They called him Neutron Jack. They called him the world's toughest boss. And then Fortune called him "The Manager of the Century." In his twenty-year career at the helm of General Electric, Jack Welch defied conventional wisdom and turned an aging behemoth of a corporation into a lean, mean engine of growth and corporate innovation. In this remarkable autobiography--now updated with a special new afterword by the author--Jack Welch takes us on the rough-and-tumble ride that has been his remarkable life. From his working-class childhood to his early days in G.E. Plastics to his life at the top of the world's most successful company, JACK is ultimately a story about people--from a man who based his career on demanding only the best from others and from himself. ... 作者简介： "JACK is about something so rarely encountered in American life today. That something is called getting it right The point of this book is to help us understand how Jack Welch got it done."--Michael M. Thomas, Financial Obse

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

ON THE WAY home from a conference, Don Piper's car was crushed by a semi that crossed into his lane. Medical personnel said he died instantly. While his body lay lifeless inside the ruins of his car, Piper experienced the glories of heaven, awed by its beauty and music. Ninety minutes after the wreck, while a minister prayed for him, Piper miraculously returned to life on earth with only the memory of inexpressible heavenly bliss. His faith in God was severely tested as he faced an uncertain and grueling recovery. Now he shares his life-changing story with you. 9o Minutes in Heaven offers a glimpse into a very real dimension of God's reality It encourages those recovering from serious injuries and those dealing with the loss of a loved one. The experience dramatically changed Piper's life,and it will change yours too. 作者简介：Don Piper has been an ordained minister since 1985 and has served in several capacities on church staffs, including six years as a senior pastor. Don has appeared on

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recountsher extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to theworld stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977,she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused onthe empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa.Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personallosses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathaicontinued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and torestore democracy to her beloved country . Infused with herunique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable story ofcourage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspiregenerations to come.

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

"Moonwalk" is the only book about his life that Michael Jackson ever wrote. It chronicles his humble beginnings in the Midwest, his early days with the Jackson 5, and his unprecedented solo success. Giving absolutely unrivalled insight into the King of Pop's life, it details his songwriting process for hits like "Beat It, Rock With You", "Billie Jean", and "We Are the World"; and describes how he developed his signature dance style, including the "Moon Walk". It also opens the door to his very private personal relationships with his family, including sister Janet, and stars like Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Marlon Brando, Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney, and Brooke Shields. At the time of its original publication in 1988, "Moonwalk" broke the fiercely guarded barrier of silence that surrounded Michael Jackson. Candidly and courageously, Jackson talks openly about his wholly exceptional career and the crushing isolation of his fame, as well as the unfair rumors that have surrounded it. "Moonwalk" is illustrated with

“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

The first book to bring together these interviews of mastermoviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars,Conversations with the Great Moviemakers offers an unmatchedhistory of American cinema in the words of its greatestpractitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra,Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned onlyfrom bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renownedproducers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters RayBradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergmanand Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation.It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, theseconversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, thewisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.

A writer renowned for his insight into the mysteries of the bodynow gives us a lambent and profoundly moving book about themysteries of family. At its center lies Sherwin Nuland’sRembrandtesque portrait of his father, Meyer Nudelman, a Jewishgarment worker who came to America in the early years of the lastcentury but remained an eternal outsider. Awkward in speech andmovement, broken by the premature deaths of a wife and child, Meyerruled his youngest son with a regime of rage, dependency, andhelpless love that outlasted his death. In evoking their relationship, Nuland also summons up the warmthand claustrophobia of a vanished immigrant New York, a world thatimpelled its children toward success yet made them feel liketraitors for leaving it behind. Full of feeling and unwaveringobservation, Lost in America deserves a place alongside suchclassics as Patrimony and Call It Sleep .

Book De*ion Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherlessand unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he wasso renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for asubject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect.During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College,Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave themnames—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes forgranted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveriesand the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible anddared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in hisgeneration. James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the mostacclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader intoNewton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanationsof the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies,rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it cant

Drawing on his unprecedented access to Grace Kelly,bestselling biographer Donald Spoto at last offers an intimate,honest, and authoritative portrait of one of Hollywood’s legendaryactresses. In just seven years–from 1950 through 1956–Grace Kelly embarkedon a whirlwind career that included roles in eleven movies. Fromthe principled Amy Fowler Kane in High Noon to the thrill-seekingFrances Stevens of To Catch a Thief, Grace established herself asone of Hollywood’s most talented actresses and iconic beauties. Herastonishing career lasted until her retirement at age twenty-six,when she withdrew from stage and screen to marry a European monarchand became a modern, working princess and mother. Based on never-before-published or quoted interviews with Graceand those conducted over many years with her friends andcolleagues–from costars James Stewart and Cary Grant to directorAlfred Hitchcock–as well as many documents disclosed by herchildren for the first time, acclaimed biographer Dona

Most 31-year olds can't boast of being the instigator of a revolution. But then again, the world's leading promoter of open source software and creator of the operating system Linux does humbly call himself an accidental revolutionary--accidental being the operative word here. Just for Fun is the quirky story of how Linus Torvalds went from being a penniless, introverted code writer in Helsinki in the early 1990s to being the unwitting (and rather less than penniless) leader of a radical shift in computer programming by the end of the decade. OK, perhaps "story" in the traditional sense of the term is stretching it a bit. This whole book is more like a series of e-mails, an exercise in textual communication for someone more used to code language than conversation: choppy sentences packed into short paragraphs, and sometimes just one-liners. The pace is fast, but the quippy tone can get somewhat tiring, though it definitely suits the portrayal of a computer-dominated life. And like an e-mail conversation

Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmentheir lives. But in 1649 Parliament was hard put to find a lawyerwith the skill and daring to prosecute a king who claimed to beabove the law. In the end, they chose the radical lawyer JohnCooke, whose Puritan conscience, political vision, and love ofcivil liberties gave him the courage to bring the king to trial. Asa result, Charles I was beheaded, but eleven years later Cookehimself was arrested, tried, and executed at the hands of CharlesII. Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned human rights lawyer, provides avivid new reading of the tumultuous Civil War years, exposinglong-hidden truths: that the king was guilty, that his executionwas necessary to establish the sovereignty of Parliament, that theregicide trials were rigged and their victims should be seen asnational heroes. Cooke’s trial of Charles I, the first trial of ahead of state for waging war on his own people, became a forerunnerof the trials of Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic

In the first in a new series of brief biographies, bestsellingauthor Peter Ackroyd brilliantly evokes the medieval world ofEngland and provides an incomparable introduction to the greatpoet’s works. Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventfullife. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, andin 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through hiswife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, whichhelped him carve out a career at Court. His posts includedController of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shirefor Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurousdiplomatic missions to France and Italy. Yet he was also indictedfor rape, sued for debt, and captured in battle. He began to write in the 1360s, and is now known as the father ofEnglish poetry. His Troilus and Criseyde is the firstexample of modern English literature, and his masterpiece, TheCanterbury Tales , the forerunner of the English novel,dominated th

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is aclassic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’soutsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in thisengaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set offthe consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to themasses, all the while lamenting the moral toll exacted byconsumerism. He believed in giving his workers a living wage,though he was entirely opposed to union labor. He had a warm andloving relationship with his wife, but sired a son with anotherwoman. A rabid anti-Semite, he nonetheless embraced AfricanAmerican workers in the era of Jim Crow. Uncovering the man behind the myth, situating his achievementsand their attendant controversies firmly within the context ofearly twentieth-century America, Watts has given us acomprehensive, illuminating, and fascinating biography of one ofAmerica’s first mass-culture celebrities.

Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling,the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest and mostversatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poewrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; inventedthe first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works ofscience fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, andthemes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism,and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today. In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies,Peter Ackroyd explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacyagainst the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimessordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s difficult childhood, hisbumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationshipswith women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin.He describes Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling andalcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections toP

Drawing on myriad sources from the Tudor era, bestsellingauthor Alison Weir provides the first book ever to examine, inunprecedented depth, the gripping story of Anne Boleyn’s finaldays. The Lady in the Tower explores the motives and intrigues ofthose who helped to seal the queen’s fate, unraveling the tragictale of Anne’s fall, from her miscarriage of the son who would havesaved her to the final, dramatic scene on the scaffold. Whatemerges is an extraordinary portrayal of a woman of great courage,tested to the extreme by the terrible plight in which she foundherself, a powerful queen whose enemies were bent on utterlydestroying her. Horrifying but captivating, The Lady in the Towerpresents the full array of evidence of Anne Boleyn’s guilt—andinnocence. Only in Alison Weir’s capable hands can readers learnthe truth about the fate of one of the most influential andfascinating figures in English history. Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and mor

Armed with a camera and a fresh cache of film and bankrolled by a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Robert Frank crisscrossed the United States during 1955 and 1956. The photographs he brought back form a portrait of the country at the time and hint at its future. He saw the hope of the future in the faces of a couple at city hall in Reno, Nevada, and the despair of the present in a grimy roofscape. He saw the roiling racial tension, glamour, and beauty, and, perhaps because Frank himself was on the road, he was particularly attuned to Americans' love for cars. Funeral-goers lean against a shiny sedan, lovers kiss on a beach blanket in front of their parked car, young boys perch in the back seat at a drive-in movie. A sports car under a drop cloth is framed by two California palm trees; on the next page, a blanket is draped over a car accident victim's body in Arizona. Robert Frank's Americans reappear 40 years after they were initially published in this exquisite volume by Scalo. Each photograph (there are

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 ).

V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of "fitting onecivilization to another." In A Writer's People , he takes usinto this process of creative and intellectual assimilation, whichhas shaped both his writing and his life. Naipaul discussesthe writers to whom he was exposed early on—Derek Walcott, GustaveFlaubert, and his father, among them—and his first encounters withliterary culture. He illuminates the ways in which the writings ofGandhi, Nehru, and other Indian writers both reveal and conceal theauthors themselves and their nation. And he brings the samescrutiny to bear on his own life: his early years in Trinidad; theempty spaces in his family history; his ever-evolving reactions tothe more complicated India he would encounter for the first time atage thirty.

Starred Review. In 1975, photographer Tannenbaum met John Lennon and Yoko Ono while covering the taping of what would be Lennon's final public performance. Tannenbaum eventually began a comfortable working relationship with Lennon and Ono as they emerged from years of seclusion to promote their album Double Fantasy, the release of which would presage Lennon's Dec. 8, 1980 murder by mere weeks. This volume collects Tannenbaum's images from that time, many never before published, providing breathtaking, borderline-voyeuristic peeks into one of rock's most enigmatic couples. Most photos here were taken in November and December 1980, including a Central Park stroll, working in the home office and an intimate, dreamlike series featuring the couple undressing and in bed in an all-white gallery exhibition space. A chapter on Lennon's death captures the despair of a city as word of the murder spread. Tannenbaum (New York in the 70s) introduces each chapter with an eloquent personal narrative, but these narrow slices

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for herfather, James Nichols, once a truly vital man, as he succumbed toAlzheimer’s disease. Beginning an intensely personal journey, sherecalls the bitter irony of watching this church historian wrestlewith his increasingly befuddled notion of time and meaning. Shedetails the struggles with doctors, her own choices, and theattempt to find a caring response to a disease whose specialcruelty is to diminish the humanity of those it strikes. Inluminous prose, Sue Miller has fashioned a compassionate inventoryof two lives, a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons anddaughters struggling to make peace with their fathers and withthemselves.

In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism,and history, The Bronté Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and AnneBronté became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputationsreflected the obsessions of various eras. When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heightshad been written by young rural spinsters, the Brontés instantlybecame as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon aftertheir deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into apicturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Eversince, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations ofreaders–Victorian, Freudian, feminist–to reinterpret them, castingthem as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics.In her bewitching “metabiography,” Lucasta Miller follows thetwists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront-mania and rescues thesethree fiercely original geniuses from the distortions oflegend.