1644 results for "Biography"
Heresy: Sandor Rado and the psychoanalytic movement
'My mother was the source of my brains and my father the mother of kindness,' said Sandor Rado, a Hungarian analyst whom Freud first embraced but with whom he was later displeased. In Heresy: Sandor Rado and the Psychoanalytic Movement, Paul Roazen and Bluma Swerdloff use interviews with Rado and his family to bring to life one of Freud's foremost followers, who later founded his own institute and psychodynamic orientation, one that focused on motivation rather than instinct. Based on interviews sponsored by the Columbia University Oral History Project, and including Freud's letters to Rado, this is a personal account of Rado and the life events that shaped him and his theories. Rado's life in late nineteenth-century Hungary, the enduring influence of his mother, his meetings with Freud (who made three slips of the tongue during their first encounter), his analysis with Karl Abraham, his affair with Helene Deutsch (she called it a 'companionship of suffering'), and Rank and Ferenczi's downfalls are vividly depicted. Rado's radical departure from Freudian theories of femininity, a reformulation daringly in keeping with today's gender debates, is also included. Rado freed himself from phallocentrism, abandoning the notions of universal castration fear and penis envy. He contended that men and woman are different, which does not mean that women are inferior. He saw women as having a greater emotional capacity based on their biological role as child bearers and nurturers. In 1963, as further evidence of his prescience, Rado prophesied the current crisis in psychotherapy, noting that 'the old-fashioned therapeutic practice will disappear for lack of money.' He anticipated that the influence of biochemical genetics was going to be 'so enormous that it would be bootless to try to outline it.' Dr. Swerdloff uses Rado's predictions and an analysis of the present debate to demonstrate the need to steer psychoanalysis toward a more scientific course.
A third face: my tale of writing, fighting, and filmmaking
A self-portrait by the late filmmaker describes his New York youth, his work in the newspaper world, his military career during World War II, and his rise to success in Hollywood as a writer, director, and producer known for his gritty, frequently violent portrayals of the dark side of American life.
Destined to live: one woman's war, life, loves remembered
Memoirs of a Jew who was born in 1927 in Borisław, Poland. Pp. 31-132 deal with the Holocaust period, based on information found in a diary she kept at the time. Wolanski survived in hiding, at first with a Christian family and then in a bunker in the forest, until the liberation.
Traveling heavy: a memoir in between journeys
Traveling Heavy is a deeply moving, unconventional memoir by the master storyteller and cultural anthropologist Ruth Behar. Through evocative stories, she portrays her life as an immigrant child and later, as an adult woman who loves to travel but is terrified of boarding a plane. With an open heart, she writes about her Yiddish-Sephardic-Cuban-American family, as well as the strangers who show her kindness as she makes her way through the world. Compassionate, curious, and unafraid to reveal her failings, Behar embraces the unexpected insights and adventures of travel, whether those be learning that she longed to become a mother after being accused of giving the evil eye to a baby in rural Mexico, or going on a zany pilgrimage to the Behar World Summit in the Spanish town of Béjar. Behar calls herself an anthropologist who specializes in homesickness. Repeatedly returning to her homeland of Cuba, unwilling to utter her last goodbye, she is obsessed by the question of why we leave home to find home. For those of us who travel heavy with our own baggage, Behar is an indispensable guide, full of grace and hope, in the perpetual search for connection that defines our humanity.
Some of my best friends are blues
In this book, leading musician, jazz club founder, and compere Ronnie Scott recalls the highlights, tribulations, multiple frustrations and moments of intense musical gratification in running his leading London jazz club, due to celebrate its 45th year in October 2004. He also writes of his early days as a musician and band-leader. The book is full of his wry and witty observations and is informed by a shrewd appreciation of the eccentricities of human nature.
Nola: a memoir of faith, art, and madness
The evidence at hand: an autobiography—complete with their mother’s edits—written by his brilliant and disturbingly religious sister; a story featuring actual childhood events, but published by his mother as fiction; the transcript of a hypnotherapy session from his adolescence; and perjured court documents hidden in a drawer for decades. These are the clues Robin Hemley gathers when he sets out to reconstruct the life of his older sister Nola, who died at the age of twenty-five after several years of treatment for schizophrenia. Armed with these types of clues, Hemley quickly discovers that finding the truth in any life—even one’s own—is a fragmented and complex task. Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness is much more than a remembrance of a young woman who was consumed her entire life by a passion for finding and understanding God; it is also a quest to understand what people choose to reveal and conceal, and an examination of the enormous toll mental illness takes on a family. Finally, it is a revelation of the alchemy that creates a writer: confidence in the unknowable, distrust of the proven, tortuous devotion to the fine print in life, and sacrifice to writing itself as it plays the roles of confessor, scourge, and creator. Upon its first release in 1998, Nola won ForeWord ’s Book of the Year Award for biography/memoir, the Washington State Book Award for biography/memoir, and the Independent Press Book Award for autobiography/memoir.
Brown's Britain
From Tajikistan to the moon: a memoir : a story of tragedy, survival and triumph of the human spirit
From Tajikistan to the Moon is an inspirational, true story of the spellbinding events of World War II, the author s escape from his war-torn country, his flight to freedom, and his ultimate success in America. Told from a unique Soviet perspective, Robert Frimtzis takes you from surviving bombs of the Nazi blitzkrieg, to imminent starvation and deprivation in a mud hut in Tajikistan, to contributing to America's lunar exploration and spacecraft development. Without warning, his childhood was shattered, his home was destroyed, and he was plunged into the madness and savagery of World War II. His family evaded Nazi capture by running eastward 3,000 miles to Tajikistan. To get to America they crossed borders illegally, trekked across half of Europe, and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp in Italy. At nineteen, penniless and knowing little English, he arrived in America with the goal to continue his education.
From Tajikistan to the moon: a memoir : a story of tragedy, survival and triumph of the human spirit
From Tajikistan to the Moon is an inspirational, true story of the spellbinding events of World War II, the author's escape from his war-torn country, his flight to freedom, and his ultimate success in America. Told from a unique Soviet perspective, Robert Frimtzis takes you from surviving bombs of the Nazi blitzkrieg, to imminent starvation and deprivation in a mud hut in Tajikistan, to contributing to America's lunar exploration and spacecraft development. Without warning, his childhood was shattered, his home was destroyed, and he was plunged into the madness and savagery of World War II. His family evaded Nazi capture by running eastward 3,000 miles to Tajikistan. To get to America they crossed borders illegally, trekked across half of Europe, and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp in Italy. At nineteen, penniless and knowing little English, he arrived in America with the goal to continue his education.
Meanwhile don't push and squeeze: a year of life in China
Vividly capturing the tastes, sounds, and smells of Hangzou, China, this entertaining and witty travelogue details a year spent teaching creative writing at Zeijang University and the experiences of being a fish out of water. Containing contributions from the author as well as his students, this memoir fondly depicts China’s galloping economy, respect for ancient texts, and everyday people.
Another little piece of my heart: my life of rock and revolution in the '60s
"In 1966, at the ripe age of 22, Richard Goldstein approached The Village Voice with a novel idea. "I want to be a rock critic," he said. "What's that?" the editor replied. It was a logical question, since rock criticism didn't yet exist. In the weekly column he would produce for the Voice, Goldstein became the first person to write regularly in a major publication about the music that changed our lives. He believed deeply in the power of rock, and, long before it was acceptable, he championed the idea that this music was a serious art form. From his unique position in journalism, he saw the full arc of events that shaped culture and politics in the 1960s--and participated in them, too. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and dropped acid with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. He was present for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the student uprising at Columbia, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was challenged to a boxing match by Norman Mailer, and took Susan Sontag to her first disco. Goldstein developed close relationships with several rock legends--Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, to name two--and their early deaths came as a wrenching shock, fueling his disillusionment as he watched the music he loved rapidly evolve from a communal rite to a vast industry--and the sense of hope for radical social upheaval fade away. Another Little Piece of My Heart is the intimate memoir of the writer as a young man with profound ambition. It is also a sweeping personal account of a decade that no one else could provide--a deeply moving, unparalleled document of rock and revolution in America"--
Reflections: the magic, music, and mathematics of Raymond Smullyan
This is an exciting if not rambling account of events of Raymond Smullyan's four lives -- as a mathematical logician, musician, magician, and author -- together with thoughts that come to his mind as he recalls them. This book includes topics from some of Smullyan's twenty-six books, as well as many of his favorite anecdotes and jokes. It also presents some generalizations of theorems of the great logicians Gödel and Tarski, and discusses logic in general, and how he won his wife with a logic trick! Smullyan also relates some of his teaching experiences, and expresses his views on mathematical education, and how our present textbooks are primarily responsible for its decline! About his life as a pianist, Smullyan relates a good deal about his experiences with the Piano Society -- a wonderful organization to which he is a staunch contributor, and how he has had such delightful relations with many of its members. Last but not least, Smullyan recounts how he has known some lovely ladies over the years.
The flutes of autumn
Descendants of light: American photographers of Jewish ancestry
Memoirs of a grandmother: scenes from the cultural history of the Jews of Russia in the nineteenth century
Pauline Wengeroff, the only nineteenth-century Russian Jewish woman to publish a memoir, sets out to illuminate the "cultural history of the Jews of Russia" in the period of Jewish "enlightenment," when traditional culture began to disintegrate and Jews became modern. Wengeroff, a gifted writer and astute social observer, paints a rich portrait of both traditional and modernizing Jewish societies in an extraordinary way, focusing on women and the family and offering a gendered account (and indictment) of assimilation. In Volume 1 of Memoirs of a Grandmother, Wengeroff depicts traditional Jewish society, including the religious culture of women, during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, who wished "his" Jews to be acculturated to modern Russian life.Pauline Wengeroff's Memoirs of a Grandmother offers a unique first-person window into traditionalism, modernity, and the tensions linking the two in nineteenth-century Russia. Wengeroff (1833–1916), a perceptive, highly literate social observer, tells a gripping tale of cultural transformation, situating her narrative in the experience of women and families. In Volume Two, Wengeroff claims that Jewish women were capable and desirous of adopting the best of European modernity but were also wedded to tradition, while Jewish men recklessly abandoned tradition and forced their wives to do the same. The result was not only marital and intergenerational conflict but also catastrophic cultural loss, with women's inability to transmit tradition in the home leading to larger cultural drift. Two of Wengeroff's children converted when faced with anti-Jewish educational and professional discrimination, unwilling to sacrifice secular ambitions and visions for the sake of a traditional culture they did not know. Memoirs is a tale of loss but also of significant hope, which Wengeroff situates not in her children but in a new generation of Jewish youth reclaiming Jewish memory. To them, she addresses her Memoirs, giving an "orphaned youth"―orphaned of their past and culture―a "grandmother."
My brother's madness: a memoir
My Brother's Madness is based on the author's relationship with his brother—who had a psychotic breakdown in his late forties—and explores the unfolding of two intertwined lives and the nature of delusion. Circumstances lead one brother from juvenile crime on the streets of Brooklyn to war-torn Vietnam, to a fast-track life as a Hollywood publicist to owning and operating The Tin Palace, one of New York's most legendary jazz clubs, while his brother falls into, and fights his way back from, a delusional psychosis. My Brother's Madness is part thriller, part exploration that not only describes the causes, character, and journey of mental illness, but also makes sense of it. It is ultimately a story of our own humanity, and answers the question, Am I my brother's keeper?
Radical passion: Ottilie Assing's reports from America and letters to Frederick Douglass
The biographical encyclopedia of Islamic philosophy
Review Offering a broader perspective than its title indicates, this useful encyclopedia extends beyond philosophy to include "all kinds of theoretical inquiry which were regarded in their time as philosophical, " including the Islamic sciences, grammar, theology, law, and traditions. Potential readers will discover that this work not only covers a great variety of philosophers, but also non philosophical Sufi mystics like Abu Sa'id and Rab'ia and influential mystical poets like Ibn al-Farid. The editor is to be commended for compiling a work that will help to alleviate the pervasive ignorance for Islamic thought and culture in English speaking countries."...this is a fine resource for the serious Islamic studies scholar. It should intersect well with another two-volume resource, Hans Daiber's soon to be supplemented Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (see ARBA 2000 entry 1269), probably the most authoritative bibliography published to date." (American Reference Books Annual)"Leaman's work fills an important gap in reference literature. While aimed at an academic audience, the sets clearly crafted essays grant people access to the ideas and people comprising almost 1400 years of Islamic philosophical tradition. This work is recommended for college, university libraries, and religious institutions." (American Reference Books Annual)Choice Outstanding Academic Title."…this is a fine resource for the serious Islamic studies scholar. It should intersect well with another two-volume resource, Hans Daiber’s soon to be supplemented Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (see ARBA 2000 entry 1269), probably the most authoritative bibliography published to date." (Sanford Lakoff)"Leaman’s work fills an important gap in reference literature. While aimed at an academic audience, the sets clearly crafted essays grant people access to the ideas and people comprising almost 1400 years of Islamic philosophical tradition. This work is recommended for college, university libraries, and religious institutions." (Sanford Lakoff) Product Description There has been a long tradition of interest in philosophy in the Islamic world, and it is the aim of these volumes to represent the lives of some of the major thinkers within this tradition. The notion of philosophy has been interpreted broadly to include a large number of intellectuals who were interested in conceptual issues that either directly relate to philosophy or form part of the background of Islamic philosophy as a whole. Included are details about the lives of significant legal thinkers, theologians, political thinkers and even geographers where their lives are relevant indicators of the progress of philosophy in the Islamic world. The Dictionary represents a landmark achievement in the understanding of Islamic philosophy, at a time when such understanding is needed as never before. It is set to become an indispensable reference work for students of Islamic and comparative philosophy. About the Author Oliver Leaman, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, is the General Editor of the Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy and the author and editor of several books on Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy (published by British and North American presses including Routledge and Notre Dame).
The end of romance: a memoir of love, sex, and the mystery of the violin
Norma Barzman is a blacklisted writer living in Southern France. Henry Myers is her beloved cousin, a former member of the Algonquin circle who has found his writing talent diminished with age, and is living an isolated life in New York City. When Norma invites Henry to Italy to realize their mutual dream of traveling together to Cremona to write about the mysterious origins of violin making, neither one could have anticipated the explosive consequences of their journey. But their adventure opens a Pandora's box of long-suppressed emotions, family secrets, and forces each to reassess their feelings towards each other, and themselves.