"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories-our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking-expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist--and named for Nubian pharaoh--Coates...

For more than 40 years, journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world. Yung Chang's This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action--feet on the ground, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, ferreting out the facts and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions. The process of translating raw experience into incisive and passionate dispatches requires the...

Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more...

"To err is human; to forgive divine." But what if the person who hurt you most refuses to apologize or express any regret? That's the question haunting Manhattan journalist Susan Shapiro when her trusted advisor of fifteen years repeatedly lies to her. Stunned by the betrayal, she can barely eat or sleep. She's always seen herself as big-hearted and benevolent, someone who will forgive anyone anything - as long as they're remorseful. Yet the addiction...

"A moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land."-- Provided by publisher. Mead, a New Yorker writer, relocated her family to her birth city, London, in the summer of 2018. She was both fleeing the political situation in America and seeking to expose her son to a wider world. The move raised poignant questions for her: What does...

"Part memoir, part manifesto, [this book] explores what it means to come into your own--on your own terms. By age thirty, Elaine Welteroth had climbed the ranks of media and fashion, shattering ceilings along the way. When she became the youngest and only the second Black editor-in-chief in Condé Nast history, Welteroth helped infuse Teen Vogue with social consciousness, amplifying youth voices on key issues and proving there was more to the selfie...

Like so many young American couples, Chris Ingraham and his wife Briana were having a difficult time making ends meet as they tried to raise their twin boys in the East Coast suburbs. One day, Chris - in his role as a "data guy" reporter at the Washington Post - stumbled on a study that would change his life. It was a ranking of America's 3,000+ counties from ugliest to most scenic. He quickly scrolled to the bottom of the list and gleefully wrote...

"In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. "Ink is a generative fluid," she explains. "If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all." A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Her subjects are wide-ranging, sharply observed, and beautifully...

"In the early twentieth century, headlines declared that "the era of women has dawned." Against this changing historical backdrop, Harriet Quimby's extraordinary life stands out as the embodiment of this tumultuous, exciting era--when flight was measured in minutes, not miles. This untold piece of feminist history unveils Quimby's incredible story: rising from humble beginnings as a dirt-poor farm girl to become a globe-trotting journalist, history-making...

"Emmy Award-winning international journalist Hala Gorani weaves stories from her time as a globe-trotting correspondent and anchor with her own lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants. What is it like to have no clear identity in a world full of labels? How can people find a sense of belonging when they have never felt part of a "tribe?" And how does a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who's never lived in the Middle East honor...