Nonfiction
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Riveting, elegant, humorous--this "picaresque voyage through Patti Smith's dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual ones" (The New York Times) is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids. Following a run of new year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith--inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing--this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction. As a stranger tells her, "Anything is possible. After all, it's the Year of the Monkey." But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue," and ten new photos, Year of the Monkey "reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source" (Los Angeles Times).
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - ONE OF USA TODAY'S MUST-READ BOOKS - This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist's journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice, from the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project "Alice Wong provides deep truths in this fun and deceptively easy read about her survival in this hectic and ableist society." --Selma Blair, bestselling author of Mean Baby In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong's Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
"In her much-needed and brilliant Year of the Witch, Temperance Alden guides readers to observe their own land, celestial cycles, seasonal cycles, and even their own biological cycles to inform their magickal year."-- Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick, and Manifestation When we think of the wheel of the year, the Wiccan wheel with its celebrations of the Yule, Beltane, Mabon, and Samhain come to mind. But what about a wheel of the year for the rest of us pagans and witches? As a witch living in sunny South Florida, longtime hereditary witch Temperance Alden has often felt at odds gearing up to celebrate Yule, for example, when it is 76 degrees and sunny outside. Year of the Witch will help readers create their own intuitive practices in harmony with the climate, culture, and local spirits where they live. It's of interest to witches coming off the Wiccan path and looking for a more personal approach to celebrating the rhythms of nature. Year of the Witch covers all aspects of this new, seasonal practice: The origins of the neo-pagan wheel of the year and why it is still so relevant today Culture, historical facts, and traditions associated with the major ceremonies Basic principles of land-based magick How to intuitively connect to the nature below your feet and the local gods Being a custodian to the land and its impact on our spiritual practice
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Winner of the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction
A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah's birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae's thirteenth and most unruly child.
A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.
The definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 10 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too-right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game-at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success-on and off the playing field-as well as his failures; how the man who insisted "I really didn't say everything I said!" nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star. Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.
Packed with humor, inspiration, and advice, You Are a Badass is the #1 New York Times bestselling self-help book that teaches you how to get better without getting busted.
In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up twenty-seven bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to:Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want, Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW, and Make some damn money already. The kind you've never made before.
By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.
In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up twenty-seven bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to:
By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - "A must-read...Phoebe Robinson discusses race and feminism in such a funny, real, and specific way, it penetrates your brain and stays with you."--Ilana Glazer, co-creator and co-star of Broad City A hilarious and timely essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from comedy superstar and 2 Dope Queens podcaster Phoebe Robinson Being a black woman in America means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities every day. Comedian Phoebe Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she's been unceremoniously relegated to the role of "the black friend," as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she's been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel ("isn't that...white people music?"); she's been called "uppity" for having an opinion in the workplace; she's been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she's ready to take these topics to the page--and she's going to make you laugh as she's doing it. Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is "Queen. Bae. Jesus," to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls, to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president, and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, 2 Dope Queens, to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, You Can't Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise. One of Glamour's "Top 10 Books of 2016"
Co-written by one of the country's most prominent internists, Dr. Henry "Harry" Lodge, and his star patient, the 73-year-old Chris Crowley, Younger Next Year for Women is a book of hope, a guide to aging without fear or anxiety. This is a book of hope, a guide to aging without fear or anxiety. Using the same inspired structure of alternating voices, Chris and Harry have recast material specifically for women, who already live longer and take better care of themselves than men. New material covers menopause and post-menopause, as well as cardiac disease, osteoporosis, sexuality, and more.
This is the book that can show us how to turn back our biological clocks--how to put off 70% of the normal problems of aging (weakness, sore joints, bad balance) and eliminate 50% of serious illness and injury. The key to the program is found in Harry's Rules: Exercise six days a week. Don't eat crap. Connect and commit to others. There are seven rules all together, based on the latest findings in cell physiology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and experimental psychology. Dr. Lodge explains how and why they work--and Chris Crowley, who is living proof of their effectiveness (skiing better today, for example, than he did twenty years ago), gives the just-as-essential motivation.
Both men and women can become functionally younger every year for the next five to ten years, then continue to live with newfound vitality and pleasure deep into our 80s and beyond.
Part pop-science, part self-help, Your Day. Your Way. is a friendly, funny, fact-based guide to changing how you make decisions in order to live a better -- maybe even your best -- life. We make, and worry about, a thousand big and little decisions during our waking hours. And for most of us, these decisions are made (after a lot of hemming and hawing), based on concerns or beliefs about our world that . . . well . . . simply aren't true. These misperceptions impact day-to-day decisions and stress us out unnecessarily -- and we all have enough stress as it is. Tim Caulfield seeks to provide the antidote to this analysis paralysis, teaching readers -- through sound science and silly stories -- that reevaluating their decision-making processes can lead to lives that are both more fulfilling and more exciting. Your Day. Your Way. unfolds like a typical day -- from the first buzz of the alarm clock all the way to bedtime. As the clock moves forward, Caulfield tackles topics associated with that particular time of day and addresses them through science-informed responses about health, offering readers a way to cut through the noise and have healthier and happier lives in the age of anxiety. Caulfield highlights what science says we should be worried about and how we can de-stress and live a healthy lifestyle. Rather than burying you in the facts, or listing out a bunch of specific things you should or should not be doing, Caulfield uses wit, humor, and a wide variety of examples to encourage readers to reevaluate how they make all of those decisions -- so that they can live in a way that truly works for them.
Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers "Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page."--Off Our Backs "Among the elements that make the book so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness, characteristics that shine through the writing bespeaking the evolution of a strong and remarkable character."--The New York Times