Jeannette Walls

In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club" and Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shouting," Jeannette Walls has written a stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family. The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors...

"The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls has written a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world—a triumph of imagination and storytelling. It is 1970 in a small town in California. “Bean” Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who “found something wrong with every place she ever lived,” takes off to find herself, leaving her...

Gossip. It's more than just hearsay, society columns, and supermarket tabloids. It has, like it or not, become a mainstay of American pop culture. In Dish, industry insider Jeannette Walls gives this provocative subject its due, offering a comprehensive, serious exploration of gossip and its social, historical, and political significance. Examining the topic from the inside out, Walls looks at the players; the origins of gossip, from birth of People...

Trailblazing pioneers set out to conquer the west, but find the land already claimed. Wagon trains meet hardship on the road to California's gold. The steamboat ushers in a new era of commerce, industry, and unprecedented wealth.

Boom turns to bust when the stock market crashes. The Great Depression and the dust bowl blanket the nation in darkness. Roosevelt's New Deal signals recovery.

America strikes oil and the boom time begins. Henry Ford brings the motorcar to the masses; the nation hits the road. Massive engineering projects modernize the West.

Commerce and industry thrive across the new nation, now one of the wealthiest on Earth. The Erie Canal brings big risk and bigger reward. In the South, cotton is king but slavery fuels a growing divide.

The attack on Pearl Harbor brings America into World War. The war effort revitalizes the nation's economy. American innovation and manufacturing might invigorate the Allies in Europe and in the Pacific.

The Transcontinental Railroad unites the nation and transforms the Heartland. Native American civilizations decline as farmers settle the continent.