Best of
Biography

1955

Papa Hemingway


A.E. Hotchner - 1955
    E. Hotchner traveled together from New York to Paris to Spain, fished the waters off Cuba, hunted in Idaho, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona. And everywhere they talked. For 14 years, Hotchner and Hemingway shared a conversation. Hemingway reminisced about his childhood, recalled the Paris literary scene in the twenties, remembered his early years as a writer, and recounted the real events that lay behind his fiction. And Hotchner took it all down. His notes on the many occasions he spent with his friend Papa - in Venice and Rome, in Key West, on the Riviera, in Ketchum, Idaho, where Hemingway died by his own hand in 1961 - provide the material for this utterly truthful, profoundly compassionate bestselling memoir of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. What emerges is an extraordinary portrait of a great writer who had, and determined, the time of his life.

Papa Married a Mormon


John D. Fitzgerald - 1955
    Mamma's Boarding House and Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse followed soon after, but good luck finding either of them.Born in Price, Utah, in 1907 to a Scandinavian Mormon mother and an Irish Catholic father, he grew up influenced by both cultures. He left Utah behind at age eighteen, working at such varied jobs as playing in a jazz band, working in a bank, and serving as an overseas newspaper correspondent. At the time of his first break into the national literary scene, he was a purchaser for a steel company in California. Fitzgerald began writing Papa Married a Mormon, a family history about his boyhood, to fulfill a promise made to his mother on her death-bed. She implored him to tell the story of those who settled the west. Not so much a story of the Mormons, but of the people themselves – specifically Fitzgerald’s family and members of the Mormon/Gentile community in which they lived.Set in the fictional southern Utah community of Adenville, Fitzgerald creates a nostalgic picture of small town life in early 1900s. The story tells of the conflicts between the Mormons and gentiles within the community, and how leaders on both sides managed to unify the town, despite their differences and animosities. Because many parts of the book are similar in prose to Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn novels, Papa Married a Mormon fits the mold of a Victorian look at an era long gone.Reference: The Promise Is Fulfilled: Literary Aspects of John D. Fitzgerald's Novels, by Audrey M. Godfrey. Retrieved February 11, 2008 from: http://mldb.byu.edu/94/godfrey.htm

Tiger of the Snows: The Autobiography of Tenzing of Everest


Tenzing Norgay - 1955
    The autobiography of Tenzing of Everest

I Love Her, That's Why!: An Autobiography


George Burns - 1955
    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.

Columbus


Ingri d'Aulaire - 1955
    A life of the Genoese weaver's son who sought to prove the world is round, telling how he studied map-making in Portugal, waited long years for financial and material support from Isabella of Spain, and finally made four voyages to the New World.

We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher


E.C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott - 1955
    C. Abbott was a cowboy in the great days of the 1870's and 1880's. He came up the trail to Montana from Texas with the long-horned herds which were to stock the northern ranges; he punched cows in Montana when there wasn't a fence in the territory; and he married a daughter of Granville Stuart, the famous early-day stockman and Montana pioneer. For more than fifty years he was known to cowmen from Texas to Alberta as "Teddy Blue." This is his story, as told to Helena Huntington Smith, who says that the book is "all Teddy Blue. My part was to keep out of the way and not mess it up by being literary.... Because the cowboy flourished in the middle of the Victorian age, which is certainly a funny paradox, no realistic picture of him was ever drawn in his own day. Here is a self-portrait by a cowboy which is full and honest." And Teddy Blue himself says, "Other old-timers have told all about stampedes and swimming rivers and what a terrible time we had, but they never put in any of the fun, and fun was at least half of it." So here it is—the cowboy classic, with the "terrible" times and the "fun" which have entertained readers everywhere. First published in 1939, We Pointed Them North has been brought back into print by the University of Oklahoma Press in completely new format, with drawings by Nick Eggenhofer, and with the full, original text.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life


C.S. Lewis - 1955
    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.

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Escape from a Siberian Labour Camp and His 3-Year Trek to Freedom


Josef Martin Bauer - 1955
    It has been translated into fifteen languages, sold more than 12 million copies, and is the basis for an award-winning German entry at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Recounting an incredible real-life adventure, it tracks the destiny of German soldier Clemens Forrell who, in the aftermath of WWII, was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in a lead mine in the barren eastern reaches of Siberia.Subjected to the brutality of the camp and the climate, Forrell dreamed continuously of escape—and then daringly effected it. From East Cape across the vast trackless wastes of Siberia, for thousands of miles and three years, with fear as his most intimate companion, Forrell fled treachery and endured some of the most inhospitable conditions on earth. In a long series of taped interviews with esteemed German author Josef M. Bauer, Forrell unfolded his remarkable story of survival. Bauer not only reconstructs Forrell's arduous journey to the Iranian frontier and freedom; he also poignantly evokes the emotional content of Forrell's brave quest—emerging as an affecting portrait of a man who strove and triumphed against all odds.

Aquinas


Frederick Charles Copleston - 1955
    An embodiment of the thirteenth-century ideal of a unified interpretation of reality (in which philosophy and theology work together in harmony), Aquinas was remarkable for the way in which he used and developed this legacy of ancient thought - an achievement which led his contemporaries to regard him as an advanced thinker. Father Copleston's lucid and stimulating book examines this extraordinary man - whose influence is perhaps greater today than in his own lifetime - and his thought, relating his ideas wherever possible to problems as they are discussed today.

Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad


Ann Petry - 1955
    

The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer


Erwin Panofsky - 1955
    Through the skill and immense knowledge of Erwin Panofsky, the reader is dazzled not only by D�rer the artist but also D�rer in a wide array of other roles, including mathematician and scientific thinker. Originally published in 1943 in two volumes, The Life and Art of Albrecht D�rer met with such wide popular and scholarly acclaim that it led to three editions and then, in 1955, to the first one-volume edition. Without sacrifice of text or illustrations, the book was reduced to this single volume by the omission of the Handlist and Concordance. The new introduction by Jeffrey Chipps Smith reflects upon Panofsky the man, the tumultuous circumstances surrounding the creation of his masterful monograph, its innovative contents, and its early critical reception. Erwin Panofsky was one of the most important art historians of the twentieth century. Panofsky taught for many years at Hamburg University but was forced by the Nazis to leave Germany. He joined the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1935, where he spent the remainder of his career and wrote The Life and Art of Albrecht D�rer. He developed an iconographic approach to art and interpreted works through an analysis of symbolism, history, and social factors.This book, one of his most important, is a comprehensive study of painter and printmaker Albrecht D�rer (1471-1528), the greatest exponent of northern European Renaissance art. Although an important painter, D�rer was most renowned for his graphic works. Artists across Europe admired and copied his innovative and powerful prints, ranging from religious and mythological scenes to maps and exotic animals. The book covers D�rer's entire career in exacting detail. With multiple indexes and more than three hundred illustrations, it has served as an indispensable reference, remaining crucial to an understanding of the work of the great artist and printmaker. Subsequent D�rer studies have necessarily made reference to Panofsky's masterpiece. Panofsky's work continues to be admired for the author's immense erudition, subtlety of appreciation, technical knowledge, and profound analyses.

The Wise Man from the West


Vincent Cronin - 1955
    If he approached the Emperor with a Bible in one hand, in the other he carried much of the accumulated technological and philosophical wisdom of the late Renaissance Europe, and thus found favour among the Mandarins, the men of learning who enjoyed high status at the Imperial Court. He learned Chinese the better to discuss with them the problems in science and technology, as also questions of religion and the hereafter. But his progress was not unopposed, for the Wise Man from the West came to be seen as an unsettling element in a too-settled society. Ricci died in 1610, disappointed in his ambition to convert the Emperor, and with him the whole of China, to Christianity. But the seed was sown and the crop, even after almost a century of atheistic communism, continues to grow in present-day China.This story of the first fully documented contact between West and East offers a fascinating insight into the history of ideas during one of the most fertile eras in European and Chinese history. Vincent Cronin has built up a reputation with his scholarly, elegantly written works of history and biography, as one of the finest popular historians of his generation. This early book proves his gift as an acutely observant and sensitive historian.

My Mother's Sabbath Days: A Memoir


Chaim Grade - 1955
    Centered on the figure of Grade's mother, Vella - simple, pious, hard-working - this is a richly detailed account of the ghetto of his youth, of the lives of the rabbis, the wives, the tradesmen, the peddlers, and the scholars. We see Vella, desperate after losing her husband, become a fruit-peddler, struggling to survive poverty and to remain true to her faith in the face of human pettiness and cruelty. We follow Grade as he walks in the footsteps of his scholar father, a champion of enlightenment; we see him entering marriage, and his mother finding some peace of mind in a marriage of her own - all of this in a world recalled with extraordinary physical and emotional intensity. Then, World War II. The partition of Poland between the Soviet Union and Germany is followed by the new German invasion of June 1941. Grade - believing, as do so many others, that the Nazis pose a danger chiefly to able-bodied men like himself - flees into Russia. In his travels on foot and by train he meets a fascinating, kaleidoscopic array of characters: the disillusioned Communist Lev Kogan; the durachok, or simpleton, a young prisoner who, mistaken for a German spy, is shot when he jumps from a train; the once-prosperous lawyer, Orenstein, who virtually becomes a beggar, dies and is buried by strangers in a remote Central Asian village. With the war's end, Grade returns to Vilna - to find the ghetto in ruins, to learn that his wife and his mother have gone to their deaths - and he is left with nothing but memories. But it is here, amid the devastation of a people, that he finds the compulsion and the passion to commit to paper the world that has been lost.

The Burden Is Light: The Autobiography of a Transformed Pagan Who Took God at His Word


Eugenia Price - 1955
    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.

The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)


Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - 1955
    The fiery IWW, labor defense & Communist leader writes vividly of her early life.DedicationPrefaceIllustrationsChildhood & Early YouthSocialist & IWW Agitator, 1906-12The Lawrence Textile StrikeThe Paterson Silk StrikeThe IWW, 1912-14World War I & Its AftermathSacco & VanzettiIndexoriginally published by Masses & Mainstream

John A. MacDonald: The Young Politician. The Old Chieftain


Donald Grant Creighton - 1955
    Macdonald: The Young Lion' (1952) and 'John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain' (1955). Each of the volumes won a Governor General's Literary Award. Creighton's rare combination of rigorous scholarship, magnificent literary style, and romantic and heroic vision gives this work extraordinary power and wide appeal.Sir John A. Macdonald's flamboyant personality dominated Canadian public life from the years preceding Confederation to the end of the nineteenth century, and the political structures and national policies which developed under his leadership continue to shape public issues today. Creighton's first volume takes Macdonald from his childhood and early years as a young lawyer in Kingston, Ontario, through his swift rise in political life to positions of influence, to the great achievement of uniting the colonies of British North America in Confederation. The second volume traces Macdonald's often tumultuous subsequent career in the context of a growing and often recalcitrant nation. He was Prime Minister from 1867 to 1873 and then again from 1878 until his death in June, 1891. The spectacular and evocative epilogues with which Creighton concludes each volume are widely recognized as having a place among the great passages of literary prose.P. B. Waite's introduction to this new one-volume republication provides an illuminating account of the impact that Creighton and his biography of Macdonald had on a whole generation of historians and readers.

The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words


Napoléon Bonaparte - 1955
    

When the Century Was Young


Dee Brown - 1955
    Now, with a natural storyteller's flair, he offers a fascinating look at both this century and his own colorful life as an important American writer.

Innocence Under the Elms


Louise Dickinson Rich - 1955
    No description available.

The Little Professor of Piney Woods


Beth Day - 1955
    It is the story of a modern Booker T. Washington and of the Piney Woods Country Life School which he created against tremendous odds.

Seeds of the Desert: The Legacy of Charles de Foucauld


René Voillaume - 1955
    

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Answer is God


Elise Miller Davis - 1955
    A biography of the life of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

A Cure for Serpents


Alberto Denti di Pirajno - 1955
    The autobiography of the Duke of Pirajno, who worked for eighteen years as a doctor in Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland.

Dig Infinity!: The Life and Art of Lord Buckley


Oliver Trager - 1955
    In this hip, frenetic biography, Oliver Trager explains Lord Buckley's turbulent life and career and the reasons behind his slide into obscurity after his death in 1960.

The Story of Amelia Earhart


Adèle de Leeuw - 1955
    

From My Experience: The Pleasures and Miseries of Life on a Farm


Louis Bromfield - 1955
    First hardcover edition of popular Bromfield work.

Alice Eastwood's Wonderland: The Adventures of a Botanist


Carol Green Wilson - 1955
    

The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography Of Walt Whitman


Gay Wilson Allen - 1955
    

Doctor Of Tanganyika


Paul White - 1955
    building clinics, confounding witch-doctors, driving antique cars over primitive roads, and being general surgeon, obstetrician, opthamologist and every other kind of specialist, was the daily task of this young Australian, who, with his wife and two children, lived in a swelling where only mosquito proof wife served to keep out the assorted inhabitants of the jungle.

Noble Savage The Life of Paul Gaugain


Lawrence Hanson - 1955
    

Relentless Pursuit: The Story of Captain F. J. Walker, CB, DSO, Royal Navy, U-Boat Hunter & Destroyer


D.E.G. Wemyss - 1955
    That man was F. J. Walker who commanded the Second Support Group until July 1944 when he tragically died following a stroke.With the increase in U-boat activity against Atlantic convoys Churchill ordered the joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with plans to combat this hidden menace. Both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force Coastal Command soon established Anti-Submarine units with Walker, then a commander, being put in charge of two anti-submarine groups that would provide escort ships for convoys in the Atlantic Ocean. Walker’s hunting and destroying operations against the U-boats proved successful and soon became the scourge of Germany’s submarine commanders.The author, after serving as Walker’s second-in-command, took over the Group during the Battle of the Atlantic. He gives an eye-witness account of the precision of the tactics, the excitement of the chase and the drama of the kill, with a vividness that could only be attained by someone who was there.

Charles Ives And His Music


Henry Cowell - 1955
    

Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel (Library of Christian Classics) (Library of Christian Classics)


Theodore Tappert - 1955
    Sometimes it is forgotten that he was also a pastor and shepherd of souls. Collected in this volume are Luther's letters of spiritual counsel, which he offered to his contemporaries in the midst of sickness, death, persecution, imprisonment, famine, and political instability. Freshly translated from the original German and Latin, the letters shed light on the fascinating relationship between his pastoral counsel and his theology.Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

Edith Stein: A Biography


Christian Feldman - 1955
    Feldman's vivid prose paints a portrait of a fellow contemporary as contradictory and fascinating as our times.

Sigmund Freud for Everybody


Rachel Baker - 1955
    

The Story of Albert Schweitzer


Jo Manton - 1955
    

The World of Albert Schweitzer: A Book of Photographs by Erica Anderson


Eugene Exman - 1955
    

The Only Way Out


R.M. Wingfield - 1955
    An infantryman's autobiography of the North-West Europe campaign, August 1944-February 1945.