In a book that is both biography and the most exciting form ofhistory, here are eighteen years in the life of a man, AlbertEinstein, and a city, Berlin, that were in many ways the definingyears of the twentieth century. Einstein in Berlin In the spring of 1913 two of the giants of modern sciencetraveled to Zurich. Their mission: to offer the most prestigiousposition in the very center of European scientific life to a manwho had just six years before been a mere patent clerk. AlbertEinstein accepted, arriving in Berlin in March 1914 to take up hisnew post. In December 1932 he left Berlin forever. “Take a goodlook,” he said to his wife as they walked away from their house.“You will never see it again.” In between, Einstein’s Berlin years capture in microcosm theodyssey of the twentieth century. It is a century that opens withextravagant hopes--and climaxes in unparalleled calamity. These aretumultuous times, seen through the life of one man who is at oncewitness to and architect of his day--and

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prizewinning author GnterGrass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a crampedtwo-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when The TinDrum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteeredfor the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; twoyears later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS.Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering fromshrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an AmericanPOW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist andmoved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write thenovel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, therubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and theexhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onionwhichcaused great controversy when it was published in GermanyrevealsGrass at his most intimate.

"Authorized, intimate, and definitive, Ben Hogan: A Life isthe long-awaited biography of one of golf's greatest, mostenigmatic legends, narrated with the unique eloquence that has madeauthor James Dodson a critically acclaimed national bestseller. "One man is often credited with shaping the landscape of moderngolf. Ben Hogan was a short, trim, impeccably dressed Texan whosefierce work ethic, legendary steel nerves, and astonishing triumphover personal disaster earned him not only an army of adoring fans,but one of the finest careers in the history of the sport. Hogancaptured a record-tying four U.S. Opens, won five of six majortournaments in a single season, and inspired future generations ofprofessional golfers from Palmer to Norman to Woods. Yet for allhis brilliance, Ben Hogan was an enigma. He was an American herowhose personal life, inner motivation, and famed "secret" were thesource of great public mystery. As Hogan grew into a giant on thepro tour, the combination of his cool outward demeanor an

A chance encounter in Spain in 1959 brought young Irishreporter Valerie Danby-Smith face to face with Ernest Hemingway.The interview was awkward and brief, but before it ended somethinghad clicked into place. For the next two years, Valerie devoted herlife to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, traveling with them throughbeloved old haunts in Spain and France and living with them duringthe tumultuous final months in Cuba. In name a personal secretary,but in reality a confidante and sharer of the great man’s secretsand sorrows, Valerie literally came of age in the company of one ofthe greatest literary lions of the twentieth century. Five years after his death, Valerie became a Hemingway herselfwhen she married the writer’s estranged son Gregory. Now, at last,she tells the story of the incredible years she spent with thisextravagantly talented and tragically doomed family. In prose of brilliant clarity and stinging candor, Valerie evokesthe magic and the pathos of Papa Hemingway

When Anne Rice stopped crafting stories about vampires andbegan writing about Jesus, many of her fans were shocked. Thisautobiographical spiritual memoir provides an account of how theauthor rediscovered and fully embraced her Catholic faith afterdecades as a self-proclaimed atheist. Rice begins with herchildhood in New Orleans, when she seriously considered entering aconvent. As she grows into a young adult she delves into concernsabout faith, God and the Catholic Church that lead her away fromreligion. The author finally reclaims her Catholic faith in thelate 1990s, describing it as a movement toward total surrender toGod. She writes beautifully about how through clouds of doubt andpain she finds clarity, realizing how much she loved God anddesired to surrender her being, including her writing talent, toGod. Covering such a large sequence of time and life events is noteasy, and some of the author's transitions are a bit jarring. Fansof Rice's earlier works will enjoy discovering more about her lifean

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov'swritings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic,biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories andplays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov's life and framedby an account of Malcolm's journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, andYalta. She writes of Chekhov's childhood, his relationships, histravels, his early success, and his self-imposed "exile"--alwayswith an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in hiswork. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will betransfixed by "Reading Chekhov."

Natalie Wood was always a star; her mother made sure this wastrue. A superstitious Russian immigrant who claimed to be royalty,Maria had been told by a gypsy, long before little NatashaZakharenko's birth, that her second child would be famousthroughout the world. When the beautiful child with the hypnoticeyes was first placed in Maria's arms, she knew the prophecy wouldbecome true and proceeded to do everything in her power —everything — to make sure of it. Natasha is the haunting story of a vulnerable and talentedactress whom many of us felt we knew. We watched her mature on themovie screen before our eyes — in Miracle on 34th Street, RebelWithout a Cause, West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and on andon. She has been hailed — along with Marilyn Monroe and ElizabethTaylor — as one of the top three female movie stars in the historyof film, making her a legend in her own lifetime and beyond. Butthe story of what Natalie endured, of what her life was like whenthe doors of the soundsta

It all started when Douglas Adams demolished planet Earth inorder to make way for an intergalactic expressway–and then invitedeveryone to thumb a ride on a comical cosmic road trip with thelikes of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the other daft denizens ofdeep space immortalized in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.Adams made the universe a much funnier place to inhabit and foreverchanged the way we think about towels, extraterrestrial poetry, andespecially the number 42. And then, too soon, he was gone. Just who was this impossibly tall Englishman who wedded sciencefiction and absurdist humor to create the multimillion-sellingfive-book “trilogy” that became a cult phenomenon read round theworld? Even if you’ve dined in the Restaurant at the End of theUniverse, you’ve been exposed to only a portion of the offbeat,endearing, and irresistible Adams mystique. Have you met the onlyofficial unofficial member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? Thevery first person to purchase a Mac

As an actor, he seduces us with his tough-guy charm. As adirector and producer, he amazes us with his artistry and technicalsavvy. As a Hollywood icon, Clint Eastwood, one of film sgreatest living legends, represents some of the finest cinematicachievements in the history of American cinema. In American Rebel, bestselling author and acclaimed filmhistorian Marc Eliot examines the ever-exciting, often-tumultuousarc of Clint Eastwood s life and career. Unlike pastbiographers, Eliot writes with unflinching candor aboutEastwood s highs and lows, his artistic successes andfailures, and the fascinating, complex relationship between hislife and his craft. Eliot s prodigious research revealshow a college dropout and unambitious playboy rose to fame asHollywood s "sexy rebel," eventually and against all oddsbecoming a star in the Academy pantheon as a multiple Oscar winner.Spanning decades, American Rebelcovers the best ofEastwood s oeuvre, films that have fast become Americanclassics– Fistful of Doll

Michael Servetus is one of those hidden figureheads of historywho is remembered not for his name, but for the revolutionary deedsthat stand in his place. Both a scientist and a freethinkingtheologian, Servetus is credited with the discovery of pulmonarycirculation in the human body as well as the authorship of apolemical masterpiece that cost him his life. The ChrisitianismiRestituto, a heretical work of biblical scholarship, written in1553, aimed to refute the orthodox Christianity that Servetus' oldcolleague, John Calvin, supported. After the book spread throughthe ranks of Protestant hierarchy, Servetus was tried andagonizingly burned at the stake, the last known copy of theRestitutio chained to his leg. Servetus's execution is significant because it marked a turningpoint in the quest for freedom of expression, due largely to thedevelopment of the printing press and the proliferation of books inRenaissance Europe. Three copies of the Restitutio managed tosurvive the burning, despite every effo

MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING. --The New York Times Book Review "MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination throughthe flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notablyby Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. Butneither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literaryimagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . .Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy'sdeath but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one thatremains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lackof resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-lifethan any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . VintageMailer." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us ourclearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages youare utterly absorbed." --Detroit Free Press "MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . .EXTREMELY LUCI

From the moment it was first published in The New Yorker, thisbrilliant work of literary criticism aroused great attention. JanetMalcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend ofSylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plathbiographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.

A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, AllSouls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie,the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration ofwhite poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemesand busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewncharacters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing singlemother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children.Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community's code of silence,MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but movinghonesty.

Shortly after arriving on Cape Cod to spend a year by herself,Joan Anderson’s chance encounter with a wise, playful, andastonishing woman helped her usher in the transformations andself-discoveries that led to her ongoing renewal. First glimpsed asa slender figure on a fogged-in beach, Joan Erikson was not only afriend and confidante when one was most needed, but also a guide asAnderson stretched and grew into her unfinished self. Joan Erikson was perhaps best known for her collaboration withher husband, Erik, a pioneering psychoanalyst and noted author.After Erik’s death, she wrote several books extending their theoryof the stages of life to reflect her understanding of aging as sheneared ninety-five. But her wisdom was best taught through theirfriendship; as she sat with Anderson, weaving tapestries of theirlives with brightly colored yarn while exploring the strengthgathered from their accumulated experiences, Joan Erikson’s lessonstook shape on their small cardboard looms as well as in

No writer alive today exerts the magical appeal of GabrielGarcía Márquez. Now, in the long-awaited first volume of hisautobiography, he tells the story of his life from his birth in1927 to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to his wife. Theresult is as spectacular as his finest fiction. Here is García Márquez’s shimmering evocation of his childhoodhome of Aracataca, the basis of the fictional Macondo. Here are themembers of his ebulliently eccentric family. Here are the forcesthat turned him into a writer. Warm, revealing, abounding in imagesso vivid that we seem to be remembering them ourselves, Living toTell the Tale is a work of enchantment.

Although his popularity is eclipsed by Rembrandt today, PeterPaul Rubens was revered by his contemporaries as the greatestpainter of his era, if not of all history. His undeniableartistic genius, bolstered by a modest disposition and a reputationas a man of tact and discretion, made him a favorite among monarchsand political leaders across Europe—and gave him the perfect coverfor the clandestine activities that shaped the landscape ofseventeenth-century politics. In Master of Shadows, Mark Lamster brilliantly recreates theculture, religious conflicts, and political intrigues of Rubens’stime, following the painter from Antwerp to London, Madrid, Paris,and Rome and providing an insightful exploration of Rubens’s art aswell as the private passions that influenced it.