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.
Born into a theatrical family, Chaplin's father died of drinkwhile his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from boutsof insanity, Chaplin embarked on a film-making career which won himimmeasurable success, as well as intense controversy. Hisextraordinary autobiography was first published in 1964 and waswritten almost entirely without reference to documentation - simplyas an astonishing feat of memory by a 75 year old man. It is anincomparably vivid reconstruction of a poor London childhood, themusic hall and then his prodigious life in the movies.
With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, thelyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decadeshe lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances hewanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that noone before him had ever done. Now, at last, the man himself tellsus the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life.Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records as achild in post-war Kent. Learning guitar and forming a band withMick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones' first fame andsuccess as a bad-boy band. The notorious Redlands drug bust andsubsequent series of confrontations with a nervous establishmentthat led to his enduring image as outlaw and folk hero. Creatingimmortal riffs such as the ones in 'Jumping Jack Flash' and 'StreetFighting Man' and 'Honky Tonk Women'. Falling in love with AnitaPallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France,wildfire tours of the US, 'Exile on Main Street' and 'So
The outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatestscientific minds and a legendary American original. In thisphenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicistRichard P. Feynman recounts in his inimitable voice his adventurestrading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas ongambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador,accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums and much else of aneyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. A New York Times bestseller; more than 500,000 copies sold.
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
"This man will either go insane or leave us all far behind," prophesied the great Impressionist Camille Pissarro. The man was Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), a vicar's son born at Groot-Zundert near Breda in Holland, who at that time was struggling to find buyers for his paintings. Van Gogh did indeed go at least to the brink of insanity. And he has long been recognised as one of the greatest modern artists.Van Gogh, who followed a variety of professions before becoming an artist, was a solitary, despairing and self-destructive man his whole life long. His truest friend was his brother Theo, who supported him unstintingly throughout and followed him to the grave just six months later.This richly illustrated study by two experts on van Gogh follows the artist from the early gloom-laden paintings in which he captured the misery of peasants and workers in his home parts, through the bright and colourful paintings he did in Paris, to the work of his final years under a southern sun in Arles, where he at last found
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.
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.
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau burst unexpectedly ontothe eighteenth-century literary scene as a provocateur whose workselectrified readers. An autodidact who had not written anything ofsignificance by age thirty, Rousseau seemed an unlikely candidateto become one of the most influential thinkers in history. Yet thepower of his ideas is felt to this day in our political and sociallives. In a masterly and definitive biography, Leo Damrosch traces theextraordinary life of Rousseau with novelistic verve. He presentsRousseau's books -- The Social Contract, one of the greatest workson political theory; Emile, a groundbreaking treatise on education;and the Confessions, which created the genre of introspectiveautobiography -- as works uncannily alive and provocative eventoday. Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a vivid portrait of thevisionary’s tumultuous life.
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".
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
The only thing the writers in this book have in common is thatthey've exchanged sex for money. They're PhDs and dropouts, soccermoms and jailbirds, $2,500-a-night call girls and $10 crack hos,and everything in between. This anthology lends a voice to anunderrepresented population that is simultaneously reviled andworshipped. Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is a collection of shortmemoirs, rants, confessions, nightmares, journalism, and poetrycovering life, love, work, family, and yes, sex. The editors gatherpieces from the world of industrial sex, including contributionsfrom art-porn priestess Dr. Annie Sprinkle, best-selling memoiristDavid Henry Sterry (Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man forRent), sex activist and musical diva Candye Kane, women and menright off the streets, girls participating in the first-everNational Summit of Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth, and RuthMorgan Thomas, one of the organizers of the European Sex Work,Human Rights, and Migration Conference. Se
Far more than a superb memoir about the highest levels ofprofessional tennis, Open is the engrossing story of a remarkablelife. Andre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left thecrib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demandingfather, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of hiseight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game’shighest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography,off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by hisgreat achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writescandidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationshipwith fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest inphilanthropy, and—described in haunting, point-by-point detail—thehighs and lows of his celebrated career.
When Newton was not yet twenty-five years old, he formulatedcalculus, hit upon the idea of gravity, and discovered that whitelight was made up of all the colors of the spectrum. By 1678,Newton designed a telescope to study the movement of the planetsand published Principia, a milestone in the history of science,which set forth his famous laws of motion and universalgravitation. Newton’s long-time research on calculus, finally madepublic in 1704, triggered a heated controversy as Europeanscientists accused him of plagiarizing the work of the Germanscientist Gottfried Leibniz. In this third volume in the acclaimed Ackroyd’s Brief Livesseries, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd provides an engagingportrait of Isaac Newton, illuminating what we think we know abouthim and describing his seminal contributions to science andmathematics. A man of wide and eclectic interests, Newton blurred theborders between natural philosophy and speculation: he was aspassionate about astrology as astronomy an
An instinctive and magnificent storyteller, Somerset Maughamwas one of the most popular and successful writers of his time. Hepublished seventy-eight books -- including the undisputed classicsOf Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge -- which sold over 40 millioncopies in his lifetime. Born in Paris to sophisticated parents, Willie Maugham wasorphaned at the age of ten and brought up in a small Englishcoastal town by narrow-minded relatives. He was trained as adoctor, but never practiced medicine. His novel Ashenden, based onhis own espionage for Britain in World War I, influenced writersfrom Eric Ambler to John le Carr?. After a failed affair with anactress, he married another man’s mistress, but reserved hisgreatest love for a man who shared his life for nearly thirtyyears. He traveled the world and spoke several languages. Despite adebilitating stutter, and an acerbic and formal manner, heentertained literary celebrities and royalty at his villa in thesouth of France. He made a fortune from hi
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.
first victims were a teenage couple, stalked and shot dead in a lovers' lane. After another slaying, he sent his first mocking note to authorities, promising he would kill more. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed thirty-seve dead. The rea toll may have reached fifty. "A chilling, real-life detective story." -Savannah News-Press Robert Graysmith was on staff at the San Francisco Chror micle in 1968 when Zodiac first struck, triggering in the resolute reporter an unrelenting obsession with seeing the hooded killer broughtto justice. In this gripping account Zodiac's eleven-month reign of terror, Graysmith reveals hur dreds of facts previously unreleased, including the complete text of the killer's letters.
