Biographies and autobiographies
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Abstract
Starting in 1970, Jean Genet-petty thief, prostitute, modernist master-spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring. Prisoner of Love, written some ten years later, when many of the men Genet had known had been killed, and he himself was dying, is a beautifully observed description of that time and those men as well as a reaffirmation of the author's commitment not only to the Palestinian revolution but to rebellion itself.
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Abstract
Twelve essays by a Japanese-American writer about being caught between past and present, old country and new. In this powerful, exquisitely crafted book, Kyoko Mori delves into her dual heritage with a rare honesty that is both graceful and stirring.
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Abstract
“Much will be made—and rightly so—of the eloquent commentary [Lam’s] essays provide on Vietnam and the Vietnamese . . . a fascinating and important book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author. A PEN American Beyond Margins Award winner. In his long-overdue first collection of essays, noted journalist and NPR commentator Andrew Lam explores his lifelong struggle for identity as a Viet Kieu, or a Vietnamese national living abroad. At age eleven, Lam, the son of a South Vietnamese general, came to California on the eve of the fall of Saigon to communist forces.
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Abstract
Patient by Patient is the memoir of a young doctor, fresh from residency, as she explores the joys and frustrations of beginning her medical practice. As she strives to help her patients face a range of challenges, from the humorous to the profoundly devastating, she learns that while medical school gave her an M.D., treating patients has made her a doctor. At the same time she is working with her patients, she is also struggling with illness in her own family.
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Abstract
An intimate and darkly comic memoir of a woman who does a 180 with her body. In the opening pages of *Passing for Thin*, Frances Kuffel waits at the airport to be picked up by her brother, Jim. He strides past her without a glimmer of recognition because she barely resembles the woman he is expecting to see. Jim had last seen her when she was 188 pounds heavier. What follows is one of the most piercing explorations of the limits and promises of a body since Lucy Grealy’s *Autobiography of a Face*.
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Abstract
A mother recounts her interactions with the US government as she struggled to bring home her abducted daughters from Saudi Arabia. Patricia Roush's girls were kidnapped more than 16 years ago and taken by their Saudi father, whom they hardly knew, to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They were three and seven at the time. At Any Price is the story of her fight to get them back from a father with a documented history of severe mental illnesses and violent tendencies. Amid this tragic set of circumstances was a bigger problem—an ongoing, demoralizing struggle with the U.S.
Publisher (Source)
HarperCollins Christian Publishing
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Abstract
Celia Sánchez is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra.
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Abstract
National Book Award winner: This story of a family torn apart by the Vietnam era is “a magnificent portrayal of two noble men who broke each other’s hearts” (Booklist). James Carroll grew up in a Catholic family that seemed blessed. His father, who had once dreamed of becoming a priest, instead began a career in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, rising through the ranks and eventually becoming one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon, the founder of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Publisher (Source)
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Abstract
On Call begins with a newly-minted doctor checking in for her first day of residency—wearing the long white coat of an MD and being called “Doctor” for the first time. Having studied at Yale and Dartmouth, Dr. Emily Transue arrives in Seattle to start her internship in Internal Medicine just after graduating from medical school. This series of loosely interconnected scenes from the author’s medical training concludes her residency three years later. During her first week as a student on the medical wards, Dr. Transue watched someone come into the emergency room in cardiac arrest and die.
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Abstract
The acclaimed, bestselling rock-and-roll biographer delivers the first complete, unexpurgated history of the world’s greatest band. The saga of the Rolling Stones is the central epic in rock mythology. From their debut as the intermission band at London’s Marquee Club in 1962 through their latest record-setting *Bridges to Babylon* world tour, the Rolling Stones have defined a musical genre and experienced godlike adulation, quarrels, addiction, legal traumas, and descents into madness and death—while steadfastly refusing to fade away.