1472 results for "Biography"

The feminism of uncertainty: a gender diary

Snitow, Ann Barr
The Feminism of Uncertainty brings together Ann Snitow’s passionate, provocative dispatches from forty years on the front lines of feminist activism and thought. In such celebrated pieces as "A Gender Diary"—which confronts feminism’s need to embrace, while dismantling, the category of "woman"—Snitow is a virtuoso of paradox. Freely mixing genres in vibrant prose, she considers Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, and Dorothy Dinnerstein and offers self-reflexive accounts of her own organizing, writing, and teaching. Her pieces on international activism, sexuality, motherhood, and the waywardness of political memory all engage feminism’s impossible contradictions—and its utopian hopes.
Duke University Press 2015-09-11 364 pages

The feminism of uncertainty: a gender diary

Snitow, Ann Barr
The Feminism of Uncertainty brings together Ann Snitow’s passionate, provocative dispatches from forty years on the front lines of feminist activism and thought. In such celebrated pieces as "A Gender Diary"—which confronts feminism’s need to embrace, while dismantling, the category of "woman"—Snitow is a virtuoso of paradox. Freely mixing genres in vibrant prose, she considers Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, and Dorothy Dinnerstein and offers self-reflexive accounts of her own organizing, writing, and teaching. Her pieces on international activism, sexuality, motherhood, and the waywardness of political memory all engage feminism’s impossible contradictions—and its utopian hopes.
Duke University Press 2015-09-11 364 pages

Cue the bunny on the rainbow: tales from TV's most prolific sitcom director

Rafkin, Alan
For director Alan Rafkin, television is probably the silliest and most volatile business in the world. Yet whether he was catching a pie in the face or working with an array of eccentric and talented stars, Rafkin was addicted to television from day one. In this autobiography, Rafkin recounts his behind-the-scenes experience working in over 80 different television series. Some of the most beloved sitcoms of all time, such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, M*A*S*H, Murphy Brown, and Coach adorn his directorial resume and illuminate Rafkin's ability to change with the times and persevere in the young world of show business. He recounts how directing strung-out actors and dodging their blows made life on the set a world unto itself. Rafkin further describes how having a good sense of humor helped him survive three divorces and three open-heart surgeries.
Syracuse University Press 1998 179 pages

Dance to the piper

De Mille, Agnes
"Born into a family of successful playwrights and producers, Agnes de Mille was determined to be an actress. Then one day she witnessed the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, and her life was altered forever. Hypnotized by Pavlova's beauty, in that moment she dedicated herself to dance. Her memoir records with light-hearted humor and wisdom not only the difficulties she faced - the resistance of her parents, the sacrifices of her training - but also the frontier atmosphere of early Hollywood, as well as New York and London during the Depression. "This is the story of an American dancer," writes Agnes de Mille, "a spoiled egocentric wealthy girl, who learned with difficulty to become a worker, to set and meet standards, to brace a Victorian sensibility to contemporary roughhousing, and who, with happy good fortune, participated by the side of great colleagues in a renaissance of the most ancient and magical of all the arts.""--
New York Review Books 2015 340 pages

The day I fired Alan Ladd and other World War II adventures

Hotchner, A. E.
"To perform heroically in a perilous situation is one thing, but I found that, in my case, the real difficulty was in getting myself into a spot where heroism was possible. Nobody on latrine duty ever got the Medal of Honor." This delightful memoir of A. E. Hotchner’s World War II experiences explores a different side of the troubled war years. Hotchner, who grew up in St. Louis, was a rookie lawyer fresh out of Washington University Law School when the United States declared war. Like many others of his generation, he aspired to serve his country. He tried to enlist in the navy, first as a pilot and then as a deck officer, but he was rejected for faulty depth perception and flat feet, respectively. Drafted as a lowly GI into the air force branch of the army, he was accepted to bombardier school. But on the eve of his departure, he was ordered to write and perform in an air force musical comedy instead. He eventually went to Officer Candidate School and was assigned to the Anti-Submarine Command as a lieutenant adjutant, but just before his squadron’s departure for North Africa he was detached and, despite knowing nothing about moviemaking, ordered to make a film that glorified the Anti-Submarine Command’s role in combating U-boats. All through his four-year military career, despite his efforts to get into combat, fate and the military bureaucracy thwarted him. The author skillfully recounts the events of those years, describing the encounters he had with many unforgettable characters, including a footsore and sentimental Clark Gable and an inept Alan Ladd—best known as the star of Shane. Ladd, then a GI, did such a poor job reading the narration for Hotchner’s film Atlantic Mission that Hotchner had to fire him. The author also describes his encounters with other well-known people, notably Tennessee Williams, with whom he attended a playwriting class at Washington University, and a wistful, vulnerable Dorothy Parker. Although much of Hotchner’s memoir is lighthearted, it also provides a unique look at the impact of the war on everyday life in the United States. Hotchner’s fast-paced prose makes this memoir an insightful pleasure to read.
University of Missouri Press 2002 131 pages

The Challenge of feminist biography: writing the lives of modern American women

Sara Alpern
This path-breaking anthology illuminates the lives of ten influential twentieth-century American women and looks at the challenges experienced by the women who have written about them. Exploring the frequently complicated dialogue between writer and subject, the contributors discuss tools appropriate to writing women's biography while their riveting accounts reveal how feminist scholarship led them to approach the study of women's lives in unconventional ways. "This wonderful collection demonstrates the significance of women's biography as a central part of feminist scholarship. The feminist biographer inserts a second life into a biography, her own, giving us yet another layer of depth and insight."--Ann J. Lane, author of To "Herland" and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
University of Illinois Press 1992 210 pages

In Love with Night The American Romance with Robert Kennedy

Ronald Steel
More than three decades have passed since Robert Kennedy was assassinated seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency. During that time, a powerful legend has grown around him, decreeing that he would have quickly ended the Vietnam War, violence in the cities, and racial and social injustice across the land. Millions of Americans continue to believe that legend. Drawing on his striking interpretation of RFK's character, award-winning historian Ronald Steel examines the life against the legend that Kennedy consciously helped create.
Thorndike Press 2000 413 pages

Tin Lizzie The Story Of The Fabulous Model T Ford

Philip Van Doren Stern
Tin Lizzie: The Story Of The Fabulous Model T Ford is a book written by Philip Van Doren Stern. The book is a comprehensive history of the Model T Ford, one of the most iconic cars in American history. The book covers the development of the Model T, its impact on American society, and the people who drove and worked on the car. The book is divided into several sections, each of which covers a different aspect of the Model T. The first section covers the early history of the automobile and the development of the Model T. The second section covers the impact of the Model T on American society, including its role in the growth of the middle class and the expansion of the American economy. The third section of the book covers the people who drove and worked on the Model T, including the assembly line workers who built the car and the farmers and businessmen who used it for transportation. The fourth section covers the Model T's impact on American culture, including its appearance in popular music and literature. Overall, Tin Lizzie: The Story Of The Fabulous Model T Ford is a fascinating and informative book that provides a comprehensive history of one of the most important cars in American history. The book is well-researched and well-written, making it an enjoyable read for anyone interested in the history of the automobile or American culture.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
Literary Licensing, LLC 2011-07 180 pages

Blood of the Liberals

George Packer
An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century—an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely—and ultimately fatally—tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, Blood of the Liberals is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.
Macmillan 2001-08 405 pages

Random Harvest

James T. Flexner
James Thomas Flexner has been a professional writer for most of his adult life. After several years spent at the City desk at the New York Herald Tribune after graduating from Harvard University, Flexner went on to become one of America's foremost historians. He has written with great distinction in a unique style accessible to and enjoyed by the scholar and general reader, twenty-six books in the fields of American history and art. Although he is principally known for his kistorical books, notably his four-volume biography of George Washington, Flexner has written in many forms and for many outlets. He has written for print and television; he has been a lecturer, columnist, reviewer, andeven a fiction writer. Collected here are samplings of Flexner's literary accomplishments throughout his long career (spanning over 60 years). In Random Harvest you will find pieces that appeared in Esquire Magaine, Time, The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, and even TV Guide. Included is an essay on George Washington and Watergate, on the art of biography, and many more. For the fan of Flexner, American history, and the art of a writer, in Random Harvest there is something to be enjoyed for everyone.
Fordham University Press 1998-11 339 pages

Liebling at home

Liebling, A. J.
A.J. Liebling was one of America's finest and most influential journalists. Reprinted here in full The Telephone Booth Indian (1942) - a witty portrait of an unusual group of entrepreneurs. These Manhattan lowlifes conduct unsavory business from the telephones in the lobbies of office buildings. The Second City (1952) - a chronicle of life in the windy city as seen by an outsider, a New Yorker and avowed Francofile.'The Honest The Life and Times of Colonel John R. Stingo (1953) - a fond biography of Colonel Stingo, raconteur and track denizen of Runyonesque proportions.'The Earl of Louisiana' (1961) - which captures the essence of a uniquely American character, Earl Long."The Jollity Building' (1962) - Otherwise known as the Brill Building, which picks up Liebling's portrait of Manhattan's West Side begun in 'The Telephone Booth Indian'. Here are hacks and hustlers scrambling over one another, vying for the 'big break.'In all five volumes, both the exalted and obscure are treated with the insight, candor, and wit that are the hallmarks of Liebling's writing.
Wideview Books 1982 532 pages