In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a newunderstanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he hasoften been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in thisground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of thebloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicatedand significant figure. Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly dividedMisssouri, at age sixteen James became a bushwhacker, one of thesavage Confederate guerrillas that terrorized the border states.After the end of the war, James continued his campaign of robberyand murder into the brutal era of reconstruction, when his recklessdaring, his partisan pronouncements, and his alliance with thesympathetic editor John Newman Edwards placed him squarely at theforefront of the former Confederates’ bid to recapture politicalpower. With meticulous research and vivid accounts of the dramaticadventures of the famous gunman, T. J. Stiles shows how heresembles not the apolitical hero o

The Outsider is an unsentimental yet profoundly moving look atone family’s experience with mental illness. In 1978, CharlesLachenmeyer was a happily married professor of sociology who livedin the New York suburbs with his wife and nine-year-old son,Nathaniel. But within a few short years, schizophrenia–adevastating mental illness with no known cure–would cost himeverything: his sanity, his career, his family, even the roof overhis head. Upon learning of his father’s death in 1995, Nathanielset out to search for the truth behind his father’s haunted,solitary existence. Rich in imagery and poignant symbolism, TheOutsider is a beautifully written memoir of a father’s struggle tosurvive with dignity, and a son’s struggle to know the father helost to schizophrenia long before he finally lost him todeath. The Outsider is a recipient of the Kenneth Johnson MemorialResearch Library Book Award and is the winner of the 2000 Bell ofHope Award, presented annually by the Mental Health Associatio

She was the first woman to inherit the throneof England, a key player in one of Britain’s stormiest eras, and aleader whose unwavering faith and swift retribution earned her thenickname “Bloody Mary.” Now, in this impassioned and absorbingdebut, historian Anna Whitelock offers a modern perspective on MaryTudor and sets the record straight once and for all on one ofhistory’s most compelling and maligned rulers. Though often overshadowed by her long-reigning sister, ElizabethI, Mary lived a life full of defiance, despair, and triumph. Bornthe daughter of the notorious King Henry VIII and the SpanishKatherine of Aragon, young Mary was a princess in every sense ofthe word—schooled in regal customs, educated by the best scholars,coveted by European royalty, and betrothed before she had reachedthe age of three. Yet in a decade’s time, in the wake of KingHenry’s break with the pope, she was declared a bastard,disinherited, and demoted from “princess” to “lady.” Ever herdeeply devout

First U.S. Publication A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of SylviaPlath, published in their entirety for the first time. Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in aheavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes.This new edition is an exact and complete tran*ion of thediaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixtypercent of the book is material that has never before been madepublic, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personaland literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both herfrequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down herdemons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essentialreading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's lifeand work. First U.S. Publication A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of SylviaPlath, published in their entirety for the first time. Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in aheavily abridged ve

In her acclaimed collections Happy Family and Music Minus One,Jane Shore traced her life from childhood to coming of age toparenthood. Now, in A Yes-or-No Answer, Shore etches thepersistence of the past in a life that has moved into a mature newphase as a member of the baby boom generation. Recalling her Jewishchildhood in New Jersey, living in the apartment above the family'sclothing store, Shore lovingly imagines her parents, now gone,reunited with relatives over a Scrabble board in the afterlife. Thepoet's teenage daughter sorts through the "vintage" clothes of hermother's own hippie days. Cherished items left behind -- an addressbook, a piano, an easy chair, a favorite doll -- continue to hauntthe living. The poems in A Yes-or-No Answer dignify memory throughprecise detail, with a voice that will resonate for a generation ata crossroads.

Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A.Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have takenit upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their ownlabel or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr.,offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man ofintegrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whosemoral compass holds the key to understanding his life. Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln LegalPapers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs,White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, andmoral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave atrail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper andfiling them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; acountry lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his ownthinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-oncommander in chief who, as soldiers a

Based on three years of research and reporting as well as 850interviews with sources, many of whom have never before spoken forpublication, Oprah is the first comprehensive biography ofone of the most influential, powerful, and admired public figuresof our time, by the most widely read biographer of our era. Anyonewho is a fan of Oprah Winfrey or who has followed her extraordinarylife and career will be fascinated and newly informed by theclosely observed, detailed, and well-rounded portrait of herprovided by Kitty Kelley’s exhaustively researched book. Readerswill come away with a greater appreciation of who Oprah really isbeyond her public persona and a fuller understanding of herimportant place in American cultural history.

“I had prepared a life plan that included ten years ofwandering, later years studying medicine. . . . All that's in thepast, the only thing that's clear is that the ten years ofwandering might grow longer . . . but it will now be of an entirelydifferent type from the one I dreamed of, and when I arrive in anew country it will not be to go to museums and look at ruins,because that still interests me, but also to join the struggle ofthe people.” – Che Guevara, in a letter to his mother, 1956 Assembled from two separate books written by Che's father, this isa vivid and intimate account of the formative years of an icon.Ernesto Guevara Lynch describes the people and personal events thatshaped the development of his son's revolutionary worldview, fromhis childhood in a bourgeois Argentinian home to the moment hejoined Castro to train for the invasion of Cuba in 1956. It alsoincludes, available for the first time in the United States, Che'sdiary of his trip around Northern Argentina in 1950. YoungChe is

In My Hands began as one non-Jew’s challenge toany who would deny the Holocaust. Much like The Diary of AnneFrank , it has become a profound document of anindividual’s heroism in the face of the greatest evil mankind hasknown. In the fall of 1939 the Nazis invaded Irene Gut’s beloved Poland,ending her training as a nurse and thrusting the sixteen-year-oldCatholic girl into a world of degradation that somehow gave her thestrength to accomplish what amounted to miracles. Forced into theservice of the German army, young Irene was able, due in part toher Aryan good looks, to use her position as a servant in anofficers’ club to steal food and supplies (and even informationoverheard at the officers’ tables) for the Jews in the ghetto. Shesmuggled Jews out of the work camps, ultimately hiding a dozenpeople in the home of a Nazi major for whom she washousekeeper. An important addition to the literature of human survival andheroism, In My Hands is further proof of why, in spite ofeverything, we mus

She died mysteriously before she was forty. Yet in the lastdecade of her life Amelia Earhart soared from obscurity to fame asthe best-known female aviator in the world. She set record afterrecord—among them, the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman,a flight that launched Earhart on a double career as a fighter forwomen's rights and a tireless crusader for commercial air travel.Doris L. Rich's exhaustively researched biography downplays the“What Happened to Amelia Earhart?” myth by disclosing who AmeliaEarhart really was: a woman of three centuries, born in thenineteenth, pioneering in the twentieth, and advocating ideals anddreams relevant to the twenty-first.