“You keep fighting, okay?” I whispered. “We’re in thistogether. You and me. You’re not alone. You hear me? You are notalone. ” 5:38 p.m. It was the precise moment Sean Manning was born and thetime each year that his mother wished him happy birthday. But justbefore he turned twenty-seven, their tradition collapsed. A heartattack landed his mom in the hospital and uprooted Manning from hislife in New York. What followed was a testament to a family’sindestructible bond—a life-changing odyssey that broke a boy andmade a man—captured here in Manning’s indelible memoir.

Immensely readable...A Chicano Manchild in the PromisedLand." -- Publishers Weekly Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971,Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano layer andnotorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr.Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite forfood, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book isAcosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in thepsychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breakingall tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong insearch of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark ofcontemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal,and unmistakably authentic. "Acosta has entered counterculture folklore. This is the lifestory of a man whose pain is made real, whose roots are inquestion, and whose society seems to be fragmenting aroundhim." -- Saturday Review of Lite

In the years following his and Francis Crick’s toweringdiscovery of DNA, James Watson was obsessed with finding twothings: RNA and a wife. Genes, Girls, and Gamow is the marvelouschronicle of those pursuits. Watson effortlessly glides between hisheartbreaking and sometimes hilarious debacles in the field of loveand his heady inquiries in the field of science. He also reflectswith touching candor on some of science’s other titans, from fellowNobelists Linus Pauling and the incorrigible Richard Feynman toRussian physicist George Gamow, who loved whiskey, limericks, andcard tricks as much as he did molecules and genes. What emerges isa refreshingly human portrait of a group of geniuses and a candid,often surprising account of how science is done.

Jon Katz, a respected journalist, father, and husband, wasturning fifty. His writing career had taken a dubious turn, hiswife had a demanding career of her own, his daughter was preparingto leave home for college, and he had become used to a sedentarylifestyle. Wonderfully witty and insightful, Running to theMountain chronicles Katz's hunger for change and his search forrenewed purpose and meaning in his familiar world. Armed with the writings of Thomas Merton and his two faithfulLabradors, Katz trades in his suburban carpool-driving and escapesto the mountains of upstate New York. There, as he restores adilapidated cabin, learns self-reliance in a lightning storm,shares a bottle of Glenlivet with unexpected ghosts, and helps afriend prepare for fatherhood, he confronts his lifelong questionsabout spirituality, mortality, and his own self-worth. Heultimately rediscovers a profound appreciation for his work, hisfamily, and the beauty of everyday life--and provides a gloriouslesson for us all.

Albert Einstein's brain floats in a Tupperware bowl in a grayduffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling acrossAmerica. Driving the car is journalist Michael Paterniti. Sittingnext to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named ThomasHarvey, who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955 -- thensimply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for overforty years. On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave NewJersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein'sperplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as theimaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-drivengenius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars.Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, andpart meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique roadtrips in modern literature.

More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remainsone of the most gifted artists of our time–and also one of the mostelusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life,Lady Day has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildlydistorted legends. Now at last, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a writer ofintellectual authority and superb literary gifts, liberates BillieHoliday from the mythology that has obscured both her life and herart. An intimate meditation on Holiday’s place in American culture andhistory, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery reveals Lady Day in allher complexity, humor and pain–a true jazz virtuoso whose passionand originality made every song she sang hers forever. Celebratedby poets, revered by recording artists from Frank Sinatra to MacyGray, Billie Holiday is more popular and influential today thanever before. Now, thanks to this marvelous book, Holiday’s manyfans can finally understand the singer and the woman they love.

“On our first date, Rich ordered a chocolate soufflé at thebeginning of the meal, noting an asterisk on the menu warningdiners of the wait involved. At the time, I imagined he did itpartly to impress me, which it did, though today I know well thathe’s simply the type of man who knows better than to turn down ahot-from-the-oven soufflé when one is offered to him.” When Michelle Maisto meets Rich–like her, a closet writer with afierce love of books and good food–their single-mindedness at thetable draws them together, and meals become a stage for their longcourtship. Finally engaged, they move in together, but sitting downto shared meals each night–while working at careers, trying towrite, and falling into the routines that come to define ahome–soon feels like something far different from their firstdinner together. Who cooks, who shops, who does the dishes? Rich craves the lightfare his mother learned to prepare as a girl in China, but Michelleleans toward the hearty dishes h

For Malcolm Jones, his parents’ disintegrating marriage was atthe center of life in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s. Hisfather, charming but careless, was often drunk and away from home;his mother, a schoolteacher and faded Southern belle, clung to thepast and hungered for respectability. In Little Boy Lost ,Jones—one of our most admired cultural observers—recalls achildhood in which this relationship played out against the largercracks of society: the convulsions of desegregation and a popularculture that threatens the church-centered life of his family. Herichly evokes a time and place with rare depth and candor, givingus the fundamental stories of a life—where he comes from, who hewas, who he has become.

McCain, with help from his administrative assistant Salter,picks up where the bestselling Faith of My Fathers left off, afterhis release from a North Vietnamese POW prison. After two decadesin Congress, he has plenty of stories to tell, beginning with hisfirst experiences on Capitol Hill as a navy liaison to the Senate,where he became friends with men like Henry "Scoop" Jackson andJohn Tower. (The latter friendship plays a crucial role in McCain'saccount of the battle over Tower's 1989 nomination for defensesecretary.) He revisits the "Keating Five" affair that nearlywrecked his career in the early '90s, pointedly observing how theinvestigating Senate committee left him dangling for politicalreasons long after he'd been cleared of wrongdoing. There's muchless on his 2000 presidential campaign than one might expect; asingle chapter lingers on a self-lacerating analysis of how he lostthe South Carolina primary. (He admits, "I doubt I shall havereason or opportunity to try again" for the White House, and