'I'm getting a life's lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?'Unforgettable is a son's spirited, affecting, and inspiring tribute to his remarkable mother and the love between parent and child. When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humour and strength, and celebrating familial love.Unforgettable expands on those famous tweets to create a memoir that is rich, deeply affecting, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating. His mother was a glamorous woman of the Mad Men-era; she worked in nightclubs, modelled, dated mobsters and movie stars, and was a brave single parent to young Scott Simon. Spending their last days together in a hospital ICU, mother and son reflect on their lifetime's worth of memories, recounting stories laced with humour and exemplifying resilience. Unforgettable is not only one man's rich and moving tribute to his mother's colourful life and graceful death, it is also a powerful portrayal of the universal bond between mother and child.

A TRUE STORY OF OBSESSIVE LOVE TURNING TO OBSESSIVE HATE IN THE CRUCIBLE OF THE DIGITAL AGE Give Me Everything You Have chronicles author James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him." Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun's account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.

Bestselling author Delia Ephron shares a deeply personal collection of stories and essays, anchored by a loving remembrance of her sister Nora. In Sister Mother Husband Dog, Delia Ephron brings her trademark wit and effervescent prose to a series of autobiographical essays about life, love, sisterhood, movies, and family. In “Losing Nora,” she deftly captures the rivalry, mutual respect, and intimacy that made up her relationship with her older sister and frequent writing companion. Other essays run the gamut from a humorous piece about love and the movies—how one romantic comedy completely destroyed her twenties—to the joy of girl friends and best friendship, the magical madness and miracle of dogs, keen-eyed observations about urban survival, and a serious and affecting memoir of life with her mother and growing up the child of alcoholics. Ephron’s eloquent style and voice illuminate every page of this superb and singular work.

“A very personal remembrance of Nora Ephron’s life and loves, and her ups and downs” ( USA TODAY ) by her long-time and dear friend Richard Cohen in a hilarious, blunt, raucous, and poignant recollection of their decades-long friendship. Nora Ephron (1941–2012) was a phenomenal personality, journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and movie director ( Sleepless in Seattle ; You’ve Got Mail ; When Harry Met Sally ; Heartburn ; Julie & Julia ). She wrote a slew of bestsellers ( I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman ; I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections ; Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media ; Crazy Salad : Some Things About Women ). She was celebrated by Hollywood, embraced by literary New York, and adored by legions of fans throughout the world. Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about She Made Me Laugh : “I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy , about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends—Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington—but the book is not a name-dropping star turn, but an attempt to capture a remarkable woman who meant so much to so many other women.” With “the nuanced perspective of a confidant” ( The Washington Post ), She Made Me Laugh “is a fine tribute to a fascinating woman” ( Houston Chronicle ): “Nora would be pleased” ( People , “Book of the Week”).

Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal , internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster remembers the experience of his development from within through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world in Report from the Interior . In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . . From his baby's-eye view of the man in the moon, to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine, to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life, Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political, and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the postwar 1950s and into the turbulent 1960s. Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life—and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: The final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures. At once a story of the times—which makes it everyone's story—and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.

A delightful collection from legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky—who currently appears on The Goldbergs , HBO’s Silicon Valley , and the serial podcast The Tobolowsky Files — “a series of true stories that wrestle with a big idea: how belief shapes our lives. Funny, smart, and moving, this is a wonderful account of our relationship with the unknowable” (Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin ). In My Adventures with God , Stephen Tobolowsky explores the idea that most people’s lives seem to fit into the template of the Old Testament. We all have powerful creation myths: tales of our childhood and family, our first battles won and lost. It is our Genesis. Then, like in the Book of Exodus , we go into slavery. Rather than building pyramids, we lose ourselves in fear and ambition—in first loves, first jobs, too many dreams mixed with too much beer. We eventually become free, only to wander in the wilderness. At some point we stop and proclaim to the universe who we are. This is our Leviticus moment. We reconcile what we thought we would be with what we have become. We often attempt a mid-course correction. Then, as in the Book of Numbers, we are shaped by mortality as we bear the loss of family and friends. Finally, we retell our stories to our children hoping to make sense of the journey, like Moses did in Deuteronomy. Tobolowsky’s stories tell of a boy growing up in the wilds of Texas, finding and losing love, losing and finding himself—all told through the prism of the Torah and Talmud, mixed with insights from science, and refined through a child’s sense of wonder. My Adventures with God is a “fast-paced, precise, wide-ranging, and impressive book draws on the I Ching, Talmud, Einstein, Grimms’ Fairy Tales , and reruns of SportsCenter to create counterpoints when discussing his life of faith. This is a well-told, must-read…for anyone interested in a comedic adventure with the divine” ( Publishers Weekly ).

At the age of 44—at the height of his success—Richard Lewis found himself on a gurney in an emergency room, suffering from a lethal mix of alcohol and drugs. The same dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and had generated so much wonderful material for comedy had turned on him. In this blistering memoir, Lewis tells how he got to that point, how he got on the road to recovery, and how he copes with being Richard Lewis, sober, on a daily basis, in this very funny, profoundly honest, inspiring but unsentimental book. He shares candid and revealing anecdotes about love, sex, fame, family, drinking therapy, eating disorders, and the serious business of comedy.

Maira Kalman, with wit and great sensitivity, reveals why dogs bring out the best in us Maira Kalman + Dogs = Bliss Dogs have lessons for us all. In Beloved Dog , renowned artist and author Maira Kalman illuminates our cherished companions as only she can. From the dogs lovingly illustrated in her acclaimed children’s books to the real-life pets who inspire her still, Kalman’s Beloved Dog is joyful, beautifully illustrated, and, as always, deeply philosophical. Here is Max Stravinsky, the dog poet of Oh-La-La (Max in Love) -fame, and her own Irish Wheaton Pete (almost named Einstein, until he revealed himself to be “clearly no Einstein”), who also made an appearance in the delightful What Pete Ate: From A to Z . And of course, there is Boganch, Kalman’s in-laws’ “big black slobbering Hungarian Beast.” And that’s just the beginning. With humor and intelligence, Kalman gives voice to the dogs she adores, noting that they are constant reminders that life reveals the best of itself when we live fully in the moment and extend unconditional love. “And it is very true,” she writes, “that the most tender, complicated, most generous part of our being blossoms without any effort, when it comes to the love of a dog.”

A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster--until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in. Equal parts Oliver Sacks and George Orwell, with a dash of Woody Allen, Jonathan Rauch's memoir is by turns harrowing and funny, a grippingly intimate journey through a bizarre maze of self-torment that ends with an unexpected discovery. Many people, gay and straight, have lived through their own versions of this story, seeking to twist their personality in directions it just wouldn't go. Not all have been lucky enough to escape. First published in 2013, Denial has been revised for this new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.

From the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay—amateur chefs and terrific hosts—here is a charming, beautifully illustrated food lover’s companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year’s Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors’ own stories of their triumphs—and catastrophes—in the kitchen. For instance: The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie the Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to John Irving’s family recipe for meatballs; Balzac’s love of coffee The greatest dinner ever given at the White House Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m. Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. “The meal is the emblem of civilization,” the Salters observe. “What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?”

A celebration of her life-long love for New York, Hanff embarked on this project as an assignment, and realized she had not been to many of the main tourist attractions- the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the World Trade Center. As make-believe tourists, off she and Patsy travel to describe the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant's Tomb, Fraunces Tavern, some of New York's very special small museums, Orchard Street, a tour of Harlem, and much more. Hanff weaves in historical events and tidbits on some of New York's most notorious personalities.

The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as "not Orthodox" mean for them. This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you've ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.

Judith Viorst is known and loved by readers of all ages, for children’s books such as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; nonfiction titles, including the bestseller Necessary Losses; and her collections of humorous poetry, which make perfect gifts for birthdays, Mother’s Day, graduation, Christmas, Chanukah, or at any time of year. Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? And did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother? And what happens to her passion for household neatness and orderliness, her deep devotion to schedules, her compulsive yearning to offer helpful advice when Alexander— now grown up, married, and the father of three—moves his family into his parents’ house? What happens is controlled, and sometimes not so controlled, chaos, as lives and routines are turned upside down and the house is overrun with scattered toys, pacifiers, baby bottles, sippy cups, pink-sequined flip-flops, jigsaw puzzles, and fishy crackers. With her characteristic sparkle and wit, Viorst relates her efforts to (graciously) share space, to become (if only a little bit) more flexible, to (sort of) keep her opinions to herself, and even to eventually figure out how to unlock the safety locks of the baby's (expletives deleted) bouncy seat. She describes how she and her husband, while sometimes longing for the former peace and tranquility of unravished rooms and quiet dinners for two unaccompanied by cries of “Oh, yuck!” survived and relished the extended visit of the Alexander Five. She also opens our eyes to the joys of multigenerational family living and to the unexpected opportunities to grow that life presents—even under the most unlikely circumstances. Several generations of readers surely will relate to this funny and loving book, enhanced throughout by Laura Gibson’s delightful two-color drawings.

My Nine Lives is a powerful and stirring memoir of one of the greatest pianists of the postwar era—an inspiring tale of courage, compassion, and triumph over outstanding odds. At the peak of his career, celebrated pianist Leon Fleisher suddenly lost the use of two fingers on his right hand. Miraculously, at the age of sixty-six, he was diagnosed with focal dystonia, and learned to manage it through a combination of physical therapy and experimental Botox injections. In 2003 Fleisher returned to Carnegie Hall to give his first two-handed performance in over three decades and brought down the house. With his coauthor, celebrated music critic Anne Midgette, Fleisher reveals here for the first time the depression that threatened to engulf him as his condition worsened, and the sheer love of music that rescued him from complete self-destruction.

Genet...Beckett...Burroughs...Miller...Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr. and John Rechy. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow) . The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and '60s, Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The Evergreen Review. Victorian "erotica." The Autobiography of Malcolm X . A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The common thread between these disparate elements, a number of which reshaped modern culture, was Barney Rosset. Rosset was the antidote to the trope of the "gentleman publisher" personified by other pioneering figures of the industry such as Alfred A. Knopf, Bennett Cerf and James Laughlin. If Barney saw a crowd heading one way--he looked the other. If he knew something was forbidden, he regarded it as a plus. Unsurprisingly, financial ruin, along with the highs and lows of critical reception, marked his career. But his unswerving dedication to publishing what he wanted made him one of the most influential publishers ever. Rosset began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012, and several publishers and a number of editors worked with him on the project. Now, at last, in his own words, we have a portrait of the man who reshaped how we think about language, literature--and sex. Here are the stories behind the filming of Norman Mailer's Maidstone and Samuel Beckett's Film ; the battles with the US government over Tropic of Cancer and much else; the search for Che's diaries; his romance with the expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and more. At times appalling, more often inspiring, never boring or conventional: this is Barney Rosset, uncensored. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs; includes index

A deeply personal memoir about one woman's journey to finding her voice and rewriting her story by the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books (tm). Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family. But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her . She turned to books and writing for help. Just when things seemed particularly bleak, Zibby unexpectedly fell in love with a tennis pro turned movie producer who showed her the path to happiness: away from type-A perfectionism and toward letting things unfold organically. What unfolded was a meaningful career, a great love, and finally, her voice, now heard by millions of listeners. An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one's true calling, Bookends will inspire and uplift.

"For Christmas the woman who would become my wife bought me a dog—a little terrier. The next year her Christmas gift to me was a shotgun. Most of the people in my family believe that those two gifts were not unrelated." So begins Born to Bark , the charming new memoir by psychologist and beloved dog expert Stan Coren of his relationship with an irrepressible gray Cairn terrier named Flint. Stan immediately loved the pup for his friendly nature and indefatigable spirit, though his wife soon found the dog’s unpredictable exuberance difficult to deal with, to say the least. Even though Flint drove Stan’s wife up the wall, he became the joy of Stan’s life. The key to unlocking this psychologist-author’s way of looking at dog behavior, Flint also became the inspiration behind Coren’s classic, The Intelligence of Dogs . Undeterred by Flint’s irrepressible behavior (and by the breeder’s warning that he might be untrainable), Coren set out to prove that his furry companion could pass muster with the best of them. He persevered in training the unruly dog and even ventured into the competitive circles of obedience trials in dog shows, where Flint eventually made canine history as the highest-scoring Cairn terrier in obedience competition up to that time. (Stan chose not to tell his wife that the highest-ranking obedience dog of that year, a border collie, earned a total score that was fifty times higher.) The longest-running popular expert on human-dog bonding, Coren has enlivened his respected books and theories about dogs with accounts of his own experiences in training, living with, loving, and trying to understand them. A consummate storyteller, Coren now tells the wry, poignant, goofy, and good-hearted tale of his life with the dog who (in the words of his own book titles) taught him How to Speak Dog and How Dogs Think and whose antics made him ask Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Illustrated with Coren’s own delightful line drawings and photos, and interwoven with his heartfelt anecdotes of other beloved dogs from his earlier life, Born to Bark is an irresistible good dog/bad dog tale of this extraordinary, willful pooch and his profound impact on his master’s insights into canine behavior as a research psychologist and on his outlook on life as a whole.

A funny, candid, insightful, and unflinchingly honest memoir from one of New York City's most spirited and outspoken mayors Ed Koch—the bold, colorful, forthright, and impassioned three-term mayor of the city of New York—lived his eighty-eight years to the fullest. In I'm Not Done Yet Koch reflects on life after politics, taking readers through his various career turns since losing the Democratic mayoral primary to David Dinkins in 1989, during which time he worked as a radio talk-show host, a newspaper columnist, a college instructor, a SlimFast spokesman, and an arbitrator on the television show The People's Court. With occasional looks back at his childhood in the Bronx and his political experiences, Koch speaks openly about the ups and downs of what he calls "the third act" of his storied career, offering a frank account of his health and medical challenges, and considering what it has meant to live a life without a partner or children. I'm Not Done Yet is a fearless account of an extraordinary man's under-standing of what it means to reach one's autumn years, and offers proof that the healthiest outlook on advancing age is to keep active at the work you love.

Everyone knows Dr. Ruth as the most famous and trusted sex therapist, but few people know she narrowly escaped death from the Holocaust, was raised in an orphanage in Switzerland, or that she was a sniper during Israel's War of Independence. After years spent as a student in Paris, Dr. Ruth came to America dreaming of a new life though never expecting the dramatic turns that would take place. And at the age of eighty-seven, she is as spirited as ever. Through intimate and funny stories, Dr. Ruth sheds light on how she's learned to live a life filled with joie de vivre. And she shows readers how they too can learn to deal with tragedy and loss, challenges and success, all while nourishing an intellectual and emotional spark, and, above all, having fun! Hilarious, inspiring, and profound, The Doctor Is In will change the way you think about life and love, in all their limitless possibilities.

“Amy Webb found her true love after a search that's both charmingly romantic and relentlessly data-driven. Anyone who uses online dating sites must read her funny, fascinating book.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project After yet another disastrous date, Amy Webb was preparing to cancel her JDate membership when epiphany struck: her standards weren’t too high, she just wasn’t approaching the process the right way. Using her gift for data strategy, she found which keywords were digital-man magnets, analyzed photos, and then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge—dozens of men who actually met her own stringent requirements wanted to meet her. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child.