Once I Was Cool: Personal Essays

10 best books like Once I Was Cool: Personal Essays (Megan Stielstra): The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Deaf Republic: Poems, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, Once More We Saw Stars, Meaty, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland, 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, Henry Clay: The Essential American, The Dead Drink First

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Author	Edmund Morris
ISBN	0375756787

'Colonel Roosevelt,' which takes its title from Roosevelt's favourite way of being addressed during his emeritus years, follows the African Journey with Mr. Morris's characteristic care. He uses primary sources, sometimes even rough drafts of letters and documents, and goes well beyond Roosevelt's...

Deaf Republic: Poems

Author	Ilya Kaminsky
ISBN	1555978312

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry
Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Ilya Kaminsky’s astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?

Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political...

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

Author	David McCullough
ISBN	1501168681

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story—the settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would come to define our country.

As...

Once More We Saw Stars

Author	Jayson Greene
ISBN	1524733539

Two-year-old Greta Greene was sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when a brick crumbled from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious. She is immediately rushed to the hospital. Once More We Saw Stars begins with this event, leading the reader into...

Meaty

Author	Samantha Irby
ISBN	0988480425

Samantha Irby explodes onto the printed page with her debut collection of brand-new essays about trying to laugh her way through failed relationships, being black, taco feasts, bouts with Crohn's disease, and more. Every essay is crafted with the same scathing wit and poignant candor thousands of...

Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

Author	Abigail Thomas
ISBN	0385720556

A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman’s life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped...

Harvey Pekar's Cleveland

Author	Harvey Pekar
ISBN	1603090916

A lifelong Cleveland resident, Harvey Pekar (1939-2010) pioneered autobiographical comics, mining the mundane for magic since 1976 in his ongoing American Splendor series. Harvey Pekar''s Cleveland is sadly one of his last, but happily one of his most definitive graphic novels. It combines classic...

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente

Author	Wilfred Santiago
ISBN	1560978929

While this graphic novel was visually stunning in places, with this nearly sepia tone feel to it images, interesting paneling and a nice mix of text with more traditional comic word balloons and captions, its narrative just wasn't that interesting.

It might be that already well-aware of the...

Henry Clay: The Essential American

Author

David S. Heidler

The epic life and times of one of the most important political figures in our history.
 
He was the Great Compromiser, a canny and colorful legislator and leader whose life mirrors the story of America from its founding until the eve of the Civil War. Speaker of the House, senator, secretary...

The Dead Drink First

Author

Dale Maharidge

Like many veterans of his era, Sgt. Steve Maharidge never talked about “the good war.” On the surface, the Maharidges were a normal working-class family in the suburbs of Cleveland. But behind closed doors, even the most mundane moments could trigger Steve’s violent, traumatic episodes, which...

Siege: Trump Under Fire

Author	Michael Wolff
ISBN	1250253829

Michael Wolff, author of the bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury, once again takes us inside the Trump presidency to reveal a White House under siege.

With Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff defined the first phase of the Trump administration; now, in Siege, he has written an equally essential and...

Excavation: A Memoir

Author	Wendy C. Ortiz
ISBN	1892061708

Wendy C. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher fifteen years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power...