1644 results for "Biography"

Ralph Lauren

Lauren, Ralph
Ralph Lauren isn't easy to define. Unlike many designers, he is not known for a single signature look, but rather for his sweeping dreams of American living. Over the course of his career, the images of luxury, adventure, and beauty that he created have come to define American style. In this visually stunning book, Lauren speaks candidly for the first time ever about himself and his art. In part one, we get to know the designer through never-before-seen pictures of him in private life and with his family, living the lives he designs for. In his own words, we hear about his life, work, and inspiration. In the second part, Lauren displays and writes about his most important, most iconic, and most beloved work, hand-picked from hundreds of runway shows, collections, and his signature cinematic advertising campaigns. Lauren's aesthetic influence and unique design sensibility are captured here by fashion's finest photographers, including Bruce Weber, Deborah Turbeville, and Patrick Demarchelier.--
Rizzoli 2011 496 pages

Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield

Lemmon, Gayle Tzemach
In 2010, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created Cultural Support Teams, a pilot program to put women on the battlefield alongside Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other special operations teams on sensitive missions in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could access places and people that had remained out of reach, and could build relationships -- woman to woman -- in ways that male soldiers in a conservative, traditional country could not. Though officially banned from combat, female soldiers could be "attached" to different teams, and for the first time women throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves heard the call to join male soldiers on special ops missions. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses exhaustive firsthand reporting and experience with the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from across the Army, and the remarkable hero at its heart: 1st Lt. Ashley White, who would become the first Cultural Support Team member killed in action and the first CST remembered on the Army Special Operations Memorial Wall of Honor alongside the Army Rangers with whom she served.
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2015-04-21 292 pages

Heart: an American medical odyssey

Cheney, Dick
"For as long as he has served at the highest levels of business and government, Vice President Dick Cheney has also been one of the world's most prominent heart patients. Now, for the first time ever, Cheney, together with his longtime cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, MD, shares the very personal story of his courageous thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012. In 1978, when Cheney suffered his first heart attack, he received essentially the same treatment as President Eisenhower had in 1955. Since then, cardiac medicine has evolved in extraordinary ways, and Cheney has benefited from nearly every medical and technological breakthrough along the way. At each juncture, when Cheney faced a new health challenge, the technology was one step ahead of his disease. In many ways, Cheney's story is the story of the evolution of modern cardiac care. Heart is the riveting, singular memoir of both doctor and patient, tracking their relationship as it unfolds over many years and crises. Like no US politician has before him, Cheney opens up about his health struggles, sharing harrowing, never-before-told stories about the challenges he faced during a perilous time in our nation's history. Dr. Reiner provides his perspective on Cheney's case and also gives readers a fascinating glimpse into his own education as a doctor. He masterfully chronicles the important discoveries, radical innovations, and cutting-edge science that have changed the face of medicine and saved countless lives. Powerfully braiding science with story and the personal with the political, Heart is a sweeping, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic book that will give hope to the millions of Americans affected by heart disease"--
Scribner 2013-10-22 344 pages

Run towards the danger: confrontations with a body of memory

Polley, Sarah
"Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry. Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a "reciprocal pressure dance." Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger. In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing"--
Penguin Press 2022 258 pages

Life will be the death of me: ...and you, too!

Handler, Chelsea
"In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in LA in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then, Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough of the privileged bubble she's lived in--a bubble within a bubble--and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large. At home, she embarks on a 'Year of Self-Sufficiency'--learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her. She becomes politically active--finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, she unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead. This is a thrillingly honest, insightful, and deeply, darkly funny memoir that is the perfect read for this moment in time"--
Spiegel & Grau 2019-04-09 239 pages

Why Meadow died: the people and policies that created the Parkland shooter and endanger America's students

Pollack, Andrew,Eden, Max
Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was murdered in the Parkland, Florida high school shooting, teamed up with education expert Max Eden to find out how the Parkland shooter slipped through the cracks. They argue that the policies pioneered in Broward plague American schools, and make school shootings more likely.
Post Hill Press 2021-02-02 357 pages

Bobby Kennedy: the making of a liberal icon

Tye, Larry
“A multilayered, inspiring portrait of RFK . . . [the] most in-depth look at an extraordinary figure whose transformational story shaped America.”—Joe Scarborough, The Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Soon to be a Hulu original series starring Chris Pine. Larry Tye appears on CNN’s American Dynasties: The Kennedys . “We are in Larry Tye’s debt for bringing back to life the young presidential candidate who . . . almost half a century ago, instilled hope for the future in angry, fearful Americans.”—David Nasaw, The New York Times Book Review Bare-knuckle operative, cynical White House insider, romantic visionary—Robert F. Kennedy was all of these things at one time or another, and each of these aspects of his personality emerges in the pages of this powerful and perceptive biography. History remembers RFK as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight of a bygone era of American politics. But Kennedy’s enshrinement in the liberal pantheon was actually the final stage of a journey that began with his service as counsel to the red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. In Bobby Kennedy, Larry Tye peels away layers of myth and misconception to capture the full arc of his subject’s life. Tye draws on unpublished memoirs, unreleased government files, and fifty-eight boxes of papers that had been under lock and key for forty years. He conducted hundreds of interviews with RFK intimates, many of whom have never spoken publicly, including Bobby’s widow, Ethel, and his sister, Jean. Tye’s determination to sift through the tangle of often contradictory opinions means that Bobby Kennedy will stand as the definitive biography about the most complex and controversial member of the Kennedy family. Praise for Bobby Kennedy “A compelling story of how idealism can be cultivated and liberalism learned . . . Tye does an exemplary job of capturing not just the chronology of Bobby’s life, but also the sense of him as a person.” — Los Angeles Review of Books “Captures RFK’s rise and fall with straightforward prose bolstered by impressive research.” — USA Today “[Tye] has a keen gift for narrative storytelling and an ability to depict his subject with almost novelistic emotional detail.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Nuanced and thorough . . . [RFK’s] vision echoes through the decades.” — The Economist
Random House 2016 580 pages

A mother's reckoning: living in the aftermath of tragedy

Klebold, Sue
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In a matter of minutes, they killed twelve students and a teacher and wounded twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently? Here she chronicles her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible, shedding light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.
Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC 2017-02-07 305 pages

Horse crazy: the story of a woman and a world in love with an animal

Nir, Sarah Maslin
"In the bestselling tradition of works by such authors as Susan Orlean and Mary Roach, a New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist explores why so many people-including herself-are obsessed with horses. It may surprise you to learn that there are over seven million horses in America-even more than when they were the only means of transportation-and nearly two million horse owners. Acclaimed journalist and avid equestrian Sarah Maslin Nir is one of them; she began riding horses when she was just two years old and hasn't stopped since. Horse Crazy is a fascinating, funny, and moving love letter to these graceful animals and the people who-like her-are obsessed with them. It is also a coming-of-age story of Nir growing up an outsider within the world's most elite inner circles, and finding her true north in horses. Nir takes us into the lesser-known corners of the riding world and profiles some of its most captivating figures. We meet Monty Roberts, the California trainer whose prowess earned him the nickname "the man who listens to horses"; George and Ann Blair, the African-American husband and wife who run a riding academy for inner city youth on a tiny island in the middle of Manhattan's East River; and Francesca Kelly, a wealthy London socialite whose love for an Indian nobleman shaped her life's mission: to rescue an endangered Indian breed of horse and bring them-illegally-to America. Woven into these compelling character studies, Nir shares her own moving personal narrative. She details her father's harrowing tale of surviving the Holocaust, and describes an enchanted but deeply lonely upbringing in Manhattan, where horses became her family. She found them even in the middle of the city, in a stable disguised in an old townhouse and in Central Park, when she chased down truants as an auxiliary mounted patrol officer. And she speaks candidly of how horses have helped her overcome heartbreak and loss. Infused with heart and wit, and with each chapter named after a horse Nir has loved, Horse Crazy is an unforgettable blend of beautifully written memoir and first-rate reporting"--
Simon & Schuster 2020-08-04 292 pages

The secret life of Salvador Dalí

Dalí, Salvador
Painter, designer, and filmmaker Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the most colorful and controversial figures in 20th-century art. A pioneer of Surrealism, he was both praised and reviled for the subconscious imagery he projected into his paintings, which he sometimes referred to as "hand-painted dream photographs." This early autobiography, which takes him through his late thirties, is as startling and unpredictable as his art. It is superbly illustrated with over 80 photographs of Dalí and his works, and scores of Dalí drawings and sketches. On its first publication, the reviewer of Books observed: "It is impossible not to admire this painter as writer. As a whole, he . . . communicates the snobbishness, self-adoration, comedy, seriousness, fanaticism, in short the concept of life and the total picture of himself he sets out to portray." Dalí's flamboyant self-portrait begins with his earliest recollections and ends at the pinnacle of his earliest successes. His tantalizing chapter titles and headnotes — among them "Intra-Uterine Memories," "Apprenticeship to Glory," "Permanent Expulsion from the School of Fine Arts," "Dandyism and Prison," "I am Disowned by my Family," "My Participation and my Position in the Surrealist Revolution," and "Discovery of the Apparatus for Photographing Thought" — only hint at the compelling revelations to come. Here are fascinating glimpses of the brilliant, ambitious, and relentlessly self-promoting artist who designed theater sets, shop interiors, and jewelry as readily as he made surrealistic paintings and films. Here is the mind that could envision and create with great technical virtuosity images of serene Raphaelesque beauty one moment and nightmarish landscapes of soft watches, burning giraffes, and fly-covered carcasses the next. For anyone interested in 20th-century art and one of its most gifted and charismatic figures, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí is must reading.
Dover 1993-01-01 400 pages

Comfort me with apples: more adventures at the table

Reichl, Ruth
In Ruth Reichl's latest book -- one that will delight her fans and convert those as yet uninitiated to her charming tales -- the author brings to life her adventures in pursuit of good meals and good company. Picking up where "Tender at the Bone leaves off, Comfort Me with Apples recounts Reichl's transformation from chef to food writer, a process that led her through restaurants from Bangkok to Paris to Los Angeles and brought lessons in life, love, and food. It is an apprenticeship by turns delightful and daunting, one told in the most winning and engaging of voices. Reichl's anecdotes from a summer lunch with M.F.K. Fisher, a mad dash through the produce market with Wolfgang Puck, and a garlic feast with Alice Waters are priceless. She is unafraid -- even eager -- to poke holes in the pretensions of food critics, making each meal a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. "The New York Times has said, "While all good food critics are humorous .. few are so riotously, effortlessly entertaining as Ruth Reichl." In Comfort Me with Apples, Reichl once again demonstrates her inimitable ability to combine food writing, humor, and memoir into an art form.
Random House 2001 302 pages

Subculture vulture: a memoir in six scenes

Kasher, Moshe
"After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: OK, so what else is out there? Over the ensuing decades, he found his way to the answer: a lot. From his current vantage point as a successful stand-up comic, Kasher looks back on his years careening from subculture to subculture, and he immerses readers in the hilariously strange nuances of each of the scenes he's found himself in. Immediately after getting sober, Kasher began serving as the self-appointed sheriff of his Young People's AA group. He then went on to start his own club-promoting business from scratch in the heart of the 90s California rave scene, and later became a security guard at Burning Man. Once, he caught a man who worked as a coyote at the US border sneaking punk kids into the festival as a side hustle. A child of deaf adults, he's also served as a sign language interpreter, and once helped an angry client cuss out a police officer. Later in life, Kasher went on to reconnect with his Jewish heritage after the death of his father, and now has a booming career as a stand-up comic"--
Random House 2024-01-30 301 pages