Holding her stuffed toy chimpanzee, young Jane Goodall observes nature, reads Tarzan books, and dreams of living in Africa and helping animals. Includes biographical information on the prominent zoologist.

This work is the author's memoir of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape. Anyone familiar with the author's fiction will recognize Gloversville, New York, once famous for producing that eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a good-time, second-fiddle father who were born into this close-knit community. But...

This memoir of being raised on a commune in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sandra Eugster's idealistic, headstrong mother created a commune in rural Virginia that came to be known as Nethers, and it was here that Sandra spent much of her childhood. This unique, honest memoir strives to accurately depict communal living in all its complexities. An array of colorful characters drifted into the commune, and the author writes sensitively about being...

"Writer Elspeth Sandys was born during the Second World War, the result of a brief encounter between two people who would never meet again. The first nine months of her life were spent in the Truby King Karitane Hospital in Dunedin, where she was known as Frances Hilton James. With her adoption, a new birth certificate was issued and she became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville. Tom and Alice Somerville lived with their son John in Dunedin's Andersons...

Grohl offers an honest portrait of an extraordinary life made up of ordinary moments. From his deep connection to his hometown of Springfield, Virginia, to the awe he still feels about raising his daughters, he tells stories from his soul. Packed with reflections on touring with Scream, joining Nirvana and watching it all crumble, creating Foo Fighters when his life was at a crossroads, and now crisscrossing the world as a family man, Grohl introduces...

You may not yet have heard of Lee Hoyle. You soon will. This collection of anecdotes, memoirs and general musings will almost certainly have you laughing, and often bring a tear to the eye. Lee's unique style of writing adds to both the humour amd the drama of the chapters of his life and often enhances the emotion of the moment. This is a must-read biography from an interesting new character, with praise heaped on chapters such as 'Breaking into...

One of America's most important and influential naturalists, John Muir was a formative figure in the country's conservation movement and the establishment of the national park system. He was also a gifted storyteller, and in this series of essays he reminisces about his early years. Muir relates the circumstances that inspired and nurtured his fascination with the natural world, from his boyhood in Scotland to his years at the University of Wisconsin,...

"HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country's most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or...

David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless untamed boys who grew up in Middle America at mid-century. Whether he's stalking snakes in the bogs of Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, leaping garbage cans for a beautiful little redheaded girl, or joining Chucky Dutcher for a movie marathon at the Erwin Theater, Benjamin is the kind of precocious ironist who would have found...

In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939-"the story," says Peter Gay, "of a poisoning and how I dealt with it." With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings-then and now-toward Germany its people. Gay relates that the...