Diaries & Memoirs

The memoirs of senior UK diplomat Sir Peter Westmacott, former ambassador in Turkey, France and the United States.

WINNER OF THE 2019 KIRKUS PRIZE IN NONFICTION WINNER OF THE 2020 STONEWALL BOOK AWARD-ISRAEL FISHMAN NONFICTION AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 One of the best books of the year as selected by The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper's Bazaar; Elle; Kirkus Reviews; Publishers Weekly; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; School Library Journal; and many more. ';A moving, bracingly honest memoir that reads like fevered poetry.' The New York Times Book Review ';Jones's voice and sensibility are so distinct that he turns one of the oldest of literary genres inside out and upside down.' NPR'S Fresh Air';People don't just happen,' writes Saeed Jones. ';We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ';I' it seems doesn't exist until we are able to say, ';I am no longer yours.'' Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir. Jones tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescenceinto tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one anotherand to one anotheras we fight to become ourselves. An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that's as beautiful as it is powerfula voice that's by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.

A timely, provocative and personal examination of the refugee experience

Violet Jessop survived the sinking of both the Titanic and Britannic, and her lively and well-rounded memoir including her first-hand account of the two disasters offers the reader a unique vantage on both the catastrophes and the socioeconomic climate of the time.

This autobiography, taken from his diaries of 1991-94, interweaves Jarman's harrowing account of physical decline and failing eyesight with wonderfully poetic and detailed descriptions of the changing seasons of Dungeness, his meetings with Tennant, Freud and others, his thoughts on his sex life and his love for his boyfriend.

Named one ofThe Guardian's "e;Best Books of 2016"e;From the author of My Brilliant FriendThis book invites readers into Elena Ferrante's workshop. It offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and the four installments of My Brilliant Friend, known in English as the Neapolitan Quartet. Consisting of over 20 years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, it is a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing. In these pages Ferrante answers many of her readers' questions. She addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. She discusses her thoughts and concerns as her novels are being adapted into films. She talks about the challenge of finding concise answers to interview questions. She explains the joys and the struggles of writing, the anguish of composing a story only to discover that that story isn't good enough. She contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies. The result is a vibrant and intimate self-portrait of a writer at work.

A selection of Mozart's letters, translated into English, complete with notes, linking commentary and chronology.

Richard Rose's memoir vividly describes first-hand experience of the transformation of politics in Europe and the United States since 1940. He has been teargassed in Chicago, seen walls go up in Belfast and come down in Berlin. The author's education in the streets and in the corridors of political power give a unique perspective on discrimination by race, religion and class, and the world in which political scientists live today. Rose has distilled a 500-page book into a three-minute Oval Office explanation to George W Bush of why America's intervention in Iraq was a disaster. He gives practical advice to political scientists about how to make words into concepts and communicate what you know to others inside and outside universities. The book's photographs show memorials to the dead, and living evidence of how election forecasting has changed since Delphi. Using skills developed since teaching himself to type at the age of eight, Rose describes his 20 years of working in newspapers, radio and television before publishing his first book. Since then he has combined social science methodology, along with the methodologies of comparative drama and the applied arts, to write many innovative books. This is the latest.

A revealing and unusal memoir by the bestselling author of What I Loved, an account of her search for the source of her mysterious nervous disorder which offers a fascinating exploration of the mind and its connection with the body 'provocative but often funny, encyclopedic but down to earth' Oliver Sacks.While speaking at a memorial event for her father, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. She managed to finish her talk and the paroxysms stopped, but not for good. Again and again she found herself a victim of the shudders. What had happened?Chronicling her search for the shaking woman, Hustvedt takes the reader on a journey into contemporary psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalysis. She unearths stories and theories from the annals of medical history, literature and philosophy, and delves into her own past. In the process, she raises fundamental questions: what is the relationship between mind and body? How do we remember? What is the self?In a seamless synthesis of personal experience and extensive research, Hustvedt conveys the often frightening mysteries of illness and the complexities of diagnosis. As engaging as it is thought-provoking, The Shaking Woman brilliantly illuminates the age-old dilemma of the mental and the physical, and what it means to be human.

Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume)John Keats died aged just twenty-five. He left behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and love letters ever written, inspired by his great love for Fanny Brawne. Although they knew each other for just a few short years and spent a great deal of that time apart - separated by Keats' worsening illness, which forced a move abroad - Keats wrote again and again about and to his love, right until his very last poem, called simply 'To Fanny'. She, in turn, would wear the ring he had given her until her death. So Bright and Delicate is the passionate, heartrending story of this tragic affair, told through the private notes and public art of a great poet.

In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history.Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitionsfrom a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President.Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies.Illuminating, revelatory, and utterly compelling, Counselor is the brilliant, long-awaited memoir from the remarkable man who shaped the presidency and the legacy of one of the greatest leaders America has ever known.

Bon Voyage Travel Notebook: A Journal For Those Who Love To Travel The WorldWhether you are ready to backpack across the country, jet off to Europe, head out on an African safari or set sail around the world, this is the perfect notebook to record all your travel memories. Large enough that you'll have plenty of room to write yet small enough to slide in your backpack or purse. Filled with 120 pages (60 sheets) of bright white lined paper Perfect for story writing, poetry, journaling, note taking and more Enjoy the therapeutic value of journaling while you travel A great travel book to record their thoughts, feelings and memories This fun notebook could even be great as a daily travel diary Or used for charting and planning your trips, personal goals and dream vacations. Other uses include: gratitude journal, fitness journal, food journal, idea journal, reading journal, project journal, poetry journal, prayer journal, and the list goes onAdd this fun Bon Voyage Travel Notebook to your cart now or save it to your wish list for later.A great Bon Voyage travel gift for anyone about to take a trip.Be sure to check out the other fun journal and notebook designs by this author.

The author shares a charming and eloquent account of a return to noticing, to rediscovering a perspective on the world that had somehow been lost to her for decades, and to reconnecting with the natural world. With special care and attention to the plight of pollinators, including honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees, she shares fascinating details of the lives of flora and fauna.

Growing up loving to hunt, Bruce LaChance decided to seek his greatest adventure yet: to hunt a giant brown bear on his own. What followed was a tale not only of adventure but of tragedy and redemption through faith.On leave from his US Navy base on Kodiak Island, twenty-year-old LaChance set out in late September 1964 for the extreme danger of the Alaskan wilderness. He struggled alone for nearly two weeks, during which he lost thirty pounds and an inch in height. Along the way, he never lost faith in himself, however. Later in life, he would again find himself lost but in a different kind of wilderness, though one every bit as deadly--that of alcoholism. Only through belief in a Higher Power was he able to survive both wildernesses, and in so doing, find contentment, faith, and true love.Lost and Found in Alaska: A True Story of Survival and Miracles on Kodiak Island...and Elsewhere will help every reader become aware of his or her Higher Power. That Power resides within them, and always has, and if they are willing to surrender to it, they can find serenity.

'Tommy' Lascelles was Private Secretary to four monarchs - and depicted in the Netflix hit The Crown. These diaries reveal the inside story of the royal household during the abdication crisis, the second world war and the Princess Margaret-Peter Townsend affair'Brilliantly entertaining and historically priceless' Spectator

In The Smallest Lights in the Universe, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love.

Explore your creative truth through the meditations, prompts, prayers, rituals and spiritual practices found within the pages so you can heal your heart, stir your soul and awaken a vision to a new way of living.

**A Sunday Times Book of the Year**The closest you'll ever get to the most infamous drug kingpin in modern history, told by the person who stood by his sideThe story of Pablo Escobar, one of the wealthiest, powerful and violent criminals of all time has fascinated the world.