National Network for Equitable Library Service

From one of our most interesting literary figures -- former editor of Granta, former fiction editor at The New Yorker, acclaimed author of Among the thugs -- a sharp, funny, exuberant, close-up account of his headlong plunge into the life of a professional cook. Expanding on his James Beard award-winning New Yorker article, Bill Buford gives us a richly evocative chronicle of his experience as "slave" to Mario Batali in the kitchen of Batali's three-star New York restaurant, Babbo.

An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest. During Sarah Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country's changing economic policies solidified her family's place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.

Part autobiography, part guide to creativity, and part guide to living, Handmade is a book for craftspeople, artists, and anyone who seeks clarity, purpose, and creativity in their work--and it's the perfect antidote to a modern world that thinks human labor is obsolete.

Since he was a small child, Lorimer Shenher knew something for certain: He was a boy. The problem was, he was growing up in a girl’s body. In this candid and thoughtful memoir, Shenher shares the story of his gender journey, from childhood gender dysphoria to teenage sexual experimentation to early adult denial of his identity - and finally the acceptance that he is trans, culminating in gender reassignment surgery in his 50s.

Narrated by the author, with interludes narrated by Buffy Sainte-Marie. A powerful, intimate look at the life and music of a beloved folk icon and activist. Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this, Sainte-Marie's first and only authorized biography, music critic Andrea Warner draws from more than sixty hours of exclusive interviews to offer a powerful, intimate look at the life of the beloved artist and everything that she has accomplished in her seventy-seven years (and counting).

Dorise Nielsen was a pioneering feminist, a radical politician, the first Communist elected to Canada's House of Commons, and the only woman elected in 1940. But despite her remarkable career, until now little has been known about her." "From her youth in London during World War I to her burial in 1980 in a hero's cemetery in China, Nielsen lived through tumultuous times.

Jenkins never dreamed he'd live long enough to be dating again. Old folks acting like teenagers was unheard of in his parents' generation. Less than two years after his beloved wife's death, Jenkins finds himself sheepishly slinking past her portrait to take another woman out to the movies. With good (and sometimes not-so-good) memories of his youth, Jenkins recalls his dating experiences through the decades -- and finds that he is still no wiser than a schoolboy. Especially when he learns his high school grad date is back n town and newly widowed.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson has long been known for his groundbreaking work as an anthropologist and expert on Arctic peoples. His three expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in the early 1900s, as well as his expertise in northern anthropology, helped create his public image as an heroic, Hemingway-esque figure in the annals of twentieth-century exploration. But the emotional and private life of Stefansson the man have remained hidden, until now.

One of the most turbulent periods in the history of prairie agriculture is chronicled in this book about the life and times of Alexander “Mac” Runciman, the Saskatchewan farmer who led the United Grain Growers as president from 1961 to 1981. Mac Runciman earned the respect and admiration on both sides of the great agriculture debates of the 1960s and 1970s — from individual farmers to Pierre Trudeau, who offered Runciman a cabinet post in 1980 (Mac turned him down).

Adele Wiseman was a seminal figure in Canadian letters. Always independent and wilful, she charted her own literary career, based on her unfailing belief in her artistic vision.