Pedro Gomez of ESPN was a beloved figure in baseball. His death from sudden cardiac arrest on Feb. 7, 2021, unleashed an outpouring of heartfelt tributes. He was 58, both a hard-nosed reporter and a smiling ambassador of the sport. These 62 personal essays soar beyond sports to delve into life lessons.Pedro, a proud Cuban American, was known for his dramatic reporting from Havana. Fully and fluidly bilingual, he did as much as anyone to bridge the wide gap that had...

Melvin Bob Fred and MeBy Robert Gabriel RothbauerRobert has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)-once known as Multiple Personality Disorder. For him, DID isn't a weakness; it's a superpower that helped him survive a traumatic childhood and navigate life in residential treatment centers and a famous sanitarium before stepping into the real world.This powerful memoir takes readers inside the mind of a person...

The nightmare called Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The sheer scale of the destruction, coupled with a widely criticized government response, created a humanitarian crisis and led to a massive, long-term displacement of residents, forever altering the region’s demographic and cultural landscape.Author/Narrator Melvin Cohea was one of those residents, but not a passive victim. After two and a half days atop his roof, he was blessed with the arr...