Best Hispanic & Latino Biographies

With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. If the outlines of Justice Sotomayor’s life are well known by now, her searching and emotionally intimate memoir, My Beloved World, nonetheless has the power to surprise and move the reader. This insightful memoir underscores just how well Justice Sotomayor mastered the art of narrative. It’s an eloquent and affecting testament to the triumph of brains and hard work over circumstance, of a childhood dream realized through extraordinary will and dedication.”. —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times. “The book delivers on its promise of intimacy in its depictions of Sotomayor’s family, the corner of Puerto Rican immigrant New York where she was raised and the link she feels to the island where she spent childhood summers. ‘I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me,’ Sotomayor tells an acquaintance when he asks whether becoming a judge will be difficult for her. And by the time you close My Beloved World , you understand how she has mastered judging, too.”. —Emily Bazelon, The New York Times Book Review “With buoyant humor and thoughtful candor, she recounts her rise from a crime-infested neighborhood in the South Bronx to the nation’s highest court. We, the jury in this case, find her irresistible.”. —John Wilwol, Washingtonian “Sotomayor turns out to be a writer of depth and literary flair. My Beloved World is steeped in vivid memories of New York City, and it is an exceptionally frank account of the challenges that she faced during her ascent from a public housing project to the court’s marble palace on First Street.”. —Adam Liptak, The New York Times “You’ll see in Sotomayor a surprising wealth of candor, wit, and affection. Her magical portraits of loved ones bring to mind Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street ; both authors bring a sense of childlike wonder and empathy to a world rarely seen in books, a Latin-American and womancentric world.”. —Grace Bello, Christian Science Monitor “This is a page-turner, beautifully written and novelistic in its tale of family, love and triumph. Anyone wondering how a child raised in public housing, without speaking English, by an alcoholic father and a largely absent mother could become the first Latina on the Supreme Court will find the answer in these pages. It didn’t take just a village: It took a country.”. —Dahlia Lithwick, The Washington Post “ My Beloved World is filled with inspiring, and surprisingly candid, stories about how the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice overcame a troubled childhood to attend Princeton and Yale Law School, eventually earning a seat on the nation’s highest court.”. —Carla Main, Wall Street Journal. A portrait of a genuinely interesting person.”. —Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast “In a refreshing conversational style, Sotomayor tells her fascinating life story with the hope of providing ‘comfort, perhaps even inspiration’ to others, particularly children, who face hard times. A portrait of an underprivileged but brilliant young woman who makes her way into the American elite and does her best to reform it from the inside. In this revealing memoir, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor candidly and gracefully recounts her formative years. Her memoir shows both her continued self-reliance and her passion for community.”. — Library Journal (Starred review). “Justice Sotomayor recounts numerous obstacles and remarkable achievements in this personal and inspiring autobiography. Readers across the board will be moved by this intimate look at the life of a justice.”. — Publishers Weekly “Amazingly candid . an intimate and honest look at her extraordinary life and the support and blessings that propelled her forward.”. — Booklist (Starred review). “Graceful, authoritative memoir.

In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the seventeen-year-old Flores twins as they make their harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother's custody in Oakland, CA. " The Far Away Brothers is impeccably timed, intimately reported and beautifully expressed. "Deserves a place alongside the strongest in the genre....By the book’s end, it’s impossible to not be rooting for [the Flores brothers]. — The Christian Century “Timely and thought-provoking…Markham provides a sensitive and eye-opening take on what’s at stake for young immigrants with nowhere else to go.” — Publishers Weekly “Powerful…Focusing primarily on one family's struggle to survive in violence-riddled El Salvador by sending some of its members illegally to the U.S.,...[this] compellingly intimate narrative…keenly examines the plights of juveniles sent to America without adult supervision….One of the most searing books on illegal immigration since Sonia Nazario's Enrique's Journey .” — Kirkus [starred review]. "This brilliantly reported book goes so deeply into the lives of its protagonists and is so beautifully, movingly written it has some of the pleasures of a novel—but all the force of bitter truth, the truth about the lives of unaccompanied minors in the USA, about poverty, the ricocheting wars here and there, and the caprices and brutalities of immigration policy. "Beautifully written, The Far Away Brothers examines the claustrophobic space between grinding poverty and brutal gang violence that drives so many children from El Salvador to make the dangerous journey North. “In the midst of a contentious debate in which reality is too often bent or ruptured entirely, The Far Away Brothers is a necessary book. Lauren Markham has written this book in a hard and noble way, depicting the Flores brothers not only as representatives of a vital issue, but as human beings: complicated, special, humorous, and flawed. —Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana and Learning to Die in Miami "Lauren Markham has written a modern day epic with The Far Away Brothers . “The most moving revelation of this book comes not from the geo-political lessons we learn, the path of the brothers through the desert, or the obstacles they face in U.S. courts—rather, it’s the insight into how that journey affects them, plaguing them with anxiety and guilt but also inspiring hope, ambition, and responsibility. From a lesser writer this would be a simple migration story, but thanks to Markham’s relentless reporting and care, it becomes a deeply relatable tale of human transformation—messy, stumbling, and bursting with optimism.” —Laura Tillman, author of The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts "Once you've read this remarkable reporting, 'immigration' will never be an abstract or airless debate for you again.

With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2013 : Happily, it is becoming a familiar story: The young, smart, and very hardworking son or daughter of immigrants rises to the top of American professional life. But already knowing the arc of Sonia Sotomayor’s biography doesn’t adequately prepare you for the sound of her voice in this winning memoir that ends, interestingly, before the Yale Law School grad was sworn in as the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. In this amazingly candid memoir, Sotomayor recalls a tumultuous childhood: alcoholic father, emotionally distant mother, aggravating little brother, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins, all overseen by her loving, domineering paternal grandmother.

My Beloved World.

Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic. Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom Hanks. “In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge’s.

Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path.

JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. I liked this book so very, very much.”—Gabrielle Hamilton. “Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top [this] one.” —The Wall Street Journal “Elegantly written . In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food.”—President Bill Clinton. “I’ve read a lot of chefs’ books, but never anything like this one.

Because Kathy was always at Jackie’s side, Rose Kennedy deemed her “Jackie’s girl.” And although Kathy called Jackie “Madam,” she considered her employer more like a big sister who, in many ways, mentored her on how to be a lady. “Celebrity watchers who covet an insider’s role will find McKeon’s frank yet benevolent memoir to be both a sobering reality check and an engaging foray into the ever-fascinating world of the Kennedy dynasty.”.

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. S.C. Gwynne is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon , which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

With a foreword by Harold S. Kushner, Frankl’s classic is presented here in an elegant new edition with endpapers, supplementary photographs, and several of Frankl’s previously unpublished letters, speeches, and essays. One of the classic psychiatric texts of our time, Man's Search for Meaning is a meditation on the irreducible gift of one's own counsel in the face of great suffering, as well as a reminder of the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity. "Dr. Frankl's words have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception… A gem of a dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems." "An inspiring document of an amazing man who was able to garner some good from an experience so abysmally bad… Highly recommended."

He takes great pains to provide a balanced picture of the people and events he witnessed and gives due credit to the tireless and dedicated Sherpas. He also avoids blasting easy targets such as Sandy Pittman, the wealthy socialite who brought an espresso maker along on the expedition. In the end, despite his evenhanded and even generous assessment of others' actions, he reserves a full measure of vitriol for himself. His account of an ascent of Mount Everest has led to a general reevaluation of climbing and of the commercialization of what was once a romantic, solitary sport; while his account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, who died of starvation after challenging the Alaskan wilderness, delves even more deeply and disturbingly into the fascination of nature and the devastating effects of its lure on a young and curious mind." Gracefully and efficiently written, carefully researched, and actually lived by its narrator, it shares a similar theme with another sort of book, a novel called " The Great Gatsby ." — The Wall Street Journal "Krakauer is an extremely gifted storyteller as well as a relentlessly honest and even-handed journalist, the story is riveting and wonderfully complex in its own right, and Krakauer makes one excellent decision after another about how to tell it.... To call the book an adventure saga seems not to recognize that it is also a deeply thoughtful and finely wrought philosophical examination of the self." " Into Thin Air is a remarkable work of reportage and self-examination.... And no book on the 1996 disaster is likely to consider so honestly the mistakes that killed his colleagues." "In this movingly written book, Krakauer describes an experience of such bone-chilling horror as to persuade even the most fanatical alpinists to seek sanctuary at sea level."

Relive the extraordinary Presidency of Barack Obama through White House photographer Pete Souza's behind-the-scenes images and stories in this #1 New York Times bestseller--with a foreword from the President himself. During Barack Obama's two terms, Pete Souza was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else--and he photographed them all. "The book, which distills the 1.9 million photographs that Souza took of Obama's eight years in the White House down to about 300 images, it as once warm and nostalgic, worshipful and respectful, sad and wistful-in a sense, not so different from the framed JFK portraits that everyday Americans hung in living rooms, right through the Nixon administration. "Here are the qualities that radiate from these photos of the former President and his family, all taken by Souza during his eight years as official White House photographer: intelligence, kindness, warmth, integrity. "Souza, chief official White House photographer for Obama's two terms, was on hand for history--documenting our first black president, and a pretty photogenic one at that. Souza's book, an instant best seller, includes many iconic images we've seen before, but its most poignant moments are the least public--like one of the president and his daughters frolicking in the snow at the White House. "The 300 photographs in the book are a remarkable account of President Obama's eight years in the White House, from events of historic significance to quiet moments with his wife and daughters and the family dogs.