167 results for "Autobiography"

Life is a Wheel Love, Death, Etc. and a Bike Ride Across America

Bruce Weber
A New York Times Bestselling AuthorRiding a bicycle across the United States is one of those bucket-list goals that many dream about but few fulfill. In 2011 at the age of fifty-seven, New York Times obituary writer Bruce Weber made the trip alone and wrote about it as it unfolded mile by mile. Now, expanding upon the articles and blog posts that quickly became a must-read adventure story, Weber gives us a witty, inspiring, and reflective diary of his journey.
Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning 2014 595 pages

Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins
These interviews with Henry Rollins conducted by RE/Search (and Search & Destroy) founder V. Vale focus on Henry's travels -- often to countries considered dangerous and off-limits. There are references to Punk Rock history, the Occupy movement, and numerous personal adventures and experiences over the past 30-plus years of combing the planet giving musical and Spoken Word performances, and generally being as creative and humorous as possible no matter what the situation may be . Whatever Henry wants to do, he does it while giving his full attention, like a kind of Zen master. RE/Search tries to reveal the full scope of his creativity, achievements and darkly sardonic perceptiveness and contempt for cliche. This book is full of both humor and inspiration.
RE/Search Publications 2012 124 pages

Coming Out of the Ice An Unexpected Life

Victor Herman
This astonishing true story is the tale of a young American man who was sent to the Soviet Union with his parents by the Ford Motor Company to set up an auto plant. He was eventually thrown into Soviet prisons and could not return to America until forty-five years later. During his life in and out of Russian prisons, he met and fell in love with a beautiful Russian gymnast who followed him into exile and lived with him and their child for a year in Siberia, in a caved chopped out under the ice. Theirs is the compelling story of a romance destined to thrive under even the most desperate conditions. It was 1938 when Victor Herman was inexplicably thrown into prison, after he had become a celebrity in the Soviet Union, having won acclaim as "the Lindbergh of Russia" for his flying and world-record-breaking parachute jumps. But what happened to him was a common nightmare during the Stalin years: those who survived imprisonment and torture were sent north to hard labor in the icy forests an
Freedom Press 1983 369 pages

Creativity/Anthropology

Smadar Lavie,Kirin Narayan,Renato Rosaldo
Creativity and play erupt in the most solemn of everyday worlds as individuals reshape traditional forms in the light of changing historical circumstances. In this lively volume, fourteen distinguished anthropologists explore the life of creativity in social life across the globe and within the study of ethnography itself. Contributors include Barbara A. Babcock, Edward M. Bruner, James W. Fernandez, Don Handelman, Smadar Lavie, José E. Limon, Barbara Myerhoff, Kirin Narayan, Renato Rosaldo, Richard Schechner, Edward L. Schieffelin, Marjorie Shostak, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Edith Turner.
Cornell University Press 2018-08-15 368 pages

Unto the Daughters The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family

Karen Tintori
"Nearly every family has a skeleton in its closet, an ancestor who "sins" against custom and tradition and pays a double price. Karen Tintori refused to allow the truth to remain forgotten. This is a book for anyone who shares the conviction that all history, in the end, is family history."--Frank Viviano, author of Blood Washes Blood and Dispatches from the Pacific Century "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine " Unto the Daughters reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II--if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone."--Eleni N. Gage, author of North of Ithaka Karen Tintori thought she knew her family tree. Her grandmother Josie had immigrated from Sicily with her parents at the turn of the century. They settled in Detroit, and with Josie's eight siblings, worked to create a home for themselves away from the poverty and servitude of the old country. Their descendants were proud Italian-Americans. But Josie had a sister that nobody spoke of. Her name was Frances, and at age sixteen, she fell in love with a young barber. Her father wanted her to marry an older don in the neighborhood mafia--a marriage that would give his sons a leg up in the mob. But Frances eloped with her barber. And when she returned a married woman, her father and brothers killed her for it. Her family then erased her from its collective memory. Even 80 years and two generations later, Frances and her death were not spoken of, her name was erased from the family genealogy, her pictures burned, and her memory suppressed. Unto the Daughters is a historical mystery and family story that unwraps the many layers of family, honor, memory, and fear to find an honor killing in turn of the century Detroit. "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours. It's a must read for anyone researching their Italian ancestry."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine KAREN TINTORI is a writer and journalist who lives in Michigan with her family. Karen's books include Trapped, a 2002 Chicago Tribune favorite book, and The Book of Names (co-author), among others. Visit her website at: www. karentintori .com
Macmillan 2008-07-08 256 pages

Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale

Jen Trynin
It was 1994: post-Liz Phair, mid-Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave "making it" one last shot. It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamored for her attention. Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn't. In a series of dizzying, hilarious, heartbreaking snapshots, Trynin captures what it's like to be catapulted to the edge of rock stardom, only to plummet back down to earth. Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be is the story of a girl who got what she wished for--and lived happily ever after anyway.
Harcourt 2007 354 pages

Whitewash III The Photographic Whitewash of the JFK Assassination

Harold Weisberg
Influential assassination researcher Harold Weisberg revolves the third installment in his Whitewash series around the photographic evidence available to government officials investigating the death of John F. Kennedy. Given the materials and photographs available to the Warren Commission, Weisberg shows that in numerous cases the government either ignored the evidence it had in front of it or intentionally misrepresented evidence. Using the photographs themselves to show the inadequacies of the government’s research techniques, as well as the impossible conclusions at which the government arrived, Weisberg’s most damning argument is that the government twisted the evidence to make it fit preconceived theories and explanations for the assassination of the president. In the years since its original publication in 1974, the books in Weisberg’s Whitewash series have become classics of assassination literature and have established the author as one of the premier investigators and researchers in his field. Decades later, the shocking revelations painstakingly detailed in his work have lost none of their impact, and the information uncovered beneath the government’s whitewash is crucial to understanding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Skyhorse 2013-10-01 296 pages

Never Again! The Government Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination

Harold Weisberg
Originally published in 1995, and in the same classic investigative style of Whitewash and Case Open , Harold Weisberg turns his sharp investigative eye towards the events surrounding the autopsy of John F. Kennedy. Inside Never Again! you’ll find: • The specific truths regarding the autopsy of John F. Kennedy—truths that have for thirty years been buried, distorted, or ignored not only by the government but also by the national press • The blatant errors and calculated deceit of the Journal of the American Medical Association in their 1992 reports on the Kennedy autopsy • The path of conspiracy leading from the Navy Hospital in Bethesda through the corridors of the FBI to the Justice Department, into the office of the attorney general and eventually that of the president Weisberg argues this case with exclusive regard for the facts. Facts lead to the book’s startling new illuminations. Facts provide a compelling narrative filled with intrigue and laced with outrage. Facts reveal the failure of America’s institutions to deal effectively with perhaps its most profound national tragedy. In the face of overwhelming facts, Harold Weisberg justly warns us that this must never again happen!
Skyhorse 2013-09-03 544 pages

Irving Howe

Gerald Sorin
A New York Times “Books for Summer Reading” selection Winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award for History By the time he died in 1993 at the age of 73, Irving Howe was one of the twentieth century’s most important public thinkers. Deeply passionate, committed to social reform and secular Jewishness, ardently devoted to fiction and poetry, in love with baseball, music, and ballet, Howe wrote with such eloquence and lived with such conviction that his extraordinary work is now part of the canon of American social thought. In the first comprehensive biography of Howe’s life, historian Gerald Sorin brings us close to this man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in the 1930s to become one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Known most widely for his award-winning book World of Our Fathers, a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, Howe also won acclaim for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American culture and as an indefatigable promoter of democratic socialism as can be seen in the pages of Dissent, the journal he edited for nearly forty years. Deeply devoted to the ideal of democratic radicalism and true equality, Howe was constantly engaged in a struggle for decency and basic fairness in the face of social injustice. In the century of Auschwitz, the Gulag, and global inter-ethnic mass murder, it was difficult to sustain political certainties and take pride in one's humanity. To have lived a life of conviction and engagement in that era was a notable achievement. Irving Howe lived such a life and Gerald Sorin has done a masterful job of guiding us through it in all its passion and complexity.
New York University Press 2002 386 pages

The Addicted Lawyer Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption

Brian Cuban
Brian Cuban was a successful lawyer—and an addict. Brian Cuban was living a lie. With a famous last name and a successful career as a lawyer, Brian was able to hide his clinical depression and alcohol and cocaine addictions—for a while. Today, as an inspirational speaker in long-term recovery, Brian looks back on his journey with honesty, compassion, and even humor as he reflects both on what he has learned about himself and his career choice and how the legal profession enables addiction. His demons, which date to his childhood, controlled him through failed marriages and stays in a psychiatric facility, until they brought him to the brink of suicide. That was his wake-up call. This is his story. Brian also takes an in-depth look at why there is such a high percentage of problematic alcohol use and other mental health issues in the legal profession. What types of therapies work? Are 12-step programs the only answer? Brian also includes interviews with experts on the subject as well as others in the profession who are now in recovery. The Addicted Lawyer is both a serious study of addiction and a compelling story of redemption.
Post Hill Press 2017-06-13 272 pages

Maps to Anywhere

Bernard Cooper
The essays in Maps to Anywhere plot terrain that is at once familiar yet subtly strange. Writing on subjects ranging from his family to the origin of the barbershop pole, Bernard Cooper digs into the glimmering surface of the southern California landscape, observing the collision of the American Dream with the realities of everyday life. From the fragments, he discovers landmarks by which he attempts to make sense of contemporary America.
Penguin Books 1992 139 pages

Nitty Gritty A White Editor in Black Journalism

Ben Burns
In Nitty Gritty one of America's most fascinating journalists details his place in the tough world of black publishing and documents the role of black publications in shaping racial pride, in protesting against discrimination, and in giving uplift to a huge segment of America's population. But is a white editor able to direct a black magazine or newspaper? Can a white editor penetrate the black experience and transmit it to America? For more than thirty years Ben Burns faced these challenges. As the first editor of Ebony and the first white editor of the Chicago Daily Defender he played an anomalous role. As editor of America's foremost publications targeted for black readership, which also included Jet, Sepia, and Duke, he struggled to bridge what seemed an impenetrable gulf between black and white thinking. His long association with the African-American press had its origins in his early days as a leftist reporter for the Daily Worker. It took shape during the war years while he was working simultaneously as national editor of the Defender and as editor of Negro Digest, which was to become the first commercially successful black monthly. In recounting his editorial experiences, he details his sometimes uneasy association with his boss, John H. Johnson, the entrepreneur who with legendary success created Ebony from an initial investment of $500 and launched the corporate empire that became Johnson Publishing Company.
University Press of Mississippi 1996 230 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

A Mother's Tale

Phillip Lopate
In 1984, Phillip Lopate sat down with his mother, Frances, to listen to her life story. A strong, resilient, indomitable woman who lived through the major events of the twentieth century, she was orphaned in childhood, ran away and married young, and then reinvented herself as a mother, war factory worker, candy store owner, community organizer, clerk, actress, and singer. But paired with exciting anecdotes are the criticisms of the husband who couldn't satisfy her, the details of numerous affairs and sexual encounters, and, though she succeeded at many of her roles, accounts of how she always felt mistreated, taken advantage of. After the interviews, at a loss for what to do with the tapes, Lopate put them away. But thirty years later, after his mother had passed away, Lopate found himself drawn back to the recordings of this conversation. Thus begins a three-way conversation between a mother, his younger self, and the person he is today. Trying to break open the family myths, rationalizations, and self-deceptions, A Mother's Tale is about family members who love each other but who can't seem to overcome their mutual mistrust. Though Phillip is sympathizing to a point, he cannot join her in her operatic displays of self-pity and how she blames his father for everything that went wrong. His detached, ironic character has been formed partly in response to her melodramatic one. The climax is an argument in which he tries to persuade her--using logic, of all things--that he really does love her, but is only partially successful, of course. A Mother's Tale is about something primal and universal: the relationship between a mother and her child, the parent disappointed with the payback, the child, now fully grown, judgmental. The humor is in the details.
Ohio State University Press 2017 188 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

The Voyage of Their Life The Story of the SS Derna and Its Passengers

Diane Armstrong
In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. they came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. there were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled from them. the epic voyage lasted almost three months and was marked by conflict and controversy until it seemed as though this hellship had absorbed the traumas of its passengers. As the conditions on board deteriorated, tension and violence simmered above and below decks. But romances and seductions also flourished, and lifelong bonds were formed. Diane Armstrong set sail on the Derna with her parents when she was nine years old. Like a detective searching for clues, she has located over a hundred of the passengers. through their recollections and memorabilia, as well as archival documents, she has recreated the voyage and traced what became of their hopes and dreams. the result is the unique portrayal of a migrant ship and its passengers.
HarperCollins Publishers Australia 2005-01-27 624 pages