166 results for "Biography"

Bookends A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

Zibby Owens
A deeply personal memoir about one woman's journey to finding her voice and rewriting her story by the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books (tm). Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family. But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her . She turned to books and writing for help. Just when things seemed particularly bleak, Zibby unexpectedly fell in love with a tennis pro turned movie producer who showed her the path to happiness: away from type-A perfectionism and toward letting things unfold organically. What unfolded was a meaningful career, a great love, and finally, her voice, now heard by millions of listeners. An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one's true calling, Bookends will inspire and uplift.
Amazon Publishing 2022 266 pages

East Into Upper East Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times , this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New York's tony Upper East Side, Jhabvala's characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience–jealousy, passion, temptation, and deception–truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander.
Catapult 1999-12-03 324 pages

The Story A Reporter's Journey

Judith Miller
Star reporter for the New York Times , the world's most powerful newspaper; foreign correspondent in some of the most dangerous fields; Pulitzer winner; longest jailed correspondent for protecting her sources, Judith Miller is highly respected and controversial. In this memoir, she turns her reporting skills on herself with the intensity of her professional vocation. Judy Miller grew up near the Nevada atomic proving ground. She got a job at the New York Times after a suit by women employees about discrimination at the paper and went on to cover national politics, head the paper's bureau in Cairo, and serve as deputy editor in Paris and then deputy at the powerful Washington bureau. She reported on terrorism and the rise of fanatical Islam in the Middle East and on secret biological weapons plants and programs in Iraq, Iran, and Russia. She covered an administration traumatized by 9/11 and an anthrax attack three weeks later. Miller shared a Pulitzer for her reporting. She turns her journalistic skills on herself and her controversial reporting which marshaled evidence that led America to invade Iraq. She writes about the mistakes she and others made on the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. She addresses the motives of some of her sources, including the notorious Iraqi Chalabi and the CIA. She describes going to jail to protect her sources in the Scooter Libby investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and how the Times subsequently abandoned her after twenty-eight years. The Story describes the real life of a foreign and investigative reporter. It is an adventure story, told with bluntness and wryness.
Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning 2015 567 pages

Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport

Shahade, Jennifer
In the game of chess, the strongest piece?the Queen?is often referred to as ?bitch, ? and being female has been long considered a major disadvantage. Chess Bitch, written by the 2004 U.S. Woman's Chess Champion, is an eye-opening account of how today's young female chess players are successfully knocking down the doors to this traditionally male game, infiltrating the male-owned sporting subculture of international chess, and giving the phrase ?play like a girl? a whole new meaning. Through interviews with and observation of the young globetrotting women chess players who challenge male domination, Chess Bitch shines a harsh light on the game's gender bias. For those who think of chess as two people sitting quietly across a table, Shahade paints a colorful world that most chess fans never knew existed.
Siles Press 2005 320 pages

The Facts of My Life

Charlotte Rae,Larry Strauss
"It's about time a book came out about one of the most talented and beloved performers in the American theater. Charlotte is the consummate actress, comedienne, entertainer. Her work on stage and screen is always hilarious and somehow also gets you right in the gut. Her story is every bit as brilliant. Read it and smile." -Comedy Legend, Carl Reiner "To think of Charlotte Rae is to smile. Consequently, when I began to read "The Facts of My Life," I was unprepared for the emotional impact it would have on me. By the time I finished the first chapter, dealing as it does with her severely troubled son Andy, I was in tears. "As an old friend of Charlotte's, I thought I knew her fairly well. But as I read on, I discovered that the 'facts of her life' were constantly surprising (as well as amusing and engrossing)! There is so much that I don't know about Charlotte and so much that I now want to know, when the book is finally completed and published, I'll be first in line to get my copy!" -Sheldon Harnick (Composer, Fiddler on the Roof) Charlotte Rae's career spans more than seventy years, from the golden age of television to Shakespeare in the Park, the New York Cabaret scene of the late 1940's and 50's to her hit series, The Facts of Life and well beyond. Off stage and screen, Charlotte's life has been one of joy and challenge, raising an autistic son, coming to terms with alcoholism, the heartache of a broken marriage, the revelation of a gay husband and the sudden challenge of facing middle-age with financial and emotional uncertainties-an crisis she ultimately turned into the determination that brought her stardom. The Facts of My Life is the first opportunity for Charlotte fans to explore the fascinating story of her extraordinary life: poignant and hilarious, a story of courage and triumph, one that speaks for a generation of women breaking barriers, taking on challenges, overcoming personal tragedy, and paving the way for others.
BearManor Media 2015-11 266 pages

Candy at Last

Candy Spelling
The followup to the New York Times bestseller Stories from Candyland has even better stories to tell--about Candy Spelling's notorious rift and reconciliation with her daughter, Tori, her misadventures in dating and sex, and her new life as a producer, writer, and businesswoman. After thirty-eight happy years of marriage to influential producer Aaron Spelling, raising two children in Hollywood, and co-managing one of the largest estates in the country (finally selling Spelling Manor, as detailed on her HGTV series, for $85 million), Candy is now adjusting to life on her own. In her new uncharted territory, she's ready to share the most intimate details of her life with Aaron; how his illness caused her to question her identity; and how she's reinvented herself as an independent woman, businesswoman, and television personality. Along the way, Candy reveals all-new dishy stories including those of Hollywood friends Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Michael Jackson, Janet Leigh, Dean Martin, and Elizabeth Taylor (her lifelong rival over their jewelry). Engaging, heartwrenching, intimate, and hilarious, Candy at Last shares her story of how family, friends, and her husband's inspiring advice to "follow your dreams" has made her determined to live life to the fullest.
John Wiley & Sons Canada, Limited 2014-05-06 252 pages

Bring Me a Unicorn Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The adventurous life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh encompasses family life and aviation with husband Charles, as well as her own distinguished literary career. These detailed records of this extraordinary woman's triumphs and tragedies have already sold 400,000 copies in previous editions and are now available to inspire a new generation of readers. 24 pages of photographs.
Pearson Education 1993-03 288 pages

Bitch: in praise of difficult women

Wurtzel, Elizabeth
No one better understands the desire to be bad than Elizabeth Wurtzel. Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at women who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter-day Delilahs include Yoko Ono, Pam Smart, Bess Myerson), Wurtzel finds many biblical counterparts to the men and women in today's headlines. In five brilliant extended essays, she links the lives of women as demanding and disparate as Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, and Nicole Brown Simpson. Wurtzel gives voice to those women whose lives have been misunderstood, who have been dismissed for their beauty, their madness, their youth. She finds in the story of Amy Fisher the tragic plight of all Lolitas, our thirst for their brief and intense flame. She connects Hemingway's tragic suicide to those of Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, and Marilyn Monroe, women whose beauty was an end, ultimately, in itself. Wurtzel, writing about the wife/mistress dichotomy, explains how some women are anointed as wife material, while others are relegated to the role of mistress. She takes to task the double standard imposed on women, the cultural insistence on goodness and society's complete obsession with badness: what's a girl to do? Let's face it, if women were any real threat to male power, "Gennifer Flowers would be sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office," writes Wurtzel, "and Bill Clinton would be a lounge singer in the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock." Bitch tells a tale both celebratory and cautionary as Wurtzel catalogs some of the most infamous women in history, defending their outsize desires, describing their exquisite loneliness, championing their take-no-prisoners approach to life and to love. Whether writing about Courtney Love, Sally Hemings, Bathsheba, Kimba Wood, Sharon Stone, Princess Di--or waxing eloquent on the hideous success of The Rules, the evil that is The Bridges of Madison County, the twisted logic of You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again--Wurtzel is back with a bitchography that cuts to the core. In prose both blistering and brilliant, Bitch is a treatise on the nature of desperate sexual manipulation and a triumph of pussy power.
Doubleday 1998-04-01 434 pages

May I Kiss You On The Lips, Miss Sandra?

Sandra Bernhard
Fragile, raw, daring, brilliant...Sandra Bernhard rocks. The actress, philospher, comedian, and cult goddess is definitely back -- and feeling fabulous -- with a labor of love that'll knock her followers off their feet and draw new ones to her like a magnet. Stage, film, music, television -- in every performance, Bernhard has shocked and amused, titillated and broken every rule. With her first two books, Confessions of a Pretty Lady and Love, Love, and Love Bernhard's electrifying talent took to the page and burned it up with flashes of true brillance -- the kind of writing that separates the powerful from the good. And now, in this new book, Sandra returns with a deeply personal collection of spicy tales, fiercely witty riffs, and sweet doses of wisdom. Here is Sandy as we know and love her -- and as we've never quite seen her before: heartrenderingly honest, with the mouth of a diva, the soul of a fighter, and the insight of a girl who has lived life big. Like a whisper in your ear, Sandy opens up her world: from her friendship with her loyal housepainter to her imagined history as as one of Jack Kennedy's lovers; from the sensual streets of Mogador to the comfort of her pristine L.A. bungalow; from her own poetry of romantic yearning and reflective prayer to dead-on truths brought to light in the heartbreaking and hilarious glow of fashion, celebrity, rock and spirituality. There is nothing Sandra Bernhard offers that doesn't deliver a pungent snap of truth and the surprise of unexpected emotion in this, her most revealing and entertaining book yet.
HarperCollins 1999-11-09 224 pages

Behind the Secret Window

Nelly S. Toll
Illustrated with Nelly's original watercolors, this powerful memoir tells the true story of how a little girl's imagination helped her survive World War II. The Nazis come to Poland when Nelly is six. By the time she turns eight, the events of World War II have taken almost everyone she loves. Scared, lonely, and running from the Nazis, Nelly hides in the bedroom of a Gentile couple in Lwow, Poland. For over a year, she lives in fear of discovery, writing in her diary and painting pictures of a fantasy world filled with open skies and happy families. For 13 months during World War II, the author and her mother were hidden from the Nazis. Like Anne Frank, Nelly kept a diary and through that outlet transformed her grim reality into an enchanting fantasy world. "Without emphasizing horror and loss, Toll conveys the effects of human evil and human folly, summoning up the forces of tragedy and courage." -- Publishers Weekly "In Toll's remembrance, art equals hope: her happy family pictures, painted in the secret room where she and her mother hid from the Nazis and the Poles, show extraordinary preteen talent as well as the will to survive." -- Kirkus Reviews
National Geographic Books 2003-03-24 176 pages

Data, a Love Story How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to Meet My Match

Amy Webb
“Amy Webb found her true love after a search that's both charmingly romantic and relentlessly data-driven. Anyone who uses online dating sites must read her funny, fascinating book.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project After yet another disastrous date, Amy Webb was preparing to cancel her JDate membership when epiphany struck: her standards weren’t too high, she just wasn’t approaching the process the right way. Using her gift for data strategy, she found which keywords were digital-man magnets, analyzed photos, and then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge—dozens of men who actually met her own stringent requirements wanted to meet her. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child.
Penguin 2014-01-28 304 pages

Approaching Eye Level

Gornick, Vivian
Seminal essays on loneliness, living in New York, friendship, feminism, and writing from nonfiction master Vivian Gornick Vivian Gornick's Approaching Eye Level is a brave collection of personal essays that finds a quintessentially contemporary woman (urban, single, feminist) trying to observe herself and the world without sentiment, cynicism, or nostalgia. Whether walking along the streets of New York or teaching writing at a university, Gornick is a woman exploring her need for conversation and connection—with men and women, colleagues and strangers. She recalls her stint as a waitress in the Catskills and a failed friendship with an older woman and mentor, and reconsiders her experiences in the feminist movement, while living alone, and in marriage. Turning her trademark sharp eye on herself, Gornick works to see her part in things—how she has both welcomed and avoided contact, and how these attempts at connections have enlivened and, at times, defeated her. First published in 1996, Approaching Eye Level is an unrelentingly honest collection of essays that finds Gornick at her best, reminding us that we can come to know ourselves only by engaging fully with the world.
Picador USA 2020-03-03 164 pages

Real estate: a living autobiography

Levy, Deborah
"Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer, a woman needs a room of one's own. Now, in [this book], acclaimed author Deborah Levy concludes her ground-breaking trilogy of living autobiographies with an exhilarating, boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it. In this vibrant memoir, Levy employs her characteristic indelible writing, sharp wit, and acute insights to craft a searing examination of womanhood and ownership. Her inventory of possessions, real and imagined, pushes readers to question our cultural understanding of belonging and belongings and to consider the value of a woman's intellectual and personal life. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory, [this book] is a brilliant, compulsively readable narrative" --
Bloomsbury Publishing 2021-08-24 208 pages

Visionary women

Nazarian, Angella M.
"Following the great success of Pioneers of the Possible, Angella Nazarian returns with an extraordinary sequel, Visionary Women. Featuring a foreword by Melanne Verveer, the director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, this new title highlights twenty more innovative and forward-thinking women. From Malala Yousafzai as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate and Carmen Amaya beginning her remarkable dance career at age four to swimmer Diana Nyad breaking a world record at sixty-four and Doris Lessing still penning stories into her nineties, this inspiring volume will compel readers to reconnect with their own dreams and envision new goals to challenge themselves at any stage of life"--Publisher's description.
Assouline 2015 165 pages

Last days at hot slit: the radical feminism of Andrea Dworkin

Dworkin, Andrea
"Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of the manhater in the popular imagination as well as a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, more than a decade after her death, this timely collection of her writing showcases the prescience of her analyses: of the genocidal character of sexual violence; of the devastating nihilism of white male supremacy, and of the toll it takes--especially on those who resist. This rediscovery of Dworkin's work will serve as a flashpoint for crucial feminist conversations today. Why is the cost of speaking out against abuse and inequality still so high? Why is the problematic work of brilliant women forced into oblivion, when that of flawed great men is embraced? What can we learn from the bitter divisions and discarded ideas of previous generations?"--Page 4 of cover.
Semiotext(e) 2019-03-05 407 pages