From humble beginnings in New York, Burns and Allen went on to become much-loved stars of stage, radio, television, and the big-screen, one of the few entertainers to be successful in each venue. The book begins with Burns' childhood and early struggles in vaudeville before he meets Gracie Allen. Burns then details his efforts to win her affections; their marriage and adoptions of two children; radio, film, and TV productions (including the script of a 1955 show for their television series). Included are 16 pages of illustrations. George Burns, born in 1896, passed away at age 100 in 1996. Gracie Allen preceded him in death, passing away in 1964.

    The book overall contains less detail concerning specific events than typical autobiographies. This is because his purpose in writing wasn't primarily historical. His aim was to identify & describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of & consequent search for the phenomenon he labelled "Joy". This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, longing. That isn't to say the book is devoid of information about his life. He recounts his early years with a measure of amusement sometimes mixed with pain. However, while he does describe his life, the principal theme of the book is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good & so high up it couldn't be explained with words. He's struck with "stabs of joy" throughout life. He finally finds what it's for at the end. He writes about his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. Though he described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" he defended the practice as being "the only chink left thru which something spontaneous & uncalculating could creep in." The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism & then from theism to Christianity. He ultimately discovers the true nature & purpose of Joy & its place in his own life. The book isn't connected with his unexpected marriage in later life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking he'd really been "Surprised by Joy". "Surprised by Joy" is also an allusion to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy-Impatient As The Wind", relating an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

    He relates his youth in a cycle of growing-up stories, beginning before he enters school and culminating with the loss of friends to the Vietnam War. The characters are memorable: Miss Daisy--one of the six Boring sisters, teachers every one; Daff-Knee Garlic, owner of the Sulpher Springs Big-Screen Drive-In Theater; and Aunt Laura, who knows to listen for the crack of dawn. Developed in oral performance, Davis's stories resonate in the experiences of his listeners and readers. These stories will teach readers the importance of caring, fairness and respect.

    The successful novelist and writer recounts the events that led her to become a born again Christian, and describes the ways her faith has sustained her.

    A young scientist studying in the Sahara Desert, he was granted permission to conduct an expedition in the “cold desert" around the North Pole. There he would be living among the northernmost people of the world, the Polar Eskimos of Thule, Greenland.The men of Thule were a race apart. Through geographical isolation and the social planning of Greenlandic Eskimo explorer Knud Rasmussen, they had managed for decades to maintain an advanced, self-sufficient Inuit culture independent of their colonial masters, the Danes. They were truly kings: strong individualists, heroic hunters. Yet they continued to maintain a form of pure communalism, sharing food, property, labor — even offspring and sexual mates. Thievery was practically unknown among them. In all of Greenland there was no jail.This is the society into which Jean Malaurie was granted intimate entry for one historic year. His experience was the last of a kind for at the end of that year the U.S. government built a huge military base in the middle of Thule Eskimo territory. The isolation was over: the modern world had won,Rarely has a book come to the English-speaking public with such advance status: translated into sixteen languages, with encomiums from adventurers, naturalists, and scholars alike, with worldwide sales in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Some readers have hailed the anecdotal side of Eskimo life depicted here; others the harrowing adventures such as the crossing to Canada by dogsled; still others the profound understanding of the Inuit character or the stirring account of Eskimo regeneration in the seventies and eighties.Like the great Eskimo adventure books from decades past—by Elisha Kent Kane, Frederick Cook, Robert Peary — The last Kings of Thule continues the saga of man’s triumph in the Arctic. More than those works, it paints for us the exemplary life of the polar Eskimos as they were—and are becoming again. Jean Malaurie’s portrait is not only a lesson and inspiration for the 100,000 Eskimos in the United States, Canada, Greenland, and the USSR, but a human model for all mankind.

    Truman was thrust into a job he neither sought nor wanted by a call summoning him to the White House. There First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt told him that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was dead. Two hours later, with little formality, he was sworn into office. "I had come to see the president," Truman recalls in this autobiography. "Now, having repeated that simply worded oath, I myself was president." With World War II raging in the Pacific, the looming decision of whether to drop the atomic bomb, and seemingly intractable labor issues at home, no chief executive ever fell heir to such a burden on such short notice. This book is an invaluable record of Truman's tumultuous first year in office, his youth in Missouri, and his rise in politics. He shares glimpses of his family life; clear-eyed appraisals of world leaders, including Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, and Joseph Stalin; and candid disclosures about history-making national and international events.

    A biography of the life of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.