Memoirs: North America

As America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.

National Book Award Finalist From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve. Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world--a world usually lost to history. Lepore's life of Jane Franklin, with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother, is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.

Born during the Islamic Revolution and raised by Persian parents amid an affectionate and gossipy Iranian diaspora in the American heartland of Dayton, Ohio, Melody Moezzi enjoyed all the amenities of a typical American youth - Froot Loops, Saturday-morning cartoons, and Catholic school - but also experienced a distinctly Iranian upbringing: Farsi class, unibrows, saffron on everything, and Ph.D.s or M.D.s for the whole family. When Moezzi battled severe physical illness at age eighteen, her community stepped up, filling her hospital rooms with roses, lilies, and hyacinths. But when she attempted suicide and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, there were no flowers. Locked in psych wards and bombarded with antipsychotics, she was encouraged to keep her illness a secret - by both her family and an increasingly callous medical establishment. Refusing to be ashamed, Moezzi instead became an outspoken advocate, determined to fight the stigma surrounding mental illness. Reporting from the no-man's-land between sickness and sanity, between the Midwest and the Middle East, Moezzi refused to be torn across cultural and social lines. Funny, caustic, and unique, Haldol and Hyacinths is a tribute to the healing power of hope and humor.

A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities. Richard Blanco's childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents' nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba and his imagined America, the country he saw on reruns of The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver--an "exotic" life he yearned for as much as he yearned to see "la patria." Navigating these worlds eventually led Blanco to question his cultural identity through words; in turn, his vision as a writer--as an artist--prompted the courage to accept himself as a gay man. In this moving, contemplative memoir, the 2013 inaugural poet traces his poignant, often hilarious, and quintessentially American coming-of-age and the people who influenced him. A prismatic and lyrical narrative rich with the colors, sounds, smells, and textures of Miami, Richard Blanco's personal narrative is a resonant account of how he discovered his authentic self and ultimately, a deeper understanding of what it means to be American. His is a singular yet universal story that beautifully illuminates the experience of "becoming;" how we are shaped by experiences, memories, and our complex stories: the humor, love, yearning, and tenderness that define a life.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction When three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul.

The popular ESPN basketball analyst and former Duke player looks at the true meaning of toughness.
If anyone knows tough, it’s Jay Bilas. A four-year starter at Duke, he learned an incomparable work ethic under coach Mike Krzyzewski, battling against the greatest college players in the game. After playing professionally overseas for several years, he returned to Duke, where he served as Krzyzewski’s assistant coach for three seasons, during which the Blue Devils won back-to-back titles. A graduate of Duke Law School, he has since become one of basketball’s most recognizable faces through his insightful, intelligent work on ESPN’s SportsCenter and College GameDay.

GB Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family's history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past--and to focus on their children's future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father's remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America--a foreign land they couldn't even imagine--where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.

We Were Not Spoiled chronicles the life of Lucille Verreault Ledoux, a Mainer born in 1921. Born and raised in Lewiston, her life is typical of many Franco-Americans of her generation and, as such, is an important addition to our understanding of Maine's ethnically diverse communities in the last century.

"Out of the traditions of healers, shamans, and other leaders of complementary medicine, the healing ways of renowned Lakota Sioux medicine man Gary Holy Bull are featured in this profile of his life and teachings. Using Holy Bull's own words and writings, the traditional ways of the Lakota Sioux are evoked through texts, contemporary and historical photographs, quotations, profiles, and first-person accounts. His descriptions of the Yuwipi ceremony, the Sun Dance, and other healing rituals illustrate his emergence as a respected elder and as the embodiment of Lakota beliefs." - Publisher description

Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In 'Rez Life', his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist's storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present.With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation. He traces the waves of public policy that have disenfranchised and exploited Native Americans, exposing the tension that has marked the historical relationship between the United States government and the Native American population. Through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges,he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of Native American life.A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, Treuer grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, but was educated in mainstream America. Exploring crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of native language and culture, 'Rez Life' is a strikingly original work of history and reportage, a must read for anyone interested in the Native American story.

"Drawing on his memories and an oral tradition, Allen Sockabasin returns to his Passamaquoddy village of Mud-doc-mig-goog, or Peter Dana Point, near Princeton, Maine. When Allen was a child in the 1940s and 1950s, his village was isolated and depended largely on subsistence hunting and fishing, working in the woods, and seasonal harvesting work for its survival. Passamaquoddy was its first language, and the tribal traditions of sharing and helping one another ensured the survival of the group. To the outside world, they lived in poverty, but Allen remembers a life that was rich and rewarding in many ways. He recalls the storytellers, tribal leaders, craftsmen, basketmakers, hunters, musicians, and elders who are still his heroes, and he explains why preserving the Passamaquoddy traditions and language is so critical to his people's survival in modern times." - Publisher description

Personal accounts highlighting Nickerson's career while serving as a Maine State Trooper from 1977 to 2005.

Retired Maine Game Warden John Ford has seen it all. He's been shot at by desperate prison escapees, been outwitted by wily trappers, and rescued scores of animals. As a tenacious and successful warden, he was always willing to spend the time needed to nab violators of the state's fish and game laws. At the same time, though, he wasn't a cold,heartless, go-by-the-book enforcer; he usually had a good quip ready when he slipped the handcuffs on a violator,and he wasn't above accepting a lesson learned as sufficient penalty for breaking the law. Ford is also a very gifted storyteller and he writes of his adventures in Suddenly, the Cider Didn't Taste So Good, a collection of true tales, both humorous and serious, from the trenches of law enforcement, and also includes heartwarming accounts of his rescue of hurt or abandoned animals.

Experience the uplifting, "unforgettable" New York Times bestseller about an abandoned kitten named Dewey, whose life in a library won over a farming town and the world -- with over 2 million copies sold! (Booklist) Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. On the coldest night of the year in Spencer, Iowa, at only a few weeks old--a critical age for kittens--he was stuffed into the return book slot of the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility (for a cat), and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most. As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming community slowly working its way back from the greatest crisis in its long history.