"A debut book by the education columnist for Slate traces her experiences as a Jewish teen intellectual whose fateful relationship with a boy who introduced her to Kafka inspired her love for German language and culture,"--NoveList

In the early seventies, some of us were shot like stars from our parents homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hell's Canyon of Eastern Oregon, one hundred miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parent's world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes. Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces...

"A heartrending immigrant memoir and a uniquely intersectional coming-of-age story of a life lived in duality and the in-between, and how one navigates through race, gender, and the search for love."--

A New York Times essayist shares her journey from a self-destructive college student to a devoted family woman and teacher while illuminating the importance of trusting in a higher power and being truthful about life's challenges "For years Glennon Doyle Melton built a wall between herself and others, hiding inside a bunker of secrets and shame. But one day everything changed: Glennon woke up to life, committing herself to living out loud and giving...

"Riveting, rousing, and utterly real, Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world--without a road map to guide her. The journey begins a few months before her twentieth birthday. Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing...

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school--in her sixties--to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance...

"'I was born at a crossroads: a crossroads in history, a crossroads in culture, and a geographical crossroads in North Houston County in East Texas.' Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity to light the two crowded rooms, no books to read. Yet despite this-or, in her words, because of it-Simmons would become one of America's preeminent educators. The former president...

They say, "If you can remember the Sixties, you probably weren't there." Happily, Dougie MacKenzie recalls those zonked and zany times and brings them hilariously back to life in his regaling memoir, Mango Lassie. MacKenzie reveals himself as a preadolescent trapped in the "rat" system of a Southern military school. From an abyss of despair following the death of his brother, the disaffected teen finds solace in the arms of two girls he meets in France...

"Told through real-life journals, collages, lists, and drawings, this coming-of-age story illustrates the transformation of an 18-year-old girl from a small-town teenager into an independent city-dwelling college student. Written in an autobiographical style with beautiful artwork, Little Fish shows the challenges of being a young person facing the world on her own for the very first time and the unease--as well as excitement--that comes along with...