"Home is a loaded word, a complex idea: it's a place that can be comforting, difficult, nourishing, war-torn, or political. In this breathtaking, thought-provoking collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors--including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer...

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people--and the times--that touched her life.

A tour of the houses and lives of America's presidents interweaves personal, presidential, and architectural histories to offer insight into the way chief executives have lived, providing photography of dwelling interiors and exteriors.

"Follow in the footsteps of much loved authors, discover the landscapes that sparked their imaginations, and learn behind-the-scenes stories in this expanded and completely updated second edition of Novel Destinations. Across more than 500 literary locales in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, experience famous authors' homes, book festivals, literary walking tours, lodgings, restaurants, bars for bibliophiles, and much more."--page 4 of cover....

"Novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair is best known for his expose? The Jungle; however, he deserves equal accolades for his entertaining critiques of Southern California's oil industry, movie studios, and urban sprawl--most of which still apply today. This book spans fifty years of his funny and fiery writings, showing how his personal life inspired his political activism. When neighbors in Long Beach struck oil, he wrote about the oil industry....

1957, Paris. A cheap no-name hotel becomes a haven for a new breed of artists struggling to free themselves from the conformity and censorship of America. Called the Beat hotel, it soon became an epicenter of the beat generation. This revelatory new documentary delves deep into this amazing place and time. Fleeing the obscenity trials surrounding the publication of Howl, Allen Ginsberg, along with Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, happened upon the...

"A literary travelogue that ventures deep into the heart of classic Southern literature. As the writer Elif Batuman did for Russian literature in The Possessed, Margaret Eby does for Southern literature in this charming book of literary exploration. From Mississippi (William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Barry Hannah) to Alabama (Harper Lee, Truman Capote) to Georgia (Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews) and beyond, Eby--herself a Southerner--travels...

Chronicles a hitherto unknown chapter in both literary history and communal living--the experiment in communalism undertaken by Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, W. H. Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Jane and Paul Bowles.

The inside story of how President Donald Trump became king of Palm Beach, and how Palm Beach, and the resort Mar-a-Lago, continue to be his spiritual home even as president.