Amusing, irreverent, sophisticated and highly accessible,Einstein for Beginners is the perfect introduction to Einstein'slife and thought. Reaching back as far as Babylon (for the origins of mathematics)and the Etruscans (who thought they could handle lightning), thisbook takes us through the revolutions in electrical communicationsand technology that made the theory of relativity possible. In theprocess, we meet scientific luminaries and personalities ofimperial Germany, as well as Galileo, Faraday, and Newton; learnwhy moving clocks run slower than stationary ones, why nothing cango faster than the speed of light; and follow Albert's thought ashe works his way toward E = mc2, the most famous equation of thetwentieth century.

In a witty and elegant autobiography thattakes up where his bestelling Palimpsest left off, thecelebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist GoreVidal reflects on his remarkable life.Writing from his desks inRavello and the Hollywood Hills, Vidal travels in memory throughthe arenas of literature, television, film, theatre, politics, andinternational society where he has cut a wide swath, recountingachievements and defeats, friends and enemies made (and sometimeslost). From encounters with, amongst others, Jack and JacquelineKennedy, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles,Johnny Carson, Francis Ford Coppola to the mournful passing of hislongtime partner, Howard Auster, Vidal always steers his narrativewith grace and flair. Entertaining, provocative, and often moving, Point to Point Navigation wonderfully captures the life ofone of twentieth-century America’s most important writers.

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.

Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Wherethe Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs gathers togetherWallace Stegner’s most important and memorable writings on theAmerican West: its landscapes, diverse history, and shiftingidentity; its beauty, fragility, and power. With subjects rangingfrom the writer’s own “migrant childhood” to the need to protectwhat remains of the great western wilderness (which Stegner dubs“the geography of hope”) to poignant profiles of western writerssuch as John Steinbeck and Norman Maclean, this collection is ariveting testament to the power of place. At the same time itcommunicates vividly the sensibility and range of this most giftedof American writers, historians, and environmentalists.

Helen Keller' striumph over her blindness and deafness hasbecome one of the most inspiring stories of our time. Here, in abook first published when she was young woman, is Helen Keller'sown story- complex, poignant, and filled with love.

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov'swritings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic,biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories andplays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov's life and framedby an account of Malcolm's journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, andYalta. She writes of Chekhov's childhood, his relationships, histravels, his early success, and his self-imposed "exile"--alwayswith an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in hiswork. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will betransfixed by "Reading Chekhov."

When the first Superman movie came out I was frequently asked'What is a hero?' I remember the glib response I repeated somany times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commitsa courageous action without considering the consequences--a soldierwho crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy tosafety. And I also meant individuals who are slightly largerthan life: Houdini and Lindbergh, John Wayne, JFK, and JoeDiMaggio. Now my definition is completely different. Ithink a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength topersevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles: afifteen-year-old boy who landed on his head while wrestling withhis brother, leaving him barely able to swallow or speak; TravisRoy, paralyzed in the first thirty seconds of a hockey game in hisfreshman year at college. These are real heroes, and so arethe families and friends who have stood by them." The whole world held its breath when Christopher Reeve struggledfor life on Memorial Day, 1995. On the

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

Call Me Anna is an American success story that grew out of abizarre and desperate struggle for survival. A harrowing,ultimately triumphant story told by Patty Duke herself--wife,mother, political activist, President of The Screen Actors Guild,and at last, a happy, fulfilled woman whose miracle is her ownlife. (Nonfiction)

A selection of the remarkable letters of Emily Dickinson in anelegant Pocket Poet edition. The same inimitable voice and dazzling insights that make EmilyDickinson’s poems immortal can be found in the whimsical, humorous,and often deeply moving letters she wrote to her family and friendsthroughout her life. The selection of letters presented hereprovides a fuller picture of the eccentric recluse of legend,showing how immersed in life she was: we see her tending hergarden; baking bread; marking the marriages, births, and deaths ofthose she loved; reaching out for intellectual companionship; andconfessing her personal joys and sorrows. These letters, invaluablefor the light they shed on their author, are, as well, a purepleasure to read.

“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

Paul Newman, the Oscar-winning actor with the legendary blueeyes, achieved superstar status by playing charismatic renegades,broken heroes, and winsome antiheroes in such revered films as TheHustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, TheVerdict, The Color of Money, and Nobody’s Fool. But Newman was alsoan oddity in Hollywood: the rare box-office titan who cared aboutthe craft of acting, the sexy leading man known for the stayingpower of his marriage, and the humble celebrity who madephilanthropy his calling card long before it was cool. The son of a successful entrepreneur, Newman grew up in aprosperous Cleveland suburb. Despite fears that he would fail tolive up to his father’s expectations, Newman bypassed the familysporting goods business to pursue an acting career. Afterstruggling as a theater and television actor, Newman saw his starrise in a tragic twist of fate, landing the role of boxer RockyGraziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me when James Dean was killedin a car a

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.

Dennis Rodman shoots from the lip as he talks about everythingfrom the NBA and his game, his sexuality, dating, his wild flingwith superstar Madonna, and morality. Reprint."

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history ofthe turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin'sfury and despair more deeply than any of his otherworks. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhoodthat shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scoredhis heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and MalcolmX, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to theAmerican South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

Michael Servetus is one of those hidden figureheads of historywho is remembered not for his name, but for the revolutionary deedsthat stand in his place. Both a scientist and a freethinkingtheologian, Servetus is credited with the discovery of pulmonarycirculation in the human body as well as the authorship of apolemical masterpiece that cost him his life. The ChrisitianismiRestituto, a heretical work of biblical scholarship, written in1553, aimed to refute the orthodox Christianity that Servetus' oldcolleague, John Calvin, supported. After the book spread throughthe ranks of Protestant hierarchy, Servetus was tried andagonizingly burned at the stake, the last known copy of theRestitutio chained to his leg. Servetus's execution is significant because it marked a turningpoint in the quest for freedom of expression, due largely to thedevelopment of the printing press and the proliferation of books inRenaissance Europe. Three copies of the Restitutio managed tosurvive the burning, despite every effo

Here is the book that Rolling Stone called "the first Doorsbiography that feels like it was written for the right reasons, andit is easily the most informed account of the Doors' brief butbrilliant life as a group".

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

The late tennis champion, activist, and AIDS victim remembershis experiences in the segregated South of his youth, his triumphson the court, his family and religious life, and his struggle withhis disease. Reprint. NYT.

From a distinguished historian of the America South comesthis thoroughly human portrait of the complex man at the center ofour nation's most epic struggle. Jefferson Davis initially did not wish to leave the Union-as theson of a veteran of the American Revolution and as a soldier andsenator, he considered himself a patriot. William J. Cooper showsus how Davis' initial reluctance turned into absolute commitment tothe Confederacy. He provides a thorough account of Davis' life,both as the Confederate President and in the years before and afterthe war. Elegantly written and impeccably researched, JeffersonDavis, American is the definitive examination of one of themost enigmatic figures in our nation's history.

“Number One” was a phrase my father—and, for that matter, mymother—repeated time and time again. It was a phrase spoken by myparents’ friends and by their friends’ children. Whenever adultsdiscussed the great Chinese painters and sculptors from the ancientdynasties, there was always a single artist named as Number One.There was the Number One leader of a manufacturing plant, theNumber One worker, the Number One scientist, the Number One carmechanic. In the culture of my childhood, being best waseverything. It was the goal that drove us, the motivation that gavelife meaning. And if, by chance or fate or the blessings of thegenerous universe, you were a child in whom talent was evident,Number One became your mantra. It became mine. I never begged myparents to take off the pressure. I accepted it; I even enjoyed it.It was a game, this contest among aspiring pianists, and although Imay have been shy, I was bold, even at age five, when faced with afield of rivals. Born in China to parents whose mu