Scott Bolzan went to work on December 17, 2008, like any other Wednesday. By that afternoon, he'd lost every memory of his past. Awakening in a hospital with no memory of who he was or how he got there, the forty-six-year-old didn't know that the petite blonde at his side was his wife of twenty-four years, Joan or even what a wife was. He couldn't remember the births of his two young-adult children, the daughter he'd lost, his time as an offensive lineman for the NFLs Cleveland Browns, or his flourishing aviation career. Scott's life and the lives of everyone who loved him were forever changed when he slipped, hit his head, and lost consciousness in his office bathroom, suffering one of the most severe cases of permanent retrograde amnesia on record. With heartrending honesty and no shortage of humor, the Bolzans share their remarkable journey as Scott navigates his way through a now-unfamiliar world. The challenges are initially overwhelming: Scotts debilitating headaches, his relearning of social etiquette (taking cues from The Sopranos!), Joans grief over the loss of the man she married and their shared history, the financial burden of Scotts lost income, his mounting medical bills, and the agony of their twenty-year-old son's struggles with drug addiction. But remarkably, My Life, Deleted is above all else a celebration of extraordinary perseverance, and of the enduring love that emerges when we are most tested. Scott learns to trust his intuition in a way few people ever will, while Joan taps into a well of patience and resourcefulness she didn't know she had. Throughout it all, what unfolds against all odds is an enviable romance as Scott and Joan fall in love all over again.Both gut-wrenching and brimming with optimism, the Bolzans captivating story makes a powerful statement about commitment and the possibility of finding extraordinary opportunity in life's greatest challenges.

I wasn't afraid to fail. It's really as simple as that.As a seven-year-old kid pitching a ball against a brick wall, John Smoltz decided to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. And from that simple decision until his last season on the mound in the major leagues, it was his faith, work ethic, and love for the game even more than God-given talent that propelled him through challenges that would have ruined other athletes. Starting and Closing chronicles John Smoltz's final season in a major league uniform, capping a legendary career that included fourteen years as part of one of the most dominant starting rotations in baseball, a Cy Young Award, and a World Series title all while battling and overcoming "career-ending" injuries. At age forty-one, Smoltz was making yet another unlikely comeback from his fifth surgery. Recounting the story of a season that tested his perseverance and deepened his faith, Smoltz flashes back to watershed moments in the skeptic-defying journey from being one of the best starting pitchers of all time, to closer, to starter again. One of the most intelligent, talented, and passionate players in the game, Smoltz delivers insights into modern major league baseball, its place in popular culture, and the value of competition. He writes with unflinching honesty about becoming a true Christian and finding in his beliefs the peace and strength to stay focused through postseason triumphs and defeats, upheavals in his personal life, and the sting of being sent to the bullpen. What emerges is an inspirational story of spiritual growth and family values, from a man who believed not just in himself but in God's plan for him and one more year.

Once upon a time, salad was iceberg lettuce with a few shredded carrots and a cucumber slice, if you were lucky. A vegetable side was potatoes—would you like those baked, mashed, or au gratinA nice anniversary dinnerWould you rather visit the Holiday Inn or the Regency InnIn Grand Forks, North Dakota, a small town where professors moonlight as farmers, farmers moonlight as football coaches, and everyone loves hockey, one woman has had the answers for more than twenty-five years: Marilyn Hagerty. In her weekly Eatbeat column in the local paper, Marilyn gives the denizens of Grand Forks the straight scoop on everything from the best blue plate specials—beef stroganoff at the Pantry—to the choicest truck stops—the Big Sioux (and its lutefisk lunch special)—to the ambience of the town's first Taco Bell. Her verdict"A cool pastel oasis on a hot day." No-nonsense but wry, earnest but self-aware, Eatbeat also encourages the best in its readers—reminding them to tip well and why—and serves as its own kind of down-home social register, peopled with stories of ex–postal workers turned café owners and prom queen waitresses. Filled with reviews of the mom-and-pop diners that eventually gave way to fast-food joints and the Norwegian specialties that finally faded away in the face of the Olive Garden's endless breadsticks, Grand Forks is more than just a loving look at the shifts in American dining in the last years of the twentieth century—it is also a surprisingly moving and hilarious portrait of the quintessential American town, one we all recognize in our hearts regardless of where we're from.

Aside from her dad, who passed away when she was six, Cassidy Jameson has only ever trusted one man: her best friend, Tyler. So of course she follows him to Texas when he leaves for college. She just didn't expect to be so drawn to their new roommate, Gage, a gorgeous guy with a husky Southern drawl. The only problemHe's Tyler's cousin.Gage Carson was excited to share an apartment off campus with his cousin. He didn't mind that Tyler was bringing the mysterious friend he'd heard about since they were kids . . . until the most beautiful girl he's ever seen jumps out of his cousin's Jeep. There's something about Cassi that makes Gage want to give her everything. Too bad Tyler has warned him that she's strictly off-limits.Despite everything keeping them apart, Cassi and Gage dance dangerously close to the touch they've both been craving. But when disaster sends her running into Tyler's arms, Cassi will have to decide whether to face the demons of herpast . . . or to burn her chance at a future with Gage.

In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer. To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a glass of sherry.) But his story has a happy ending: in 1993, the washed-up Ferguson washed up in the United States. Finally sober, Ferguson landed a breakthrough part on the hit sitcom The Drew Carey Show, a success that eventually led to his role as the host of CBS's The Late Late Show. By far Ferguson's greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008, just before his command performance for the president at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson talks a red, white, and blue streak about everything our Founding Fathers feared.

In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white- checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. She described life in vivid, unforgettable detail, explored apparently irreconcilable views of human nature people are good at heart but capable of unimaginable evil and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided in August 1944.But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a deliberate work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

The first-ever inside look at DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars America's greatest idea factory isn't Bell Labs, Silicon Valley, or MIT's Media Lab. It's the secretive, Pentagon-led agency known as DARPA. Founded by Eisenhower in response to Sputnik and the Soviet space program, DARPA mixes military officers with sneaker-wearing scientists, seeking paradigm-shifting ideas in varied fields from energy, robotics, and rockets to peopleless operating rooms, driverless cars, and planes that can fly halfway around the world in just hours. DARPA gave birth to the Internet, GPS, and mind-controlled robotic arms. Its geniuses define future technology for the military and the rest of us.Michael Belfiore was given unprecedented access to write this first-ever popular account of DARPA. Visiting research sites across the country, he watched scientists in action and talked to the creative, fearlessly ambitious visionaries working for and with DARPA. Much of DARPA's work is classified, and this book is full of material that has barely been reported in the general media. In fact, DARPA estimates that only 2 percent of Americans know much of anything about the agency. This fascinating read demonstrates that DARPA isn't so much frightening as it is inspiring it is our future.

In March 2007, twenty-four hours after Mary Weiland dragged her husband Scott's pricey rock-star wardrobe onto their driveway and torched it, she was locked up in a mental hospital. Watching all this were her frightened extended family, a conflicted husband wrestling with demons of his own, and a tabloid industry gone gleeful at the "Bonfire in Toluca Lake!"To the outside world, Weiland had led what seemed to be an enviable life. A successful international model in the nineties, she married her longtime sweetheart famed lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and, later, Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland in 2000. Mary was the sane one, went the story it was the tempestuous, unpredictable Scott who was crazy. In her gripping memoir Fall to Pieces, Mary Weiland reveals that the truth is somewhere in between.From her earliest days in San Diego, Weiland displayed signs of trouble: a black depression that sometimes left her immobile for days, a temper that sent her into wild rages she didn't understand, an overdose. But her fierce determination to "have more" led to early success as a model. At sixteen, she fell in love at first sight with Scott Weiland, then an aspiring musician who was hired to drive her to and from modeling gigs. Slowly, her casual relationship with beer and pot grew into an affair with cocaine and heroin that rivaled her love for Scott, who was addicted as well. From rehab to rehab, from breakup to reconciliation to eventual marriage, the couple fought their way back, welcomed the babies they'd dreamed of, and hoped their struggles were behind them. Then came the bonfire breakdown and the full onset of Mary's bipolar disorder, a widely misunderstood and misdiagnosed mental illness that affects more than five million Americans and had been, in fact, stalking Mary Weiland since her teens.With refreshing candor, innate comic timing, and earned wisdom, Weiland recounts the extreme highs and lows of her life, including an unforgettable love affair with the man she always knew she'd marry, the careers and rock tours that took them around the world, and her fight to finally come to grips with the addictions that could have killed her. In her journey to understand and manage her bipolar disorder, she takes the reader on a wild ride into the dark and back into the light.

The face of entertainment has changed radically over the last decade and dangerously so. Stars like Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Amy Winehouse and their media enablers have altered what we consider "normal" behavior. According to addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky and business and entertainment expert Dr. S. Mark Young, a high proportion of celebrities suffer from traits associated with clinical narcissism vanity, exhibitionism, entitlement, exploitativeness and the rest of us, especially young people, are mirroring what we witness nightly on our TV and computer screens. A provocative, eye-opening study, The Mirror Effect sounds a timely warning, raising important questions about our changing culture and provides insights for parents, young people, and anyone who wonders what the cult of celebrity is really doing to America.

An irresistible nighttime tour of Paris, past and present, by the bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Walk in the World Every guidebook to Paris is crammed with sites to see during the day, but visitors are often cast adrift once the sun sets and the Louvre, Notre Dame, and other tourist attractions shut their doors. Sadly for those who have retreated into their hotel rooms, it's only when darkness falls that the City of Light shines brightest. Full of as many unexpected detours and delightful digressions as the city itself, award-winning author John Baxter's Five Nights in Paris is the ultimate off-the-beaten-path guide to exploring the French capital after hours. Baxter leads readers on five evening tours across Paris's great neighborhoods. Each night's itinerary is selected for its connection to one of the five senses: the first, "Sound," explores the great jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; "Taste" samples the eclectic restaurants and bakeries of the Marais; "Touch" brings alive the city's legendary cabaret scene, including Montmartre's nearby Moulin Rouge; "Smell" describes Parisians' love of perfume and takes us to the infamous former opium fumeries along the Bois de Boulogne; and "Sight" traces the favorite haunts of the Surrealist artists, beginning in Montparnasse.

Once upon a time, a historical romance author created a family . . . But not just any family. Eight brothers and sisters, assorted in-laws, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews (not to mention an overweight corgi) plus an irrepressible matriarch who's a match for any of them . . . These are the Bridgertons: less a family than a force of nature. Through eight bestselling novels, readers laughed, cried, and fell in love. But they wanted more.And so the readers asked the author . . . What happens nextDoes Simon ever read his father's lettersDo Francesca and Michael become parentsWho would win in a Pall Mall grudge match?Does The End really have to be the endNow, with The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After, Julia Quinn delivers eight sexy, funny, and heartwarming 2nd Epilogues plus a bonus story about none other than the wise and witty matriarch Violet Bridgerton herself. So get to know the Bridgertons all over again because Happily Ever After is a whole lot of fun.

Do you believe in the freedom of individuals to determine their own future and solve problems cooperatively?Don't hurt people, and don't take their stuff. Simple and straightforward, that's liberty in a nutshell no assembly required.And yet it seems like, more and more, the decisions Washington makes about what to do for us, or to us, or even against us, are having an increasingly adverse impact on our lives. Young people can't find jobs, millions of Americans are losing the health care plans they were promised they could keep, and every one of us is somehow being targeted, monitored, snooped on, con*ed, induced, taxed, subsidized, regulated, or otherwise manipulated by someone else's agenda, based on someone else's decisions made in some secret meeting or closed-door legislative deal.What givesOur government is out of control. But setting things right again requires that you step up and take your freedom back.From Matt Kibbe, the influential leader of Freedom Works, Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff is the first true manifesto of a new libertarian grassroots movement. As political powermongers and crony corporatists in Washington continue to consolidate their control and infringe on our most fundamental liberties, Kibbe makes the libertarian case for freer people, more voluntary cooperation, and solving problems from the bottom up. He calls out the tyranny of faceless bureaucrats with too much power and discretion, laying out a clear road map for restoring liberty. A witty yet piercing critique of government's expanding control over you and your future, Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff is a vital read for all those who cherish personal liberty and the unalienable right to choose your own path in life.

A powerful, lyrical memoir of self-discovery full of warmth and wry humor a book that combines the soul-baring insight of Wild, the profound wisdom of Shop Class as Soulcraft, and the ad venturous spirit of Eat, Pray, Love When her college-bound daughter leaves home, Lynn Darling, widowed more than a decade earlier, finds herself alone and utterly lost. Freed of her parental responsibilities, she has no idea what she wants or even who she is. Searching for answers, she leaves her apartment in New York City and moves to a cranky little house in the middle of the Vermont woods, her only companions, a new dog and a compass. There she hopes to develop a sense of direction both in the woods and in her life.As she finds new ways to get lost in her own backyard, Darling meditates on her past and on the challenges that aging poses to love, work not to mention fashion and the way she sees herself. She has just begun to chart a new course for the future when an unexpected setback unsettles her newfound balance.With rare insight and remarkable honesty, Out of the Woods reveals how honing the skills of navigation literal and metaphorical smoothed one woman's path through the uneven course of life. It is a story at once universal and deeply personal in the words of writer Geraldine Brooks, both a compass and a manifesto for navigating the often-treacherous switchbacks of the second half of life.

Maurice Hilleman's mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister stillborn. As an adult, he said that he felt he had escaped an appointment with death. He made it his life's work to see that others could do the same. Born into the life of a Montana chicken farmer, Hilleman ran off to the University of Chicago to become a microbiologist, and eventually joined Merck, the pharmaceutical company, to pursue his goal of eliminating childhood disease. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella practically toothless and nearly forgotten; his measles vaccine alone saves several million lives every year. Vaccinated is not a biography; Hilleman's experience forms the basis for a rich and lively narrative of two hundred years of medical history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a cast of hundreds, all caught up, intentionally or otherwise, in the story of vaccines. It is an inspiring and triumphant tale, but one with a cautionary aspect, as vaccines come under assault from people blaming vaccines for autism and worse. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts those arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.

Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story.Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

American Brad Washburn's impact on his protégés and imitators was as profound as that of any other adventurer in the twentieth century. Unquestionably regarded as the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history and as one of the finest mountain photographers of all time, Washburn transformed American attitudes toward wilderness and revolutionized the art of mountaineering and exploration in the great ranges. In The Last of His Kind, National Geographic Adventure contributing editor David Roberts goes beyond conventional biography to reveal the essence of this man through the prism of his extraordinary exploits from New England to Chamonix, the Himalaya to the Yukon.Washburn's remarkable achievements including nine first ascents of North American peaks would stamp him not only as one of a kind, but as one of a kind they don't make anymore. Born June 7, 1910, to a Boston Brahmin family whose roots trace back to the Mayflower, this highly intelligent, impatient, and stubborn iconoclast published books, made a monumental first ascent in the French Alps that would become a touchstone in mountaineering history, and lectured on his adventures including an address to the National Geographic Society while still in his teens. In 1935, at the age of twenty-four, while others were turning their attention to the Himalaya, the Harvard-educated Washburn led a three-month journey across what was then the largest remaining unexplored territory in North America the 6,400 square miles of glaciers and mountains in the frozen heart of Alaska's Saint Elias Range.In addition to his prowess as a mountaineer and photographer, Washburn was also a renowned surveyor and cartographer, producing maps of little-known terrain the Grand Canyon, Mt. McKinley, and Mt. Everest that surpassed those that came before, and several of which remain the standard. He was also a scientist who would take a regional natural-history museum and transform it into one of the outstanding teaching institutions of its kind in the world.Roberts introduces the family, teachers, friends, colleagues, and rivals who would play important roles in this legendary man's experiences, and re-creates his enthralling journeys to some of the most remote and beautifully wild places on earth. An exciting narrative of mountain climbing in the twentieth century, The Last of His Kind brings into focus Washburn's deeds in the context of the history of mountaineering, and provides a fascinating look at an amazing culture and the influential icon who shaped it.

Julia Fox Garrison refused to listen to the professionals she called Dr. Jerk and Dr. Panic, who after she suffered a massive, debilitating stroke at age thirty-seven told her she'd probably die, or to Nurse Doom, who ignored her emergency call button. Instead she heeded the advice of kind, gifted Dr. Neuro, who promised her he would "treat your mind as well as your body." Julia figured if she could somehow manage to get herself into a wheelchair, at least she'd always find parking. But after many, many months of hospitalization and rehab with the help of family, friends, and her own indomitable spirit Julia not only got into a wheelchair, but she got back out.Don't Leave Me This Way is the funny, inspiring, profoundly moving true story of a woman's fight for her life and dignity and her determined quest to awaken an entrenched, unfeeling medical community to the fact that there's always a human being inside every patient.

On February 28, 2009, Nick Schuyler, a twenty-four-year-old personal trainer, left for a deep-sea fishing trip with three friends: NFL players Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, and Will Bleakley, his best friend, who once played football for the University of South Florida.It was supposed to be a day of fun and relaxation aboard Cooper's twenty-one-foot boat, which anchored seventy miles west of Tampa, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico. The friends were out to catch some amberjack and grouper and maybe a few sharks. They planned to drink a few beers, have some laughs, and get home before an approaching cold front hit.As the seas began to swell and the winds picked up in the late afternoon, they packed their gear and decided to head to shore. One problem. The anchor was stuck. Inexperienced boaters, they made what would become a fatal mistake, tying the anchor rope to the stern of the boat and hitting the throttle. The anchor did not yank free. Instead, the stern sank and filled with water, and the boat capsized.And so the nightmare began. The men had to forage for life jackets beneath the boat. They had no emergency beacon to alert authorities, and their cell phones didn't work so far out in the Gulf. With no food or water, the men clung to the overturned hull through the night as the seas roughened and the cloudy sky became inky black. They were continuously tossed from the boat by brutal waves, and sometimes found each other only by swimming toward their friends' voices.During the rare lull, they would pray and talk about the ones they loved, what they would've done differently with their lives, and what they would do once they returned home. As the hours passed, the four friends, who had grown up as athletes, worked as a team in their desperate bid to survive. They battled hypothermia, hallucinations, hunger, dehydration, and huge waves.A witness to incredible heroism and unspeakable tragedy, Nick remained at sea for more than forty hours, holding on, hoping against hope and clinging to the thought that he couldn't bear to have his mother attend his funeral.Not Without Hope is much more than a story of survival. It is an inspiring story of friendship, resolve, and courage.

True stories are more bizarre than any fiction, and Dr. Gary Small knows this best. After thirty distinguished years of psychiatry and groundbreaking research on the human brain, Dr. Small has seen it all now he is ready to open his office doors for the first time and tell all about the most mysterious, intriguing, and bizarre patients of his career. The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head is a spellbinding record of the doctor's most bewildering cases, from naked headstands and hysterical blindness to fainting schoolgirls and self-amputations. It is an illuminating journey into the mind of a practicing psychiatrist and his life in medicine as it evolves over time a behind-the-scenes look at the field and a variety of mental diseases as they've never been seen or diagnosed before. You'll find yourself exploring the puzzling eccentricities that make us human.Often funny, sometimes tragic, and always compelling, Dr. Small takes you on a tour of his career that moves from the halls of a crowded inner-city Boston emergency room to the multimillion-dollar ski lodges of the nation's elite. In between, Dr. Small introduces a strange cast of true-life characters and conditions, while dealing with mysterious hysterical blindness, a man convinced that his penis is shrinking, secret double lives, and frighteningly psychotic romantic desires. His career and personal life come full circle when his own mentor becomes his patient, making Small realize that no one is beyond mental exploration not even himself.

From Thomas Jefferson to William Jefferson Clinton, Scorpion Tongues is a popular history of gossip in American politics. Complete with wickedly delightful anecdotes of major and minor politicians and entertainers over the last 200 years, Gail Collins examines the evolving relationship between politicians and the press and the blurring of the lines between politicians and celebrities. Supported by extensive research and written with an entertaining flair, she speculates on how gossip reflects the current moral compass of the time, noting how a rumor, like an unpredictable summer tornado, can flatten one reputation while a similar story passes over another with hardly a rustle. "Hilariously readable" (The Economist), Scorpion Tongues offers sinful scandals and mild hearsay for every taste.

Enter a world of tender friendships, staunch loyalties, violent jealousies and enduring love.As a child, Sheri Speede knew that she wanted to advocate for animals in any way she could. But it was not until many years after veterinary school, when she was transporting a chimpanzee named Pierre away from a biomedical facility as part of her job as a conservation advocate in Cameroon, that Dr. Speede discovered her true calling. She began to search for land for a forest sanctuary for captive chimpanzees that were held on chains and in small cages at local hotels.Dr. Speede eventually founded the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, a forested home for orphans of the illegal ape meat trade. One chim- panzee, Dorothy, was rescued by Dr. Speede and her colleagues from a bleak existence imprisoned on a chain and forged a deep friendship with her. Dr. Speede explains how chimpanzees, like humans, are capable of a broad spectrum of emotional behaviors both hateful and loving. Dr. Speede also candidly reveals her own struggles as a stranger in a foreign culture trying to adjust to rural African village life. And she admits that unlike Dorothy, she was not always kind, gentle, and forgiving.Dorothy died of old age at the sanctuary, and a photograph of Dorothy's funeral, in which Dr. Speede cradled Dorothy's head while her family of chimpanzees mournfully viewed her body, went viral after being published in National Geographic. The world was surprised at the depth of the chimps' grief at the loss of their friend, but Dr. Speede was not. Through the chimps, she had come to understand the meaning of love, loyalty, and true connection.While this is a compelling story about the emotional complexity of the chimpanzees she rescued and befriended, it is also Dr. Speede's story. Major events in her personal life, including love affairs, dangerous run-ins with criminals, and the birth of her daughter, unfold as the development of her primate rescue center runs parallel to her own development. Ultimately, Kindred Beings is a story of profound resilience, of both the apes and the woman who loved them.