autobiographies

A picture book memoir in which Senator Kamala Harris shares her life story and discusses heroic figures from her youth.

"Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety. They did not know whether their parents were alive. At age twelve, Clemantine and Claire were granted asylum in the United States. . . . This book captures the . . . costs and aftershocks of war: what is forever lost, what can be repaired, the fragility and importance of memory. A . . . story of dislocation [and] survival"--Provided by publisher.

The author shares his life and his role as a decorated medic during World War II. Exploring his actions that saved many soldiers on D-Day.

"In this young readers' adaptation of his adult memoir Dear America, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas tells his story, in light of the . . . undocumented immigrants . . . in the United States"--Provided by publisher.

"Shaun David Hutchinson was nineteen. Confused. Struggling to find the vocabulary to understand and accept who he was and how he fit into a community in which he couldn't see himself. The voice of depression told him that he would never be loved or wanted, while powerful and hurtful messages from society told him that being gay meant love and happiness weren't for him. A million moments large and small over the years all came together to convince Shaun that he couldn't keep going, that he had no future. And so he followed through on trying to make that a reality. Thankfully Shaun survived, and over time, came to embrace how grateful he is and how to find self-acceptance. In this courageous and deeply honest memoir, Shaun takes readers through the journey of what brought him to the edge, and what has helped him truly believe that it does get better"--Publisher.

What happens when a shy, awkward Arab girl with a weird name and an unfortunate propensity toward facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable homeland of Iraq and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio, with its Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and kids playing doctor everywhere? This is Ayser Salman's story.

"The founder of the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons program, aka 'TOPGUN,' shares the untold story of how he and eight other young pilots revolutionized the art of aerial combat and created the center for excellence and incubator of leadership that thrives to this day"--Provided by publisher.

"So begins The Elephant in the Room, Tommy Tomlinson's remarkably intimate and insightful memoir of his life as a fat man. When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishing--and dangerous--460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn't go the way he planned--in fact, he wasn't sure that he really wanted to change. In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay's Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin'. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America's "capital of food porn," and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take--big and small--to lose weight by the end. Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is a powerful memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. It is also a literary triumph that will stay with readers long after the last page."--Pages [2-3] of cover.

Harris, a United States senator from California, describes how her upbringing and her career as the district attorney for San Francisco and later as California's attorney general influenced her passion for justice. She communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values and discusses the core truths that unite us and how to best act on them.

This funny and wise new memoir from Harrison Scott Key, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, will inspire laughter and hope for anyone who's ever been possessed by a dream of what they want to be when they grow up.