Becoming: The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller by Michelle Obama

$30.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Now in paperback featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A, the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United StatesThe No. 1 BestsellerBritis h Book Awards, Non-Fiction Book of the YearThe Sunday Times, Memoir of the YearBooks of the Year- The Times, Observer, Guardian, Evenings StandardIn her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms.Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same. ...Show more

Conversations with RBG - Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law by Jeffrey Rosen

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

The audiobook version includes recorded conversations between the two from the 1990s to the present, delivering a compelling informal profile. As a permanent record of Ginsburg's voice and fighting spirit, it's an inspiring listen. -- Paste This program includes recorded conversations between Jeffrey Ro sen and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.   In this audiobook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers an intimate look at her life and career, through an extraordinary series of conversations with the head of the National Constitution Center.   Conversations with RBG is a remarkable and unique audiobook, an informal portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on a series of her conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era. Rosen, a veteran legal journalist, scholar, and president of the National Constitution Center, shares with us the justice's observations on a variety of topics, and her intellect, compassion, sense of humor, and humanity shine through. The affection they have for each other as friends is apparent in their banter and in their shared love for the Constitution and for opera.   With Justice Ginsburg's approval, Rosen has collected her wisdom from their many conversations in which she discusses the future of the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade, her favorite dissents, the cases she would most like to see overruled, the #MeToo movement, how to be a good listener, how to lead a productive and compassionate life. These frank exchanges illuminate the steely determination, self-mastery, and wit that have inspired women and men of all ages to embrace the "Notorious RBG."   Whatever the topic, Justice Ginsburg always has something interesting--and often surprising--to say. And while few of us will ever have the opportunity to chat with her face-to-face, Jeffrey Rosen brings us by her side as never before. Conversations with RBG is a deeply felt portrait of an American hero. ...Show more

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

$25.00 NZD

Category: Music Biography/Memoir

'Magical' GUARDIAN'A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith's signature poetic flair' VOGUE'Extraordinary ... A tense, teasing mix of reality and dream' Sunday Times'A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith's third memoir' BBC'Her willingness to look closely at life's closing chapters makes for a magical book' WASHINGTON POSTFollowing a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, “Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey.” For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world.Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. ...Show more

Yearbook by Seth Rogen

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

A collection of funny personal essays from one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express and one of the producers of The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, and The Boys. (All of these words have been added to help this book show up in people's searches using the wonders of algorithmic technology. Thanks for bearing with us!) Hi! I'm Seth! I was asked to describe my book, Yearbook, for the inside flap (which is a gross phrase) and for websites and shit like that, so... here it goes!!! Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy "book" way of saying "the first one.") I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day. I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don't enjoy it, I'm sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I'll do my best to make it up to you.   ...Show more

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris

$26.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

A New York Times bestseller   From Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders and Joe Biden's pick for his 2020 running mate, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and acro ss the life of our country   Senator Kamala Harris's commitment to speaking truth is informed by her upbringing. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents--an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India--met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California as a whole. Known for bringing a voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for California's working families. Her hallmarks were applying a holistic, data-driven approach to many of California's thorniest issues, always eschewing stale "tough on crime" rhetoric as presenting a series of false choices. Neither "tough" nor "soft" but smart on crime became her mantra. Being smart means learning the truths that can make us better as a community, and supporting those truths with all our might. That has been the pole star that guided Harris to a transformational career as the top law enforcement official in California, and it is guiding her now as a transformational United States Senator, grappling with an array of complex issues that affect her state, our country, and the world, from health care and the new economy to immigration, national security, the opioid crisis, and accelerating inequality.   By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in THE TRUTHS WE HOLD a master class in problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come. ...Show more

In the Dream House - A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado

$25.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties   In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.   And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.   Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be. ...Show more

The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

'The Hungover Games deftly explores expectations of modern womanhood through a beautiful, wild, painfully honest, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking story. Full of adventure and awe, Sophie Heawood has written a soulful, truthful homage to a life lived with appetite, intensity and wonder.' Dolly Alde rton I had no idea how to commit to another human being. I could barely commit to reading a magazine, and I wrote for magazines for a living. My specialist subject was celebrities, and my own relationships made their marriages look eternal. I'd never paid a household bill that didn't mention bailiffs, and my idea of exercise was to go and stand outside a famous person's house and stare until I'd convinced myself that I lived in it. But my life in LA was happy; free of care and consequence. That was, until I came down to earth - with a bump. So this is the story of how I staggered from partying in Hollywood to bringing up a baby in Piss Alley, Dalston; how I never did find a copy of What To Expect When You Weren't Even Fucking Expecting To Be Expecting, and why paternity testing is not a good topic for a first-date conversation. People always said I'd find love where I least expected it. I always said they were idiots. **AN EVENING STANDARD AND COSMOPOLITAN BEST BOOK OF 2020** **AN OBSERVER NON-FICTION BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2020** ...Show more

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain with Laurie Woolever

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from the hidden pockets of his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to Tanzania's utter beauty and the stunning desert solitude of Oman's Empty Quarter - a nd many places beyond. In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places - in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid, World Travel provides essential context that will help readers further appreciate the reasons why Bourdain found a place enchanting and memorable. Supplementing Bourdain's words are a handful of essays by friends, colleagues, and family that tell even deeper stories about a place, including sardonic accounts of traveling with Bourdain by his brother, Chris; a guide to Chicago's best cheap eats by legendary music producer Steve Albini, and more. Additionally, each chapter includes sly, witty illustrations by cartoonist Tony Millionaire. For veteran travelers, armchair enthusiasts, and those in between, World Travel offers a chance to experience the world like Anthony Bourdain.   ...Show more

The Louder I Will Sing by Lee Lawrence

$28.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Shortlisted for the Costa Prize 2020 'This is the story of arguably one of the most important, yet least known, events in modern British history. Lee's journey and fight for justice are both inspiring and enraging' AKALA What would you do if the people you trusted to uphold the law committed a crime a gainst you? Who would you turn to? And how long would you fight them for? On 28th September 1985, Lee Lawrence's mother Cherry Groce was wrongly shot by police during a raid on her Brixton home. The bullet shattered her spine and she never walked again. In the chaos that followed, 11-year-old Lee watched in horror as the News falsely pronounced his mother dead. In Brixton, already a powder keg because of the deep racism that the community was experiencing, it was the spark needed to trigger two days of rioting that saw buildings brought down by petrol bombs, cars torched and shops looted. But for Lee, it was a spark that lit a flame that would burn for the next 30 years as he fought to get the police to recognise their wrongdoing. His life had changed forever: he was now his mother's carer, he had seen first-hand the prejudice that existed in his country, and he was at the mercy of a society that was working against him. And yet that flame - for justice, for peace, for change - kept him going. The Louder I Will Sing is a powerful, compelling and uplifting memoir about growing up in modern Britain as a young Black man. It's a story both of people and politics, of the underlying racism beneath many of our most important institutions, but also the positive power that hope, faith and love can bring in response. ...Show more

Ladies in Waiting by Anne Somerset

$28.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

'Provides a wealth of juicy anecdotal material about five centuries of court life' New York Times 'Naughty Knickers version of our island story' Daily Mail --------------------------------------------- Ladies in Waiting chronicles the lives of famous and infamous ladies who served royalty, casting a f resh, intimate angle on four hundred years of monarchy. For centuries, the most beautiful, able and aristocratic women in England competed for positions at court. Some who came to serve were remarkable for their learning and exemplary virtue, but others were notable for promiscuity and lack of scruple, drawn to court by a lust for money and power. Several ladies-in-waiting became royal mistresses, showing few qualms about betraying the queen consorts they ostensibly served. If bedding the King was not an option open to all, many ladies came to court in hope of finding husbands, only to succumb to constant assaults on their virtue or to find themselves denied permission by their sovereign to marry. Drawing on an enormous variety of sources, Anne Somerset provides an illuminating guide to the character, profligate or pious, of each court. Contained within the stories of the individual women is a consistently entertaining commentary on the manners, morals and shifting mentality of the royal, the rich, and the prominent throughout the centuries, resulting in social history at its most enjoyable and vibrant. ...Show more

The Mirror Steamed Over by Anthony Byrt

$20.00 NZD

$45.00 (55% off)

Category: NZ Biographies

In the early sixties at the Royal College of Art in London, three extraordinary personalities collided to reshape contemporary art and literature. Barrie Bates (who would become Billy Apple in November 1962) was an ambitious young graphic designer from New Zealand, who transformed himself into one of po p art's pioneers. At the same time, his friend and fellow student David Hockney - young, Northern and openly gay - was making his own waves in the London art world. Bates and Hockney travelled together, bleached their hair together, and, despite being two of London's rising art stars, almost failed art school together. And in the middle of it all was the secretary of the Royal College's Painting School - an aspiring young novelist called Ann Quin. Quin ghost-wrote her lover Bates's dissertation and collaborated with him on a manifesto, all the while writing Berg: the experimental novel that would establish her as one of the British literary scene's most exciting new voices. Taking us back to London's art scene in the late fifties and early sixties, award-winning writer Anthony Byrt illuminates a key moment in cultural history and tackles big questions: Where did Pop and conceptual art come from? How did these three remarkable young outsiders change British culture? And what was the relationship between revolutions in personal and sexual identities and these major shifts in contemporary art? From the Royal College to Coney Island and Madison Avenue, encountering R. D. Laing and Norman Mailer, Shirley Clarke and Larry Rivers, The Mirror Steamed Over is a remarkable journey through a pivotal moment in contemporary culture. ...Show more

JFK Volume One 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography & Memoir

'A powerful, provocative, and above all compelling book' Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author of The Soul of America The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth p resident. By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston's wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in modern history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person. Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Harvard professor Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade combing through material unseen or unused by previous biographers, searching for and piecing together the 'real' John F. Kennedy. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that for the first time properly contextualizes Kennedy's role in the international events of the twentieth century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK's life-from birth through his decision to run for president-to reveal his early relationships, his formative and heroic experiences during World War II, his ideas, his bestselling writings, his political aspirations, and the role of his father, wartime ambassador to Britain. In examining these pre-White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we've previously known. In chronicling Kennedy's extraordinary life and times, with authority and novelistic sensibility, putting the reader in every room where it happened, this landmark work offers the clearest portrait we have of a remarkable figure who still inspires individuals around the world. 'A brisk, authoritative, and candid biography, and a wonderfully compelling history of America's heady and troubled mid-century rise' Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States '[Fredrik Logevall] makes JFK as alive and compelling as if you were reading about him for the first time' George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America 'In his utterly absorbing JFK, Fred Logevall reconstructs not only a great man, but also his entire age' Brendan Simms, author of Hitler: A Global Biography ...Show more