Includes material on Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the "October Surprise" controversy, and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Your Turn to Speak! gathers classical lovers into a room and encourages them to speak one by one. Zeus, Hera, Patroclus, Achilles, Aphrodite and Medea take to the stage and forge their dramatic monologues, while Sappho broods and whispers fragmented asides from the front row of the stalls. Together, they dissect the DNA of the love poem, in all its tragedy and comedy. Ultimately, we readers may begin to hear our own voices speak through the actors. Their masks reveal themselves as mirrors. “With this brilliantly disquieting book, the stage is set for a writing spectacle so subversive and outré that every word uttered threatens / promises to bring down the house! Your Turn to Speak! by Lady Red Ego arrives right on cue “at great personal cost, to deliver this message” and in so doing thrillingly dismantles and disarms patriarchal violences as they echo around the theatron of poetry from Ancient Greece to now. I don’t know of anyone writing poetry as daringly gladiatorial and discombobulating as this. Listen up.” —Colin Herd “This playful collection contains a symphony of voices, and all have different stories to tell. Lady Red Ego daringly extends poetic form by giving her work the appearance of a play and filling it with wit. Given how exciting it is to read on the page, I’d love to see it on stage!” —Xie Jinhao

An inspiring, timely, and conversation-starting memoir from the barrier-breaking and Emmy Award–winning journalist Ilia Calderón—the first Afro-Latina to anchor a high-profile newscast for a major Hispanic broadcast network in the United States—about following your dreams, overcoming prejudice, and embracing your identity. As a child, Ilia Calderón felt like a typical girl from Colombia. In Chocó, the Afro-Latino province where she grew up, your skin could be any shade and you’d still be considered blood. Race was a non-issue, and Ilia didn’t think much about it—until she left her community to attend high school and college in Medellín. For the first time, she became familiar with horrifying racial slurs thrown at her both inside and outside of the classroom. From that point on, she resolved to become “deaf” to racism, determined to overcome it in every way she could, even when she was told time and time again that prominent castings weren’t “for people like you.” When a twist of fate presented her the opportunity of a lifetime at Telemundo in Miami, she was excited to start a new life, and identity, in the United States, where racial boundaries, she believed, had long since dissolved and equality was the rule. Instead, in her new life as an American, she faced a new type of racial discrimination, as an immigrant women of color speaking to the increasingly marginalized Latinx community in Spanish. Now, Ilia draws back the curtain on the ups and downs of her remarkable life and career. From personal inner struggles to professional issues—such as being directly threatened by a Ku Klux Klan member after an interview—she discusses how she built a new identity in the United States in the midst of racially charged violence and political polarization. Along the way, she’ll show how she’s overcome fear and confronted hate head on, and the inspirational philosophy that has always propelled her forward.

Two sworn enemies start to fall in love through anonymous notes in How to Speak Boy, a fun and charming YA novel from Tiana Smith. Quinn and Grayson have been fierce speech and debate rivals for years. They can't stand one another, either in competition or in real life. But when their AP Government teacher returns their school assignments to the wrong cubbies, they begin exchanging anonymous notes without knowing who the other one is. Despite their differences, the two come together through their letters and find themselves unknowingly falling for the competition. Before the state tournament, the two of them need to figure out what they want out of life, or risk their own future happiness. After all, what’s the point of speech and debate if you can't say what's in your heart?

The former First Lady discusses her life, the Reagan administration, her shaky relationship with her children and key White House personnel, her husband’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, and her bout with cancer. “During our White House years I said almost nothing about how I really felt regarding the controversies that swirled around me. . . . But now those years are over, and it’s my turn to describe what happened. . . .” About Ronald Reagan: “Although Ronnie loves people, he often seems remote, and he doesn’t let anybody get too close. There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.” About being a mother: “What I wanted most in all the world was to be a good wife and mother. As things turned out, I guess I’ve been more successful at the first than at the second.” About her influence: “I make no apologies for telling Ronnie what I thought. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you have no right to express your opinions. For eight years I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn’t give you special access, I don’t know what does.” About astrology: “What it boils down to is that each person has his or her own ways of coping with trauma and grief, with the pain of life, and astrology was one of mine. Don’t criticize me, I wanted to say, until you have stood in my place. This helped me. Nobody was hurt by it—except, possibly, me.” About Don Regan: “His very first day on the job, Don said that he saw himself as the ‘chief operating officer’ of the country. But he was hired to be chief of staff. . . . Although I believed for a long time that Donald Regan was in the wrong job, my ‘power’ in getting him to leave has been greatly exaggerated. Believe me, if I really were the dragon lady that he described in his book, he would have been out the door many months earlier.”

Are you baffled by sewing terminology, different tools and materials, or patterns in general? Well-known apparel designer and sewing expert Christine Haynes answers all your questions in the authoritative guide to over 300 sewing terms. This easy-to-use sewing primer isn't sorted alphabetically but by categories that make sense. How can you tell the difference between a weave and a grain? What's a muslin and why should you use it? Christine's advice covers the "what" and the "why" of everything from buttonhole thread to flat felled seams. The fully illustrated guide explains each term with words and visuals for reader-friendly understanding.

In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers. Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers. Cal reveals that matching your job to a pre-existing passion does not matter. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it. With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love, and will change the way you think about careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.

PLEASE NOTE: Some recent copies of Let Your Life Speak included printing errors. These issues have been corrected, but if you purchased a defective copy between September and December 2019, please send proof of purchase to [email protected] to receive a replacement copy. Dear Friends: I'm sorry that after 20 years of happy traveling, Let Your Life Speak hit a big pothole involving printing errors that resulted in an unreadable book. But I'm very grateful to my publisher for moving quickly to see that people who received a defective copy have a way to receive a good copy without going through the return process. We're all doing everything we can to make things right, and I'm grateful for your patience. Thank you, Parker J. Palmer With wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.

Who is Mary Cheney? In the most eagerly awaited political memoir of the season, Mary Cheney, who served as a top campaign aide to her father, the vice president, presents a behind-the-scenes look at the high-intensity world of presidential politics and talks for the first time about her life, her family, and her role in the campaigns of 2000 and 2004. As a senior adviser to her father, she was in the middle of every major event of the 2000 and 2004 presidential contests -- at the conventions, the debates, and on the trail. Both elections made history -- and so did Mary. And for the first time ever, she writes about what it was like to be at the center of her father's campaigns as his daughter, as a member of the senior staff, and, though she never intended it, as a political target for the other side. Mary, her experiences, and her opinions, have been the subject of intense debate in the media and from activists on both ends of the political spectrum, but she has never spoken publicly about herself, her life, or her political views -- until now. In Now It's My Turn, a frank, funny, and down-to-earth memoir, Mary Cheney describes life inside the bubble of a national campaign. She talks about her close relationship with her parents, how it feels to be pursued by the press, and what it was like when John Edwards and John Kerry made her sexual orientation an issue in live debates televised to millions of Americans. As she describes it, life inside a presidential campaign can be uplifting, frustrating, and heartbreaking, but no matter what else it may be, it's always entertaining.