biography & autobiography / personal memoirs

"On the Other Side of Freedom reveals the mind and motivations of a young man who has risen to the fore of millennial activism through study, discipline, and conviction. His belief in a world that can be made better, one act at a time, powers his narratives and opens up a view on the costs, consequences, and rewards of leading a movement."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. From the internationally recognized civil rights activist/organizer and host of the podcast Pod Save the People, a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of a movement from the front lines. In August 2014, twenty-nine-year-old Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, Mckesson lays out an incisive new framework for today's liberation movement. Continuing a conversation about activism, resistance, and justice that embraces our nation's complex history, he dissects how deliberate oppression persists, how racial injustice strips our lives of promise, and how technology has added a new dimension to mass action and social change. He argues that our best efforts to combat injustice have been stunted by the belief that racism's wounds are history, and suggests that intellectual purity has curtailed optimistic realism. The book offers a new framework and language for understanding the nature of oppression. With it, we can begin charting a course to dismantle the obvious and subtle structures that limit freedom. Honest, courageous, and imaginative, On the Other Side of Freedom is a work brimming with hope. Drawing from his own experiences as an activist, organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible. Honoring the voices of a new generation of activists, On the Other Side of Freedom is a visionary's call to active citizenship, challenging us to take responsibility for imagining, and then building, the world we want to live in"--.

"A raucous and vividly dishy memoir by the only woman writer on the masthead of Rolling Stone Magazine in the early Seventies. In 1971, Robin Green had an interview with Jann Wenner at the offices of Rolling Stone magazine. She had just moved to Berkeley, California, a city that promised 'Good Vibes All-a Time.' Those days, job applications asked just one question, 'What are your sun, moon and rising signs?' Green thought she was interviewing for a clerical job like the other girls in the office, a 'real job.' Instead, she was hired as a journalist. With irreverent humor and remarkable nerve, Green spills stories of sparring with Dennis Hopper on a film junket in the desert, scandalizing fans of David Cassidy, and spending a legendary evening on a waterbed in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s dorm room. In the seventies, Green was there as Hunter S. Thompson crafted Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and now, with a distinctly gonzo female voice, she reveals her side of that tumultuous time in America. Brutally honest and bold, Green reveals what it was like to be the first woman granted entry into an iconic boys' club. Pulling back the curtain on Rolling Stone magazine in its prime, The Only Girl is a stunning tribute to a bygone era and a publication that defined a generation."--Dust jacket.

"A memoir by . . . singer-songwriter and social activist Ani DiFranco. In her new memoir, 'No Walls and the Recurring Dream,' Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more . . . In these . . . pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty . . ."--Provided by publisher.

When Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating familial love.

Joseph Kim discusses his childhood in North Korea, the devastation of the Great Famine, and how he eventually escaped to China and then the United States where he was taken in by a foster family and learned to thrive.

"A deeply moving memoir about two lives that were changed in the blink of an eye, and the love that helped them rewrite their future. Five months pregnant, on a flight to their "babymoon," Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange, and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave--a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident--had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night. When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come. As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation for this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again. This is a manifesto for living, an ultimately uplifting story about the transformative power of faith and resilience. It's a tale of a husband's turbulent road to recovery, the shifting nature of marriage, and the struggle of loving through pain and finding joy in the broken places"--.

"Hall of Fame New York Yankees pitcher Ron Guidry recounts his years playing for . . . the world champion New York Yankees during their heyday in the Bronx Zoo years, with . . . manager Billy Martin, . . . owner George Steinbrenner, and an ego-driven all-star cast that included everyone from Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson to Sparky Lyle and Catfish Hunter . . . --Provided by publisher.

Using details from his father's life, clinical psychologist Stephen Hinshaw explores the ways in which the mental health community can help debunk the many stigmas surrounding diagnosis, hospitalizations, and periods of highs and lows in patients.

"In this . . . collection of personal essays, veteran video blogger and star of MTV's Decoded, Franchesca Ramsey explores race, identity, online activism, and the downfall of real communication in the age of Twitter rants and call-out wars"--Provided by publisher.

"From the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a memoir about learning to lead and make change, based on a lifetime of fighting for women's rights and social justice"--Provided by publisher.