Difficult Memoirs

After you’ve had it, there isn’t even life without drugs … It started when she was served a drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her.

Smart, sassy, and unapologetically feminine, In Praise of Difficult Women is an ode to the bold and charismatic women of modern history. Karen Karbo spotlights the spirited rule breakers who charted their way with little regard for expectations: Amelia Earhart, Helen Gurley Brown, Edie Sedgwick, and Shonda Rhimes, among others. Their lives provide inspiration and instruction for the new age of feminism we have entered. Karbo distills these lessons with wit and humor, examining the universal themes that connect us to each of these mesmerizing personalities today.

Drew Nieporent has been a staple of the New York dining scene for decades, establishing a host of iconic restaurants like Nobu, Tribeca Grill, and Montrachet. But his career started from much more humble beginnings—the grill at the local McDonald’s. A middle class kid from New York’s East...

The author of this diary began journaling on her 16th birthday. She lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in Santa Monica with her mom, dad, and Berkeley-bound older brother. She was a good girl, living a good life...but one party changed everything. One party, where she took one taste - and liked it. Really liked it.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself. “I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was...

Lillian Hellman was a giant of 20th-century letters and a groundbreaking figure as one of the most successful female playwrights on Broadway. Yet the author of The Little Foxes and Toys in the Attic is today remembered more as a toxic, bitter survivor and literary fabulist, the woman of whom Mary McCarthy said, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" In A Difficult Woman, renowned historian Alice Kessler-Harris undertakes a feat few would dare to attempt: a reclamation of a combative, controversial woman who straddled so many political and cultural fault lines of her time.

“Incredible…riveting.” —Dax Shepard, Armchair Expert podcast For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER One of The Economist’s Best Books of the Year! In this “affecting…intriguing…heartbreaking” (Booklist) coming-of-age memoir, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the...

In Difficult Knitting Eve Machin, born in Bristol in 1915, gives a rich account of a childhood divided between two worlds: a comfortable, quintessentially English upper middle class world of servants, horses, spacious houses, public school and stiff upper lip - the world of her English father. And the world of her mother, daughter of a wealthy, sophisticated and very numerous Jewish family in Vienna, who had married against their wishes. The marriage was catastrophic. Torn between a loving but alcoholic father, and a close but distinctly un-maternal mother, Eve's childhood is spent ...

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture. Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love...

Jay was a sweet, bright high school student who cared about his grades and his friends. He had ambitions. He was happy. And he thought he could handle anything. He was wrong. When Jay falls in with a crowd that's dabbling in drugs and the occult, he finds himself in over his head and doing things he never thought possible.

Así comienza este recorrido en el que Felipe Calderón reflexiona sobre la compleja tarea de gobernar y lo que significa tomar decisiones en escenarios de incertidumbre, decisiones que, a fin de cuentas, nadie más quiere tomar. Al enfrentar este reto, dice el autor, es inevitable relatar las circunstancias, las vivencias, las ideas que rodean cada hecho. Así, a partir de una concepción muy particular de la política, como vocación y deber, Felipe Calderón presenta una visión de conjunto de las decisiones más difíciles que ha tomado en su trayectoria....

In the summer of 1987, Payam Zamani fled Iran. As a member of the Baha'i Faith, he had already survived years of religious persecution at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Taking the only path available to him, he escaped to Pakistan through the Emptiness Desert: a harrowing five-day trek through one of the hottest, driest, and most hostile regions on the planet. Twelve years later, he and his brother set records when the company they founded hit a $1.2 billion valuation on Wall Street.

Life on the farm with Granddaddy is full of hard work, but despite all the chores, Granddaddy always makes time for play, especially fishing trips. Even when there isn't a bite to catch, he reminds young Michael that it takes patience to get what's coming to you. One morning, when Granddaddy heads into town in his fancy suit, Michael knows that something very special must be happening. For the very first time, Granddaddy is allowed to vote, and he couldn't be more proud. But can Michael be patient when it seems that justice just can't come soon enough?

Maud Gonne, the legendary woman known as the Irish Joan of Arc, left her mark on everyone she met. What motivated this extraordinary person? Kim Bendheim has long been fascinated by Maud Gonne’s perplexing character, and here gives us an intensely personal assessment of her thrilling life. The product of much original research, including interviews with Gonne’s equally vivid, unconventional descendants, The Fascination of What’s Difficult is a portrait of a powerful woman who, despite her considerable flaws, continues to inspire.

A is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, super-fruit with reputed healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifting odor - peaches, old garlic. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by gardeners for its flowers. In this work of unique invention, these and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of 26 lyrical essays that range from deeply personal to botanical, from culinary to medical, from humorous to philosophical.

Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable—together. This is their true story. As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta, and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide. But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

Bailey welcomes a fresh start at the prestigious boarding school, Prescott Academy, far away from the painful memories of her mother's death and the unendurable happiness of her father and his new wife. She expects rigorous coursework and long hours of studying - what she doesn't expect is to be inducted into the Science Club, a group of wealthy and intelligent students who run a business cooking up drugs in their spare time. Suddenly, Bailey has everything she's ever wanted, including a sweet and handsome boyfriend named Warren, the brainy lead chemist in the Club.

As John Henry Clark notes in his book, Dying, as we get older we start to think about our own mortality. Those thoughts become even stronger as our parents age. It’s usually around this time we realize that time is no longer on our side, and if we really want to know more about our parents and the legacy they want to leave, we need to talk to them. Now. That’s exactly what Clark decided to do. Now in his fifties – with his father in his seventies – he sets out to record his father’s memories and his conversations with him and to put them into this touching slice-of-life memoir. ...

★★★★★ "Great story of redemption and the human spirit!" - Reader review ___ In this gripping memoir, Jimmy “Slim” Rumsey tells the extraordinary story of his life. His inspiring perspective arose out of his struggles as a teenager and young adult after confronting his most difficult challenges of seeking redemption for his past, embarking on a process of self-healing, and extending forgiveness. Jimmy was born on the run to a fugitive father, coming of age in California as a formidable gang member, serving time behind bars, and nearly losing his life after being shot in the ...