Best of
Biography-Memoir

1972

All Creatures Great and Small


James Herriot - 1972
    For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.James Herriot's memoirs have sold 80 million copies worldwide, and continue to delight and entertain readers of all ages

The Water is Wide


Pat Conroy - 1972
    Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence–unless, somehow, they can learn a new life. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher.Here is PAT CONROY’S extraordinary drama based on his own experience–the true story of a man who gave a year of his life to an island and the new life its people gave him.

In My Own Way: An Autobiography


Alan W. Watts - 1972
    From early in this intellectual life, Watts shows himself to be a philosophical renegade and wide-ranging autodidact who came to Buddhism through the teachings of Christmas Humphreys and D. T. Suzuki. Told in a nonlinear style, In My Own Way wonderfully combines Watts’ own brand of unconventional philosophy and often hilarious accounts of gurus, celebrities, psychedelic drug experiences, and wry observations of Western culture. A charming foreword written by Watts’ father sets the tone of this warm, funny, and beautifully written story of a compelling figure who encouraged readers to “follow your own weird” — something he always did himself, as his remarkable account of his life shows.

George Muller: Man of Faith and Miracles


Basil Miller - 1972
    By the time he was 16, he was in jail as a vagabond and thief.In his early twenties he came in contact with a group of people who met regularly for prayer and Bible study. Through their witness he was brought to a turning point in his life and was born into the family of God. Daily Bible reading and prayer immediately became an important part of his Christian life and a cornerstone of his future orphanage ministry.The personal story of one of the greatest prayer-warriors of the past century.

Will There Really Be a Morning?


Frances Farmer - 1972
    This book was published about a year after her death of cancer in 1970.

Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story


David Wolf - 1972
    

Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps


Emmett Grogan - 1972
    While Kesey's Merry Prankster's were off tripping the light fantastic, the Diggers were transforming the Haight from a seedy district of abandoned Victorian houses into an evanescent paradise on earth.For anyone who thinks that those were days only of peace, love and flower power, Ringolevio will be a revelation, as it evokes the gritty urban sensibility that supplied the backbone to the community's free flights of fancy.Vastly entertaining, Ringolevio is at once high adventure, political screed, social history. and hyperbolic memoir. This classic traces the story of Emmett Grogan, a larger-than-life sixties legend of great controversy, from the streets of New York to the heights of the Haight.Citadel Underground's edition of Ringolevio features a new introducing by the actor Peter Coyote, one of Grogan's oldest friends, a fellow Digger and a veteran of the San Francisco Mime Troupe."The San Francisco Diggers combined Dada street theater with the revolutionary politics of free." Slum-alley saints, they lit up the period by spreading the poetry of love and anarchy with broad strokes of artistic genius. Their free store, communications network of instant offset survival poetry, along with an Indian-inspired consciousness, was the original white light of the era. Emmett Grogan was the hippie warrior par excellence. He was also a junkie, amaniac, a gifted actor, a rebel hero, ...and above all a pain in the ass to all his friends. Ringolevio is half-brilliant." -- Abbie Hoffman

The Children of Pride: Selected letters of the family of the Rev. Dr. Charles Colcock Jones from the years 1860-1868; A New, Abridged Edition


Robert Manson Myers - 1972
    The letters vividly recreate a period of American history unparalleled for its drama and poignancy. From reviews of the first edition: No story in America's history has been so often told, or has so well stood the retelling, as that of the Old South and its destruction. But Robert Manson Myers's splendid [book] tells it as it has not been told before, in the fullness of its poignancy and tragedy. -Madison Jones, New York Times Book Review A great and indispensable book. -Jonathan Yardley, New Republic A Gone with the Wind saga...This book is superb. -Clarence E. Olson, St. Louis Post Dispatch The Children of Pride is family reconstruction on a grand scale. It demonstrates how the editing of sources can become, in the hands of an imaginative scholar, the work of creative history. -Citation for the 1973 National Book Award in History. The original version of The Children of Pride was the winner of the 1973 National Book Award in History.It was also named among the best books of 1972 by the American Library Association and by the New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Time, Washington Post, and Newsweek.

For Love of a Rose


Antonia Ridge - 1972
    A true and very unusual story of two remarkable families, the Meillands in Lyons and the Paolinos in Antibes, who shared a common devotion to roses and later became united through marriage and through their work together.

Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals


Lord Byron - 1972
    They provide a vivid self-portrait of the man who, of all his contemporaries, seems to express attitudes and feelings most in tune with the twentieth century. In addition, they offer a mirror of his own time. This first collected edition of all Byron's known letters supersedes Prothero's incomplete edition at the turn of the century. It includes a considerable number of hitherto unpublished letters and the complete text of many that were bowdlerized by former editors for a variety of reasons. Prothero's edition included 1,198 letters. This edition will have more than 3,000, over 80 percent of them transcribed entirely from the original manuscripts. Byron's epistolary saga continues "con brio" in this volume. At the start of 1818 he sends off the last canto of Childe Harold and abandons himself to the debaucheries of the Carnival in Venice. At the close of 1819 he resolves to return to England but instead follows Teresa Guiccioli to Ravenna. In the meantime he writes three long poems and two cantos of Don Juan, whose bowdlerization he violently protests; he breaks off with Marianna Segati, copes with his amorous "tigress" Margarita Cogni, then falls passionately in love with the young Countess Guiccioli; he thinks seriously of emigrating to South America; he takes custody of his little daughter Allegra and becomes increasingly fond of the child. The Shelleys visit him, as does Thomas Moore, to whom he entrusts his memoirs (burned after his death). The letters to friends are amarvelous outpouring of funny anecdotes, practical talk, discussions of his poems, statements of his beliefs. The love letters are in a class by themselves.

The Art of Beatrix Potter


Enid Linder - 1972
    

The Green Stick (Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. I)


Malcolm Muggeridge - 1972
    Publisher: Collins Date of Publication: 1972 Binding: hard back Edition: Condition: Very Good/Very Good Description: 0002151197 jacket covered in plastic

I Never Had It Made


Jackie Robinson - 1972
    In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier, striking a crucial blow for racial equality and changing the world of sports forever. I Never Had It Made is Robinson's own candid, hard-hitting account of what it took to become the first black man in history to play in the major leagues.I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson's early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school's first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the "Noble Experiment"—Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball.More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson's life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr.Originally published the year Robinson died, I Never Had It Made endures as an inspiring story of a man whose heroism extended well beyond the playing field.

The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White


Sean Callahan - 1972
    

St. Francis of Assisi: Writing and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis


Marion A. Habig - 1972
    Francis, " available again in a limited edition. Persons wishing to study the life of St. Francis by means of these primary texts may find William Hugo's Studying the Life of Francis of Assisi: A Beginner's Workbook to be a valuable companion volume to the Omnibus.(Paperback reprint is in 2 volumes, pages 1808; Franciscan Herald Press)

Acres and Pains


S.J. Perelman - 1972
    What you will see is a middle-aged city dweller, as lean and bronzed as a shad's belly (I keep a shad's belly hanging up in the barn for purposes of comparison), gnawing his fingernails and wondering how to abandon a farm.Thus begins Acres and Pains, S.J. Perelman's unique testament to the joys and tribulations of country living. Acres and Pains describes the purchase and transformation of the Perelman property, Rising Gorge, as our hero transforms himself from city lazybones to country squire.Eudora Welty called S.J. Perelman "a National Treasure."

Autobiographical Writings


Hermann Hesse - 1972
    IntroductionChildhood of the MagicianFrom My SchooldaysAbout GrandfatherLife Story Briefly ToldRemembrance of IndiaPidurutalagalaA Guest at the SpaJourney to NurembergOn Moving to a New HouseNotes on a Cure in BadenFor MarullaEvents in the Engadine

Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood


Frances Marion - 1972
    

George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait


Howard Teichmann - 1972
    GSK had many collaborators: Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Marc Connelly, Ring Lardner, John P Marquand, Alexander Woollcott and Howard Teichmann -- the author of this memoir.

Eleanor: The Years Alone


Joseph P. Lash - 1972
    Lash picks up where Eleanor and Franklin ended, tracing Mrs. Roosevelt’s 17 years of life after FDR’s death in 1945. Combining meticulous research with riveting anecdote, he examines the humanitarian work that earned Eleanor the title of First Lady of the World.

Black Worker In The Deep South; A Personal Record


Hosea Hudson - 1972
    

Spassky Versus Fischer: Chess Match of the century


Svetozar Gligorić - 1972
    

The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay: The Autobiography of the Rev. Troy D. Perry, as Told to Charles L. Lucas


Troy D. Perry - 1972
    and a homosexual. Here, he shares his own life story with the world in the hope of creating greater understanding and ending the evils of prejudice.

The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer


Oskar Schlemmer - 1972
    edition, itself a translation (by Krishna Winston) of the 1958 German edition. In a thirty-year period spanning the two World Wars, Schlemmer was a leader among those who brought new concepts and directions to artistic expression. This collection of his writings paints a vivid picture of the Bauhaus era and its artists.

Dick Gregory's Political Primer


Dick Gregory - 1972
    A brilliant and informed student of the American experiment, he viewed and understood politics with an acuity few possess. Nearly fifty years ago, on the eve of Richard M. Nixon's reelection, he wrote a classic guide to the American political system for ordinary folks. Today, when American democracy is threatened, his primer is more necessary than ever before.In Dick Gregory's Political Primer, Gregory presents a series of lessons accompanied by review questions to educate and empower every citizen. He provides amusing, concise, and clear information and commentary on the nature of political parties, the three branches of government and how they operate, how the campaign process works and the costs, and more. Gregory offers imaginative comparisons such as the Hueys--Long, the populist Louisiana governor and Newton, the cofounder of the Black Panthers--and numerological parallels between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. He also includes a trenchant glossary that offers insights into some of the major players, terms, and institutions integral to our democracy and government.An essential guide to American history unlike any other, Dick Gregory's Political Primer joins the ranks of classics such as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and is essential reading for every American.