Victorian England lives in this biography by a French writer: Illustrations Note Bibliography Publisher's Note Two generations Schools Brummel & St Ignatius Business Retreat Pilbrimage Doctrines Conquest of London Independent Women Badge of a party M.P. The Maiden Speech Weddings Mary Anne The Right Honorable Baronet Young England The Oak & the Reed Leader Obstacles Mr Gladstone's Cruel Duty Shadows The Top of the Greasy Pole The Queen Mourning A Cloud of Grandmothers The Chief Action Atrocities War? The Congress of Berlin Afghans, Zulus, Floods The Outer World 'His Favorite Flower' Index

To movie audiences, the work of Andrew Marton (born in Hungary in 1904) is memorable: the famous chariot race in Ben-Hur and the meticulously accurate Normandy invasion in The Longest Day are two of his important achievements. But because his credits were very often "Second Unit Director" or "Co-Director," Marton is often not immediately associated with his work. For the first time this oral history reveals just what were Andrew Marton's contributions to the cinema. This extensive interview, filled with great detail on how he did his movie magic, covers Marton's 55-year career. Technically clever, he always retained his humanity, humor, and humaneness.

A highly decorated Israeli military officer, leader, and former director of the internal security service, Shin Bet, sees the light on what his country must do to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspective from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own. As head of the Shin Bet security agency, he gained empathy for 'the enemy' and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose. Researching and writing Friendly Fire , he came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel's civil society while heaping humiliation upon its Palestinian neighbours. 'If Israel becomes an Orwellian dystopia,' Ayalon writes, 'it won't be thanks to a handful of theologians dragging us into the dark past. The secular majority will lead us there motivated by fear and propelled by silence.' Ayalon is a realist, not an idealist, and many who consider themselves Zionists will regard as radical his conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security and to sustain itself as a Jewish homeland and a liberal democracy. 'How can a staunch Zionist who was raised on one of Israel's earliest settlements and trained as a kill-or-be-killed elite commando spearhead a campaign for peace with his enemies? The answer, in Ami Ayalon's captivating narrative, is an eye-opener for Palestinians and Israelis alike.' -Sari Nusseibeh, author of Once Upon a Country- a Palestinian life , former president of the Al-Quds University, and former Palestinian National Authority representative in Jerusalem ' Ayalon's aims and accomplishments are ... undeniably impressive ... Hope finds a prominent presence in what so many think is a hopeless, endless conflict.' - Kirkus Reviews 'Ami Ayalon discusses how he came to see a two-state solution with the Palestinians as the best way to ensure Israel's security, not just through analysing numbers and statistics, but through a humanistic approach. He discusses ... how his humanist paradigm not only allowed him to see how the Palestinians' grievances and aspirations are intertwined with Israel's security, but also how he still acknowledges and sympathises with the narratives of those in Israel whom he may disagree with.' -Jonah Naghi, The Times of Israel

From the heyday of the '50s B-movies through the disaster genre of the '70s, William Castle was an extraordinary movie mogul who produced such classic thrillers as Straight Jacket, Homicidal and Rosemary's Baby. Here are the outrageous memoirs of an American original whose life was every bit as outlandish as his movies. Photographs. Filmography.

This is the first truly comprehensive history of the political explosion that shook America in the 1970s and whose aftereffects are still being felt in public life today. Drawing on contemporary documents, personal interviews, memoirs, and a vast quantity of new material, Stanley Kutler shows how President Nixon's obstruction of justice from the WHite House capped a pattern of abuse that marked his entire tenure in office. He makes clear how the drama of Watergate is rooted not only in the tumultuous events of the 1960s but also in the personality and history of Richard Nixon.

From the legendary producer and author of The Kid Stays in the Picture—one of the greatest Hollywood memoirs ever written—comes a long-awaited second work with all the elements of a star-studded blockbuster: glamour and conflict, giddy highs and near-fatal lows, struggle and perseverance, tragedy and triumph.

In mid-2008, after thirty years of increasingly tyrannical rule, Robert Mugabe, the eighty-four-year-old ruler of Zimbabwe, met his politburo. He had just lost an election. But instead of conceding power, he was persuaded to launch a brutal campaign of terror to cower his citizens. Journalist and author Peter Godwin was one of the few observers to slip into the country and bear witness to the terrifying period that Zimbabweans call, simply, the Fear. Following on from his compelling and moving memoirs, Mukiwa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun , this is a personal journey through the country Peter Godwin grew up in and knows so well – a landscape and a people, grotesquely altered, laid waste by a raging despot. At considerable risk, he travels widely to see the torture bases, the burned villages, the death squads, the opposition leaders in hiding, the last white farmers, the churchmen and the diplomats putting their own lives on the line to stop the carnage. Told with Godwin’s brilliant eye for character and natural story-telling gifts, this dark story of Africa’s corruption and violence is populated by extraordinary characters whose lives have been shaped by the Fear.

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.

Memoirs of a twenty-year relationship between the author and Ayn Rand, who was his friend, mentor, lover, and enemy. No index. No bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud drove him to airports; the British film industry kowtowed to his power; the great Hollywood studios fawned at his feet.Sir Alexander Korda, one of the world's most flamboyant movie tycoons, rose from obscurity in rural Hungary to become a legendary filmmaker. With him were his brothers, Zoltan and Vincent, all living charmed lives in circles that included H. G. Wells, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Marlena Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, and Merle Oberon, who was soon to be Alex's wife. But along with Alex's flair for success was an equally powerful impulse for destruction. Now, Vincent's son, Michael Korda, in the first book of his memoirs, recalls the enchanted figures of his childhood...the glory days of the Korda brothers' great films...and then their heartbreaking, tragic end.

The memoirs of Lev Razgon, "the last man alive to have actually attended and survived the Communist Party Congress of 1934." Razgon was born in a shetl, became a Communist journalist and writer, was among the Party elite at the beginning of Stalin's reign of terror, and spent seventeen years in labour camps.

Did the Jews go like 'sheep to slaughter' during the Shoah? Not really. They walked to their deaths with great dignity, and thousands of Jews resisted in the camps, ghettos, forests, and allied armies. This is the untold story of that resistsance in the Soviet Union during WW II. Based on personal memoirs, officer accounts, and interviews, this 655-page book tells that story with over 100 photos and 12 maps. Porter himself is a survivor and his father was a partisan commander in Western Urkaine.

A critical biography drawn from the author's letters, notebooks, memoirs and fiction.

Uses excerpts from letters, memoirs, and documents to recreate the life of Ada Byron, daughter of the English poet, and discusses her contributions to mathematics and her friendships with the leading mathematicians of the period

The turn of the century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams. Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant protrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.

The passing of David Bronstein was the saddest chess news of 2006, but at least his many fans now have the chance to read his collection of memoirs and games from his long career. Much of the material appeard in Russian several years ago, but this is the first English translation. Bronstein's love of the game, and his special rapport with chess amateurs, shines through especially strongly. English players will find details of his visits to Hastings, appearances for Charlton in the London League, and friendship with numerous chess fans in the UK. Lovers of more sinister gossip and conspiracy theories will enjoy his account of the alleged shenanigans at Zurich 1953, and his secret preparation with Korchnoi bevor the latter's 1974 match with Karpov. Any lover of chess will find hours of delight in this book, which is a worthy tribute to one of the games's immortals. Review by Steve Giddins. David Bronstein describes the chess personalities he has met in various countries over the past decade, and annotates 40 of his best games from this period. He also recalls the most significant events from his earlier career, gives his impressions of contemporaries such as Larsen, Spassky and Korchnoi (including a secret training match against the latter played in 1971), and expresses his outspoken views on modern chess.

Wurtzel pub. her groundbreaking memoir of depression, Prozac Nation, at the age of 26. It was a worldwide success, but no success could staunch her continuous battle with depression. The absence of fulfillment in the wake of success became yet another seemingly insurmountable hurdle. Her doctor prescribed Ritalin to boost the effects of her anti-depression medication, and it worked. But she reached the point where she couldn t go more than 5 minutes without a fix of Ritalin, then cocaine, & then more Ritalin. In this harrowing account, she contemplates what it means to be in love within something in your blood that takes over your body, becomes the life force within you -- & could kill you. Recounts a courageous fight back to a life worth living.

Calvin Trillin, the celebrated New Yorker writer, offers a rich and engaging biography of his father, as well as a literate and entertaining fanfare for the common (and decent, and hard-working) man. Abe Trillin had the western Missouri accent of someone who had grown up in St. Joseph and the dreams of America of someone who had been born is Russia. In Kansas City, he was a grocer, at least until he swore off the grocery business. He was given to swearing off things—coffee, tobacco, alcohol, all neckties that were not yellow in color. Presumably he had also sworn off swearing, although he was a collector of curses, such as "May you have an injury that is not covered by workman's compensation." Although he had a strong vision of the sort of person he wanted his son to be, his explicit advice about how to behave didn't go beyond an almost lackadaisical "You might as well be a mensch." Somehow, though, Abe Trillin's messages got through clearly. The author's unerring sense of the American character is everywhere apparent in this quietly powerful memoir, Messages from My Father .