Growing up in 1970s Manhattan, in an apartment where such luminaries as Saul Bellow and Andy Warhol came over for raucous parties, Ariel Leve was often alone in her room at night. Yelling out for the grown-ups to be quiet and let her sleep, she lived at the whim of her narcissistic, volatile mother. “I had no choice but to exist in the sea that she swam in. It was a fragile ecosystem where the temperature changed without warning. My natural shape was dissolved and I became shapeless.” Leve’s story, recounted in her acclaimed memoir, An Abbreviated Life, is a heartbreaking portrait of how vulnerable we are, especially as children, to the force of others’ turmoil...

How do you stay sober when drinking inspires friendships, connections, and even promotions? heers!” I said, clinking glasses of wine with members of the Communist Party in Vietnam’s National Assembly, the equivalent of the U.S.’s White House. I brought the glass to my mouth and tipped it, as if to drink, stopping just shy of the wine reaching my lips. If anyone noticed the lack of gulping (my acting skills are trash) or the never-empty glass, they made no mention of it. There were more important things to discuss anyway...