School Memoirs

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school - in her 60s - to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful, demands of a life fully lived.

Teacher and former rugby league player Chris Dawson appeared to have it all - a loving family and a beautiful home in Sydney's Northern Beaches. But in the summer of 1982 his wife Lynette disappeared and not long afterwards Dawson married a much younger woman, a former student. Less than a decade later this young woman escaped the marriage and went to the police to record her suspicions that Dawson had been involved in Lynette's disappearance. A homicide investigation followed but got nowhere until 1998, when Detective Sergeant Damian Loone was handed Lynette's file.

Welcome to Noreen Olson's kitchen table, where everything happens. She loves birds, animals, family, children, friends, growing things and life on the farm, and writes about them and all the odd situations they manage to get into with engaging liveliness. Many of the pieces are humorous, but more than that, they are heartwarming and true. In them you will see reflections of your own loves, life, guilt, laughter, nostalgia, memories and beliefs. All of the animals, people, and incidents are real and names have been changed for "her own protection".

A gripping chronicle of psychological manipulation and abuse at a “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled teens, and how one young woman fought to heal in the aftermath. At fifteen, Elizabeth Gilpin was an honor student, a state-ranked swimmer and a rising soccer star, but behind closed...

A sharp-witted and deeply insightful look into the storied world of elite prep schools from the first African-American legacy student to graduate from The Taft School. Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer...

In A Matter of Principal, Mandy Davis takes listeners on a heartfelt voyage from the corridors of traditional schooling into the nurturing embrace of homeschooling. Rooted in her experience as an elementary school principal, Mandy highlights the gaps in a system that often overlooks the diverse needs of individual children. As a dedicated mother and educator, she felt the call to transition to homeschooling, seeking a more personalized and meaningful educational experience for her own children.

Barnes's extremely frank and highly detailed memoir is a fast-paced tale of courage, loss, and eventual redemption that feels like someone telling you their story across the kitchen table. Above all else, this book tells the unvarnished truth of the modern-day veteran experience from a senior non-commissioned officer's point of view.

High school is the jungle. This is your field guide. Four Years in the Jungle is a coming-of-age memoir that doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. With unfiltered honesty and unforgettable stories, JJ takes you inside the real high school experience—cafeteria politics, sports pressure, hallway chaos, awkward dances, academic tournaments, and the deep, hilarious friendships that make it all worth it.

In Beer School, authors and entrepreneurs Steve Hindy and Tom Potter share the improbable saga of Brooklyn Brewery, the company they grew from a home-brew hobby into a multimillion-dollar business - all in the most competitive beer market in the United States. If you have a thirst for entrepreneurial success, drink up. If you are a business manager or owner and want fresh ideas and insight, tap in. You'll learn entrepreneurial basics, plus some things textbooks don't teach you, as you follow the company's successes (and a few failures).

In Hiding from the School Bus: Breaking Free from Control Fear, Isolation and a Childhood Without Education, Calvin Bagley courageously chronicles his journey through isolation, fear and religious contradiction. This powerful memoir reveals how navigating PTSD, dealing with childhood trauma, and reexamining core beliefs can form the foundation for genuine transformation, resilience, and healing.

Growing up in British Guiana in the 1950s, Sharon Maas has everything a shy child with a vivid imagination could wish for. She spends her days studying bugs in the backyard, eating fresh mangos straight from the tree, and tucked up on her granny’s lap losing herself in books. But with her father campaigning for Guiana’s independence and her mother away for work, there’s a void in Sharon’s heart, and she craves rules and structure. The books she devours give her a glimpse of life in a faraway country: England.

I grew up on a ranch near Willow Creek, Montana, during the Great Depression. Running through the fields to school with my brothers and sisters was among my most cherished memories along with having attended all 12 grades in that small hamlet. With nine children in the family, we were raised as free as birds, growing up in a world of simplicity. Our farm was our world and nature an educator that gave us free rein for our imaginations. We absorbed the natural order of things and observed the facts of life unfolding daily before our eyes.

I spent 60 years in the school as a student, a teacher, and an elementary principal. My experiences with peer pressure, family dysfunction, evangelical fundamentalism, and lack of success in school strongly influenced my role as a professional educator. I use the power of story and humor to illustrate the life lessons I learned along the way.

Waite "Schoolboy" Hoyt's improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. Based on a trove of Hoyt's writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend's untold story, entirely in Hoyt's own words. Over his twenty-three-year professional baseball career, Hoyt won 237 big league games across 3,845 2/3 innings—and one locker room brawl with Babe Ruth. He writes at length about the art of pitching and how the game and its players changed—and didn't—over his lifetime.

Alice Achan was just 13 when the Lord’s Resistance Army first terrorised her village in Northern Uganda in 1987. She spent five years on the run from the brutal LRA and then cared for her young nieces after their mother died of AIDS, losing them one by one to the disease. Their deaths plunged her into depression, which only began to lift after she took in an unexpected guest: a pregnant teenage girl, kidnapped and assaulted by the LRA, who had escaped captivity with her toddler.

The Apostolic School That Wasn’t... narrates a gripping account of how a rugged and picturesque 240 acre property in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada slowly transformed into an accredited minor seminary, junior high, and high school for boys interested in the Catholic priesthood, then flourished, floundered, and finally shuttered. Situated between the action of God’s divine providence and human realities, the narration seeks to give witness to the faith and effort of the many persons involved in the project, while exploring the reasons that led to the school’s demise.

The author considered a school bus as a learning-mobile, a moving laboratory of humanity, and a meeting place for students, away from the classroom. Equipped with those concepts, this retiree took a trip down memory lane and recalled his stint as a school bus driver in a suburban New York. The result is a memoir that is anything but ordinary. The author has vivid recollections, fascinating stories, and beguiling folklore from various cultures. This memoir is more than a reminiscence; it is a curious amalgam of autography and story-telling.

The school careers of two teenage girls who lived across town from each other - one black, one white - were altered by a court-ordered desegregation plan for Durham, NC in 1970. LaHoma and Cindy both found themselves at the same high school from different sides of a court-ordered racial “balancing act”. This plan thrust each of them involuntarily out of their comfort zones and into new racial landscapes. Their experiences, recounted in alternating first-person narratives, are the embodiment of desegregation policies, situated in a particular time and place.

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s.

In 1961, Carol Knych was hired by the Department of Defense Dependents Schools in Germany, where she began a lifetime career as an English teacher for the children of military personnel. Stationed in Germany in the midst of the Cold War, Carol witnessed both the height of communism, and the eventual fall of the Soviet Union. In-between, A Cold War Teacher's Tale reflects countless other memories that span an era. For any fan of history and the human experience, this audiobook is certain to be an entertaining listen.