Autobiography/Memoir
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A traumatic brain injury is, in some ways, the cruelest of injuries. A survivor may appear recovered, without physical scars or obvious deficits, while the psychological agony of the trauma continues unseen. Because of this abyss between what the survivor experiences and what their family and caretakers see, support can be hard to come by, and the struggle for real recovery is an epic battle.
Numerous published memoirs about brain injury offer an insider’s view of these challenges....
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Author Andre Bruneau has certainly lived an interesting life: he was a high-powered commercial real estate developer, a singer and songwriter, race horse owner, and world traveler. Unfortunately, his uneven and unfocused autobiography doesn’t live up to its potential. The best writing of the book is featured in the first pages, as Bruneau discusses growing up in French Catholic Montreal during the Great Depression and World War II. It is also illuminating to read about the Quebec separatist...
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Television shows like Prison Break and movies like The Shawshank Redemption portray a skewed version of what goes on behind the walls of a prison. Robert D. Hannigan sets the record straight with his memoir, A Forty Year Journey in Corrections. Here he offers anecdotes, history lessons, moral conundrums, and a hearty dose of real life experience to counteract the Hollywood interpretation so many of us rely on.
Hannigan began his career as a guard working the night...
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Man is the keeper of history. After all, what are history books but man’s interpretation and retelling of facts? In So Far, So Good, historian James C. Davis steps away from exploring other people’s lives and takes a stab at his own. Thankfully, his own life is as rich as anyone else’s. This is a man who attended Princeton and spent his Army days in gorgeous Italy. Along the way, Davis not only chronicles what he has seen and experienced but also poses some serious questions about...
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Originally published in 1961, Rural Free was in part based on Peden's popular newspaper column, "The Hoosier Farm Wife Says…" Peden describes the joys and rhythms of living on an Indiana farm, with tender attention to detail.
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After two years of “hitting the books,” James Feinstein enters the clinical or hands-on portion of his medical training and comes face to face with patients. His memoir, Short White Coat, named after the third-year medical student uniform, describes Jamie’s transformation from bumbling student to doctor-in-training. “The rough, starched collar of my short white coat chafed at my neck,” Feinstein writes. “I could feel the crunch of the impeccably white fabric as I leaned against the counter....
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As more time passes between us and World War II, collective memories of the spirit and sacrifice of that time grow dimmer. For some individuals, however, such as author Enid “Peggy” Haag, life during the Second World War remains vivid. In Peggy’s Wartime Memories, Haag recalls life as a young girl during the Great Depression and World War II.
More than just a home front chronicle, Peggy’s Wartime Memories follows the journey of Peggy, her older brother John, and her...
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When her son, Jeffrey, then twenty-four years old, called her one evening in December 2006 and uttered his “famous” words: “Mom, I’ve been thinking…” Karen Dye-Walker knew that something was about to happen. She didn’t realize that these words would be the beginning of a journey that would change her life. “Mom, you need to write a book. I want you to write a page a day,” he said. “And I will hold you accountable by calling you every day to see what you have written.” The knowledge that her...
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licensed marriage and family therapist as well as past vice-president of the Georgia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy reveals the abuse she suffered from her mentally ill father, an ophthalmologist who would approach after playing the piano; divided into two parts: “The Biology of Evil and the Psychology of Grace,” and “The Geography of Trauma and the History of Redemption.”
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Lindley, who has been a guest on The 700 Club, The Salle Jesse Raphael Show, and The Maury Povich Show, discusses her facial disfigurement; topics include the diagnosis of a “baseball-sized tumor in the center of her head,” her pleadings to God, and her subsequent life as an inspirational speaker.
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co-author of To Serve the Devil as well as former contributor to Women’s Sports magazine presents her family, who once owned Fort Ticonderoga, and tells of her life from “snobbish foxhunting debutante” to San Quentin prison reporter; references include Harvard, psychiatry, and “museum-like mansions.”
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instructor in social work at Syracuse University tells of her life with twin brother Frankie (1947-1953), who died of polio, and efforts to cure the disease; references include the history of polio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
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former U.S. representative, U.S. senator, and the governor of Arkansas from 1975-1979 tells his story; topics include Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson, and a surprise visit at the Cummins Prison Farm near Pine Bluff.
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former associate of the Institute for Policy Studies, author of Culture and Politics, and contributor to the New York Times Magazine presents a “reflection on the fate of women, during, and after the rise and defeat of the Taliban”; includes experiences at a girls’ primary school in Khoja Bahauddin and a babies’ orphanage in Kabul.
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young, beautiful Saudi TV news anchor of The Kingdom this Morning tells the story of being beaten by her Saudi husband, who fractured her face in thirteen places by banging her head against the marble tiles of the floor resulting in a coma for four days; in 2004 Mohammed al-Fallatta was sentenced to six months in jail and 300 lashes for wife beating.
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It may have been Emily Dickenson who first suggested the fullness of absence, but in her appealing memoir, Yarn: Remembering the Way Home, Kyoko Mori updates the concept. “In knitting, the holes are constructed…” she writes. “You build what is usually taken away. Loss can expand as well as constrict us: an absence is also an opening.”
She ought to know.
In 1970s’ Japan, where her story begins, mastering domestic arts is paramount for middle class girls anticipating future...
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Sometimes it is hard to appreciate the deluge of books being published about personal growth or helping oneself by helping others. At their worst, these books seem glib and superficial, nothing more than a set of pat phrases stuck together with a little narrative and a book binding. Therefore, when a book with authentic substance arrives, it gets our attention.
Andrew Bienkowski’s One Life to Give is just such a book. Part self-help, part memoir, this little volume is an account of... -
The title of Jimmy Heath’s autobiography is a bit misleading. He didn’t just walk with giants, he was, and remains, a giant. The influence of Heath’s musical arrangements alone would put him on that stroll with the greats, but his compositions and his playing—what a unique tenor sax sound!—places him up there with Charlie (Bird) Parker and John Coltrane. That’s some company for a mild-mannered little guy from Philadelphia.
Rife with anecdotes and fascinating facts, one doesn’t have to... -
Storytelling and medical research collide in the psychiatric emergency room, and Dr. Paul Linde uses both to show readers the full range of day-to-day life in the ER. Linde’s story—peopled with the insane and the suicidal, caretakers and prisoners—shows a world off-limits to most, teaching us about patient care under dramatic, high-stakes circumstances. As a result, Danger to Self speaks both to health professionals and those interested in a good story; Linde delivers through chapters...
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For those who’ve never ventured into a boxing gym, the sport can sometimes seem the brutal, mysterious realm of grizzled trainers and hardened athletes. In that light, the image of a middle-aged female Jewish psychotherapist tying on her boxing gloves is not only incongruous, but almost amusing.
That delighted tone permeates Binnie Klein’s memoir of her boxing obsession, as she details her experience with the sport. She admits from the start that she’s an unconventional boxer, but she...