The New York Times Bestseller From one of the country’s most recognizable journalists, Lesley Stahl of CBS's 60 Minutes : How becoming a grandmother transforms a woman’s life. After four decades as a reporter, Lesley Stahl’s most vivid and transformative experience of her life was not covering the White House, interviewing heads of state, or researching stories at 60 Minutes . It was becoming a grandmother. She was hit with a jolt of joy so intense and unexpected, she wanted to “investigate” it—as though it were a news flash. And so, using her 60 Minutes skills, she explored how grandmothering changes a woman’s life, interviewing friends like Whoopi Goldberg, colleagues like Diane Sawyer (and grandfathers, including Tom Brokaw), as well as the proverbial woman next door. Along with these personal accounts, Stahl speaks with scientists and doctors about physiological changes that occur in women when they have grandchildren; anthropologists about why there are grandmothers, in evolutionary terms; and psychiatrists about the therapeutic effects of grandchildren on both grandmothers and grandfathers. Throughout Becoming Grandma , Stahl shares stories about her own life with granddaughters Jordan and Chloe, about how her relationship with her daughter, Taylor, has changed, and about how being a grandfather has affected her husband, Aaron. In an era when baby boomers are becoming grandparents in droves and when young parents need all the help they can get raising their children, Stahl’s book is a timely and affecting read that redefines a cherished relationship.

Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.” And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life. Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that made Barbara aware of the ups and downs that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks. The financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love all played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She has spent a lifetime auditioning, and this book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

#1 New York Times Bestseller "Amy Schumer's book will make you love her even more. For a comedian of unbridled (and generally hilarious) causticity, Schumer has written a probing, confessional, unguarded, and, yes, majorly humanizing non-memoir, a book that trades less on sarcasm, and more on emotional resonance." — Vogue " The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is an alternatingly meditative, sexually explicit, side-splittingly hilarious, heart-wrenching, disturbing, passionately political, and always staggeringly authentic ride through the highs and lows of the comedic powerhouse's life to date." — Harper's Bazaar "This is your happy hour with Amy Schumer...It's Bossypants meets Trainwreck meets your long weekend." —TheSkimm “Amy’s got your back. She’s in your corner. She’s an honesty bomb. And she’s coming for you. ” —Actress Tilda Swinton and Trainwreck co-star The Emmy Award-winning comedian, actress, writer, and star of Inside Amy Schumer, Hulu's Life & Beth, and the acclaimed film Trainwreck has taken the entertainment world by storm with her winning blend of smart, satirical humor. Now, Amy Schumer has written a refreshingly candid and uproariously funny collection of ( extremely ) personal and observational essays. In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo , Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex and shares the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul to stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh. Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend—an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever. Whether she’s experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor’s secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably—but only because it’s over.

A dazzling and devastating memoir -- Girl Interrupted for the Juno generation. Talented, prolific and charming, Emma Forrest was settled in Manhattan at twenty-two and on contract to the Guardian when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity, past the warm waters of weird and into those cold, deep patches of the sea where people lose their lives. Lonely, in a dangerous cycle of cutting and bulimia, and drawn inexplicably to damaging and cruel relationships, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist -- a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the vibrant and dangerous tide of herself, and who would help her to recover when she tried to end her life. Emma's loving and supportive family and friends circled around her in panic. Like Ophelia, Emma was on the brink of drowning. But she was also still working, still exploring, still writing. And then she fell in love. One day, when Emma called to make an appointment with her psychiatrist, she found no one there. He had died, shockingly, at the age of fifty-three, leaving behind a young family for whom he had fought to survive. Processing the premature doorstep, a failed suicide, she was adrift. And when her significant and all-consuming relationship also fell apart, she was forced to cling to the page for survival. Your Voice in My Head is spiked with wit, humour and unique perception. It not only explores the crashing weight of depression, mania and suffering, but also the beauty of love and the heartbreak of loss. It is also, fundamentally, about our relationship with ourselves.

Welcome to Chelsea Handler's world—a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power—vodka. Seems reasonable, when considering that she discovered her boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo and she had to pretend to be honeymooning with her father in order to upgrade to first class. In this highly entertaining, deliciously skewed collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she’s convincing her third-grade class that she has been chosen to play Goldie Hawn’s daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin , deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her...only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea showcases the candor and irresistible turns of phrase that have made her one of the freshest voices in comedy today.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For years, people have been asking Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, the brash, outspoken, and fiercely loyal eldest brother in the Emanuel clan, the same question: What did your mom put in the cereal? Middle brother Rahm is the mayor of Chicago, erstwhile White House chief of staff, and one of the most colorful figures in American politics. Youngest brother Ari is a Hollywood superagent, the real-life model for the character of Ari Gold on the hit series Entourage . And Zeke himself, whom the other brothers consider to be the smartest of them all, is one of the world’s leading bioethicists and oncologists, and a former special advisor for health policy in the Obama administration. How did one family of modest means produce three such high-achieving kids? Here, for the first time, Zeke provides the answer. Set amid the tumult of Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s, Brothers Emanuel recounts the intertwined histories of these three rambunctious, hypercompetitive Jewish American boys, each with his own unique and compelling life story. But ultimately, this is the story of the entire Emanuel family: the tough, colorful Old World grandparents; a mischievous, loving father who immigrated to the United States with twenty-five dollars and who enthralled his boys with tales of his adventures in Israel’s war for independence; and a proud, politically engaged mother who took the boys with her to rallies and protests—including a civil rights march through the streets of Chicago led by Martin Luther King himself. Even as the Emanuels distinguished themselves as individuals, the bond of brotherhood that tied them together was never broken. Brothers Emanuel is a wry, rollicking, and often poignant narrative of how one American family succeeded in raising three extraordinary children. Praise for Brothers Emanuel “An endearing, honest and gripping account of an American success story.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A beautiful portrait of growing up Jewish in an urban environment during an era of profound social change.” — Publishers Weekly “This delightful memoir is a deeply personal tale of one family, but it’s also about much larger things: America and tribal identity, love and rivalry, and the moral lessons to be learned as you grow up.” —Walter Isaacson “Fascinating . . . a classic tale of an immigrant family.” — Chicago Tribune “Mighty entertaining.” —The Hollywood Reporter “A clear-eyed, candid memoir that is unique and yet quintessentially American.” —BookPage “A fun read.” —The Forward

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Magnificent.” — The New York Times * “Beguiling, observant, and howlingly funny.” — San Francisco Chronicle * “Spectacular.” — Star Tribune (Minneapolis) * “Full of astonishments.” — The Boston Globe Susan Orlean—the beloved New Yorker staff writer hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Library Book —gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. “How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,” writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon , she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals , she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world’s most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world’s hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean’s stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

"Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can't help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic." --Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club and The Art of Memoir From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom's most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika's arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, "No one in Haiti can help you with." Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika's boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost. Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed--a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.

My octogenarian dad wanted to study Homer's epic and learn its lessons about life's journeys. First he took my class. Then we sailed for Ithaca. When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired computer scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his "one last chance" to learn the great literature he'd neglected in his youth--and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months during which the two men explore Homer's great work together--first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise--filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus's famous voyages--it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn's narrative comes to echo The Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned author-scholar's most triumphant entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.

The electrifying, often harrowing memoir of a highly decorated DEA agent who targeted the world's most notorious narco-terrorists through the "dark art" of undercover operations. Edward Follis bought eightballs of coke in a red Corvette. He negotiated multimillion-dollar deals onboard private King Airs. He developed covert relationships with men who were not only international drug traffickers but--in some cases--operatives for Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shan United Army, or the Mexican Federation of cartels. He was a master at the dark art of going undercover. And this is his story... Spanning five continents and filled with harrowing stories about the world's most ruthless drug lords and terrorist networks, The Dark Art is an incredible first hand account of Edward Follis's twenty-seven-year undercover career in the DEA--from doing street-level busts evocative of Miami Vice to using high-resolution-optics surveillance and classified cutting-edge technology to bring down narco-terror kingpins. It also closely examines how, from the early 1990s to today, the DEA underwent its own radical transformation, shifting its focus from local dealers of coke and weed to the billionaire financiers of worldwide terrorism. Every word is true, and every story is documented. A globe-hopping nonfiction thriller, The Dark Art is a page-turning memoir that will electrify you from page one.

Finalist for the 1997 National Book Award for Nonfiction Jamaica Kincaid’s brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid’s incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother’s life and death is also a story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer’s mother. My Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.

A haunting and often hilarious memoir of growing up in 80s Miami as the son of Big Tony, a flawless model of the great American pot baron. To his fellow smugglers, Anthony Edward Dokoupil was the Old Man. He ran stateside operations for one of the largest marijuana rings of the twentieth century. In all they sold hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana, and Big Tony distributed at least fifty tons of it. To his son he was a rambling man who was also somehow a present father, a self-destructive addict who ruined everything but affection. Here Tony Dokoupil blends superb reportage with searing personal memories, presenting a probing chronicle of pot-smoking, drug-taking America from the perspective of the generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Great Stoned Age.

At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel’s tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all. “This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death. I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it. I want Nick's life to be not only a tender memory for us, but a gift to others. . . . I would like to offer people hope and the realities we lived with. I want to make a difference. My hope is that someone will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it.” —Danielle Steel From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful, personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him—and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans.

Silk parachute pants. A gold lame jumpsuit. Ankle boots with fringe. Were these fashion-forward items sending men running in the opposite direction? Maybe, but Leandra Medine never cared. Slipping into drop-crotch shorts and a boxed sequin blazer in the dressing room of Topshop in downtown Manhattan, a brokenhearted Leandra had an epiphany. Looking in the mirror, she suddenly realized she didn't have a boyfriend because of the way she dressed. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that such outfits said a lot about her life-romantic and otherwise. Now, the acclaimed blogger and fashion darling recounts her most significant memories through the lens of her sartorial choices. With her signature sass, blunt honesty, and some personal photos, Leandra shares details of the night she lost her virginity right down to the pair of white tube socks she forgot to take off, as well as when and why she realized her grandma's vintage Hermes ostrich skin clutch could hold much more than just keys and a cell phone. Through it all, she proves you don't need to compromise even your most repellent qualities to find your way into that big white dress (and an organza moto jacket). See? You can have your yeti and wear it, too. Showcasing the singular voice that has won Leandra millions of fans, this book is a collection of awkwardly funny experiences, a sweet love story, and above all, a reminder to celebrate and embrace a world made for women, by women.

From Hadley Freeman, bestselling author of House of Glass , comes a “riveting” ( The New York Times ) memoir about her experience as an anorexic and her journey to recovery. In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through “sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia—the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage—and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades. Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.

The multitalented writers, directors, producers, and actors (as seen on The League, Transparent, and The Mindy Project ) share the secrets of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir. “A book that anyone will love . . . You can enjoy it even if you have no idea who the Duplass brothers are.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times Whether producing, writing, directing, or acting, the Duplass Brothers have made their mark in the world of independent film and television on the strength of their quirky and empathetic approach to storytelling. Now, for the first time, Mark and Jay take readers on a tour of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir told in essays that share the secrets of their success, the joys and frustrations of intimate collaboration, and the lessons they’ve learned the hard way. From a childhood spent wielding an oversized home video camera in the suburbs of New Orleans to their shared years at the University of Texas in early-nineties Austin, and from the breakthrough short they made on a three-dollar budget to the night their feature film Baghead became the center of a Sundance bidding war, Mark and Jay tell the story of a bond that’s resilient, affectionate, mutually empowering, and only mildly dysfunctional. They are brutally honest about how their closeness sabotaged their youthful romantic relationships, about the jealousy each felt when the other stole the spotlight as an actor (Mark in The League, Jay in Transparent ), and about the challenges they faced on the set of their HBO series Togetherness —namely, too much togetherness. But Like Brothers is also a surprisingly practical road map to a rewarding creative partnership. Rather than split all their responsibilities fifty-fifty, the brothers learned to capitalize on each other’s strengths. They’re not afraid to call each other out, because they’re also not afraid to compromise. Most relationships aren’t—and frankly shouldn’t be—as intense as Mark and Jay’s, but their brand of trust, validation, and healthy disagreement has taken them far. Part coming-of-age memoir, part underdog story, and part insider account of succeeding in Hollywood on their own terms, Like Brothers is as openhearted and lovably offbeat as Mark and Jay themselves. “Wright. Ringling. Jonas. I’m sure you could name a bunch of famous brother teams. They’re all garbage compared to Mark and Jay. I can’t wait for you to read this book.”—from the foreword by Mindy Kaling

'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.

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 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.

Alan Arkin knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five: "Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was." "An Improvised Life" is the Oscar winner's wise and unpretentious recollection of the process--artistic and personal--of becoming an actor, and a revealing look into the creative mind of one of the best practitioners on stage or screen. In a manner that is direct, down-to-earth, accessible, and articulate, Arkin reveals insights not only about himself (and his audience and students), but also truths for the rest of us about work, relationships, and sense of self.