“You keep fighting, okay?” I whispered. “We’re in thistogether. You and me. You’re not alone. You hear me? You are notalone. ” 5:38 p.m. It was the precise moment Sean Manning was born and thetime each year that his mother wished him happy birthday. But justbefore he turned twenty-seven, their tradition collapsed. A heartattack landed his mom in the hospital and uprooted Manning from hislife in New York. What followed was a testament to a family’sindestructible bond—a life-changing odyssey that broke a boy andmade a man—captured here in Manning’s indelible memoir.
In the years following his and Francis Crick’s toweringdiscovery of DNA, James Watson was obsessed with finding twothings: RNA and a wife. Genes, Girls, and Gamow is the marvelouschronicle of those pursuits. Watson effortlessly glides between hisheartbreaking and sometimes hilarious debacles in the field of loveand his heady inquiries in the field of science. He also reflectswith touching candor on some of science’s other titans, from fellowNobelists Linus Pauling and the incorrigible Richard Feynman toRussian physicist George Gamow, who loved whiskey, limericks, andcard tricks as much as he did molecules and genes. What emerges isa refreshingly human portrait of a group of geniuses and a candid,often surprising account of how science is done.
A PRESIDENTIAL DYNASTY. AN ARAB TERRORIST ATTACK. DEMOCRACYUNDER SIEGE. Mario Puzo envisioned it all in his eerily prescient1991 novel, The Fourth K. President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in largepart, thanks to the legacy of his forebears–good looks, privilege,wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon,however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabusedof his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has beenbefore. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot,Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series ofviolent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world andthose closest to him look on with both awe and horror.
"A true emotional phenomenon...Entertaining...Of particularinterest to fans will be the evolution of Johnson's relationshipwith Bird, his great karmic partner in the game." NEW YORK NEWSDAY He's faced challenges all of his life, butnow Magic Johnson faces the biggest challenge of all, his own bravebattle with HIV. In this dramatic, exciting, and inspirationalautobiography, Magic Johnson allows readers into his life, into histirumphs and tragedies on and off the court. In his own exuberantstyle, he tells readers of the friends and family who've beenconstant supporters and the basketball greats he's worked with.It's all here, the glory and the pain the character, charisma, andcourage of the hero called Magic. AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTHCLUB
In this elegant collection of essays, one of modernliterature's most enchanting masters reminisces about Italy'santifascist resistance and the whirl of ideas that blossomed in thepost-war era. In America, Calvino follows Nixon's election hopeswhile marvelling at colour television and American cars, butdescribes with loathing his first experience of mass racism, whenhe is lucky enough to meet Martin Luther King in Alabama. He alsowrites brilliant short pieces on his Italian dialect, the final dayof the Second World War, and the rich joys of living inParis. A stylish assortment of memoir and wit, Hermit in Paris includesthe very finest of Calvino's superb work.
Three years ago,award-winning actress Angelina Jolie took on a radically different role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees .Here are her memoirs from her journeys to Sierra Leone,Tanzania,where she lived and worked and gave her heart to theose who suffer the world's most shattering violence and victimization.Here are her revelations of joy and warmth amid utter destitution compelling snapshots of courageous and inspiring people for whom survival is their daily work and candid notes form a unique pilgrimage that completely changed the actress's worlview-and the world within herself
In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. Translated by Randolf Hogan.
After Out on a Limb , MacLaine now offers more of her familybackground, with reproductions of parental game-playingconversations which must evoke poignant recognitions in children ofconflicting adults. Aided by spirit-guided acupuncture, she hasbeen recovering past-life experiences enabling her to deal withthis pain. Most moving is her meeting with her Higher Self, whichcontinues to guide her. Another colorful love affair in Paris andHollywood provides food for the gossip-column fans. More seriousare her ruminations on creative artistry, first as a dancer, thenas a movie star. Even readers put off by MacLaine's uncritical andwholehearted embrace of reincarnation will have to applaud hercandor and zest for discovering the meaning of her life. Jeanne S.Bagby, Tucson P.L., Ariz. Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information,Inc.
As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926,tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no Boys Own Paper tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and joyce.
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insularNew Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by hermother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hidingher before they finally banish her altogether. After giving herbaby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the MiddleEast, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally herblood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life thatencircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one,her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in grittypoverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Theirreunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall'sparents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offersthem her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in whichloss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion intowisdom.
In Going Within, MacLaine asks tough questions of and givesgood advice to the spiritual seeker. She has suffered, felt sorrowand anger, stress, fear, and anxiety, yet she has never allowedherself to be defined by her negative emotions. Instead she asks,"If we are not in harmony with ourselves, how can we possibly be inharmony with anyone else, much less the world that we inhabit?"MacLaine celebrates the independence that comes with therecognition of all emotions, both negative and positive. MacLainehas created many memorable roles as an actress but ironicallyyounger adults may be more familiar with her work as a memoiristand spiritual seeker. In Out on a Limb, MacLaine reveals an intenseand secretive loving relationship with a prominent politician,which sparked her quest for self-discovery. Fans of the actress'searlier works will be aware of her love of the journey. Herde*ions of her travels from Stockholm to Hawaii to Peru willstimulate even the most sedate armchair traveler wanting to seemore of the
MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING. --The New York Times Book Review "MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination throughthe flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notablyby Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. Butneither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literaryimagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . .Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy'sdeath but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one thatremains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lackof resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-lifethan any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . VintageMailer." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us ourclearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages youare utterly absorbed." --Detroit Free Press "MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . .EXTREMELY LUCI
Hillary Rodham Clinton is known to hundreds of millions ofpeople around the world. Yet few beyond her close friends andfamily have ever heard her account of her extraordinary journey.She writes with candor, humor and passion about her upbringing insuburban, middle-class America in the 1950s and her transformationfrom Goldwater Girl to student activist to controversial FirstLady. Living History is her revealing memoir of life through theWhite House years. It is also her chronicle of living history withBill Clinton, a thirty-year adventure in love and politics thatsurvives personal betrayal, relentless partisan investigations andconstant public scrutiny. Hillary Rodham Clinton came of age during a time of tumultuoussocial and political change in America. Like many women of hergeneration, she grew up with choices and opportunities unknown toher mother or grandmother. She charted her own course throughunexplored terrain -- responding to the changing times and her owninternal compass -- and became an
Universally known and admired as a peacemaker, DagHammarskj?ld concealed a remarkable intense inner life which herecorded over several decades in this journal of poems andspiritual meditations, left to be published after his death. Adramatic account of spiritual struggle, Markings has inspiredhundreds of thousands of readers since it was first published in1964. Markings is distinctive, as W.H. Auden remarks in hisforeword, as a record of "the attempt by a professional man ofaction to unite in one life the via activa and the viacontemplativa." It reflects its author's efforts to live his creed,his belief that all men are equally the children of God and thatfaith and love require of him a life of selfless service to others.For Hammarskj?ld, "the road to holiness necessarily passes throughthe world of action." Markings is not only a fascinating glimpse ofthe mind of a great man, but also a moving spiritual classic thathas left its mark on generations of readers.
If you had to give America a voice, it’s been said more thanonce, that voice would be Willie Nelson’s. For more than fiftyyears, he’s taken the stuff of his life—the good and the bad—andmade from it a body of work that has become a permanent part of ourmusical heritage and kept us company through the good and the badof our own lives. So it’s fitting, and cause for celebration, thathe has finally set down in his own words a book that does justiceto his great gifts as a storyteller. In The Facts of Life ,Willie Nelson reflects on what has mattered to him in life and whathasn’t. He also tells some great dirty jokes. The result is a bookas wise and hilarious as its author.
This book charts the life and achievements of the boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, from his first taste of fame in the early 1950s to his untimely death in 1977. Over 400 fabulous photographs document the important events in his life and career. The pictures are accompanied by informative captions, adding context and depth to his amazing story, and an appendix of facts and figures sets out his remarkable achievements in the music industry. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
modern-day classic. "Gift from the Sea is like a shell itself inits small and perfect form . . . It tells of light and life andlove and the security that lies at the heart."--New York Times BookReview.
In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of MarkTwain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant orTwain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision wouldprofoundly alter not only both their lives but the course ofAmerican literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two menbecame close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant racedagainst the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of hislife and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish hisgreatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Inthis deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writerMark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twaininspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentiallyAmerican masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careersof these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusivefortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought themtogether as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk
Jeanne Marie Laskas had a dream of fleeing her otherwise happyurban life for fresh air and open space — a dream she woulddiscover was about something more than that. But she never expectedher fantasy to come true — until a summer afternoon’s drive in thecountry. That’s when she and her boyfriend, Alex — owner of Marley thepoodle — stumble upon the place she thought existed only in herdreams. This pretty-as-a-picture-postcard farm with an Amish barn,a chestnut grove, and breathtaking vistas is real ... and for sale.And it’s where she knows her future begins. But buying a postcard — fifty acres of scenery — and living onit are two entirely different matters. With wit and wisdom, Laskaschronicles the heartwarming and heartbreaking stories of thecolorful two- and four-legged creatures she encounters onSweetwater Farm. Against a backdrop of brambles, a satellite dish, and sheep,she tells a tender, touching, and hilarious tale about life, love,and the unexpected complic
The first complete, unvarnished history of Southern rock’slegendary and most popular band, from its members’ hardscrabbleboyhoods in Jacksonville, Florida and their rise to worldwide fameto the tragic plane crash that killed the founder and the band’srise again from the ashes. In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie VanZant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band toplay covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds and thecountry and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming theirband after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee SeniorHigh School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiringmusicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties,and bars throughout the South. During the next decade LynyrdSkynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commerciallysuccessful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since theAllman Brothers. Their hits “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama”became classics. The
After her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomashearings, Anita Hill ceased to be a private citizen and became apublic figure at the white-hot center of an intense national debateon how men and women relate to each other in the workplace. Thatdebate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts incorporate policies that have had a profound effect on ourlives--and on Anita Hill's life. Now, with remarkable insight andtotal candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, andafter the hearings, offering for the first time a complete accountthat sheds startling new light on this watershed event.Only afterreading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family'sOklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled herto withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings andfor years afterward. Only after reading her detailed narrative ofthe Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding ofhow Washington--and the media--rush to judgment. And only a
THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking serieswhere America's finest writers and most brilliant minds tackletoday's most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues.Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voiceson matters political, social, economic, and cultural, willenlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debateacross the country.
"Franklin''s is one of the greatest autobiographies inliterature, and towers over other autobiographies as Franklintowered over other men." -William Dean Howells
