51 results for "History"

A boy from Georgia: coming of age in the segregated South

Jordan, Hamilton
When Hamilton Jordan died of peritoneal mesothelioma in 2008, he left behind a mostly finished memoir, a book on which he had been working for the last decade. Jordan's daughter, Kathleen - with the help of her brothers and mother - took up the task of editing and completing the book. A Boy from Georgia - the result of this posthumous father-daughter collaboration - chronicles Hamilton Jordan's childhood in Albany, Georgia, charting his moral and intellectual development as he gradually discovers the complicated legacies of racism, religious intolerance, and southern politics, and affords his readers an intimate view of the state's wheelers and dealers. Jordan's middle-class childhood was bucolic in some ways and traumatizing in others. As Georgia politicians battled civil rights leaders, a young Hamilton straddled the uncomfortable line between the southern establishment to which he belonged and the movement in which he believed. Fortunate enough to grow up in a family that had considerable political clout within Georgia, Jordan went into politics to put his ideals to work. Eventually he became a key aide to Jimmy Carter and was the architect of Carter's stunning victory in the presidential campaign of 1976; Jordan later served as Carter's chief of staff. Clear eyed about the triumphs and tragedies of Jordan's beloved home state and region, A Boy from Georgia tells the childhood story of a remarkable life in a voice that is witty, vivid, and honest. -- from dust jacket.
University of Georgia Press 2015 228 pages

No Pretty Pictures

Anita Lobel
The beloved Caldecott Honor artist now recounts a tale of vastly different kind -- her own achingly potent memoir of a childhood of flight, imprisonment, and uncommon bravery in Nazi-occupied Poland. Anita Lobel was barely five when the war began and sixteen by the time she came to America from Sweden, where she had been sent to recover at the end of the war. This haunting book, illustrated with the author's archival photographs, is the remarkable account of her life during those years. Poised, forthright, and always ready to embrace life, Anita Lobel is the main character in the most personal story she will ever tell.Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Krakow, Poland, changing her life forever. She spent the days of her childhood in hiding with her brother--who was disguised as a girl--and their Catholic nanny in the countryside, the ghetto, and finally in a convent where the Nazis caught up with her. She was imprisoned in a succession of concentration camps until the end of the war. Sent by the Red Cross to recuperate in Sweden, she slowly blossomed as she discovered books and language and art. Since coming to the United States as a teenager, Anita Lobel has spent her life making pictures. She has never gone back. She has never looked back. Until now. 00-01 Tayshas High School Reading List Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Krakow, Poland, changing her life forever. She spent the days of her childhood in hiding with her brother--who was disguised as a girl--and their Catholic nanny in the countryside, the ghetto, and finally in a convent where the Nazis caught up with her. She was imprisoned in a succession of concentration camps until the end of the war. Sent by the Red Cross to recuperate in Sweden, she slowly blossomed as she discovered books and language and art. Since coming to the United States as a teenager, Anita Lobel has spent her life making pictures. She has never gone back. She has never looked back. Until now.
HarperCollins 2000-02-02 193 pages

Boom Town

Sonia Levitin
Cat Bowman Smith and Sonia Levitin have teamed up again to bring the history of America's westward expansion to life in this fun, colorful picture book. Bored by cabin life in the sparse settlement, Amanada figures out how to bake a gooseberry pie in the family's crude wood stove. Soon prospectors are paying for her pies, and her business success spills over to the other folks who've decided to settle there.
Scholastic 2004-02 40 pages

Rake's progress: my political midlife crisis

Johnson, Rachel
A unique, revealing and entertaining insight into the political dramas of recent times. Rachel Johnson was born into what has been described by some as the UK's most famous political family , and by others as 'Poundshop Kennedys'. She was always keen to avoid the family business at all costs and plough her own furrow as a broadcaster, novelist and journalist. But, after the referendum to leave the EU in 2016, she felt the heavy hand of fate. When an insurgent centre party burst onto the scene in 2019, she felt compelled to stand for something rather than nothing - which happened to be just as her own older brother, Boris , was making his final assault on Downing Street . As some joked, she went into politics to spend more time with her family. Rake's Progress tells the extraordinary story of what happened next. From long silences on the radio when asked tricky policy questions to loud curses from David Cameron during tennis matches, Rachel reveals all about her brief political career. Taking on Ann Widdecombe and the Brexit Party , would she and her party make history - or become a forgotten footnote in the rolling omnishambles of British politics? Beyond her own story, Rake's Progress highlights the importance of standing up for your beliefs and the challenges of life in the public eye, and takes the reader behind the scenes, from the campaign trail to the 'Westminster bubble' and the carpeted corridors of power. Written with great honesty and self-deprecating humour, this is a book that reveals the very human side of politics.
Simon & Schuster 2020 253 pages

It's All Your Fault

Paul Rudnick
One last chance. One wild weekend. Flat out the funniest book of the year. "Paul Rudnick makes me lie hysterical on the floor, screeching with laughter and sobbing with fury that I can't write the way he does." -- E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks Up until forty-eight hours ago, Caitlin had never: Tasted alcohol, kissed a boy, sang in public at the top of her lungs, kidnapped anyone or --- WHAT? STOLEN A CONVERTIBLE? Now she's in jail and has no idea what to tell: The police, her parents, the mayor, all of those camera crews and everyone on Twitter. She has just noticed that: Her nose is pierced and -- WAIT? IS THAT A TATTOO? She blames one person for the entire insane weekend: Her famous cousin.Who is also her former best friend.Who she has HATED for the past four years.Who she also might miss like crazy. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, HELLER HARRIGAN!!!!
Scholastic, Incorporated 2017-01-31 304 pages

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

E.L. Konigsburg
I Prefer Not To.... That's Margaret Rose Kane's response to every activity she's asked to participate in at the summer camp to which she's been exiled while her parents are in Peru. So Margaret Rose is delighted when her beloved uncles rescue her from Camp Talequa, with its uptight camp director and cruel cabinmates, and bring her to stay with them at their wonderful house at 19 Schuyler Place. But Margaret Rose soon discovers that something is terribly wrong at 19 Schuyler Place. People in their newly gentrified neighborhood want to get rid of the three magnificent towers the uncles have spent forty-five years lovingly constructing of scrap metal and shards of glass and porcelain. Margaret Rose is outraged, and determined to strike a blow for art, for history, and for individuality...and no one is more surprised than Margaret Rose at the allies she finds for her mission.
Atheneum Books for Young Readers 2006-01-01 304 pages

Affairs of state: the rise and rejection of the presidential couple since World War II

Troy, Gil
The emergence of the presidential couple is one of the most important and contentious developments in America's postwar political history. After the exceptional Roosevelts, the change began innocently enough, with Mamie becoming the first First Lady to remain on the campaign trail without her husband - receiving nothing but praise as a result. By the 1960s, with Lady Bird lobbying for legislation on TV, the first signs of protest appeared. In the 1970s, when Jerry and.
Free Press 1997 486 pages

Unearthed: a lost actress, a forbidden book, and a search for life in the shadow of the Holocaust

Frank, Meryl
"As child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the city, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl's cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna's Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic family and community to play roles as prostitutes and bellhops, lovers and nuns. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died. Before Mollie passed away, she gave Meryl a Yiddish book containing the terrible answer, but forbade her to read it. And for years, Meryl obeyed. Unearthed is the story of Meryl's search for Franya and a timely history of hatred and resistance. Through archives across four continents, by way of chance encounters and miraculous discoveries, and eventually, guided by the shocking truth recorded in the pages of the forbidden book, Meryl conjures the rogue spirit of her cousin-her beauty and her tragedy. Meryl's search reveals a lost world destroyed by hatred, illuminating the cultural haven of Vilna and its resistance during World War II. As she seeks to find her lost family legacy, Meryl looks for answers to the questions that have defined her life: what is our duty to the past? How do we honor such memories while keeping them from consuming us? And what do we teach our children about tragedy?"--
Hachette Books 2023 242 pages

Mr. and Mrs. President: from the Trumans to the Clintons

Troy, Gil
It began with Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. It accelerated with Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson became partners in office and Nancy and Ronnie seemed joined at the hip. Without question, the presidential couple has arrived as a force in politics. Yet surprisingly, the electorate is not happy about it. The emergence of the presidential couple is one of the most important and contentious developments in America’s postwar political history. Its citizens’ reaction to the First Couple reflects the country’s changing morality, its uncertain attitude toward feminism, and the increasing power of the media. Gil Troy traces these shifts through ten presidential marriages, from the homesick tensions between Harry and Bess Truman to the very public scandals endured by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Along the way, readers learn of Mamie Eisenhower's perseverance on her husband’s campaign trail, Gerald Ford’s embarrassment over Betty’s outspoken honesty, and the amazing political success of Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s partnership in office. With a new chapter devoted to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s tainted partnership in office and to our present First Lady’s senatorial ambitions, this edition of Gil Troy’s Mr. and Mrs. President offers fresh insights into America’s paradoxical expectations for its presidential wives and husbands. “Troy argues that the rise of the First Couple is not simply a function of the women’s movement, but reflects a mixture of factors, including the weakening of parties, the rise of personality politics, the increasing power of the Presidency and the Federal Government and perhaps, most important of all, the ‘rise of the mass media and the new political culture it spawned.’”—New York Times Book Review.
University Press of Kansas 2000-05-02 440 pages

The girl from Human Street: a Jewish family odyssey

Cohen, Roger
It has taken me a long time to piece all this together. Memories come not like heavy rain but the drops falling from leaves after it. There were elements missing. At last I knew I would not be whole until I found them... June Cohen was born on Human Street in 1929. Her street ran through the centre of Krugersdorp, a mining town near Johannesburg where June's father, Laurie, a doctor, and his wife of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, had decided to establish themselves thirty years on from the family's crossing to South Africa. June was named after the month she was born in. In the wake of his mother's death, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen embarks on a compassionate and sensitive portrait of the journeys made by both his maternal and paternal family, exploring the stories that have filtered through to him since childhood. Told through personal letters and collective memories, Cohen follows his family from Lithuania to South Africa, England, the United States and Israel. He illuminates the uneasy resonance of the racism his relatives witnessed living in apartheid-era South Africa and explores the pervasive sense of 'otherness' that originated from his Jewish heritage of persecution and from the repeated loss that accompanied his forebears' multiple migrations. And through this, he begins to understand better the manic depression that has permeated his family and that plagued his mother until her last moments. A sweeping family story spanning continents, families and great swathes of history, Roger Cohen's deeply personal examination of Jewish identity is a tale of displacement and remembrance, an account of suicide and resilience, a meditation on identity and belonging, a classic for our times.
Bloomsbury 2016-01-27 304 pages

A legacy of liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the future of the South African dream

Gevisser, Mark
In this gripping social history of South Africa, award-winning journalist Mark Gevisser follows the family of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to make sense of his legacy and understand the future of the country under new President Jacob Zuma. With unparalleled access to Mbeki and Zuma, as well as other key players in the ANC, Gevisser presents an intimate yet accessible account of South Africa's past, present and future. With his stunning account of the Mbeki family's history as a backdrop, Gevisser fleshes out a monumental period in world history that will continue to shape African politics for years to come.
Palgrave Macmillan 2010-06-08 376 pages

Maybe Esther

Petrowskaja, Katja
Zusammenfassung: Katja Petrowskaja's family story is inextricably entangled with the history of twentieth-century Europe. There is her great-uncle, who shot a German diplomat in Moscow in 1932 and was sentenced to death. There is her Ukrainian grandfather, who disappeared during World War II and reappeared forty years later. And there is her great-grandmother - whose name may or may not have been Esther - who was too old and frail to leave Kiev when the Jews there were rounded up, and was killed by a Nazi outside her house. Taking the reader from Berlin to Warsaw, to Moscow, to Kiev, from Google searches, strange encounters and coincidences to archives, anecdotes and jokes, Katja Petrowskaja undertakes a journey in search of her own place in past and present, memory and history, languages and countries. The result is Maybe Esther - a singular, haunting, unforgettable work of literature.
4th Estate 2019 254 pages

Austerity baby

Wolff, Janet
"Austerity Baby might best be described as an "oblique memoir". Janet Wolff's fascinating volume is a family history - but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word."--Publisher's description.
Manchester University Press 2017 262 pages

The bill from my father

Cooper, Bernard
Edward Cooper was a hard man to know. Dour and exuberant by turns, his moods dictated the always-uncertain climate of the Cooper household. Now - balding, octogenarian - he makes an unlikely literary muse. But to his now middle-aged son, he looms larger than life, an overwhelming, baffling presence. Edward Cooper made his name as a divorce attorney in LA whose cases were devoured by the tabloids. Now, he is slowly succumbing to dementia. As Bernard attempts to forge a coherent picture of his family history, he uncovers Edward's lawsuits against other family members, and recalls the itemized invoice his father once sent him for the total cost of his upbringing, for the sum of two million dollars. 'Bernard Cooper's The Bill from My Fathe r is a glorious cornucopia of love and pain. Not only is Cooper an exemplary writer but he can parse an emotion down to its most resonant note. This memoir amazes' Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones 'Cooper is a beautiful writer . . . his book is in a class of its own . . . Somehow, this is a story about all parents and their grown-up children and how they manage to keep going through all the insults and mixed messages and botched attempts to express love' Observer 'Cooper's wry, rueful memoir of a lifetime's wrangling with the old guy is memorably moving, emotionally disciplined, devilish in the detail and smartly funny. Read it now' The Times
Picador 2014-01-16 258 pages

What you did not tell: a Russian past and the journey home

Mazower, Mark
"In a tribute to his late father, British historian Mark Mazower traces his family's story from the end of the nineteenth century to today, beginning with his grandfather Mordkhel Mazower's birth in the town of Grodno, part of the Pale of Settlement to which the majority of the Russian Empire's Jews were confined. An activist and member of the Communist Bund, Mordkhel--who later assumed the more European name "Max"--Travelled widely in the years surrounding the Revolution before ultimately settling in England, where his son would live his entire life"--
Allen Lane 2017 379 pages

What you did not tell: a Russian past and the journey home

Mazower, Mark
SHORLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 NEW STATESMAN AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 'Brilliant ... a staggering story' Robert Fox, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 'Fascinating, vast and rich ... a dramatic family memoir' Guardian Uncovering his family's remarkable and moving stories, Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. It was a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht . His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution. Max, the grandfather, had started out as a socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society. In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, What You Did Not Tell recounts a brand of socialism erased from memory - humanistic, impassioned, and broad-ranging in its sympathies. But it also explores the unexpected happiness that may await history's losers, the power of friendship, and the love of place that allowed Max and Frouma's son to call England home.
Penguin Books 2018-07-05 400 pages