Additional Memoirs Of My Youth

A writer arrives in Bombay on a book-related visit, and finds himself in search of the city he grew up in and barely knows, a city shaken to its core not long ago by the 2008 terrorist strikes-even as he takes for granted his errant local friend, Ramu. A six-foot-tall Kannadiga and one-time junkie who cannot reconcile himself to modern-day adult life, Ramu is an unlikely hero, Bombay incarnate; the writer is his mirrored counterpart in an extraordinary narrative about this city by the sea. Friend of My Youth is at once an unexpected exploration and a concentrated reminiscence woven around a series of visits to a city that was never really home; a commentary on the power of memory and the stubborn interference of childhood with adult life; a paean to the transformative power of friendship by one of our greatest living writers.

Memoir of My Youth in Cuba: A Soldier in the Spanish Army during the Separatist War, 1895-1898 by Josep Conangla is an important addition to the accounts of Spanish and Cuban soldiers who served in Cuba's second War of Independence.

An “entertaining and occasionally even moving” personal recollection by the lawyer, historian, and renowned chronicler of old-money WASP society (The Boston Globe). At the time of his death, Louis Auchincloss—enemy of bores, self-pity, and stale gossip—had just finished taking on a subject he had long avoided: himself. His memoir confirms that, despite the spark of his fiction, Auchincloss himself was the most entertaining character he ever created. No traitor to his class, but occasionally its critic, Auchincloss returns to his insular society, which he maintains was less interesting than its members admitted—and unfurls his life with dignity, summoning family (particularly his father, who suffered from depression and forgave him for hating sports) and intimates. Brooke Astor and her circle are here, along with glimpses of Jacqueline Onassis. Most memorable, though, is Auchincloss’s way with those outside the salon: the cranky maid; the maiden aunt, perpetually out of place; the less-than-well-born boy who threw himself from a window over a woman and a man. Above all, here is what it was like to be Auchincloss, an American master, a New York Times–bestselling novelist, and a rare, generous, lively spirit to the end. “[Auchincloss] concentrates on bringing back to life—literary alchemy, after all—the people who loved him: his mother, father, aunts, uncles, school friends and colleagues. He understands how lucky he was to have them, and ‘A Voice From Old New York’ is his thank-you note.” —The New York Times

The "utterly compelling, uncommonly beautiful" collection of personal essays (Newsweek) that established Jo Ann Beard as one of the leading writers of her generation. Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that remain when the boys of her youth -- and then men who replace them -- are gone. This widely praised collection of autobiographical essays summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death. The Boys of My Youth heralded the arrival of an immensely gifted and influential writer and its essays remain surprising, original, and affecting today. "A luminous, funny, heartbreaking book of essays about life and its defining moments." --Harper's Bazaar