In her plucky Autobiography/​Memoir, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Susan Orlins inspires you to embrace your mishe­gas. With wit and grit, Orlins takes you from her starter Jew­ish wed­ding to her sec­ond mar­riage in 1979. She then moves to Bei­jing (where she has her own spy). Her effort to adopt an infant pro­vides a rare por­trait of a bit­ter era in Chi­na. Orlin­s’s inner Jew­ish moth­er is unmis­tak­able when her daugh­ter grows old­er and urges, ​“Mom, please don’t hug me like you’re nev­er going to see me again every time I go out.” In the chap­ter ​“I May Have Ruined the Mar­riage, But You’re Ruin­ing the Divorce,” Orlins exquis­ite­ly por­trays her sep­a­ra­tion with wry, wrench­ing self-aware­ness. She rebounds with a post-trau­mat­ic-divorce par­ty and ​“fam­i­ly” vaca­tions with her ex. While explor­ing what young Susan would think of her present-day self, Orlins faces a life-chang­ing real­iza­tion. Read­ers will relate to this deeply per­son­al sto­ry, told with com­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty by a quirky, star­tling­ly hon­est woman. Con­fes­sions of a Wor­ry­wart: Hus­bands, Lovers, Moth­ers, and Oth­ers lingers long after you fin­ish read­ing it.