77 results for "Biography"

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Diversified Publishing 2021-05-11 416 pages

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.

David A. Adler
An introduction to one of the most outstanding Americans of the twentieth century, perfect for young readers. Born in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up to become a civil rights leader whose philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience helped African Americans win many battles for equal rights. Young readers will learn how his interest in equality was sparked by experiences in his childhood, and how his legacy shaped modern America. Pairing detailed illustrations and an accessible narrative of Dr. King's life, this book is ideal for a discussion about the history behind the holiday, or an early introduction to the struggle for civil rights in America. Includes a timeline of important dates. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.
Candlewick Press 1989-01-01 32 pages

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

David A. Adler
From the Holiday House Reader series, this volume briefly introduces Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights leader. Adler points out not only King's childhood experiences with racism but also the values his parents taught him: self-respect, dignity in the face of injustice, and the power of ideas and words. This brief biography chronicles the main events of King's life and goes on to include his death and his legacy as "a powerful man of peace."
Holiday House 2003-05 48 pages

Opening Day The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

Jonathan Eig
This bestselling account of the most important season in baseball history, 1947, tells the dramatic story of how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and changed baseball forever. April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front—and Robinson had a chance to lead the way. In Opening Day , Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime’s most sacred myth. He offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Was it true that the St. Louis Cardinals plotted to boycott their first home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers? Was Pee Wee Reese really Robinson’s closest ally on the team? Was Dixie Walker his greatest foe? How did Robinson handle the extraordinary stress of being the only black man in baseball and still manage to perform so well on the field? Opening Day is also the story of a team of underdogs that came together against tremendous odds to capture the pennant. Facing the powerful New York Yankees, Robinson and the Dodgers battled to the seventh game in one of the most thrilling World Series competitions of all time. Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration’s promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball’s ultimate story.
Simon and Schuster 2008-04 336 pages

Ali A Life

Jonathan Eig
"The definitive biography of an American icon, from a New York Times best-selling author with unique access to Ali's inner circle. He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us himself). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century's most fantastic figures and arguably the most famous man on the planet. But until now, he has never been the subject of a complete, unauthorized biography. Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America's master storytellers, radically reshapes our understanding of the complicated man who was Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali's life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He conducted more than 500 interviews and uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files, as well dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Collectively, they tell Ali's story like never before--the story of a man who was flawed and uncertain and brave beyond belief. "I am America," he once declared. "I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me--black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me." He was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost. Like so many boxers, he stayed too long. Jonathan Eig's Ali reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition. Ali is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world."--Publisher's description
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018 672 pages

A Picture Book of George Washington Carver

David A. Adler
Born a slave, he became a leading scientist. This is the inspiring story of the pioneering African-American teacher, scientist, and artist. Carver is perhaps best known for his scientific work with peanuts and sweet potatoes (and for inventing peanut butter!), but Time magazine also called him the "Black Leonardo" for his painting. Adler tells of Carver's work at the Tuskegee Institute with Booker T. Washington, his hard childhood, and his determination to learn despite many obstacles, A man of deep faith, Carver worked throughout his life to create scientific discoveries that would improve the lives of Southerners--especially African Americans. The colorful illustrations show Carver in all stages of his life and give children insight to Carver's world. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history, or who need reliable sources for school book reports.
Candlewick Press 2000-09-01 32 pages

Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

Kasher, Moshe
In this "moving and powerful memoir" (Mayim Bialik), comedian Moshe Kasher details his outrageously dysfunctional early years in this darkly hilarious, absurd coming-of-age story. Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for 8 years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting from therapy to rehab to arrest to...you get the picture. But Kasher in the Rye is not an "eye opener" to the horrors of addiction. It's a hilarious memoir about the absurdity of it all. When he was a young boy, Kasher's mother took him on a vacation to the West Coast. Well it was more like an abduction. Only not officially. She stole them away from their father and they moved to Oakland , California. That's where the real fun begins, in the war zone of Oakland Public Schools. He was more than just out of control-his mother walked him around on a leash, which he chewed through and ran away. Brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny, Kasher's first literary endeavor finds humor in even the most horrifying situations.
Grand Central Publishing 2023-09-26 320 pages

Dilla Time The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

Dan Charnas
WINNER OF THE PEN/ JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius.” —QUESTLOVE Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century. He wasn’t known to mainstream audiences, even though he worked with renowned acts like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and influenced the music of superstars like Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. He died at the age of thirty-two, and in his lifetime he never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod: revered by jazz musicians and rap icons from Robert Glasper to Kendrick Lamar; memorialized in symphonies and taught at universities. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way “traditional” musicians play. In Dilla Time , Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla’s own “Motown,” to funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of Black culture in America and of what happens when human and machine times are synthesized into something new. Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to “see” and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way. Dilla’s beats, startling some people with their seeming “sloppiness,” were actually the work of a perfectionist almost spiritually devoted to his music. This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.
Picador 2023-01-31 480 pages

Nigger

Dick Gregory,Robert Lipsyte
“Powerful and ugly and beautiful…a moving story of a man who deeply wants a world without malice and hate and is doing something about it.” — The New York Times “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night…” “Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: ‘We don't serve colored people here.’ “I said: ‘That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.’ “About that time these three cousins come in, you know the ones I mean, Klu, Kluck, and Klan, and they say: ‘Boy, we’re givin’ you fair warnin’. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.’ About then the waitress brought me my chicken. ‘Remember, boy, anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.’ So I put down my knife and fork, and I picked up that chicken, and I kissed it.”
Simon and Schuster 1986 224 pages

Inheritance A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

Dani Shapiro
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Signal Fires and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets : a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test, an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love. “Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family.” — People In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had casually submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history—the life she had lived—crumbled beneath her. Inheritance is a book about secrets. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that had been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in, a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. Dani Shapiro’s memoir unfolds at a breakneck pace—part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience that makes us who we are. Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity, written with stunning intensity and precision.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2020-01-28 272 pages

Native Sons

James Baldwin,Sol Stein
James Baldwin was beginning to be recognized as the most brilliant black writer of his generation when his first book of essays, Notes of a Native Son , established his reputation in 1955. No one was more pleased by the book’s reception than Baldwin’s high school friend Sol Stein. A rising New York editor, novelist, and playwright, Stein had suggested that Baldwin do the book and coaxed his old friend through the long and sometimes agonizing process of putting the volume together and seeing it into print. Now, in this fascinating new book, Sol Stein documents the story of his intense creative partnership with Baldwin through newly uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions, and an illuminating memoir of the friendship that resulted in one of the classics of American literature. Included in this book are the two works they created together–the story “Dark Runner” and the play Equal in Paris , both published here for the first time. Though a world of difference separated them–Baldwin was black and gay, living in self-imposed exile in Europe; Stein was Jewish and married, with a growing family to support–the two men shared the same fundamental passion. Nothing mattered more to either of them than telling and writing the truth, which was not always welcome. As Stein wrote Baldwin in a long, heartfelt letter, “You are the only friend with whom I feel comfortable about all three: heart, head, and writing.” In this extraordinary book, Stein unfolds how that shared passion played out in the months surrounding the creation and publication of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son , in which Baldwin’s main themes are illuminated. A literary event published to honor the eightieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, Native Sons is a celebration of one of the most fruitful and influential friendships in American letters.
Random House Publishing Group 2005-07-26 256 pages

A Picture Book of Sacagawea

David A. Adler
A concise look at the legendary Shoshone woman who led explorers Lewis and Clark on their route from the Dakotas to the Pacific Ocean. Born in the Rocky Mountains, Sacagawea was taken captive and held hundreds of miles away from home for years. When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark came through her new village, Sacagawea was offered as a guide since the explorers were heading toward Shoshone territory, where she was from. Pregnant with her first child and the only woman on the expedition, she accompanied them through the frigid winter of 1804-05 and gave birth to her son as the group traveled west. Her knowledge of the land, interpretation skills, and diplomatic manner were of great use to the team and helped ensure a successful voyage. This child friendly narrative of Sacagawea's intrepid life contains memorable facts, history, and context, accompanied by elegant illustrations. Back matter includes a timeline, author's note, and bibliography.
Holiday House 2001-01-01 32 pages

The Last Folk Hero The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson

Jeff Pearlman
A New York Times Bestseller By the author of Showtime--the source for HBO's Winning Time--the definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson. "A legendary tome on a legendary athlete." --Chris Herring, author of Blood in the Garden From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character--and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America's most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth. Then, almost overnight, he was gone. He was Bo Jackson. Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University's transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous "Bo Knows" Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or ... maybe.) Bo Jackson isn't Jim Thorpe. He's not Deion Sanders, either. No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan. The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only "master storyteller" (NPR.org) Jeff Pearlman could tell.
HarperCollins Publishers 2023-09-26 496 pages

A Picture Book of Thurgood Marshall

David A. Adler
A brilliant lawyer, a leader of the Civil Rights movement, and the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court. A strong-willed boy, Marshall grew up in Baltimore, MD with the guidance of his parents who believed in the power of equality, education, and the importance of hard work. His determination carried him through law school at Howard University where he graduated at the top of his class. Marshall worked for the NAACP (National Association for ther Advancement of Colored People) and was the first African American to win a case before the United States Supreme Court. He argued thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court—winning twenty-nine. His greatest court victory was the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topek a—a turning point in the battle against segregation. Ultimately, Marshall would be appointed as a justice on the Supreme Court. When he retired in 1991, he was called a true American hero and the most significant lawyer of his time. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.
Candlewick Press 1997-01-01 32 pages

Highcastle A Remembrance

Stanisław Lem
Stanislaw Lem's Highcastle is at once a remembrance and a meditation. Even as Lem gives an account of his childhood in Lvov in the years between the two world wars, he ponders the nature of memory, innocence, and the imagination. His recollections of growing up the son of a bourgeois doctor at Number 4 Brajerska Street are stunningly evocative, re-creating with acuity a boy's perception of the world around him: his gossipy French tutor; the magical window of Zalewski's Confectionery; his father's anatomy books and carefully hidden French pornography; a trip to Klaften's Toy Shop; an aborted visit to a tattooed lady at the Eastern Fair; the trams, organ grinders, and halvah stands of Lvov.
Harcourt, Brace 1995 146 pages

Sweetness The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton

Jeff Pearlman
The definitive biography of Chicago Bears superstar Walter Payton. In the twelve years since his death from cancer, Walter Payton’s legend has only grown in magnitude. The Hall of Fame running back, who broke Jim Brown’s all-time NFL rushing mark, appeared in nine Pro Bowls, won a Super Bowl ring with the 1985 Chicago Bears, and is still revered throughout the sporting landscape. Payton has become the lasting image of what’s great about football. Yet in mindlessly canonizing the man simply known as “Sweetness,” we have missed the opportunity to understand—and appreciate—one of the most uniquely complex and enigmatic superstars in the history of American sports. No longer. Based on meticulous research and interviews with nearly seven hundred family members, friends, teammates, and various associates, Sweetness delivers an unforgettable portrait of a man who lived his life just like he played the game: at full speed. From his childhood in segregated Mississippi, to Chicago, where Payton emerged from athlete to icon as he broke the NFL’s all-time rushing record and led the Bears to Super Bowl glory; to his darker moments battling depression and adjusting to life after football, Sweetness is an eloquently written, revelatory saga of a complex, guarded superstar who died far too young.
Penguin Publishing Group 2012-08-28 512 pages

What You See Is What You Get

Alan Sugar
From a Hackney council estate to the House of Lords, this is the extraordinary story of one of our greatest entrepreneurs. Alan Sugar was born in 1947 and brought up on a council estate in Clapton, in Hackney. As a kid he watched his dad struggle to support the family, never knowing from one week to the next if he'd have a job. It had a huge impact on him, fuelling a drive to succeed that was to earn him a sizeable personal fortune. Now he describes his amazing journey, from schoolboy enterprises like making and selling his own ginger beer to setting up his own company at nineteen; from Amstrad's groundbreaking ventures in hi-fi and computers, which made him the darling of the stock exchange, to the dark days when he nearly lost it all; from his pioneering deal with Rupert Murdoch to his boardroom battles at Tottenham Hotspur FC. He takes us into the world of The Apprentice, and describes his appointment as advisor to the government and elevation to the peerage. Like the man himself, this autobiography is forthright, funny and sometimes controversial.
Macmillan 2010 609 pages

The Holocaust Lady

Ruth Minsky Sender
In this emotional sequel to The Cage and To Life , Ruth Minsky Sender relates her struggle to build a new life in America, her battle to cope with her horrific memories of the Holocaust, and her decision to tell her story. In an effort to teach children about the Holocaust, Ruth Minsky Sender describes the impact of this horrifying event on her life and the lives of other survivors. She immigrated to America with her husband and young children in 1950, and even though she was not granted citizenship until 1952, she still participated in the democratic process of a senatorial election by passing out pamphlets and encouraging those around her to not take their freedom to choose their leaders for granted. Still, she is permanently changed by her experience—plagued by nightmares and painful reminders even in everyday moments, such as her children asking about their grandparents or having to show her identification papers when visiting Canada. This moving volume lays bare the unique pain of survivors in a way that “affectingly and courageously bridges the vast abyss between adult knowledge of the Holocaust and youthful need and desire to learn about this crucial subject” ( Publishers Weekly ).
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 2020-04-06 192 pages