1644 results for "Biography"

Fool me once: hustlers, hookers, headliners, and how not to get screwed in Vegas

Lax, Rick
Rick Lax was paranoid to begin with. He saw lies everywhere. And when he saw them, he spoke up. But when his girlfriend gets conned by a violent drug dealer, nothing Rick does seems to help. So what if he misses the next lie? What if spotting them isn't enough to protect against them? What if exposing lies puts him in even more danger? Terrified of being conned himself, Rick bolts for Vegas, deception capital of the world, to learn the game and how to guard against it. Rick meets deceivers of all kinds, from back-alley hustlers and poker pros to the biggest headliners on the Strip. During the course of his unconventional education, which includes passing himself off as an octogenarian, being exposed as a card counter, and picking up a hooker (inadvertently, of course), Rick gets closer to becoming a human lie detector...but at what cost? By the end of Fool Me Once , you'll know why seventh graders make better liars than college students, how to use a handful of rice as a polygraph, and how to bluff a poker pro. But above all, you'll understand why some things in life are a lot worse than being fooled.
St. Martin's Griffin 2011-01-04 295 pages

Dickinson

Swift, Rebecca
By the end of her life, Emily Dickinson lived in virtual isolation in her family’s home, refusing any contact with strangers. Though she attracted local renown as a recluse, her reputation as one of America’s finest and most original poets was established only posthumously; her works, numbering nearly two thousand, were virtually all unpublished at the time of her death. Displayed here is an insightful and comprehensive outline of all her most famous works as well as the real life events that inspired her. This in-depth examination is then coupled with rich, extensive, and intimate correspondences with figures who exerted enormous influence on the poet—despite, in some cases, never meeting her—all of which were recovered after her death, to form a compete, authoritative account of one of America’s most beloved poets.
Hesperus 2011 158 pages

The Hooligan's return: a memoir

Manea, Norman
Romanian exile Norman Manea’s internationally acclaimed memoir/novel, now available to English-language readers At the center of The Hooligan’s Return is the author himself, always an outcast, on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Manea’s book is in many ways a memoir, it is also a deeply imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global, competitive, and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project, The Hooligan’s Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness, obedience and integrity.
Yale University Press 2013-10-22 385 pages

Double yoi! a half century of sportswriting and Broadcasting

Cope, Myron
This entertaining, revealing memoir of the Pittsburgh writer-turned-broadcaster recounts memories and behind-the-scenes stories from a career that can only be called truly special. No broadcaster has come even close to matching his stretch of 35 years as radio color analyst for an NFL team’s games—in Cope’s case, the six-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Here, Cope gives you insight into the performers who have inspired the Steelers Nation. Their path to the top is reflected in observations he offers with admiration, amusement, and blunt criticism. Seasoned with laugh-out-loud anecdotes and touching vignettes, Double Yoi! shares Cope’s most personal moments, from labor pains in birthing the Terrible Towel to the reason behind his charity work with the physically and mentally afflicted—among them, his son Danny—to his emotional dedication to his late wife, Mildred, who died after a long battle with cancer. The author’s most embarrassing moments, including getting the hook during his Pro Football Hall of Fame acceptance remarks, are here as well. Famed for his raspy voice and enthusiastic style, Myron Cope transcended mere broadcasting to become part of the Pittsburgh Steelers mythos. From firsthand experiences, Cope brings his takes on the famous, such as Terry Bradshaw, Muhammad Ali, the Dallas “Cryboys,” and Bill Cowher. Cope also explains how he helped John F. Kennedy become America’s first Catholic President and how Frank Sinatra nearly cost him his job. Double Yoi! is the ultimate collector’s item for the Pittsburgh-loyal and the standard for accomplished sportswriters nationwide.
Sports Publishing 2013-11-06 229 pages

Selected letters of Mary Antin

Antin, Mary
Best known as an immigrant autobiographer—primarily for the much-celebrated The Promised Land (1912) and From Plotzk to Boston—Mary Antin (1881-1949) wrote regularly for the Atlantic Monthly and played an influential role in the Boston and New York Jewish literary communities. With the publication of her letters, Evelyn Salz restores her to a prominent place in American literature. Throughout her life, Antin corresponded with a wide range of people from Israel Zangwill and Theodore Roosevelt to Zionists Horace Kallen and Bernard G. Richards, as well as writer and editor Louis Lipsky, industrialist Thomas A. Watson, and Rabbi Abraham Cronbach. Impressive in its scope and elegance, this correspondence (1899-1949) follows Antin's life from a precocious adolescence through her years of fame and public involvement (after writing The Promised Land) and her slow descent into mental illness and eventual obscurity.
Syracuse University Press 2000 160 pages

The Martian's daughter: a memoir

Whitman, Marina von Neumann
One of the five Hungarian scientific geniuses dubbed "the Martians" by their colleagues, John von Neumann is often hailed as the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century and even as the greatest scientist after Einstein. He was a key figure in the Manhattan Project; the inventor of game theory; the pioneer developer of the modern stored-program electronic computer; and an adviser to the top echelons of the American military establishment. In The Martian's Daughter , Marina von Neumann Whitman reveals intimate details about the famed scientist and explores how the cosmopolitan environment in which she was immersed, the demanding expectations of her parents, and her own struggles to emerge from the shadow of a larger-than-life parent shaped her life and work. Unfortunately, von Neumann did not live to see his daughter rise to become the first or highest-ranking woman in a variety of arenas. Whitman became a noted academic during the 1960s and '70s, casting her teaching and writing in the framework of globalization before the word had been invented; became the first woman ever to serve on the President's Council of Economic Advisers and participated actively in U.S. efforts to reshape the international monetary and financial system during the early 1970s; pioneered the role of women on the boards of leading multinational corporations; and became the highest-ranking female executive in the American auto industry in the 1980s. In her memoir, Whitman quotes from personal letters from her father and describes her interactions with such figures as Roger Smith of GM and President Nixon. She also details the difficulties she encountered as an early entrant into a world dominated by men and how she overcame the obstacles to, in her words, "have it all."
University of Michigan Press 2012-08-31 308 pages

Lights!, camera!, Alice! the thrilling true adventures of the first woman filmmaker

Rockliff, Mara
Meet Alice Guy-Blaché. She made movies--some of the very first movies, and some of the most exciting! Blow up a pirate ship? Why not? Crawl into a tiger's cage? Of course! Leap off a bridge onto a real speeding train? It will be easy! Driven by her passion for storytelling, Alice saw a potential for film that others had not seen before, allowing her to develop new narratives, new camera angles, new techniques, and to surprise her audiences again and again. With daring and vision, Alice Guy-Blaché introduced the world to a thrilling frontier of imagination and adventure, and became one of filmmaking's first and greatest innovators.
Chronicle Books 2018-09-11 60 pages

Children of the flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the untold story of the twins of Auschwitz

Matalon Lagnado, Lucette
Relates the life story of Josef Mengele and quotes from the testimonies of twin children who were the victims of his sadistic pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz. They speak about the complicated psychological problems which they confronted after the war, and which caused their silence in the 1950s-70s. In 1984 the organization of surviving twins, CANDLES, was established, which organized a trip to Auschwitz in 1985 and publicized their reminiscences.
Morrow 1991 320 pages