Uneducated: A Memoir of Flunking Out, Falling Apart, and Finding My Worth

Zara (Tortured Artists), a senior editor at Fast Company, takes an incisive, enlightening look at his trials and triumphs navigating the New York journalism world without a college degree. After completing 10th grade in Trenton, N.J., in 1986, Zara (who later obtained a GED) left high school and embarked on a series of minimum-wage jobs, picking up a heroin habit along the way. After getting clean and landing an unpaid internship at Show Business Weekly (which conveniently didn’t inquire about his educational background), he secured a full-time position at the publication, later becoming a contributor to Condé Nast Traveler and Wired and a full-time reporter at Newsweek. All the while, Zara found himself just outside the industry’s inner circle: “No matter how disparate and diverse my coworkers seem, they all share a collective experience—the college years and the college friends—that’s completely foreign to me.” Zara’s tale is perfectly paced, told with powerful prose and invigorating candor. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this must-read memoir offers hope to anyone who worries the weight of their past stands in the way of their future. Agent: Ryan D. Harbage, Fischer-Harbage. (May)