The lives of Margaret Fuller

Sample

Beverly Cleary

The New Yorker called Beverly Cleary's first volume of memoirs, A Girl From Yamhill, a warm, honest book, as interesting as any novel. Now the creator of the classic children's stories millions grew up with continues her own fascination story. Here is Beverly Cleary, from college years to the publication of her first book. It is a fascinating look at her life and a writing career that spans three generations, continuing to capture the hearts and imaginations of children of all ages throughout the world.

Sample

Alix Kates Shulman

At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. In this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter - discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Schulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.

Sample

Eleanor Dienstag

Whose career comes first when a family moves? Does the one who earns the living have the ultimate power of decision? Forty percent of the population relocates once every four years. Whither Thou Goest is the inside story of the effects of moving on one family -- not just the packing, leave-taking, readjustment and search for new friends, but most important, the balance of power within marriage. When her lawyer husband was offered the job of a lifetime in Rochester, New York, Eleanor Dienstag, career mother and passionate Manhattanite, left her native turf to follow her spouse. Caught between traditional values and burgeoning feminism, she made the move from a Riverside Drive apartment and the joys of the city to a house in a quiet upstate town. The move broke their marriage open, revealing vital issues about sex roles, responsibility, independence and ambition. Then another trauma shook their marriage: the decline of the Stirling Homex Company -- one of the most spectacular business disasters of recent times -- the company for whom the Dienstags left New York. What happens to a wife who moves for the sake of her husband's career when that career explodes? How do you help an ambitious man admit a mistake? How do you strive for an equitable marriage when your husband's job is using all his energy? Whither Thou Goest is the honest story of one woman -- who could be any woman -- facing up to the moral demands of business, marriage and self, and confronting the seductive power of the American dream of upward mobility -- a dream that diminishes both men and women.

Sample

Jeanette Winterson

Memories of the author about her difficult childhood as the adopted daughter of an English mother with strong religious convictions, and her subsequent search for her biological mother.