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My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir
by Jenn ShaplandFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fictionHow do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers's life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others' narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers's life?her history, her secrets, her legacy?reveal to Shapland about herself?In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation's greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.
My Avant-Garde Education: A Memoir
by Bernard CooperA wry and beautifully observed memoir about coming of age in the era of conceptual art. Growing up in the suburbs--confused about his sexuality, about his consumer-oriented world, about the death of his older brother--Bernard Cooper falls in love with Pop art and sets off for the California Institute of the Arts, the center of the burgeoning field of conceptual art, in this beguiling memoir. The most famous, and infamous, artists of the time drift through the place, including Allan Kaprow and John Baldessari, not to mention the student who phones the Identi-Kit division of the Los Angeles Police Department and has them make a composite drawing of the Mona Lisa. My Avant-Garde Education is at once an artist's coming-of-age story and a personal chronicle of the era of conceptual art, from a writer "of uncommon subtlety and nuance" (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times). It is a record of the wonders and follies of a certain era in art history, always aware that awakening to art is, for a young person, inseparable from awakening to the ever-shifting nature of the self.
My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It
by James BarillaFor James Barilla and his family, the dream of transforming their Columbia, South Carolina, backyard into a haven for wildlife evoked images of kids catching grasshoppers by day and fireflies at night, of digging up potatoes and picking strawberries. When they signed up with the National Wildlife Federation to certify their yard as a wildlife habitat, it felt like pushing back, in however small a way, against the tide of bad news about vanishing species, changing climate, dying coral reefs. Then the animals started to arrive, and Barilla soon discovered the complexities (and possible mayhem) of merging human with animal habitats. What are the limits of coexistence, he wondered? To find out, Barilla set out across continents to explore cities where populations of bears, monkeys, marmosets, and honeybees live alongside human residents. My Backyard Jungle brings these unique stories together, making Barillaâ TMs yard the centerpiece of a meditation on possibilities for coexistence with animals in an increasingly urban world. Not since Gerald Durrell penned My Family and Other Animals have readers encountered a naturalist with such a gift for storytelling and such an open heart toward all things wild.
My Bass and Other Animals
by Guy PrattGuy Pratt's life as bass player to the stars. The book behind the successful comedy show.Guy Pratt came of age just as playing bass became cool, with the likes of Paul Simonon and Bruce Foxton. Having dallied with Funkapolitan, Pratt suddenly found himself on Top of the Pops and supporting David Bowie with smooth Australian outfit Icehouse. At a ludicrously young age Guy Pratt became a sought after bass player to the stars, finding himself crawling from studio to bar, from hotel to stadium portacabin with Robert Palmer, Womack & Womack, Bernard Edwards, Bryan Ferry and David Crosby, etc. The eighties were in their prime, and with a number of Crolla-suited appearances in windswept videos behind him, he was invited to join Pink Floyd for a series of stadium of extravaganzas to make Bono & co look fairly modest. Pratt has recorded with Madonna, and spent time in the studio with Michael Jackson. He was in The Smiths for a week, has travelled through customs in a wheelchair after a flight with Jimmy Page, and has lived to tell all. MY BASS AND OTHER ANIMALS emerges from the successful stand-up tour of the same name. It charts his journey from a Mod band in Southend to playing with Roxy Music at Live 8.
My Bass and Other Animals
by Guy PrattGuy Pratt's life as bass player to the stars. The book behind the successful comedy show.Guy Pratt came of age just as playing bass became cool, with the likes of Paul Simonon and Bruce Foxton. Having dallied with Funkapolitan, Pratt suddenly found himself on Top of the Pops and supporting David Bowie with smooth Australian outfit Icehouse. At a ludicrously young age Guy Pratt became a sought after bass player to the stars, finding himself crawling from studio to bar, from hotel to stadium portacabin with Robert Palmer, Womack & Womack, Bernard Edwards, Bryan Ferry and David Crosby, etc. The eighties were in their prime, and with a number of Crolla-suited appearances in windswept videos behind him, he was invited to join Pink Floyd for a series of stadium of extravaganzas to make Bono & co look fairly modest. Pratt has recorded with Madonna, and spent time in the studio with Michael Jackson. He was in The Smiths for a week, has travelled through customs in a wheelchair after a flight with Jimmy Page, and has lived to tell all. MY BASS AND OTHER ANIMALS emerges from the successful stand-up tour of the same name. It charts his journey from a Mod band in Southend to playing with Roxy Music at Live 8.
My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich
by John Henry Crosby Dietrich Von HildebrandHow does a person become Hitler's enemy number one? Not through espionage or violence, it turns out, but by striking fearlessly at the intellectual and spiritual roots of National Socialism. Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic thinker and teacher who devoted the full force of his intellect to breaking the deadly spell of Nazism that ensnared so many of his beloved countrymen. His story might well have been lost to us were it not for this memoir he penned in the last decades of his life at the request of his wife, Alice von Hildebrand. In My Battle Against Hitler, covering the years from 1921 to 1938, von Hildebrand tells of the scorn and ridicule he endured for sounding the alarm when many still viewed Hitler as a positive and inevitable force. He expresses the sorrow of having to leave behind his home, friends, and family in Germany to conduct his fight against the Nazis from Austria. He recounts how he defiantly challenged Nazism in the public square, prompting the German ambassador in Vienna to describe him to Hitler as "the architect of the intellectual resistance in Austria." And in the midst of all the danger he faced, he conveys his unwavering trust in God, even during his harrowing escape from Vienna and his desperate flight across Europe, with the Nazis always just one step behind. Dietrich von Hildebrand belongs to the very earliest anti-Nazi resistance. His public statements led the Nazis to blacklist him already in 1921, long before the horrors of the Third Reich and more than twenty-three years before the famous assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. His battle would culminate in the countless articles he published in Vienna, a selection of which are featured in this volume. "It is an immense privilege," writes editor John Henry Crosby, founder of the Hildebrand Project, "to present to the world the shining witness of one man who risked everything to follow his conscience and stand in defiance of tyranny."From the Hardcover edition.
My Beautiful Disaster: My Brain Injury, My Gift, My Life
by Derek AmatoDerek Amato's reflections in My Beautiful Disaster provide rare insight into what people with extraordinary gifts see, think, feel and do; pose questions about the potential to tap into previously undetected abilities and spotlight the 'silent epidemic' of head trauma. His experiences also make vivid some the challenges faced by those living with autism and other neurological disorders and hint at the possibility we all have more in common than we think. Readers enchanted by autistic savant, Daniel Tammet's eloquent Born On A Blue Day, will welcome another multi-layered, first person account of what is to live with a remarkable condition. Uniquely, having spent his life as a "neurotypical" Amato's tale relates the before and after of 'the gift'; his voice at times resonating with incredulity at what has happened and what the eventual cost may be.
My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time
by Lone FrankWhat if you could predict your future - which political party you will vote for, what kind of person you will marry, which disease will end your life, whether your blue mood will fester into something more troubling, even debilitating. Would you want to know? Taking a uniquely intimate and cheeky approach to the personal genomics revolution, internationally acclaimed science writer Lone Frank swabs up her genetic code to explore who any of us are in the days when a catalogue of your full six billion DNA building blocks is available for $10,000 and the local Walgreens offers genetic screening tests to anyone. She challenges the august Nobel Prize winners and the hyperactive business mavericks who are pushing to map and decipher every fetus's genome within the next decade. She tests the potential to detect diseases early, as well as our capacity to develop chronic anxieties when our DNA is seen as a death sentence. She ponders whether personality, including her own above-average irritability and non-conformity, can really be reduced to biochemistry. And she prods the psychologists who hope to uncover just how much or how little our environment will matter in the new genetic century - a quest made all the more gripping as Frank considers her family's and her own struggles with depression. At turns compellingly candid and irreverently insightful, Frank provides the first truly personal account of the new science of consumer-led genomics - and to what extent our genes determine our destiny. Lone Frank is the author of The Neurotourist: Postcards from the Edge of Brain Science (ISBN 9781851687961). She holds a PhD in neurobiology and was previously a research scientist working in the biotechnology industry in the United States. An award-winning science journalist and TV documentary presenter, she has written for such publicationsn as Scientific American, Science, and Nature Biotechnology and is a frequent speaker at venues including Harvard Medical School, the Library of Congress, the Royal Society, and TED.
My Beautiful Idol
by Pete GallThe author of My Beautiful Idol is on a quest to be successful-in a lucrative job at an advertising agency, in ministry work, even in his relationships. And in a futile attempt to control the sources of love and security, he has turned these things into idols he can keep in his soul's back pocket. He pulls the idols out when he feels vulnerable and defenseless, and hides them again when things are going well. But the idols keep failing-even when he turns to his own Christian faith. In a creative narrative style rooted in raw honesty, My Beautiful Idol invites readers to identify with the young would-be Christian hero as he seeks God, and as he hides from God. Far from reducing complex matters to simplistic formulas, Pete Gall weaves together stories both sublime and wretched, ego-building and humbling, humorous and painful, and successfully celebrates the messiness of faith, the importance of validating truth, and the unscripted nature of experiencing a God who is intimately involved in all of life.
My Beautiful Sisters: A Story of Courage, Hope and the Afghan Women’s Football Team
by Khalida PopalA FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2024'Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere' MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureateA story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban.August 2021: Kabul falls to the Taliban.Overnight, life for women across Afghanistan changes.The national women's football team faces an imminent threat to their lives, just for playing sport. For Khalida Popal, the team's first captain and co-founder, this is not an unprecedented event. Born in Afghanistan, as a child she fled Taliban rule with her family and grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. On her return to Afghanistan, football gave her and her teammates power, comradeship and freedom. But advocating for women's rights in sport put Popal's life increasingly at risk, forcing her to flee the country, this time alone.As a refugee in Denmark, Popal worked to uncover widespread sexual abuse of players by the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation - forcing FIFA and the government of Afghanistan to act. When Kabul falls Khalida is safe, but her teammates are left behind. Against all the odds, she and a small but mighty network of allies orchestrate an international evacuation strategy to save them. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping memoir about courage, the power of teamwork against all odds and the existence of hope in dark times.
My Beautiful Sisters: A Story of Courage, Hope and the Afghan Women’s Football Team
by Khalida PopalA FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2024'Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere' MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureateA story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban.August 2021: Kabul falls to the Taliban.Overnight, life for women across Afghanistan changes.The national women's football team faces an imminent threat to their lives, just for playing sport. For Khalida Popal, the team's first captain and co-founder, this is not an unprecedented event. Born in Afghanistan, as a child she fled Taliban rule with her family and grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. On her return to Afghanistan, football gave her and her teammates power, comradeship and freedom. But advocating for women's rights in sport put Popal's life increasingly at risk, forcing her to flee the country, this time alone.As a refugee in Denmark, Popal worked to uncover widespread sexual abuse of players by the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation - forcing FIFA and the government of Afghanistan to act. When Kabul falls Khalida is safe, but her teammates are left behind. Against all the odds, she and a small but mighty network of allies orchestrate an international evacuation strategy to save them. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping memoir about courage, the power of teamwork against all odds and the existence of hope in dark times.
My Beautiful Sisters: A Memoir of Courage, Hope, and the Afghan Women's Soccer Team
by Khalida PopalArgo meets The Bookseller of Kabul in this incredible memoir from the Afghan women&’s soccer pioneer turned activist and feminist icon who has helped save more than 350 female soccer players from the dangerous rule of the Taliban. &“Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere.&” —MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureateA story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life—to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports. Khalida first began playing soccer in a refugee camp in Pakistan after her parents fled Taliban rule. Returning to Afghanistan, she fell deeper in love with the freedom and comradeship soccer provides. As co-founder and first captain of the Afghan women&’s soccer team, Khalida began using sports to empower young women, and was subjected to intensifying death threats in return. Hounded out of her own country, she continued to support the Afghan women&’s team, founding the organization Girl Power and exposing widespread sexual abuse of players. From her new home in Denmark, she watched Kabul fall and immediately knew the risk to the players still there. Assembling a small but mighty network of international allies, she began evacuating women whose lives were at risk simply for loving the sport she had done so much to promote. Her teammates. Her sisters.My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping, important memoir, and a compulsively readable one—a harrowing yet ultimately heartening story of survival and sisterhood.
My Beautiful Struggle
by Jordan BoneA girl with her whole life ahead of her. A terrible accident. An inspiring story of triumph over trauma. Aged 15, Jordan was a happy-go-lucky girl; having fun with friends and loving life. In one fateful moment, everything changed. A car accident left her paralysed from the chest down and shocked her into deep depression. She was on the brink of giving up. But gradually Jordan realised there is hope beyond utter devastation, and life beyond disability.Painstakingly re-learning how to apply her beloved make-up, Jordan began to rebuild her sense of self and empowerment. Her body may have been broken but her spirit was not. She is now a successful beauty blogger and her journey of positivity inspires millions around the world.MY BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE is the incredible true story of how one young woman overcame immense challenges, of inner strength that lies beneath outer beauty, of how to believe in yourself and find the light when it feels like all hope is gone.
My Beautiful Struggle
by Jordan Bone<P>Aged 15, Jordan Bone got into a car with friends. She would never walk again. Paralysed from the chest down, her life was changed forever. Becoming depressed and feeling like life wasn't worth living, these weren't the teenage years that Jordan had envisaged. <P>However, slowly but surely, she began to get herself out of the darkness. With a little help from the internet, Jordan started to embrace positive thinking and embarked on a personal journey to get her confidence - and her life - back. Eleven years on from the accident, Jordan creates her own beauty tutorials on YouTube and has a range of successful brand partnerships. She has reclaimed her life and her independence and now wants to share her inspirational story with others and is telling it through different aspects of beauty. This isn't a book about looking good on the surface, this is a story of inner strength, believing in yourself and finding motivation when you feel like all hope is gone.
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
by Caleb CarrCaleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat pairings: Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior. <P><P> For the seventeen years that followed, Caleb and Masha were inseparable. Masha ruled the house and the extensive, dangerous surrounding fields and forests. When she was hurt, only Caleb could help her. When he suffered long-standing physical ailments, Masha knew what to do. Caleb’s life-long study of the literature of cat behavior, and his years of experience with previous cats, helped him decode much of Masha’s inner life. But their bond went far beyond academic studies and experience. The story of Caleb and Masha is an inspiring and life-affirming relationship for readers of all backgrounds and interests—a love story like no other. <p> <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
My Beloved World
by Sonia SotomayorThe first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. <P><P> But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney's office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.
My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes)
by Luisa WeissThe Wednesday Chef cooks her heart out, finds her way home, and shares her recipes with usIt takes courage to turn your life upside down, especially when everyone is telling you how lucky you are. But sometimes what seems right can feel deeply wrong. My Berlin Kitchen tells the story of how one thoroughly confused, kitchen-mad perfectionist broke off her engagement to a handsome New Yorker, quit her dream job, and found her way to a new life, a new man, and a new home in Berlin--one recipe at a time.Luisa Weiss grew up with a divided heart, shuttling back and forth between her father in Boston and her Italian mother in Berlin. She was always yearning for home--until she found a new home in the kitchen. Luisa started clipping recipes in college and was a cookbook editor in New York when she decided to bake, roast, and stew her way through her by then unwieldy collection over the course of one tumultuous year. The blog she wrote to document her adventures in (and out) of the kitchen, The Wednesday Chef, soon became a sensation. But she never stopped hankering for Berlin. Luisa will seduce you with her stories of foraging for plums in abandoned orchards, battling with white asparagus at the tail end of the season, orchestrating a three-family Thanksgiving in Berlin, and mending her broken heart with batches (and batches) of impossible German Christmas cookies. Fans of her award-winning blog will know the happy ending, but anyone who enjoyed Julie and Julia will laugh and cheer and cook alongside Luisa as she takes us into her heart and tells us how she gave up everything only to find love waiting where she least expected it.
My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story, with Recipes
by Luisa WeissThe Wednesday Chef cooks her heart out, finds her way home, and shares her recipes with us It takes courage to turn your life upside down, especially when everyone is telling you how lucky you are. But sometimes what seems right can feel deeply wrong. My Berlin Kitchen tells the story of how one thoroughly confused, kitchen-mad perfectionist broke off her engagement to a handsome New Yorker, quit her dream job, and found her way to a new life, a new man, and a new home in Berlin—one recipe at a time. Luisa Weiss grew up with a divided heart, shuttling back and forth between her father in Boston and her Italian mother in Berlin. She was always yearning for home—until she found a new home in the kitchen. Luisa started clipping recipes in college and was a cookbook editor in New York when she decided to bake, roast, and stew her way through her by then unwieldy collection over the course of one tumultuous year. The blog she wrote to document her adventures in (and out) of the kitchen, The Wednesday Chef, soon became a sensation. But she never stopped hankering for Berlin. Luisa will seduce you with her stories of foraging for plums in abandoned orchards, battling with white asparagus at the tail end of the season, orchestrating a three-family Thanksgiving in Berlin, and mending her broken heart with batches (and batches) of impossible German Christmas cookies. Fans of her award-winning blog will know the happy ending, but anyone who enjoyed Julie and Julia will laugh and cheer and cook alongside Luisa as she takes us into her heart and tells us how she gave up everything only to find love waiting where she least expected it. .
My Best Friend is a Wookie
by Tony PacittiIn a galaxy far, far away a geek was born.So begins the real-life hero's journey of Jedi Knight wannabe Tony Pacitti. In this hilarious coming-of-age memoir, Tony shows how Star Wars has served as a source of comfort, guidance, and wisdom in his life. From the first thunderous boom of John William's score, seven-year-old Tony takes on Star Wars as his moral compass, his mentor, even his psychologist. Like his hero Luke Skywalker, Tony must then overcome Stormtrooper bullies, Lando turncoats, and Emperor Palpatine authority figures and embrace his own geekiness to grow into a man worthy of riding shotgun with Chewie. With the sense of humor of Han Solo, the willpower of Luke Skywalker, and the wisdom of a (much younger) Yoda, Pacitti uses the Force to follow his heart, overcome obstacles, and live a life worthy of a Jedi knight, endearing Star Wars fans everywhere in the process!
My Best Friend is a Wookie: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy
by Tony PacittiIn a galaxy far, far away a geek was born.So begins the real-life hero's journey of Jedi Knight wannabe Tony Pacitti. In this hilarious coming-of-age memoir, Tony shows how Star Wars has served as a source of comfort, guidance, and wisdom in his life. From the first thunderous boom of John William's score, seven-year-old Tony takes on Star Wars as his moral compass, his mentor, even his psychologist. Like his hero Luke Skywalker, Tony must then overcome Stormtrooper bullies, Lando turncoats, and Emperor Palpatine authority figures and embrace his own geekiness to grow into a man worthy of riding shotgun with Chewie.With the sense of humor of Han Solo, the willpower of Luke Skywalker, and the wisdom of a (much younger) Yoda, Pacitti uses the Force to follow his heart, overcome obstacles, and live a life worthy of a Jedi knight, endearing Star Wars fans everywhere in the process!
My Best Friend is a Wookiee
by Tony Pacitti"In a galaxy far, far away a geek was born. "So begins the real-life hero s journey of Jedi Knight wannabe Tony Pacitti. In this hilarious coming-of-age memoir, Tony shows how "Star Wars" has served as a source of comfort, guidance, and wisdom in his life. From the first thunderous boom of John William s score, seven-year-old Tony takes on "Star Wars" as his moral compass, his mentor, even his psychologist. Like his hero Luke Skywalker, Tony must then overcome Stormtrooper bullies, Lando turncoats, and Emperor Palpatine authority figures and embrace his own geekiness to grow into a man worthy of riding shotgun with Chewie. With the sense of humor of Han Solo, the willpower of Luke Skywalker, and the wisdom of a (much younger) Yoda, Pacitti uses the Force to follow his heart, overcome obstacles, and live a life worthy of a Jedi knight, endearing "Star Wars" fans everywhere in the process
MY BEST FRIENDS FUNERAL
by Roger W. ThompsonThere's a certain kind of lost a boy feelsin this world without a father. Tim felt it. I felt it. And we realized our onlyway out would be together.In an openhearted memoir of faith on the fringe, Roger Thompsonmeditateson the life and premature death of his best friend and business partner, TimGarrety, cofounder of Skate Street Ventura. Roger and Tim's twenty-year friendship was forged inthe surf and on the streets of 1980s California. Together they hazarded countlesswaves and every rite of passage--from guitars to girls to God--and influenced the lives of thousands ofskateboarders, musicians, surfers, and otherwise disconnected youth in theprocess. With unrestrainedhonesty and a punk-rock soundtrack, MyBest Friend's Funeral is a memoir of friendship, doubt, surfing, and thecomplex relationships between fathers and sons. Iflife has ever left you feeling abandoned--or if you simply prefer a rock show toa sermon--My Best Friend's Funeral is a memoir you won't want to miss, and aconfirmation that you are never alone.
My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future
by Alice RandallAlice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents &“a celebration of all things country music&” (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music.Country music had brought Alice Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood&’s &“XXX&’s and OOO&’s (An American Girl)&”. Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity. What emerges in My Black Country is &“a delightful, inspirational story of persistence, resistance, and sheer love&” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of this most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.
My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King
by Reymundo SanchezLooking for an escape from childhood abuse, Reymundo Sanchez turned away from school and baseball to drugs, alcohol, and then sex, and was left to fend for himself before age 14. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became his refuge and his world, but its violence cost him friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly his life. This is a raw and powerful odyssey through the ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than rival gangs are members of your own gang, who in one breath will say they'll die for you and in the next will order your assassination.
My Body: Emily Ratajkowski's deeply honest and personal exploration of what it means to be a woman today
by Emily RatajkowskiA deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time._______________'This is the book for every woman trying to place their body on the map of consumption vs control, and every woman who wants to better understand her impulses. It left me much changed' - Lena Dunham'I read these pages, breathless with recognition, and the thrill of reading a new voice telling it like it is' - Dani Shapiro'Emily Ratajkowski's first essay collection needs to be read by everyone [...] both page-turning and moving as hell' - Amy Schumer'A slow, complicated indictment of a profession and the people who propel it [...] it will deliver a more nuanced and introspective rendering of her interior than those who come to it with those surface interests might expect' - Vogue'Ratajkowski brings nuanced insight to questions about empowerment versus commodification of women's bodies and sexuality. Blending cultural criticism and personal stories, My Body is smart and powerful' - Time Magazine'Raw, nuanced and beautifully written. A moving and enlightening experience to join a woman openly exploring such deep parts of her physical self via the written word. A truly impressive debut' - Emma Gannon_______________Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture's commodification of women is the subject of this book.My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski's life while investigating the culture's fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women's sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the grey area between consent and abuse.Nuanced, unflinching, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a fierce writer brimming with courage and intelligence.