Gloria Steinem, icon of the women's liberation movement, is a co-founder of Ms magazine and author of the bestselling Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions .Revealing her own long quest for self-esteem, she explores the nature of this quality, showing how crippling a lack of it can be, and how recapturing it can transform our lives.Too many of us lose our sense of self-worth early on.Girls are especially vulnerable, often turning from free spirits into 'female impersonators' by adolescence.Gloria Steinem describes how, by returning to her childhood self through techniques such as imagery, guided meditation and artistic expression, she rediscovered the strong, secure person every one of us is born to be.She states reassuringly that anyone can heal the inner child of the past through these and other means, and inspires us with case histories of people who came to know how valuable they are.

“One of my favorite books of all time.” ―Amy Schumer A tour de force of comedy and reflection about the perilous journey from kindergarten to twelfth grade and beyond ― from the beloved stand-up comic and creator of The Great Depresh For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian’s comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother’s house in Boston—living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That’s where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the reader through every year of his childhood education, with obsessively detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny. We meet Gulman’s family, neighbors, teachers, heroes, and antagonists, and get to know the young comedian-in-the-making who is his own worst―and most persistent―enemy. From failing to impress at grade school show-and-tell to literally fumbling at his first big football game―in settings that take us all the way from the local playground to the local mall, from Hebrew School to his best (and only) friend’s rec room, young Gary becomes a stand-in for everyone who grew up wondering if they would ever truly fit in. And that’s not all: the book is also chock-full of ‘80s nostalgia (Scented Markers, indifference to sunscreen, mall culture). Misfit is a book that only Gary Gulman could have written: a brilliant, witty, poignant, laugh-until-your-face-hurts memoir that speaks directly to the awkward child in us all.

Shockingly honest, richly detailed, and pulling no punches, Friends and Enemies traverses the highs and lows of Barbara Amiel's storied life in journalism and high society. From her early childhood in London during the Blitz to emigrating to North America and her rise to the top rungs of journalism; to her four husbands and other assorted beaus both famous and not; and right up to her marriage to Conrad Black and their prolific legal battles against the powerful and vengeful American justice system, Barbara Amiel's life has been as dramatic as it is glamorous. She has been called every conceivable name in the book by the media (and authors of unauthorized biographies about her), pilloried for her extravagant lifestyle and sometimes regrettable quotes to the press ("My extravagance knows no bounds," for instance, to Vogue ), not to mention her outspoken conservative political views as stated in her weekly newspaper columns around the world. It's no surprise she remains to this day a subject of utter fascination after over four decades in the public eye. But until now, very few people actually know her real story—the break-up of her family when she was a child, her bouts of debilitating depression and other chronic health issues, her thoughts on feminism and #MeToo, her travels with the international jet set and A-list celebrities, and, of course, her unvarnished views on the trial and conviction (since overturned) of Conrad Black and the iron-clad bond they have shared since they were married in 1992. Whether you are an admirer or critic of Amiel’s, you will be completely engrossed in her operatic life, one that seems ripped from the pages of a scandalous novel. She also distinguishes herself as a woman well ahead of her time—the first female editor of a national newspaper in Canada, she challenged the sexual mores of society while also angering the feminist establishment. She has certainly had many friends and enemies over the years—Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Elton John, Tom Stoppard, David Frost, Anna Wintour, Oscar de la Renta, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Marie Jose Kravis, to name but a few—and she brings these personalties into the spotlight in this larger-than-life memoir that is sure to cause a sensation with readers everywhere.

The riveting memoir of Rikki Klieman--an enormously successful defence attorney and television personality--as she discovers the possibilities of love in middle age with Los Angeles' new police commissioner, Bill Bratton. Thirty-five-year-old Rikki was named one of America's top five female trial attorneys by Time magazine for her work in criminal defence, one of the toughest branches of law for a woman to enter. She defended clients ranging from accused drug smugglers to media moguls to well-meaning Christian Scientists Ginger and David Twitchell, whose beliefs were put on trial after the death of their child. She waged a war of nerves with Boston police and the FBI during negotiations for the return of fugitive sixties radical Katherine Ann Power. As Rikki moved from success to success, however, the frenetic lifestyle of a defence attorney began to damage her health and happiness. She suffered from exhaustion, chronic back pain, and two failed marriages, but considered these afflictions to be part of "the price of the prize." After several decades as a practicing attorney, she joined Court TV, where she gained national prominence covering the O.J. Simpson trial and she went on to host Court TV's daily show Both Sides. Now, at midlife, this warrior with a woman's heart has finally achieved, in her loving marriage to LAPD chief Bill Bratton, the balance many seek but few find. Her dramatic story proves that fairy tales can come true and that great love and great success can go hand in hand.

Public Hostage, Public Ransom starts with the autobiographical story of William Bronston, the activist physician whose early professional California training steels him with a deep moral, professional and cultural bond to the huge 6000 person disabled population he encounters incarcerated in Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, NY, on whose behalf he daily battles to humanize and ultimately catalyze a Federal Class Action Lawsuit against the state to close the deathmaking institution. Prior to the expose of Willowbrook, no small individualized community living arrangements existed across New York state in lieu of 30 massive state institutions. Medicaid funded, these institutions warehoused the 'different' population imposed on their stricken families. Having been closed to admission by public scandal and impossible overcrowding, families were blackmailed to have their dependent member submit to secret viral research whose impact was completely unknown, where rampant disease, gruesome sanitation, lack of adequate food, clothing, carloads of tranquilizing medicine and the most minimal care and supervision was the brutal norm. Ultimately, concerned parents, caring workers, top child development leaders in the field, local and national media were organized to expose and address the bureaucratic evil and ubiquitous violence that dominated the wretched lives inside. This passionate book documents the immense drama, and story arc, of the public mobilization, media expose and Federal judicial process Bronston helped arouse, that forged the path to what ultimately becomes the legal conviction for this systemic human abuse and Justice Ruth Ginsburg's subsequent, monumental Supreme Court Olmstead Decision that framed the rightful foundation for nationwide deinstitutional reform. Dr. Bronston draws the clear line to indict the self serving State bureaucracy and the strategic rationale to end Title 19 of the Social Security Act, the Medicaid system, in order to heal the deep societal wound that the nursing home and assisted living industry, the segregated norm, that compels our universal commoditized and paradigmatic terminus. The human rights movement in America has transformed the lives of all people with special needs as new politics, technology and a profound awareness of the dehumanization of this vast community reached a zenith in the late 1960s and 1970s. It leads to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act that emancipated the devalued and stigmatized populations of labeled people including Mental Retardation, Cerebral palsy, Autism, Epilepsy, Polio, sensory loss, neuromuscular degenerative conditions, on and on, "public hostages", who now age to become society's elders consigned again to profit driven, segregated and congregate institutional lives, funded by Medicaid's billions, America's "public ransom". _ us an artificially created domestic refugee population, torn from every community and devastating America's families has become an accepted paradigm that Dr. Bronston's story intimately charts and passionately indicts. Universal expanded and improved Medicare for all, single payer health care, is the clear solution and ultimate antidote to this crime against humanity we numbly tolerate.

This diary of acclaimed psychologist and radical feminist icon Phyllis Chesler was a pioneering work when it was first published in 1979. A look into the second wave of feminism and the era's changing attitudes toward motherhood and pregnancy, With Child--now with an updated preface from her son--remains relevant for mothers today.