Women Memoirs

In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.

In Geisha, a Life, Mineko Iwasaki tells her story, from her warm early childhood, to her intense yet privileged upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya (household), to her years as a renowned geisha, and finally, to her decision at the age of 29 to retire and marry, a move that would mirror the demise of geisha culture. Mineko brings to life the beauty and wonder of Gion Kobu, a place that "existed in a world apart, a special realm whose mission and identity depended on preserving the time-honored traditions of the past."

Amanda Knox spent four years in a foreign prison for a crime she did not commit. In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered when her roommate was murdered in their apartment. After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she has remained silent, until now.

On September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee which was considering the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. She described an alleged sexual assault by the Supreme Court nominee that took place at a high school party in the 1980s. Her words and courage on that day provided some of the most credible and unforgettable testimony our country has ever witnessed.  In One Way Back, Ford recounts the months she spent trying to get information into the right hands without exposing herself and her family to backlash.

As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, an influential newspaper editor, loomed large in her life, and once he decided she should become editor-in-chief of Vogue, she never looked back.

Acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior broke new ground when it was first published 35 years ago, weaving autobiography, history, folklore, and fantasy in to a candid and revelatory story about the daughter of Chinese immigrants in mid-20th century California.

In the vein of Running with Scissors, Playground is the glitzy, glamorous, and surreal true story of a young girl who grew up inside the Playboy Mansion and never learned where the party stopped and the real world began. You are six years old. Every day after school your father takes you to a sprawling castle filled with exotic animals, bowls of candy, and half-naked women catering to your every need. You have your own room. You have new friends. You have an uncle Hef who's always there for you.

Before she became a celebrated teacher and lecturer, Gabrielle Bernstein was going down a dangerous path. For years, Bernstein struggled with eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, and constant self-doubt and self-loathing. That all changed when she discovered A Course in Miracles, which taught her that much of what she feared in life was not frightening at all and, in many cases, not even real. Now, Bernstein lives an empowered, healthy, and joyful life.

Le 22 juillet 2002, je me suis choisie. Tout aurait pu s'arrêter ce soir-là, mais je me suis battue pour m'arracher des mains meurtrières de M. Je me suis enfuie, j'ai sauvé ma peau… Malgré mon départ précipité, l'ombre de M fut omniprésente. Un M ne lâche pas prise aussi facilement. Un M n'abandonne pas sa proie. Me défaire de ses ficelles, me détacher et me guérir de lui fut un long parcours tumultueux où de nombreuses épreuves ont fait obstacle à ma quête de délivrance.

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong "hill women" who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region - an uplifting and eye-opening memoir for fans of Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.

In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea. After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O’Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover—the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own—was too tempting.

On August 8, 2020, 40-year-old Stephanie Lincoln seemingly had the perfect life. She just had the wedding of her dreams, owned a successful business, and was traveling the country in an RV with her husband and 3 dogs. An innocent choice to go on a short hike in the Olympic National Forest became the catalyst for disaster. On that day, Stephanie officially became a missing person and the battle for her life ensued.

For 46 years, Carol Minto has quietly gone about her life, carrying with her the most extraordinary and heartbreaking secrets. In The Asylum, Carol tells the full story of how she overcame unimaginable suffering, to find the happiness and solace she has today as a mother and grandmother.

When Amanda Eyre Ward's 13-year-old son, Harry, dove headfirst into the world of sneaker culture, she found herself baffled by his obsession with flashy, expensive shoes that seemed like mere status symbols. Determined to bridge the gap with her teenage son, Ward reluctantly decided to embrace the mantra of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". As she shed her preconceptions and immersed herself in the quest to snag the latest drops, Ward discovered a community far richer than she had imagined.

Kym Gold's mantra - "never settle for a no, always look for a yes" - is what led her to co-create True Religion Brand Jeans, a major retail clothing company that she sold for close to a billion dollars in 2013. In Gold Standard, she finally gives her side of the story of how the once fledgling jeans company that nobody wanted,went on to become a giant, revolutionizing player in the fashion industry.

With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Deftly tracing Madonna’s story from her roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure - the sober life she never wanted. For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was "the gasoline of all adventure". She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. But there was a price. Publicly, she covered her shame with self-deprecating jokes, and her career flourished, but as the blackouts accumulated, she could no longer avoid a sinking truth.

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie.

Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it.

When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of 35, she didn’t expect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled into birdwatching, initially out of curiosity. What she never could have predicted was that she would become one of them. Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder follows the peregrinations of a narrator who learns more from birds than she ever anticipated, finding new meaning in midlife.