The author reviews a lifetime of reading, acknowledging the books that shaped his literary life and sharing anecdotes about how reading saw him through his most challenging periods and helped him to retain his grasp on sanity.

The celebrated author shares the intimate story of her relationship with her mother, relating the events that prompted her mother to send young Angela to Arkansas to live with her grandmother and the complicated fallout that shaped their family life.

The author shares the story of his youth in Virginia, describing his relationship with his ex-NASA employee father, the misdiagnosis that categorized him as developmentally disabled, and the short story that unexpectedly launched his career.

An illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will change the way he is perceived and understood. Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961--from his pinnacle until his suicide--Paul Hendrickson traces the writer's exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar. We follow him from Key West to Paris, to New York, Africa, Cuba, and finally Idaho, as he wrestles with...

In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a successful, critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty...

Stephen King reflects on how his writing has helped him through difficult times and describes various aspects of the art of writing.

Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder, Run, and Bel Canto, examines her deepest commitments-- to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband-- creating a resonant portrait of her life.

The author describes some of the dogs that have had special places in his life, including his first dog, Snowball, in the Phillippines; Dirk, who protected him from bullies; and Cookie, who saved his life.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.
In Calvin Trillin’s antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that if you didn’t go to every performance of your child’s school play, “the county would come and take the child.” Now,...

"Thoroughly enjoyable ... an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."