171 results for "Biography"

Ladyparts A Memoir

Deborah Copaken
A frank, witty, and dazzlingly written memoir of one woman trying to keep it together while her body falls apart—from the “brilliant mind” (Michaela Coel, creator of I May Destroy You ) behind Shutterbabe “The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read and an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing.”—Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE I’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces. Twenty years after her iconic memoir Shutterbabe, Deborah Copaken is at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying—literally—on sexism’s battlefield as she scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs into a glass container before heading off to the hospital . . . in an UberPool. Ladyparts is Copaken’s irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, the story of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, healthcare Frogger, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father’s death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one atop the other, which provide the book’s narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. Copaken bounces back from each bum body part, finds workarounds for every setback—she transforms her home into a commune to pay rent, sells her soul for health insurance, turns FBI informant when her sexual harasser gets a presidential appointment—but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net. Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, quintessentially American throughout, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir.
Random House Publishing Group 2023-10-24 496 pages

The Matter of Black Lives Writings from the New Yorker

Jelani Cobb,David Remnick
A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking writing on race in America, including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more From the pages of the New Yorker comes a bold and telling portrait of Black life in America, with astonishing early work from Rebecca West's account of a lynching trial and James Baldwin's 'Letter from a Region in My Mind' (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time) to more recent writing by Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, Hilton Als, Jamaica Kincaid, Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Alexander, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Doreen St. Félix, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kelefa Sanneh, and more. Reaching back across the last century, The Matter of Black Lives includes a wide array of material from the New Yorker archives ranging across essays, reported pieces, profiles, criticism, and historical pieces. This book addresses everything from the arts to civil rights, matters of justice, and politics, and brings us up to the present day with accounts of what Jelani Cobb calls "The American Spring." The result is a startling, nuanced and, ultimately, indelible portrait of America's complex relationship with race.
William Collins 2021 848 pages

Kate Remembered

A. Scott Berg
For seven decades Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the twentieth century - reigning as an admired actress, a beloved movie star, and a treasured icon of the modern American woman. She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time. In 1983 - at the age of seventy-five, her career cresting - the four-time Academy Award winner opened the door to biographer A. Scott Berg - then thirty-three - and began a special friendship, one that endured to the end of her illustrious life. From the start, Scott Berg felt that Katharine Hepburn intended his role to be not just that of a friend but also of a chronicler, a confidant who might record for posterity her thoughts and feelings. Over the next twenty years, Kate used their many hours together to reveal all that came to mind, often reflecting on the people and episodes of her past, occasionally on the meaning of life. Here are the stories from those countless intimate conversations, and much more. In addition to recording heretofore untold biographical details of her entire phenomenal career and her famous relationships with such men as Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes, Kate Remembered also tells the amusing, often emotional story of one of the most touching friendships in her final years. Scott Berg provides his own memories of Katharine Hepburn offstage - quiet dinners in her town house in New York City, winter swims (she swam, he watched) in the Long Island Sound at Fenwick, her home in Connecticut, weekend visits with family members and dear friends...even some unusual appearances by the likes of Michael Jackson and Warren Beatty. Finally, Kate Remembered discusses the legendary actress's moving farewell, during which her mighty personality surrendered at last to her failing body - all the while remaining true to her courageous character. Kate Remembered is a book about love and friendship, family and career, Hollywood and Broadway - all punctuated by unforgettable lessons from an extraordinary life.
Penguin Publishing Group 2004-09-07 384 pages

Ready, Steady, Go! The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London

Shawn Levy
It’s the summer of 1966... The fundamental old ways: chastity, rationality, harmony, sobriety, even democracy: blasted to nothing or crumbling under siege. The city glows. It echoes. It pulses. It bleeds pastel and fuzzy, spicy, paisley and soft. This is how it's always going to be: smashing clothes, brilliant music, easy sex, eternal youth, the eyes of everybody, everyone's first thought, the top of the world, right here, right now: Swinging London. Shawn Levy has a genius for unearthing the secret history of popular culture. The Los Angeles Times called King of Comedy , his biography of Jerry Lewis, "a model of what a celebrity bio ought to be–smart, knowing, insightful, often funny, full of fascinating insiders' stories," and the Boston Globe declared that Rat Pack Confidential "evokes the time in question with the power of a novel, as well as James Ellroy's American Tabloid and better by far than Don DeLillo's Underworld. " In Ready, Steady, Go! Levy captures the spirit of the sixties in all its exuberance. A portrait of London from roughly 1961 to 1969, it chronicles the explosion of creativity–in art, music and fashion–and the revolutions–sexual, social and political–that reshaped the world. Levy deftly blends the enthusiasm of a fan, the discerning eye of a social critic and a historian's objectivity as he re-creates the hectic pace and daring experimentation of the times–from the utter transformation of rock 'n' roll by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the new aesthetics introduced by fashion designers like Mary Quant, haircutters like Vidal Sassoon, photographers like David Bailey, actors like Michael Caine and Terence Stamp and filmmakers like Richard Lester and Nicolas Roeg to the wild clothing shops and cutting-edge clubs that made Carnaby Street and King's Road the hippest thoroughfares in the world. Spiced with the reminiscences of some of the leading icons of that period, their fans and followers, and featuring a photographic gallery of well-known faces and far-out fashions, Ready, Steady, Go! is an irresistible re-creation of a time and place that seemed almost impossibly fun.
Crown 2003-07-08 360 pages

My Garden (Book)

Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid invites us into her garden in this “irresistible stream of horticultural consciousness” (Michael Pollan). Jamaica Kincaid’s first garden in Vermont was a square plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced gardener friends, she planted only seeds of flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book): , she gathers all that she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it in the same spirit: generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid’s affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododendron ‘Jane Grant,’ and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily and dreams of ways to trap small plant-eating animals. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up and where one of her favorite school subjects was botany, and she considers the implications of the English idea of the garden in colonized countries. On a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show, she visits historic English gardens on English soil. My Garden (Book): is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the gardeners who tend them.
Picador 2024-07-16 240 pages

Flashpoints the emerging crisis in Europe

George Friedman
Europe is ready to explode. Where will the explosion take place and what will the damage be? This major new book from the bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman presents a bold and provocative thesis about the likeliest locations for the coming eruptions. George Friedman forecasted coming global trends in The Next 100 Years and The Next Decade . Now, in Flashpoints , he zooms in on Europe and examines the dry tinder of the region: culture. Walking the faultlines that have existed here for centuries, Friedman inspects all the dormant social and political fissures still smouldering just beneath the continent's surface, and identifies those likely to erupt first. The book begins with a fascinating history of the events leading up to the horrific wars that nearly tore apart Western civilisation, and shows how modern efforts to overcome Europe's geopolitical tensions – including the formation of the European Union – have largely failed. Homing in on half a dozen pivotal locations, George Friedman gauges what the future holds, both in terms of conflict and also opportunity. Flashpoints details how events in Europe will affect the rest of the world – from USA to Russia, from China to Latin America – and reveals a new yet familiar political landscape in what is at once a gripping history lesson and a terrifying forecast of the potential devastation ahead.
Scribe Publications 2015-03-02 288 pages

La guía de Bernie Sanders para la revolución política / Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution (Spanish Edition)

Bernie Sanders
En este libro preciso y descarnado, Bernie Sanders, un político estadounidense de larga trayectoria progresista y senador independiente autodefinido como “socialista democrático," traza un diagnóstico de las calamidades sociales que afectan a Estados Unidos. Entre estas, Sanders delinea la creciente desigualdad de ingresos (el 1% más rico de los norteamericanos posee tanta riqueza como el 90% más pobre), la brutalidad policial, la inaccesibilidad a la educación superior, el racismo, los laberintos del sistema sanitario... Sanders deja enseñanzas para el resto del mundo: hay que transformar el sistema.
Square Fish 2020-08-25 240 pages

A Walker in the City

Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin burst onto the American literary scene in 1942, when his first book, "On Native Grounds," announced the arrival of an important new literary critic. "A Walker in the City," his second, signaled the other direction his career would follow: author of several intense, intimate, and lyrical memoirs. Years later he would admit how he struggled writing it. He thought he wanted to concentrate on New York itself, describing a series of walks around the city. But what emerged was the story of his own boyhood encounters with it, starting from Brownsville, the Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood of his birth, then stretching out to alluring, mysterious Manhattan and from there to the world. Each walk is simultaneously a journey out and a journey in: outward, from the neighborhood to the land beyond, the great, electric, canyoned streets of the city; inward, into his own soul, as it grows and falls in love with books and language and literature, with music and metaphysics and politics, with the city and the country and the world and rapturously tries to take them all in.
Fine Communications 1997 176 pages

Two Lives Gertrude and Alice

Janet Malcolm
Two Lives is Janet Malcolm's stunning portrait of a legendary couple: Gertrude Stein, the modernist master, and Alice B Toklas, the 'worker bee' who ministered to Stein's needs throughout their forty-year expatriate 'marriage'. As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couple's charmed life in a village in Vichy France her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. 'The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties,' she writes. The portrait of their relationship that emerges is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat. Janet Malcolm is at her finest in this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism.
Melbourne University Publish 2007 229 pages

Give Me Everything You Have On Being Stalked

James Lasdun
A TRUE STORY OF OBSESSIVE LOVE TURNING TO OBSESSIVE HATE IN THE CRUCIBLE OF THE DIGITAL AGE Give Me Everything You Have chronicles author James Lasdun's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled "verbal terrorist," who began trying, in her words, to "ruin him." Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun's account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.
Macmillan 2014-02-04 224 pages

Rising Out of Hatred The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

Eli Saslow
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, the powerful story of how a prominent white supremacist changed his heart and mind. This is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another. "The story of Derek Black is the human being at his gutsy, self-reflecting, revolutionary best, told by one of America's best storytellers at his very best. Rising Out of Hatred proclaims if the successor to the white nationalist movement can forsake his ideological upbringing, can rebirth himself in antiracism, then we can too no matter the personal cost. This book is an inspiration." --Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Derek Black grew up at the epicenter of white nationalism. His father founded Stormfront, the largest racist community on the Internet. His godfather, David Duke, was a KKK Grand Wizard. By the time Derek turned nineteen, he had become an elected politician with his own daily radio show--already regarded as the the leading light of the burgeoning white nationalist movement. We can infiltrate, Derek once told a crowd of white nationalists. We can take the country back. Then he went to college. At New College of Florida, he continued to broadcast his radio show in secret each morning, living a double life until a classmate uncovered his identity and sent an email to the entire school. Derek Black ... white supremacist, radio host ... New College student The ensuing uproar overtook one of the most liberal colleges in the country. Some students protested Derek's presence on campus, forcing him to reconcile for the first time with the ugliness of his beliefs. Other students found the courage to reach out to him, including an Orthodox Jew who invited Derek to attend weekly Shabbat dinners. It was because of those dinners--and the wide-ranging relationships formed at that table--that Derek started to question the science, history, and prejudices behind his worldview. As white nationalism infiltrated the political mainstream, Derek decided to confront the damage he had done. Rising Out of Hatred tells the story of how white-supremacist ideas migrated from the far-right fringe to the White House through the intensely personal saga of one man who eventually disavowed everything he was taught to believe, at tremendous personal cost. With great empathy and narrative verve, Eli Saslow asks what Derek Black's story can tell us about America's increasingly divided nature.
Diversified Publishing 2018-09-18 368 pages

Crash of the Heavens The Untold Story of the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe's Jews During World War II

Douglas Century
In the decades before the Second World War, thousands of young Jewish men and women left the antisemitism of Europe for British-controlled Palestine. By 1942, they then began receiving reports of unimaginable horrors- of the liquidation of the ghettos, of industrialised killing centres in Poland, of the plan to exterminate all of Europe's Jews. The Yishuv - the Jewish community in British Palestine - needed to act. Striking a deal with British Intelligence in 1943, they trained a cadre of volunteer Jewish emigres to parachute behind enemy lines on a dual mission- assisting thousands of downed Allied airmen to escape and to rescue as many Jewish citizens as possible from the death camps. At the centre of this story is the extraordinary Hannah Senesh, a legendary poet-soldier, and her courageous female colleagues, who, armed with only their intelligence and humanity, underwent training as commandos, radio operators and parachutists - then, in early 1944, courageously jumped behind enemy lines. Captured in her native Hungary, Senesh refused to give up any information even while suffering months of gruesome torture. Thrilling and inspiring, Crash of the Heavens is one of the great untold stories of the Second World War. 'What a story! This book is a magnificent masterwork, and you won't be able to put it down.' -Colonel Jack Jacobs, US Army (retired), Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, author of If Not Now, When? 'Hannah Senesh isn't just a hero. She's a reminder of what happens when Jews stop running and start fighting. Crash of the Heavens captures the essence of that moment - when young volunteers, men and women, parachuted into the heart of Nazi Europe not as victims but as warriors.' -Aaron Cohen, author of Brotherhood of Warriors Praise for No Surrender - 'A fascinating war story ... a you-are-there portrait of the horrors of war and the incredible effect one selfless person can have on hundreds.' - Kirkus Reviews
Scribe Publications 2025-11-18 432 pages

The Big Rewind A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture

Nathan Rabin
Nathan Rabin viewed pop culture as a life-affirming form of escape throughout his childhood and adolescence. As an adult, pop culture became his life. Head writer for A.V. Club for more than a decade, Rabin uses specific books, songs, albums, films, and television shows as springboards for dissecting his Dickensian life story in his acclaimed memoir The Big Rewind . Rabin writes movingly and hilariously about how pop culture helped save him from suicidal despair, institutionalization, and parental abandonment during a childhood that sent him ricocheting from a mental hospital to a foster home to a group home for emotionally disturbed adolescents. A fun book about depression, The Big Rewind is ultimately a touching narrative of a motherless child’s search for family and acceptance, and a darkly comic valentine to Rabin’s lovable, hard-luck dad. With comic dissertations on everything from The Simpsons to The Great Gatsby, and from Grey Gardens to Dr. Dre, The Big Rewind chronicles Rabin’s improbable yet all-too-true journey through life, and its fortuitous intersections with the dizzyingly wonderful world of entertainment.
Scribner 2010-07-13 384 pages

Christmas A Biography

Judith Flanders
A critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author explores the Christmas holiday, from the original festival through present day traditions. Christmas has always been a magical time. Or has it? Thirty years after the first recorded Christmas, one archbishop was already complaining that his flock was spending the day, not in worship, but in dancing and feasting to excess. By 1616, the playwright Ben Jonson was nostalgically remembering the Christmases of the old days, certain that they had been better then. Other elements of Christmas are much newer--who would have thought gift-wrap was a novelty of the twentieth century? That the first holiday parade was neither at Macy’s, nor even in the USA? Some things, however, never change. The first known gag holiday gift book, The Boghouse Miscellany , was advertised in the 1760s "for gay Gallants, and good companions", while in 1805, the leaders of the Lewis and Clark expedition exchanged--what else?--presents of underwear and socks. Christmas is all things to all people: a religious festival, a family celebration, a period of eating and drinking. In Christmas , bestselling author and acclaimed social historian Judith Flanders casts a sharp eye on its myths, legends and history, deftly moving from the origins of the holiday in the Roman empire, through the first appearance of Christmas trees in Central Europe, to what might be the origins of Santa Claus--in Switzerland--to draw a picture of the season as it has never been seen before.
St. Martin's Publishing Group 2019-10-22 256 pages

A Preface to Politics

Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 - December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, and critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 book Public Opinion.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2016-03-07 120 pages

The Book of Separation A Memoir

Tova Mirvis
The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as "not Orthodox" mean for them. This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you've ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.
HarperCollins Publishers 2018-09-18 336 pages

After the Madness

Sol Wachtler
Driving down the Long Island Expressway in November of 1992, Sol Wachtler was New York's Chief Judge and heir apparent to the New York Governorship. Suddenly, three van loads of FBI agents swerved in front of him--bringing his car and his legal career to a halt. Wachtler's subsequent arrest, conviction and incarceration for harassing his longtime lover precipitated a media feeding frenzy, revealing to the world his struggles with romantic obsession, manic-depression and drug abuse. In this, his prison diary, Wachtler reveals the stark reality behind his vertiginous fall from the heights of the legal establishment to the underbelly of the criminal justice system. Sentenced to a medium security prison in Butner, North Carolina, Wachtler is stabbed by an unseen assailant, berated by prison guards, and repeatedly placed in solitary confinement with no explanation. Moreover, as a prisoner he confronts first hand the inequities of a system that his judicial rulings helped to construct and befriends the type of people he once sentenced to prison. With unflinching honesty, Wachtler draws upon his unique experience of living life on both sides of the bench to paint a chilling portrait of prison life interwoven with a no-holds-barred analysis of the shortcomings of the American legal justice system.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2003-07 320 pages

Why Did I Come Into This Room? A Candid Conversation about Aging

Joan Lunden
Why Did I Come into This Room? is a funny What to Expect When You're Expecting for the aging woman. “I’m too old for Snapchat, but too young for Life Alert.” In her most candid and revealing book yet, acclaimed broadcast journalist and Baby Boomer Joan Lunden delves into the various phases of aging that leave many feeling uncomfortable, confused, and on edge. In her hilarious book, Lunden takes the dull and depressing out of aging, replacing it with wit and humor. After all, laughing is better than crying—unless it makes you pee! Whether you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, or more, this book is full of helpful information to embrace—or at least prepare for—the inevitable. Funny, captivating, and raw, no topic is off limits. Lunden goes where others fear to tread, openly talking about wrinkles and age spots (which Lunden insists are sunspots), expanding waistlines (no, you didn’t shrink your jeans), diminished energy (my get-up-and-go got up and went), weak pelvic floors (yes, we’re talking about leaking), hot flashes (they suck), disrupted sleep (the morning host is an expert on lack of sleep), changes in sex drive (oh yeah, she goes there), ageism (it exists and it pisses us off), and yes, the real reasons we suddenly find ourselves always searching for those car keys! Through her poignant and often laugh out loud funny personal experiences, Lunden candidly shares her anxieties and breakthroughs and how she’s coping with the realities of aging. She’s talking about the good, the bad and the ugly, elevating the conversation on topics often considered “taboo.” Why Did I Come into This Room? also explores the science of aging, including how it impacts the body and brain, while dispelling myths and revealing useful options to stave off the aging process as long as possible. Even more importantly, Lunden goes beyond the physical aspects of aging by closely examining the mental and emotional minefields that come with our advancing years. As she explores the value of asking ourselves important questions including, “Am I still relevant?”, “Do I have meaningful friendships?”, and “Am I leaving an impactful legacy?” Lunden also examines the freedom in “letting go,” the importance of managing stress, and how joy and a sense of purpose all play an impactful role in slowing the aging process. In a society where youth is revered and aging feared, Why Did I Come into This Room? is the long-awaited tell-it-like-it-is guide for women of all ages. As Lunden says, “Aging ain’t for sissies…you better be prepared.”
Renaissance Literary & Talent 2022-05-31 294 pages