In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history.... from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies.--From publisher's description.

In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history. Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage . Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions—from a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President. Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies. Illuminating, revelatory, and utterly compelling, Counselor is the brilliant, long-awaited memoir from the remarkable man who shaped the presidency and the legacy of one of the greatest leaders America has ever known.

From one of America's most acclaimed directors comes a book that is both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller from the host of NPR's Weekend Edition -- "absolutely spectacular-wise and intimate, often funny, always touching" (Scott Turow) -- now in paperback. In a beautifully written narrative that runs from childhood to adulthood through times of war and peace, Scott Simon movingly tracing his life as a fan -- of sports, theater, politics, and the people and things he holds dear. Sports Illustrated columnist Ron Fimrite says of Home and Away, "Rarely do you find in books of this genre a clearer look into mysteries and confusions of childhood . . . moving and often amusing portraits . . . insights into the complex and often corrupt world of Chicago politics, the city being this book's true protagonist. There are compelling scenes from Simon's years as a war correspondent, roving reporter, and political operative . . . There is also an emotional account of Michael Jordan's last championship season with the Bulls that is a book within a book . . . "The writing is uniformly superb. This is, in fact, a memoir of such breadth and reach it compares favorably with another book that is allegedly about the nature of sports allegiance, Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. And that, believe me, is saying something."

Clean, Crisp, One crease to spine. No real damage, Memoir of a family rich in everything but money.

Uncompromisingly frank, "both brutal and beautifully written" (The Boston Globe), The Cap is an unconventional Holocaust memoir that defies all moral judgment and ventures into a soul blackened by the unforgiving cruelty of its surroundings. Roman Frister's memoir of his life before, during, and after his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps sparked enormous controversy and became an international best-seller. With bone-chilling candor, Frister illustrates how the impulse to live unhinges our comfortable notions of morality, blurring the boundary between victim and oppressor and leaving absolutely no room for martyrdom. By the time Roman Frister was sixteen, he had watched his mother murdered by an SS officer and he had waited for his father to expire, eager to retrieve a hidden half loaf of bread from beneath the dying man's cot. When confronted with certain death, he placed another inmate in harm's way to save himself. Frister's resilience and instinct for self-preservation -- developed in the camps -- become the source of his life's successes and failures. Chilling and unsentimental, The Cap is a rare and unadorned self-portrait of a man willing to show all of his scars. Reflected in stark relief are the indelible wounds of all twentieth-century European Jews. An exceptional and groundbreaking testimony, Roman Frister's "gut-wrenching memoir is a must-read." -- Kirkus Reviews

" In this sweeping memoir, Novak offers a full account of his involvement in the Valerie Plame CIA leak affair, while also telling the story of his remarkable life and career, a singular journey through a half century of stories, scandals, and personal encounters with Washington's most powerful and colorful people. Novak has been a Washington insider since the days when the place was a sleepy southern town and journalism was built on shoe leather and the ability to cultivate and keep sources (not to mention the ability to hold one's liquor). He has covered every president since Truman, known (personally and professionally) virtually all the big movers and shakers in DC, and broken a number of the biggest stories. Here, he puts it all into perspective. He also reveals the extraordinary transformations that have fundamentally remade Washington, politics, and journalism--and his own role in those transformations.--From publisher description.

In 1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as a heated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of a pretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces -- John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" -- and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and pictures by an extraordinary man.

At the age of 44—at the height of his success—Richard Lewis found himself on a gurney in an emergency room, suffering from a lethal mix of alcohol and drugs. The same dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and had generated so much wonderful material for comedy had turned on him. In this blistering memoir, Lewis tells how he got to that point, how he got on the road to recovery, and how he copes with being Richard Lewis, sober, on a daily basis, in this very funny, profoundly honest, inspiring but unsentimental book. He shares candid and revealing anecdotes about love, sex, fame, family, drinking therapy, eating disorders, and the serious business of comedy.

Biography, autobiography, and memoir is among the best ways to teach students to appreciate nonfiction reading.

A long-awaited new book on personal writing from Lopate--the celebrated essayist and the director of Columbia University's nonfiction program. He provides the nuts and bolts, offering a refreshing new master class on the craft of the personal narrative, including the personal essay and memoir

"A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award Winner Just Kids." - Publisher's description

A memoir from the beloved, colorful criminal defense attorney and three-term mayor of Las Vegas.

An intimate memoir by the controversial, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Oliver Stone Before moving to Los Angeles and the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while working odd jobs in Manhattan. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the highs and lows: meetings with Al Pacino over Stone's early scripts; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction; the failure of his first feature; his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; and much more. Chasing the Light is a true insider's guide to Hollywood's razor-edged years of upheaval in the 1970s and '80s with untold stories of decade-defining films from the man behind the camera.

An intimate memoir by the controversial, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his rarefied New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while driving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the high and low moments: We see meetings with Al Pacino over Stone’s scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino; the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award–winning film, Midnight Express. Chasing the Light is a true insider’s look at Hollywood’s years of upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s.

How do we come to terms with what can't be forgotten? How do we bear witness to extreme experiences that challenge the limits of language? This remarkable volume explores the emotional, political, and aesthetic dimensions of testimonies to trauma as they translate private anguish into public space. Nancy K. Miller and Jason Tougaw have assembled a collection of essays that trace the legacy of the Holocaust and subsequent events that have shaped twentieth-century history and still haunt contemporary culture. "Extremities" combines personal and scholarly approaches to a wide range of texts that bear witness to shocking and moving accounts of individual trauma: Toni Morrison's "Beloved", Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus," Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss", Tatana Kellner's Holocaust art, Ruth Klger's powerful memoir "Still Alive", and Binjamin Wilkomirski's controversial narrative of concentration camp suffering, "Fragments". The book grapples with the cultural and social effects of historical crises, including the Montreal Massacre, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the medical catastrophes of HIV/AIDS and breast cancer. Developing insights from autobiography, psychoanalysis, feminist theory and gender studies, the authors demonstrate that testimonies of troubling and taboo subjects do more than just add to the culture of confession--they transform identities and help reimagine the boundaries of community. "Extremities" offers an original and timely interpretive guide to the growing field of trauma studies. The volume includes essays by Ross Chambers, Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Marianne Hirsch, Wayne Koestenbaum, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and others.

"The Beautiful Smile is my favorite book." -Nan Goldin The Beautiful Smile, unavailable since its original publication on the occasion of Nan Goldin's (born 1953) Hasselblad Award of 2007, is finally back in print. The Hasselblad Award is considered the most important international photography prize in the world today; since 1980, award winners have included some of the greatest names the medium has known. 2007 winner Nan Goldin is easily one of the most significant photographers of our time. Adopting the direct aesthetics of snapshot photography, she has documented her own life and that of her friends and others on the margins of society for more than 30 years, offering frank depictions of drug abuse, cross-dressing and alternative sexualities. Her intimate photographs depict urban lives in New York and Europe in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, a period massively determined by HIV and AIDS. Her practice of photography as memoir, as a means of protection against loss and as an act of preservation, as well as her use of the slide show, resonates in the work of photographers of recent generations. This classic volume, which the photographer has called her favorite of all of her books, is a moving homage to the work of one of the most eminent artists of our time.

The Dramatic Story that Capitvated a GenerationWith this new edition, the classic best-selling autobiography by the late playwright Moss Hart returns to print in the thirtieth anniversary of its original publication. Issued in tandem with Kitty , the revealing autobiography of his wife, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Act One , is a landmark memoir that incluenced a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and general book readers everywhere. The book eloquently chronicles Moss Hart's impoverished childhood in the Bronx and Brooklyn and his long, determined struggle to his first theatreical Broadway success, Once in a Lifetime . One of the most celebrated American theater books of the twentieth centure and a glorious memorial to a bygone age, Act One if filled with all the wonder, drama, and heartbreak that surrounded Broadway in the 1920s and the years before World War II.

The underground artist and journalist presents a memoir of her years between September 11 and the Occupy movement in New York City to discuss the impact of historical events on her work and her decision to become a witness journalist--

As one of the country's foremost restaurant reviewers, Mimi Sheraton set the standard for food writing and criticism. In this engrossing memoir, the doyenne of food criticism explains how she developed her passion for writing about food and wine, sharing the secrets of her career, including her years at the New York Times . Witty and honest, she talks openly about the importance of anonymity, her battle with weight, and the demands of juggling work with the needs of a husband and son. From fine dining to lunch in New York City public schools, Mimi Sheraton gives readers the big dish on a life in food.