Don't Call Me Jupiter is a true-story memoir about an All-American family that becomes all hippied out. It's about the pros and cons that kids growing up in hippie environments encountered and how their early experiences continue to shape them later in life. This "First Family" story begins in 1961 in Cincinnati, Ohio with Dr. Sabin as they're selected to demonstrate the oral vaccine for polio. They are the paragon of midwestern, conservative, white-bread, Catholic idealism. And yet, led by an eccentric mother, the Martha Stewart of hippies, the family transforms into a clan of liberal, pot-smoking, psychedelic-bus-tripping, nature-loving California free spirits. Told through the wide-eyes of a middle child; a reluctant hippie kid who loves his family as much as he is embarrassed by them, this is a hilarious book about abandonment. Climb aboard their magic yellow bus for an unforgettable ride with colorful characters caught in situations that will make you laugh, cry, and cringe. Don't Call me Jupiter is a page-turning ride down memory lane when many parents went in search of themselves and lost their children along the way. "Growing up in this era was groovy and far out. We believed in the power of the people. We felt we could save the whales and make the world a better place. But there was bad craziness too."The '60s were a pivotal time. It revolutionized the way people looked at the world and their place in it. People challenged tradition, experimented with new lifestyles - and drugs. The very definition of family was stretched. Many people share unforgettable memories connected to the hippie movement and want to know how it's affecting them today. What was gained? What was lost? Are any of our adult disorders and anxiety tied to our unusual childhoods? This book presents a strong case in favor of the "fuck yea - of course it does!"In this first book of three in the series, you'll get an intimate understanding of the main characters, the changes they embrace, and how it affects their decisions and behaviors. Years later, this disbanded group is forced back together to deal with a family crisis. Similar memories about surviving dysfunctional families include: Running with Scissors, The Glass Castle, Let's Pretend this Never Happened, The Liar's Club, This Boy's Life, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It's like a 70's version of Shameless but with less booze, more weed, and way more hallucinogenics. This book needs to be read because it expands our understanding of the hippie movement and its continuing impact on society. Don't Call Me Jupiter provides an accurate, visceral, entertaining, real-life perspective into the ups and downs of surviving a hippie childhood.

For more than five decades, Horton Foote, "the Chekhov of the small town," has chronicled with compassion and acuity the changes in American life -- both intimate and universal. His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He received an Indie Award for Best Writer for The Trip to Bountiful and a Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta. In his plays and films, Foote has returned over and over again to Wharton, Texas, where he was born and where he lives, once again, in the house in which he grew up. Now for the first time, in Farewell, Foote turns to prose to tell his own story and the stories of the real people who have inspired his characters. He was the first child of his generation of Footes, born into an extended family of aunts, great-aunts, grandparents and dozens of cousins once removed, all of whom discovered that even as a young boy Foote was an avid listener with an uncanny ability to extract a story -- including those deemed unfit for children. Foote's memories are of a time when going down to meet the train was an event whether or not you knew someone on it, when black and white children played together until segregation forced them apart at school-age. Foote beautifully maintains the child's-eye view, so that we gradually discover, as did he, that something was wrong with his Brooks uncles, that none of them proved able to keep a job or stay married or quit drinking. We see his growing understanding of all sorts of trouble -- poverty, racism, injustice, marital strife, depression and fear. His memoir is both a celebration of the immense importance of community in our earlier history and evidence that even a strong community cannot save a lost soul. In all of Foote's writing, he reveals the immense drama behind quiet lives, or as Frank Rich has said, "the unbearable turbulence beneath a tranquil surface." Farewell is as deeply moving as the best of Foote's writing for film and theater, and a gorgeous testimony to his own faith in the human spirit.

Libby Henry unabashedly tells her story in this lively memoir set in central Kentucky. She rides her pony rough-shod through the lives of Earl and Beal, her parents, singing The Little Orange Bird. All Earl wants is some "peace," hard to find with a daughter some fifty years his junior, with a croaky voice and coke bottle glasses perparing for a song and dance career, with a dash of fashion. Beal lives vicariously through Libby's short-lived modeling career, her romances, and connections, pleased when she approves, and tending to the unhinged wihen not so pleased. Earl is still looking for "peace," while weathering the car wrecks, the vacatons, and the unexpected in his home-life. And then there's those trips to Lincoln county where Libby's maternal grandfather is a big man in the community, a man of property who also owns the stockyard and is a deputy sheriff, though he hasn't qutie caught up to the times and modernized his house with running water. There's the little old lady who "shot me a dog once," Davy Crockett and Sam Houston make an appearance, and that "bad man" who got his head knocked into a wall by Earl. And darker times too, times of illness, loss, mortgage fraud and divorce. Libby shares all with an enduring sense of humor and a welcoming voice that draw you near and keep you turning pages.

From the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF, a brilliant collaboration to rival 1987's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

2019 Living Now Book Awards Gold Medal Winner in Inspirational/Memoir (Female) 2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards finalist in Memoir Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018 2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards Silver Medal in Memoir Francine Falk-Allen was only three years old when she contracted polio and temporarily lost the ability to stand and walk. Here, she tells the story of how a toddler learned grown-up lessons too soon; a schoolgirl tried her best to be a “normie,” on into young adulthood; and a woman finally found her balance, physically and spiritually. In lucid, dryly humorous prose, she also explores how her disability has affected her choices in living a fulfilling (and amusing) life in every area—relationships, career, religion (or not), athleticism, artistic expression, and aging, to name a few. A clear-eyed examination of living with a handicap, Not a Poster Child is one woman’s story of finding her way to a balanced life—one with a little cheekiness and a lot of joy.

An adventurous teenager is determined to roller skate across France to reunite with his girlfriend, despite her overprotective father and 800 miles of topless beaches between them.From the icy peaks of Germany to the steamy beaches of France, this coming of age story begins when Michael, 19, gets a letter from his girlfriend asking him to meet her in Barcelona. He quits his daredevil job at the top of the German Alps and plots a risky two-month solo trek across the coast of southern France-on roller skates. He leaves his alpine friends behind to follow his heart with only a backpack, ski poles, and roller skates. Even being chased down impossibly steep mountain roads by tour busses and ritzy sports cars can't keep an American teenager down, especially when he's delivering an engagement ring? and a dark confession. It was supposed to be fun and easy, but when disaster strikes his love life and a spectacular wipeout leaves him a heartbeat away from roadkill status, Michael must emerge from his tenderfoot life and learn some difficult lessons about growing up. Rolling over every inch of the French Riviera, European history, art history, and French culture come together in this off-the-grid, true tale of living in the moment, creating your true self, and living to write about it.Roller SkatingQuad Roller SkatesSolo TravelAdventure TravelFrench RivieraTraveler & Explorer BiographiesBiographies & Memoirs / Sports & OutdoorsTravel WritingHiking & CampingMemoir