"Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure...

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

"An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world,"--Amazon.com. Jahren has built three laboratories in which she's studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. She tells about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classrooms labs; about how...

The best-selling author offers a new collection of satirical and humorous essays that chronicle his own life and ordinary moments that turn beautifully absurd, including how he coped with the pandemic, his thoughts on becoming an orphan in his seventh decade, and the battle-scarred America he discovered when he resumed touring.

"How did Davy Crockett save President Jackson's life--only to end up dying at the Alamo? Was the Lone Ranger based on a real lawman--and was he an African American? What amazing detective work led to the capture of Black Bart, the 'gentleman bandit' and one of the West's most famous stagecoach robbers? Did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really die in a hail of bullets in South America? Generations of Americans have grown up on TV shows, movies,...

"A Generous Nature: Lives Transformed by Oregon offers profiles of twenty-one conservationists and activists who have made enduring contributions to the preservation of Oregon's wild and natural places and its high quality of life. These stories speak to their courage, foresight, and actions-at times against great odds-to save places, enact legislation, and motivate others to cherish and protect the places that make Oregon unique. Taken from personal...

"The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal. 1980s hard rock was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated--and maybe even helped to define--a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' Mötley Crüe's 'Girls, Girls, Girls,' and Guns N' Roses' 'Welcome to the Jungle' are as inextricably linked to...

"In Secondhand, journalist Adam Minter takes us on an unexpected adventure into the often-hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse: thrift stores in the American Southwest to vintage shops in Tokyo, flea markets in Southeast Asia to used-goods enterprises in Ghana, and more. Along the way, Minter meets the fascinating people who handle--and profit from--our rising tide of discarded stuff, and asks a pressing question: In a world that craves shiny...

Documents are milestones and markers of human activity, part of who and what we are. Our story can be told through the objects, profound and trivial, famous and forgotten, by which we remember and are remembered. Documents That Changed the Way We Live examines dozens of compelling stories that describe these documents, their creation, motivation, influence, importance, historical and social context, provenance, and their connections to contemporary...

Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter, had their lives turned upside down when they adopted their pig-daughter Esther--the so-called micro pig who turned out to be a full-sized commercial pig growing to a whopping 600 pounds--as they describe in their bestselling memoir Esther the Wonder Pig. The book ends with them moving to a new farm, and starting a new wonderful life where they will live on the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary to care for other animals...