Traces the life of the American novelist from her childhood in the newly settled prairies of Nebraska through her years as a journalist, editor, and teacher, and examines the relationship between what she wrote and who she was.

The Cruel Years provides readers with a vivid picture of what life was like a hundred years ago, not for the rich and famous but for ordinary working Americans. The story is told in the words of twenty-two fascinating people who lived by laboring long hours at farms and factories and mines. A preface by Howard Zinn and an introduction by William Loren Katz provide an easy-to-follow historical map that places these hard-hitting, first-person narratives in the context of their troubled times and within the larger picture of U.S. growth and development. Here are the no-nonsense words of a young immigrant trying to survive as a sweatshop operator in New York City, a hard working farmer's wife who has writing ambitions; a black southern sharecropper seeking fulfillment under a new system of slavery; a young Puerto Rican passing the Statue of Liberty and ready for new challenges; a Chinese immigrant, a Mexican immigrant, and a Japanese immigrant struggling to rise from lower rungs on the social and economic ladder; an Irish girl of sixteen deciding to become a political agitator; a black southern woman trying to fend off the hurts of Jim Crow; a coal miner telling of the lethal dangers of his work; and a black cowhand rejoicing in the thrill of the cattle trails.

This new volume in the Best American History Essays series brings together classic writing from top American historians on one of our greatest presidents. Ranging from incisive assessments of his political leadership, to explorations of his enigmatic character, to reflections on the mythos that has become inseparable from the man, each of these contributions expands our understanding of Abraham Lincoln and shows why he has been such an object of enduring fascination. Contributions include:* James McPherson on Lincoln the military strategist* Richard Hofstadter on the Lincoln legend* Edmund Wilson on his contribution to American letters* John Hope Franklin on the Emancipation Proclamation* James Horton on Lincoln and race* David M. Potter on the secession* Richard Current on Lincoln's political genius* Mark Neely on Lincoln and civil liberties

This is a moving, star-filled account of one of Hollywood’s true golden ages as told by a man in the middle of it all. Walter Mirisch’s company has produced some of the most entertaining and enduring classics in film history, including West Side Story , Some Like It Hot , In the Heat of the Night , and The Magnificent Seven . His work has led to 87 Academy Award nominations and 28 Oscars. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from his personal collection, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History reveals Mirisch’s own experience of Hollywood and tells the stories of the stars—emerging and established—who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, and many others. With hard-won insight and gentle humor, Mirisch recounts how he witnessed the end of the studio system, the development of independent production, and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most gifted (and notorious) cultural icons. A producer with a passion for creative excellence, he offers insights into his innovative filmmaking process, revealing a rare ingenuity for placating the demands of auteur directors, weak-kneed studio executives, and troubled screen sirens. From his early start as a movie theater usher to the presentation of such masterpieces as The Apartment , Fiddler on the Roof , and The Great Escape , Mirisch tells the inspiring life story of his climb to the highest echelon of the American film industry. This book assures Mirisch’s legacy—as Elmore Leonard puts it—as “one of the good guys.” Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association

Joel Benjamin is one of the most prominent faces in the history of US chess. At thirteen years of age he broke Bobby Fischer's record as the youngest ever national master, and this was followed by countless tournament successes. Perhaps most famously, in 1997 he hit the headlines when he became the chess consultant for IBM's Deep Blue computer, which made history by beating World Champion Garry Kasparov in an epic encounter. In American Grandmaster, Benjamin takes the reader on a journey through chess adventures spanning more than thirty years. Tracing through his own career, from being a prodigy in the 'Fischer boom' era thorough to an experienced Grandmaster with many titles, Benjamin is in a unique position to highlight the major changes that have occurred both in US and international chess throughout the last four decades.This book includes: Instructive annotations of his favourite gamesAnecdotes and reflections from thirty years of US and worldwide chess eventsNew perspectives on the legendary Kasparov-Deep Blue matchInsights into how Grandmasters earn their livingA deep look into the current major issues of ches

"One of the great statesmen of our century, Shimon Peres, winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, has shaped the history of Israel and the future of the Middle East. In the seventies, as Israel's minister of defense, he engineered the legendary Entebbe raid against PLO terrorists; in the eighties, as prime minister, he saved the Israeli economy from near collapse; and as foreign minister, Shimon Peres is now a key negotiator in the peace accords that he helped bring about. In Battling for Peace, he tells, for the first time, the story of his amazing career. As we follow Peres from his ancestral home in Poland to Israel, from the youth village of Ben-Shemen to Kibbutz Alumot, from youth movement leader to prime minister, we are introduced both to a man and to a nation. A thoughtful, disciplined, and immensely resourceful young man, Peres was singled out by Israel's great leader David Ben-Gurion, who appointed him, while still in his twenties, director general of the Ministry of Defense. From this point on, Peres's life was inseparable from his country's history. Peres writes of his bitter quarrels with Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, and of his great admiration for Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Francois Mitterrand. He discusses the origins of Israel's nuclear program, and tells how he led the way toward the Oslo agreement, describing his secret talks with King Hussein in London ten years ago, and revealing how a chance for peace was thwarted by self-serving politicians and timid American diplomacy"--OCLC

In his own words, this is the life of Joe Simon, one of the most important figures in comics history, and half of the famous creative team Simon and Kirby. Joe Simon co-created Captain America , and was the first editor in chief of Marvel Comics (where he hired Stan Lee for his first job in comics). Simon began his prolific career in the Great Depression, and this book recounts his journey to New York City, his first comic book work, his meeting with Jack Kirby, and the role comics played in wartime America. He remembers the near-death of the comics industry, and the scramble to survive. And he reveals what it was like to bring comics out of their infancy, as they became an American art form.

"'If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think, ' as Woolf puts it in A Room of One's Own , writing like a woman simply means writing like what one actually is, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, belly and bowels, the consonants and the vowels too. We may have a general sense that women poets are more likely than men, at the present time, to write in detail about their bodies; to take power relationships as a theme; to want to speak with a strong rather than a subdued voice; are less likely to seek distance, more likely to seek intimacy, in poetic tone. But generalization would be foolish here. 'Woman poet, ' like 'American poet' or 'French poet' or 'Russian poet, ' allows--even insists on--diversity, while implying something valuable in common, some shared language and life, of tremendous importance to the poet and the poet's readers." --Alicia Ostriker

The last quarter century has been an extraordinary and turbulent period in the art world. It was a time of creative intensity during which a handful of artists, like Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, managed, in their different ways, to cross over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture. It was also a time when other promising careers and even whole movements, like Graffiti, spurted to life and then just as suddenly disappeared. During the astonishing boom years of the 1980s, the newly vigorous art market transformed the role of dealers and collectors to give them unprecedented power as tastemakers and the dangerous glamour of Hollywood power agents. And then came the bust. Writer Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within the art world, known the players, and reported on the scene for this entire span of time. True Colors draws on two decades of reporting to deliver an authoritative and deliciously inside account of the contemporary art world that will be the most talked-about book on art since The Shock of the New. Haden-Guest gives vivid portraits of the art world's key players and dramatizes the pivotal moments in the always evolving scene. Skillfully conveying a sense of the intricate geography of the art world, he tells of its clashes of ambition, its intrigues, its power plays. This is how artists survive, or don't survive. True Colors is filled with telling anecdotes and expertly told stories that cohere to give a sense of how the art world works, its current state, and where it may be going.

In the heavily forested foothills of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, a Shuar healer named Alejandro Tsakimp leads many lives. He is a peasant who sells cattle and lumber, a member of the Shuar Federation, a son and a brother, a husband and a father, a student and a worker, and, finally, a troubled shaman. Being a healer has long been both a burden and a resource, for the power to cure is also the power to kill, and shamans like Tsakimp are frequently in danger from accusations of witchcraft. But the situation of the Shuar today is especially perilous, and Tsakimp must constantly negotiate relations of power not only with rival shamans and his patients, but with the better-educated and richer officials of the Shuar Federation and his own siblings as well. In his own words, Alejandro Tsakimp tells of his lives and relationships, the practice of shamanism, and the many challenges and triumphs he has encountered since childhood. He was born at the time when Shuar were first confronting the impact of Ecuadorian colonialism, which had triggered devastating intertribal conflict over the production and trade of shrunken heads and intratribal feuding fueled by accusations of witchcraft. Tsakimp was first exposed to healing practices when he was cured in the womb by a shaman. Later he actively pursued this knowledge in the hopes of curing his father, another shaman, who was ill from witchcraft. His father's death in 1990 created conflict among his heirs, who were the first generation of Shuar to inherit property. Tsakimp's family fiercely competed for the property and eventually accused one another of witchcraft and parricide. Anthropologist Steven Rubenstein, who began working with Tsakimp in 1989, has skillfully edited Tsakimp's stories and provides essential background information. Ruben-stein argues that although these stories reveal tensions between individual and collective autonomy on the colonial frontier, they also resist simplistic dichotomies such as state versus indigene and modern versus traditional. Alejandro Tsakimp provides a revealing look at the relationship between anthropologist and shaman and an insightful glimpse into the complicated lives of South American Indians today.

This book speculates about the important inventions, scientific discoveries, and political and social developments, which may occur during the coming millennium. It does this by presenting -- through the eyes of a fictitious author living in the year 3000 -- a list of the 100 men and women who have had the greatest impact on world history and on the everyday lives of individuals. The hundred persons are ranked in order of their influence. The main section of the book consists of short biographies of those 100 persons, describing what each person accomplished, and why that person is so important. Forty-five of the entries are actual historical personages. These include such well known figures as Jesus Christ, Confucius, Charles Darwin, Christopher Columbus, Albert Einstein, and George Washington. Among the fifty-five entries from the third millennium are: Sue Ellen Green (who develops a cancer vaccine); Miguel Carranza (chief founder of the United World Federation); Stella Ricardo Garcia (architect and formscaper); Mika Kivikoski (who develops the technology to control the weather); and Shu Gungwu (who finds the solution to the baffling "mind-body problem"). Other topics treated include: space travel and space colonies; medical advances (such as artificial organs, and reversible sex-change operations); arts and entertainment (including music, literature, the visual arts, and sports and games); solar power; philosophy (including political theory, epistemology, semantics, and ethics); mathematics, pollution control, robots, brainwashing; nuclear warfare; robots; and artificial intelligence. The book includes a historical chart (listing the main events of both the actual past and the projected future), a list of honorable mentions (and their accomplishments); a glossary, and an extensive index.

Mosaic: Memoirs, Lincoln Kirstein's long-awaited autobiography, is a compelling, often highly subjective evocation of his astonishing youth. The book's scenes move from the old mansions of Brahmin Boston to the waterfront bars of Brooklyn, George Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, and the brothels of Marrakesh. It culminates with thrilling suspense in 1933, when Kirstein visits Paris, hoping to lure George Balanchine to the United States. Kirstein shapes his numinous memories into the story of a young man's quest to fuse his various roles into a unified self. Mosaic is the epic history of his ultimately triumphant search for a vocation. As a chapter in the growth of modernism, and as a contribution to cultural history - and the history of assimilation - this superbly written, humorous, and candid book is unique and invaluable.

"In this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade, and his sixth decade of making movies"--

The author provides remarkable insight into the early development of organised Jewish life in the United States. this is a comprehensive, authoritative work about a Long-Neglected but Central figure of 19th century American Jewish

A real-life thriller about a CIA contractor who vanished in Iran and the international manhunt to find him In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times , draws on years of interviews and never-before-disclosed CIA files to weave together a riveting narrative of the ex-agent’s journey to Iran and the hunt to rescue him. The result is an extraordinary tale about the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace. Its colorful cast includes CIA operatives, Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, White House officials, gangsters, private eyes, FBI agents, journalists, and a fugitive American terrorist and assassin. Missing Man is a fast-paced story that moves through exotic locales and is set against the backdrop of the twilight war between the United States and Iran, one in which hostages are used as political pawns. Filled with stunning revelations, it chronicles a family’s ongoing search for answers and one man’s desperate struggle to keep his hand in the game.

Rev. ed. of: Child of light. 1951. Describes the life of the author of "Frankenstein" and wife of the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelly.

One of the most imaginative figures to emerge from the science fiction field. Olaf Stapledon left an indelible mark on many other writers, from Arthur C. Clarke to Saul Bellows, but never won a mass following himself. This study by a renowned American literary critic provides a long-needed introduction to the life and work of the man Brian Aldiss called "the great classical example, the cold pitch of perfection as he turns scientific concepts into ontological epic prose poems, the ultimate science fiction writer." Probing the recurrent themes and images of Stapledon's novels -- which include Last and First Men, Odd John, Star Maker, and Sirius -- Leslie A. Fiedler brilliantly illuminates the complexity and richness that underlie Stapledon's fiction. As Fiedler demonstrates, Stapledon was very much a product of the 1930s, embracing a set of leftist attitudes that were common to many other "Oxbridge-educated sons of the English upper classes." But, as Fiedler further shows, there is much more to Stapleton's books than their superficial ideological content: his works are unique in their awe-inspiring vision of the breadth of the physical universe and the depths of the human psyche. "Certainly since encountering him," Fielder writes, "I have never been able to stare up at thee night sky with the same secure faith that either God exists or he does not; anymore than I have been able between sleeping and waking to be sure that the nighttime "I" preparing to dream is identical with or totally different from the conscious "I" about to surrender its dominion."

"THE PURPOSE OF POLITICS IS NOT TO DEFEAT YOUR OPPONENT AS MUCH AS IT IS TO PROVIDE SUPERIOR LEADERSHIP AND BETTER IDEAS THAN THE OPPOSITION." --JACK KEMP The late 1970s were miserable for America. It was the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, a time of high unemployment, ruinous inflation, gasoline lines, Communist advances, and bottomed-out U.S. morale. In the 1980s, it all turned around: "stagflation" ended and nearly two decades of prosperity ensued. The Soviet Union retreated, then collapsed. America again believed in itself. And around the world, democratic capitalism was deemed "the end of history." Ronald Reagan's policies sparked the American renaissance, but the Gipper's leadership is only part of the story. The economic theory that underpinned America's success was pioneered by a star professional quarterback turned self-taught intellectual and "bleeding-heart conservative": Jack Kemp. Kemp's role in a pivotal period in American history is at last illuminated in this first-ever biography, which also has lessons for the politics of today. Kemp was the congressional champion of supply-side economics--the idea that lowering taxes would foster growth. Even today, almost no one advocates a return to a top income tax rate of 70 percent. Kemp didn't just challenge the Democratic establishment. He also encouraged his fellow Republicans to be growth (not austerity) minded, open their tent to minorities and blue-collar workers, battle poverty and discrimination, and once again become "the party of Lincoln." Kemp approached politics the same way he played quarterback for the Buffalo Bills: with a refusal to accept defeat. Yet he also was incapable of personal attack, arguing always on the level of ideas. He regarded opponents as adversaries, not enemies, and often cooperated with them to get things done. Despite many ups and downs, including failed presidential and vice-presidential bids, he represented a positive, idealistic, compassionate Republicanism. Drawing on never-published papers and more than one hundred Kemp Oral History Project interviews, noted journalists Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes trace Kemp's life, from his childhood through his pro football career to his influential years as a congressman and cabinet secretary. As the American Dream seems to be waning and polarized politics stifles Washington, Kemp is a model for what politics ought to be. The Republican party and the nation are in desperate need of another Kemp.

"If an umpire could steal the show in a Major League game, Al Clark might well have been the one to do it. Tough but fair, in his thirty years as a professional umpire he took on some of baseball's great umpire baiters, such as Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, and Dick Williams, while ejecting any number of the game's elite--once tearing a hamstring in the process. He was the first Jewish umpire in American League history, and probably the first to eject his own father from the officials' dressing room. But whatever Clark was doing--officiating at Nolan Ryan's three hundredth win, Cal Ripken's record breaker, or the "earthquake" World Series of 1989, or braving a labor dispute, an anti-Semitic tirade by a Cy Young Award winner, or a legal imbroglio--it makes for a good story. Called Out but Safe is Clark's outspoken and often hilarious account of his life in baseball from umpire school through the highlights to the inglorious end of his stellar career. Not just a source of baseball history and lore, Clark's book also affords a rare look at what life is like for someone who works for the Major Leagues' other team"--