Michael Brick is one of those writers who never leaves your side, and what pleasurable company he provides.In reading this collection of his newspaper and magazine stories from Brooklyn, Houston, and beyond, picture the man. Tall, and lanky, and so proud to be Texan, wearing a brown vest and cowboy boots, his narrow reporter's notebook in his back pocket slapping at his flat ass, as if urging him onward because these blank pages needed filling.Brick's words breathe life int...

Inside the race to save a great American high school, where making the numbers is only the beginningBeing principal was never her dream. Anabel Garza, the young widow of a young cop, got by teaching English to immigrant children, taking college classes at night and raising her son.And Reagan High was no dream assignment. Once famous for its state football championships, educational achievements and award-winning design, the school was a shadow of its former self. “...

Recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants and with works exhibited at the prestigious Biennale de Paris, New York’s Whitney Museum, the de Menil Collection in Houston, and other venues, Bob “Daddy-O” Wade started “keeping it weird” in 1961 when he arrived in Austin with his ’51 custom Ford hot rod and his slicked-back hair. Primed to study art at the University of Texas, Wade’s coif and dragster earned him his trademark moniker, and the abstract, welded sculptures he fashio...

The football star made famous in the hit film (and book) The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher shares his personal account of his story, in this inspirational New York Times bestseller.Looking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family. Eventu...

From the hit podcast and radio show, a collection of soul-bearing stories from The Moth's archives.A wedding toast hone horribly awry. A rapper's obsession with a Sarah McLachlan song. A death-defying stunt in a bullring. The fight to save Mother Teresa's life. These are the spellbinding tales from The Moth's storytellers.Inspired by friends telling stories on a porch, The Moth was born in small-town Georgia, garnered a cult following in New York City, and th...

The rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street—the basis for the major motion picture starring Will Smith.At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed ...

From the heart of one of the world’s most beloved entertainers comes an engaging memoir of professional triumph, private heartbreak, and personal victory.It didn’t take Wynonna Judd long to find her purpose—or her voice. She picked up her first guitar at nine and in less that ten years was performing with her mother Naomi in a celebrated, multiple-award-winning, platinum-selling duo—a phenomenal success story that would set the stage for an equally triumphant solo ...

For 25 years, there's always been a home in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader for those times in life you wish you could take back--"oops" moments, embarrassing accidents, spectacular failures. Because we never get tired of reading about unfortunate accidents (as long as they're happening to someone else), here is a whole book of "the best of the worst," the troubling and funny stories of things got terribly awry. Read all about:* The little math error that took down a spaceship.* A sexy stimul...

The beloved bathroom reader series returns with this twenty-sixth edition that's flush with weird facts on a wide array of topics.The twenty-sixth annual edition of Uncle John's wildly successful series is all-new and jam-packed with the BRI's patented mix of fun and information. Open to any page and you may find an interesting origin (like the origin of the snow globe) or a piece of obscure history (like the true story of the man who tried to repeal the law of gra...

She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer after being diagnosed only days before the 2004 election. She touched hundreds of similarly grieving families when her own son, Wade, died tragically at age sixteen in 1996. Now she shares her experiences in Saving Graces, an incandescent memoir of Edwards’ trial...

Tom Brokaw, known and beloved for his landmark work in American journalism and for the New York Times bestsellers The Greatest Generation and Boom!, now turns his attention to the challenges that face America in the new millennium, to offer reflections on how we can restore America’s greatness.“What happened to the America I thought I knew?” Brokaw writes. “Have we simply wandered off course, but only temporarily? Or have we allowed ourselves to be so div...

The twenty-seventh Bathroom Reader in the beloved, bizarre trivia series with more than fifteen million copies in print!At a whopping 544 pages, Uncle John's Canoramic Bathroom Reader is overflowing with everything that Bathroom Readers' Institute fans have come to expect from this bestselling trivia series: fascinating history, silly science, obscure origins . . . plus fads, blunders, wordplay, quotes, and a few surprises (such as some of the "creative" m...