June 6, 2023
In Crossing the Swamp, entrepreneur and investor John Shen recounts his path to success in order, he writes, “to support the growing interest in entrepreneurship in the US.”
Shen’s book opens in crisis: During the 2008 crash, as his Orlando-based real estate collapses in slow motion around him, he considers jumping out a hotel window—but […]
June 6, 2023
Some 38 individual doctors, 97 appointments and almost five years of treatment for metastatic breast cancer are part of the physical and spiritual journey reported in Keith Klafehn’s detailed journal about his wife Muriel’s final illness.
Klafehn’s diary begins in 1998, with Muriel’s diagnosis of Stage III breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy and chemotherapy, which […]
May 23, 2023
Lee Halverson’s Cong Catchers recalls his time serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
Immediately after accepting his diploma at Iowa State University graduation ceremonies, the author walked back to his campus housing and found a draft notice hanging on his door. A few months later, he reported for basic training. In a […]
May 23, 2023
In this detail-rich account of his family history, Stephen Watts shares what he has learned, but perhaps just as importantly, how he has learned it, about his great-great-grandfather Charles, the man responsible for bringing the Watts family to America.
In December 1835, 23-year-old Charles left England for America, arriving in New York City in January […]
May 16, 2023
U.S. Army veteran Joanna Rakowski’s memoir of training to become an intelligence officer in the early 2000s presents a deeply felt case study in perseverance and determined self-transformation.
What makes Rakowski’s story especially compelling is that she transformed herself on several different fronts. Born in Communist Poland, she immigrated in the mid-’90s and embraced her […]
May 16, 2023
Author Les Young tells the story of his years with the love of his life, Warren, in this charming family memoir.
Born in 1939 as the youngest of six to a widowed mother, Young was raised in a rural village in New South Wales, Australia. He realized he was gay as a teenager and took […]
May 16, 2023
At age 36 after two children, divorce and remarriage, the author reinvented her life by earning a BS in nursing. This account of her first 11 years in the field is compulsively readable as it details daily life on unnamed hospital wards ranging from sub-acute to psychiatric.
Alice Marlett’s engaging journal describes the typical and […]
May 15, 2023
In this vivid travelogue, a 58-year-old retired Indian husband and father is convinced by his wife to undertake a 30-mile trek around Mount Kailash in Tibet at an altitude of over 18,000 feet.
Mo Rao’s adventure begins with a threat against him and his family, made by a member of the “land mafia”: gangsters acquiring […]
May 9, 2023
In her memoir, Sherrie Lancaster recounts her abandonment by her mother and a life-long quest to find the love and acceptance she lost.
Lancaster is one of five siblings born to an unstable father and mercurial mother whose drastic mood shifts spark constant moves. By the time the author is ten, she has moved 17 […]
May 2, 2023
Linda Katehi, the first female chancellor emerita of the University of California, Davis, exposes the cutthroat world of higher academia, including her battle against sexism, in this gripping memoir about persevering through relentless persecution.
Katehi grew up on the Greek island of Salamis in a family that was rich only in heritage. When she complained […]