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the mostsuccessful romantic and political partnerships in American history.Sylvia Jukes Morris's access to previously unpublished letters anddiaries brings to full life her portrait of the Roosevelts andtheir times.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.

Soon to be a major motion picture Coco Chanel and Composer Igor Stravinsky. Their love affair inspired their art. Their art defined an era. In 1913, at the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," the young couturiere Coco Chanel witnesses the birth of a musical revolution- one that, like her designs, rips down the artifice of the old regime and ushers in something profoundly modern. Seven years later, she invites Stravinsky and his family, now exiled from their Russian homeland, for a summer at her villa, and the powerful charge between them ignites into a deep love affair. As Stravinsky enjoys a new burst of creativity and Chanel brings forth her own revolutionary creation-the perfume Chanel No. 5-their love threatens to overtake work, family and life.

"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

Revered for his strength of character when Britain stood aloneagainst Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill is painted as one of WorldWar II's most heroic figures-a characterization that overshadowshis faults, which have had their own devastating legacy. This book examines the decisions and policies of Churchillbetween June 1940 and December 1941 that actually hindered theAllied cause, extended the conflict, and even destabilized severalregions that remain in chaos to this day. With profound insight into Churchill's early colonial experiencesas well as his first tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty,Christopher Catherwood offers an honest appraisal of Churchill'sstrategies in a unique and fascinating perspective that separatesthe myth from the man.

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.

“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

In this fascinating and meticulously researched book,bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of themost universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, andreveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India andthe British Empire. They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s mostglamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a piousmiddle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet ArthurHerman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined asthe twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead theirnations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and becomelocked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fates ofcountries, continents, and ultimately an empire. Here is a sweepingepic with a fascinating supporting cast, and a brilliant narrativeparable of two men whose great successes were always haunted bypersonal failure—and whose final moments of triumph wereovershadowed by the loss of what they held

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.

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.

He squared off against Caesar and was friends with youngBrutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botchedtransition from military hero to politician. He lambasted MarkAntony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his witas he was for exposing his opponents? sexual peccadilloes.Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation butalso a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Rome?s most fearedpolitician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times.Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill allstudied his example. No man has loomed larger in the politicalhistory of mankind. In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everittplunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancientRome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through hislegendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection ofunguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to lifein these pages as a witty and cunning political ope

Gies recalls how, during WW II, she, her husband and some of their coworkers sheltered her boss Otto Frank, his family and several other Jews in a secret annex of their Amsterdam office building. PW found that although Gold's retelling is "disappointing," Gies's "sincerity, humility and courage emerge . . . and will not fail to inspire." Photos. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the secondcentury A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world byone of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In whatis by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch revealsthe character and personality of his subjects and how they ledultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full ofdetail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus andTheseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many morepowerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome. The present translation, originally published in 1683 inconjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes andpreface are also included in this edition.

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prizewinning author GnterGrass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a crampedtwo-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when The TinDrum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteeredfor the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; twoyears later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS.Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering fromshrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an AmericanPOW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist andmoved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write thenovel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, therubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and theexhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onionwhichcaused great controversy when it was published in GermanyrevealsGrass at his most intimate.

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

Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson s growth a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.

IMMEDIATELY ENGROSSING . . . [A] SPLENDID MEMOIR. --The Wall Street Journal "Run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and treat yourself tothe most heartwarming, nostalgia-producing book you will have readin many a year." --Ann Landers "Entertaining . . . The story of a modest man who succeededextravagantly by remaining mostly himself. . . . His memoir is ashort course on the flow of events in the second half of thiscentury--events the world knows more about because of WalterCronkite's work." --The New York Times Book Review A MAIN SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF THE MONTH CLUB

“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

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of oneof the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamukwas born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartmentbuilding where his mother first held him in her arms. His portraitof his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory andthe melancholy–or h ü z ü n– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid theruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappyparents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking theBosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to thewriters and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape hisconsciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ BuenosAires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of placeand sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

No one is better poised to write the biography of JamesHerriot than the son who worked alongside him in the Yorkshireveterinary practice when Herriot became an internationallybestselling author. Now, in this warm and poignant biography, JimWight ventures beyond his father's life as a veterinarian to revealthe man behind the stories--the private individual who refused toallow fame and wealth to interfere with his practice or his family.With access to all of his father's papers, correspondence,manu*s, and photographs--and intimate recollections of thefarmers, locals, and friends who populate the James Herriotbooks--only Jim Wight could write this definitive biography of theman who was not only his father but his best friend.

How does he assess the information that is brought to him? Howdoes his personal or political philosophy, or a moral sense,sustain him? How does he draw inspiration from those around him?How does he deal with setbacks and disasters? In this brilliantclose-up look at Winston Churchill's leadership during the SecondWorld War, Gilbert gets to the heart of the trials and strugglesthat have confronted the world's most powerful leaders, even up tocurrent politicians such as George Bush and Tony Blair. Basing the book on his intimate knowledge of Churchill's privateand official papers, Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s officialbiographer, looks at the public figure and wartime propaganda, toreveal a very human, sensitive, and often tormented man, whonevertheless found the strength to lead his nation forward from thedarkest and most dangerous of times.

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.