Michael J. Neufeld, curator and space historian at theSmithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, delivers a brilliantlynuanced biography of Wernher von Braun. Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathersof the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source ofconsistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as awar criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whoseintelligence and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, somewould say, blinding ambition. Based on new sources, Neufeld'sbiography delivers a meticulously researched and authoritativeportrait of the creator of the V-2 rocket and his times, detailinghow he was a man caught between morality and progress, between hisdreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.

In Listening to Whales, Alexandra Morton shares spellbindingstories about her career in whale and dolphin research and what shehas learned from and about these magnificent mammals. In the late1970s, while working at Marineland in California, Alexandrapioneered the recording of orca sounds by dropping a hydrophoneinto the tank of two killer whales. She recorded the variedlanguage of mating, childbirth, and even grief after the birth of astillborn calf. At the same time she made the startling observationthat the whales were inventing wonderful synchronized movements, abehavior that was soon recognized as a defining characteristic oforca society. In 1984, Alexandra moved to a remote bay in British Columbia tocontinue her research with wild orcas. Her recordings of the whaleshave led her to a deeper understanding of the mystery of whaleecholocation, the vocal communication that enables the mammals tofind their way in the dark sea. A fascinating study of the profoundcommunion between humans and whales

What happens when a coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking,steak-eating twenty-five-year-old atheist decides it is time to getin touch with her spiritual side? Not what you’d expect… When Suzanne Morrison decides to travel to Bali for a two-monthyoga retreat, she wants nothing more than to be transformed from atwenty-five-year-old with a crippling fear of death into herenchanting yoga teacher, Indra—a woman who seems to have found itall: love, self, and God. But things don’t go quite as expected. Once in Bali, she finds thather beloved yoga teacher and all of her yogamates wake up everymorning to drink a large, steaming mug…of their own urine. Sugar isa mortal sin. Spirits inhabit kitchen appliances. And the more shetries to find her higher self, the more she faces her cynical,egomaniacal, cigarette-, wine-, and chocolate-craving lowerself. Yoga Bitch chronicles Suzanne’s hilarious adventures andmisadventures as an aspiring yogi who might be just a bit tooskeptical to drink the Kool-Aid. But along th

Helen Keller' striumph over her blindness and deafness hasbecome one of the most inspiring stories of our time. Here, in abook first published when she was young woman, is Helen Keller'sown story- complex, poignant, and filled with love.

Fidel Castro is perhaps the most charismatic and controversialhead of state in modern times. A dictatorial pariah to some, he hasbecome a hero and inspiration for many of the world's poor,defiantly charting an independent and revolutionary path for Cubaover nearly half a century. Numerous attempts have been made to get Castro to tell his ownstory. But only now, in the twilight of his years, has he beenprepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for theworld to read. This book is nothing less than his living testament.As he told reporters, his desire to finish checking its text wasthe one thing that kept him going through his recent illness. Hepresented a copy of the book in its Spanish edition to his compadrePresident Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle thatspans the harshness of his elementary school teachers; the earlyfailures of the revolution; his intense comradeship with CheGuevara and their astonishing, against-all-odds victory over thedic

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the secondcentury A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world byone of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In whatis by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch revealsthe character and personality of his subjects and how they ledultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full ofdetail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus andTheseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many morepowerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome. The present translation, originally published in 1683 inconjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes andpreface are also included in this edition.

A majestic literary biography, a truly new, surprisingly freshportrait. -- Newsday A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice National Book Critics Circle Award finalist A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. .. . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh." --The Philadelphia Inquirer While Virginia Woolf--one of our century's most brilliant andmercurial writers--has had no shortage of biographers, none hasseemed as naturally suited to the task as Hermione Lee. Subscribingto Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness ofidentity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude ofperspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer andthe woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictionsintact. Such issues as sexual abuse, mental illness, and suicideare brought into balance with the immensity of her literaryachievement, her heroic commitment to her work, her generosity andwit, and her sanity and strength. It

The epic life and times of one of the most important politicalfigures in our history. He was the Great Compromiser, a canny and colorful legislator andleader whose life mirrors the story of America from its foundinguntil the eve of the Civil War. Speaker of the House, senator,secretary of state, five-time presidential candidate, and idol tothe young Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay is captured in full at lastin this rich and sweeping biography that vividly portrays all thedrama of his times. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler present Clay in his earlyyears as a precocious, witty, and optimistic Virginia boy, raisedon a farm, who at the age of twenty transformed himself frombumpkin to attorney—a shrewd and sincere defender of the ordinaryman who would be his eventual political base. The authors revealClay’s tumultuous career in Washington, one that transformed thecapital and the country. Nicknamed “the Western Star,” Clay becamethe youngest Speaker of the House shortly before the War of 1812and tran

The first dual biography of two of the world’s most remarkablewomen—Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots—by one ofBritain’s “best biographers” ( The Sunday Times ). In a rich and riveting narrative, Jane Dunn reveals theextraordinary rivalry between the regal cousins. It is the story oftwo queens ruling on one island, each with a claim to the throne ofEngland, each embodying dramatically opposing qualities ofcharacter, ideals of womanliness (and views of sexuality) anddivinely ordained kingship. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they weredeplored for their femaleness, compared unfavorably with each otherand courted by the same men. By placing their dynamic andever-changing relationship at the center of the book, Dunnilluminates their differences. Elizabeth, inheriting a weak,divided country coveted by all the Catholic monarchs of Europe, isrevolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone and inspired in heruse of celibacy as a political tool—yet also possessed of

In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. Translated by Randolf Hogan.

In this extraordinary memoir, one of the best young writers inAmerica today transforms into a work of art the darkest passageimaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affairbetween father and daughter that began when Kathryn Harrison,twenty years old, was reunited with a parent whose absence hadhaunted her youth. Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifyingdream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power andbeauty of its creation. A story both of taboo and of familycomplicity in breaking taboo, The Kiss is also about love -- aboutthe most primal of love triangles, the one that ensnares a childbetween mother and father. From the Hardcover edition.

Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insularNew Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by hermother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hidingher before they finally banish her altogether. After giving herbaby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the MiddleEast, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally herblood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life thatencircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one,her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in grittypoverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Theirreunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall'sparents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offersthem her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in whichloss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion intowisdom.

When the first Superman movie came out I was frequently asked'What is a hero?' I remember the glib response I repeated somany times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commitsa courageous action without considering the consequences--a soldierwho crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy tosafety. And I also meant individuals who are slightly largerthan life: Houdini and Lindbergh, John Wayne, JFK, and JoeDiMaggio. Now my definition is completely different. Ithink a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength topersevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles: afifteen-year-old boy who landed on his head while wrestling withhis brother, leaving him barely able to swallow or speak; TravisRoy, paralyzed in the first thirty seconds of a hockey game in hisfreshman year at college. These are real heroes, and so arethe families and friends who have stood by them." The whole world held its breath when Christopher Reeve struggledfor life on Memorial Day, 1995. On the

Saucerful of Secrets is the first in-depth biography of thisvery private group. At the heart of the saga is Syd Barrett, thegroup's brilliant founder, whose public decline into shatteredincoherence--attributable in part to his marathon use of LSD--isone of the tragedies of rock history. The making of Dark Side ofthe Moon and Floyd's other great albums is recounted in detail, asare the mounting of "The Wall"? ? and the creation of the flyingpigs, crashing? ? planes, "Mr. Screen" and the other elements oftheir spectacular stage shows. The book also explores the manybattles between bass player/song writer Roger Waters and the restof the group, leading up to Water's acrimonious departure for asolo? ? career in 1984 and his unsuccessful attempt to disolve thegroup he had left behind. Saucerful of Secrets is an electrifying account of thisground-breaking, mind-bending group, covering every period of theircareer from? ? earliest days to latest recordings. It is full of? ?revealing information that will

Here is the enlightening memoir of the industrialist as famousfor his philanthropy as for his fortune.

Universally known and admired as a peacemaker, DagHammarskj?ld concealed a remarkable intense inner life which herecorded over several decades in this journal of poems andspiritual meditations, left to be published after his death. Adramatic account of spiritual struggle, Markings has inspiredhundreds of thousands of readers since it was first published in1964. Markings is distinctive, as W.H. Auden remarks in hisforeword, as a record of "the attempt by a professional man ofaction to unite in one life the via activa and the viacontemplativa." It reflects its author's efforts to live his creed,his belief that all men are equally the children of God and thatfaith and love require of him a life of selfless service to others.For Hammarskj?ld, "the road to holiness necessarily passes throughthe world of action." Markings is not only a fascinating glimpse ofthe mind of a great man, but also a moving spiritual classic thathas left its mark on generations of readers.

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

Christopher (Kit) Lukas’s mother committed suicide when hewas a boy. He and his brother, Tony, were not told how she died. Noone spoke of the family’s history of depression and bipolardisorder. The brothers grew up to achieve remarkable success; Tonyas a gifted journalist (and author of the classic book, CommonGround ), Kit as an accomplished television producer anddirector. After suffering bouts of depression, Kit was able toconfront his family’s troubled past, but Tony never seemed to findthe contentment Kit had attained–he killed himself in 1997. Writtenwith heartrending honesty, Blue Genes captures thedevastation of this family legacy of depression and details thestrength and hope that can provide a way of escaping itsgrasp.

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.

The first complete, unvarnished history of Southern rock’slegendary and most popular band, from its members’ hardscrabbleboyhoods in Jacksonville, Florida and their rise to worldwide fameto the tragic plane crash that killed the founder and the band’srise again from the ashes. In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie VanZant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band toplay covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds and thecountry and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming theirband after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee SeniorHigh School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiringmusicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties,and bars throughout the South. During the next decade LynyrdSkynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commerciallysuccessful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since theAllman Brothers. Their hits “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama”became classics. The

A gathering ofbrilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of thetwentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles. Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, thesetexts tell the story of the various farces that developed aroundthe literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime.Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize,or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptanceceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted inscandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s FederalChamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received thatone, he said, in recognition of the great example he set forshopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with theprizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of thenew-house and luxury-car variety. Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic,sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the w