A #1 best-selling author shows how a boy from small-town New York made it to literary stardom. How did a kid whose dad lived in the poorhouse become the most successful storyteller in the world? On the morning he was born, he nearly died. His dad grew up in the Pogey--the Newburgh, New York, poorhouse. He worked at a mental hospital in Massachusetts, where he met the singer James Taylor and the poet Robert Lowell. While he toiled in advertising hell,...

In Roughing It our nation's favorite storyteller shares memories of his "vagabondizing" days on the untamed frontier - of curious people, exotic places, hardship, danger - and a whopping dose of good fun.

A collection of seventy-seven "poems of the prairies, poems on the nature of love, poems about many other topics, and a. . . [long] chanting poem, 'Timesweep, ' about many incarnations of life over the ages."

Born into the middle of World War II, Gary Paulsen's turbulent childhood provided plenty of subject matter for his bestselling novels, and the librarians in his life gave him the inspiration and support to explore the world through books. As a soldier himself, his storytelling technique developed, and for the first time he shares his own.

An account of Twain's experiences as an apprentice riverboat pilot in the days of the great Mississippi steamboats.

"Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman reflects on growing up with his award-winning father, Sid Fleischman, and details his own path to becoming a writer"-- Provided by publisher.

Offering an invitation into her personal life, the noted author shares the stories of the people, places, ideals, and art to which she has remained indelibly committed.

"You fall down. You get hurt. You get up again. You know Jennifer Weiner as many things: a bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and "an unlikely feminist enforcer" (The New Yorker). She's also a mom, a daughter, and a sister; a former rower and current runner; a best friend and a reality TV junkie. Here, in her first foray into nonfiction, she takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins it into a collection of essays on womanhood as uproariously...

Annie Dillard has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Discomfort Zone is Franzen's memoir of growth from his boyhood as a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a Midwestern middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s and a vivid personal history of an America turning its back on a certain idealism.