Collection: Biography & Memoir

As the descendant of Martha Carrier, an accused woman executed at Salem, Alice Markham-Cantor presents a riveting story that spans centuries and brings the historical significance of the witch trials into modern times.

Extensively researched and told through alternating fiction and non-fiction chapters, this book illuminates a shocking truth: contrary to popular opinion, the witch hunts never ended. Alice shares research that suggests tens of thousands of witch hunt-related deaths have happened all over the world in the last thirty years. The Once & Future Witch Hunt also features tantalizing glimpses into Alice's ancestors' lives and reimagines the trials through fact-based fiction.

At the intersection of witchcraft, feminism, anthropology, and history, this book gives us as authentic a retelling as may ever be possible while trying to answer that single, irrepressible question: how could this have happened?

Eric Protzman chaired the Young Life committee and Andy Morman served as the Area Director. When they began their journey together, they brimmed with confidence and trust.

In just a few years, they couldn't stand each other, and their Young Life Area struggled because of it.

In Our Town, Our Kids, Eric Protzman shares the lessons he and Andy learned as they forged a trusting friendship and developed a model for healthy Young Life Areas. In his thought-provoking book, you'll learn how to

- Honor Young Life and YL staff

- Avoid outsourcing your kids' salvation

- Wage war on staff fear and loneliness

Reimagine your Young Life Area!

Discover the life of Jackie Robinson-a story about breaking down barriers for kids ages 6 to 9

Jackie Robinson was the first Black Major League Baseball player and an important civil rights leader. Before he made history as a pioneer in sports, Jackie was a hardworking kid who loved to play all kinds of ball games. When Jackie was growing up, Black and white sports players in the United States were not treated the same way.

Jackie used his amazing baseball talent to help bring all players together and work toward ending the unfair treatment of Black players. Explore how Jackie went from being a thoughtful young boy growing up in California to an American role model and activist.

The Story of Jackie Robinson includes:

• Core curriculum-Learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Jackie's life, and take a quick quiz to test your knowledge.
• His legacy-Explore how Jackie Robinson made the world a better place for future generations, including you!
• Simple definitions-Find easy-to-understand definitions for some of the more advanced words and ideas in the book.

How will Jackie's hard work and dedication inspire you?

Escape the "family trap," help your loved one on the road to recovery, and take back your life.

If you have a family member who suffers from mental illness, but refuses to seek treatment, you may feel like you're caught in a trap. If you try making life easier for your loved one, you wind up perpetuating dependency and entitlement. If you push for treatment, you are met with resistance or outright animosity. And when you reach out to professionals for help, you are told that nothing can be done unless your family member is ready to change. So, how can you escape the "family trap?"

Written by clinicians and introducing the innovative family well-being approach (FWBA), this essential guide provides validation and doable strategies for anyone who feels trapped by a family member or loved one suffering from mental illness. Using the skills in this book, you'll learn how your responses to your loved one can worsen and even perpetuate the very problems you are trying to resolve. You'll also discover ways to promote healthy behavior in recovery avoiders, but only after the whole family is emotionally and strategically prepared to follow through successfully.

The family well-being approach outlined in this book is based on established principles of behavior change, family interaction research, and more than three decades of clinical experience. If you're feeling caught in a trap with a loved one who won't seek help--also known as a recovery avoider--this practical guide can help you find your way out, once and for all.

In the vein of Waiting for an Echo and Dead Man Walking, a deeply immersive look at justice in America, told through the interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to visit them . . .

In 2018, after nearly a decade's hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death, more than any other state but Texas in that time period. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, one only brought to a halt by a global pandemic.

Award-winning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering them both locally for the Nashville Scene alt-weekly and nationally for The Appeal.

In Death Row Welcomes You, Hale traces the lives of condemned prisoners at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution--and the people who come to visit them. What brought them--the visitors and convicted murderers alike--to death row?

The visitors are, for the most part, not activists--or at least they did not start out that way. Nor are they the sort of killer-obsessed death row groupies such settings sometimes attract. In fact, in most cases they are average people whose lives, not to mention their views on the death penalty, were turned upside down by a face-to-face meeting with a death row prisoner.

Hale's access to the people that make up that community afforded him a perspective that no other journalist has been granted, largely because Tennessee's Department of Correction has all but shut off official media access.

Combining topics that have long fascinated readers--crime, death, and life inside prison--Hale writes with humanity, empathy, and insight earned by befriending death row prisoners . . . and standing witness to their final moments.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

"Five gritty leaders whose extraordinary passion and perseverance changed history...a gripping read on a timeless and timely topic" --Angela Duckworth, #1 bestselling author of Grit

An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights, Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

What do such disparate figures have in common? Why do their extraordinary stories continue to amaze and inspire? In delivering the answers to those questions, Nancy Koehn offers a remarkable template by which to judge those in our own time to whom the public has given its trust.

She begins each of the book's five sections by showing her protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on an Antarctic ice floe; Lincoln on the verge of seeing the Union collapse; escaped slave Douglass facing possible capture; Bonhoeffer agonizing over how to counter absolute evil with faith; Carson racing against the cancer ravaging her in a bid to save the planet. The narrative then reaches back to each person's childhood and shows the individual growing--step by step--into the person he or she will ultimately become. Significantly, as we follow each leader's against-all-odds journey, we begin to glean an essential truth: leaders are not born but made. In a book dense with epiphanies, the most galvanizing one may be that the power to lead courageously resides in each of us.

Whether it's read as a repository of great insight or as exceptionally rendered human drama, Forged in Crisis stands as a towering achievement.

William Gee Wong was born in Oakland, California's Chinatown in 1941, the only son of his father, known as Pop. Pop was born in Guangdong Province, China and emigrated to Oakland as a teenager during the Chinese Exclusion era in 1912. He entered the U.S. legally as the "son of a native," despite having partially false papers. Sons of Chinatown is Wong's evocative dual memoir of his and his father's parallel experiences in America.

As Pop grappled with the systemic racism towards Asians during the exclusion era, Wong wistfully depicts Pop's efforts to establish a family business and build a life for his family in segregated Oakland. As the exclusion law ended in 1943, young William was assimilating into American life and developing his path as a journalist. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Oakland Tribune, and Asian American periodicals, Wong chronicled Asian American experiences while honoring Chinese American history and identity, but he too faced discrimination.

Sons of Chinatown poignantly weaves these father and son stories together with admiration and righteous anger. Through the mirrored lens of his father, Wong reflects on the hardships Asian Americans endured--and continue to face--with American exceptionalism. Wong's inspiring memoir provides a personal history that also raises the question of whether America welcomes or repels immigrants.

In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine.

Informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote, this majestic biography traces the emergence of personality in American food while reckoning with the outwardly gregarious Beard's own need for love and connection, arguing that Beard turned an unapologetic pursuit of pleasure into a new model for food authors and experts.

Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1903, Beard would journey from the pristine Pacific Coast to New York's Greenwich Village by way of gay undergrounds in London and Paris of the 1920s. The failed actor-turned-Manhattan canapé hawker-turned-author and cooking teacher was the jovial bachelor uncle presiding over America's kitchens for nearly four decades. In the 1940s he hosted one of the first television cooking shows, and by flouting the rules of publishing would end up crafting some of the most expressive cookbooks of the twentieth century, with recipes and stories that laid the groundwork for how we cook and eat today.

In stirring, novelistic detail, The Man Who Ate Too Much brings to life a towering figure, a man who still represents the best in eating and yet has never been fully understood--until now. This is biography of the highest order, a book about the rise of America's food written by the celebrated writer who fills in Beard's life with the color and meaning earlier generations were afraid to examine.

A memoir in verse from one of America's legendary poets

In a New York Times review of Alice Notley's 2007 collection In the Pines, Joel Brouwer wrote that "the radical freshness of Notley's poems stems not from what they talk about, but how they talk, in a stream-of-consciousness style that both describes and dramatizes the movement of the poet's restless mind, leaping associatively from one idea or sound to the next." Notley's new collection is at once a window into the sources of her telepathic and visionary poetics, and a memoir through poems of her Paris-based life between 2000 and 2017, when she finished treatment for her first breast cancer. As Notley wrote these poems she realized that events during this period were connected to events in previous decades; the work moves from reminiscences of her mother and of growing up in California to meditations on illness and recovery to various poetic adventures in Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, and Edinburgh. It is also concerned with the mysteries of consciousness and the connection between the living and dead, "stream-of-consciousness" teasing out a lived physics or philosophy.

"A masterpiece of women's wisdom."--Christiane Northrup, M.D.

"The journey to capture her feminine soul and live authentically . . . makes a fascinating, well-researched and well-written story."--Publishers Weekly

In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its publication, a newly reissued edition of the bestselling author's classic work of feminine spiritual discovery, with a new introduction by the author.

"I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised, and, in fact, a little terrified, when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening."--Sue Monk Kidd

For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, she experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, Kidd tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost in the church.

From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats and to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women--one that retains a meaningful connection with the "deep song of Christianity," embraces the sacredness of ordinary women's experience, and has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman's life--her marriage, her career, and her religion.

New York Times Bestseller

"A refreshingly unadorned account of the true brutality of climbing K2, where heroes emerge and egos are stripped down, and the only thing achieving immortality is the cold ruthless mountain." -- Norman Ollestad, author of Crazy for the Storm

In this riveting work of narrative nonfiction, New York Times journalist Graham Bowley re-creates one of the most dramatic tales of death and survival in mountaineering history--the 2008 K2 ascent that claimed the lives of eleven climbers

In the tradition of Into Thin Air and Touching the Void, No Way Down is the harrowing account of the worst mountain climbing disaster on K2, second to Everest in height. . . but second to no peak in terms of danger. On August 1, 2008, no fewer than eight international teams of mountain climbers--some experienced, others less prepared--ascended K2, the world's second-highest mountain, with the last group reaching the summit at 8 p.m. Then disaster struck. A huge ice chunk came loose above a deadly three-hundred-foot avalanche-prone gully, destroying the fixed guide ropes. More than a dozen climbers--many without oxygen and some with no headlamps--faced the nearly impossible task of descending in the blackness with no guideline and no protection. Over the course of the chaotic night, some would miraculously make it back. Others would not.

From tragic deaths to unbelievable stories of heroism and survival, No Way Down is an amazing feat of storytelling and adventure writing, and, in the words of explorer and author Sir Ranulph Fiennes, "the closest you can come to being on the summit of K2 on that fateful day."

Born as a ward of the state of Maine, the child of an unmarried Yankee blueblood mother and an unknown black father, Victoria Rowell beat the odds. The Women Who Raised Me is the remarkable story of her rise out of the foster care system to attain the American Dream--and of the unlikely series of women who lifted, motivated, and inspired her along the way.

From Agatha Armstead--a black Bostonian who was Victoria's longest-term foster mother and first noticed her spark of creativity and talent--to Esther Brooks, a Paris-trained prima ballerina who would become her first mentor at the Cambridge School of Ballet--The Women Who Raised Me is a loving, vivid portrait of all the women who would help Victoria transition out of foster care and into New York City's wild worlds of ballet, acting, and adulthood. Though Victoria would go on to become an accomplished television and film star, she still carried the burden of loneliness and anxiety, particularly common to those "orphans of the living" who are never adopted. Vividly recalled and candidly told, her story is transfixing, redemptive, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.

This unique book is the memoirs of a kosher slaughterer, a Jewish functionary, who lived in Ukraine and Crimea from the middle of the nineteenth century until the First World War. For the first time, it gives us a snapshot of Jewish life from a functionary's point of view in the last century of Tsarist rule, and at the same time deals with the eternal questions of antisemitism, minority status, and the life of Jews in Ukraine.

The behind-the-scenes story of JFK's 1960 Wisconsin primary campaign

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he did something no candidate had done before: he leveraged the power of state primaries to win his party's nomination. Kennedy's first battleground state? Wisconsin--a state that would prove more arduous, more exhausting, and more crucial to winning the presidency than any other.

Wisconsin for Kennedy brings to life the stories behind JFK's history-making 1960 Wisconsin primary campaign, and how Kennedy's team managed to outmaneuver his politically seasoned opponent, Hubert Humphrey. From Jackie Kennedy commandeering a supermarket loudspeaker in Kenosha, to the Wisconsin forklift driver who planned President Kennedy's final trip to Dallas, this captivating book places readers at the heart of the action.

Author B.J. Hollars chronicles JFK's nail-biting Wisconsin win by drawing on rarely cited oral histories from the eclectic team of people who worked together to make it happen: a cranberry farmer, a union leader, a mayor, an architect, and others. Wisconsin for Kennedy explores how Wisconsin helped propel JFK all the way to the White House in a riveting historical account that reads like a work of rollicking, page-turning fiction.

Quieres leer la increíble historia de Cristiano Ronaldo?

Cristiano Ronaldo es uno de los futbolistas más famosos y exitosos del mundo. Tiene una historia increíble de superación de la adversidad para lograr sus objetivos. Este libro cuenta su historia completa: desde que creció en la pobreza en Portugal hasta que se convirtió en uno de los deportistas más ricos y famosos del planeta.

Cristiano Ronaldo nació el 5 de febrero de 1985 en la isla portuguesa de Madeira. Al crecer en un hogar pobre y monoparental, Ronaldo desarrolló una fuerte ética de trabajo desde muy temprano. Con sólo ocho años, empezó a jugar en un equipo juvenil local, y pronto se vio que tenía un talento excepcional. A los 12 años, Ronaldo fue fichado por el Sporting CP de Lisboa, y pronto ascendió hasta convertirse en uno de sus jugadores jóvenes más prometedores. En 2003, con 18 años, Ronaldo debutó con la selección nacional de Portugal.

Al año siguiente, llamó la atención del poderoso Real Madrid con una serie de impresionantes actuaciones en la Eurocopa. El Madrid pagó la cifra récord de 94 millones de euros para fichar a Ronaldo del Sporting CP en 2009. Desde su llegada al Real Madrid, Ronaldo se ha consolidado como uno de los mejores jugadores de fútbol de todos los tiempos. Ha ganado cinco Balones de Oro (un premio anual que se otorga al mejor jugador del mundo), cuatro Botas de Oro europeas (que se otorgan al máximo goleador de Europa) y muchos otros galardones. En 2018, se unió al club italiano Juventus FC en un acuerdo de más de 100 millones de euros.

En este libro aprenderás todo sobre la vida y la carrera de Ronaldo. Es una lectura fascinante que te mantendrá entretenido de principio a fin. No podrás dejarlo.

Compre su ejemplar hoy mismo!