1644 results for "Biography"

Warrior nation: a history of the Red Lake Ojibwe

Treuer, Anton
The Red Lake Nation has a unique and deeply important history. Unlike every other reservation in Minnesota, Red Lake holds its land in common -- and, consequently, the tribe retains its entire reservation land base. The people of Red Lake developed the first modern indigenous democratic governance system in the United States, decades before any other tribe, but they also maintained their system of hereditary chiefs. The tribe never surrendered to state jurisdiction over crimes committed on its reservation. The reservation is also home to the highest number of Ojibwe-speaking people in the state. Warrior Nation covers four centuries of the Red Lake Nation's forceful and assertive tenure on its land. Ojibwe historian and linguist Anton Treuer conducted oral histories with elders across the Red Lake reservation, learning the stories carried by the people. And the Red Lake band has, for the first time, made available its archival collections, including the personal papers of Peter Graves, the brilliant political strategist and tribal leader of the first half of the twentieth century, which tell a startling story about the negotiations over reservation boundaries.
Minnesota Historical Society Press 2015 447 pages

Entangled in terror: the Azef affair and the Russian Revolution

Geifman, Anna
In the winter of 1909, a political bombshell exploded in tsarist Russia. Scandal swept not only the empire but the entire world with the exposure of the secret life of one man. Newspaper headlines introduced him as a 'twentieth-century Judas,' and since his initiation to the most notorious villains' club, his name, Evno Filipovich Azef, has remained in the Russian tradition as a synonym for scandalous duplicity, unscrupulous perfidy, and criminal provocation. His story is inseparable from the history of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary party (PSR) and the terrorism that plagued the tsarist regime in the first decade of the twentieth century. More than 17,000 people were killed or wounded throughout the empire between 1905 and 1910 as a result of political assassination attempts alone. The use of undercover police spies to infiltrate oppositionist groups was a primary means of combatting terrorist activity. Enter Evno Azef, a man who, before being reviled by Socialist-Revolutionary party leaders as a traitorous double agent, would spend fifteen years inside the PSR, the largest terrorist organization in Russia. A man who would rise to a position of prominence in the party's Central Committee, and become one of the most trusted leaders of its famous terrorist arm, the SR Combat Organization: Evno Azef, Russian master spy. A thorough investigation based on all available documentary resources-available for the first time due to the Soviet government's demise-Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution sorts out the facts of the case from rumors and legends. Entangled in Terror explores the background and history of the radical SR party and its Combat Organization, the course of Azef's career, his role within the party, and the extent and frequency of his contacts with the secret police. The book evaluates the consequences of the Azef affair for the party, for the Russian revolutionary movement, and for terrorism in Russia. Finally, Entangled in Terror examines Azef's personal motivations: was he seduced by money or did he seek adventure and the thrill of a double life? A gripping expose on high-stakes political intrique, Entangled in Terror tells a powerful, true-to-life tale of power, money, deception, and deadly consequences.
Scholarly Resources 2000 247 pages

In the realm of tones: a composer's memoir

Shawn, Allen
"A poignant, compelling, and clear-eyed memoir of a life in music, with the dogged pursuit of composing at its center. Perhaps no art form has ever splintered into as many factions, genres, languages, philosophies, and mutually exclusive audiences as the art of music did in the mid-twentieth century. Allen Shawn's memoir fascinatingly evokes this tumultuous time, while weaving together his art and his life, hinting at their unexpected and sometimes paradoxical interconnections. Shawn grew up in an atmosphere of cultural privilege in New York City, the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn. An instinctive composing prodigy at age ten, it took him until the age of thirty to compose music he was proud of. Shawn sketches his childhood and long apprenticeship, his experiences composing for theater, dance, and concert hall, his forty years as a teacher at Bennington College, and his unexpected emergence as a writer. The book balances an account of his musical evolution, ups and downs, and life choices, offering glimpses into family life and of the many people with whom he interacted, including Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Petit, Jacques-Louis Monod, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, Benny Goodman, Louis Malle, and Vivian Fine. Along the way, Shawn offers reflections on such issues as social class, aging, loneliness, politics, and music education. In The Realm of Tones: A Composer's Memoir is a unique and touching account of one individual's internal search for self-expression and self-understanding, and of his effort to construct a life around it"--
University of Rochester Press 2025 232 pages

Chemistry & art: further adventures of a chemist collector

Bader, Alfred
Alfred Bader's achievements—as the founder of one of the most important companies in its field in the world, as a collector and dealer in Old Master paintings, and as a legendary philanthropist—make for fascinating reading. This book begins where Alfred Bader's first autobiography, Adventures of a Chemist Collector, ended: with the boardroom coup in which he was dismissed from the chemical company he had built up from the ground. Bader now turns his enormous energy to Old Master paintings, in which he had become interested at a young age and in which he by now has the means to invest. The chapters that follow are roughly chronological, with some devoted to particularly meaningful paintings or groups of paintings, memorable auctions, mysteries, or discoveries relating to the artworks in the Bader Collection, while others are dedicated to friends, family, love, religion, charity, and, occasionally, chemistry.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008 246 pages

The prophet outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940

Deutscher, Isaac
Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. This third volume of the trilogy, first published in 1963, is a self-contained narrative of Trotsky’s years in exile and of his murder in Mexico in 1940. Deutscher’s masterful account of the period, and of the ideological controversies ranging throughout it, forms a background against which, as he says, ‘the protagonist’s character reveals itself, while he is moving towards catastrophe.’
Verso 2003 484 pages

Jacob Neusner: an American Jewish iconoclast

Hughes, Aaron W.
"Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by--and of interest to--religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American academy. But even those who disagree with Neusner's academic approach to ancient rabbinic texts have to engage with his pioneering methods. In this comprehensive biography, Aaron Hughes shows Neusner to be much more than a scholar of rabbinics. He is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and was an outspoken political figure during the height of the cultural wars of the 1980s. Neusner's life reflects the story of what happened as Jews migrated to the suburbs in the late 1940s, daring to imagine new lives for themselves as they successfully integrated into the fabric of American society. It is also the story of how American Jews tried to make sense of the world in the aftermath of the extermination of European Jewry and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and how they sought to define what it meant to be an American Jew. Unlike other great American Jewish thinkers, Neusner was born in the U.S., and his Judaism was informed by an American ethos. His Judaism is open, informed by and informing the world. It is an American Judaism, one that has enabled American Jews--the freest in history--to be fully American and fully Jewish."--Publisher's description
New York University Press 2016-09-13 321 pages

Publisher

Maschler, Tom
At the end of the millennium, the leading British industry magazine, The Bookseller, selected the ten people who had most influenced its century. Tom Maschler—described as "the most important publisher in Britain; the most innovative, adventurous, and newsworthy"—was one of them. It went on to say that for nearly 20 years, "he made publishing glamorous." Over the course of his career, Maschler launched the careers of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Bruce Chatwin, among others. From the party where Norman Mailer stabbed his wife to the porch where Ernest Hemingway shot himself, this frank and fascinating memoir affords a rare glimpse into the golden days of British publishing. An extraordinary literary memoir by one great publishers of the 20th century.
Picador 2005 293 pages

Truth comes in blows: a memoir

Solotaroff, Ted
Truth Comes in Blows is distinguished editor and critic Ted Solotaroff's richly textured account of a coming-of-age at once quintessentially American and especially vexed. Planted between him and his entry into adulthood, autonomy, and the wider world was Ben Solotaroff - as hard a father to placate, comprehend, and, finally, defy as can be found in the annals of the American memoir. Tough, shrewd, seductive, and impossibly overbearing, Ben Solotaroff was a self-made man carried to the edge - "almost all ego and almost no conscience." Against this formidable scion of the fierce Solotaroff clan stood Ted's mother, Rose, product of the cultivated Weisses of Cream Ridge, New Jersey, and Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Norton 1998 285 pages

The many voyages of Arthur Wellington Clah: a Tsimshian man on the Pacific Northwest Coast

Brock, Peggy
"First-hand accounts of indigenous people's encounters with colonialism are rare. A daily diary that extends over fifty years is unparalleled. Based on a transcription of Arthur Wellington Clah's diaries, this book offers a riveting account of a Tsimshian elder who moved in both colonial and Aboriginal worlds. From his birth in 1831 to his death in 1916, Clah witnessed profound change: the arrival of traders, missionaries, and miners, and the establishment of industrial fisheries, wage labour, and reserves. His many voyages physical, cultural, and spiritual provide an unprecedented Aboriginal perspective on colonial relationships on the Pacific Northwest Coast."--Pub. desc.
UBC Press 2011 306 pages

Rememberings: the world of a Russian-Jewish woman in the nineteenth century

Wengeroff, Pauline
"And so, in her seventies, she sat down to recreate the world of her childhood, a world structured around strong parental authority and deep religious commitment. When it first appeared in 1908, her memoir received rave reviews for its sensitive and faithful depiction of the Jewish world of the nineteenth century. A second volume devoted to her years of married life quickly followed." "Now available for the first time in English translation, Wengeroff's memoir is the earliest record of Eastern European Jewish life written by a woman. Pauline spreads out before us the richness of Judaism and Jewish folk life, the joy and pain of marriage and motherhood, and the personal losses that she, as a Jewish woman, had suffered at the hands of great historical forces."--BOOK JACKET.
University Press of Maryland 2000 306 pages

Leaving Russia: a Jewish story

Shrayer, Maxim
Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a memoir of coming-of-age and struggling to leave the USSR. Shrayer chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a Soviet childhood and expresses the dreams and fears of a Jewish family that never gave up its hopes for a better life. Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy’s confessional trilogy and Nabokov’s autobiography, this is a searing account of the KGB’s persecution of refuseniks, a poet’s rebellion against totalitarian culture, and Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer’s remembrances are set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire’s collapse. His story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence. Leaving Russia is a love story in which a young Jew’s love is unrequited and his heart is forever broken by his homeland.
Syracuse University Press 2013-12-03 324 pages

My crazy century

Klíma, Ivan
Czech writer Ivan Klima masterfully recounts, first, what it was like for him as a Jewish child confronting with his family the inhumanities of the Theresienstadt concentration camp situated at the edge of their hometown, Prague. Then, more fully, he painstakingly recalls what it was like for him and his countrymen after the Nazi thugs were driven out by the Soviet Army and replaced for four decades by the Communist thugs. Includes an appendix of essays on topics ranging from social history and political thinking to love and liberty.
Grove Press 2013-10-14 534 pages

Hyperdream

Cixous, Hélène
Hyperdream is a major new novel by celebrated French author Hélène Cixous. It is a literary tour de force, returning anew to challenge necessity itself, the most implacable of human certainties: you die in the end -- and thatʹs the end. For you, for me. But what if? What if death did not inevitably spell the end of life? Hyperdream invests this fragile, tentative suspension of disbelief with the sheer force of its poetic audacity, inventing a sort of magic telephone: a wireless lifeline against all the odds to the dearly departed. It is a book about time, age, love and the greatest loss. A book which turns on death: on the question or the moment of death, depending on it, expecting it, living off it, taking place at once before and after, but at the same time turning against it, contesting it, outwriting it hopefully, desperately, performatively, as an interruptible interruption. -- Back cover.
Polity 2009 168 pages

Hell's cartographers: some personal histories of science fiction writers

Aldiss, Brian W and Harry Harrison (editors)
Seven essays on science fiction: Introduction Robert Silverberg: sounding brass, tinkling cymbal Alfred Bester: my affair with science fiction Harry Harrison: the beginning of the affair Damon Knight: Knight piece Frederick Pohl: ragged claws Brian Aldiss: magic & bare boards Appendices: how we work, selected bibliographies
Harper & Row 1975 246 pages