This Is The Author

"I found out I was writing a poetry book at the end of last year and I had all of 45 days to put it together. And I wrote this entire book while I was traveling to Peru to go do an Ayahuasca immersion with some shamans in the middle of the jungle and I've never had to work on something so diligently before. Every single day. If I missed one day I would have been off track. I kind of fell into a vortex with this book, this poetry vortex." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/586136/all-of-it-is-you/

"This is a story of natural disasters through human history, from Pompeii to Hurricane Katrina to the Japanese Great Tsunami, the stories of natural disasters, so that we can see how these disasters affect us both physically and socially." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554995/the-big-ones/

"What planted the seed for this book for me was an agent who came to me because he had benefited personally from our work and from our collaborative problem solving approach and it had a transformative effect upon him and his family. And he came to me and said he thought there was a much broader audience for my work." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/540671/changeable/

"This book actually began when the editor of THE NEW YORKER, David Remnick, called me into his office and asked me to explain Texas because he can’t understand why I live here. And, to be honest, I’ve wondered about that myself. " Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/561612/god-save-texas/

"I’ve worked as a journalist in politics for a number of years and the subject of immigration has always fascinated me, not simply because my family is a family of immigrants but also because of the fundamental questions that the issue of immigration raises: Who are we as a country? Who is an American? What does it mean to be an American? And how have those definitions changed overtime? So when I began this book I wanted to address those central questions through a personal lens and this is the result of that endeavor." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/248653/futureface/

"I first saw STAR WARS when I was tiny, I think I was three. RETURN OF THE JEDI was probably the first movie I saw at the movie theaters, and I saw it many times...I was in love. And I’m still in love. I’ve just loved that world my whole life." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/568276/last-shot-star-wars/

"What planted the seed for this book was the Air traffic control strike of 1981. It was a turning point in my life and, obviously, it was a big turning point in my father’s life. And it was also a huge turning point in labor history, not only in America but around the world." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/549724/air-traffic/

"Our book is about influence. The question is: What is influence? On a very basic level, influence can be defined as the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action, usually within the context of a specific goal. Now that definition is legitimate and certainly works but I don’t believe it’s the substance of influence, which really is pull." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/314009/the-go-giver-influencer/

"My book is about endurance; specifically, it’s about this emerging sport known “fastest known times,” which are basically trail records on the super long trails like the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail. But it also talks about the really amazing people who have set these records, and some of them are my friends and mentors. I wanted to talk about them and then also share my experience as a record setter and illustrate how it was so empowering for me to realize that there is no gender divide when it comes to endurance." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/548048/the-pursuit-of-endurance/

"I was inspired by my work as a veterinary internal medicine specialist. Although, if I'm honest, when I first started writing this book it was not going to be about my job as a vet. It was going to be about pretty much anything other than that. But once I started writing I realized that there was really only one story I wanted to tell, and that was the story of my patients and the things that they’ve taught me about life, and about medicine, and about being a veterinarian." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/250324/my-patients-and-other-animals/

"I wrote this book because, over the years, I saw how my perspectives, although molded and sculpted to warrant success, weren’t really the norm of athletes or most people. It’s a false misnomer that you have to have this angst or chip on your shoulder to succeed as an athlete, and science now supports that positivity and optimism are really the drivers of success." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/555798/let-your-mind-run/

Listen to this special This is the Author compilation of Lidia Bastianich, Junot Diaz, Joey Coleman, Daniel José Older, Suzy Fincham-Gray, J. Stuart Ablon, Gregory Pardlo, and Sir Ken Robinson talk about how libraries have influenced their lives.

"The origin of this book came from a speech that I gave a few years ago about the importance of the first 100 days of the customer relationship. At the time, to be frank, I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea or not. But I was asked to give a speech at an event where there was a contest, and the audience would vote on their favorite speech, and the winner would win a $10,000 prize that was a donation to the charity of their choice. Well, thankfully, the audience voted for my speech. And in that moment, I knew that there might be some legs under this idea." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/561172/never-lose-a-customer-again/

"This book is actually my memoir. Being a chef, a restaurateur, and a cooking show host—I'm known for that. But the more I cooked, the more I wrote cookbooks...the more people wanted to know about me, my personal life. Because my trek, my coming to America, my being an immigrant, has an interesting story. And in today’s time I felt I wanted to share my story, my experience as an immigrant coming to America—the difficulties in doing so and the joys and the rewards that I reaped in coming to America." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/549475/my-american-dream/

"I wrote the book and get to be in it. It’s very exciting. I casted myself as Christopher because I felt like it was a really fun departure for me as an actor. I love that Christopher is the kind of guy a piece of us wanted to be a little bit growing up, and kind of, still now. No worries in the world, and exudes this confidence that comes from, probably a six-pack, of both beer and the one on his stomach." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554754/folded-notes-from-high-school/

"My book is about being a young—well, relatively young—disgusting idiot who makes terrible choices, and wants to get revenge on anyone who ever dumped me." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/555854/meaty/

"I’ve worked in education for a long time, and I’ve written quite a few books addressed to people as individuals and also to educators, but I’ve also had lots of conversation with parents. I am a parent. And I’m constantly being asked by parents about what’s going on in education, and what the right thing is to do for their children." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/315396/you-your-child-and-school/

"Our book is about so many wonderful things. It’s really about being raw, and real, and not being ashamed to speak the truth, and I get that from my mom. Growing up I could ask her any and everything, whether it be about sex, drugs, dating, relationships—it did not matter! She would answer me honestly." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/561936/perfect-is-boring/

"My book is about three young people: Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel. They are complete strangers who have seemingly nothing in common except for this one key thing, which is that each of them, in their own way, is lost. They collide, literally, in New York's Central Park, and that kicks off a day together where they form this intense friendship and a little bit of romance as they kind of come to understand that maybe the way out of their own loss lies is inhabiting one another’s." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/554278/i-have-lost-my-way/

"I wrote MY DEAD PARENTS because after my mother died I was cleaning out her house and found love letters that my parents had exchanged long before my sister and I were born. The letters were so fascinating and totally confusing because the people that my parents were in those letters were so different form the people I knew." Learn more: http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/book/247514/my-dead-parents/