In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of MarkTwain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant orTwain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision wouldprofoundly alter not only both their lives but the course ofAmerican literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two menbecame close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant racedagainst the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of hislife and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish hisgreatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Inthis deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writerMark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twaininspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentiallyAmerican masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careersof these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusivefortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought themtogether as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk

In an engaging book that sweeps from the Gilded Age to the1960s, award-winning author Laura Claridge presents the firstauthoritative biography of Emily Post, who changed the mindset ofmillions of Americans with Etiquette, a perennial bestseller andtouchstone of proper behavior. A daughter of high society and one of Manhattan’s mostsought-after debutantes, Emily Price married financier Edwin Post.It was a hopeful union that ended in scandalous divorce. But thetrauma forced Emily Post to become her own person. After writingnovels for fifteen years, Emily took on a different sort ofproject. When it debuted in 1922, Etiquette represented afifty-year-old woman at her wisest–and a country at its wildest.Claridge addresses the secret of Etiquette’s tremendous success andgives us a panoramic view of the culture from which it took itsshape, as its author meticulously updated her book twice a decadeto keep it consistent with America’s constantly changing sociallandscape. Now, nearly fifty years aft

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

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.

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

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.

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

Susan Loomis arrived in Paris twenty years ago with littlemore than a student loan and the contents of a suitcase to sustainher. But what began then as an apprenticeship at La Varenne Ecolede Cuisine evolved into a lifelong immersion in French cuisine andculture, culminating in permanent residency in 1994. "On Rue Tatin"chronicles her journey to an ancient little street in Louviers,one of Normandy's most picturesque towns. With lyrical prose andwry candor, Loomis recalls the miraculous restoration that she andher husband performed on the dilapidated convent they chose fortheir new residence. As its ochre and azure floor tiles emerged,challenges outside the dwelling mounted. From squatters to a surlypriest next door, along with a close-knit community wary ofoutsiders, Loomis tackled the social challenges head-on, throughpersistent dialogue-and baking. "On Rue Tatin "includes deliciousrecipes that evoke the essence of this region, such as Apple andThyme Tart, Duck Breast with Cider, and Braised Chicken i

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

A German soldier during World War II offers an inside look atthe Nazi war machine, using his wartime diaries to describe how aruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinaryGermans to carry out his monstrous schemes.

No one is better poised to write the biography of JamesHerriot than the son who worked alongside him in the Yorkshireveterinary practice when Herriot became an internationallybestselling author. Now, in this warm and poignant biography, JimWight ventures beyond his father's life as a veterinarian to revealthe man behind the stories--the private individual who refused toallow fame and wealth to interfere with his practice or his family.With access to all of his father's papers, correspondence,manu*s, and photographs--and intimate recollections of thefarmers, locals, and friends who populate the James Herriotbooks--only Jim Wight could write this definitive biography of theman who was not only his father but his best friend.

A swashbuckling Texan, a teller of tall tales, a womanizer,and a renegade, Fred Cuny spent his life in countries rent by war,famine, and natural disasters, saving many thousands of livesthrough his innovative and sometimes controversial methods ofrelief work. Cuny earned his nickname "Master of Disaster" for hisexploits in Kurdistan, Somalia, and Bosnia. But when he arrived inthe rogue Russian republic of Chechnya in the spring of 1995,raring to go and eager to put his ample funds from George Soros togood use, he found himself in the midst of an unimaginably savagewar of independence, unlike any he had ever before encountered.Shortly thereafter, he disappeared in the war-rocked highlands,never to be seen again. Who was Cuny really working for? Was he a CIA spy? Who killedhim, and why? In search of the answers, Scott Anderson traveled toChechnya on a hazardous journey that started as as a magazineassignment and ended as a personal mission. The result is agalvanizing adventure story, a chilling pic

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 the years following his and Francis Crick’s toweringdiscovery of DNA, James Watson was obsessed with finding twothings: RNA and a wife. Genes, Girls, and Gamow is the marvelouschronicle of those pursuits. Watson effortlessly glides between hisheartbreaking and sometimes hilarious debacles in the field of loveand his heady inquiries in the field of science. He also reflectswith touching candor on some of science’s other titans, from fellowNobelists Linus Pauling and the incorrigible Richard Feynman toRussian physicist George Gamow, who loved whiskey, limericks, andcard tricks as much as he did molecules and genes. What emerges isa refreshingly human portrait of a group of geniuses and a candid,often surprising account of how science is done.

He’s been imprisoned, shot at, denounced, shunned, and banned,yet Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams remains resolute in his beliefthat peace is the only viable option for the Irish people. Adamsled the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on anextraordinary journey from armed insurrection to activeparticipation in government. Now he tells the story of thetumultuous series of events that led to the historic Good FridayAgreement as only he can: with a tireless crusader’s conviction andan insider’s penetrating insight. In vivid detail, Adams describes the harrowing attack on his life,and he offers new details about the peace process. We learn ofpreviously undisclosed talks between republicans and the Britishgovernment, and of conflicts and surprising alliances between keyplayers. Adams reveals details of his discussions with the IRAleadership and tells how republicans differed, “dissidents”emerged, and the first IRA cessation of violence broke down. Herecounts meetings in the Clinton White House,

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

From the author of the national best seller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science." ( The New York Times ).

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. Cary Grant He is Hollywood s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood s quintessential leading man. Today, the man from dream city, as critic Pauline Kael once described him, remains forever young, an icon of quick wit, romantic charm, and urbane sophistication, the epitome of male physical perfection. Yet beneath this idealized movie image was a conflicted man struggling to balance fame with a desire for an intensely private life separate from the Cary Grant persona celebrated by directors and movie studios. Exploring Grant s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities as well as the magical amalgam of characteristi

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.

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.