School Memoirs

You think you know what it means to coach? Think again. In Confessions of a High School Football Coach, Michael DiMatteo pulls back the curtain on the real world of high school coaching — not the highlight reels or Hollywood versions, but the gut-level truth of what it's like to lead young men through wins, losses, egos, politics, and everything in between. With over three decades of firsthand experience, DiMatteo delivers more than just stories — he delivers hard-earned wisdom. From locker room lessons to parent-teacher battles, from championship highs to soul-crushing defeats, this is...

In America’s public schools today, teachers are overwhelmed by the number of students in their classrooms, the challenges of meeting their students’ emotional and academic needs, and the daunting administrative tasks thrust at them. What can be done to inspire teachers to stay the course? How can future generations of teachers be convinced to embark on a career that has meant so much to the advancement of an educated citizenry? Robert Pacilio taught high school English for 32 years and was a teacher of the year in San Diego County. He has written a memoir dedicated to the principle that...

From Jimmy Blackmon comes a blow-by-blow account of his journey through the most challenging leadership and small tactics course in the world - US Army Ranger School. Through colorful dialogue and vivid storytelling for which Jimmy Blackmon has been praised, the listener will take a journey through Ranger School. 

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER | NPR BOOKS WE LOVE 2024 | PEOPLE’S BEST CELEBRITY MEMOIRS 2024 | TOWN & COUNTRY’S BEST NEW ROYAL BOOKS 2024 | THE TIMES (LONDON) 10 BEST BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS 2024 | WINNIPEG FREE PRESS’S BEST BOOKS 2024 NOW WITH A NEW AFTERWORD “A tour de force.” —The...

Fred Tomasello Jr. served three years as an officer in the U. S. Marine Corps. He earned two Purple Hearts, five Air Medals and a heavy dose of Post Traumatic Stress. Born and raised in West Tampa, Florida, Fred graduated from the University of South Florida and worked 27 years at the Tampa Postal Service. Retiring in 1999, he and his wife Kathy Blair sold their home, bought a truck and trailer, and traveled cross-country for five years as full-time RV'ers before settling in Cheektowaga, NY, a suburb of Buffalo. Soon after September 11, 2001 Fred started writing and discovered the spiritual...

This memoir is the true, no holds barred story of my incredibly blessed, ridiculously messy life. If you’re looking for a fun, relaxing beach read, this isn’t it. This is more of a roller-coaster, “Good grief, what next?” kind of read. But I hope you’ll give it a chance because it’s definitely not boring, occasionally funny, and does have a wonderful, happy ending…eventually. Within the pages of this book you’ll find: Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Just Plain Monsters Abandonments by Disturbingly Imperfect Parents, and Adoptions by Nearly Perfect Parents Drug Addicts, Alcoholics, ...

Welcome to Noreen Olson's kitchen table, where everything happens. She loves birds, animals, family, children, friends, growing things and life on the farm, and writes about them and all the odd situations they manage to get into with engaging liveliness. Many of the pieces are humorous, but more than that, they are heartwarming and true. In them you will see reflections of your own loves, life, guilt, laughter, nostalgia, memories and beliefs. All of the animals, people, and incidents are real and names have been changed for "her own protection".

Medical school taught him how to diagnose disease, interpret test results, and save lives. What it didn't teach him was how to comfort a grieving family, earn the trust of a frightened patient, or sit quietly beside someone facing the hardest day of their life. In this heartfelt memoir, a young doctor reflects on his first year of residency through twenty unforgettable patient encounters. From a lonely widow spending Christmas in the hospital to a veteran carrying a lifetime of memories, each chapter reveals the human side of medicine rarely found in textbooks. Sometimes funny, sometimes ...

New York Times Bestseller One of the most influential public intellectuals in the world and the architect of the two biggest ideas to reshape the American conversation about fairness offers the intimate story of how her life gave birth to these ideas. It is not very often that someone comes...

Social media phenomenon and mental health advocate Chris Olsen invites readers into his therapist’s office—and into the story he’s spent years trying to understand—in this raw, fearless, and darkly funny memoir. For much of his childhood, Chris Olsen believed his family was ordinary...

A chorus of Black student voices that renders a new story of US education—one where racial barriers and violence are confronted by freedom dreaming and resistance Black students were forced to live and learn on the Black side of the color line for centuries, through the time of slavery...

They took her freedom. They took her innocence. They took her child. But they couldn't take her spirit. Bridie Rodgers was just two years old when she was arrested for begging on the streets of Dublin. She was to spend the next thirty years of her life locked away in different institutions. The orphanage came first. But at sixteen, she was raped, fell pregnant, and was sent to a home for unmarried mothers. Even then, when she should have been shattered by what life had thrown at her, she found happiness in her perfect son. But Bridie's child was taken away from her. She was sent to one of ...

Think No Evil is the first insider account of the tragic events, the personal victories and the daily Amish life in Nickel Mines, written by a native of the Amish community who still lives and works where most of his relatives are Old Order Amish. Against the rich and fascinating backdrop of Amish culture, Beiler reveals the best of the human spirit in the midst of the worst, and leaves us all drawn heavenward, the richer for it.

Decades after Scott Turow entered law school comes an all new unabridged production of this classic with a special introduction by and interview with the author One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school and a bestseller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to...

Who am I? Who were these people who made me who I am? And, what was this place? Was it ever what I thought it was? For celebrated journalist and author Julie Salamon, these recently became central questions. Salamon spent the first 18 years of her life Seaman, Ohio, a town that is part of the American heartland, a repository of mythology and misunderstanding.

From this book, What Papa Told Me, you will learn about the story of Murray, a young Jewish boy from Poland whose courage and sheer will to live helped him survive eight different labor and concentration camps in the Holocaust, start a new life in America, and keep a family intact in the aftermath of his wife's suicide - one of the Nazis' last victims.

The Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller! From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Make Your Bed—a short, inspirational book of advice and leadership lessons that Admiral McRaven collected over his four decades as a Navy SEAL. The title “Bullfrog” is given to the Navy SEAL who has served...

Instant New York Times Bestseller A love letter to the rookie in all of us: Singer-actor Joshua Bassett's fearless memoir in verse about surviving the darkest moments of fame, addiction, and mental health struggles—and finding hope on the other side. "We're all figuring it out as we go along...

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher, and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history.