May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life-not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude-both an exhilarating and terrifying...

"In January 1990, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gunter Grass made two New Year's resolutions: the first was to travel extensively in the newly united country and the second was to keep a diary, to record his impressions of a historic time. Grass takes part in public debates, writes for newspapers, makes speeches, and meets emerging politicians. He talks to German citizens on both sides, listening to their bewilderment, their hopes...

"With more than 365 photographs that take you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful -- and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process -- A Book of Days is a deeply generous and inspirational map of an artist's life" --

Draws from more than two centuries of soldiers' personal encounters with combat--through excerpts from letters, diaries, memoirs, audio recordings, film, and blogs--to capture the essence of the American military experience firsthand.

Michael Palin's diaries begin in the late 1960s when he began writing for hugely popular programs. He recounts how Monty Python emerged and triumphed. From the success and cult status brought by Monty Python, Palin shares stories from their world tours, their stay at hotels recently trashed by Led Zeppelin, their battles over censorship, and how individually the Pythons went their separate ways. Yet at the same time they were working on the now celebrated...

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs is the most intimate book ever written by William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and one of the most celebrated literary outlaws of our time. Laid out as diary entries of the last nine months of Burroughs's life, Last Words spans the realms of cultural criticism, personal memoir, and fiction. Classic Burroughs concerns -- literature, U.S. drug policy, the state of humanity, his love for his...