676 results for "Biography"

The Face of War

Martha Gellhorn
A collection of "first-rate frontline journalism" from the Spanish Civil War to US actions in Central America "by a woman singularly unafraid of guns" (Vanity Fair). For nearly sixty years, Martha Gellhorn's fearless war correspondence made her a leading journalistic voice of her generation. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the Central American wars of the mid-eighties, Gellhorn's candid reporting reflected her deep empathy for people regardless of their political ideology. Collecting the best of Gellhorn's writing on foreign conflicts, and now with a new introduction by Lauren Elkin, The Face of War is a classic of frontline journalism by "the premier war correspondent of the twentieth century" (Ward Just, The New York Times Magazine ). Whether in Java, Finland, the Middle East, or Vietnam, she used the same vigorous approach. "I wrote very fast, as I had to," she says, "afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures, which were special to this moment and this place." As Merle Rubin noted in his review of this volume for The Christian Science Monitor, "Martha Gellhorn's courageous, independent-minded reportage breaks through geopolitical abstractions and ideological propaganda to take the reader straight to the scene of the event."
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated 2018-10-16 352 pages

Our Man Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

George Packer
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography* *Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography* *Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize* Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it.--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.--David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.
Random House Large Print 2019 896 pages

Let the People Rule Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary

Geoffrey Cowan
"The best new discussion of the primary system." —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt came out of retirement to challenge William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. TR seized on the campaign theme “Let the People Rule”—a cry echoed in today’s elections—and through the course of his run helped create thirteen new primaries. Though he won most of the primaries, party bosses proved too powerful, and Roosevelt walked out of the convention to create his own Bull Moose Party—only to make the shocking political calculation to ban black delegates from his new coalition. In Let the People Rule , Geoffrey Cowan takes readers inside the dramatic campaign that changed American politics forever.
National Geographic Books 2017-01-17 320 pages

Pioneers of modern design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius

Pevsner, Nikolaus
One of the most widely read books on modern design, Nikolaus Pevsner’s landmark work today remains as stimulating as it was when first published in 1936. This expanded edition of Pioneers of Modern Design provides Pevsner’s original text along with significant new and updated information, enhancing Pevsner’s illuminating account of the roots of Modernism. The book now offers many beautiful color illustrations; biographies and bibliographies of all major figures; illustrated short essays on key themes, movements, and individuals; a critique of Pevsner’s analysis from today’s perspective; examples of works after 1914 (where the original study ended); a biography detailing Pevsner’s life and achievements; and much more. Pevsner saw Modernism as a synthesis of three main sources: William Morris and his followers, the work of nineteenth-century engineers, and Art Nouveau. The author considers the role of these sources in the work of early Modernists and looks at such masters of the movement as C.F.A. Voysey and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Britain, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in America, and Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner in Vienna. The account concludes with a discussion of the radical break with the past represented by the design work of Walter Gropius and his future Bauhaus colleagues.
Yale University Press 2005-01-01 192 pages

Wallace Stegner and the American West

Fradkin, Philip L.
Wallace Stegner was the premier chronicler of the twentieth-century western American experience, and his novels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose and the National Book Award–winning The Spectator Bird, brought the life and landscapes of the West to national and international attention. Now, in this illuminating biography, Philip L. Fradkin goes beyond Stegner’s iconic literary status to give us, as well, the influential teacher and visionary conservationist, the man for whom the preservation and integrity of place was as important as his ability to render its qualities and character in his brilliantly crafted fiction and nonfiction. From his birth in 1909 until his death in 1993, Stegner witnessed nearly a century of change in the land that he loved and fought so hard to preserve. We learn of his hardscrabble youth on the Canadian frontier and in Utah, and of his painful relationship with his father, a bootlegger and gambler. We follow his intellectual awakening as a young man and his years as a Depression-era graduate student at the University of Iowa, during its earliest days as a literary center. We watch as he finds his home, with his wife, Mary, in the foothills above Palo Alto, which provided him with a long-awaited sense of belonging and a refuge in which he would write his most treasured works. And here are his years as the legendary founder of the Stanford Creative Writing Program, where his students included Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, Robert Stone, and Wendell Berry. But the changes wrought by developers and industrialists were too much for Stegner, and he tirelessly fought the transformation of his Garden of Eden into Silicon Valley. His writings on the importance of establishing national parks and wilderness areas—not only for the preservation of untouched landscape but also for the enrichment of the human spirit—played a key role in the passage of historic legislation and comprise some of the most beautiful words ever written about the natural world. Here, too, is the story—told in full for the first time—of the accusations of plagiarism that followed the publication of Angle of Repose, and of the shadow they have cast on his greatest work. Rich in personal and literary detail, and in the sensual description of the country that shaped his work and his life—this is the definitive account of one of the most acclaimed and admired writers, teachers, and conservationists of our time.
Alfred A. Knopf 2008-02-12 369 pages

Stories my father told me: notes from "The Lyons Den"

Lyons, Jeffrey
"This amazing collection of choice anecdotes takes us right back to the Golden Age of New York City nightlife, when top restaurants like Toots Shor's, "21," and Sardi's, as well as glittering nightclubs like the Stork Club, The Latin Quarter, and El Morocco, were the nightly gathering spots for great figures of that era: movie and Broadway stars, baseball players, champion boxers, comedians, diplomats, British royalty, prize-winning authors, and famous painters. From Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, from Ethel Barrymore to Sophia Loren, from George Burns to Ernest Hemingway, from Joe DiMaggio to the Duke of Windsor: Leonard Lyons knew them all. For forty glorious years, from 1934 to 1974, he made the daily rounds of Gotham nightspots, collecting the exclusive scoops and revelations that were at the core of his famous newspaper column, "The Lyons Den." In this entertaining volume Jeffrey Lyons has assembled a considerable compilation of anecdotes from his father's best columns, and has also contributed a selection of his own in-depth interviews conducted on his own TV shows with George Clooney, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Dame Judi Dench, George Carlin, Dennis Hopper, Sir Michael Caine, Sir Ben Kingsley and other current stars. Organized chronologically by decade and subdivided by celebrity, "Stories my father told" me offers fascinating and amusing stories illustrated by some sixty archival photographs. He so captured the tenor of those exciting times that the great Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg said: "Imagine how much richer American history would have been had there been a Leonard Lyons in Lincoln's time."--
Abbeville Press 2011-06-07 352 pages

Five Chimneys

Olga Lengyel
Memoir of a Hungarian woman who was imprisoned for several years in the German concentration camp Auschwitz. This is the true, documented chronicle of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare horror of the worst death camp of them all. Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization. ""You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten speak.""-Albert Einstein "This book is a horrifying, but necessary, reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization."-New York Herald-Tribune "It is a picture of utter hell."-Saturday Review of Literature
Repro India Limited 2021-09-27 242 pages

Fantastic Mr Dahl

Rosen, Michael
"A true genius . . . Roald Dahl is my hero" David Walliams Life story of Roald Dahl, World's No.1 storyteller, creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach and many more, brought to life by Michael Rosen - author, top children's poet and former Children's Laureate. Written especially for children, with fun pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake. So, how did Roald Dahl get into writing? Where did he get his ideas from? What ingredients in his life turned him into the kind of writer he was? Michael Rosen comes up with some of the answers to these key questions in his lively biography, specially for children, of the world's No.1 storyteller. Full of stories and funny anecdotes from Roald Dahl's school days and family life, Michael Rosen's fascinating observations creates a vivid picture of one of the most famous writers of all time.
Puffin 2012 162 pages

Ted Hughes: the life of a poet

Feinstein, Elaine
This volume is a biography of English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes (1930-1998). Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and (particularly) American admirers of Plath. Hughes life was dogged by tragedy and controversy. He never entirely recovered from Plath's death, for which many have held his adultery responsible. The author explores a complex situation, throwing new light on Hughes' relationship with Assia Wevill, who later killed herself along with their young daughter.
Norton 2001 273 pages

Moscow diary

Benjamin, Walter
The life of the German-Jewish literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is a veritable allegory of the life of letters in the twentieth century. Benjamin's intellectual odyssey culminated in his death by suicide on the Franco-Spanish border, pursued by the Nazis, but long before he had traveled to the Soviet Union. His stunning account of that journey is unique among Benjamin's writings for the frank, merciless way he struggles with his motives and conscience. Perhaps the primary reason for his trip was his affection for Asja Lacis, a Latvian Bolshevik whom he had first met in Capri in 1924 and who would remain an important intellectual and erotic influence on him throughout the twenties and thirties. Asja Lacis resided in Moscow, eking out a living as a journalist, and Benjamin's diary is, on one level, the account of his masochistic love affair with this elusive--and rather unsympathetic--object of desire. On another level, it is the story of a failed romance with the Russian Revolution; for Benjamin had journeyed to Russia not only to inform himself firsthand about Soviet society, but also to arrive at an eventual decision about joining the Communist Party. Benjamin's diary paints the dilemma of a writer seduced by the promises of the Revolution yet unwilling to blinker himself to its human and institutional failings.
MIT Press 1986 146 pages

Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the war between the Windsors

Bower, Tom
After a childhood spent on Hollywood film sets, Meghan Markle fought hard for stardom. But even when she landed her breakthrough role on Suits, her dream of worldwide celebrity remained elusive until she met the man who would change her life--Prince Harry. Their whirlwind romance culminated with Meghan's ultimate fairy tale ending: their 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle. Finally, the world was her stage. It seemed that the dizzying success of the wedding between the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex marked the beginning of a fresh era for the British Royal Family. Yet, within one tumultuous year, the dream became a nightmare. Now, with extensive research and exclusive insider interviews, Britain's leading investigative biographer unravels the tangled web of courtroom drama, courtier politics, and thwarted childhood dreams to reveal this story of love, betrayal, secrets, deceit, and revenge.
Atria Books 2022 452 pages

P.S.: further thoughts from a lifetime of listening

Terkel, Studs
Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prizewinning oral historian through his landmark books—“The Good War”, Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs’s best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and deeply enjoyable writings for the first time. The pieces in P.S. reflect Studs’s wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Studs’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Studs’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times. A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of Studs’s extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he found to talk to.
New Press 2008-11-11 230 pages

Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the search for the cancer-diet connection

Apple, Sam
"The extraordinary story of the Nazi-era scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat-and what it means for how we should. The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg-a cousin of the famous finance Warburgs-was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the twentieth century, a man whose research was integral to humanity's understanding of cancer. He was also among the most despised figures in Nazi Germany. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it"--
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company 2021-05-25 399 pages

Who's who in Nazi Germany

Wistrich, Robert S.
Who's Who in Nazi Germany looks at the individuals who influenced every aspect of life in Nazi Germany. It covers a representative cross-section of German society from 1933-1945, and includes: * Nazi Party leaders; SS, Wehrmacht and Gestapo personalities; civil service and diplomatic personnel * industrialists, churchmen, intellectuals, artists, entertainers and sports personalities * Resistance leaders, political dissidents, critics and victims of the regime * extensive biographical information on each figure extending into the post-war period * analysis of their role and significance in Nazi Germany * an accessible, easy to use A-Z layout * a glossary and comprehensive bibliography.
Routledge 1995 296 pages

Avid reader: a life

Gottlieb, Robert
After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited a long list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton -- not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it -- editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016 337 pages