Best of
Biography

1956

To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson


Courtney Anderson - 1956
    This compelling story of unwavering faith traces the conflicts of Judson's early life to the hardships he endured in Burma.

The Miracle Worker: A Play


William Gibson - 1956
    Born deaf, blind, and mute, with no way to express herself or comprehend those around her, she flew into primal rages against anyone who tried to help her, fighting tooth and nail with a strength born of furious, unknowing desperation. Then Annie Sullivan came. Half-blind herself, but possessing an almost fanatical determination, she would begin a frightening and incredibly moving struggle to tame the wild girl no one could reach, and bring Helen into the world at last....

Nancy Wake


Russell Braddon - 1956
    But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s ‘most wanted’ list.Mixing armed combat with a taste for high living, Nancy frustrated the Nazis at every turn—whether she was smuggling food and messages as part of the underground Resistance or being parachuted into the heart of the war to lead a 7,000-strong band of Resistance fighters.The extraordinary courage of this unequalled woman changed the course of the war, and Russell Braddon’s vividly realised biography brings her incredible story to life.Revised edition: This edition of Nancy Wake includes editorial revisions.

My Family and Other Animals


Gerald Durrell - 1956
    My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.

Bugles and a Tiger: My Life in the Gurkhas


John Masters - 1956
    He went to Sandhurst in 1933 at the age of eighteen and was commissioned into the 4th Gurkha Rifles in time to take part in some of the last campaigns on the turbulent north-west frontier of India. John Masters joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission, and his depiction of garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier has never been surpassed. BUGLES AND A TIGER is a matchless evocation of the British Army in India on the eve of the Second World War. Still very much the army depicted by Kipling, it stands on the threshold of a war that will transform the world. This book is the first of three volumes of autobiography that touched a chord in the post-war world.

Carve Her Name with Pride


Rubeigh James Minney - 1956
    She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.On June 7th, 1944, Szabo was parachuted into Limoges. Her task was to co-ordinate the work of the French Resistance in the area in the first days after D-Day. She was captured by the SS 'Das Reich' Panzer Division and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris for interrogation. From Paris, Violette Szabo was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed in January 1945. She was only 23 and for her courage was posthumously awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

Proud Shoes


Pauli Murray - 1956
    Written by Pauli Murray the legendary civil rights activist and one of the founders of NOW, Proud Shoes chronicles the lives of Murray's maternal grandparents. From the birth of her grandmother, Cornelia Smith, daughter of a slave whose beauty incited the master's sons to near murder to the story of her grandfather Robert Fitzgerald, whose free black father married a white woman in 1840, Proud Shoes offers a revealing glimpse of our nation's history.

Fly For Your Life: The Story of Bob Stanford Tuck


Larry Forrester - 1956
    story of British Air Force pilot Robert Stanford Tuck.

Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War


Burke Davis - 1956
    Lee forged his reputation as perhaps the most daring soldier in American history, renowned for his shrewdness, courage and audacity.Gray Fox is the vivid chronicle of Lee's command, a book that humanizes this gentleman-soldier of tradition and makes him all the more awe-inspiring.

Lady Sings the Blues


Billie Holiday - 1956
    Updated with an insightful introduction and a revised discography, both written by celebrated music writer David Ritz.Lady Sings the Blues is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith albums), to her emergence on Harlem’s club scene, to sold-out performances with the Count Basie Orchestra and with Artie Shaw and his band, this revelatory memoir is notable for its trenchant observations on the racism that darkened Billie’s life and the heroin addiction that ended it too soon. We are with her during the mesmerizing debut of “Strange Fruit”; with her as she rubs shoulders with the biggest movie stars and musicians of the day (Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and more); and with her through the scrapes with Jim Crow, spats with Sarah Vaughan, ignominious jailings, and tragic decline. All of this is told in Holiday’s tart, streetwise style and hip patois that makes it read as if it were written yesterday.

Wing Leader (Fighter Pilots)


J.E. Johnson - 1956
    From the moment the author joins his first operational Spitfire squadron in August 1940, the reader is taken on an epic journey through the great aerial fighter actions of the war including the Battle of Britain, sweeps across the Channel and over France, Dieppe and Normandy; and finally, operations across the Rhine and into Germany itself.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music


Sergei Bertensson - 1956
    When Bertensson and Leyda's 1956 biography first appeared, it lifted the veil from several areas of Rachmaninoff's life, especially the genesis of his compositions and how their critical reception affected him.The authors consulted a number of people who knew Rachmaninoff, worked with him, and corresponded with him. Even with the availabilty of such sources and full access to the Rachmaninoff Archive at the Library of Congress, the authors were tireless in their pursuit of privately held documents, in particular his correspondence. Their labors masterfully incorporates primary materials into the narrative. Almost half a century after it first appeared, this volume remains essential reading.

No Moon Tonight


Don Charlwood - 1956
    Accepted as a RAF navigator in 1940, he was posted to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds in the winter of 1942. There he crewed up with a pilot from Western Australia and a British crew to fly a Lancaster bomber. In No Moon Tonight he gives a profound insight into the inner lives of the men of Bomber Command and their hopes and fears in the face of mounting losses. He depicts the appalling human cost of the air war in an account which has been favorably compared to other enduring memoirs of the 1st World War, namely Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. A memorable first hand account of the air war over Germany.

The Life and Work of Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Rumi


Afzal Iqbal - 1956
    It then analyses the formative period of Rumi's life and his change from the writing of prose to mystical poetry in middle age.

The Story of Annie Oakley


Edmund Collier - 1956
    Biography written for children.

Escort Commander


Terence Robertson - 1956
    Walker, known as Johnnie, was the most innovative and successful anti-submarine warfare commander of the Battle of the Atlantic. He commanded the 36th Escort Group, embarked in the sloop Stork, and with bravery and brilliance helped the Royal Navy save the Allied cause. The British Admiralty stated Walker “did more to free the Atlantic of the U-boat menace than any other single officer.” Terence Robertson's Destroyer Commander is the tale of one man's unfaltering courage and unswerving devotion to duty and to country.

Naught For Your Comfort


Trevor Huddleston - 1956
    

I was chaplain on the Franklin


Joseph T. O'Callahan - 1956
    

Miracle in the Mountains: The Inspiring Story Of Martha Berry's Crusade For The Mountain People Of The South


Harnett T. Kane - 1956
    Born to plantation wealth, she refused to ignore those thousands of forgotten Americans who lived in the southern mountains. She went to work to do something about them - and for them.It all started one day when Martha Berry, spending a Sunday afternoon at an old log cabin near her home where she kept her books, looked up to see three grimy little boys peeping in the window. At first they were too shy to talk to her, but finally she tempted them with apples and persuaded them to come in. Where did they come from? Martha wanted to know. "We's brothers and live in Trapp Holler at the foot o' Lavender Mountain, and he's from over in Possum Trot." They didn't go to school or to Sunday school because there weren't any such in Trapp Holler or Possum Trot. Martha started telling them Bible stories and held them spellbound. The next Sunday they were back with some of their brothers and sisters - and Martha Berry's log cabin school began.Out of that log cabin has grown Berry Schools, one of the most unique educational institutions in America. Its campus is the largest in the world. 30,000 acres of forest, mountains, fields, and lakes - a highland empire about the size of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Most of the buildings have been put up by the boys themselves, and they have built most of the furniture. The girls learn homemaking, milk the cows, do weaving, and help keep the buildings in order.The story of how Martha Berry, a small pretty southern woman, built the Berry Schools is told in this absorbing and inspiring biography. It is filled with warmth and humor and the understanding which Harnett T. Kane brings to all his books.

The Journals of Andre Gide, Vol 1: 1889-1924


André Gide - 1956
    

The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh


Agnes Smedley - 1956
    He was commander in chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, and this is the story of the first sixty years of his life. As a supreme commanding general, he was probably unique; surely there has never been another commander in chief who, during his years of service, spun, wove, set type, grew and cooked his own food, wrote poetry and lectured not only to his troops on military strategy and tactics but to women's classes on how to preserve vegetables. Evans Carlson wrote that Chu Teh has the kindness of a Robert E. Lee, the tenacity of a Grant, and the humility of a Lincoln. More than a biography, this work by a great American woman journalist, who took the account from Chu Teh himself, is a social and historical document of the highest value.

Trail Blazer of the Seas


Jean Lee Latham - 1956
    Bowditch, winner of the 1956 Newbery Medal, Jean Lee Latham writes an absorbing biography of Matthew Fontaine Maury, the man considered to be the father of modern oceanography.In the early 1800s, the voyage from New York to San Francisco took six months. That was before Maury, a lieutenant in the US Navy, blazed a trail for ships to follow. The first ship to follow Maury's directions based on his wind and current charts cut nearly two months off that time. Later, clipper ships cut that time in half.For seven years Maury had fought against skepticism and bitter opposition, for the cooperation needed to gather data for his charts. Years later, at a worldwide peacetime conference in Brussels, which he organized in 1853, nine-tenths of the world's ships were helping Maury collect data and blaze more trails.After the success of his charts, Maury blazed on with more new ideas: he campaigned for a Naval Academy, for better fortification of our southern ports, and separate shipping lanes for eastbound and westbound routes in the Atlantic to avoid deadly collisions.Jean Lee Latham gives a warm, lively picture of the man and a clear explanation of all his achievements. Victor Mays' drawings are both powerful and authentic. There is no discussion of slavery in this biography.

I, Claud: Memoirs of a Subversive


Claud Cockburn - 1956
    They tell the story of an Oxford-educated Communist who rubbed elbows with everyone from Al Capone to Charles de Gaulle. From Times correspondent to foreign editor of the Daily Worker, Cockburn witnessed many of the twentieth century’s most important events. He shares his insights with unparalleled, and decidedly irreverent, authorial skill. Includes a new foreword by Alexander Cockburn.Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) was a renowned journalist and novelist. His novel Beat the Devil was made into a film directed by John Huston.

Battle Hymn


Dean E. Hess - 1956
    Hess is the subject of this inspiring autobiography, Battle Hymn, first published in 1956, which tells of his experiences as a U.S. Air Force colonel, including his involvement in the so-called “Kiddy Car Airlift” during the Korean War on December 20, 1950.With the airfield over capacity, Hess sent Korean orphans to an orphanage in Seoul. When the North Korean forces began to capture the city, Hess reportedly organized 15 C-54 Skymaster aircraft to airlift 950 orphans and 80 orphanage staff from the path of the Chinese advance to safety on Jeju Island. When Hess departed Korea in June 1951, a new orphanage on this island held over 1,000 Korean children.The book later served the basis for the 1957 film of the same name, where he was played by Rock Hudson.

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne


Michel de Montaigne - 1956
    But in this volume, Marvin Lowenthal has drawn from his letters, essays, travel writings, and manuscripts to create a biography of his life told in his own words, thereby fulfilling Montaigne s intention of presenting his self-portrait to the world. For it was Montaigne who wrote, My book and I are one, and into his writing he poured the amazing varieties of his perceptions, his unflinching powers of observation and analysis, and his deeply felt love of humanity in all its messy contrariness. Above his desk, on a beam on his ceiling, were inscribed the words nihil humani alieni mihi puto : nothing human is alien to me and nothing was, for into his writing he distilled his tender heart and biting wit, his nonsense and wisdom, his passions and his hates. By collecting and arranging these autobiographical passages into a unified whole, Lowenthal has framed a complete portrait in this rich and rewarding book. All of Montaigne is here: his adventures and love affairs, his marriage, travels, tastes, and opinions. Seldom has so much wit, wisdom, and pure entertainment been packed into a single volume.

The Magsaysay Story


Carlos P. Romulo - 1956
    

The Story of Dwight D. Eisenhower


Arthur J. Beckhard - 1956
    A stirring account of the dangers and decisions that faced the Supreme Commander during World War II. An inspiring story of a boy whose sense of fair play and teamwork brought him to the Presidency.

Beloved


Viña Delmar - 1956
    Historical novel about the life of 19th-century American Jewish politician Judah Philip Benjamin, who became a member of Confederate President Jefferson Davis' cabinet.

The Living of These Days: The Autobiography of Harry Emerson Fosdick


Harry Emerson Fosdick - 1956
    The autobiography of one of America's greatest preachers.

Return Ticket


Anthony Deane-Drummond - 1956
    This contention is certainly borne out by the experiences of Anthony Deane-Drummond, so simply and yet so convincingly told in RETURN TICKET. Deane-Drummond was one of the first parachutists to land in enemy Italy on a raid in 1941, and was taken prisoner after his mission was completed. Twice he made ingenious and daring escapes;once from a prison and once from a military hospital. On each occasion he reached the heavily guarded Swiss frontier and on the second, he managed to cross it. Thence he traveled through war-time France and back to England.He then promptly joined the First Airborne Division and was dropped with that immortal body of men on Arnhem. There he was taken prisoner once more, and having spent 13 days and 13 nights hidden in a constricted wall-cupboard in a German guard-room, he escaped yet again, recovered in the house of a courageous Dutch family from this truly astonishing feat of endurance and crossed back into the British lines.As a stopry of ingenuity, courage and determination, this is difficult to equal.

Sorrow built a bridge: The life of Mother Alphonsa, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne


Katherine Burton - 1956
    Although culturally enhanced by the European travels, her formal education was random and erratic, provided mainly by her parents and by instructors at home. Like both her brother, Julian, and her sister, Una, Lathrop felt compelled to further the Hawthorne literary fame. She began writing stories when she was eleven, married a writer when she was twenty, and spent the next 25 years of an unfulfilled, stormy marriage writing and publishing poetry, short stories, and sketches. Her only child, Francis, died in 1881 at the age of four.Restless and rootless, Lathrop renounced her Unitarian faith in 1891, and she and her husband were received into the Catholic church. In 1895 with church permission, she formally separated from her husband to devote her life to the care of impoverished, dying victims of cancer, and she organized a group who called themselves Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. In 1900, two years after the death of her husband, Lathrop was named Sister Mary Alphonsa in the Dominican Order. A year later, as head of two resident homes she had established for the incurably ill, she became Mother Alphonsa. She directed one of these homes, Rosary Hill, in Hawthorne, New York, until her death.

Over Seventy


P.G. Wodehouse - 1956
    Wodehouse is recognized as the greatest English comic writer of the twentieth century, rightly admired throughout the world and translated into more than thirty languages. Launched on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, this series presents each Overlook Wodehouse as the finest edition of the master’s work ever published—beautifully designed and faithful to the original.Over Seventy is an “autobiography with digressions” (Wodehouse’s own words again), rich with the master’s reflections on America, his adopted home.

The Atom of Delight


Neil M. Gunn - 1956
    

In and Out of Character


Basil Rathbone - 1956
    "Basil Rathbone's book about himself...is better written than most books by or about actors and is more intellectually vigorous...Sherlock Holmes fans will be much interested in his remarks on the character with whom he has been so closely identified." -Library Journal "Quite naturally full of memories, full of names, full of glimpses of stars of stage and screen of yesterday and today." -New York Times Book Review

The Amazing Nellie Bly


Mignon Rittenhouse - 1956
    

Chateaubriand


André Maurois - 1956
    For information address Harper & Brothers 1 1-8 FIRST EDITION K-N CHATF. U'BRIANI) IX Hi,, by Hilrtii'< j Ld) nt Poet Statesman Lover by ANDR MAUROIS t tk* Fttnck by VB& A FRASBR . , I\* s* / u*--<&* Brotbtets CONTENTS Introduction ix I. Childhood and Youth i II. Soldier and Voyager 3 5 III. Exile 57 IV. Le Genie du Christianisme 87 V, Journey from Paris to Andalmia 1 2 8 VI The Valley of Wolves 156 VIL The Partisan 193 VIII. The Upward Climb. The Dizzy Heights. The Fall 233 IX. The Monarchist against the Monarchy 269 X, Old Age and Second Flowering 305 ILLUSTRATIONS Chateaubriand in 1 820 frontispiece Madame Recamier facing page 55 Chateaubriand 70 Madame de Custine 135 Natalie de Labor de. Viscountess of Noailles 1 50 The Countess of Castellane 215 Portrait of Madame Recamier in later life 230 Chateaubriand, last portrait, 186* 7 278 Introduction EVERAL reasons have led me to apply myself to the study of Chateaubriand's life. The first was a great admiration for the writer, one of those who have exercised the most lasting and profound in fluence on French literature; the second the desire to compare a French romantic with the English romantics I had studied, and especially to find in Chateaubriand the original of which Byron was so often a copy; the third a keen interest in that strange exist ence which found itself bound up with the whole history of France throughout the most dramatic period of that history* The Old Order, the Revolution, the Empire, the Restoration, the July monarchy, Chateaubriand knew them all; he was banished by the Republic, a rival of the Emperor, a minister and afterwards an op ponent of the King; he lived in England and in America. In his cime he was traveller, soldier, novelist, ambassador, religious writer and political publicist; he was loved by the most beautiful and sphinx-like woman of her age. In all this there is so much material for a biography that it is suiprising to find that Chateaubriand's has* all things considered, been rarely written. There exist num bers of special studies; fine scholars have pieced together, minute by minute, the use of his time; literary critics have dealt with Ms nyle; psycWttrists and psychologists have analysed his character. Oomprchensive studiat, however, arc scarce and the most recent, iiat of M* Henry B$ rettger f was written before the latest dia soveriaHdiiCoveri^ which are mfiiiitely precious* It would seem that the reasons for this abstention arc on the mt hand tie fact that Chateaubriand himself, in the f ONM^ TIW^ TOW* h own ife* m tit 4p ; f* if pf research to the of so long and These two objections have not withheld mc-for these Introduction reasons: ( i) The M$ moires cTOutre-Tombe are far from being wholly trustworthy moreover, Chateaubriand put into them only a fractional part of all that went to make his real life, ( 2) The labour of research has been lightened for me in that, for the last few years, there has existed in Paris a Soci6t6 Chateaubriand which has brought together all the scholars engaged in the study of that writer, classified fresh documents and, finally, issued a bulletin to spread the knowledge of those documents. To the president of that society, Dr. Le Savoureux, and to his archivist, Mile, Daren berg, I owe my warmest thanks for their careful checking of my work, the proofs of which they have been good enough to read* Without their help, I should never have dared undertake it. The Socit6 Chateaubriand has begun the publication of a com plete bibliography* It is vast and I shall make no attempt to sum marise it here, I would only point out all that this book owes to the excellent work of M, Collas and IVL Aubr6e on Chateaubriand's youth, of M. B6dier and M, Chinard on th

Laughter Is a Wonderful Thing


Joe E. Brown - 1956
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.