1472 results for "Biography"

Two unlikely people: to change the world a memoir

Berg, Karen
This is not a traditional biography with a chronological enumeration of dates and places and events, because my husband's was not a traditional existence. Interwoven with details of his life and our life together, you will find lessons he taught and ideas he was most fervent about. His every thought and action was part of a larger whole--a profound knowledge of the universe that Philip Berg, who later became known as the Rav, acquired and then imparted. As his wife, I look back in these pages on our lives together, and I'm reminded of salient moments that defined his character and destiny. I include here events that are representative of his passion and purpose--events that also shaped my own journey, our tumultuous marriage, and the creation of the worldwide network known as the Kabbalah Centre.
Kabbalah Centre Publishing 2019 278 pages

Child no more: a memoir

Hollander, Xaviera
In the bestselling The Happy Hooker and subsequent books, Xaviera Hollander became famous for her unforgettably candid and racy stories of life as a New York madam catering to a sophisticated international clientele during the 1960s and 70s. Yet this remarkable woman's sexual escapades form only a part of her own remarkable life story—a story she reveals for the first time in the pages of this literary memoir, Child No More. It was a life begun in terror: Two months after her birth, young Xaviera de Vries and her mother were confined in a prison camp during the WWII Japanese occupation of Indonesia; her father, a doctor, was imprisoned in another camp. Two years later, summoned to treat a sick child, he operated on his own daughter without realizing her identity. But that story is just the start of an extraordinary memoir in which she traces her own life—and sexuality—as it was influenced by the example of her parents: her father, a dapper and witty Jewish psychologist and intellectual, her mother the gorgeous daughter of conventional German parents, and a target of Nazi enmity for her association with a Jew. With breathtaking but entirely characteristic—frankness, Xaviera revisits how her parents' own tempestuous relationship (and her father's licentious lifestyle) shaped her own life story. As she chronicles her eventual departure for New York, her entree into the world of prostitution, and her years of international celebrity, she reveals for the first time how her parents' lives continued to entwine with her own, as she endured years of separation from her father, and even stood by her mother as she entered a fulfilling lesbian relationship in the last years of her life. Told in the utterly frank and unquenchably inquisitive voice that marks all her work—yet from an entirely new and ultimately more honest perspective—Child No More recounts a surprising and ultimately uplifting "voyage of discovery through three lives."
ReganBooks 2002-06-04 305 pages

Seventy years of life and labor: an autobiography

Gompers, Samuel
Autobiography of Samuel Gompers, describing his role in the historical development of the AFL labour movement and trade union attitudes in the USA - discusses working conditions of working class immigrants, the role of strikes in resolving early labour disputes, the growth of trade unionism, acceptance of labour standards, socialism, respect for woman workers, etc.; includes brief biographies of other trade union officers of the period. Bibliography, photographs.
ILR Press, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University 1984 236 pages

Everything is possible: life and business lessons from a self-made billionaire and the founder of Slim-Fast

Abraham, S. Daniel
In Everything Is Possible, Dan Abraham, the legendary founder of Slim-Fast, recounts the story of his personal and business life, starting from his childhood and army years and his purchase of Thompson Medical for $5,000 when he was in his early twenties, and culminating in the sale of Slim-Fast for $2.3 billion in 2000. At the heart of Everything Is Possible are 16 life lessons that Abraham has picked up in sixty years of a hard-working business career. Among them: There is no such thing as a mistake (see pages 198–202) Why I always insured that my suppliers made a profit (see pages 208–9) The philosophy of continuous improvement (see pages 202–5) If you have a theory and the facts dispute it, drop your theory (pages 205–8) The realization that we all have both good and bad luck in our lives, but many of us don't prepare for either (pages 216–9) I never saw a man pick a fight with a stronger man (pages 191–5) But this memoir, a brilliant guide for anyone starting and growing a business, is about far more than business. Abraham tells the heartwarming story of growing up in a modest home in Long Beach, New York, and the lessons he learned from his mother, father, and one high school teacher that have guided him ever since. And there is more, much more: a discussion of his beliefs about the pleasure of giving; what he has learned from Judaism about ethics and the Golden Rule; and what he learned from his experiences with the FDA about the importance of compromise and about the necessity to fight hard when you believe you're right. At a time, when newspapers are filled with reports of business fraud and deceptions, and when so many people believe that to have spectacular success in business you have to be ruthless and dishonest, this is an account of a business life that has been lived honorably, passionately, and successfully, and with fun. Everything Is Possible is a book to be savored and shared with young and old alike.
Newmarket Press 2010-02-16 240 pages

What a life! the autobiography of Pesach'ke Burstein, Yiddish matinee idol

Burstein, Pesach
Pesach Bursrein, an old trouper from the Yiddish theater, recalls dramas both onstage and off in this memoir, which he dictated to his wife, Lillian Lux Burstein. The Story of Burstein's successful stage career is played out against the background of political turmoil in Europe, vignettes of life in small towns and big cities, friendships and rivalries among theater folk, family life, emigration to the United States, and tours through Europe, South America, Israel, and South Africa. Every personal anecdote tells the larger history: theater history and also the history of the Yiddish communities who were his audiences. While Burstein is a legend in Yiddish cheater, he was little known outside that world until he was celebrated in Arnon Goldfinger's acclaimed documentary Der Komedia11t. This memoir provides the first window for English readers into the other side of Yiddish culture—the Yiddish burlesque, the traveling Yiddish theater, and the music hall. It will not only delight readers but also reveal a social and cultural history never before described in such detail. Burstein's life is the story of popular Yiddish theater in the first half of the century.
Syracuse University Press 2003-04-01 309 pages

Sacco and Vanzetti: the anarchist background

Avrich, Paul
The Sacco-Vanzetti affair is the most famous and controversial case in American legal history. It divided the nation in the 1920s, and it has continued to arouse deep emotions, giving rise to an enormous literature. Few writers, however, have consulted anarchist sources for the wealth of information available there about the movement of which the defendants were a part. Now Paul Avrich, the preeminent American scholar of anarchism, looks at the case from this new and valuable perspective. This book treats a dramatic and hitherto neglected aspect of the cause célèbre that raised, according to Edmund Wilson, "almost every fundamental question of our political and social system."
Princeton University Press 1991 265 pages

Parkinson's blues: stories of my life

Clayton, John Jacob
"This book begins describing the onset of Parkinson's, the arrival of the dark unexpected. In a Monty Python skit, someone is nagged by questions. "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition," he complains. Suddenly Michael Palin, in red 16th century costume, bursts into the room. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" he shrieks. Who expects the onset of Parkinson's? Or cancer? Or stroke? Or the loss of a child? The terrible surprise isn't limited to Parkinson's. It's the existential condition of everyone's life. In fourteen sketches, John J. Clayton links the experience of PD with the experience of childhood sickness, family battles, the struggle to make a good life out of a painful life"--
Paragon House 2020 157 pages

Kidney to share

Gershun, Martha,Lantos, John D.
"A woman who decides to donate a kidney to a stranger tells her story, and a bioethicist reviews the history of ethical controversies surrounding organ donation. These different perspectives on kidney donation give the reader a sense of how this medical technology has evolved and how ethics and the law have changed to make organ donation possible"--
ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press 2021 210 pages

The lost traveller's dream: a memoir

Kovel, Joel
The influential author of White Racism: A Psychohistory; The Age of Desire; History and Spirit; Red Hunting in the Promised Land; The Enemy of Natureand the controversial Overcoming Zionism, among others, offers a memoir of his first 80 years, from his early Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, his Yale and Columbia medical training, his years as a psychiatrist, Reichian psychoanalyst and subsequent academic career, to his embracing of Marxist political economy and commitment to radical ecosocialism. Highlights include his 1998 Green Party candidacy for the US Senate, his campaign in 2000 for the Green nomination for President of the United States, his work with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, and his recent Christian spiritual conversion.
Autonomedia 2017 376 pages