171 results for "Biography"

The Girl Watchers Club Lessons from the Battlefields of Life

Harry Stein
Harry Stein gives us the conversations of a group of older men who meet every week for lunch to reflect on their lives and the state of the world. What is a well-lived life? What is honour, and does it have a place in our society? A profound and poignant meditation on the meaning of honour, told through the words of men who lived life according to the forgotten rules of trust and responsibility. From these conversations, Stein shows us men who lived their lives according to values that have since been declared relative or obsolete: honour, responsibility, decency, and an uncynical commitment to being the best men they could be. Stein presents the stories of this remarkable group of men who lived through the difficult time of the mid-20th century and all its wars and social upheavals. We meet Moe Turner, Stein's father-in-law, a mathematician involved in research on the H-bomb who is Stein's connection to the group. We meet Boyd Huff, a survivor of the Nazi prisoner camps, whose youngest son was killed in a gun accident and oldest is a hospitalized schizophrenic. We meet Gene Cooper, an electrical engineer and the emotional centre of the group. These three men, and the rest of the club, have had difficult lives and plenty of trying moments, yet all of them have survived with their sense of right and wrong, of honour and love, fully intact. Stein connects their background, stories and lives, to the valuable views and ideas they share with him now. What the reader comes away with is a renewed sense of purpose, a new confidence in the strength of courage and conviction in your beliefs—even as those of the world change around you.
Harper Collins 2005-02 315 pages

No Way Renee The Second Half of My Notorious Life

Renee Richards
In 1975, at the age of forty, Richard Raskind, a renowned eye surgeon and highly ranked amateur tennis player, "died," and Renée Richards was "born," in what was to become the most public and highly scrutinized sex reassignment to date. It was not until Renée Richards was discovered playing in an amateur tennis tournament that the world took notice. Extensive media coverage and criticism thrust Renée reluctantly into the spotlight, sparking an intense public debate over her private life. Now, at seventy-two, Richards looks back and speaks frankly about all aspects of her complicated and often notorious life in this eye-opening, thought-provoking memoir. Richards' honest and compelling narrative explores the dichotomy between the successful life she lived as Dr. Richard Raskind, who seemed to have everything (devoted friends, a beautiful wife and son, a stellar record of academic and professional achievement, and outstanding athletic ability), and a secret life of struggle with a drive that could not be suppressed, even by years of psychotherapy and the force of a considerable will. Richards takes readers through her difficult decision to undergo surgery and the complex mixture of relief and continued frustration that came with the realization of her new identity. Discussing life after her transformation, Richards candidly relates the details, trials, and pleasures of her romantic life as well as fascinating stories about her tennis career, including her experiences as Martina Navratilova's coach. She also provides an intimate account of her difficult but rewarding relationship with her rebellious son: runaway teenager, high-stakes Vegas gambler, karate champion, and entrepreneur. She describes the deterioration of a once-loving marriage and the challenges of reclaiming her place at the forefront of her demanding medical specialty. Having lived as a woman almost as long as she lived as a man, Richards draws on a personal history that illuminates thirty years of remarkable change in society's attitude toward gender issues. Her absorbing and inspiring story, at once heartbreaking and uplifting, is a testimony to how far we have progressed in our ability to discuss and accept sexuality in all its iterations, as well as a reminder of how far we still must travel.
Simon & Schuster 2008-11-12 320 pages

The Naked God The Writer and the Communist Party

Howard Fast
2020 Reprint of the 1957 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Howard Fast (1914-2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style. In The Naked God the well-known author tells of his disillusionment with Communism and his subsequent break with the Party. The book is Howard Fast's public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. As the bestselling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism. In The Naked God, his first book after officially leaving the Party in 1956, Howard Fast explores the reasons he joined and his long inner struggle with a political movement in which he never felt he truly belonged.
Martino Fine Books 2020-11-03 206 pages

Reflections of a Wondering Jew

Morris Cohen
Much as he considered himself a philosopher, Morris Raphael Cohen was also immersed in the machinery of social life. From his first years of "engagement" as a volunteer teacher in Thomas Davidson's school for working-class people, to his last as professor of philosophy at New York's City College and at the University of Chicago, he constantly sought to understand the underlying assumptions of human behavior. The studies Cohen gathered together for Reflections of a Wondering Jew are an indication of representative achievements of his life. He was deeply involved in the experience of the American Jewish community, and much of his work here consists of an inquiry into and analysis of specifically Jewish affairs. Some of his most valuable contributions to American thought and maturity are those that were never included in standard philosophical efforts. His work and scholarship provide foundations for the field of human problems and the history of ideas. These lectures illuminated the way forward in so many of our crisis years. There is a certain tragedy to the fact that for many decades Morris Raphael Cohen had hoped to organize and put into systematic form his literary reflections on Jewish problems and American liberalism. Towards the end of his life, he faced the realization that many of his intended writings would never reach fruition. Though this volume may not be quite what Cohen intended, it is a product of a mature giant in American intellectual history.
[distributor] Taylor & Francis, c/o Bookpoint 2017-09-20 186 pages