Words Memoir

“If you want a lifechanging book, this is the one to read.” —The View “A truly revealing” (Hillary Clinton) memoir of an unlikely journey to parenthood through America’s broken foster care system. What does it take to keep a child safe? As a long-time strategist and activist fighting...

Winston Churchill understood and wielded the power of words throughout his six decades in the public eye. His wartime writings and speeches revealed both his vision for the future and his own personal feelings, fascinating generation after generation with their powerful style and thoughtful reflection. In this book Churchill's official biographer, Martin Gilbert, has skilfully selected 200 extracts from his entire oeuvre of books, articles and speeches that reflect his life story, career and philosophy.

Do you have strong feelings about the word “irregardless”? Have you ever tried to define the word “is”? Brimming with intelligence and personality, this vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made is a must-read for word mavens. Many of us take dictionaries for granted...

Paret lay on the ground, quivering gently, a small froth on his mouth. The house doctor jumped into the ring. He knelt. He pried Paret's eyelid open. He looked at the eyeball staring out. He let the lid snap shut. He reached into his satchel, took out a needle, jabbed Paret with a stimulant. Paret's back rose in a high arch. He writhed in real agony. They were calling him back from death. One wanted to cry out, "Leave the man alone. Let him die."

At once a beautifully poetic memoir and an exploration of the various ways we live in the world, A Language Older Than Words explains violence as a pathology that touches every aspect of our lives and indeed affects all aspects of life on Earth. This chronicle of a young man's drive to transcend domestic abuse offers a challenging look at our worldwide sense of community and how we can make things better.

Dame Emma Thompson, DBE, is one of Britain's most acclaimed actresses and scriptwriters. In this collection we hear - in her own words - about her early career as a comic and scriptwriter. She discusses some of her most famous works, including Fortunes of War, Sense and Sensibility, Remains of...

Actress and comedian Tisha Campbell (Martin, My Wife and Kids) shares her entertaining, emotional, and sometimes comical journey navigating her son’s Autism diagnosis, offering realistic insight and personal stories of the challenges and triumphs that come with raising a child on the spectrum...

At the beginning of his physical transition from female to male, then-17-year-old Skylar Kergil posted his first video on YouTube. In the months and years that followed, he recorded weekly update videos about the physical and emotional changes he experienced. Skylar’s openness and positivity attracted thousands of viewers, who followed along as his voice deepened and his body changed shape. Through surgeries and recovery, highs and lows, from high school to college to the real world, Skylar welcomed others on his journey.

In Seven Dirty Words, journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred.

A Life in Words, the first complete translation of Ismat Chughtai's celebrated memoir Kaghazi hai Pairahan, provides a delightful account of several crucial years of her life. Along side vivid descriptions of her childhood years are the conflicted experiences of growing up in a large Muslim...

This book will leave you with grins that you did not know you had within. Questions you didn't know you wanted the answers to. Answers that you didn't know had questions for them. Tears that you thought were held behind walls made of diamonds. Unable to break. To Put It Into Words, this book is an emotional nuclear bomb that is waiting for you to set off. I went from a musical theater kid to the cringe kid on TikTok. The “Imma slide in” to my “divorce cake” idea. Now it’s poetry. Regardless of what genre. I always want to make people feel. To feel seen, heard, safe, understood, or loved.

From frozen pond to Olympic rink, Nancy Kerrigan started skating when she was six years old. Nineteen years later she won the Olympic silver medal. This is the story of what happened in between: the hard work, the fun and friends, the nerve-racking competitions, the disappointing losses and, of course, the thrilling victories. Here is Nancy's story about a little girl from Massachusetts who grew up to be an Olympic champion.

Step inside the death chamber and behind the walls of Ohio’s death row. Bill Kimberlin, PsyD, invites the listener on an extensive and unbiased journey inside Ohio’s death row in Watch Me Die: Last Words from Death Row. You will see how these inmates think as Kimberlin not only spends time interviewing them, but also eats meals with them and, in some cases, is the last person to speak with them before they are executed.

True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming-of-age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.

Praised as one of Stewart's most revealing and personal works yet, Words Never Spoken details his journey as a songwriter, entrepreneur, and playwright, and his self-discovery as a gay Black man living in Atlanta. Stewart writes candidly about his private conversations with media mogul Tyler Perry, and why Perry dubbed Stewart's work brilliant, but opted not to help him.

Last words are never easy—since, let’s face it, they’re mostly spoken by people in the worst health of their lives. But even if they aren’t eloquent, they can offer a glimpse into the speaker’s true self. Some are clever, others are loving, heartbreaking, or occasionally shocking. In Any Last Words?, Joseph Hayden explores the last words of more than two hundred actors, athletes, writers, musicians, politicians, intellectuals, criminals, and more. What was the last thing Bogart said to Bacall? What did Marie Antoinette say to her executioner?

In interviews ranging from 1963 to 2009, Shirley Bassey talks about her childhood in Tiger Bay; being a tomboy, and how she began her singing career. As well as clothes, concerts and controversially performing in Sun City (South Africa) she also talks in detail about her long career in show...

In Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words, Kate Whouley strips away the romantic veneer of mother-daughter love to bare the toothed and tough reality of caring for a parent who is slowly losing her mind. Yet, this is not a dark or dour look at the demon of Alzheimer’s. Whouley shares the trying, the tender, and the sometimes hilarious moments in meeting the challenge also known as Mom.

Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.

Words With My Father offers a gripping audio portrait of the evolution of a young man's mental illness and how it manifested into a dramatic and often dangerous existence through the turbulence of the Civil Rights, Peace and Conservation movements.