Nonfiction
All That Moves Us: Life Lessons from a Pediatric Neurosurgeon
Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations--there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain--in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human--every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist. In All That Moves Us, Dr. Jay Wellons pulls back the curtain to reveal the profoundly moving triumphs, haunting complications, and harrowing close calls that characterize the life of a pediatric neurosurgeon, bringing the high-stakes drama of the operating room to life with astonishing candor and honest compassion. Reflecting on lessons learned over twenty-five years and thousands of operations completed on some of the most vulnerable and precious among us, Wellons recounts in gripping detail the moments that have shaped him as a doctor, as a parent, and as the only hope for countless patients whose young lives are in his hands. Wellons shares scenes of his early days as the son of a military pilot, the years of grueling surgical training, and true stories of what it's like to treat the brave children he meets on the threshold between life and death. From the little boy who arrived at the hospital near death from a gunshot wound to the head, to the eight-year-old whose shredded nerves were repaired using suture as fine as human hair, to the brave mother-to-be undergoing fetal spinal cord surgery, All That Moves Us is an unforgettable portrait of the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern children's hospital--and a meditation on the marvel of life as seen from under the white-hot lights of the operating room.
Allegorizings
Not so long ago, feeling intimations of mortality, Jan Morris embarked on a wholly novel literary enterprise. What began as a series of high-minded letters to her late daughter--in the style of Lord Chesterfield addressing his son--quickly transformed itself into a potpourri of mini-essays and vibrant reminiscences, organized around experiences both majestic and mundane, from traveling the world with her lifelong partner, Elizabeth, to sneezing and kissing and simply growing old.
So Allegorizings came to be, and so Morris decided that it should only be published upon her death, not because she had anything to hide but, merely, in parting. Featuring essays largely written in the early twenty-first century, Allegorizings reflects, above all, Morris's steadfast conviction that nothing is only what it seems. In fact, she observes, everything is allegory. Indeed, in Morris's telling, even life--the whole conundrum of existence--is one long, majestically impenetrable allegory.
Taking us from the separatist hippie colony of Bolinas, California, to her home country of Wales, and introducing us to Nepalese Sherpas and elderly cruise-goers alike, Morris follows the throughline of allegory throughout her works. In one essay, she lambasts the joylessness of maturity ("Maturity! Did ever a heart thrill to the sound of it, still less the meaning?") and in another, decries the nonsense of nationality. With characteristic verve, she offers odes to whistling and cursing, cats, and exclamation points. Morris's travels anchor the collection, as she revisits the iconic settings of her previous works. We join her aboard the storied Orient Express, as well as tube trains passing through the purlieus of London. So too, we hike the foothills of the Himalayas--where Morris burst onto scene with her on-the-spot reportage of the first ascent of Everest--and reflect on the picaresque allure of Tournus, a dichotomized town in France where one France, bearing all the vestiges of privilege, seems to kiss another.
Intimate and luminously wise, Allegorizings is as much a testament to the virtues of embracing life as it is a testament to its charming, indignant, and ever-surprising author. In her final work, Morris's writing is as erudite as ever, conveying a generosity of spirit "flavored by well-earned crankiness" (Vox). Though newly bereft of her company, readers will be reminded what "a good, wise, and witty companion" (Alexander McCall Smith) Morris has been to so many, for so long.
Always Home: A Daughter's Recipes & Stories: Foreword by Alice Waters
An Indelible Journey
Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us
"An eye-opening and enchanting book by one of our major scientist-explorers." --Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper's Wife
Nicknamed the "Real-Life Lorax" by National Geographic, the biologist, botanist, and conservationist Meg Lowman--aka "CanopyMeg"--takes us on an adventure into the "eighth continent" of the world's treetops, along her journey as a tree scientist, and into climate action Welcome to the eighth continent! As a graduate student exploring the rain forests of Australia, Meg Lowman realized that she couldn't monitor her beloved leaves using any of the usual methods. So she put together a climbing kit: she sewed a harness from an old seat belt, gathered hundreds of feet of rope, and found a tool belt for her pencils and rulers. Up she went, into the trees. Forty years later, Lowman remains one of the world's foremost arbornauts, known as the "real-life Lorax." She planned one of the first treetop walkways and helps create more of these bridges through the eighth continent all over the world. With a voice as infectious in its enthusiasm as it is practical in its optimism, The Arbornaut chronicles Lowman's irresistible story. From climbing solo hundreds of feet into the air in Australia's rainforests to measuring tree growth in the northeastern United States, from searching the redwoods of the Pacific coast for new life to studying leaf eaters in Scotland's Highlands, from conducting a BioBlitz in Malaysia to conservation planning in India and collaborating with priests to save Ethiopia's last forests, Lowman launches us into the life and work of a field scientist, ecologist, and conservationist. She offers hope, specific plans, and recommendations for action; despite devastation across the world, through trees, we can still make an immediate and lasting impact against climate change. A blend of memoir and fieldwork account, The Arbornaut gives us the chance to live among scientists and travel the world--even in a hot-air balloon! It is the engrossing, uplifting story of a nerdy tree climber--the only girl at the science fair--who becomes a giant inspiration, a groundbreaking, ground-defying field biologist, and a hero for trees everywhere. Includes black-and-white illustrationsAsylum: A Memoir & Manifesto
Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir
An eerily dreamlike memoir, and the first work of nonfiction by one of our most inventive novelists.
Aurelia, Aurélia begins on a boat. The author, sixteen years old, is traveling to Europe at an age when one can "try on personae like dresses." She has the confidence of a teenager cultivating her earliest obsessions--Woolf, Durrell, Bergman--sure of her maturity, sure of the life that awaits her. Soon she finds herself in a Greece far drearier than the Greece of fantasy, "climbing up and down the steep paths every morning with the real old women, looking for kindling." Kathryn Davis's hypnotic new book is a meditation on the way imagination shapes life, and how life, as it moves forward, shapes imagination. At its center is the death of her husband, Eric. The book unfolds as a study of their marriage, its deep joys and stinging frustrations; it is also a book about time, the inexorable events that determine beginnings and endings. The preoccupations that mark Davis's fiction are recognizable here--fateful voyages, an intense sense of place, the unexpected union of the magical and the real--but the vehicle itself is utterly new. Aurelia, Aurélia explodes the conventional bounds of memoir. It is an astonishing accomplishment.Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist
"Sesali Bowen is poised to give Black feminism the rejuvenation it needs. Her trendsetting writing and commentary reaches across experiences and beyond respectability. I and so many Black girls still figuring out who they are in this world will gain so much from whatever she has to say."--Charlene A. Carruthers, activist and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
"Sesali perfectly vocalizes the inner dialogue, and daily mantras needed to be a Bad Bitch."--Gabourey Sidibe, actor, director, and author of This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare
"A powerful call for a more inclusive and 'real' feminism."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bowen writes from an authentic space for Black women who are often left out of feminist conversations due to respectability politics, but who are just as deserving of the same voice and liberation."--Booklist (starred review)
From funny and fearless entertainment journalist Sesali Bowen, Bad Fat Black Girl combines rule-breaking feminist theory, witty and insightful personal memoir, and cutting cultural analysis for an unforgettable, genre-defining debut.
Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love.
Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae.But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism meets today's hip-hop.
Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.
Bad bitches: this one's for you.
Ballad of Tommy LiPuma
Captures seven hit-making decades during the American recording industry's glittering, freewheeling years.
Tommy LiPuma was one of America's most successful record producers whose work with seminal artists like Miles Davis, Diana Krall, Barbra Streisand, Rickie Lee Jones, George Benson, and Willie Nelson went on to sell over seventy-five million records. It is also a picaresque journey that opens with the murder of a man on a dirt path in Sicily and concludes with five trips up the Grammy red carpet. The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma is real-life Horatio Alger adventure storied with bootleggers, gangsters, artists, hipsters, set in a revolutionary time in music history that changed popular culture around the world. Finally, it's a deeply personal account of how music saved one man's life, and how he went on to affect the lives of millions of others.
"Tommy was my best friend, my creative partner, my mentor, my confidant, and my producer for twenty-four years. As time goes on, I realize just how special he was."--Diana Krall
"Tommy was a fantastic producer. He always had a great sense of humour . . . he would sit in the studio with us musicians and make every session a complete joy."--Paul McCartney
"Tommy was always looking for ways to bring authentic jazz and blues to a larger audience."--Donald Fagen
"He leaves a great legacy of great music that's going to stand the test of time . . . . I miss him every day."--Al Schmitt
"Tommy was a great producer and a real friend."--Willie Nelson
I don't think that it's been noticed enough what he's done. He's been the most successfulperson, commercially, in the history of jazz."--Randy Newman
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Be My Baby: A Memoir
"Do I have to tell you that Ronnie's got one of the greatest female rock-and-roll voices of all time? She stands alone."
--Keith Richards
Beatle Who Vanished
Becoming
Better, Not Bitter: The Power of Hope and Living on Purpose
Big Hurt: A Memoir
Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist's Freedom Song
Birdman of Koshkonong: The Life of Naturalist Thure Kumlien
Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments
Blood Orange Night: My Journey to the Edge of Madness
Book of Atlantis Black
A young woman is found dead on the floor of a Tijuana hotel room. An ID in a nearby purse reads "Atlantis Black." The police report states that the body does not seem to match the identification, yet the body is quickly cremated and the case is considered closed.
So begins Betsy Bonner's search for her sister, Atlantis, and the unraveling of the mysterious final months before Atlantis's disappearance, alleged overdose, and death. With access to her sister's email and social media accounts, Bonner attempts to decipher and construct a narrative: frantic and unintelligible Facebook posts, alarming images of a woman with a handgun, Craigslist companionship ads, DEA agent testimony, video surveillance, police reports, and various phone calls and moments in the flesh conjured from memory. Through a history only she and Atlantis shared--a childhood fraught with abuse and mental illness, Atlantis's precocious yet short rise in the music world, and through it all an unshakable bond of sisterhood--Bonner finds questions that lead only to more questions and possible clues that seem to point in no particular direction. In this haunting memoir and piercing true crime account, Bonner must decide how far she will go to understand a sister who, like the mythical island she renamed herself for, might prove impossible to find.
Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz: A True Story of Family and Survival
"Brilliantly written, vivid, a powerful and often uncomfortable true story that deserves to be read and remembered. It beautifully captures the strength of the bond between a father and son."--Heather Morris, author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz
The #1 Sunday Times bestseller--a remarkable story of the heroic and unbreakable bond between a father and son that is as inspirational as The Tattooist of Auschwitz and as mesmerizing as The Choice.
Where there is family, there is hope
In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholster from Vienna, and his sixteen-year-old son Fritz are arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Germany. Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis' murderous brutality.
Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz--and certain death.
For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow.
Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future.
Based on the secret diary that Gustav kept as well as meticulous archival research and interviews with members of the Kleinmann family, including Fritz's younger brother Kurt, sent to the United States at age eleven to escape the war, The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz is Gustav and Fritz's story--an extraordinary account of courage, loyalty, survival, and love that is unforgettable.
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Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
"I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power." So begins Taylor Brorby's Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, "a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking."
In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.
Broken (in the best possible way)
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
New bonus chapter
Broken Horses: A Memoir
Brothers in the Beloved Community: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr.
Only a few years earlier, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an open letter to Martin Luther King Jr. as part of his effort to raise awareness and bring peace in Vietnam. There was an unexpected outcome of Nhat Hanh's letter to King: The two men met in 1966 and 1967 and became not only allies in the peace movement, but friends. This friendship between two prophetic figures from different religions and cultures, from countries at war with one another, reached a great depth in a short period of time. Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He wrote: Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.
The two men bonded over a vision of the Beloved Community: a vision described recently by Congressman John Lewis as a nation and world society at peace with itself. It was a concept each knew of because of their membership within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace organization, and that Martin Luther King Jr. had been popularizing through his work for some time. Thich Nhat Hanh, Andrus shows, took the lineage of the Beloved Community from King and carried it on after his death.
In Brothers in the Beloved Community, Marc Andrus tells the little-known story of a friendship between two giants of our time.