Burn the Place: A Memoir, by Iliana Regan. Midway Books, 2019Iliana Regan is the owner of the Michelin Star restaurant “Elizabeth”, named for her sister who died in a jail holding cell. She was exposed to food a lot as a child- they lived on a farm and grew, foraged, baked, and preserved most of their food, but until the point her mother rebelled ( Read more... )

Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs, by Bill Cunningham. Penguin Press, 2018
Born during the Depression to an Irish-American family with conservative values, Bill Cunningham’s penchant for fancy clothes and beautiful décor was discouraged- discouraged to the point of receiving a brutal beating when his mother caught four year old Bill ( Read more... )

Muddy Boots and Red Socks: A Reporter’s Life, by Malcolm W. Browne. Times Books, 1993Malcolm Wilde Browne (Wilde because his grandmother was Oscar Wilde’s cousin) was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covered wars all over, starting in Korea, and thence to Viet Nam (for which he won said Pulitzer), and then to the Middle East. War wasn’t all ( Read more... )

Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times, by John Perry Barlow, with Robert Greenfield. Crown Archetype, 2018
The recently deceased author had a really colorful life. He seems to have known everyone and done everything. Born to a cattle ranching family that was powerful in Wyoming politics, he went to school with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead ( Read more... )

It’s Not Dark Yet: A Memoir, by Simon Fitzmaurice. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 Simon Fitzmaurice was only 33 when he was given a diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease, motor neuron disease) and given four years to live. A filmmaker with a young family, he wasn’t about to just sit and give up. In 2010, the muscles that allowed him to breathe ( Read more... )

Girl Unbroken: A Sister’s Harrowing Story of Survival from the Streets of Long Island to the Farms of Idaho, by Regina Calcaterra and Rosie Maloney. William Morrow, 2016
“Girl Unbroken” is a truly horrific true story of one child growing up in multiple abusive settings. Rosie’s mother, Cookie, is mentally ill, an alcoholic and drug abuser, and ( Read more... )

Another Little Piece of My Heart, by Richard Goldstein. Bloomsbury 2015 In 1966, twenty-two year old Goldstein walked into the Village Voice and invented the job he wanted: rock critic. During his time doing this, he had some amazing adventures and met a lot of the great rock innovators. He became friends with Janis Joplin, was a passenger in a car ( Read more... )