Theodore Rex is the story—never fully toldbefore—of Theodore Roosevelt’s two world-changing terms asPresident of the United States. A hundred years before thecatastrophe of September 11, 2001, “TR” succeeded to power in theaftermath of an act of terrorism. Youngest of all our chiefexecutives, he rallied a stricken nation with his superhumanenergy, charm, and political skills. He proceeded to combat theproblems of race and labor relations and trust control while makingthe Panama Canal possible and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Buthis most historic achievement remains his creation of a nationalconservation policy, and his monument millions of acres ofprotected parks and forest. Theodore Rex ends with TRleaving office, still only fifty years old, his future reputationsecure as one of our greatest presidents.

“I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at thelast moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling — quiteliterally a dead man walking — into camp and the shaky start of myreturn to life....” In 1996 Beck Weathers and a climbing team pushed toward the summitof Mount Everest. Then a storm exploded on the mountain, rippingthe team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl fortheir lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying,and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred. Weathers appeared,blinded, gloveless, caked with ice — coming down the mountain as a“dead man walking.” In this powerful memoir, Weather describes not only his escape fromhypothermia and the murderous storm that killed nine climbers; hedescribes another journey, a life’s journey. This is the story of aman’s route to a dangerous sport and a fateful expedition, as wellas the road of recovery he has traveled since. In Left for Dead , we are witness to survival in the face ofce

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.

Filled with keen observations,autobiographical notes, and the seeds of many of Maugham's greatestworks, A Writer's Notebook is a unique and exhilarating lookinto a great writer's mind at work. From nearly five decades, Somerset Maugham recorded anintimate journal. In it we see the budding of his incomparablevision and his remarkable career as a writer. Covering the yearsfrom his time as a youthful medical student in London to a seasonedworld traveler around the world, it is playful, sharp witted, andalways revealing. Undoubtedly one of his most significant works, A Writer's Notebook is a must for Maugham fans and anyoneinterested in the creative process.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," TheRise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatestbiographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of TheodoreRoosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversaryof Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.

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

I was eleven, no more, when the wish came to me to be awriter; and then very soon it was a settled ambition. But for theyoung V. S. Naipaul, there was a great distance between the wishand its fulfillment. To become a writer, he would have to find waysof understanding three very different cultures: his family'shalf-remembered Indian homeland, the West Indian colonial societyin which he grew up, and the wholly foreign world of the Englishnovels he read. In this essay of literary autobiography, V. S. Naipaul siftsthrough memories of his childhood in Trinidad, his university daysin England, and his earliest attempts at writing, seeking theexperiences of life and reading that shaped his imagination and hisgrowth as a writer. He pays particular attention to the traumas ofIndia under its various conquerors and the painful sense ofdereliction and loss that shadows writers' attempts to capture thecountry and its people in prose. Naipaul's profound reflections on the relations betweenpersonal or hi

Historically acknowledged as one of America's most powerfulorators, Washington challenged racial prejudice when such behaviorfrom a black man was unheard of. Here is the dramatic,autobiographical account of how he stood fast against the socialand ideological bias prevalent in his day.

In Going Within, MacLaine asks tough questions of and givesgood advice to the spiritual seeker. She has suffered, felt sorrowand anger, stress, fear, and anxiety, yet she has never allowedherself to be defined by her negative emotions. Instead she asks,"If we are not in harmony with ourselves, how can we possibly be inharmony with anyone else, much less the world that we inhabit?"MacLaine celebrates the independence that comes with therecognition of all emotions, both negative and positive. MacLainehas created many memorable roles as an actress but ironicallyyounger adults may be more familiar with her work as a memoiristand spiritual seeker. In Out on a Limb, MacLaine reveals an intenseand secretive loving relationship with a prominent politician,which sparked her quest for self-discovery. Fans of the actress'searlier works will be aware of her love of the journey. Herde*ions of her travels from Stockholm to Hawaii to Peru willstimulate even the most sedate armchair traveler wanting to seemore of the

Translated by Audie E. Bock. "A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that acomplete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtainedwithout reading this book.... Also indispensable for buddingdirectors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefson the primacy of a good *, on *writing as an essentialtool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, andon the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novelsto detective fiction." -- Variety "For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of mustreading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic andabsorbing screen entertainments." -- Washington Post Book World

Jimmy Stewart’s all-American good looks, boyish charm, anddeceptively easygoing style of acting made him one of Hollywood’sgreatest and most enduring stars. Despite the indelible image heprojected of innocence and quiet self-assurance, Stewart’s life wasmore complex and sophisticated than most of the characters heplayed. With fresh insight and unprecedented access, bestsellingbiographer Marc Eliot finally tells the previously untold story ofone of our greatest screen and real-life heroes. Born into a family of high military honor and economic successdominated by a powerful father, Stewart developed an interest intheater while attending Princeton University. Upon graduation, heroomed with the then-unknown Henry Fonda, and the two began afriendship that lasted a lifetime. While he harbored a secretunrequited love for Margaret Sullavan, Stewart was paired with manyof Hollywood’s most famous, most beautiful, and most alluringleading ladies during his extended bachelorhood, among them GingerRogers, Olivi

Prize-winning biographer Robert D. Richardson has written thedefinitive biography of the fascinating William James, whose lifeand writing put an indelible stamp on psychology, philosophy,teaching, and religion—and on modernism itself. A pivotal member ofthe Metaphysical Club, author of The Varieties of ReligiousExperience, and older brother of extraordinary siblings Henry andAlice, William emerges here as an immensely complex man.Richardson’s thought-provoking and utterly moving work, ten yearsin the making, draws on a vast number of unpublished letters,journals, and family records. Through impassioned scholarship,Richardson illuminates James’s hugely influential works: TheVarieties, Principles of Psychology, Talks to Teachers, andPragmatism. Finally, brought richly to life through Richardson’sbrilliant insights, James is given his due as a man whose influenceresonates in innumerable areas of modern life.

Here is the most important autobiography from RenaissanceItaly and one of the most spirited and colorful from any time orplace, in a translation widely recognized as the most faithful tothe energy and spirit of the original. Benvenuto Cellini was both a beloved artist in sixteenth-centuryFlorence and a passionate and temperamental man of action who wascapable of brawling, theft, and murder. He counted popes,cardinals, kings, and dukes among his patrons and was the adoringfriend of—as he described them—the “divine” Michelangelo and the“marvelous” Titian, but was as well known for his violent feuds. Atage twenty-seven he helped defend the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome,and his account of his imprisonment there (under a mad castellanwho thought he was a bat), his escape, recapture, and confinementin “a cell of tarantulas and venomous worms” is an adventure equalto any other in fact or fiction. But it is only one in a long lifelived on a grand scale. Cellini’s autobiography is n

A bestseller since 1880... The classic saga of the Roman Empire From a thrilling sea battle to its famouschariot race to the agony of the Crucifixion, this is the epic taleof a prince who became a slave and by a twist of fate and his ownskill-won a chance at freedom.

A wild, lyrical, and anguished autobiography, in which CharlesMingus pays short shrift to the facts but plunges to the verybottom of his psyche, coming up for air only when it pleases him.He takes the reader through his childhood in Watts, his musicaleducation by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, andCharlie Parker, and his prodigious appetites--intellectual,culinary, and sexual. The book is a jumble, but a glorious one, bya certified American genius.

At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed upwith the Hudson's Bay Company -- the company of GentlemanAdventurers -- and ended up at an isolated trading post in theCanadian Arctic, where there was no communication with the outsideworld and only one ship arrived each year. But he was not alone.The Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polarbears, build igloos, and survive ferocious winter storms. Helearned their language and became completely immersed in theirculture, earning the name Issumatak, meaning “he who thinks.” In The Last Gentleman Adventurer, Edward Beauclerk Mauricerelates his story of coming of age in the Arctic and transports thereader to a time and a way of life now lost forever.

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.

Neil Young is one of rock and roll’s most important andenigmatic figures, a legend from the sixties who is still hugelyinfluential today. He has never granted a writer access to hisinner life – until now. Based on six years of interviews with morethan three hundred of Young’s associates, and on more than fiftyhours of interviews with Young himself, Shakey is a fascinating,prodigious account of the singer’s life and career. Jimmy McDonoughfollows Young from his childhood in Canada to his cofounding ofBuffalo Springfield to the huge success of Crosby, Stills, Nash andYoung to his comeback in the nineties. Filled withnever-before-published words directly from the artist himself,Shakey is an essential addition to the top shelf of rockbiographies.

In The Perfect Hour, biographer James L. W. West III reveals thenever-before told story of the romance between F. Scott Fitzgeraldand his first love, Ginevra King. They met in January 1915, whenScott was nineteen, a Princeton student, and sixteen-year-oldGinevra, socially poised and confident, was a sophomore at WestoverSchool. Their romance flourished in heartfelt letters and quicklyran its course–but Scott never forgot it. Ginevra became theinspiration for Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise and themodel for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Scott also wroteshort stories inspired by her–including “Babes in the Woods” and“Winter Dreams,” which, along with Ginevra’s own story featuringScott are reprinted in this volume. With access to Ginevra’spersonal diary, love letters, photographs, and Scott’s ownscrapbook, West tells the beguiling story of youthful passion thatshaped Scott Fitzgerald’s life as a writer. For Scott and Ginevra, “the perfect hour” was private code for afleeti

He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widelyread authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the mostfamous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own truestory has never been fully told. At last, the fascinating truth isrevealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer SelinaHastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personalcorrespondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his onlychild, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity,and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as TheRazor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage. Hastings vividly presents Maugham’s lonely childhood spentwith unloving relatives after the death of his parents, a traumathat resulted in shyness, a stammer, and for the rest of his lifean urgent need for physical tenderness. Here, too, are his adulttriumphs on the stage and page, works that allowed him a glitteringsocial life in which he befriended and sometimes fell out with suchluminaries as Do