Biography and Memoir
January 2021
Recent Releases
How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
by Jerald Walker

What it is: a darkly humorous essay collection from Emerson College creative writing professor and Street Shadows author Jerald Walker.

Why you might like it: This wide-ranging National Book Award Finalist offers personal reflections on Black identity and culture, life in academia, parenting, disability, and more. 

Try this next: For another incisive essay collection by a Black academic, read Kiese Laymon's How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. 
Melania and me : the rise and fall of my friendship with the First Lady
by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

"A revealing and explosive portrayal of Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's fifteen-year friendship with Melania Trump and observations of the most chaotic White House in history"
His very best : Jimmy Carter, a life
by Jonathan Alter

An intimate portrait of the 39th President draws on fresh archival material to trace Jimmy Carter’s improbable rise from a humble peanut farmer and complex man of faith to an American President and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian. 150,000 first printing.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
by Jacqueline Winspear

What it is: an evocative and richly detailed memoir of novelist Jacqueline Winspear's childhood in post-World War II Kent.

Want a taste? "Mist hangs across the land like a silk scarf -- not quite touching the earth, but not rising high enough to join a cloud." 

Who it's for: Fans of Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mysteries will enjoy spotting real-life inspirations for the series; readers who appreciate family histories will also find much to savor in this reflective coming-of-age tale.
We keep the dead close : a murder at Harvard and a half century of silence
by Becky Cooper

Documents the unsolved 1969 murder of Harvard student Jane Britton, sharing insights into how the case was clouded by false rumors and the realities of gender inequality and institutional silence in period academic circles. 150,000 first printing.
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