Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional U.S. Shopping
Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional U.S.
Richard Wright
Black Boy - ABRIDGED
by HarperAudio (Audio Cassette) (Release Date: 1998-06-02)
With an introduction by Jerry W. Ward, Jr. Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming off age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America. "Superb...The Library of America has insured that most of Wright's major texts are now available as he wanted them to be tread...Most important of all is the opportunity we now have to hear a great American writer speak with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives."--Alfred Kazin, New York Time Book Review "The publication of this new edition is not just an editorial innovation, it is a major event in American literary history." --Andrew Delbanco, New Republic
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir
by Simon & Schuster (Paperback)
Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers' leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.
Michael Patrick MacDonald
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
by Beacon Press (Hardcover)
This searing coming-of-age memoir is set in "Southie" where gangster Whitey Bulger runs the drug business, and class and racial violence erupt in response to forced busing in the 1970s. MacDonald loses four siblings to drugs, poverty, and violence, and eventually attempts to transcend his grief as he becomes an activist in the Southie he can't help but love. "If you were charmed by Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes . . . try All Souls, Michael Patrick Mac-Donald's guileless and powerful memoir of precarious life and early death in Boston's Irish ghetto. . . . With its probes of crooked politicians, bad cops, and layers of racism, All Souls easily breaks its regional and ethnic boundaries."-R. Z. Sheppard, Time
Michael Perry
Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time (Wisconsin)
by HarperCollins (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2002-10-08)
Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin (population: 485), where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now -- after a decade away -- he has returned.Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Mike figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, he tells a frequently comic tale leavened with moments of heartbreaking delicacy and searing tragedy. Tracing his calls on a map in the little firehouse, he sees "a dense, benevolent web, spun one frantic zigzag at a time" from which the story of a tiny town ...
Melba Pattillo Beals
Warriors Don't Cry (Unabridged)
by Perfection Learning (Unknown Binding)
One of the nine black teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock, Arkansas' Central High School in 1957 offers an account of her ordeal and of the 1987 ""reunion"" hosted by then-Governor Bill Clinton. 30,000 first printing. Tour.
Ralph Moody
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers
by Bison Books (Paperback)
Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books.
Julia Reed
The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story
by Ecco (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-06-24)
Julia Reed went to New Orleans in 1991 to cover the reelection of former (and currently incarcerated) governor Edwin Edwards. Seduced by the city's sauntering pace, its rich flavors and exotic atmosphere, she was never entirely able to leave again. After almost fifteen years of living like a vagabond on her reporter's schedule, she got married and bought a house in the historic Garden District. Four weeks after she moved in, Hurricane Katrina struck. With her house as the center of her own personal storm as well as the ever-evolving stage set for her new life as an upstanding citizen, Reed traces the fates of all who enter to wine, dine (at her table for twenty-four), tear down walls, install fixtures, throw fits and generally leave their mark on the house on First Street. There's Antoine, Reed's beloved homeless handyman with an unfortunate habit of landing in jail; JoAnn Clevenger, the Auntie Mame—like restaurateur who got her start mixing drinks for Dizzy Gillespie and ...
Rick Bragg
Ava's Man
by Vintage (Paperback) (Release Date: 2002-08-13)
Reymundo Sanchez
My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King
by Chicago Review Press (Hardcover)
Luis J. Rodriguez
Always Running: LA Vida Loca : Gang Days in L. A.
by Topeka Bindery (School & Library Binding)
By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as drugs, murder, suicide, and senseless acts of street crime claimed friends and family members. Before long Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words, and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more -- until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.