American Diaries

Exorcist Msgr. Stephen Rossetti has a very active caseload of demonic possessions, and in each case two vivid lessons consistently emerge: Demons possess or harass people in a myriad of ways (even when they do not enter a body), and they are defeated decisively by the power of Christ and His Church—and especially by invocations to the Blessed Mother.

In May 1987, Jackie Benton received a heartbreaking phone call from her boyfriend, Sean Hardy, bringing an end to their five-year relationship. He’d fallen for a fellow student at Exeter University. Sean and Jackie would never see each other again. Thirty-three years later, Sean returns to his home town. There, he inadvertently discovers what became of Jackie Benton.

Remy Morgan, a young girl born and raised in the heart of the ghetto, gets caught up in the life when she meets a drug lord who offers her the world. Young and naive, she is trapped in a game of lies, deception, and greed and learns the hard way that everything that glitters ain't gold. After her love is slain, Remy is forced back into the life that she desperately tried to forget. Remy has kept a diary of her life for the past two years. What she writes inside is a tale of love, passion, money, and secrecy - and ultimately a witness to her tragic end.

In the Shadow of the American Dream is a stunning collection of riveting and revealing chapters from Wojnarowicz's extensive personal diaries - 30 volumes' worth of memories and lucid observations, some bitter, some sweet - that the author began writing when he was 17 and continued until his death two decades later. Here is a brilliant chronicle of an artist's emergence - a young man's still achingly fresh memories of his unhappy adolescence and his glorious discovery of self.

The Motorcycle Diaries is Che Guevara's diary of his journey to discover the continent of Latin America while still a medical student, setting out in 1952 on a vintage Norton motorcycle together with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. It captures, arguably as much as any book ever written, the exuberance and joy of one person's youthful belief in the possibilities of humankind tending toward justice, peace, and happiness.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

In 1969, John Julius Norwich, the legendary popular historian, gathered together the favourite things he'd come across in the last 365 days into one short charming pamphlet. Initially just a treat for his friends, it rapidly turned into a huge word-of-mouth success. And soon the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest 'Christmas Cracker' became as essential a part of the English Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. Norwich had a brilliant eye for a story and telling detail, and his Crackers are full of jokes, warmth and wit.

Howard Hughes was a true American original: legendary lover, record-setting aviator, award-winning film producer, talented inventor, ultimate eccentric, and, for much of his lifetime, the richest man in the United States. His desire for privacy was so fierce and his isolation so complete that even now, 25 years after his death, inaccurate stories continue to circulate, and many have been published as fact. Hughes explodes the illusion of his life and exposes the man behind the myth. He was a playboy whose sexual exploits with Hollywood stars were legendary.

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

Invalid teenager Leroy Wiley Gresham left a seven-volume diary spanning the years of secession and the Civil War. He was just 12 when he began, and he died at 17, just weeks after the war ended. LeRoy’s diary offers an inside look at a fateful journey that robbed an energetic and likeable young man of his youth and life. I Am Perhaps Dying adds considerably to the medical literature by increasing our understanding of how tuberculosis attacked a young body over time, how it was treated in the middle 19th century, and the effectiveness of those treatments.

Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming”, a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces - the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons - in the remote reaches of the American West.

This is the story of Morning Glory’s turn of the century kenbutsu—her travels—to America. Guided by her uncle, a Harvard graduate, Morning Glory travels at a time when most Americans know little or nothing about Japan, aside from the popular tunes of The Mikado (1885) and The Geisha (1896).

Each day during his presidency, Jimmy Carter made several entries in a private diary. He offered unvarnished assessments of cabinet members, congressmen, and foreign leaders; he narrated the progress of secret negotiations such as those that led to the Camp David Accords. When his four-year term came to an end in early 1981, the diary amounted to more than 5,000 pages. But this extraordinary document has never been made public - until now.

Listen to Confederate Girl's Diary with a movie-style soundtrack and amplify your audiobook experience. Sarah Morgan Dawson was a young woman of 20 living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when she began this diary. The American Civil War was raging. Though at first the conflict seemed far away, it would eventually be brought home to her in very personal terms.

A brand-new collection from the internationally best-selling author of Letters of Note.

Have you ever thought about becoming an exchange student or living abroad? When I was 16 and living in the 1980s, my dream was to travel to France with my high school class. But, I missed the deadline to apply and my dreams were crushed. Until I learned about an opportunity to travel to Japan as a youth exchange student. Spending six weeks with two Japanese host families was not only a surprise, it was life-changing. Listen about my daily travels as an American exchange student to Japan in the summer of 1985.

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts", as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.

In the public imagination, Ernest Hemingway looms larger than life. But the actual person behind the legend has long remained elusive. Now, his son Patrick shares the letters they exchanged over two decades, offering a glimpse into how one of America’s most iconic writers interacted with his children. These letters reveal a father who wished for his children to share his interests—hunting, fishing, travel—and a son who was receptive to the experiences his father offered.

From its beginnings, America has acted out much of its history on the battlefront. Yet for the average American, little is known of the Spanish-American War. The reasons for our entry never seemed compelling - at times, yellow fever seemed more the enemy than did Spanish troops - and the United States was ill prepared for the venture. Nevertheless, this conflict served to unify a country that only 30 years before had been hopelessly divided by civil strife.