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"You were dead, Sarah, you were dead." In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza's crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother. In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure--and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towards this legacy, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization, denial, and patriarchy both within and outside her."--Amazon.

"In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening? All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love -- or to any other passion, substance, or craving--and who yearns, at long last, for liberation." -- Provided by publisher.

Antonio, We Know You follows the life of a migrant farmworker kidnapped at age four, trafficked through age ten at a famous California Ranch, until being saved from an attempted suicide and taken under Cesar Chavez's wing. Antonio eventually graduated from law school and found the strength and resilience to be reunited with his long-lost family after 24 years. In telling his story, Antonio aims to offer hope in desperate circumstances. He shares the legacy of his family and reflects the dignity and sacrifices of their difficult Chicano life.-- Amazon.

"Sometimes you have to risk baring it all. Christine Amoroso did everything right to achieve the perfect life. Falling for a sandy-haired surfer and landing pregnant at seventeen, she knew the "right" thing to do. She could have it all, even if in the "wrong" order: beautiful children, a good marriage, and approval from those around her. Until it all fell apart. Ever the overachiever, she continued to take on too much, finishing college with two kids in tow. But as her responsibility grew, so did her resentment. A stressed-out young mom, an inattentive husband, and the attention of another man made the perfect recipe for disaster. Hard work and responsible decisions had not guaranteed a happy life or lasting love. She had failed, and now she floundered as she tried to find a fresh start. She turned inward for answers rather than seeking external validation. After a few missteps, she slowly learned her worth couldn't come from a list of accolades, achievements, or some guy. Her story is an earnest and humorous account of what it's like to be a modern American woman trying to have it all and the dangers of losing oneself in the process. Bare Naked in Public is a must-read memoir for burnt-out overachievers seeking answers about their worth while finally forgiving their past."--Amazon.com.

"From political economist, cabinet member, beloved professor, media presence, and bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, a deeply-felt, compelling memoir of growing up in a baby-boom America that made progress in certain areas, fell short in so many important ways, and still has lots of work to do. A thought-provoking, principled, clear-eyed chronicle of the culture, politics, and economic choices that have landed us where we are today--with irresponsible economic bullies and corporations with immense wealth and lobbying power on top, demagogues on the rise, and increasing inequality fueling anger and hatred across the country. Nine months after World War II, Robert Reich was born into a united America with a bright future--that went unrealized for so many as big money took over our democracy. His encounter with school bullies on account of his height-4'11" as an adult--set him on a determined path to spend his life fighting American bullies of every sort. He recounts the death of a friend in the civil rights movement; his political coming of age witnessing the Berkeley free speech movement; working for Bobby Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy; experiencing a country torn apart by the Vietnam War; meeting Hillary Rodham in college, Bill Clinton at Oxford, and Clarence Thomas at Yale Law. He details his friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith during his time teaching at Harvard, and subsequent friendships with Bernie Sanders and Ted Kennedy; his efforts as labor secretary for Clinton and economic advisor to Barack Obama. Ultimately, Reich asks: What did his generation accomplish? Did they make America better, more inclusive, more tolerant? Did they strengthen democracy? Or, did they come up short? In the end, though, Reich hardly abandons us to despair over a doomed democracy. With his characteristic spirit, humor, and inherent decency, he lays out how we can reclaim a sense of community and a democratic capitalism based on the American ideals we still have the power to salvage."-- Provided by publisher.

"A memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family."-- Provided by publisher.
Chaudry was raised with a lot of love-- and a lot of that love looked like food. Delicious Pakistani dishes, and an abundance of American processed foods, caused her family to become alarmed about their chubby daughter's future. How would she ever get married? Here Chaudry chronicles the dozens of times she tried and failed to achieve what she was told was her ideal weight-- and in doing so shows us how freeing it is to finally make peace with the body we have.--Adapted from jacket.

"You were dead, Sarah, you were dead." In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza's crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother. In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure--and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. As she moves towards this legacy, Aziza learns to resist the forces of colonization, denial, and patriarchy both within and outside her."--Amazon.

"Derek Black was raised to take over the white nationalist movement in the United States. Their father, Don Black, was a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and started Stormfront, the internet's first white supremacist website--Derek built the kids' page. David Duke, was also their close family friend and mentor. Racist hatred, though often wrapped up in respectability, was all Derek knew. Then, while in college in 2013, Derek publicly renounced white nationalism and apologized for their actions and the suffering that they had caused. The majority of their family stopped speaking to them, and they disappeared into academia, convinced that they had done so much harm that there was no place for them in public life. But in 2016, as they watched the rise of Donald Trump, they immediately recognized what they were hearing--the spread and mainstreaming of the hate they had helped cultivate--and they knew that they couldn't stay silent. This is a thoughtful, insightful, and moving account of a singular life, with important lessons for our troubled times. Derek can trace a uniquely insider account of the rise of white nationalism, and how a child indoctrinated with hate can become an anti-racist adult. Few understand the ideology, motivations, or tactics of the white nationalist movement like Derek, and few have ever made so profound a change. When coded language and creeping authoritarianism spread the ideas of white nationalists, this is an essential book with a powerful voice."-- Book jacket.

"The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He's a loner, awkward and obsessive; she's charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream--as we all dream--of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive on the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can't run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage At Sea pairs adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable."-- Provided by publisher.

A spirited dive into the life and career of a performer, writer, and director who dominated twentieth-century American comedy.
"Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, is one of the great comic voices of the twentieth century. Having won almost every entertainment award there is, Brooks has straddled the line between outsider and insider, obedient and rebellious, throughout his career, making out-of-bounds comedy the American mainstream. Jeremy Dauber argues that throughout Brooks's extensive body of work -- from Your Show of Shows to Blazing Saddles to Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs -- the comedian has seen the most success when he found a balance between his unflagging, subversive, manic energy and the constraints imposed by comedic partners, the Hollywood system, and American cultural mores. Dauber also explores how Brooks's American Jewish humor went from being solely for niche audiences to an essential part of the American mainstream, paving the way for generations of Jewish (and other) comedians to come."-- Book jacket.

"Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy's first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as "my shelter and my storm." "Heart-smashed" by her mother Mary's death in September 2022 yet puzzled and "more than a little ashamed" by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, "not because I didn't love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her." And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author's journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today. With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace--a memoir like no other." -- Provided by publisher.

"This memoir is based on the detailed journal Claudia Krich, a U.S. aid worker, kept during the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon in 1975. A co-director of an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) humanitarian program, Krich was one of only three American women to remain in Saigon after the U.S. withdrawal, and readers glean insights into what happened in Saigon in the first days and months after the Americans had left Saigon and the North Vietnamese swiftly established their regime. Her narrative is supplemented by historical and personal reflections penned by American and Vietnamese contemporaries."-- Provided by publisher.