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Undisputed: A Champion's Life
Par Donovan Bailey. 2023
A memoir of Olympic glory, the value of mentorship and the courage to champion your own excellence, from the long-reigning…
world's fastest man, Canadian sprinting legend Donovan Bailey.From the lush fields of his boyhood in Jamaica, to the basketball courts of Oakville, where he came of age in one of Canada’s most thriving cultural mosaics, to his sprint toward double Olympic gold for Canada in Atlanta in 1996, Donovan Bailey got a long way on natural talent. But he also learned that in the bureaucratic world of Canadian sports, an athlete who didn't come up in the system needed to take charge of his fate if he was going to become the world’s best. As he ascended from outsider to dominant athlete, others didn’t always understand the rigour at work behind Bailey’s confident demeanour. He’d learned from watching Muhammad Ali that a champion needed to act like a champion. But media grew fixated on the sprinter’s immodesty, the likes of which they never saw from Canadian athletes, especially track athletes in the wake of the Ben Johnson doping scandal at Seoul in 1988. Bailey was having none of it, and when he called out Canada's subtle racism and contradicted the prevailing idea most Canadians had of their country, he left in his wake a media uproar and cracked wide open the nation’s moral complacency. In addition to his unforgettable 100-metre and 4x100 relay gold-medal sprints in Atlanta, Bailey's track career was a litany of records and rare accomplishments, including his audacious 1997 race in Toronto's SkyDome against American 200-metre Olympic champion Michael Johnson to determine who was really the world’s fastest man. There was no disputing the result. Bailey had been coached in success before he was seriously coached in athletics. Following the lead of his father, a machinist-turned-real estate investor, Bailey became a millionaire by the age of 21, an experience he continues to draw on as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Frank about his dominance on the track and unapologetic for expecting as much of those around him as he expects of himself, Undisputed is an athlete's story that refuses to settle for second best.The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays
Par Andrew Forbes. 2016
Spitball literary essays on the off-kilter joys, sorrows and wonder of North America’s national pastime. A collection of essays for…
ardent seamheads and casual baseball fans alike, The Utility of Boredom is a book about finding respite and comfort in the order, traditions, and rituals of baseball. It’s a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication—whether we’re eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a rain delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast. From learning about America through ball-diamond visits to the most famous triple play that never happened on Canadian soil, Forbes invites us to witness the adult conversing with the O-Pee-Chee baseball cards of his youth. Tender, insightful, and with the slow heartbreak familiar to anyone who’s cheered on a losing team, The Utility of Boredom tells us a thing or two about the sport, and how a seemingly trivial game might help us make sense of our messy lives.The Road Years: A Memoir, Continued . . .
Par Rick Mercer. 2023
THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLERRick Mercer is back—again!—with the eagerly awaited sequel to his bestselling memoirAt the end of his memoir…
Talking to Canadians, Rick Mercer was poised to make the biggest leap yet in his extraordinary career. Having overcome a serious lack of promise as a schoolboy and risen through the showbiz ranks—as an aspiring actor, star of a surprisingly successful one-man show about the Meech Lake Accord, co-founder of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, creator and star of the dark-comedy sitcom Made in Canada—he was about to tackle his biggest opportunity yet. The Road Years picks up the story at that exciting point, with the greenlighting of what would become Rick Mercer Report. Plans for the show, of course, included political satire and Rick’s patented rants. But Rick and his partner, Gerald Lunz, were also determined to do something that comedy tends to avoid as too challenging: they would emphasize the positive. Rick would travel from coast to coast to coast in search of everything that’s best about Canada, especially its people. He found a lot to celebrate, naturally, and was rewarded with a huge audience and a run of 15 seasons. The Road Years tells the inside story of that stupendous success. A time when Rick was heading to another town—or military base, sports centre, national park—to try dogsledding, chainsaw carving, and bear tagging; hang from a harness (a lot); ride the “Train of Death;” plus countless other joyous and/or reckless assignments. Added to the mix were encounters with the country’s great. Every living prime minister. Rock and roll royalty from Rush to Randy Bachman. Olympians and Paralympians. A skinny-dipping Bob Rae. And Jann Arden, of course, who gets a chapter to herself. Along the way he even found the time to visit several countries in Africa and co-found and champion the charity Spread the Net, which has gone on to protect the lives of millions. Join the celebration, and revive a wealth of happy memories, with what is Rick Mercer’s funniest, most fascinating book yet.11 de septiembre 1973: Esa semana
Par Isabel Allende Bussi. 2023
50 años después del Golpe, la hija menor de Salvador Allende relata qué ocurrió durante esa fatídica semana. El martes…
11 de septiembre la autora de este libro partió en su automóvil a La Moneda para acompañar a su padre, el presidente Salvador Allende, en la resistencia al golpe de Estado. Salió del palacio antes del bombardeo y, desde ese momento, tuvo que pasar por situaciones angustiantes e insólitas antes de salir con su familia, en calidad de exiliadas, a México, el sábado 15 de septiembre. Este libro, un ejercicio de memoria de lo acontecido durante esa semana, ofrece por primera vez un panorama íntimo de cómo la familia Allende Bussi tuvo que lidiar con episodios dolorosos y resguardados en la intimidad hasta hoy: la muerte del padre, el bombardeo a Tomás Moro, el entierro anónimo en Viña del Mar, la rápida salida de su hermana Beatriz "Tati" Allende con el cuerpo diplomático cubano, el asilo familiar en la Embajada de México y la -hasta último minuto- angustiosa salida al país mediante la valiente gestión del embajador Gonzalo Martínez. Isabel Allende Bussi ofrece una poderosa y pormenorizada evocación de esa semana, en que la gesta del presidente de resistir hasta el final impactó al mundo entero.A Spy in the Sky: A Photographic Reconnaissance Spitfire Pilot in WWII
Par Kenneth B. Johnson. 2019
&“An enjoyable ramble . . . the memoir of an unassuming, self-doubting aviator who, despite himself, proved to be pretty bloody good.&”…
—Aircrew Book Review Many stories abound of the daring exploits of the RAF&’s young fighter pilots defying the might of Hitler&’s Luftwaffe, yet little has been written about the pilots who provided the key evidence that guided the RAF planners—the aerial photographers. Ken Johnson joined No.1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit as an eighteen-year-old. In this lighthearted reminiscence, he relives his training and transfer to an operational unit, but not the one he had expected. He had asked if he could fly Spitfires. He was granted that request, only to find himself joining a rare band of flyers who took to the skies alone, and who flew in broad daylight to photograph enemy installations with no radios and no armament. Unlike the fighter pilots who sought out enemy aircraft, the pilots of the PRU endeavored to avoid all contact; returning safely with their vital photographs was their sole objective. As well as flying in northern Europe, Ken Johnson was sent to North Africa, where his squadron became part of the United States Army Air Force North West African Photographic Wing (NAPRW). In this role, he flew across southern Europe, photographing targets in France and Italy. The Spy in the Sky fills a much-needed gap in the history of the RAF and, uniquely, the USAAF during the latter stages of the Second World War. &“The sorties he flew are nothing less than heroic . . . his writing style is very good, and very humorous at that!&” —Flyin&’ and Ridin&’ BlogSticking It Out: From Juilliard to the Orchestra Pit: A Percussionists's Memoir
Par Patti Niemi. 2016
&“By turns reflective and dramatic, poignant and hilarious, Sticking It Out offers an irresistible portrait of the artist as a…
young percussionist&” (San Francisco Chronicle). When Patti Niemi was ten years old, all the children in her school music class lined up to choose their instruments. Boy after boy chose drums, and girl after girl chose flute—that is, until it was Patti&’s turn. From that point onward, Patti devoted her life to mastering the percussive arts. Cymbals, snare drum, marimba, timpani, chimes: she practiced them all, and in 1983, she entered Juilliard, the most prestigious music conservatory in in the world. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing New York City in the 1980s, Sticking It Out recounts Patti&’s years mastering her craft and struggling to make it in a cutthroat race to a coveted job in an orchestra. Along the way, she has to compete with friends, face her own crippling anxiety, and confront the delicate, and sometimes perilous, balance of power between teachers and their students. Bringing us inside a world that most of us never get to see, Patti&’s vivid memoir is &“an eye-opening tale of demanding teachers, grueling practice schedules, severe performance anxiety and bias against &‘girl drummers&’—a funny, poignant first-person account of the fierce commitment it takes to succeed in classical music&” (San Jose Mercury News). &“One of the funniest-ever classical-music books . . . and certainly among the best written.&” —The Philadelphia Inquirer &“A shattered-mirror insight into the bizarre world of hitting things with sticks.&” —Neil Peart, bestselling author, lyricist, and drummer for RushOutside the Wire: American Soldiers' Voices from Afghanistan
Par Christine Dumaine Leche. 2013
A riveting collection of thirty-eight narratives by American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, Outside the Wire offers a powerful evocation of…
everyday life in a war zone. Christine Dumaine Leche—a writing instructor who left her home and family to teach at Bagram Air Base and a forward operating base near the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border—encouraged these deeply personal reflections, which demonstrate the power of writing to battle the most traumatic of experiences.The soldiers whose words fill this book often met for class with Leche under extreme circumstances and in challenging conditions, some having just returned from dangerous combat missions, others having spent the day in firefights, endured hours in the bitter cold of an open guard tower, or suffered a difficult phone conversation with a spouse back home. Some choose to record momentous events from childhood or civilian life—events that motivated them to join the military or that haunt them as adults. Others capture the immediacy of the battlefield and the emotional and psychological explosions that followed. These soldiers write through the senses and from the soul, grappling with the impact of moral complexity, fear, homesickness, boredom, and despair.We each, writes Leche, require witnesses to the narratives of our lives. Outside the Wire creates that opportunity for us as readers to bear witness to the men and women who carry the weight of war for us all.The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales Of Life On The Road
Par Finn Murphy. 2017
“There’s nothing semi about Finn Murphy’s trucking tales of The Long Haul.”—Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair More than thirty years ago,…
Finn Murphy dropped out of college to become a long-haul trucker. Since then he’s covered more than a million miles as a mover, packing, loading, hauling people’s belongings all over America. In The Long Haul, Murphy recounts with wit, candor, and charm the America he has seen change over the decades and the poignant, funny, and often haunting stories of the people he encounters on the job.Rocky Mountain High: A Tale Of Boom And Bust In The New Wild West
Par Finn Murphy. 2023
The best-selling author of The Long Haul returns with the story of ditching his truck to seek his fortune… in…
hemp. After decades as a long-haul trucker, Finn Murphy left the road and settled in Boulder County, Colorado. Before long he noticed that many of his neighbors were captivated by the prospect of vast riches in “the Hemp Space.” When hemp was legalized, after eighty years in federal exile, Colorado became the center of a hemp growing and processing boom. Figuring he’d harvest some of that easy money, Murphy bought a thirty-six-acre farm. What could go wrong? Well, pretty much everything… Rocky Mountain High is the comic chronicle of a wild year as Murphy follows his Great American Dream, gradually losing his shirt but not his spirit. Pivoting away from growing hemp himself, he decides to make himself a middleman. He builds drying sheds the size of football fields. He battles with freezing temperatures and even colder bankers. And he assembles an eclectic crew of workers, including the wry and vastly talented Manuel, the business savvy Pierce, and a scruffy army of “trimmigrants”—specialized farm laborers who roam the country pursuing (or not) their own American Dreams. Pretty soon, Murphy is pitting his dwindling cash against the mercurial buyers who inhabit the Wild West of the hemp market. Told with Murphy’s trademark wit, keen eye for character, and sharp insights into the hardscrabble society around him, Rocky Mountain High is an inside look at the alluring world of the hemp boom and a masterful tale of one entrepreneur’s misadventures.Murder, Witchcraft and the Killing of Wildlife: Memoirs of a Police Officer in the Heart of Africa
Par Stephen R. Matthews. 2020
A former British police officer’s memoir of his assignment in Northern Rhodesia where he encountered black magic, cannibals, human trafficking,…
and more.Stephen R. Matthew’s first police posting near the Northern Rhodesian border with the Congo coincided dramatically with a time of horrific ethnic cleansing in the Belgian Congo area. At just twenty-one years old, Stephen was knifed, ambushed, stoned, shot, and wounded by bow and arrow. Steve’s life was saved several times by his courageous Doberman, Alex . . . This is the true, action-packed, unadulterated stories of those frantic and dangerous years, where a young police inspector confronted terrifying actions and events well beyond his complete understanding. He found that the cops were fighting on two fronts: trying to protect the vulnerable citizens of the country and at the same time endeavoring to stop the slaughter of wildlife.This unique book depicts dramatic accounts of witchcraft-murders and cannibalism. Highly dangerous solo investigations are detailed, incorporating incidents of black magic, kidnapping, arson, gun-running and people trafficking.“[A] rattling good memoir by a former British police officer writing of his colorful career while on assignment in Congo . . . . Despite his best attempts, Matthews could never shake off the way the locals saw him, as a white witch doctor with the ability to speak with the spirits of the dead and place spells against the living. There’s a story—several, in fact—about what led to this perception, which proves that, at the very least, the author learned a thing or two about telling a tale.” —The New York TimesHertfordshire Soldiers of The Great War (Your Towns And Cities In The Great War Ser.)
Par Paul Johnson, Dan Hill. 2020
Collected first-hand accounts of British men and women serving their country during World War I, as discovered through the Herts…
At War community project.In Hertfordshire Soldiers of The First World War the authors explore a series of individual case studies of Hertfordshire men who served in various theaters during the First World War, all of which had been uncovered as part of the Herts At War community project. This unique collection of largely unknown accounts includes stories from the Western Front, Gallipoli, Salonika, Mesopotamia, East Africa, Egypt, and even Russia in the fight against the Bolsheviks in 1919.The Herts At War team uncovered many letters and objects in the course of their research, including men who were Victoria Cross winners to those whose courage or bravery went unrecognized, as well as stoicism on the Home Front. One of the most moving of these surrounds a photograph which was found in the hands of Sergeant Percy Buck as he lay fatally wounded in a shell hole in 1917. On the back of the photograph of his wife and young son he had written his address and asked for whoever found the image to post it to his loved ones in the event of his death. Sergeant Buck would have assumed it would be a British comrade who would find the photograph, but the person who recovered it was a German soldier who subsequently sent it on to the grieving, but grateful, family.The war memorials of Hertfordshire contain the names of over 23,000 men and women who gave their lives whilst in the service of their country during the Great War; some of their tales are uncovered here. Indeed, the poignant collection of stories, anecdotes, and artifacts revealed in this book bring the First World War to life in an unusual and highly moving fashion.Unofficial History: Field-Marshal Sir Williams Slim
Par Sir William Slim. 1970
A career soldier, veteran of both World Wars, and British war hero remembers the campaigns he fought—and his worthy foes.…
Like most members of the professional military freemasonry, Field Marshal Sir William Slim came to admire &“all the soldiers of different races who have fought with me and most of those who have fought against me.&” Among the most likable of his enemies were the Wazirs of India&’s Northwest Frontier. In 1920, Slim took part in a retaliatory raid on an obscure village. It was an unusually easy victory over the canny Wazirs, whom the British took by surprise and escaped from with scant loss. Afterwards, in the casual frontier way, the British sent a message to the Wazirs, expressing surprise at the enemy&’s unusually poor shooting. The Wazirs replied in courtly fashion that their rifles were Short Magazine Lee-Enfields captured in previous fights with the British, and that they had failed to sight the guns to accord with a new stock of ammunition. Now, having calculated the adjustment, they would be delighted to demonstrate their bull&’s-eye accuracy any time the British wanted. &“One cannot help feeling,&” Slim says, &“that the fellows who wrote that ought to be on our side.&” Slim genuinely enjoyed his virtually blood-free skirmishes with such foes as the Turks, the Wazirs and the Italians in 1940 Ethiopia. &“An attempt to depict the lives of ordinary men in and out of combat. The accounts are written with style, wit and exceptional humanity.&”—Tom HallIf I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Par Tim O'Brien. 1975
A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of The Things They Carried "One of the best, most disturbing,…
and most powerful books about the shame that was / is Vietnam."—Minneapolis Star and TribuneBefore writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader&’s guide and bonus content.Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
Par Tahir Hamut Izgil. 2023
A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape…
from genocideOne by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China&’s internment camps for Muslim minorities.Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government&’s radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs&’ radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world.Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir&’s daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope. Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.A Passionate Prodigality: Fragments of Autobiography
Par Guy Chapman. 2019
This classic WWI memoir by a decorated infantryman and historian presents a vivid account of life in the trenches on…
the Western Front. During World War One, Major Guy Chapman, OBE MC, served in the Royal Fusiliers and was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery. Joining soon after war was declared, Chapman was stationed in France and fought in the Battle of Arras. When Chapman&’s memoir, A Passionate Prodigality, was first published in 1933 it was hailed as one of the finest English works to have come out of the Great War. Today it reads with a graphic immediacy, not merely in the descriptions of the shock and carnage of war, but in its evocation of the men who fought—&“certain soldiers who have now become a small quantity of Christian dust.&”They Gave Me a Seafire
Par Commander R. Mike Crosley. 1884
&“Superb . . . one of the most honest, candid, and truly delightful memoirs . . . the perfect memorial…
to one of the Fleet Air Arm&’s greats.&”—Aircrew Book Review A classic in every sense of the word, this book charts Commander R. &“Mike&” Crosley&’s service career in the Fleet Air Arm during the entire period of the Second World War. Part of his service saw him in action aboard HMS Eagle, flying Sea Hurricanes on the Harpoon and Pedestal Malta convoys of June and August 1942. It was during this time that he shot down his first enemy aircraft and survived the dramatic sinking of HMS Eagle. From there he graduated on to Seafires, (the Naval equivalent of the Spitfire), and flew this type in Combat Air Patrols over Norway and ramrod strikes from Operation Torch (the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942), through to D-Day in June 1944 in the European Theatre of Operations, and then in the Pacific abroad HMS Implacable as part of the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 until the end of the Pacific War, by which time he had command of his own combined squadron, 801 and 880. They Gave Me a Seafire sets to bring the endeavors of Crosley to a whole new generation of enthusiasts, and it should appeal across the board to fans of aviation, naval history and families and friends of Armed Forces, past and present. &“The fascinating publication details Mike&’s incredible capacity for survival, and sheer skill as a pilot, which were remarked on at the time, securing him a number of decorations.&”—Island Life MagazineCome Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan
Par Darryl Pinckney. 2022
Critic and writer Darryl Pinckney recalls his friendship and apprenticeship with Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein and the introduction they…
offered him to the New York literary world.Darryl Pinckney arrived at Columbia University in New York City in the early 1970s and had the opportunity to enroll in Elizabeth Hardwick’s creative writing class at Barnard. It changed his life. When the semester was over, he continued to visit her, and he became close to both Hardwick and Barbara Epstein, Hardwick’s best friend and neighbor and a fellow founder of The New York Review of Books.Pinckney was drawn into a New York literary world where he encountered some of the fascinating contributors to the Review, among them Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, and Mary McCarthy. Yet the intellectual and artistic freedom that Pinckney observed on West Sixty-seventh Street could conflict with the demands of his politically minded family and their sense of the unavoidable lessons of black history. In addition, through his peers and former classmates—such as Felice Rosser, Jim Jarmusch, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lucy Sante, Howard Brookner, and Nan Goldin—Pinckney witnessed the coming together of the New Wave scene in the East Village. He experienced the avant-garde life at the same time as he was discovering the sexual freedom brought by gay liberation. It was his time for hope. In Come Back in September, through his memories of the city and of Hardwick, we see the emergence and evolution of Pinckney himself as a writer.Notebooks of a Wandering Monk
Par Matthieu Ricard. 2023
The memoirs of renowned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and his extraordinary journey toward inner freedom and compassion in action.Matthieu Ricard began…
his spiritual transformation at the age of twenty-one, in Darjeeling, India, when he met Tibetan teacher Kangyur Rinpoche, who deeply impressed the young man with his extraordinary quality of being. In Notebooks of a Wandering Monk, Ricard tells the simple yet extraordinary story of his journey and the remarkable men and women who inspired him along the way, including Kangyur Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama, as well as great luminaries such as Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, and a number of leading scientists.Growing up, Ricard, the son of philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, regularly found himself in the company of intellectuals and artists such as Luis Buñuel, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Igor Stravinsky. Young Ricard loved nature, classical music, and science and dreamed of unlocking the mysteries of molecular biology. But, six years after meeting Kangyur Rinpoche, Ricard gave up a promising career in genetics to pursue a meditative life in the remote Himalayas. While spending half a century in India, Bhutan, and Nepal, he visited Tibet more than twenty times and spent years publishing rare Tibetan texts and photographing his spiritual teachers and the world in which they lived. Elegantly translated by Jesse Browner and accompanied by more than fifty full-color photographs, some of which are Ricard&’s own, Notebooks of a Wandering Monk charts Ricard&’s lifelong path to wisdom and compassion. This candid and reflective memoir will inspire all readers, wherever they may be on their own journey to a meaningful and well-lived life.My Disappearing Mother: A Memoir of Magic and Loss in the Country of Dementia
Par Suzanne Finnamore. 2023
To come to terms with her mother&’s dementia, writer Suzanne Finnamore&’s groundbreaking new memoir conceptualizes dementia as an actual, albeit…
rather magical, place, &“like the Acropolis or Yonkers…a place where beloved and ancient queens and kings retire, where linear time doesn&’t exist, and the rules of society are laid aside…. Whenever I go to my parents&’ double-wide in Hayward, California, I am really traveling to Dementia.&”My Disappearing Mother: A Memoir of Magic and Loss is far more than a memoir on the devastation that comes with dementia, a cognitive impairment that affects 55 million people worldwide. Finnamore beautifully chronicles her mother&’s rich and varied life journey, from her birth in Puerto Rico during the height of the Depression to ferrying to the United States, in hopes of a better life. On U.S. soil, her mother, Bunny, started working as a performer for enlisted men, then became a secretary, and eventually a professional clairvoyant. With unexpected humor, Suzanne explores the feeling of love, grief, family, and loss while celebrating the bonds between mothers and daughters. In Suzanne&’s words, &“I want a book that attests to the fact that in a world full of disease, there is an abiding and supernatural force of love. That because of this, the sadness and the horror can be borne. That laughter can live alongside grief. That it must.&” When Suzanne&’s guest essay &“Dementia Is a Place Where My Mother Lives. It Is Not Who She Is&” was published in the New York Times on Mother&’s Day 2022, readers responded with an outpouring of empathy and love. And so this book was born, full of clues and guidance to help others feel less alone on the path that Finnamore has walked.Beautiful Monster: A Becoming
Par Miles Borrero. 2023
A breathtaking, exquisitely crafted memoir about a trans person&’s singular journey through breaching the boundaries of gender—across generations, cultures and…
borders—to become his truest, most authentic self.Nearing the age of forty, with an entire life already lived as a woman—half in Colombia, half in the US—Miles Borrero comes face to face with his father&’s impending death. Suddenly realizing that he has been stalling his transition for fear of losing his family&’s love, this moment catalyzes Miles&’s determination to be fully known as his father&’s son before it is too late. In Beautiful Monster, Miles chronicles his unusual childhood, by turns riveting and hilarious, in &’80s and &’90s Colombia during the Pablo Escobar years, as well as his move to Salt Lake City to pursue acting and the winding trajectory that eventually lands him in the New York City yoga scene. Within these very different cultures, the realities of being queer and trans echo poignantly through the triumphs, heartbreaks, family dynamics, spiritual pursuits, and relationships that propel Miles along his path. Sublimely nuanced and written in ravishing prose that is as unique and irresistible as its subject, Beautiful Monster is one person&’s story of navigating the pressures to perform femininity while becoming a gender outlaw. Brimming with wonder, humor, and mythos, entertaining and enlightening in equal measure, this book offers a compelling case for embracing one&’s true nature.