Southern Memoirs

For a woman traveling without her husband in the late nineteenth century, there was only one reason to take the train all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one sure to garner disapproval from fellow passengers. On the American frontier, the new state offered a tempting freedom often difficult to obtain elsewhere: divorce. In The Divorce Colony, writer and historian April White unveils the incredible social, political, and personal dramas that unfolded in Sioux Falls and reverberated around the country through the stories of four very different women.

He has been called the greatest surgeon of the 20th century. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey rose from humble beginnings in a backwater Louisiana town to dominate the landscape of modern medicine. His contributions to our understanding and treatment of cardiovascular disease, in particular, were innumerable and epoch-making. DeBakey led a life of high drama, from the streets of Jazz Age New Orleans and the operating theaters of pre-war Europe, to the battlefields of World War II and the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

Nearly two centuries before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their epic trek to the Pacific coast, a group of three Spanish noblemen and an African survived shipwreck, famine, Indian attack, and disease to make the first crossing of North America in recorded history. Drawing on contemporary accounts and long-lost records, Robert Goodwin tells the amazing story of their odyssey through the American South.

A white Afrikaner, Zelda la Grange grew up in segregated South Africa, supporting the regime and the rules of apartheid. Her conservative family referred to the imprisoned Nelson Mandela as "a terrorist". Yet just a few years after his release and the end of apartheid, she would be traveling the world by Mr. Mandela’s side, having grown to respect and cherish the man she would come to call "Khulu", or "Grandfather".

Mab Segrest explores her singular experience as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent Far Right movement in North Carolina in this best-selling political memoir.

THE CARTAYA CAPER is a story whose plot is woven from the fabric of real life experience on the Costa de la Luz. Despite living in a pleasant seaside village close to the Portuguese border, Nick Mellors is bored of his life as an itinerant teacher. His Welsh friend Meuric is tired of his office job, while his young Spanish pal Juanjo is sick of working for peanuts at a posh hotel. When the three men sit down to devise a money-making scheme to get them out of their collective rut, some rather dodgy options are discussed. After choosing one and planning their first project, their lives will ...

Sophie Crockett spent most of her childhood suffering from crippling anxiety. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, she became a virtual prisoner in her own home, afraid to venture outside. After battling with depression, eating disorders and self-harm, Sophie had the courage to re-enter society in her late teens.

Few athletes hold a record comparable to that of Oscar Chalupsky. He made history at the age of fifteen as the first person to win both the Junior and Senior Ironman titles on the same day at the South African National Lifesaving Championships, he was the country’s spokesman at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and he is a multiple-times global surfski champion. No Retreat, No Surrender is an uplifting account of grit, perseverance, talent and attitude, vividly capturing the determined mindset of an inspirational sporting legend.

This is a brilliant dual biography charting British Robert Scott's and Norwegian Roald Amundsen's race to the South Pole during 1911-12. Huntuford's is the accepted, definitive account of the race and a reassessment of the two men. Thoroughly researched, revealing the adventures and misfortunes that befell them both, he describes the driving ambitions of the era, and the complex, often deeply flawed individuals who were charged with carrying them out.

The first Black man to become sheriff of a major city in the Deep South after Reconstruction, STRIVING FOR JUSTICE is the story of how a poor Black boy grew up in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, survived a violent racist attack by the Ku Klux Klan, and advanced through a blatantly prejudiced police force in the 1960s to become a national leader of police reform in America, who, as President Clinton recognized, broke down barriers, and whose innovative policing reforms created greater respect between citizens and police, lower crime, and safer neighborhoods.

First published in 1988, the award-winning Trash showcases Allison at her most fearlessly honest and startlingly vivid. The limitless scope of human emotion and experience are depicted in stories that give aching and eloquent voice to the terrible wounds we inflict on those closest to us. These are tales of loss and redemption; of shame and forgiveness; of love and abuse; and the healing power of storytelling.

Humorous essays on life in the south. A Southern woman's take on daily life.

In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads and legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. Highways and Heartaches takes listeners on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled.

In Tallulah, first published in 1952 and a New York Times bestseller for twenty-six weeks, Bankhead's literary voice is as lively and forthright as her public persona. She details her childhood and adolescence, discusses her dedication to the theater, and presents amusing anecdotes about her life in Hollywood, New York, and London. Along with a searing defense of her lifestyle and rambunctious habits, she provides a fiercely opinionated, wildly funny account of American stage at a time when the movies were beginning to cast theater into eclipse.

An epic road trip romance through the Atacama Desert and beyond. When a hot Argentinian asks if you would like to ride with him through the Atacama Desert, there is only one answer. ¿Por qué no? Why not? Flaca, an independent solo traveller, meets the handsome, charismatic Motoman in a remote village in the Chilean Andes. After a few days, they decide to continue their trip north together on the Motoman’s shiny black, powerful motorbike. Los compadres de la ruta soon become more than travel buddies as their story unfolds and extends against grand, impressive landscapes of South America....

Che Guevara was a threat to American foreign policy - and when he turned his attention to Bolivia in 1967, the Pentagon made a decision: Che had to be eliminated. Hunting Che follows the exploits of Major Ralph "Pappy" Shelton, Felix Rodriguez, and Gary Prado - the Bolivian Ranger commander who ultimately captured him. With the White House and the Pentagon secretly monitoring every move, Shelton and his team changed history.

Is it ever too late to overcome the adversities of our past? Set in the South during the 60s and 70s, The Art of Straightening Nails follows Robert Rhodes as he reminisces about his life. His childhood had not been a pleasant, innocent experience. Aside from the poverty and the endless disappointment his family endured, the boy had also known personal challenges of neglect and abuse. As an adult, Robert continues to be fettered by his past. Even a religious conversion doesn't resolve his struggles. After realizing the source of his lifelong pain, he confronts his past in a dramatic climax ...

No part of America scars its children as does the south. In this incandescent memoir, Robert Coram tells how a rough-edged boy escaped from a nowhere little town in rural southwest Georgia and became an accomplished writer. With a flawless ear and an unblinking eye, Coram escorts us across a unique landscape, capturing the nuances of life in a small southern town during the 1950s, not by writing of the romantic south, but rather of a south that can be narrow and harsh and brutal.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping”—Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable”—Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

In this book, former South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) forensic photographer Lt. Rita Y. Shuler recounts twenty-eight days of terror and shocking developments in one of the most notorious double murders and manhunts in South Carolina history. Shuler shares her own personal interactions with some of the key players in this famous manhunt and investigation. Also included are Bell's chilling calls from area phone booths to the Smith family, along with his disconcerting interviews and bizarre actions in the courtroom.