With his signature style and grace, Willie Morris, arguably oneof this country's finest Southern writers, presents us with anunparalleled memoir of a country in transition and a boy coming ofage in a period of tumultuous cultural, social, and politicalchange. In North Toward Home , Morris vividly recalls the South ofhis childhood with all of its cruelty, grace, and foibles intact.He chronicles desegregation and the rise of Lyndon Johnson in Texasin the 50s and 60s, and New York in the 1960s, where he became thecontroversial editor of Harper's magazine. North TowardHome is the perceptive story of the education of an observantand intelligent young man, and a gifted writer's keen observationsof a country in transition. It is, as Walker Percy wrote, "atouching, deeply felt and memorable account of one man'spilgrimage."
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night hespent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and internationalglobe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht,crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to thewife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking,hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did hisbidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of theill-fated genius they called… In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notoriousinvestment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamousnames in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper wholed his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Streetand into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astoundingand hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story ofgreed, power, and excess no one could invent. Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmontturned microcap investing into a wickedly
A German soldier during World War II offers an inside look atthe Nazi war machine, using his wartime diaries to describe how aruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinaryGermans to carry out his monstrous schemes.
In his life and in his music, Cole Porter was "the top"--thepinnacle of wit, sophistication, and success. His songs--"I Get aKick Out of You," "Anything Goes," and hundreds more--were instantpop hits, and their musical and emotional depths have made themlasting standards. William McBrienhas captured the creator of these songs, whose life was not merelyone of wealth and privilege. A prodigal young man, Porter found hisemotional anchor in a long, loving, if sexless marriage, arelationship he repeatedly risked with a string of affairs withmen. His last eighteen years were marked by physical agony but alsounstinting artistic achievement, including the great Hollywoodmusicals High Society, Silk Stockings, and Kiss Me Kate (recentlyand very successfully revived on Broadway). Here, at last is a lifethat informs the great music and lyrics through illuminatingglimpses of the hidden, complicated, private man.
Jack Stewart was a longtime editor at the New York Times.Linda was the U.S. representative of a French publishingconsortium. Theirs was a marriage graced with good luck, a unionfrom which each drew strength and joy in equal measure. In hisearly seventies, Jack opted for retirement but continued to work asa freelance editor and literary agent. The passing years wereenriched by travel, strong family ties, and the delight offriendships. Illness descended abruptly one October afternoon. Jack, awakingconfused and disoriented from a nap, was rushed to the hospital.There the diagnosis was both swift and horrifying: Alzheimer'sdisease. It was a pronouncement that instantly overwhelmed allother considerations. Against her husband's loss of self-awareness,Linda quickly found she had no preparation, no defense. As hismemory vanished, the essence of who he was vanished as well. 25Months documents the struggle of a husband and wife to navigate thetreacherous terrain of illness. Alzheimer's is being diag
