"[A]s a reporter, I was spending my life telling other people's stories and ignoring my own family's incredible one," Dawn Anahid MacKeen realized at 35. Her 78-year-old Armenian mother was aging, and MacKeen could no longer ignore her calls to "come home." In 2006, MacKeen left...
From the age of 13, Vivien Thomas worked with his master carpenter father and began growing a bank account that might someday take him to college and eventually medical school. The stock market crash of 1928 wiped out Thomas' savings, but nothing could touch his determination...
China's infamous one-child policy lasted just 35 years. Forced sterilizations, gruesome late-term abortions, an overseas adoption boom, and baby trafficking emerged as by-products of the draconian law. What was touted as a "necessary step in [China's] Herculean efforts to lift the population…from abject poverty" resulted in...
“No one said this global journey would be smooth,” writes Baz Dreisinger with controlled understatement. Covering two years and nine countries in her pilgrimage to prisons worldwide, Dreisinger – a self-described “white English professor specializing in African-American cultural studies,” as well as prison educator and criminal justice...
Beloved NPR host Diane Rehm’s latest memoir begins with her husband John's end – depleted by Parkinson's disease, unable to "stand walk, eat, bathe, or in any way care for himself on his own, he was now ready to die." After 54 years of marriage –...
More than a full century before Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Little Rock Nine (1957), Ruby Bridges (1960), and the Civil Rights Movement, 4-year-old Sarah Roberts entered the Otis School in Boston to begin her education in 1847. Her student days ended quickly when a...
Journalist Rod Nordland’s debut title began as a series of popular 2014 New York Times articles that introduced Ali and Zakia as Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet. At the time of the book’s publication, the young lovers were alive and living together, though facing a dangerously...
"Nothing seemed amiss that first Sunday in December 1945." In California, 21-year-old Harry questions why his white employer is sending him home. His comment that he had nothing to do with Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor gets him promptly fired. In Hiroshima, 4,000 miles away, 17-year-old...
Although JFK’s tenure was only 1,036 days, his legacy hasn’t tarnished much. In this volume of the Presidential Powerhouses series, Rowell diverges from too many children’s titles that lionize the youngest-ever POTUS to offer a finely balanced biographical overview. While JFK’s achievements are many – the...
*STARRED REVIEW In his sublime "foreword [that] might be better thought of as an afterword," physician and bestselling author Abraham Verghese reveals that he came to know Paul Kalanithi "most intimately when he'd ceased to be." That, too, is true of every listener here. Neurosurgeon Kalanithi died in...
*STARRED REVIEW "I was taught to avoid showing off," Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson (writing, Columbia University; On Michael Jackson) begins. "But isn't all memoir a form of showing off?" That hesitation permeates throughout, the restraint perfectly mimicked in Robin Miles's elegant recitation. This work is a...
“A house. A writing machine. …[And her] animals” are the “home” Sandra Cisneros needs to “feel like writing.” The MacArthur “Genius”-author of The House on Mango Street – one of those celebrated pivotal titles readers never forget – offers the “stories from my life [that]...
*STARRED REVIEW This is not your ordinary Hollywood memoir: no script doctor or publicist seems to have embellished or sanitized Tony/Emmy/Obie/Golden Globe-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker's first book. Written as a series of letters to almost three dozen "Mr."s both real and imagined, Parker's work captures past...
Outstanding International Books: Presenting the 2016 USBBY Selections As the domestic publishing industry continues to respond to the resounding battle cry of “We Need Diverse Books,” the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) has been working assiduously for over a decade to promote...
‘In Other Words’ traces Jhumpa Lahiri's love affair with the Italian language A few days before Christmas 1994, Jhumpa Lahiri made her first trip to Italy. She left a week later, in “[l]ove at first sight” not with a person, but with the Italian language. Over...
*STARRED REVIEW Ruth Bader Ginsberg (b. 1933) is legend: she was Columbia University's first female tenured professor; she published the first casebook on sex discrimination; she was the second woman to sit on the nation's highest court; and she was the first Supreme Court justice to...
Last year’s beaver den is this year’s cozy lair for a mother otter and three newborn pups. When they are finally allowed out, they lose no time leaping and tumbling, pouncing and wrestling, because, well, otters love to play. With their waterproof fur coats, the pups...
*STARRED REVIEW It’s true: “When Ruth Law made up her mind, there was no use trying to stop her.” With tenacious aplomb, Law announced that she would fly from Chicago to New York in one day – a distance, in 1916, that had never before been...
*STARRED REVIEW Rhimes has become one of television's most powerful women – her ShondaLand production company owns Thursday night with Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away with Murder. But career success aside, Rhimes is an introvert who was perfectly happy turning down most of...
Text and art find a perfect pairing between two hard covers that stretch out to reveal a 10-foot, double-sided spread of popping colors, swirly lines, and infectious energy. Captured within is the story of two friends "who play together just like kids." They joyously romp through...
