Childhood Memoir

Young Mendel, from age four to 14, tells in vivid detail the wretched journey in cramped cattle cars through frigid Russia, the indignities of being forced labor, the shame of begging for bread just to survive, and death of those closest to him. The family's plight includes abandonment, hunger, and separation (and later remarkable twists of fate and reunion) quite unlike other Holocaust stories.

Nancy McCabe, who grew up in Kansas just a few hours from the Ingalls family’s home in Little House on the Prairie, always felt a deep connection with Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series. McCabe read Little House on the Prairie during her childhood and visited Wilder sites around the Midwest with her aunt when she was 13. But then, she didn’t read the series again until she decided to revisit in adulthood the books that had so influenced her childhood.

For Clarence, a two-year-old Minnesota boy, the terrible twos were terrible. His mother was killed in an auto accident, boiling water scalded his arm, and a rooster nearly pecked out one of his eyes. Things weren’t much better at six. Tumbling into a stream, a broken bottle pierced his elbow and doctors contemplated amputating the arm. At eight, his luck changed.

These stories are specific to one legendary riverfront plateau and one boy's journey, but are emblematic of immigrant life and blue-collar aspirations during the heyday of American industry and its crash, foreshadowing one of the largest internal migrations in US history. Approximately six million baby boomers, like the narrator, fled the Rust Belt. Another six million remained and stories of their youth, struggles, and aspirations echo throughout this book.

Rosemary Penfold's beautiful and evocative memoir of her life growing up in the fields of the English countryside is a moving testament to a forgotten world and a disappearing and misunderstood people. Born in 1938 in a traditional Gypsy wagon, surrounded by the love of her parents and extended family in a small but close-knit community, Rosemary paints a vivid and touching portrait of a way of life that no longer exits.

The year is 1939. As war breaks out across Europe, nine-year-old Susie and her older sister Gyll are dispatched to Africa by their mother. Alone on the dusty continent, the sisters find little sympathy in their new guardians, and little to like about their new way of life: patched-up clothes, a 6 o'clock bedtime (a particular indignity), and regular obsessive cleanliness rituals. Their continued presence a nuisance, and overwhelmed by fear of doing the wrong thing, Susie and Gyll seek an ally in Mavis.

The actress Isla Blair’s extraordinary, moving and uplifting story of her childhood in India and her separation from her parents. Born in Bangalore India, during the fading days of the Raj, Isla grew up on a tea plantation managed by her father. She spent her early years in the lush, verdant hills of Kerala with her much loved older sister Fiona, secure in the love and affection of her parents and her adored “Ayah”.

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its wildlife. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds and small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of the garden - were the perfect apprenticeship for his two lifelong passions: exploring the wonders of nature and writing about them. Warm, wise and full of wonder, The Dun Cow Rib is a captivating coming of age tale by one of the founding fathers of nature writing.

In this vivid memoir, Neidhardt explores her childhood in wider familial and social contexts. Drawing upon a trove of family letters and other archival material, she follows her parents’ journey from privilege to food stamps—from their formative youths, to their embrace of pioneer homemaking and rural poverty, to their sudden and wrenching return to conventional society—and explores the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s as it was, and as she lived it.

In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure.

Sunil Dutta is a 20-year veteran of the LAPD. Before that, he was a biologist at the University of California and a translator of classic Indian poetry. Before that, he was a destitute refugee, one of so many uprooted by the genocidal violence surrounding the Partition of India. Back then, he had a brother. Back then, they were children together, chasing whatever fun and solace they could find in impossible conditions. Sunil looked up to Raju. He admired his strength, his character.

To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. Eve rarely spoke about her childhood and it was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except Manhattan, where she could be found attending Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera or inspecting a round of French triple crème at Zabar’s. After her mother passed, Julie discovered a keepsake book filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva.

Jeden Sommer brachen wir mit dem VW-Bus auf von München, Neuperlach in Richtung Süden, ins Jugoskorsikalawienland oder irgendwo anders hin, wo es düstere Felsen, düsteres Meer und düstere Ortschaften mit düsteren Menschen gab. Was es dort nicht gab, war so etwas wie ein Klo oder eine Dusche. Denn meine Eltern waren nicht einfach nur Camper. Nein, sie waren überzeugte Wildcamper. Riesenspinnen auf dem Rücksitz, Schlangen in der Trinkwasserzisterne, gigantische Müllberge und sinkende Schlauchboote – es war alles dabei, was Camping in den 70ern so außergewöhnlich machte.

Journey Back into the Vault: In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints invites you to travel with me back to the land of my birth for the first time in 56 years in order to reclaim my forgotten Cuban childhood memories, original identity, and once-promised destiny. Come with me as I search for the now faded footprints I once left behind in the homes, school, and playgrounds of the first nine years of my life; help me honor the grandparents, uncles, and aunts I never saw again at their final resting place; and meet family members I never knew I had.

Don’t Expect Me to Cry is a powerful story of the horrors Janet experienced at the hands of multiple abusers, including her father, and the courageous journey of healing that brought her to a life that is inspirational to other survivors. Janet’s resilience is evident as she tells her story in three parts, reflecting her thoughts and experiences at critical stages of her life. She explains how, from that place of despair, she learned that it is possible to heal from the dark shame and trauma and live a steadier and more content life.

A revelation about the future of America and the group called "The third America" that has the last key to the solution for us today, to poverty, racism, and peace. These solutions were prophesied by the greatest fighter that ever lived when he was in Jr High School, Muhammad Ali. These revelations were revealed to us by Ali's childhood friend who walked to school with him every day and became a writer from The James Brown Show, Sonny Fishback. Ali believes these solutions can help avoid a nuclear explosion.

With little more than a run-down Jeep and their newborn baby in tow, author Micah Perks' parents set out in 1963 to build a school and a utopian community in the mountains. The school would become known as a place to send teens with drug addictions and emotional problems, children with whom Micah and her sister would grow up. This complex memoir mixes a moving celebration of the utopian spirit and its desire for community and freedom with a lacerating critique of the consequences of those desires - especially for the children involved.

Justin Webb's childhood was far from ordinary. Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better. And the backdrop to this coming of age story? Britain in the 1970s. Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Free. Strikes, inflation and IRA bombings. A time in which attitudes towards mental illness, parenting and masculinity were worlds apart from the attitudes we have today.

Vinnie Curto was born in East Boston, Massachusetts, on July 10, 1955. His father Jimmy Curto was a raving, sick, alcoholic homosexual. Vinnie’s father and his drunken friends sexually abused young Vinnie, frequently raping him and performing other deviant sexual acts on him, while his mother Loretta stood by and let it happen.

Tiny’s Wall is the story of my undiscovered faith and a testament to perseverance, the will to live, to forgive, and find love. I accepted God's grace and mercy for my life, and I hope I can help someone else.