A biography of the author's great-aunt, jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter, drawing on family records to examine the traditions that shaped her youth, her marriage to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, and her role in supporting the New York jazz world.

A critical biography drawn from the author's letters, notebooks, memoirs and fiction.

The first biography of Pericles in a century, written by a renowned scholar and teacher, offers a classical model for today's political leaders. Kagan reminds readers of the fragility of democracy and uses Pericles as an example of the kind of strong political leadership so urgently needed today.

Radclyffe Hall was born in 1884 in Bournemouth in a house of horrors called 'Sunny Lawn'. It was an unhappy childhood, until her father's death when Radclyffe inherited £200,000. She was 18. She leased a London house, dressed in chappish clothes, called herself Peter then John & wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, obsessive about work, hunted with 3 packs, got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets & had her hair cropped. She thought real women were born to be wives & disliked doing any business with them. Her 1st love was Mabel Batten, known as Ladye, who reputedly had an affair with Edward VII. Radclyffe Hall is now most famous for THE WELL OF LONELINESS, written in 1928. A novel about 'congenital inverts' - lesbian love - the book was suppressed both here & the US & caused Radclyffe to be put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act. Brilliantly written, this biography is a fresh and irreverent insight into the lives of one of the most alluring and eccentric women of this century.

"In this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade, and his sixth decade of making movies"--

Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America's founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness--even his grandfatherly appearance--are legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin's biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William's release, while his father, to the world's astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America's most distinguished families. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America.

A provocative, surprising, and utterly fresh portrait of Charles, Prince of Wales He is one of the world's most fascinating and least understood figures: now sixty-six, Prince Charles has spent his entire life preparing to be king while insisting on being his own man. In this brilliant portrait, he emerges as a complex character driven by a painful past, a questing intellect, and a powerful impulse not only to reshape the monarchy but to use the long wait for the throne to work toward high ideals. Based on exclusive interviews with members of Charles's inner circle and on rare access to the Prince himself, this revelatory biography takes us deep into the royal sphere—a world of its own that Catherine Mayer calls Planet Windsor—and shows us the skullduggery and unintentional comedy of court life. At the same time, it provides a clear-eyed view of Charles's struggles and his achievements as a philanthropist and activist. The book also offers a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most documented episodes in modern history—his marriage to Diana. The reality, as with many aspects of the Prince's story, is more gripping and more poignant than we knew. Now closer than ever to achieving happiness, the Prince is still far from settled. He remains committed to bringing about social and political change, but in aiming to be a king of hearts, he often creates heartache, for himself and others. Born to Be King explains how and why Charles may redefine the role of the sovereign, even as it reveals the astonishing extent to which the Prince has already left his mark on the world.

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 'Loose Women's' Andrea McLean is much loved for her bubbly, warm personality. But her life has seen its share of heartache, as well as love and happiness, and now she's finally ready to tell the full story. She takes us from a childhood spent constantly on the move, leaving her feeling like an outsider, to landing a dream job as a weathergirl on GMTV. She describes the tough lessons she had to learn to survive in TV and her hilarious - and sometimes disastrous - encounters with celebrities as a showbiz reporter. She reveals how she pushed herself to be the perfect daughter, the perfect wife and mother - so when she had an affair that ended her first marriage, the guilt and self-loathing drove her shockingly close to a breakdown.

This is a book of aspirations fulfilled, those of the author and his colleagues. It tells us what it is to be a mathematician and to do mathematics. It will be read with interest and enjoyment by those in mathematics and by those who might want to know what mathematicians and mathematical careers are like. Halmos, mathematician and expositor, has contributed much to ergodic theory, algebraic logic, operator theory, and the mathematical literature in general.

Renaissance military memoirs studied for what they reveal of contemporary attiudes towards war, selfhood and identity.

Book by Smith, Willie

From the heyday of the '50s B-movies through the disaster genre of the '70s, William Castle was an extraordinary movie mogul who produced such classic thrillers as Straight Jacket, Homicidal and Rosemary's Baby. Here are the outrageous memoirs of an American original whose life was every bit as outlandish as his movies. Photographs. Filmography.

Probes beneath the mystique and deliberate affectations of pop artist Andy Warhol to reveal the troubled yet brilliant man behind the public persona.

Wassily Leontief (1905–1999) was the founding father of input-output economics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1973. This book offers a collection of papers in memory of Leontief by his students and close colleagues. The first part, 'Reflections on Input-Output Economics', focuses upon Leontief as a person and scholar as well as his personal contributions to economics. It includes contributions by Nobel Laureate Paul A. Samuelson who shares his memories of a young Professor Leontief at Harvard and ends with the last joint interview with Wassily and his wife, to date previously unpublished. The second part, 'Perspectives of Input-Output Economics', includes theoretical and empirical research inspired by Leontief's work and offers a wide-ranging sample of the state of interindustry economics, a field Leontief founded. This is a strong collection likely to appeal to a wide range of professionals in universities, government, industry and international organizations.

This is a moving, star-filled account of one of Hollywood’s true golden ages as told by a man in the middle of it all. Walter Mirisch’s company has produced some of the most entertaining and enduring classics in film history, including West Side Story , Some Like It Hot , In the Heat of the Night , and The Magnificent Seven . His work has led to 87 Academy Award nominations and 28 Oscars. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from his personal collection, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History reveals Mirisch’s own experience of Hollywood and tells the stories of the stars—emerging and established—who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, and many others. With hard-won insight and gentle humor, Mirisch recounts how he witnessed the end of the studio system, the development of independent production, and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most gifted (and notorious) cultural icons. A producer with a passion for creative excellence, he offers insights into his innovative filmmaking process, revealing a rare ingenuity for placating the demands of auteur directors, weak-kneed studio executives, and troubled screen sirens. From his early start as a movie theater usher to the presentation of such masterpieces as The Apartment , Fiddler on the Roof , and The Great Escape , Mirisch tells the inspiring life story of his climb to the highest echelon of the American film industry. This book assures Mirisch’s legacy—as Elmore Leonard puts it—as “one of the good guys.” Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association

Relates the multiple ways adopted by young German Jews (born mainly between 1914-28) to escape from Nazi Germany. Their destinations included Palestine, Great Britain, the USA, South America, and China. Dwells on the routes of escape - sometimes dangerous, and on the organizational framework of the escape - sometimes part of a political underground. Some young persons managed to survive in Germany. Many Jews, both those who escaped and those who remained in Germany, joined the anti-Nazi struggle in multiple forms - from the underground in Berlin to joining up with the Red Army. Many countries of destination were reluctant to accept the refugees, in part due to antisemitism. Other possible frameworks (e.g. communists) were also not eager to help Jews. The majority of the émigrés did not return to Germany after the war.

Seminal essays on loneliness, living in New York, friendship, feminism, and writing from nonfiction master Vivian Gornick Vivian Gornick's Approaching Eye Level is a brave collection of personal essays that finds a quintessentially contemporary woman (urban, single, feminist) trying to observe herself and the world without sentiment, cynicism, or nostalgia. Whether walking along the streets of New York or teaching writing at a university, Gornick is a woman exploring her need for conversation and connection—with men and women, colleagues and strangers. She recalls her stint as a waitress in the Catskills and a failed friendship with an older woman and mentor, and reconsiders her experiences in the feminist movement, while living alone, and in marriage. Turning her trademark sharp eye on herself, Gornick works to see her part in things—how she has both welcomed and avoided contact, and how these attempts at connections have enlivened and, at times, defeated her. First published in 1996, Approaching Eye Level is an unrelentingly honest collection of essays that finds Gornick at her best, reminding us that we can come to know ourselves only by engaging fully with the world.

"The first middle-grade book from a picture book master-a harrowing, heartrending, illustrated account of his childhood escape from the terrors of war"--