Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse....

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas--until now. James Patterson shows the real Vegas in a dazzling journey through true stories of excess, drama, and hope. In What Really Happens in Vegas, full of surprises for both newcomers and Las Vegas regulars, James Patterson and Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal transport readers from the thrill of adrenaline-fueled vice to the glitter of A-list celebrity and entertainment." --Goodreads.

From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that...

Wine, romance, and French bureaucracy the ups and downs of an American's life in Paris. This laugh-out-loud memoir is almost too funny to be true! Drinking too much bubbly. Dating sappy Frenchmen. Encountering problème after problème with French bureaucracy. When newly-single party girl Vicki moved to Paris, she was hoping to indulge in wine, stuff her face with croissants, and maybe fall in love. In her first book, this cheeky storyteller and semi-professional...

Offers historical anecdotes, little-known stories, and more than one hundred vignettes to provide an entertaining and informative look at five periods in American history.

One hundred brief stories about real people and occurrences in American history, arranged in chronological order by year from 1565 to 2000.

Explores America's hidden history in the first half of the nineteenth century, one of the most tumultuous but overlooked periods in the nation's early history. In the dramatic period from 1800 through 1850, the United States emerged from its inauspicious beginning as a newborn nation, to a near-empire that spanned the continent. It was a time in which the "dream of our founders" spread in ways that few men of that Revolutionary Generation could possibly...

"Gratitude is often a casualty of our feeling that we seldom have enough. No matter how much we have, the object of our affection and the conditions for our happiness lie somewhere in the future. I decided to write this book to demonstrate how gratitude can be a "right now" organizing principle and force in people's lives."--Preface.

Tired of his disconnected life and uninspiring job, Englishman Leon Logothetis leaves it all behind - job, money, home, even his cell phone - and hits the road with nothing but the clothes on his back and five dollars in his pocket. His journey from Times Square to the Hollywood sign relying on the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of the open road, inspire a dramatic and life changing transformation.