Parenting Memoir

Five years into fatherhood, Calvin Hennick is plagued by self-doubt and full of questions. How can he teach his son to be a man when his own father figures abandoned him? As a white man, what can he possibly teach his biracial son about how to live as a black man in America? And what does it even mean to be a man today, when society's expectations of men seem to change from moment to moment?

In Material, Kary takes listeners along with him to visit some of the places where modern artisans are preserving, and in some cases passing on, the old craft skills. His vivid descriptions and eye for detail make this book a rich and delightful listen, and the natural and cultural history he imparts along the way provides an important context for understanding our own past and the roots of our industrial society. Personal, engaging, and filled with memorable people, landscapes, and scenes, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create.

From Golda to Ginsburg, Yentl to Mama Rose, Tallulah to the Queen of Mean, Tovah Feldshuh has always played powerful women who aren't afraid to sit at the table with the big boys and rule their world. But offstage, Tovah struggled to fulfill the one role she never auditioned for: Lily Feldshuh's only daughter. Tovah shares the highs and lows of a remarkable career that has spanned five decades, and shares the lessons that she has learned, often the hard way, about how to live a life in the spotlight, strive for excellence, and still get along with your mother.

Bowing to Elephants is a travel memoir with a twist—the story of an unloved rich girl from San Francisco who becomes a travel junkie, searching for herself in the world to avoid the tragic fate of her narcissistic, alcoholic mother. Haunted by images of childhood loneliness and the need to learn about her world, Dimond journeys to far-flung places—into the perfumed chaos of India; the nostalgic, damp streets of Paris; the gray, watery world of Venice in the winter; the reverent and silent mountains of Bhutan; and the gold temples of Burma.

Two families assemble for a wedding at a family mansion on the beach in East Hampton. But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride suffers a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal and lies in a coma in the hospital. So begins Jeanne McCulloch’s vivid memoir of her wedding weekend in 1983 and its aftereffects on her family and the family of the groom. As McCulloch reveals, the repercussions from that weekend will ripple throughout her own family and that of her in-law as they grapple with questions of loyalty, tradition, marital honor, hope, and loss.

In this brave and shocking memoir, the author masterfully guides us through the pivotal points of her life, from an abusive upbringing that destroys her self-confidence, to the wreckage of an ill-conceived marriage, and on to a defining moment, full of grace and mercy, which gave her the wings to become the conquering and triumphant phoenix she is today.

Uno de los más preciosos libros acerca del significado de la palabra familia. Cerca de cumplir los cincuenta años, Fabiola Hablützel descubrió que era adoptada. Después de salir del estado de conmoción que esta noticia le produjo, pensó que aquel descubrimiento era la respuesta a la pregunta que se había hecho desde niña. En más de una ocasión, la posibilidad de no ser hija biológica de sus padres rondó su mente, ya que el parecido físico con ellos no resultaba suficiente. Por más que recibió todo el amor que alguien hubiera podido desear, sentía que había algo distinto en ella.

Leaving home was not easy for Irene Sardanis. Born into a Greek family in the Bronx in the 1940s, she was the youngest child of an unhappy mother and a father who drank, gambled, and enjoyed other women—and then, when Irene was 11, abandoned the family altogether. Irene's older siblings found a way out, but Irene was trapped, held hostage to her mother's rage and despair. When she finally escaped her mother as a young adult, she married a Greek man who controlled and dominated her just like her mother always had. But Irene wasn't ready to let her story end there.

The American mental health system is in crisis, and those affected by its shortcomings are drowning without the tools and resources they deserve and need to thrive. In Born into Crisis, author Kenneth Nixon shares his story of growing up with a mother with severe mental illness and a family stuck in an enduring cycle of trauma. He knows firsthand the impact trauma can have on a person's life. Kenneth not only takes you on a powerful journey through his stories, he provides cogent and practical strategies for creating lasting change in our mental health system.

In this cohesive collection of provocative stories, West details the precarious journey of raising her daughter while going through a quarter-life crisis of her own. She writes intimately about their mother-daughter relationship and how it, and Savannah's belief in her, kept her going every day despite their brush with homelessness, an attempted sexual assault on West, and multiple career derailments including losing a job at a major sports league.

She was only nine when her world fell apart. The struggle to understand took a lifetime.In 1960s Bristol, Susan's family was like any other with its joys and frustrations, and fierce loyalties. Then tragedy struck and left a legacy that was to last a lifetime.Susan was only nine when her mother died. A year later she was sent away to school. She didn't want to go, and didn't understand why she had to. In her struggle to cope with an uncertain world - a world where nothing seemed to make sense any more....

Richard Hoffman sometimes felt as though he had two fathers: the real one who raised him and an imaginary version, one he talked to on the phone, and one he talked to in his head. Although Hoffman was always close to the man, his father remained a mystery, shrouded in a perplexing mix of tenderness and rage. When his father receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, Hoffman confronts the depths and limitations of their lifelong struggle to know each other.

Josiah was 19 with the world at his feet when things changed. Without warning, the new university student's mental health deteriorated to the point that he planned his own death. His mother, bestselling author Amanda Prowse, found herself grappling for ways to help him, with no clear sense of where that could be found. This is the book they wish had been there for them during those dark times.

An inspiring memoir, reminding us that whether life's lessons arrive through illness, trauma or any other unexpected upheaval, life really does love us. As a free-spirited, independent woman, Bronnie Ware was used to donning a variety of hats: singer, songwriter, author, speaker, traveller and adventurer. And as her soul would have it in her mid-40s, she felt the urge to add one more: mother.

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie's death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life.

Writer. Mother. Wife. New Yorker. Abigail Pogrebin is many things, but the one that has defined her most profoundly is "identical twin." Pogrebin's relationship with her sister---both as children, when they were inseparable, and today, when she longs for that uncomplicated intimacy---inspired her to examine the phenomenon of twinship, to learn how other identical pairs regard their doubleness and what experts are learning about how DNA impacts our sense of identity and shapes our lives.

When Madeleine Dean discovered that her son Harry was stealing from the family to feed a painkiller addiction, she was days away from taking the biggest risk of her life: running for statewide office in Pennsylvania. For years, she had sensed something was wrong. Harry was losing weight and losing friends. He had lost the brightness in his eyes and voice, changing from a young boy with boundless enthusiasm to a shadow of himself, chasing something she could not see. Now her worst fears had come to light.

In the Fall of 1970, at the start of eighth grade, Peter Selgin fell in love with the young teacher who'd arrived from Oxford wearing Frye boots, with long blond hair and a passion for his students that was as intense as it was rebellious. The son of an emotionally remote inventor, Peter was also a twin competing for the attention and affection of his parents. He had a burning need to feel special. The new teacher supplied that need.

Ann Hedreen's story of what it was like to become a mom just as her own beautiful, brainy mother began to lose her mind to an unforgiving disease. Arlene was a copper miner’s daughter who was divorced twice, widowed once, raised six kids singlehandedly, survived the turbulent ‘60s, and got her BA and MA at 40 so she could support her family as a Seattle schoolteacher - only to start showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in her late 50s, taking Ann and her siblings on a long descent they never could have anticipated or imagined.

Valorie, Veronica, Vance, and Vincent’s perfect world turned into a nightmare one hot afternoon in 1959 in Cebu, Philippines. What was to be a quick lunch with their father turned into a flight to America, where four dreadfully long years of running from state to state, hiding, and vanishing into the night followed. Kidnapped from the only world they knew, confusion quickly set in.