An extraordinary "practical resource for beginners" looking to write their own memoir—now new and revised ( Kirkus Reviews).A Poets & Writers Magazine Best Book for WritersThe greatest story you could write is one you've experienced yourself. Knowing where to start is the hardest part, but it just got a little easier with this essential guidebook for anyone wanting to write a memoir.Did you know that the #1 thing that...

Whether or not one has lived an exceptional or dramatic life, we inherently understand that writing memoir—whether it’s a book, blog, or just a letter to a child—is the single greatest portal to self-examination. Stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind “writer’s block” and learn how to write with intent. Marion Roach Smith’s disarmingly frank but wildly fun tactics offer you simple and effective guidelines that work. Your legacy beings now.

A neuroscience-based approach to learning how to play music at any ageYou can learn to play music, no matter what you've been told about your musical talent or aptitude. Each and every one of us has been gifted with a fully customizable brain, one we can mold to learn anything, at any age. With the right instruction and methods, learning to play music can be an endless source of joy and fulfillment. And learning to play music isn't just fun, it's also the ideal bra...

A true historical “detective story” full of insight about how we look at art―and the artists and eras that produced itSome five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created work of unearthly beauty. An intimate associate of Florence’s unofficial rulers, the Medici, he was commissioned by a member of their family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by the city’s greates...

This landmark collection, brimming with his signature wit and incomparable sensibility, is Larry McMurtry’s classic tribute to his home and his people.Before embarking on what would become one of the most prominent writing careers in American literature, spanning decades and indelibly shaping the nation’s perception of the West, Larry McMurtry knew what it meant to come from Texas. Originally published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s homage to the ...

In his groundbreaking #1 bestseller Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman revolutionized how we think about intelligence. Now, he reveals practical methods for using these inner resources to more readily enter an optimal state of high performance and satisfaction while avoiding burnout.There are moments when we achieve peak performance: An athlete plays a perfect game; a business has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. But these moments are often e...

Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts.Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through...

The soulful, hilarious memoir of a chronic people pleaser who surprised everyone in her life by abandoning an unfulfilling career and marriage to join a convent—and learned how much we stand to gain when we fully embrace our authentic selves“A Change of Habit follows the arc of Sister Monica Clare’s career with irreverence and sincerity. . . . Her book [confirms] the warmth—and fragility—of her new community.”—The New York Times

In this history of fishing—not as sport but as sustenance—archaeologist and bestselling author Brian Fagan argues that fishing was an indispensable and often overlooked element in the growth of civilization. It sustainably provided enough food to allow cities, nations, and empires to grow, but it did so with a different emphasis. Where agriculture encouraged stability, fishing demanded movement. It frequently required a search for new and better fishing grounds; its technologies, centered ...

The Lowells of Massachusetts were a remarkable family. They were settlers in the New World in the 1600s, revolutionaries creating a new nation in the 1700s, merchants and manufacturers building prosperity in the 1800s, and scientists and artists flourishing in the 1900s.Though no strangers to controversy, the family boasted some of the most astonishing individuals in America's history: Percival Lowle, the patriarch who planted the roots of the family tree; Reverend John Lowell, the...

This riveting exploration of a nearly lost first-century scripture tells the story of a courageous saint named Thecla and offers us a road map to knowing our worth.“Meggan Watterson writes with a prophet’s vision and a mystic’s heart.”—Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive GlobalA teenage girl named Thecla is sitting at her bedroom window listening to a man share stories nearby. Her mother and fiancé order her to stop. But Thecla, tra...

A masterful, genre-defying narrative of the most ambitious science project ever conceived: NASA’s deep-space mission to Europa—the Jovian moon where might swim the first known alien life in our solar system—powered by a motley team of obsessives and eccentrics.When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: “Is it habitable?” and “How do we get there?” To answer the first, they had to answer the second, and so began a vivacious ...