22 results for "History"

Things that make white people uncomfortable

Bennett, Michael,Zirin, Dave
"Defensive lineman Michael Bennett adds his voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field."--Provided by publisher.
Haymarket Books 2018 220 pages

Set the night on fire: living, dying, and playing guitar with The Doors

Krieger, Robby,Alulis, Jeff
In his tell-all, legendary Doors guitarist, Robby Krieger, one of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," opens up about his band's meteoric career, his own darkest moments, and the most famous black eye in rock 'n' roll. Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after fifty years, The Doors' notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Through a series of vignettes, Robby Krieger takes readers back to where it all happened: the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar; the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust; his parents' living room where his first songwriting sessions with Jim Morrison took place; the empty bars and backyard parties where The Doors played their first awkward gigs; the studios where their iconic songs were recorded; and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors' most vital years, and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band's career. Krieger also goes into heartbreaking detail about his life's most difficult struggles, ranging from drug addiction to cancer, but he balances out the sorrow with humorous anecdotes about run-ins with unstable fans, famous musicians, and one really angry monk. SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE is at once an insightful time capsule of the '60s counterculture, a moving reflection on what it means to find oneself as a musician, and a touching tale of a life lived non-traditionally. It's not only a must-read for Doors fans, but an essential volume of American pop culture history.
Little, Brown and Company 2021 422 pages

Howard Stern comes again

Stern, Howard
Rock stars and rap gods. Comedy legends and A-list actors. Supermodels and centerfolds. Moguls and mobsters. A president. Over his four-decade career in radio, Howard Stern has interviewed thousands of personalities -- discussing sex, relationships, money, fame, spirituality, and success with the boldest of bold-faced names. But which interviews are his favorites? It's one of the questions he gets asked most frequently. Howard Stern Comes Again delivers his answer. Tracy Morgan opens up about his near-fatal car crash. Lady Gaga divulges her history with cocaine. Madonna reminisces on her relationship with Tupac Shakur. Bill Murray waxes philosophical on the purpose of life. Jerry Seinfeld offers a master class on comedy. Harvey Weinstein denies the existence of the so-called casting couch. An array of creative visionaries weigh in on what Stern calls "the climb"--The stories of how they struggled and eventually prevailed. Interspersed throughout are selections from the Howard Stern Show archives with Donald Trump that depict his own climb: transforming from Manhattan tabloid fixture to reality TV star to president of the United States. Stern also tells of his Moby Dick-like quest to land an interview with Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. He speaks with extraordinary candor about a variety of subjects, including his overwhelming insecurity early in his career, his revolutionary move from terrestrial radio to SiriusXM, and his belief in the power of psychotherapy. As Stern notes in the introduction: "The interviews collected here represent my best work and show my personal evolution. But they don't just show my evolution. Gathered together like this, they show the evolution of popular culture over the past quarter century."
Simon & Schuster 2019 549 pages

Rust in peace: the inside story of the Megadeth masterpiece

Mustaine, Dave,Selvin, Joel
"Rust in Peace details the making of Megadeth's iconic record, which was released in 1990, at an incredible time of flux and creativity in the rock world. Relayed by the lead vocalist and guitarist of Megadeth himself, Dave Mustaine, the book covers the process of hiring the band and supporting cast, of trying to handle the ensuing success, and ultimately the pressure of fame and fortune -- which caused the band to finally break-up. In short, it's a true story of groundbreaking anti-pop that was moving toward the mainstream (or the mainstream that was moving toward the band), at a time of great cultural change, power, ego, drugs, and other vices that went hand-in-hand with Rock N' Roll, circa the late eighties-early nineties. Little did Mustaine know that the birth pangs of the record were nothing compared to the oncoming pain and torment that would surround it. Alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, property, prestige, the lies the band was told by the industry -- and the lies they told each other -- were just beginning, and much like rust in real life, these factors would ultimately eat away at the band's bond until only the music survived."--Amazon.com
Hachette Books 2020 191 pages

Starstruck: my unlikely road to Hollywood

Maltin, Leonard
Hollywood historian and film reviewer Leonard Maltin invites readers to pull up a chair and listen as he tells stories, many of them hilarious, of 50+ years interacting with legendary movie stars, writers, directors, producers, and cartoonists. Maltin grew up in the first decade of television, immersing himself in TV programs and accessing 1930s and '40s movies hitting the small screen. His fan letters to admired performers led to unexpected correspondences, then to interviews and publication of his own fan magazine. Maltin's career as a free-lance writer and New York Times-bestselling author as well as his 30-year run on Entertainment Tonight, gave him access to Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Shirley Temple, and Jimmy Stewart among hundreds of other Golden Age stars, his interviews cutting through the Hollywood veneer and revealing the human behind each legend. Starstruck also offers a fascinating glimpse inside the Disney empire, and Maltin's tenure teaching USC's popular film course reveals insights into moviemaking along with access to past, current, and future stars of film, such as George Lucas, Kevin Feige, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro.
GoodKnight Books, an imprint of Paladin Communications 2021 307 pages

Madness and memory: the discovery of prions--a new biological principle of disease

Prusiner, Stanley B.
In 1997, Stanley B. Prusiner received a Nobel Prize, the world's most prestigious award for achievement in physiology or medicine. That he was the sole recipient of the award for the year was entirely appropriate. His struggle to identify the agent responsible for ravaging the brains of animals suffering from scrapie and mad cow disease, and of humans with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, had been waged largely alone and in some cases in the face of strenuous disagreement. In this book, Prusiner tells the remarkable story of his discovery of prions - infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease but surprisingly contain no genetic material - and reveals how superb and meticulous science is actually practiced with talented teams of researchers who persevere. He recounts the frustrations and rewards of years of research and offers fascinating portraits of his peers as they raced to discover the causes of fatal brain diseases. Prusiner's hypothesis, once considered heresy, now stands as accepted science and the basis for developing diagnoses and eventual cures. He closes with a meditation on the legacy of his discovery: What will it take to cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's and other devastating diseases of the brain?
Yale University Press 2014 320 pages

Chess queens: the true story of a chess champion and the greatest female players of all time

Shahade, Jennifer
"Jennifer Shahade, a two-time US Women's Chess Champion, spent her teens and twenties travelling the world playing chess. Tournaments have taken her from Istanbul to Moscow, and introduced her to players from Zambia to China. In this ultra male-dominated sport, Jennifer found shocking sexism, but she also found friendships, feminism and hope. Through her own story as well as interviews with international players, Jennifer invites us into the extremely competitive world of chess. She shows us the rivalry and the camaraderie; the ecstatic highs and the excruciating losses; the glamour and the hard work. She describes the coach who told her that her period will affect her standard of play, and gives us thrilling blow by blow accounts of the matches that made history. Intertwined with Jennifer's own story are those of the top female players from around the world. We meet the famous Polgar sisters, the three Hungarian girls who were all child prodigies; we meet the glamorous jet setters who travel the world partying, and the players who escaped war-torn countries to become champions against the odds. Chess Queens is a fascinating glimpse into the exhilarating world of chess and an essential book for all the aspiring chess queens of today"--Publisher's description.
Hodder & Stoughton 2022 389 pages

But enough about me: why we read other people's lives

Miller, Nancy K.
In her latest work of personal criticism, Nancy K. Miller tells the story of how a girl who grew up in the 1950s and got lost in the 1960s became a feminist critic in the 1970s. As in her previous books, Miller interweaves pieces of her autobiography with the memoirs of contemporaries in order to explore the unexpected ways that the stories of other people's lives give meaning to our own. The evolution she chronicles was lived by a generation of literary girls who came of age in the midst of profound social change and, buoyed by the energy of second-wave feminism, became writers, academics, and activists. Miller's recollections form one woman's installment in a collective memoir that is still unfolding, an intimate page of a group portrait in process.
Columbia University Press 2002 145 pages

Writing a woman's life

Heilbrun, Carolyn G.
"Astute and provocative....Blends the sophistication of recent feminist theory with highly textured details fro the lives of independent and ambitious women." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Drawing on the experience of celebrated women, from George Sand and Virginia Woolf to Dorothy Sayers and Adrienne Rich, Heilbrun examines the struggle these writers undertook when their drives made it impossible for them to follow the traditional "male" script for a woman's life. Refreshing and insightful, this is an homage to brave women past and present, and an invitation to all women to write their own scripts, whatever they may be.
Ballantine Books 2002 144 pages

Unspeakable: the autobiography

Bercow, John
When Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31st October, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, and had created a vacancy of huge importance. As Speaker since 2009 he had a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history, presiding over the Commons while it had to contend with key issues such as austerity in the light of the financial crisis; the coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats; and of course the most intractable problem of all, how to deliver on the 2016 referendum decision that Britain should leave the EU.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2021 438 pages

Unspeakable: the autobiography

Bercow, John
When Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31st October, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, and had created a vacancy of huge importance. As Speaker since 2009 he had a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history, presiding over the Commons while it had to contend with key issues such as austerity in the light of the financial crisis; the coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats; and of course the most intractable problem of all, how to deliver on the 2016 referendum decision that Britain should leave the EU.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2021 451 pages

Driven: a daughter's odyssey

Heldman, Julie
"In the mid-20th century, the Heldmans were tennis royalty. Julie was a volatile and gutsy tennis star, twice ranked number 5 in the world. Her mother Gladys was broadly admired for her unique magazine, World Tennis, and for engineering the women's tennis revolution. No one guessed that Gladys's hidden emotional abuse was the source of Julie's powerful drive. Driven is a highly readable insider's account of a pivotal time in women's tennis history; an in-depth look at Gladys's complex character; and the revealing story of Julie's interior journey, both on and off the court."--Page 4 of cover
Julie Heldman 2019 435 pages

Heimlich's maneuvers: my seventy years of lifesaving innovation

Heimlich, Henry J.
" Here, in his own words, is the story of one of the twentieth century's most creative medical innovators, Dr. Henry Heimlich. The thoracic surgeon is best known for having developed the Heimlich Maneuver, the world's easiest-to-learn and most universally known method to save people from choking to death on food or foreign objects. But many don't know about Dr. Heimlich's other life-saving inventions. He is the inventor of the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, which saved thousands of lives during the Vietnam War, and the Heimlich MicroTrach, which provides a remarkably efficient way for people to take oxygen. In the present decade, Dr. Heimlich has turned his attention to two devastating illnesses for which medicine has not yet found a cure--cancer and HIV. He describes his research and its promise, as well as the controversy and resistance his new ideas have generated from the medical establishment. Interweaving the author's personal life with riveting stories of his numerous medical breakthroughs, this rich memoir provides insights into the workings of a creative mind and the machinations of the American medical system."
Prometheus Books 2014 253 pages

Man of the futures: the story of Leo Melamed and the birth of modern finance

Melamed, Leo
As the founder of financial futures and initiator of Globex, the world's first global electronic trading system, Leo Melamed revolutionized the finance industry. Man of the Futures, his definitive memoir, recounts Melamed's journey from Holocaust survivor and accidental runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), to one of the most prominent leaders in the world of finance. At 33, Melamed gave up a promising law career to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time pit-trader at the CME. He quickly ascended the ranks to become chairman. From there, he set out to disrupt the status quo and ultimately transform both the exchange itself and the broader finance industry. Through daring to embrace innovative ideas many considered absurd, Melamed was a pioneer, continually fighting for modernisation in the financial markets through diversification and the introduction of new technologies. Covering the internal battles waged within the CME, the launch of the International Monetary Market (IMM) and the rise of Globex, this enthralling autobiography details the struggles, scandals and triumphs of a visionary in his field. Together with behind-the-scenes reminiscences about the financial markets, this narrative delves into Melamed's philanthropic work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as his fascinating dealings with political figures at home in Chicago, at the White House, and around the world in China, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil. . Man of the Futures offers exclusive access to the rationale behind some of the biggest financial decisions and dealings in the late 20th and early 21st century. Join Leo Melamed for this fascinating and revealing story of a life lived in pursuit of the future. --
Harriman House 2021-04-27 368 pages

The situation and the story: the art of personal narrative

Gornick, Vivian
A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of" Fierce Attachments "and "The End of the Novel of Love"All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth.How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question "The Situation and the Story" asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid inteligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of ninfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2001 165 pages

Autobiographical Jews: essays in Jewish self-fashioning

Stanislawski, Michael
A collection of lectures delivered in May 2002 under the auspices of the Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Analyzes autobiographical works of seven Jews from antiquity to the 20th century. Two of these reflect despair in the midst and in the wake of World War II. Ch. 4 (pp. 103-138), "Autobiography as Farewell I: Stefan Zweig, " discusses the Austrian Jewish writer, who committed suicide in 1942, as a non-Zionist universalist even in the face of Nazism. Pp. 131-136 deal with the persecution of the Jews. Ch. 5 (pp. 139-174), "Autobiography as Farewell II: Sarah Kofman, " discusses the life and works of Kofman, who committed suicide in 1994. Focuses on her "Rue Ordoner, Rue Labat" and her Holocaust experiences as a child in Paris. Her father was killed in Auschwitz, and Kofman was looked after by a Christian woman to whom she felt closer than her mother. Deals with the conflicts in Kofman's sexual and religious identities.
University of Washington Press 2004 209 pages

Writing as resistance: four women confronting the Holocaust : Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum

Brenner, Rachel Feldhay
Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.
Pennsylvania State University Press 1997 216 pages

My long journey home

Golden, Lily
The daughter of Oliver Golden, an African American expatriate and agrarian activist of the early 1900's, and Bertha Bialek, youngest daughter of Polish American emigres of Jewish descent, Lily Golden has a special place in history. In this account of her experience, Golden provides a connection between the contemporary and historical relationships of America to Russia. Golden offers a distinctly different and refreshing point of view of the lives and experiences of Russia in her often alluring and romantic, sometimes bitterly painful, yet always vivid and intimate details of her life as a dark-skinned Russian surviving in and struggling against turbulent changes. She brings her tale of a sometimes charmed sometimes challenged existence full circle in her descriptions of her ultimate contact with distant relatives in the United States. Lily Golden allows the reader access into her lifelong revelation that family and community ties are boundless by time and geography.--page 4 of cover.
Third World Press 2002-01-01 211 pages