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Marcia Calhoun Forecki has written an engrossing, personal account of her life with Charlie, an adorable, active, deaf seven-year-old. Speak to Me! is the story of an ordinary hearing person confronted with an overwhelming reality—the fact that her son is deaf. Forecki’s struggle as a single parent to care for her child, to find the “right” schools, and to establish communication with her son will strike a familiar chord in all hearing parents of deaf children. All readers, parents or not, will be touched by the mixture of pathos and humor in this well-written account.

A road trip through Steinbeck’s America—revisited, reimagined, and reinterpreted.

Steinbeck’s Uneasy America is the first collection of critical scholarship devoted to Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck’s best-selling, late-career travel memoir. In 1960, Steinbeck was a renowned man of American letters. Many considered him America’s troubadour of ordinary people, the conscience of the country. But weakened by two small strokes and anxious that he had lost touch with America, he embarked on a cross-country road trip accompanied by his wife’s standard poodle, Charley. Two years later, he published Travels with Charley to popular acclaim and robust sales.

Throughout this narrative, Steinbeck insists that all of our perceptions are “warped” by personality, history, and society. And while this hybrid and experimental book has long been accepted as an accurate account of his journey, journalists and scholars agree that the narrative is part factual, part fiction—America as seen through Steinbeck’s particular “warp.” The work is long overdue for scholarly assessment.

Steinbeck’s Uneasy America explores three main topics. Part 1 explores genre and form to consider the degree to which the work is fiction or nonfiction. Part 2 assesses Steinbeck’s increasingly bleak assessment of America—almost a jeremiad that warns citizens of ecological excess and political apathy. Part 3 focuses on Travels with Charley as a road text, travel adventure, and literary influence.

This volume’s authors offer rich scholarly insights and a wealth of stories, facts, and anecdotes about Steinbeck and the adventures and misadventures he and Charley met on the road. Lively and groundbreaking, the collection both enlightens and enlivens discussions of Steinbeck and of the twentieth-century American book world.
 

You probably knew Molly Ivins as an unabashed civil libertarian who used her rapier wit and good ole Texas horse sense to excoriate political figures she deemed unworthy of our trust and respect. But did you also know that Molly was one helluva cook? And we're not just talking chili and chicken-fried steak, either. Molly Ivins honed her culinary skills on visits to France—often returning with perfected techniques for saumon en papillote or delectable clafouti aux cerises. Friends who had the privilege of sharing Molly's table got not only a heaping helping of her insights into the political shenanigans of the day, but also a mouth-watering meal, prepared from scratch with the finest ingredients and assembled with the same meticulous attention to detail that Molly devoted to skewering a political recalcitrant.

In Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins, her longtime friend, fellow reporter, and frequent sous-chef Ellen Sweets takes us into the kitchen with Molly and introduces us to the private woman behind the public figure. She serves up her own and others' favorite stories about Ivins as she recalls the fabulous meals they shared, complete with recipes for thirty-five of Molly's signature dishes. These stories reveal a woman who was even more fascinating and complex than the "professional Texan" she enjoyed playing in public. Friends who ate with Molly knew a cultured woman who was a fluent French speaker, voracious reader, rugged outdoors aficionado, music lover, loyal and loving friend, and surrogate mom to many of her friends' children, as well as to her super-spoiled poodle. They also came to revere the courageous woman who refused to let cancer stop her from doing what she wanted, when she wanted. This is the Molly you'll be delighted to meet in Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins.

A nonfiction work examining a confluence of bodily and worldwide transition

Stream is an exploration of the large- and small-scale changes taking place in a single body and on our planet as a whole. Using a stream as a biological, technological, and psychological metaphor, Angus layers lyric essay, journal entries, and the detritus of a life spent writing about the climate within and without to consider how we remain fluid in a time of constant change. Each section of Stream flows into the next, weaving through thaws, floods, cataracts, and eddies while asking how a melting of rigid categories, from seasons to gender, might help us approach a changing world anew. From winery workers dying in the fields to endangered desert tortoises unable to outrun the flames, Stream is an outpouring of climatological grief toward those who perpetuate inaction, an elegy for those we’ve lost to the heat, and a tribute to the tributaries that help us see the world from other perspectives.

A memoir of lessons learned from an Ojibwe grandmother during the time of Relocation
 

Why, her mother asked, did Janis keep running away from kindergarten? She wanted to go home. But not to the house they had just moved to in Duluth, with its gravel yard and traffic noise. She was a country girl, and home was the log cabin among the wildflowers on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Bena, Minnesota. Knowing they were now going to stay in the city, Janis’s parents offered her a compromise: during the summer, Janis could leave the bustle of Duluth and live with her grandmother on the Fond du Lac Reservation, listening to stories, learning Ojibwe, and finding her place in the world. In Sugar Bush Babies, Janis A. Fairbanks returns to that time of Relocation, dislocation, and discovery, taking us home with her through stories of childhood and lessons learned at her grandmother’s knee, enveloped in love and tradition.

Through the eyes of a child and the teachings of an elder, Fairbanks revisits her life during Indian Relocation from reservations to urban areas, from Ojibwe villages to white communities whose ideas about Indians came from Hollywood Westerns. Recalling her early childhood at Leech Lake, her school days in Duluth, and her summers in Fond du Lac, Janis brings the gifts of living history full circle, continuing the traditions of carrying family lore, women’s wisdom, and Indigenous culture from generation to generation.

There are tales told at nighttime or during thunderstorms; lessons in Native medicine; stories of Grandma’s recollections of boarding school, Daddy’s days as a lumberjack, and Mother’s special powers; memories of wash days and dancing, of powwows and Girl Scout camp, of snaring rabbits, selling lilacs, and attending the circus. A lyrical memoir, Sugar Bush Babies conveys the eloquence of women speaking and sharing through generations and the lasting power of tradition.

Weaving together a personal narrative and a sociological perspective, Surviving Alex movingly describes how even children from “good families” fall prey to addiction, and recounts the hellish toll it takes on families. Drawing from interviews with Alex’s friends, family members, therapists, teachers, and police officers—as well as files from his stays in hospitals, rehab facilities, and jails—Roos paints a compelling portrait of a young man whose life veered between happiness, anxiety, success, and despair. And as she explores how a punitive system failed her son, she calls for a community of action that would improve care for substance users and reduce addiction, realigning public health policy to address the overdose crisis.

A memoir of discovery, loss, and wonder that shows us how to slow down 

When psychologist and author Susan Baur first slipped into a Cape Cod pond with a snorkel, she wasn’t looking for transformation, just a swim. But beneath the surface, she discovered something extraordinary: minnows hiding among water lilies; fresh-water jellies like jewels and—most striking of all—painted, musk, and snapping turtles. Whether the turtles were buried in mud, teetering on a submerged branch, or drifting like ancient astronauts, they pulled her into a mysterious happiness she could not explain. 

Learning to move slowly enough to see them became both her new discipline and her greatest joy. Each dive required patience, curiosity, and humility, and she learned to read the water, follow a subtle shadow, and anticipate the turtles’ rhythms without disturbing their world. As she mastered the art of swimming with turtles, Baur also fell in love with an older man whose companionship deepened her connection to the natural world. When he passed away, grief drove her deeper into the water. There, among the turtles, she found solace and purpose: a reason to keep diving, looking, and learning. 

Over nearly two decades, Baur became a self-taught naturalist, children’s author (of The Turtle Sisters series), and unlikely environmental advocate, founding Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage to protect the ponds she had grown to love. With humor, heart, and vivid observation, Baur shows that wonder isn’t reserved for the young or the lucky—it waits beneath the surface for anyone willing to slow down, look closely, and stay a while.

A memoir of discovery, loss, and wonder that shows us how to slow down 

When psychologist and author Susan Baur first slipped into a Cape Cod pond with a snorkel, she wasn’t looking for transformation, just a swim. But beneath the surface, she discovered something extraordinary: minnows hiding among water lilies; fresh-water jellies like jewels and—most striking of all—painted, musk, and snapping turtles. Whether the turtles were buried in mud, teetering on a submerged branch, or drifting like ancient astronauts, they pulled her into a mysterious happiness she could not explain. 

Learning to move slowly enough to see them became both her new discipline and her greatest joy. Each dive required patience, curiosity, and humility, and she learned to read the water, follow a subtle shadow, and anticipate the turtles’ rhythms without disturbing their world. As she mastered the art of swimming with turtles, Baur also fell in love with an older man whose companionship deepened her connection to the natural world. When he passed away, grief drove her deeper into the water. There, among the turtles, she found solace and purpose: a reason to keep diving, looking, and learning. 

Over nearly two decades, Baur became a self-taught naturalist, children’s author (of The Turtle Sisters series), and unlikely environmental advocate, founding Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage to protect the ponds she had grown to love. With humor, heart, and vivid observation, Baur shows that wonder isn’t reserved for the young or the lucky—it waits beneath the surface for anyone willing to slow down, look closely, and stay a while.