He’s been punched, kicked and shot at, but TIME Magazine columnist and admittedly unmanly man Joel Stein may finally be ready to conduct a convincing game of catch with his 3-year-old son Laszlo when the time comes.
At least that’s the hope. Until Laszlo, the comfortably urbane writer was quite happy not fixing things around the house, racing fast cars or engaging in any other macho activity normally associated with red-blooded American males. Stein has since done all these things and more in solid preparation for future father/son outings, as well as his forthcoming first book, Man ...
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In 2006, Jai Pausch's husband Randy, a professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon, was stricken with pancreatic cancer at the age of 46.
Read more new and notable memoirs this May.
Given only a few months to live, his life was prolonged for two years by heroic measures, including a dangerous operation followed by an experimental program involving radiation and three different chemotherapy drugs.
Randy is notably known for giving the speech at Carnegie Mellon titled “The Last Lecture,” which also went on to become a New York Times bestseller he co-wrote with ...
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In the opening pages of Héctor Abad’s memoir Oblivion we meet Abad’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez. He is a warm man, affectionate. Perhaps a little too so—when he hugs him in front of his friends it’s so very embarrassing.
Read the last Bookslut on the graphic novel 'Unterzakhn.'
A few chapters later we’re reintroduced to the man as husband and family man, and then a little later, as professor and doctor. As the pages turn, Héctor Jr. grows and so does his awareness of Héctor Sr., and the son can ...
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A decade after the publication of his debut memoir Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs has produced a tough-love take on the self-help genre with his recent book of advice, This is How.
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It’s somewhat of a format departure for the acclaimed author. Here, Burroughs offers welcoming hugs, positive reinforcement and a sharp slap in the face for readers eager to comprehend and process the machinations of excessive drinking, suicide, regret, overeating, finding love, realizing your dreams, getting a job or exuding confidence.
Burroughs talks to us about this shrewd combination of ...
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At 37, Francis Slakey lived a life with no commitments and no permanent attachments. His primary goal was to travel the world, no strings attached.
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Slakey’s job as a physics lecturer at Georgetown allowed him to take off lengthy stretches of time to climb while also serving as the means to fund his travel. Teaching was “mechanical” to Slakey, nothing more. There were no houses, no serious girlfriends—and certainly no marriage or kids—in the professor’s future. And he was content with that.
Until he started his quest.
Slakey ...
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In The World of the Salt Marsh, Charles Seabrook, an environmental writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other publications, explores one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet—the salt marsh along the Southeast coast of the United States.
Home to a diverse blend of flora and fauna, the salt marsh constitutes a vital area between the land and the sea, but real estate development and pollution are threatening large swaths of the salt marsh across South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
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Here, Seabrook discusses his upbringing along the salt marsh, the ...
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Alison Bechdel first gained a fan following with her serial comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. That strip made an indelible mark on pop culture when it introduced what’s now known as the Bechdel Test for films—to pass the test, the movie must include two women holding a conversation that isn’t about a man.
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Her critically acclaimed graphic memoir, Fun Home, explored her complex relationship with her father, a funeral director, English teacher, house restorer and closeted homosexual. She’s now published a companion volume, Are You My ...
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Many fans were distressed to hear that British adventurer Bear Grylls recently parted ways with the Discovery Channel, the network responsible for bringing his madly popular survivalist program, Man vs. Wild, to American shores.
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While Grylls plans his next adventure, readers can take comfort in his latest project, his autobiography, Mud, Sweat, and Tears, which offers a more nuanced perspective for those who know Grylls best as a man who hollows out camel carcasses for shelter and extracts nourishment from elephant dung.
But long before he took to scaling mountains and parachuting ...
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Canadian author Sarah Leavitt makes an emotionally powerful debut with Tangles, a graphic memoir of how Alzheimer’s disease transformed not only her late mother but the entire family dynamic.
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Both honesty and humor pervade the work, which should provide insight and comfort for readers who find themselves facing similar challenges. In a starred review, we said that it was “not simply the story of a disease, but of the flawed, complex, intelligent people whose lives it transformed.”
Why did you decide that the graphic medium was best suited to this sort of memoir ...
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Before Rosecrans Baldwin became a novelist, he got what he thought was the opportunity of a lifetime—the self-proclaimed Francophile got a gig working as an ad man on the Champs D’elysee.
With half-baked French and dreams of the City of Light, Baldwin arrived in Paris to discover that life as an expat is not always what it seems, remembering the experience in Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down. Here, the author of the acclaimed 2010 novel You Lost Me There recounts the development, surprises and lessons learned writing the unusual and very funny memoir ...
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As the weather warms up, so do book lovers’ options. The spring season always sees a new crop of amazing releases. Check out these 10 new must-reads in nonfiction.
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Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama
Alison Bechdel
Though Bechdel had previously enjoyed a cult following with her longstanding comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, she raised the bar for graphic narrative with her book debut, Fun Home (2006). That memoir detailed her childhood in the family’s funeral home, her closeted and emotionally distant father’s bisexuality, his questionable death (an accident ...
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From his comprehensive biographies of glossy celebrities like Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson, New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli has become the literary world’s consummate Hollywood chronicler.
Check out more books on the Kennedys?
In the very first interview Taraborrelli has given on his latest work, After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the Present, a continuation of the Kennedy family profile after 2000’s Jackie, Ethel, Joan, the author spoke to us about an affinity for the icons he profiles, his exacting writing process, why he won ...
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A reader could divide the selections in Farther Away, the latest essay collection by Jonathan Franzen, into two distinct categories: birds and books.
Or, a little more specifically, birders—“birdwatchers,” to those who don’t share the passion—and literary writers. But since the author self-identifies as each, I’d suspect he might reject such duality and instead thematically unite these essays under a single classification:
Endangered species.
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For Franzen is a rare bird, one who is both the birdwatcher and the self-proclaimed “literary writer,” and positions himself apart from the culture ...
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These days, more people recognize Marilu Henner for her awe-inspiring memory than for her role as Elaine Nardo on the cult TV classic Taxi. Her 60 Minutes appearance several years ago, in which she demonstrated her Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, has attracted the attention of scientists and casual observers alike.
Read more new and notable nonfiction books this April.
When she's not undergoing testing with researchers at UC-Irvine or filming on the set of a new movie, Henner’s at work on her Total Health Makeover lifestyle program. The latest addition to the stable, her ninth book Total Memory ...
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Just one year after the Apollo 11 moon landing, Robert Hazen, then a student at MIT, had the good fortune to work with a team of geologists studying the moon rocks that the astronauts had brought back to earth.
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In The Story of Earth, Hazen describes how this early experience led to his deepening understanding of the co-evolution of the earth and the moon, and led him and his colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Geophysical Laboratory to study how life may have originated on earth ...
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Sunday marks yet another Earth Day. And while there are many ways to show appreciation for Mother Nature, why not pick up one of these titles on the state of the environment now?
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The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century
Dickson Despommier
This debut is the author’s first full discussion of the concept [of vertical farming], which has been widely covered in major media but never implemented. Recounting the evolution of agriculture, Despommier argues that traditional farming has ruined our ecosystems and cannot possibly meet the ...
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From her home in rural Texas, Jenny Lawson runs a PR firm and writes parenting advice and satirical articles about sex. But she is best known as The Bloggess, author of a screamingly funny, surprisingly inspiring blog that chronicles her daily adventures and wacky discussions with her husband, and showcases her growing collection of unusually posed and dressed taxidermied animals.
Like funny people? Check out Michael Ian Black's latest memoir, You're Not Doing It Right.
The Bloggess counts Neil Gaiman, Penn Jillette, Wil Wheaton, and Matthew Broderick among her many fans—she has more than 220,000 followers ...
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When a book about sales and salespeople starts with one of the hard-boiled lines from David Mamet’s famous play Glengarry Glen Ross, you know you’re in for something a little different.
In his last book, Ahead of the Curve, Philip Delves Broughton eviscerated the MBA program at Harvard University. In The Art of the Sale he posits that sales is at the root of everything we do as people, offering a clear-eyed look at how to succeed in business—while really, really trying.
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What makes The Art of the Sale ...
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After a successful string of books largely aimed at academia, Jonathan Gottschall is hoping for something new—a popular hit.
His latest, The Storytelling Animal, is a lively exploration into the very nature of stories and why they seem so central to the human psyche. We recently found the Washington and Jefferson College educator operating even further outside his comfort zone while assembling a book trailer for The Storytelling Animal on his desktop computer. “I’m just kind of screwing around here with absolutely no technical skills,” he says. “I’ve never done a trade book before.” Here, an excited ...
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Recovery experts say to attend 90 meetings in 90 days if you really want to get sober. Post-rehab, those 90 days are exactly what was staring Bill Clegg down as he returned to his old using grounds of lower Manhattan.
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A rising star in the literary world and a talented agent, Clegg chronicled his addictions, especially to crack, in his acclaimed 2010 memoir, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. In Ninety Days: A Memoir of Recovery, he tackles the aftermath—continuing to work on his sobriety in downtown New York ...
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