"Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents--her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father--and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child's transition to caregiver.--

When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's ... meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating familial...

In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the devastation of the earthquake. Back home, she finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence and can't sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she'd reported from. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control...

"Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. That first close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May, and in that moment she discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her...

"Honey, you are 300 sandwiches away from an engagement ring." When New York Post writer Stephanie Smith made a turkey and swiss on white bread for her boyfriend, Eric (aka E), he took one bite and uttered those now-famous words. While her beau's declaration initially seemed unusual, even antiquated, Stephanie accepted the challenge and got to work. Little did she know she was about to cook up the sexiest and most controversial love story of her generation....

Picking up where he left off in his acclaimed memoir Sting-Ray Afternoons, Steve Rushin brilliantly captures a bygone era, and the thrills of new adulthood in the early 80s. It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace the cover of a book jacket. And it ends at a desk in the legendary Time & Life building, with that same boy-now in his early 20s and writing professionally-reflecting...

A multigenerational story of Gayla Marty's family farm, cleared from woodlands by her great-grandfather Jacob in the 1880s near Rush City, Minnesota. Her history resonates for many with attachments to small towns or farms, whether they continue to work the land, or like so many, have left for a different life.

Growing up in a military family, journalist and news anchor Harris Faulkner experienced firsthand how success in life is rooted in the knowledge, integrity, and duty that came from her military surroundings. She shares the formative lessons in leadership and work ethic she learned from a lifetime spent absorbing the military mindset, and offers recommendations for how all families can benefit from the guiding principles of military life.

As State Department spokesperson for John Kerry, press secretary for Presidents Obama and Biden, and now host of her own show on MSNBC, Psaki knows a thing or two about communication. Such as how to get a point across with clarity; how to simplify even the most complex subjects; how to diffuse combative situations; and how to correct unintentional misstatements. These traits are not only essential in her profession, they are elemental for anyone who...

Enter a world of shrunken heads, mystic holy men, shriveled aliens, and bizarre relics in the delightfully odd tale of Robert Ripley. Born in California, Ripley began his career as a sports cartoonist. He went on to chronicle global records and oddities in his weekly column, Believe It Or Not! After publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst took an interest in the column, it became a syndicated global success. Ripley spent his life traveling to more...