Edith Kermit Carow grew up in New York City in the same circlesas did Theodore Roosevelt. But only after TR's first wife died atage twenty-two did the childhood friends forge one of the mostsuccessful romantic and political partnerships in American history.Sylvia Jukes Morris's access to previously unpublished letters anddiaries brings to full life her portrait of the Roosevelts andtheir times. During her years as First Lady (1901-09), Edith KermitRoosevelt dazzled social and political Washington as hostess,confidante, and mother of six, leading her husband to remark, "Mrs.Roosevelt comes a good deal nearer my ideal than I do myself."
This funny and tender book combines three of Alice Steinbach’sgreatest passions: learning, traveling, and writing. Afterchronicling her European journey of self-discovery in WithoutReservations , this Pulitzer Prize—winning columnist for theBaltimore Sun quit her job and left home again. This time sheroamed the world, taking lessons and courses in such things asFrench cooking in Paris, Border collie training in Scotland,traditional Japanese arts in Kyoto, and architecture and art inHavana. With warmth and wit, Steinbach guides us through thepleasures and perils of discovering how to be a student again. Shealso learns the true value of this second chance at educatingherself: the opportunity to connect with and learn from the peopleshe meets along the way.
Aliens are big in America. Whether they’ve arrived via rocket,flying saucer, or plain old teleportation, they’ve been invading,infiltrating, or inspiring us for decades, and they’ve fascinatedmoviegoers and television watchers for more than fifty years. Abouthalf of us believe that aliens really exist, and millions areconvinced they’ve visited Earth. For twenty-five years, SETI has been looking forthe proof, and as the program’s senior astronomer, Seth Shostakexplains in this engrossing book, it’s entirely possible thatbefore long conclusive evidence will be found. His informative, entertaining report offers aninsider’s view of what we might realistically expect to discoverlight-years away among the stars. Neither humanoids nor monsters,says Shostak; in fact, biological intelligence is probably just aprecursor to machine beings, enormously advanced artificialsentients whose capabilities and accomplishments may have developedover billions of years and far exceed our own. As he explor
Musician, composer, producer, arranger, and pioneering entrepreneur Quincy Jones has lived large and worked for five decades alongside the superstars of music and entertainment -- including Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ray Charles, Will Smith, and dozens of others. Q is his glittering and moving life story, told with the style, passion, and no-holds-barred honesty that are his trademarks. Quincy Jones grew up poor on the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side, brushing against the law and feeling the pain of his mother’s descent into madness. But when his father moved the family west to Seattle, he took up the trumpet and was literally saved by music. A prodigy, he played backup for Billie Holiday and toured the world with the Lionel Hampton Band before leaving his teens. Soon, though, he found his true calling, inaugurating a career whose highlights have included arranging albums for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Count Basie; comp
The five interviews in this book were conducted by students in“The Art of Poetry,” a course that Harry Thomas taught for severalyears. The students’ depth of knowledge and keenness of insightinto the poets’ work is an affirmation of American education. Thepoets respond to the students with a frankness and feeling offraternity that mounts at times to a sort of communion. The poets take up a great range of matters in the interviews thenature of artistic creation, the varieties and difficulties ofpoetic translation, poetry and politics, religion, popular culture,the contemporary readership for poetry, and the experience ofliving as a poet in a country not your own. They speak withfamiliarity and enthusiasm of a number of writers, including Eliot,Joyce, Rilke, Brodsky, Pound, Ovid, Dante, Ralegh, Wordsworth,Keats, Mandelstam, and Wilde. One of the delights of reading theseinterviews is to observe the poets responding to the same matterfor instance, Seamus Heaney speaking of Robert Pinsky’s translation
As the boomer generation moves onward through the milestonesof life, 1960s nostalgia holds tremendous meaning today. Andnothing more eloquently symbolizes the counterculture era than thepeace sign. How did this simple sketch become so powerful an image?Peace: The Biography of a Symbol tells the surprising story of thesign in words and pictures, from its origins in the nucleardisarmament efforts of the late 1950s to its adoption by theantiwar movement of the 1960s, through its stint as a mass-marketedcommodity and its enduring relevance now. As the symbol’s popularity blossomed, so did an entiregeneration, and author Ken Kolsbun’s expertly selected images—fromhis own collections as well as a variety of historicalarchives—illustrate both the sign itself and the larger historythat it helped to shape. Along the way, the book recounts thecontroversy inspired by the peace symbol, bringing to light severaltrials that challenged its very existence. Drawing on exclusivearchival interviews with Ger
An absorbing biography of the great leaderwho was the bridge between ancient and modern Europe — the firstmajor study in more than twenty-five years. Charlemagne was an extraordinary figure: aningenious military strategist, a wise but ruthless leader, acunning politician, and a devout believer who ensured the survivalof Christianity in the West. He also believed himself above therules of the church, siring bastards across Europe, and coldlyordering the execution of 4,500 prisoners. Derek Wilson shows howthis complicated, fascinating man married the military might of hisarmy to the spiritual force of the Church in Rome, thereby forgingWestern Christendom. This is a remarkable portrait of Charlemagneand of the intricate political, religious, and cultural world hedominated.
Masters of Doom is the amazing true story ofthe Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and JohnRomero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popularculture. And they provoked a national controversy. More thananything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream,escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the mostnotoriously successful game franchises in history— Doom and Quake — until the games they made tore them apart. This is astory of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerfuland compassionate account of what it's like to be young, driven,and wildly creative.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Discover Jane Fonda, in her own words and now experience the story of her life in the HBO documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts.
An illuminating portrait of Anne Morrow Lindbergh--loyal wife,devoted mother, pioneering aviator, and critically acclaimed authorof the bestselling Gift from the Sea. Anne Morrow Lindbergh has been one of the most admired women andmost popular writers of our time. Her Gift from the Sea is aperennial favorite. But the woman behind the public person hasremained largely unknown. Drawing on five years of exclusiveinterviews with Anne Morrow Lindbergh as well as countless diaries,letters, and other documents, Susan Hertog now gives us the womanwhose triumphs, struggles and elegant perseverance riveted thepublic for much of the twentieth century.
“Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He wasa creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than Iam.” –from The Good Good Pig A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own amongwild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always feltmore comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladlyopened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away fromnourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inklingthat this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not onlysurvive but flourish–and she soon found herself engaged with hersmall-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible.Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler withsomething she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventuallyweighing 750 pounds) to family and home. The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all hisglory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural NewHampshire, where his boundless zest for life a
