frustrated Kamala what she wanted, the young girl responded with: "Freedom!"

As Kamala grew from a small girl in Oakland to a senator running for president, it was this long-fostered belief in freedom and justice for all people that shaped her into the inspiring figure she is today. From fighting for the use of a soccer field in middle school to fighting for the people of her home state in Congress, Senator Harris used her voice to speak up for what she believed in and for those who were otherwise unheard. And now this dedication has led her all the way to being elected Vice President of the United States.

Told in Nikki Grimes's stunning verse and featuring gorgeous illustrations by Laura Freeman, this picture book biography brings to life a story that shows all young people that the American dream can belong to all of us if we fight for one another.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Audrey Style comes a charming guide to Audrey Hepburn?inspired living for the modern woman

Audrey Hepburn epitomized grace and style, not only in her appearance but in her very essence. Whether in fashion, relationships, her work on the screen, or for UNICEF and her home life, there is no one more worthy of imitation.

How did she do it? What Would Audrey Do? is the answer: a complete Audrey primer, with rich anecdotes and insight from the people who knew her best, and Audrey-inspired lessons in loveliness, including:

- Dating advice from the woman who enjoyed romances with John F. Kennedy, William Holden, and Albert Finney
- What made her an icon, and how to apply her style choices to twenty-first-century clothes, makeup, and accessories
- Raising children, trying to raise husbands, and making home life balanced in every way
- How to travel, what to pack, and maintaining your cool on the road
- Using renown (long before Angelina and Bono got all the press) to help others around the world
- Insight into her rich interior life and the discipline, intelligence, and generosity that made her so compelling

In an era fraught with selfishness, flamboyance, and sensational headlines, Audrey as a role model is precisely what the world needs.

"For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. It's a wonderful, necessary book."
- Hillary Clinton

The four most powerful African American women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in America.

The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years--Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore--a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson's first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Over the years, they've filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they've worked with those who have shaped our country's history--US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who've worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of "hurrying history" so that every American -- regardless of race, gender or religious background -- can have a seat at the table. This is their story.

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By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.

Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective--the tropes, the presumptions--Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.

"I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body," Brookins writes. "Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I'm perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can't change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says 'female, ' and my heart says neither of the sort. What does it mean--to be a girl-turned-man when you're something else entirely?"

Informed by KB Brookins's personal experiences growing up in Texas, those of other Black transgender masculine people, Black queer studies, and cultural criticism, Pretty is concerned with the marginalization suffered by a unique American constituency--whose condition is a world apart from that of cisgender, non-Black, and non-masculine people. Here is a memoir (a bildungsroman of sorts) about coming to terms with instantly and always being perceived as "other"

A bold, poignant essay collection that treats women's friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space

"Fiercely felt and finely etched."--Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams

Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger's devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency--a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger's life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture--ranging from fairy tales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the "sad girls" of Tumblr--Dancyger's essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.

Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it's our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.

A captivating memoir from one of the first zoologists to study wild animals in Africa.

In the 1950s, Anne Innis Dagg was a young zoologist with a lifelong love of giraffes and a dream to study them in Africa. Based on her extensive journals and letters home, Pursuing Giraffe vividly chronicles Dagg's realization of that dream and the year she spent studying and documenting giraffe behaviour. Her memoir captures her youthful enthusiasm for her journeys--from Zanzibar to Victoria Falls to Mount Kilimanjaro--as well as her naiveté about the complex social and political issues in Africa.

Once in the field, Dagg recorded the complexities of giraffe social relationships but also learned about human relationships in the context of apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Kenya. Hospitality and friendship were readily extended to her as a white woman, but she was shocked by the racism of the colonial whites in Africa.

Reflecting the twenty-three-year-old author's response to an "exotic" world far removed from her home in Toronto, Pursuing Giraffe is a fascinating account that has much to say about the status of women in the mid-twentieth century, and the book's foreword by South African novelist Mark Behr (author of The Smell of Apples and Embrace) provides further context for and insights into Dagg's narrative.

"Clearly the definitive book of Eleanor Roosevelt quotes. Albion does excellent work weeding out all the apocryphal quotes so often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, giving us only the real thing."--Christy Regenhardt, associate editor of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Volume 2 "Eleanor Roosevelt remains a compelling and interesting person, and these quotes give her greater voice."--Kenneth Bindas, author of Remembering the Great Depression in the Rural South

Born in the late 1800s to one of the wealthiest families in New York City, Eleanor Roosevelt seemed destined for a traditional woman's role within a sedate Victorian life. Instead, she married her fifth cousin and was flung into the highest levels of American politics, culminating in Franklin's unprecedented four-term presidency.

While previous first ladies refrained from public discussion of their personal views, Eleanor's bold opinions on political, social, and racial issues took many by surprise. She held press conferences and wrote a syndicated column. She spoke at national conventions, granted interviews, and often made appearances on her husband's behalf. Her own influence lasted years beyond his death. She advocated for human rights, worked with the United Nations, and supported what later became the civil rights movement.

The fascinating quotes in this collection are the words of an articulate, honest, and thoughtful woman. Of war, she said, "I hope the day will come when all that inventing and mechanical genius will be used for other purposes." At a time when racism prevailed, Eleanor said, "We must be proud of every one of our citizens, for regardless of nationality, or race, every one contributes to the welfare and culture of the nation."

Organized by topic--government, money, art, education, class, relationships, emotions--these quotations reveal the personal thoughts Roosevelt shared in letters and conversations alongside the strong opinions she expressed in speeches and interviews, giving evidence to her character and her beliefs. Her words continue to resonate today.