By any measure, Hans Mark was a warrior of the Cold War. Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1929, he spent his early childhood in Vienna before escaping the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 and eventually emigrating to the United States, settling in New York. He graduated from high school in 1947, went west to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a PhD in physics from MIT. His work in nuclear engineering soon set him on a path that would be shaped by aeronautics, space exploration, and national defense. It was through advanced technology that Mark believed the United States could win the Cold War. In An Anxious Peace , Mark recounts in detail his life as a twentieth-century “rocket man.” Here is the inside story of one who—in a career spanning more than six decades—was on the technological front line, from long-range bombers to the space shuttle. Along the way, Mark reveals many never-before-told stories from life at NASA and more. Readers will revel in learning the background behind the decision to place a plaque on Pioneer 10 , a space probe that the NASA Ames Research Center designed to fly past the asteroid belt, Jupiter, and Saturn to collect data and images. Mark tells how he, Carl Sagan, and NASA insider John Naugle kept secret the addition of the now iconic 6x9-inch aluminum “message from humanity” until the probe had been launched. To this day Mark is pushing for a manned mission to Mars. One thing is sure: Hans Mark has left a major impact on academic and scientific communities that will be felt for decades to come.

In this vivid memoir, Silviu Brucan traces half a century of East European history, bringing to life the drama of a generation caught between the 1944 communist revolution and the 1989 anticommunist revolution. Brucan himself was at the heart of political power from World War II through the formation of a new government after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. After participating in the antifascist underground movement in World War II, he became acting editor of Romania's leading communist daily. He served as Romania's ambassador to the United States and then as its ambassador to the United Nations. He later grew disenchanted with the Ceausescu regime, becoming a prime mobilizer of popular support for reform and subsequently one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front. Brucan's insider position gave him a unique perspective on the inner workings of the Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu regimes as well as of the political machinations of Soviet and other East European leaders. He reveals for the first time the details - available nowhere else - of secret meetings between communist leaders: the 1944 conspiracy with King Michael against the German occupation; the extraordinary 1945 meeting between Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator decided that Georghiu-Dej and not Ana Pauker should lead the Romanian Communist Party; the secret mission assigned to Gheorghiu-Dej by Nikita Khrushchev during the 1956 revolution to install Janos Kadar as leader of the communist party; the 1958 Khrushchev-Gheorghiu-Dej meeting after a bear hunt in the Carpathians, which appeared to be a chat between two canny old peasants but concluded with Khrushchev's decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Romania; and Ceausescu's astute maneuver to seize power while Gheorghiu-Dej was on his deathbed. Brucan then recounts the real story behind the 1989 revolution, which was rooted in earlier plots to overthrow Ceausescu. He traces his own memorable transformation from staunch communist to outspoken critic of the regime, weaving his own story within the larger framework of his country's transformation and hopes for the future.

For fifty years, Peter Brook's opera, stage, and film productions have held audiences spellbound. His visionary directing has created some of the most influential productions in contemporary theater. Now at the pinnacle of his career, Brook has given us his memoir, a luminous, inspiring work in which he reflects on his artistic fortunes, his idols and teachers, his philosophical path and personal journey. In this autobiography, the man 'The New York Times' has called "the English-speaking world's most eminent director" and 'The London Times' has named "theater's living legend" reveals the myriad sources behind his lifelong passion to find the most expressive way of telling a story. Whether in India's epic "Mahabharata" or a stage adaptation of Oliver Sak's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," South Africa's" Woza Albert" or "The Cherry Orchard," Brook's unique blend of practicality and vision creates unforgettable experiences for audiences worldwide.

"From a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this moving and humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for his American future. In this poignant literary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professor Maxim D. Shrayer explores both material and immaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionate reportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversing the borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourished him-Russian, Jewish, and American"--

Recounts the transformation of two daily newspapers in the face of economic downturns and sweeping technological change. In 1978, Harry Rosenfeld left the Washington Post , where he oversaw the paper’s standard-setting coverage of Watergate, to take charge of two daily papers under co-ownership in Albany, New York: the morning Times Union and the evening Knickerbocker News . It was a particularly challenging moment in newspaper history. While new technologies were reducing labor costs on the production side and providing ever more sophisticated tools for journalists to practice their craft, those very same technologies would soon turn a comparatively short-lived boom into a grave threat, as ever more digitally distracted readers turned to sources other than print and other legacy media for their news. Between these boundaries, Rosenfeld set about to do his work. Picking up where his previous memoir, From Kristallnacht to Watergate , left off, Battling Editor tells the story of how Rosenfeld and his colleagues transformed two daily publications into alert and aggressive newspapers even in times of economic downturn. Bringing the investigative habits he had honed in his years at the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post , Rosenfeld’s objective was to tell the fully rounded stories of the region’s cities, suburbs, and rural towns, with awareness of both their achievements and their shortcomings. Furthermore, the misuse of power, whenever it happened, whether in city hall or the state capitol, in courtrooms or prisons, or in hospitals, corporations, community organizations, was to be exposed, and those accountable were to be held responsible. More importantly, however, Rosenfeld’s account is enlisted in the growing call to arms for all who cover the news and all who consume it. Written at a time when the credibility of news organizations is under attack by those at the highest levels of government, Battling Editor is a full-throated defense of fact-based journalism and hard-hitting reporting at the local as well as national level. “Harry’s book is often about tough decisions, and it stands out as a handbook on how to live an ethical life in the news business right now. Is it possible to tell the truth all the time? Sometimes. But this is an instructive narrative—especially today when the truth is such a rare commodity in the White House and Congress, and the financially beleaguered press is itself under threat as an enemy of the people. Harry and his family lived in Nazi Germany, and escaped it in 1939. A large part of his subsequent life has been an ongoing war against fascism, racism, and political criminals. This book explains how he waged that war on a daily basis in the newsrooms he managed so well, and for so long.” — from the Foreword by William Kennedy “Harry Rosenfeld made a choice. He left an exciting job at the Washington Post for the chance to do what so many editors dream of—become the guy in charge of two vibrant regional newspapers. What fun he had as a boss—being responsible for stories about local heroes, crooked politicians, and the day-to-day doings of a capital city. There also is a tinge of nostalgia in Harry’s memoir, for the kind of local reporting Harry lived for has all but disappeared in today’s newspaper world. Local coverage has been stripped away in newspaper after newspaper as all are facing dwindling readership and disappearing income.” — Seymour M. Hersh

"Takes readers inside the life mind of Frank Mankiewicz, a man who was essentially 20th century America incarnate. Born into Hollywood royalty, Frank's father and uncle were responsible for such classic films as Citizen Kane and All About Eve. Growing up in Beverly Hills, guests at the dinner table included F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Marx brothers. At age eighteen Frank joined the Army, seeing action at the Battle of the Bulge. Returning home, he began work for Robert Kennedy's campaign, becoming the Senator's press secretary and a personal friend of the family. During a long career in media and politics Frank helped give birth to National Public Radio and served as a director for the nascent Peace Corps. Such a long and interesting life gave rise to a myriad of opinions, and, before he passed away at 92, Frank was not afraid to share them. In this intriguing, insightful, and often humorous memoir, Frank recalls his favorite memories while sharing his opinions on everything from Zionism to smartphones. Like story-time with the nation's most interesting grandfather, he will make you laugh, make you cry, and probably embarrass you. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way"--

A compelling account of the development of a great artist, and a portrait of the tragic character of an entire era The uncompromising achievement of Elias Canetti has been matched by few writers this century. Canetti worked brilliantly in many forms, but the three volumes that comprise his autobiography are where his genius is perhaps most evident. The first volume, "The Tongue Set Free," presents the events, personalities, and intellectual forces that fed Canetti's early creative development. "The Torch in My Ear" explores his admiration for the first great mentor of his adulthood, Karl Krauss, and also describes his first marriage. The final volume, "The Play of the Eyes," is set in Vienna between 1931 and 1937, with the European catastrophe imminent; here he vividly portrays relationships with Hermann Broch and Robert Musil, among others.

Renowned as the legendary rude landlord of the Coach and Horses in London's Soho, Norman Balon has been immortalized in Private Eye and, most recently, as a menacing off-stage presence in Keith Waterhouse's play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. These are his memoirs - a personal view not only of his 50 years at the Coach and Horses where actors, painters, authors, drinkers and Private Eye writers have come and gone (some more peacefully than others), but also of a much-loved and much-changed Soho.

Memoirs of a Jew who was born in 1922 in Zhetel (in Polish, Zdzięcioł). Pp. 73-137 deal with the Holocaust period, and Shelub's experiences as a partisan in the forests of Belarus.

In the bestselling The Happy Hooker and subsequent books, Xaviera Hollander became famous for her unforgettably candid and racy stories of life as a New York madam catering to a sophisticated international clientele during the 1960s and 70s. Yet this remarkable woman's sexual escapades form only a part of her own remarkable life story—a story she reveals for the first time in the pages of this literary memoir, Child No More. It was a life begun in terror: Two months after her birth, young Xaviera de Vries and her mother were confined in a prison camp during the WWII Japanese occupation of Indonesia; her father, a doctor, was imprisoned in another camp. Two years later, summoned to treat a sick child, he operated on his own daughter without realizing her identity. But that story is just the start of an extraordinary memoir in which she traces her own life—and sexuality—as it was influenced by the example of her parents: her father, a dapper and witty Jewish psychologist and intellectual, her mother the gorgeous daughter of conventional German parents, and a target of Nazi enmity for her association with a Jew. With breathtaking but entirely characteristic—frankness, Xaviera revisits how her parents' own tempestuous relationship (and her father's licentious lifestyle) shaped her own life story. As she chronicles her eventual departure for New York, her entree into the world of prostitution, and her years of international celebrity, she reveals for the first time how her parents' lives continued to entwine with her own, as she endured years of separation from her father, and even stood by her mother as she entered a fulfilling lesbian relationship in the last years of her life. Told in the utterly frank and unquenchably inquisitive voice that marks all her work—yet from an entirely new and ultimately more honest perspective—Child No More recounts a surprising and ultimately uplifting "voyage of discovery through three lives."

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Biography) A Hollywood love story, a Hollywood memoir, a dual biography of two of Hollywood's most famous figures, whose golden lives were lived at the center of Hollywood's golden age, written by their daughter, an acclaimed writer and producer. Fay Wray was most famous as the woman--the blonde in a diaphanous gown--who captured the heart of the mighty King Kong, the twenty-five-foot, sixty-ton gorilla, as he placed her, nestled in his eight-foot hand, on the ledge of the 102-story Empire State Building, putting Wray at the height of New York's skyline and cinematic immortality. Wray starred in more than 120 pictures opposite Hollywood's biggest stars--Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper ( The Legion of the Condemned, The First Kiss, The Texan, One Sunday Afternoon ), Clark Gable, William Powell, and Charles Boyer; from cowboy stars Hoot Gibson and Art Accord to Ronald Colman ( The Unholy Garden ), Claude Rains, Ralph Richardson, and Melvyn Douglas. She was directed by the masters of the age, from Fred Niblo, Erich von Stroheim ( The Wedding March ), and Mauritz Stiller ( The Street of Sin ) to Leo McCarey, William Wyler, Gregory La Cava, "Wild Bill" William Wellman, Merian C. Cooper ( The Four Feathers, King Kong ), Josef von Sternberg ( Thunderbolt ), Dorothy Arzner ( Behind the Make-Up ), Frank Capra ( Dirigible ), Michael Curtiz ( Doctor X ), Raoul Walsh ( The Bowery ), and Vincente Minnelli. The book's--and Wray's--counterpart: Robert Riskin, considered one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Academy Award-winning writer (nominated for five), producer, ten-year-long collaborator with Frank Capra on such pictures as American Madness, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, and Meet John Doe, hailed by many, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, as "among the best screenwriters in the business." Riskin wrote women characters who were smart, ornery, sexy, always resilient, as he perfected what took full shape in It Happened One Night, the Riskin character, male or female--breezy, self-made, streetwise, optimistic, with a sense of humor that is subtle and sure. Fay Wray and Robert Riskin lived large lives, finding each other after establishing their artistic selves and after each had had many romantic attachments--Wray, an eleven-year-long difficult marriage and a fraught affair with Clifford Odets, and Riskin, a series of romances with, among others, Carole Lombard, Glenda Farrell, and Loretta Young. Here are Wray's and Riskin's lives, their work, their fairy-tale marriage that ended so tragically. Here are their dual, quintessential American lives, ultimately and blissfully intertwined.

Robert Manne is one of Australia's most profound political analysts. His memoir traces his intellectual roots, revealing how his family background and early years informed the questions he would spend his life trying to answer. It also provides a fascinating portrait of key political controversies, including intellectual combat over Pol Pot, Wilfred Burchett, Quadrant, the Stolen Generations, Manning Clark, the Howard government, the Murdoch press and much more. During the Cold War and the culture wars, Manne clashed with some of the most influential thinkers, writers and polemicists - Noam Chomsky, Les Murray, Leonie Kramer, Tom Keneally, Isi Leibler, Helen "Demidenko" Darville, Peter Craven, Paddy McGuinness, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt. This memoir recounts with surprising and unknown detail what really happened and why. Often subverting conventional notions of left and right, Manne is an original thinker who has helped shape the nation's discourse for decades. This is the inside story of a life of engagement and reflection, and a book for anyone interested in the shape and meaning of the past nearly fifty years of politics. 'Robert Manne's prose is elegant and reflective, offering the rare perspective of a man unafraid to admit and learn from his mistakes.' -Becca Whitehead, Books+Publishing 'Essential reading for anyone interested in what has happened to politics and ideas in this country since World War II' -Frank Bongiorno, Australian Book Review

"Ja, No, Man is an eerily familiar portrayal of the life of an ordinary white South African growing up during Apartheid-era South Africa. Told with extraordinary humour and self-awareness, Poplak's story brings his gradual understanding of the difference between his country and the rest of the world vividly to life. A startlingly original memoir that veers sharply from the quotidian to the bizarre and back again, Ja, No, Man is an enlightening, darkly hilarious, and, at times, disturbing read." From book cover

"A memoir by the renowned Hungarian writer Péter Nádas"--

The influential author of White Racism: A Psychohistory; The Age of Desire; History and Spirit; Red Hunting in the Promised Land; The Enemy of Natureand the controversial Overcoming Zionism, among others, offers a memoir of his first 80 years, from his early Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, his Yale and Columbia medical training, his years as a psychiatrist, Reichian psychoanalyst and subsequent academic career, to his embracing of Marxist political economy and commitment to radical ecosocialism. Highlights include his 1998 Green Party candidacy for the US Senate, his campaign in 2000 for the Green nomination for President of the United States, his work with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, and his recent Christian spiritual conversion.

This is not a traditional biography with a chronological enumeration of dates and places and events, because my husband's was not a traditional existence. Interwoven with details of his life and our life together, you will find lessons he taught and ideas he was most fervent about. His every thought and action was part of a larger whole--a profound knowledge of the universe that Philip Berg, who later became known as the Rav, acquired and then imparted. As his wife, I look back in these pages on our lives together, and I'm reminded of salient moments that defined his character and destiny. I include here events that are representative of his passion and purpose--events that also shaped my own journey, our tumultuous marriage, and the creation of the worldwide network known as the Kabbalah Centre.