Looks at the life and career of Sally Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman to travel in space.

A biography of the outspoken New York politician who became the first black person to the elected to Congress from Brooklyn and the first black Congresswoman in history.

The long-awaited, untold, inside story of the rise of the legendary actor, singer, scholar, and activist. The first volume of this major biography breaks new ground. The greatest scholar-athlete-performing artist in U.S. history, Paul Robeson was one of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century. Now his son, Paul Robeson Jr., traces the dramatic arc of his rise to fame, painting a definitive picture of Paul Robeson's formative years. His father was an escaped slave; his mother, a descendent of freedmen; and his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Eslanda Cardozo Goode. With a law degree from Columbia University; a professional football career; title roles in Eugene O'Neill's plays and in Shakespeare's Othello; and a concert career in America and Europe, Robeson dominated his era. This unprecedented biography reveals the depth of Robeson's cultural scholarship, explores the contradictions he bridged in his personal and political life, and describes his emergence as a symbol of the anticolonial and antifascist struggles. Filled with previously unpublished photographs and source materials from the private diaries and letters of Paul and Eslanda Robeson, this is the epic story of a forerunner who now stands as one of America's greatest heroes.

By general consensus, Pablo Picasso is the most brilliant and influential artist of this century. Despite this supreme position in the history of art, he has nonetheless eluded and frustrated critics. Getting an intimate sense of the character of Picasso appears almost impossible; his macho posture and his incomparable range of styles seem designed to keep everyone who is interested in him at a distance. Who better than another legendary artist, Norman Mailer, to enter inside so enigmatic and protean a mind? In Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man, Mailer sets out to capture the meaning of Picasso's life and art and explores in bold fashion the originality of his ambition. Commenting upon much of the critical work on Picasso that has appeared over the years, Mailer's biography brings us closer to the young artist than we have ever been before. Much at the heart of Mailer's interpretation in Picasso's first great love, Fernande Olivier, with whom the artist lived for seven years--a period that included Picasso's most revolutionary works, from the explosive innovations of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to the mysteries of Cubism itself. To understand Picasso in these years, Mailer argues, it is necessary to follow his relationship with the extraordinary Fernande, who is here given her own voice by way of excerpts from her candid memoirs, hitherto unpublished in English. Since this period also includes Picasso's friendships with Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein, the book evokes the charm and special character of bohemian life in Paris in the early 1900s.

National book Award laureate; recipient of Special Pulitzer Prize citation; winner of the Life in America Prize the Archives of American Art Award; among many others, James Thomas Flexner has written with distinction about American history and art. He has penetrated many of the charactrers who have shaped history exposing the intricacies of not only the historical figure, but the man beneath the marble image. The range of Flexner's subjects is wide: painters, inventors, doctors, loyalists, traitors, and spies, such luminaries as George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Alexander Hamilton, and John Singleton Copley, are among those Flexner has taken as subjects. After over fifty years of writnig, Flexner, one of America's greatest chroniclers has turned his probing eye back on to the pages of his own life with the same honesty, frankness, wit which have come to signify his form. James Thomas Flexner was born in 1908 on Lexington Avenue, New York City to parents Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner (scientist and first director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical research.) Published in the literary magazine at the Lincoln High School, Flexner's passion for writing was spawned at a young age. This passion would become a source of life long struggle as well as success for Flexner. Journalist for the Herald Tribune, and foremost biographer (as well as making numerous appearances on radio and television,) Flexner's career allowed him access into the quick of the political, social, and artistic movements and developments that shaped the twentieth century. An un-traditional student, Flexner, although graduating magna com laude from Harvard University, often pursued what was to be considered by academics, unorthodox methods of research for his work. Following the passion of his own interests and plotting his own course of research and study, Flexner created of himself a sort of maverick, chartign a course for biography that countered that written in the guide books of academe. While he probed and uncovered the lives of the great men who shaped the past, noteworthy publishers, writers, artists, and politicians of the twentieth century fill the pages of Maverick's Progress. Flexner writes of how influences, acquantances, and friends such as Bernard Berenson, Conrad Aiken, Ivy Lee, Harry Hopkins, Allan Nevins, Logan Pearsall Smith, and Edward Hopper figured in his life, and in his development as a writer. James Flexner has authored more than twenty books, several of them have been recently re-published by Fordham University Press. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Eminence in Biography, by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988. He is perhaps most well known for his four-volume biography of George Washington which was eventually condensed into one: An Indispensable Man from which two television mini-series have been produced and for which he was awared the Peabody Award and Emmy Nomination. Maverick's Progress offers us a candid an sparkling look into the life of a writer who has indeed been a maverick in the canon of American historians - an individual who himself has been an Indispensable Man.

A new, updated edition of Jack Newfield's hard-hitting unauthorized biography of boxing kingpin Don King, source of the Emmy-winning film starring Ving Rhames. With a new epilogue. Working his way out of a life of street crime and numbers running - and jail time for manslaughter - King rose to become a powerhouse in the fight game, outnegotiated corporate giants, fleeced the treasuries of entire countries, and amassed a vast personal fortune while ruining the lives and careers of some of boxing's greatest champions. The dying words of the man King stomped to death on the streets of Cleveland in 1966 - Don, I'll pay you the money! - became the motif for Don King's ascendancy.

Abigail & John offers readers the opportunity to view prominent scenes in American history through the remarkable lives of one of the country's most beloved couples-the Adams's. Exploring the historical significance of a partnership that spanned over five decades, the book details the love they shared for each other and the country. From carefree childhoods to years of war, to the births of their children, and the beginning of a new nation, Abigail & John looks into the unique roles the Adams's played in the formation of America, and contributions and sacrifices they made for the young country.From David Bruce Smith, author of American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, and his mother Clarice Smith, world renowned artist, comes this compelling and insightful historical biography of Abigail and John Adams. This unique nonfiction children's book tells the story of one of America's most-treasured couples alongside stunning and original illustrations.

Matthew Arnold BY LIONEL TRILLING NEW YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON GEORGE ALLEN and UNWIN, LTD. Copyright 1939, 1949, by Lionel Trilling FIRST PRINTING 1939 BY W. W. NORTON COMPANY, INC. REISSUED WITH ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 1949 BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS AND GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN, LTD. REPRINTED 1958 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO DIANA CITY MO. PUBLIC PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION BOOK was first published ten years ago. The demand I for it during this time, although certainly not large, has been --steady enough to have exhausted the last printing of the original publisher this is naturally a satisfaction to me, and no less gratifying is the action of the Press of my own University in making the book again available. Because of technical considerations a re vision of the text was not possible. I have been able to correct certain literal inaccuracies, although probably not all. But I have not been able to let my pencil follow its strong, irritable impulse to alter phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, or to modify and make juster the state ments that now cause me uneasiness. For this I am very glad. One s sense of style does, I think, improve with the years and one is likely to acquire stricter notions of how prose should sound and of what is due one s readers and possibly one even does also acquire more precise notions of the way things are, of what the object really is. But were I able to undertake incidental revisions I should certainly be led on to fundamental ones, and I am relieved that circumstance pro tects me from this temptation. Leaving aside the question of whether or not it is proper to impose a present self on a former self, I know that ten yearsago I had the advantage of a much more intimate con nection with Matthew Arnold than I have now, and, of much more knowledge of certain aspects of 19th-century thought. When the book was done, I quite intentionally turned away from the subject, know ing that my absorption in it had inevitably had its effect on my mind, one that on the whole I thought beneficial, but having no wish to be, Preface to the Second Edition as one says in the academic profession, quot an Arnold man. quot Were I now to undertake any fundamental revision, I should be tampering with the work of a writer who, whatever the lapses of his knowledge, knew more about certain matters than I do now and, whatever the failures of his judgment, had the considerable advantage of a deep involve ment with his subject. I may, however, without encroachment, mention two faults of the book of which I became aware soon after its publication. Mr. Ed mund Wilson remarked in a review that in my narrative of Arnold s youthful stress the figure of Arthur Hugh Clough is not sufficiently clear and solid I think that this is so, and it is indeed a fault, and an opportunity missed. Then I am in agreement with the reviewers who said that I did not pay enough attention to the aesthetics of Arnold s poetry. I speak in particular of these two insufficiencies because they are of a kind which the reader can supply if once he has been put in mind of them. The ten years have of course seen a continuing production of scholarly and critical work on Arnold. I could certainly have derived benefit from this work had it been available to me as I was writing but, so far as I know, nothing has as yet appeared which would lead me to change in any essentialway my account of Arnold s thought. The two most considerable publications of the decade are The Poetry of Matthew Arnold A Commentary, by Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Howard Foster Lowry Oxford University Press, 1940, which is mentioned in my original preface as not yet published, and Matthew Arnold, Pohe Essai de biographic psychologique, by Professor Louis Bonnerot Paris, Didier, 1947, The new edition of Arnold s poems by Professor Tinker and President Lowry is on the point of publication and Dr...

Book by Tenn, William

With flair, humor, and style, Sydney Biddle Barrows tells the whole intriguing story of how she merged business and sex to create Cachet--the escort service of choice among rich, powerful, and prominent men. Adapting business management methods of the 1980s to the world's oldest profession, in this frank, surprising, and insightful, book, Ms. Barrows emerges as a woman who seized a chance and made the most of it.

In his fast-paced memoir, written with best-selling author Garth Sundem, Olympic silver medalist Tim Morehouse describes his life's inspiring trajectory from a rough neighborhood in New York City to fencing halls around the world and eventually the Olympic podium. Using the Italian adage Maestro di scherma, maestro di vita (Master fencing, master life] as his compass, Tim shows us the hidden and sometimes dangerous underbelly of international saber fencing and shows how revelations on the strip can inform our lives, such as: Win the idea, lose the point "You can fence well and still be touched, but by measuring success by your actions and not the score, you can turn the tide of a match. Close the distance "It's useless to shout a pickup line from across a crowded bar, and likewise, it's useless to feint cut Russia's Stanislav Pozdniakov from an inch too far away. The right move from the wrong distance is no move at all.

Here, for the first time, is an all-embracing account of the loves of that royal womaniser, Edward VII, as Prince of Wales and King. It is also a study of the three women with whom the King was most deeply in love - his `official' mistresses, Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick and Alice Keppel. In their different ways, all three were exceptional personalities; Lillie Langtry, the socially ambitious girl from the vicarage, became a famous actress; Daisy Warwick, an immensely wealthy heiress and social butterfly, was converted to socialism; Alice Keppel, probably the King's greatest love, developed into an astute and fascinating figure in her own right. Spanning three decades and packed with incident, scandal and high romance, the story is set in the extravagant and hypocritical world of late Victorian and Edwardian society. It is full of colourful characters: Edward's beautiful and betrayed wife Alexandra; the three cuckolded husbands - Edward Langtry, the Earl of Warwick and the Hon. George Keppel; the flamboyant Oscar Wilde; the sensuous Sarah Bernhardt; the dissipated Prince Albert Victor; and the sexually complex W.E. Gladstone. The King in Love challenges long-established myths and reveals much that was hitherto unknown: not least the extraordinary scene that took place at the deathbed of King Edward VII. The result is a brilliant evocation of a world, and a way of life that has gone forever.

Prince Albert Victor, known to his family as 'Eddy', was the eldest child of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. This is the story of Prince Eddy's alleged involvement in a Victorian cause célèbre - the Cleveland Street brothel case. The discovery of this homosexual brothel in 1889 led to an extraordinary cover-up by the British government - a cover-up which is explicable only in the light of Prince Eddy's involvement. Working from original sources (including the files of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Esher Papers), Theo Aronson has written the first full account of the strange life of Prince Eddy, setting it in perspective against a vivid backcloth of the astonishingly active homosexual underworld during the last decades of Queen Victoria's reign. Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld explores Prince Eddy's upbringing, his university and military careers, his curious personality, his alleged "secret marriage", his links with the Jack the Ripper murders, his early death and, above all, his sexual orientation. For it was this that linked the young prince's name to the Cleveland Street Scandal. Praise for Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld: 'Students of the erotic will love this book, and so will royal-watchers, but arbiters of sexual purity should hate it, for Mr. Aronson displays an underground culture that exposed its judges as upright liars' - New York Times Book Review

The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila presents a remarkable description of the entire spiritual life from the first release from mortal sin into Sanctifying Grace through the Mystical Marriage of the soul with Christ as a journey through what she called The Interior Castle. She sees the soul as a magnificent castle full of spacious and well-lit rooms or mansions each of which leads deeper into the heart of the castle to the seat of the King. However, St. Teresa laments that most people give all their attention to the outer wall of the castle the body ignoring the beauty of the soul within. St. Teresa gives practical advice regarding the early struggles and the temptations to turn back which beset the beginner. She describes each of the seven mansions and urges us forward to love and serve the Divine Majesty, imparting her absolute conviction that progress toward God through prayer is worth vastly more than all the treasures of this earth.

"The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself" is the autobiographical account of Saint Teresa of Avila, a prominent 16th century Spanish mystic, Carmelite nun, theologian, and writer of the Counter Reformation. Saint Teresa of Avila was born in 1515 in Avila, Spain to a wealthy and prominent family. After the death of her mother when she was 11, she went to live with the Augustinian nuns and devoted the rest of her life to the church until her death in 1582. Believed to have been written prior to 1567 at the direction of her confessor, Father Pedro Ibanez, Saint Teresa's autobiography has a didactic tone, similar to many of her other writings. Her autobiography is intended to be instructional and to show the reader how to live a more devout Christian life in the manner put forth by the Catholic Church. A classic work of Christian mysticism "The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself" is a must read for anyone seeking a more contemplative life and a closer and more spiritual connection with God through prayer and religious devotion. This edition follows the translation of David Lewis and is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. The Naked and the Dead (1948), inspired by his experience in World War II, was a bestseller and made him famous at the age of 25. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good fight both physically and verbally. Whether cheered or booed, Mailer was front and center in America's cultural battles for more than 50 years. He married six times and was father to nine children. Susan, born in 1949, is the eldest. Susan's parents separated when she was a baby. She grew up shuttling between her mother's home in Mexico and New York. Later she would marry a Chilean activist, spending the majority of her adult life in Chile, where she is a practicing psychoanalyst. In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her five stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very different cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life . . . In Another Place.

What does is it mean to be a citizen of the United States? Susan Griffin’s provocative investigation of that question takes us from the Declaration of Independence to the Iraq War, with many stops in between. Her conclusion: democracy is nothing less than a revolution of consciousness, and the revolution has just begun.

A collection of photographs of Marilyn Monroe, many of them previously unpublished, from her earliest days to the zenith of her screen career. The photographer, Bruno Bernard, was well-known for his portraits of Hollywood stars, and was Monroe's friend and confidant for 17 years.

A titan of modern media, Sumner Redstone shares how he became the head of one of the world’s great media empires and one of the richest men in the entertainment business. In one of the most fascinating and eye-opening business autobiographies written, Sumner Redstone shares the unvarnished story of how he overcame significant obstacles on his trek to build a vast media and entertainment engine. A Passion to Win gives a riveting look behind the scenes at the highly charged negotiations that won Redstone both Viacom and Paramount, revealing the intense business calculations and strong emotions of Redstone’s head-to-head confrontations with adversaries such as Barry Diller and H. Wayne Huizenga. In a book that shows readers what it takes to win, Redstone shares the rollercoaster journey that led him to become the head of a wildly successful company and the mind behind the revolution of the video industry.