The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.

From the big woods of Wisconsin to the Indian country of the Great Plains, new adventures and landscapes filled the rich childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder. On a frontier steeped in both danger and great possibility, Laura would grow up to witness firsthand the rapid transformation of the West as pioneers and covered wagons gave way to farms, towns, and railroads. A pioneer, teacher, farmer's wife, and storyteller, Laura Ingalls Wilder experienced one of the most exciting times in American history.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

The beloved actress and star of One Tree Hill, White Collar, and Lethal Weapon, Hilarie Burton, tells the inspiring story of leaving Hollywood for a radically different kind of life in upstate New York with her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan - a celebration of community, family, and the value of hard work in small town America.

Everybody knows that Patricia Heaton plays the hilarious, wise, and tempestuous married-with-kids everywoman on Everybody Loves Raymond. What they might not know is that in real life, she is married, has four boys under eight years old, and is just as funny offscreen as on. Motherhood and Hollywood is Patricia Heaton’s humorous and poignant collection of essays on life, love, marriage, child-rearing, show business, having parents, being a parent, spousal rage, surviving fame, success, and the shame of underarm flab. She is warm, witty, and refreshingly irreverent.

It’s 1967, and for young Richard it’s a time of heartbreak and turmoil. Over the span of a few months, his brother, Mark, is killed in Vietnam; his father loses his job and moves the family from California to his grandmother’s abandoned home in Utah; and his parents make the painful decision to separate. With uncertainty rattling every corner of his life, Richard does his best to remain strong—but when he’s run down by bullies at his new school, he meets Mr. Foster, an elderly neighbor who chases off the bullies and invites Richard in for a cup of cocoa.

In Jenny Doan's new memoir, How to Stitch an American Dream, listeners will discover the behind-the-scenes success story of the Missouri Star Quilt Company and Jenny’s remarkable journey to overcome hardship, claim the abundance of family, and ignite the power of giving - all while revitalizing a small town along the way. Over the last decade, the Doan family business, the Missouri Star Quilt Company in tiny Hamilton, Missouri, has grown from Jenny’s corner shop.

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent 20 fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than 100 friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became necessary to her.

This no-holds-barred autobiography chronicles the remarkable life of Phil Robertson, the original Duck Commander and Duck Dynasty star, from early childhood through the founding of a family business. Life was always getting in the way of Phil Robertson’s passion for duck hunting. An NFL-bound quarterback, Phil made his mark on Louisiana Tech University in the 1960s by playing football and completing his college career with a master’s degree in English. But Phil’s eyes were not always on the books or the ball; they were usually looking to the sky....

In 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills had come to the edge of all they had ever been. Across the South, padlocks and chains bound the doors of silent mills, and it seemed a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill still bit, shook, and roared. The mill had become almost a living thing, and they served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers.

During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.

Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears.

In an American story of enduring importance, former President Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed the country.

Ten-year-old Pearl Spence is a daydreamer, playing make-believe to escape life in Oklahoma's Dust Bowl in 1935. The Spences have their share of misfortune, but as the sheriff's family, they've got more than most in this dry, desolate place. They're who the town turns to when there's a crisis or a need. Pearl is proud of her loving, strong family, though she often wearies of tracking down her mentally impaired older sister or wrestling with her grandmother's unshakable belief in a God. Then a mysterious man bent on revenge tramps into her town of Red River.

In an American story of enduring importance, former President Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed the country.

As foreclosure fragments her family, five-year-old Mildred and her three siblings find refuge with her grandparents enjoying a modest retirement. When the "little heathens" flush the seniors and their child-rearing skills out of retirement, the grandparents deploy tough but loving bedtime schedules, Bible and prayer routines, and plenty of character-building chores. Having no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.

Take one thoroughly modern gal with a recessionary income problem, mix with the practices of a culture that has proved to be recession-proof, and what have you got? A financial planner in a straw hat. When writer Lorilee Craker learned that the Amish are not just surviving but thriving in the economic downturn, she decided to find out why.

During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains, en route to Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen, a place where soldiers could enjoy coffee, music, home-cooked food, magazines, and friendly conversation during a stopover that lasted only a few minutes.

For listeners who long for strong families that know how to truly enjoy life together, there is much to learn from the Amish. Values like community, forgiveness, simple living, obedience, and more can be your family legacy - without selling your car, changing your wardrobe, or moving out to farm country. In Amish Values for Your Family, bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher shows how you can adopt the wisdom of the Amish when it comes to family matters. In this inspiring and practical audio book listeners will find charming true stories interlaced with solid, biblical advice....

Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disabilities and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than 30 years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse.

In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York, for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their soci-ety luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teach-ing jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied—shocking their families and friends.

A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish.

Eddie Bielawski was born in the town of Wegrow in Poland in mid-1938. Not a propitious time and place for a Jewish child to be born. As a young child, he sees the Nazi army marching toward Russia. Day and night they marched - soldiers, trucks, tanks, and more soldiers, in a never-ending line - an invincible force. One night, his father had a dream. In this dream, he saw what he had to do: where to build the bunker, how to build it, and even its dimensions. This would be their Noah's Ark, saving them from the initial deluge.

A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur "Genius Award" winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed - and heal - broken communities. An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will's personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a vibrant, deeply personal portrait of this revered American author, illuminating her thoughts, travels, philosophies, writing career, and dealings with family, friends, and fans as never before. This is a fresh look at the adult life of the author in her own words. Gathered from museums, archives, and personal collections, the letters span over 60 years of Wilder's life, from 1894 to 1956, and shed new light on Wilder's day-to-day life.

Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.

In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)