Best of
Autobiography

1985

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character


Richard P. Feynman - 1985
    Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.

Yeager: An Autobiography


Chuck Yeager - 1985
    . .the World War II flying ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop-driven P-51 Mustang . . .the hero who defined a certain quality that all hotshot fly-boys of the postwar era aimed to achieve: the right stuff.Now Chuck Yeager tells his whole incredible life story with the same "wide-open, full throttle" approach that has marked his astonishing career.  What it was really like enaging in do-or-die dogfights over Nazi Europe.  How after being shot over occupied France, Yeager somehow managed to escape.  The amazing behind-the-scenes story of smashing the sound barrier despite cracked ribs from a riding accident days before.The entire story is here, in Yeager's own words, and in wondeful insights from his wife and those friends and colleagues who have known him best.  It is the personal and public story of a man who settled for nothing less than excellence, a one-of-a-kind portrait of a true American hero.

Trapped in Hitler's Hell: A Young Jewish Girl Discovers the Messiah's Faithfulness in the Midst of the Holocaust


Anita Dittman - 1985
    By the time she was twelve, the war had begun. Abandoned by her father when he realized the price of being associated with a Jewish wife and family, Anita and her mother were ultimately left to fend for themselves. Anita's teenage years are spent desperately fighting for survival yet learning to trust in the One she discovered would not leave her ...

Lime Street at Two


Helen Forrester - 1985
    In this book, Helen Forrester continues the moving story of her early life with an account of the war years in blitz-torn Liverpool, and the happiness which she so nearly captured, but which was to elude her twice.

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography


Ansel Adams - 1985
    Written with characteristic warmth, vigor, and wit, this fascinating account brings to life the infectious enthusiasms, fervent battles, and bountiful friendships of a truly American original. "A warm, discursive, and salty document." - New Yorker

The White Mouse


Nancy Wake - 1985
    Nancy Wake, a New Zealander who became one of the most highly decorated women of WW II, here she tells her own story.

I Want to Be a Mathematician: An Automathography


Paul R. Halmos - 1985
    The main message i absorbed from it was a set of conditions required for success in mathematics: talent, yes; single-mindedness, almost as obvious; sense of humour, essential when the going gets tough; and love, yes that is the right word - you must love mathematics, and that means all the ingredients, passion, pain and loyalty." The Mathematical Gazette#1"The book is written in a very personal, but plain and honest way, result of reflected experience and mature self-assessment of a wise man. It avoids palliation as well as exaggerated modesty.- It should be a document for history and sociology of science." (R. Fischer) Zentralblatt für Mathematik#2

I Came, I Saw: An Autobiography


Norman Lewis - 1985
    It is now re-published with 50 new pages increasing in depth the story in the 1960s and 1970s, recording his time spent in the south of Italy.

Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books


Helene Hanff - 1985
    Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books he recommended, began to order them from a small store in London, at 84, Charing Cross Road. Thus began a correspondence that became an enormously popular book, play and television production, and that finally led to the trip to England – and a visit to Q’s study – that she recounts here. In this exuberant memoir, Hanff pays her debt to her mentor and shares her joyous adventures with her many fans.

Dancing in the Light


Shirley MacLaine - 1985
    Outspoken,  controversial, talented, and perceptive Shirley  MacLaine now takes us on an intimate and fascinating  personal odyssey. In 1984 she won an Oscar, starred  on Broadway, wrote the best-selling Out on  a Limb -- and turned fifty years old. At  this special time, in this special year, she was  now ready to resume the spiritual journey she had  begun in her early forties. In Dancing in  the Light, Shirley MacLaine bares her  innermost self and explores the lives, both past and  present, which touched and affected her own. She  sheds new light on her loves, her losses, her  childhood, her passions, and her inner drives and  ambitions. She asks poignant questions and finds  surprising answers. She asks poignant questions and  finds surprising answers. She challenges her beliefs  and confronts her conflicts. Ultimately, she takes  us with her through a life-altering experience  that provides a stunning new vision of herself, her  future... and the fate of our world.From the Paperback edition.

Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement


James Farmer - 1985
    Farmer might be called the forgotten man of the movement, overshadowed by Martin Luther King Jr., who was deeply influenced by Farmer’s interpretation of Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent protest. Born in Marshall, Texas, in 1920, the son of a preacher, Farmer grew up with segregated movie theaters and “White Only” drinking fountains. This background impelled him to found the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942. That same year he mobilized the first sit-in in an all-white restaurant near the University of Chicago. Under Farmer’s direction, CORE set the pattern for the civil rights movement by peaceful protests which eventually led to the dramatic “Freedom Rides” of the 1960s. In Lay Bare the Heart Farmer tells the story of the heroic civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. This moving and unsparing personal account captures both the inspiring strengths and human weaknesses of a movement beset by rivalries, conflicts and betrayals. Farmer recalls meetings with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson (for whom he had great respect), and Lyndon Johnson (who, according to Farmer, used Adam Clayton Powell Jr., to thwart a major phase of the movement). James Farmer has courageously worked for dignity for all people in the United States. In this book, he tells his story with forthright honesty. First published in 1985 by Arbor House, this edition contains a new foreword by Don Carleton, director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, and a new preface.

Shoemaker Of Dreams: The Autobiography Of Salvatore Ferragamo


Salvatore Ferragamo - 1985
    

Elsa: I Come With My Songs


Elsa Gidlow - 1985
    

The Test of Time


Garry Kasparov - 1985
    

Other People's Trades


Primo Levi - 1985
    Throughout the book there are glimpses of long lost childhood summers, his grandparents, adolescence and, most importantly, his writing. The book, which is near to autobiographical of Levi's post-Auschwitz years, conveys his conviction that though "we are living in an epoch rife with problems and perils, it is not boring".

My Life for the Poor: Mother Teresa of Calcutta


José Luis González-Balado - 1985
    In this inspiring book, one of the world's most famous women tells her own story: her childhood, her family, and her early years in Albania; her work and religious training as a nun; her years teaching in India; her call to leave her order to serve the poor; the establishment of her Missionaries of Charity; and the growth of her order, including their life together and the work they have done.

A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika


Alfons Heck - 1985
    This autobiographical account is a rare glimpse at World War II from a German boy's viewpoint.

While Others Slept: Autobiography and Journal of Ellis Reynolds Shipp


Ellis Reynolds Shipp - 1985
    

Mad White Giant


Benedict Allen - 1985
    At the age of 22, inspired by a youthful aspiration to be an explorer, Allen set out to travel from the mouth of the Orinoco to the mouth of the Amazon. But as he stumbled through the Amazonian jungle, he was soon confronted by the harsh reality of his isolation in the midst of potentially perilous territory. Mercifully, the experience of living in the rainforest among indigenous Indians taught him how to survive - a skill of which he soon found himself to be in considerable and urgent need.

Mary Lou: Creating an Olympic Champion


Mary Lou Retton - 1985
    Signed and inscribed by Mary Lou Retton on the free endpaper.

Midway on the Waves: Diaries, 1948-1949


James Lees-Milne - 1985
    

Balanchine's Tchaikovsky: Conversations with Balanchine on His Life, Ballet, and Music


Solomon Volkov - 1985
    He had, however, been conducting over his last two years a continuous series of private interviews with Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. Their subject was Tchaikovsky, the composer who exercised perhaps the most profound lifelong influence on the great choreographer. And throughout these interviews, it was Balanchine's characteristic way to spring from his observations of Tchaikovsky and the many affinities he so deeply felt in the composer's art and life into a free flow of personal reflections and reminiscences.

Call Me Woman


Ellen Kuzwayo - 1985
    Winner of South Africa's CNS Literary Award (1987). "Among that small group of books that have entered into my consciousness and changed my frame of reference."--San Francisco Chronicle

Diana Cooper: Autobiography; The Rainbow Comes and Goes; The Lights of Common Day; Trumpets from the Steep


Lady Diana Cooper - 1985
    Married to Duff Cooper. She is the first Lady Diana.

The Authorized Al


Tino Insana - 1985
    This tongue-in-cheek examination of the life and music of this "superstar" covers from his birth to his rise to stardom. The Authorized Al is actually based on the mock rocumentary HBO special and video The Complete Al (CBS/Fox, 1984), and the two items work well as a complementary package. The video includes such items as his rock videos, concocted interviews with family and friends and concert footage. The book provides such gems as "Weird Al's" Six-Minute Work Out, bogus newspaper and magazine clippings and The Complete Al Songbook, with all of his song lyrics to date. The book's major shortcoming is the inability to translate some of the atmosphere and humor of Al's work to the printed page. However the popularity of the entertainer plus the rock-and-roll subject matter should attract a large YA audience. John Lawson, Fairfax County Public Library, Va.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Cats of Shambala


Tippi Hedren - 1985
    The riveting story of how actress Tippi Hedren, in the process of making a feature film as a plea to save wildlife, came to share her home and land with some 100 lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and cougars.

Years with Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius


Edgar Tafel - 1985
    Unpredictable, cantankerous, a striking figure with white hair, cape and cane, Frank Lloyd Wright was an individualistic spirit who delighted in acting out his own myth. Here is an intimate view of the many moods of Wright the man, warts and all, the inspired teacher, and the creative visionary, by a devoted student who came to know him as few others have.Now a successful architect in his own right, Tafel takes us back to 1932 and the early years of the Taliesin Fellowship when a group of promising young apprentices gathered in Spring Green, Wisconsin, to  be near the 65-year-old master and work at his elbow. We are privy to the incredible richness and diversity of Wright's thinking, his passion for artistic truth and devotion to the cause of architecture, his unfailing creative surges, as well as to his eccentricities and fascinating details about life at Taliesin. We see genius at close range as he designs the most famous house of the twentieth century. Fallingwater, the magnificent Johnson Wax Building and Wingspread; as he ceaselessly tinkers with his designs, all the while proclaiming his organic theories of architecture; as he badgers, bullies, awes and inspires a generation of young architects.Tafel's memoir provides us with a rare view of the man who considered his chief mission in life to create a genuinely American architecture and style of living, wholly personal and original. Here are illuminating anecdotes about his Prairie house and Oak Park periods, his disdain for the Bauhaus school and its leading practitioners, his total immersion in the design and construction of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, his romance with concrete, his efforts to develop the practical "Usonian homes," and much else. It is also an enlightening summary of the facts and forces which influenced the history of American architecture.Written with affection and admiration, and enhanced with over 300 photographs — many never before published — Years with Frank Lloyd Wright offers an unusually candid portrait of the brilliant, eccentric genius who charted a new course for modern architecture.

Voyages of Joshua Slocum: Voyage of the Destroyer from New York to Brazil : Sailing Alone Around the World : Rescue of Some Gilbert Islanders


Joshua Slocum - 1985
    Contents include: Sailing Alone Around the World, Voyage of the Destroyer, Rescue of Some Gilbert Islanders, Voyage of the Liberdade and the Aquidneck Correspondence.