My mother knew I was abused as a child. She had read letters sent from my abuser to me...But she never spoke to me about them, or what they described. And she never intervened to stop the abuse...Now she is dying and the past is rising to the surface like a bruise. When Gemma Carey was twelve years old, a man twice her age would sneak into her bedroom on a weekly basis and sexually assault her. When Gemma was seventeen, she took the perpetrator to court without anyone else knowing and had him placed on the child sex offenders register. When she was thirty-three, her mother died of cancer. For twenty years, her mother had known about this man. But why had she not acted to protect her daughter? Could the genesis of this betrayal be found in her own family history? No Matter Our Wreckage is the story of past and present colliding. It seeks to capture the complexity of forces which lead to abuse; to understand the intertwined narratives of mothers and daughters and how trauma becomes encoded in our DNA through generations. It explores grooming and the intricacies of consent, and how as a society we have not yet figured out how to deal with these types of crimes or the people who commit them. No Matter Our Wreckage is a powerful, poetic and unflinching memoir about what it means not to matter, and how an extraordinary woman refused to listen to the stories she was being told about herself - by her history, by her abuser, by her mother, by society. It is only by speaking out that Gemma Carey learns she can break free from her past and reclaim her life, her self and her future. 'No Matter Our Wreckage is a brutal reminder of our responsibility to notice and protect those we love. A devastating and clear-eyed memoir with a poet's voice. Gemma Carey will boil your blood and break your heart.' - Anna Spargo-Ryan, author of The Gulf

Top selling poet Sarah Kay releases her debut collection of work from the first decade of her career. Following the success of her breakout poem, "B," No Matter the Wreckage presents readers with new and beloved work that showcases Kay's skill for celebrating family, love, travel, history, and unlikely love affairs between inanimate objects ("Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire"). Both fresh and wise, Kay's poetry allows readers to join in on her journey of discovering herself and the world around her. - 2011 TED speaker (recording has been viewed 3 million times online) - First book, "B" was ranked #1 Bestselling Poetry Book on Amazon - Featured on HBO, American Public Radio, Huffington Post, CNN.com, etc. - Founder and Co-Director of Project VOICE

When Gemma Carey was twelve years old, a man twice her age would sneak into her bedroom on a weekly basis and sexually assault her. When Gemma was seventeen, she took the perpetrator to court without anyone else knowing and had him placed on the child sex offenders register. When she was thirty-three, her mother died of cancer. For twenty years, her mother had known about this man. But why had she not acted to protect her daughter? Could the genesis of this betrayal be found in her own family history? No Matter Our Wreckage is the story of past and present colliding. It seeks to capture the complexity of forces which lead to abuse; to understand the intertwined narratives of mothers and daughters and how trauma becomes encoded in our DNA through generations. It explores grooming and the intricacies of consent, and how as a society we have not yet figured out how to deal with these types of crimes or the people who commit them. No Matter Our Wreckage is a powerful, poetic and unflinching memoir about what it means not to matter, and how an extraordinary woman refused to listen to the stories she was being told about herself - by her history, by her abuser, by her mother, by society. It is only by speaking out that Gemma Carey learns she can break free from her past and reclaim her life, her self and her future.

"Magnificent." —People Magazine The instant New York Times bestseller: Laugh-out-loud, deeply insightful, and emotion-filled essays from multitalented actress, comedian, podcaster, and writer Casey Wilson. Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn’t afraid to share. In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human nature. Whether she’s extolling the virtues of eating in bed, processing the humiliation over her father’s late in life perm, mourning her mother's passing, or revealing her patented method for keeping the mystery alive in a marriage, Casey is witty, candid, and full of poignant and funny surprises. Humorous dives into her obsessions and areas of personal expertise—self-help, nice guys, cool girls (not her) and how to receive visitors in the bath—are matched by touching meditations on female friendship, anger, grief, motherhood, and identity. Reading The Wreckage of My Presence is like spending time with a close friend—a deeply passionate, full-tilt, joyous, excessive, compulsive, shameless, hungry-for-it-all, loyal, cheerleading friend. A friend who is ready for any big feelings that come her way—and isn’t afraid to embrace them.

This is not your mother’s memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch, a lifelong swimmer and Olympic hopeful escapes her raging father and alcoholic and suicidal mother when she accepts a swimming scholarship which drug and alcohol addiction eventually cause her to lose. What follows is promiscuous sex with both men and women, some of them famous, and some of it S&M, and Lidia discovers the power of her sexuality to help her forget her pain. The forgetting doesn’t last, though, and it is her hard-earned career as a writer and a teacher, and the love of her husband and son, that ultimately create the life she needs to survive.

From longtime New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comes a wrenching portrayal of ordinary Americans struggling for survival in a nation that has lost its way In his eighteen years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way. Herbert’s combination of heartrending reporting and keen political analysis is the purest expression since the Occupy movement of the plight of the 99 percent. The individuals and families who are paying the price of America’s bad choices in recent decades form the book’s emotional center: an exhausted high school student in Brooklyn who works the overnight shift in a factory at minimum wage to help pay her family’s rent; a twenty-four-year-old soldier from Peachtree City, Georgia, who loses both legs in a misguided, mismanaged, seemingly endless war; a young woman, only recently engaged, who suffers devastating injuries in a tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis; and a group of parents in Pittsburgh who courageously fight back against the politicians who decimated funding for their children’s schools. Herbert reminds us of a time in America when unemployment was low, wages and profits were high, and the nation’s wealth, by current standards, was distributed much more equitably. Today, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has widened dramatically, the nation’s physical plant is crumbling, and the inability to find decent work is a plague on a generation. Herbert traces where we went wrong and spotlights the drastic and dangerous shift of political power from ordinary Americans to the corporate and financial elite. Hope for America, he argues, lies in a concerted push to redress that political imbalance. Searing and unforgettable, Losing Our Way ultimately inspires with its faith in ordinary citizens to take back their true political power and reclaim the American dream.

My past taught me to play it safe. To stay far away from handsome men who promised it all. My life was good without them. Stable, secure, predictable. But one kiss showed me that I’d been playing it safe for far too long. One night and all I wanted was more of his wildfire. One challenge and my carefully constructed walls tumbled down. Amidst the rubble, I realized there was more to this man than I ever dreamed. When everything fell apart, he showed me what it meant to stay. How to truly live. But some demons don’t stay buried. The past can come knocking when you least expect. And the life he’s showing me might be shorter than either of us expected…

Carla Moore hit a roadblock in life. She wasn't heading where she always dreamed of going and it wasn't until she hit an actual roadblock - a concrete median while cruising at 55 mph, to be exact - is when she realized each passing day was never coming back. If she wanted to live the life she imagined, she needed to make some changes. And so she did. Going from 300 pounds to triathlete, and armed with her small-town roots from Centerville, TN, Carla launched the next phase of her HBO career in New York City, where she continued to grow into the vision she longed to fulfill. Now Carla wants to share with you the rewarding life she is leading and how she achieved it, so you can do the same in your life and career. When you finish this book you will: See that "crash moments" are transformational moments in disguise Have tools to get you through the wreckage and back on your feet quickly Realize it takes a personal transformation to drive a leadership transformation Walking in your dreams is an amazing feeling, and I want everyone to experience it. If you feel like you've stalled out on your way to your dream life, then Crash! is the spark for your jumpstart!

I Still Believe is a story that spans decades of multiple Grammy winner and Christian music icon Russ Taff's life, told from the first-hand perspective of Russ and his wife, Tori. You’ve seen the movie; now get the complete, unflinchingly honest details of the journey from childhood abuse to massive success with music, from the searing pain of addiction to his hard-won recovery. Russ opens up in-depth for the first time about the shame and trauma that irrefutably impacted his faith, his family, and his career. But woven throughout I Still Believe is a miraculous testament to the power of love—from God, family, and friends, but especially from Tori, who was fierce in her love for her best friend who was slowly disappearing before her eyes. But this relentless love and a lot of hard work helped Russ move out of hiding and into the light of recovery and acceptance. Above all, this is a story about hope. Hope for anyone who feels they have been hurt too badly, fallen too far, or caused too much damage along the way. This memoir stands as a testament that in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, there is always reason to keep believing. Russ and Tori’s beautifully broken story will encourage any reader that there is no need to be defined or held back by the trauma of the past; instead, life can be rooted in and restored through faith, recovery, love, and the promise that God will never let you go.

Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.