77 results for "Biography"

Good Girls A Story and Study of Anorexia

Hadley Freeman
From Hadley Freeman, bestselling author of House of Glass , comes a “riveting” ( The New York Times ) memoir about her experience as an anorexic and her journey to recovery. In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through “sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia—the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage—and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades. Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.
Simon and Schuster 2024-04-23 288 pages

Unforgettable

Scott Simon
'I'm getting a life's lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?'Unforgettable is a son's spirited, affecting, and inspiring tribute to his remarkable mother and the love between parent and child. When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humour and strength, and celebrating familial love.Unforgettable expands on those famous tweets to create a memoir that is rich, deeply affecting, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating. His mother was a glamorous woman of the Mad Men-era; she worked in nightclubs, modelled, dated mobsters and movie stars, and was a brave single parent to young Scott Simon. Spending their last days together in a hospital ICU, mother and son reflect on their lifetime's worth of memories, recounting stories laced with humour and exemplifying resilience. Unforgettable is not only one man's rich and moving tribute to his mother's colourful life and graceful death, it is also a powerful portrayal of the universal bond between mother and child.
Macmillan Australia 2015-04-01 256 pages

The Book of Joan

Melissa Rivers
Joan Rivers was known all over the world-from the Palace Theater to Buckingham Palace, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the footlights of Broadway, from the days of talkies to hosting talk shows. But there was only one person who knew Joan intimately, one person who the authorities would call when she got a little out of hand. Her daughter and best friend, Melissa. Joan and Melissa Rivers had one of the most celebrated mother-daughter relationships of all time. If you think Joan said some outrageous things to her audiences as a comedian, you won't believe what she said and did in private. Her love for her daughter knew no bounds-or boundaries, apparently. ('Melissa, I acknowledge that you have boundaries. I just choose to not respect them.') In The Book of Joan- Tales of Mirth, Mischief and Manipulation, Melissa shares stories (like when she was nine months old and her parents delivered her to Johnny Carson as a birthday gift), bon mots ('Missy, is there anything better than seeing a really good-looking couple pushing a baby that looks like a Sasquatch who got caught in a house fire?'), and life lessons from growing up in the Rosenberg-Rivers household ('I can do tips and discounts and figure out the number of gay men in an audience to make it a good show.That's all the math you'll ever need.'). These were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to life in the family that Melissa describes as more Addams than Cleaver.And at the center of it all was a tiny blond force of nature. The Book of Joan is full offunny, poignant and irreverent observations, thoughts, and tales about the woman who raised Melissa and is the reason she considers Valium one of the four basic food groups.
Penguin Books India PVT, Limited 2015-05-27 304 pages

Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.)

Delia Ephron
Bestselling author Delia Ephron shares a deeply personal collection of stories and essays, anchored by a loving remembrance of her sister Nora. In Sister Mother Husband Dog, Delia Ephron brings her trademark wit and effervescent prose to a series of autobiographical essays about life, love, sisterhood, movies, and family. In “Losing Nora,” she deftly captures the rivalry, mutual respect, and intimacy that made up her relationship with her older sister and frequent writing companion. Other essays run the gamut from a humorous piece about love and the movies—how one romantic comedy completely destroyed her twenties—to the joy of girl friends and best friendship, the magical madness and miracle of dogs, keen-eyed observations about urban survival, and a serious and affecting memoir of life with her mother and growing up the child of alcoholics. Ephron’s eloquent style and voice illuminate every page of this superb and singular work.
Penguin Publishing Group 2014-08-26 240 pages

All There Is Love Stories from StoryCorps

Dave Isay,David Isay
StoryCorps founder Dave Isay shares stories of love and marriage from the revolutionary oral history project, revealing the many and remarkable paths that relationships can take. From the excitement of courtship to the deep connection of lifelong commitment, we discover that love is found in the most unexpected of places and witness the life-affirming joy of partnership, the comfort of shared sorrows, and profound gratitude in the face of loss.
Thorndike Press 2012 209 pages

The First Love Story Adam, Eve, and Us

Bruce Feiler
From the New York Times bestselling author of Walking the Bible and Abraham comes a revelatory journey across four continents and 4,000 years exploring how Adam and Eve introduced the idea of love into the world, and how they continue to shape our deepest feelings about relationships, family, and togetherness. Since antiquity, one story has stood at the center of every conversation about men and women. One couple has been the battleground for human relationships and sexual identity. That couple is Adam and Eve. Yet instead of celebrating them, history has blamed them for bringing sin, deceit, and death into the world. In this fresh retelling of their story, New York Times columnist and PBS host Bruce Feiler travels from the Garden of Eden in Iraq to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, from John Milton's London to Mae West's Hollywood, discovering how Adam and Eve should be hailed as exemplars of a long-term, healthy, resilient relationship. At a time of discord and fear over the strength of our social fabric, Feiler shows how history's first couple can again be role models for unity, forgiveness, and love. Containing all the humor, insight, and wisdom that have endeared Bruce Feiler to readers around the world, The First Love Story is an unforgettable journey that restores Adam and Eve to their rightful place as central figures in our culture's imagination and reminds us that even our most familiar stories still have the ability to surprise, inspire, and guide us today.
Diversified Publishing 2017-03-21 464 pages

Passing: a memoir of love and death

Korda, Michael
"In the tradition of The Year of Magical Thinking comes a legendary editor's unflinching love song about his radiant wife, Margaret, and her battle with cancer. It was a warm April in Pleasant Valley when Margaret Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, 'Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me.' Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital. An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret's tumors quickly returned-leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern- day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together. Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love"--
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company 2019-10-08 239 pages

Bad mother: a chronicle of maternal crimes, minor calamities, and occasional moments of grace

Waldman, Ayelet
Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (Whose toddler can recite the planets in order from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, balancing the work-family dynamic, and the bane of every mother's existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.
Doubleday 2009 213 pages

Spelling It Like It Is

Tori Spelling
THE REALITY BEHIND REALITY TV—HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE MOM-STAR TELLS IT LIKE IT IS Tori Spelling is the first to admit that the “reality” behind her popular television show, Tori & Dean, isn’t always real. Not even Star Magazine could invent the true chaos that happens behind the scenes. Luckily, Tori is famously honest and self-deprecatingly funny when it comes to her personal life. She’s always Spelling It Like It Is… Life is never boring at Tori’s house, but since her New York Times bestselling memoirs sTORI Telling, Mommywood, and Uncharted terriTORI, things have been especially unpredictable: Finding out she was pregnant with her third baby after nearly vomiting live on the Home Shopping Network; trying to hide her fourth pregnancy so soon after giving birth (as her stylist said, “who would be that crazy?”); being rescued from a paparazzo by a mom lynch mob; stalking her celebrity neighbor; and allowing cameras to film every personal detail of her life—from the most challenging time in her marriage to the only time in six years when she really felt as though those cameras invaded her privacy. Tori shares these stories and many more with the usual humor, candor, and down-to-earth charm that her fans love. She also writes openly about her biggest challenges: the terrifying health problems surrounding her high-risk pregnancy with youngest son Finn, her guilt over missing baby Hattie’s early months because she was in the hospital on bed rest, her struggles (and failures) to live within her means after growing up in opulence, discovering how much she has in common with her late mega-producer father, Aaron Spelling, and falling in love with Dean all over again (hint: it didn’t happen at their vow renewal ceremony). After years of intimately revealing her everyday antics onscreen, Tori’s life is still full of surprises. Slowing down long enough to enjoy them? Now that’s another sTORI.
Simon and Schuster 2014-05-06 320 pages

A View from the Bench

Red Holzman,Leonard Lewin
Holzman has seen all the great ones in action, and here he discusses the unique contributions of such superstars as Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Bob Cousy, Julius Erving, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and others. These are the names that changed the way the game is played today. The heart of the book is Holzman's appraisal of the great matchups, those individual rivalries that have often decided championship series. The model here is Russell, who brought back the concept of defense, against Chamberlain, the greatest offensive force the game has known and virtual owner of the record book. Other matchups such as Bradley vs. Havlicek are chosen to illustrate Holzman's concept of team play. In each case he breaks down the matchup into its physical and psychological aspects, with plenty of anecdotal spinoffs that reflect the intensity of the rivalry. Reading this book is like sitting beside Red Holzman on the bench. His uncensored observations give a whole new perspective on how the game is played by the pros and what to watch for.
W. W. Norton 1980 288 pages

Denial My 25 Years Without a Soul

Jonathan Rauch
A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster--until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in. Equal parts Oliver Sacks and George Orwell, with a dash of Woody Allen, Jonathan Rauch's memoir is by turns harrowing and funny, a grippingly intimate journey through a bizarre maze of self-torment that ends with an unexpected discovery. Many people, gay and straight, have lived through their own versions of this story, seeking to twist their personality in directions it just wouldn't go. Not all have been lucky enough to escape. First published in 2013, Denial has been revised for this new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.
Acorn Abbey Books 2019-09-15 128 pages

uncharted terriTORI

Tori Spelling
A hilarious and candid essay collection about living a normal life in Hollywood, where life is anything but normal, from mom, actress, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Tori Spelling. With her signature wit and unique Hollywood insight, Tori Spelling explores the adventures—and misadventures—of raising a family in Tinseltown. From balancing parenthood with tabloid pressures and from becoming a mini mogul to her evolving relationship with her mom, Tori takes us behind the glitz and glamor of being a modern-day celebrity. Featuring her whip-smart voice that fans know and love, she effortlessly illustrates that when you’re Tori Spelling, every day is uncharted territory.
Gallery Books 2011-03-22 224 pages

Plunder A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

Menachem Kaiser
From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery--that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex--leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance--material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
HarperCollins Publishers 2022-03-15 288 pages

Working Class Man

Jimmy Barnes
THE SEQUEL TO THE NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER WORKING CLASS BOY It's a life too big and a story too extraordinary for just one book. Jimmy Barnes has lived many lives - from Glaswegian migrant kid to iconic front man, from solo superstar to proud father of his own musical clan. In this hugely anticipated sequel to his critically acclaimed bestseller, Working Class Boy, Jimmy picks up the story of his life as he leaves Adelaide in the back of an old truck with a then unknown band called Cold Chisel. A spellbinding and searingly honest reflection on success, fame and addiction; this self-penned memoir reveals how Jimmy Barnes used the fuel of childhood trauma to ignite and propel Australia's greatest rock'n'roll story. But beyond the combustible merry-go-round of fame, drugs and rehab, across the Cold Chisel, solo and soul years - this is a story about how it's never too late to try and put things right.
ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited 2017-11-22 670 pages

I Still Have It ... I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It Confessions of a Fiftysomething

Rita Rudner
While there are people who actually embrace getting older (although we confess not to know any) most try to deny it. Rita Rudner is no exception. When she reached 50, she couldn't even bear to admit it: "It was more comfortable getting a laugh and telling people I was filthy than having to say the word fffiffffty," she writes. In her hysterically dead-on book I Still Have It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It , she relates her absurd adventures as a woman of a certain age navigating the strange and terrifyingly funny world of "near-sighted insights." In chapters such as "Artificially Hip"; "Older Than Springtime, Younger Than Angela Lansbury"; "I Won't Blog, Don't Ask Me"; and "The Advantage of Vintage," Rudner tackles body issues, style, and technology, and looks at the wonders and surprises of life on the dark side of 50. So put on your bifocals and get ready to laugh. Just don't blame Rita if your laugh lines become visibly deeper. "Sexy deadpan is comedian Rita Rudner's trademark style, never more in evidence than in I Still Have It ... I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It ... Pure vaudeville, a kick at any age."-- O, The Oprah Magazine
Crown Publishing Group 2009-05-05 272 pages

Pee Wees Confessions of a Hockey Parent

Rich Cohen
A New York Times bestselling author takes a rollicking, personal deep dive into the ultracompetitive world of youth hockey. Rich Cohen, the author of The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse and Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football , turns his attention to matters closer to home: his son’s elite Pee Wee hockey team and himself, a former player and a devoted hockey parent. In Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent , Cohen takes us through a season of hard-fought competition in Fairfield County, Connecticut, an affluent suburb of New York City. Part memoir and part exploration of youth sports and the exploding popularity of American hockey, Pee Wees follows the ups and downs of the Ridgefield Bears, the twelve-year-old boys and girls on the team, and the parents watching, cheering, plotting, praying, and cursing in the stands. It is a book about the love of the game, the love of parents for their children, and the triumphs and struggles of both.
Picador 2022-01-11 240 pages

Uncommon Arrangements Seven Marriages

Katie Roiphe
Katie Roiphe’s stimulating work has made her one of the most talked about cultural critics of her generation. Now this bracing young writer delves deeply into one of the most layered of subjects: marriage. Drawn in part from the private memoirs, personal correspondence, and long-forgotten journals of the British literary community from 1910 to the Second World War, here are seven “marriages à la mode”—each rising to the challenge of intimate relations in more or less creative ways. Jane Wells, the wife of H.G., remained his rock, despite his decade-long relationship with Rebecca West (among others). Katherine Mansfield had an irresponsible, childlike romance with her husband, John Middleton Murry, that collapsed under the strain of real-life problems. Vera Brittain and George Gordon Catlin spent years in a “semidetached” marriage (he in America, she in England). Vanessa Bell maintained a complicated harmony with the painter Duncan Grant, whom she loved, and her husband, Clive. And her sister Virginia Woolf, herself no stranger to marital particularities, sustained a brilliant running commentary on the most intimate details of those around her. Every chapter revolves around a crisis that occurred in each of these marriages—as serious as life-threatening illness or as seemingly innocuous as a slightly tipsy dinner table conversation—and how it was resolved…or not resolved. In these portraits, Roiphe brilliantly evokes what are, as she says, “the fluctuations and shifts in attraction, the mysteries of lasting affection, the endurance and changes in love, and the role of friendship in marriage.” The deeper mysteries at stake in all relationships.
Random House Publishing Group 2008-05-20 352 pages

Data, a Love Story How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to Meet My Match

Amy Webb
“Amy Webb found her true love after a search that's both charmingly romantic and relentlessly data-driven. Anyone who uses online dating sites must read her funny, fascinating book.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project After yet another disastrous date, Amy Webb was preparing to cancel her JDate membership when epiphany struck: her standards weren’t too high, she just wasn’t approaching the process the right way. Using her gift for data strategy, she found which keywords were digital-man magnets, analyzed photos, and then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge—dozens of men who actually met her own stringent requirements wanted to meet her. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child.
Penguin 2014-01-28 304 pages

My Bonnie: how dementia stole the love of my life

Suchet, John
Earlier this year John Suchet revealed that his beautiful 67-year-old wife Bonnie, the love of his life, is suffering from Dementia. During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer, and he has found his new job exceptionally tough. In this moving and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair. For John, it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a decade after they first met, their passionate and romantic love affair began. They married in 1985, head over heels in love, and have enjoyed more than 20 years of love and laughter. Both had been married before (she had two children and he had three) but both felt, the day they married, they finally joined their other half. In March 2004, John began to notice strange quirks in Bonnie's behavior. She underwent her first set of neurological tests in March 2005, which brought back no definite results. Then, in February 2006, following a second set of tests, she was diagnosed with Dementia. For three years John personally cared for his beloved wife, keeping her condition secret from all but family and close friends. But in the middle of September this year, more than 26 years after his life with Bonnie began, John made the agonizing decision to move his wife to a full-time care home. Written in passionate and vivid prose that captures both the warmth of the good times and the utter despair of the bad times, John weaves together a series of moving and heartfelt stories.
HarperCollins 2010 311 pages