Free

August 1, 2021

In I Came All This Way To Meet You, New York Times best-selling author Attenberg explains that as the daughter of a traveling salesman she came by her wanderlust naturally and shows how reflecting on her early years during her travels led her to writing--and particularly her theme of troubled families (75,000-copy first printing). Award-winning actress and Food Network star Bertinelli follows up her No. 1 New York Times best-selling memoir Losing It with inspiration as she turns 60 in Enough Already (100,000-copy first printing). In High-Risk Homosexual, a memoir ranging from funny (a baby speaking an ancient Jesuit language) to heartbreaking (the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando), Gomez explains how he came to embrace his gay, Latinx identity within a culture of machismo. In This Boy We Made, Harris relates her efforts to determine what is suddenly wrong with her bouncy 22-month-old boy in a system frequently inhospitable to Black mothers and her discovery when meeting with a geneticist that she has medical issues of her own. In Admissions, James relates the complications of being a diversity recruiter for select, largely white prep schools after attending The Taft School as its first Black legacy student. Attorney, podcaster, and Extra correspondent Lindsay discusses growing up in Dallas, TX; her career in law; and why she chose to be the first Black Bachelorette on The Bachelor in Miss Me with That. Miller reveals how he made the Jump, taking Nike's Jordan Brand from a relatively modest $150 million sneaker producer to a $4.5 billion worldwide footwear and apparel phenomenon while also recalling his teenage jailtime and the nightmares from which he still suffers and arguing for criminal justice reform and greater educational opportunities for the currently or formerly imprisoned. After her mother, actress Roseanne Barr, moved the family to celebrity-soaked Hollywood from working-class Denver, using personal details from their lives there for her sitcom's storylines, the teenaged Pentland endured anxiety and eating issues and various 1980s-sanctioned self-help interventions while muttering to herself This Will Be Funny Later (evidently proved here). In Lost & Found, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker staffer Schulz explores the bittersweet reality of meeting the woman she would marry just 18 months before losing her father. Readers Rise with Vonn as she earns 82 World Cup wins, 20 World Cup titles, seven World Championship medals, and three Olympic medals to become one of the top women ski racers of all time. Raised in Albania, the last Communist country in Europe, where the final tumble of Stalin's and Hoxha's statues soon led to economic chaos, political violence, and the flight of the disillusioned, Ypi has earned the right more than most to ponder what it means to be Free.

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Starred review from October 11, 2021
A child’s sense of safety, security, and national pride is upended as family histories surface and a political system splinters in this beautiful debut from Guardian contributor Ypi. The author, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Albania, recounts her coming-of-age in 1990 as the country (the last with Stalinist-type rulers in Europe) began to shed its Communist identity. She reflects on her puzzlement as a young girl when protesters demanding freedom and democracy took hold of her city that December. “We had plenty of freedom,” she writes. “I felt so free... my freedom as a burden.” That mindset, nurtured by her teachers at school, directly opposed the beliefs of her family, intellectuals and property owners whose own ideas of liberty led to their punishment in what the Party referred to as “universities,” where “different subjects of study corresponded to different official charges.” When the government crumbled, her parents felt it safe enough to finally reveal to her “that my country had been an open-air prison for almost half a century.” Out of this comes an electric narrative of personal and political reckoning, suffused with sharp cultural critique, that underscores history’s contentious relationship with independence and truth. This vivid rendering of life amid cultural collapse is nothing short of a masterpiece.

November 1, 2021
An Albanian writer reflects on her personal experience of her country's transition out of Soviet-style socialism and into civil war. Growing up, Ypi, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, had complete faith in what she was taught in school. At home, she urged her parents to display a picture of Prime Minister Enver Hoxha--whom she and her classmates called "Uncle Enver"--in their living room. At school, she was thrilled to be chosen to join the Pioneers of Enver, a socialist youth group, a year before the rest of her peers. It wasn't until the country's first "free and fair election" that Ypi realized her own parents had never supported the repressive government and, in fact, were grateful to see it fall. Even more shocking were the family secrets that her parents, now unafraid, revealed to her in rapid succession: Her beloved grandmother used to be an aristocrat so well connected that she attended a royal wedding; a "former prime minister whom I had grown up despising" was her great-grandfather; and her mother came from a long line of formerly wealthy property owners. In the years that followed, Ypi weathered not only a changing country, but also a changing sense of self, as she released political beliefs she had held for decades. The author's narrative voice is stunning, expertly balancing humor, pathos, and deep affection for the characters and places that defined her past. She is adept at immersing readers in her childhood experiences of unquestioned loyalty to "The Party" while also maintaining a tongue-in-cheek, critical distance from what she now recognizes as a tyrannical regime. However, while the scenes and characterizations are captivating, the book lacks a clear narrative arc, making the chapters feel more like a loose collection of memories than a cohesive story. A poignant, humorous memoir about growing up during the decline and fall of the Iron Curtain.

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December 15, 2021
In this vivid memoir, political commentator Lea Ypi recalls her adolescence during the complete social upheaval in Albania in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At first, she attended school in a fully socialist nation. Religion was abolished, illiteracy was eradicated, she and her family received vouchers for food and other necessities, and everyone went to work. She was 11 when she first saw a statue of Joseph Stalin beheaded by protesters, and so began the epic instability that would define her teenage years. Ypi witnessed her parents becoming outspoken in their political beliefs, and she was confused to discover that they did not fully share the party loyalty she was taught in school. The first free elections brought chaos and rumors of fraud. Then, in 1997, it all came to a head with the Albanian Civil War, wherein economic insolvency led to violence, anarchy, and massive loss of life. Ypi's family was separated as they fought for freedom. Ypi's prose is colored by the innocence of her youth as she delivers a beautifully straightforward analysis of the world around her. This is also a gripping portrait of all ill societies struggling with socialism and capitalism. Ypi's experiences and perspective are invaluable, especially for politically minded readers dreaming up the future.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.