Best of
Biography-Memoir

1993

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now


Maya Angelou - 1993
    This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power do spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou's latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth on every page. "From the Paperback edition."

April Fool's Day


Bryce Courtenay - 1993
    Or that’s how Damon saw it, anyway. Damon wanted a book that talked a lot about love. Damon Courtenay died on the morning of April Fool’s Day. In this tribute to his son, Bryce Courtenay lays bare the suffering behind this young man’s life. Damon’s story is one of life-long struggle, his love for Celeste, the compassion of family, and a fight to the end for integrity. A testimony to the power of love, April Fool’s Day is also about understanding: how when we confront our worst, we can become our best.

Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness


Pete Fromm - 1993
    A gripping story of adventure and a modern-day Walden, this contemporary classic established Fromm as one of the West's premier voices.

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years


Sarah L. Delany - 1993
    They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America's first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother--a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free--give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma. They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws, Harlem's Golden Age, and the Civil Rights movement--and, in their own feisty, wise, inimitable way, they've got a lot to say about it.More than a firsthand account of black American history, "Having Our Say" teaches us about surviving, thriving, and embracing life, no matter what obstacles are in our way.

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year


Anne Lamott - 1993
    A gifted writer and teacher, Lamott (Crooked Little Heart) is a single mother and ex-alcoholic with a pleasingly warped social circle and a remarkably tolerant religion to lean on. She responds to the changes, exhaustion, and love Sam brings with aplomb or outright insanity. The book rocks from hilarious to unbearably poignant when Sam's burgeoning life is played out against a very close friend's illness. No saccharine paean to becoming a parent, this touches on the rage and befuddlement that dog sweeter emotions during this sea change in one's life.

Shadows on the Koyukuk: An Alaskan Native's Life Along the River


Sidney Huntington - 1993
    It is also a tribute to the Athapaskan traditions and spiritual beliefs that enable him and his ancestors to survive. His story, simply told, is a testament to the durability of Alaska's wildlands and to the strength of the people who inhabit them.

Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate


Helen Prejean - 1993
    In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

The Tears of My Soul


Kim Hyun Hee - 1993
    What they found was Kim Hyun Hee, an idealistic young woman who had been transformed by her country into an obedient killing machine. The Tears of My Soul is her poignant, shocking, and utterly compelling story. Kim Hyun Hee grew up in a country obsessed by the loss of South Korea, an Orwellian world where right and wrong, good and evil, slavery and freedom meant nothing but what the North Korean Communist Party said they did. At sixteen, she was singled out by the Party for her intelligence and beauty and given special training in languages. At nineteen she was honored to be chosen for the North Korean Army's secret and elite espionage school. There she was trained to kill with everything from her hands and feet to grenades and assault rifles, enduring years of grueling physical and psychological conditioning designed to make her an effective and utterly obedient tool of the Party's spy masters. And in 1987, at age twenty-five, she was sent on the mission that would, she was told, reunify her divided country forever. Kim and her control agent, a man she considered her spiritual father, were captured only hours after the explosion. They were provided with suicide capsules, but hers failed and, for the first time in her life, Kim was outside the control of her masters. After more than a year of soul-wrenching questioning and deprogramming by the South Korean police, Kim realized the full enormity of her crimes, made a full confession, and waited for execution. But in a remarkable decision that sparked national outrage, the South Korean president gave her a full pardon, declaring that she was as much a victim of North Korea as the passengers. Kim Hyun Hee has devoted the rest of her life to atoning for the 115 lives lost on flight 858.

Genet


Edmund White - 1993
    in works from 'Our Lady of the Flowers' to 'The Screens', he created a scandalous personal mythology while savaging the conventions of his society. His career was a series of calculated shocks marked by feuds, rootlessness, and the embrace of unpopular causes and outcast peoples. Now this most enigmatic of writers has found his ideal biographer in novelist Edmund White, whose eloquent and often poignant chronicle does justice to the unruly narrative of Genet's life even as it maps the various worlds in which he lived and the perverse landscape of his imagination.

Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America


Natalie Goldberg - 1993
    The author of Writing Down the Bones recounts her journey awakening from the profound sleep of a suburban childhood, describing her fifteen years as a student of Zen Buddhism, her writing, and resistance to change.Reprint.

When I Was Puerto Rican


Esmeralda Santiago - 1993
    Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.

The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family


Ron Chernow - 1993
    They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy.Ron Chernow's hugely fascinating history is a group portrait of a clan whose members were renowned for their brilliance, culture, and personal energy yet tragically vulnerable to the dark and irrational currents of the twentieth century.

Taken on Trust: An Autobiography


Terry Waite - 1993
    Here he reveals the inner strength that helped him endure the savage treatment he received, his constant struggle to maintain his faith, and his resolve to have no regrets, no false sentimentality, no self-pity. of photos.

Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow


David Stenn - 1993
    She was M-G-M's most bankable asset, a blonde bombshell whose bleached hair, voluptuous body, and bawdy humor inspired a fervent cult following that remains to this day. Despite Harlow's blinding fame, the events of her life have been obscured by a fifty-year haze of secrets, lies, and silence. Until the publication of this book. After years of research, critically acclaimed biographer David Stenn unearthed the truth behind the improbable rise of this tow-headed tomboy from Kansas City, her huge success, and her tragic fall. After fifty-six years, David Stenn persuaded Harlow's family, friends, colleagues, and employers to break their silence and provide previously sealed legal, financial, and medical records, which solved the mystery of her death. His account is confirmed by scores of exclusive interviews with eyewitness sources, including Harlow's nurses during the last days of her life. Exhaustively researched and compulsively readable, Bombshell stands as the definitive Harlow biography. This edition contains a new UNSEEN SCENES section of never-before-seen photos of deleted scenes from Harlow's biggest hits. This book is a must-have not only for every Harlow fan, but anyone interested in a truly riveting story.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes


Janet Malcolm - 1993
    Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.

Thing of Beauty


Stephen Fried - 1993
    Within a year, Gia was one of the top models of the late 1970's, gracing the covers of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, partying at New York's Studio 54 and the Mudd Club while redefining the industry's standard of beauty. She was the darling of moguls and movie stars, royalty and rockers. Gia was also a girl in pain, desperate for her mother's approval. A drug addict on a tragic slide toward oblivion, who started going directly from $10,000-a-day fashion shoots to the heroin shooting galleries on New York's Lower East Side. Finally blackballed from modeling, Gia entered a vastly different world on the streets of New york and Atlantic City, and later in a rehab clinic. At twenty-six, she became one of the first women in America to die of AIDS; a hospital welfare case visited only by rehab friends and what remained of her family. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Gia's gamily, lovers, friends, and colleagues, Thing of Beauty creates a poignant portrait of an unforgettable character and a powerful narrative about beauty and sexuality, fame and objectification, mothers and daughters, love and death.

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography


Donald Spoto - 1993
    The book reveals new details of every aspect of her life, from her guarded childhood, and her relationships with men and marriages, to her mysterious death. Spoto comments on previous books about Marilyn, and puts to rest questions regarding Monroe's connection with the Kennedys.

Days of Grace: A Memoir


Arthur Ashe - 1993
    Frank, revealing, touching--Days of Grace is the story of a man felled to soon. It remains as his legacy to us all....

Janette Oke: A Heart for the Prairie


Laurel Oke Logan - 1993
    Reprint.

The Romanovs: Love, Power and Tragedy


Alexander Bockanov - 1993
    Told through the diaries and family albums of the last Tsar and Tsarina. Hundreds of unique and historic photographs from the personal photo albums of Tsar Nikolai, an early camera enthusiast.

Life Work


Donald Hall - 1993
    It will remain with me always."—Louis Begley, The New York Times"A sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness. . . . Life Work reads most of all like a first-person psychological novel with a poet named Donald Hall as its protagonist. . . . Hall's particular talents ultimately [are] for the memoir, a genre in which he has few living equals. In his hands the memoir is only partially an autobiographical genre. He pours both his full critical intelligence and poetic sensibility into the form."—Dana Gioia, Los Angeles Times"Hall . . . here offers a meditative look at his life as a writer in a spare and beautifully crafted memoir. Devoted to his art, Hall can barely wait for the sun to rise each morning so that he can begin the task of shaping words."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)"I [am] delighted and moved by Donald Hall's Life Work, his autobiographical tribute to sheer work--as distinguished from labor--as the most satisfying and ennobling of activities, whether one is writing, canning vegetables or playing a dung fork on a New Hampshire farm."—Paul Fussell, The Boston Globe“Donald Hall’s Life Work has been strangely gripping, what with his daily to do lists, his ruminations on the sublimating power of work. Hall has written so much about that house in New Hampshire where he lives that I’m beginning to think of it less as a place than a state of mind. I find it odd that a creative mind can work with such Spartan organization (he describes waiting for the alarm to go off at 4:45 AM, so eager is he to get to his desk) at such a mysterious activity (making a poem work) without getting in the way of itself.”—John Freeman’s blog (National Book Critics Circle Board President)

The Helene Hanff Omnibus


Helene Hanff - 1993
    "Underfoot in Show Business" is the zany memoir of her playwriting apprenticeship, when she was young and penniless, yet determined to have fun. "84 Charing Cross Road", her most acclaimed work, is the account of her 20-year exchange of correspondence with a London antiquarian bookshop. "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street" is the diary of her first journey to London. "Apple of My Eye" is her eccentric view of life in New York. And "Q's Legacy" is a tribute to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who strongly influenced her tastes.

St. Rita of Cascia: Saint of the Impossible


Joseph Sicardo - 1993
    Rita is known as the \"Saint of the Impossible\" because of her amazing answers to prayers, as well as the remarkable events of her own life. Desirous of being a nun, she instead obeyed her parents and married. Her husband was cruel, and caused her much suffering, to which she responded with love and prayers and eventually converted him. After the death of her husband and two sons, Rita was able to enter a convent, where she devoted herself to prayer and penance. She abandoned herself totally to God, diminishing herself as He increased in her. An inspiring story of a soul completely resigned to God\'s will. 132 pgs, PB

মানিকদার সঙ্গে


Soumitra Chattopadhyay - 1993
    Soumitra Chatterjee tells the stories of his life with Satyajit Ray, recounting his experiences on and off the sets, revealing unknown facts, and offering intimate glimpses into his relationship with the film-maker he revers. As much about Ray as it is about Chatterjee, this is a unique artistic as well as personal journey along the path walked by the director and his most beloved actor. Soumitra Chatterjee was originally rejected for the role of Apu in Apur Sansar by Satyajit Ray. How did he get it back? Did Soumitra Chatterjee advise Satyajit Ray to change the ending of Charulata? How did Satyajit Ray influence Soumitra Chatterjees career on the stage? For 35 years, Bengals most accomplished actor Soumitra Chatterjee was a constant presence in the artistic and personal life of Indias foremost film director Satyajit Ray. Not only did he act in 14 of the maestros films, he was also the film- makers most faithful student and one of his closest friends. Soumitra Chatterjee tells the stories of his life with Satyajit Ray, recounting his experiences on and off the sets, revealing unknown facts, and offering intimate glimpses into his relationship with the film-maker he revers. As much about Ray as it is about Chatterjee, this is a unique artistic as well as personal journey along the path walked by the director and his most beloved actor. My life would never be the same again. It wasnt just that he had given me the chance to act in so many of his films, but also the fact that what I had got from my relationship of thirty-five years with him was no different from what I got from my parents or my wife. It was woven into my life, into the development of my character, and will remain with me till I die

A Short Walk from Harrods


Dirk Bogarde - 1993
    Here he recounts his life growing up in London. "I learned very early in my life that nothing was forever; so I should have been aware of disillusion in early middle age: but, somehow, we try to obliterate early warnings and go cantering along hopefully, idiotically. . . ."

The Creek


J.T. Glisson - 1993
    . . .They have a primal quality against their background of jungle hammock, moss-hung against the tremendous silence of the scrub country. The only ingredients of their lives are the elemental things."--Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, March 1930, in a letter to Alfred S. Dashiell of Scribner's Magazine Except for one extended black family and "one writer from up north," folks from Cross Creek were ornery, independent Crackers, J. T. Glisson writes in this memoir of growing up in the backwoods of north-central Florida. The time spanned the late twenties to the early fifties, and isolation and an abundance of mosquitoes and snakes were their claim to fame. The writer was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. In her 25 years at the Creek, Miz Rawlings was regarded as "That Woman"--warm, high-strung, and simply eccentric. She drove recklessly, smoked in public, and had "black spells." A Pulitzer Prize did little to change her status. In Cross Creek everyone had space to be a character and every character had a title: the meanest, laziest, most pregnant, or best cat fisherman. Describing day-to-day life in unaffected prose, Glisson's portraits include Charley, the fisherman who did his banking in a Prince Albert tobacco can nailed to a tree; Bernie Bass, who spoke "perfect Florida Cracker without polish"; Old Blue, young Jake Glisson's nuisance hog; Aunt Martha Mickens, the matriarch of all the blacks at the Creek (including Henry, the first critic to pass judgment on Jake's drawings); and especially Jake's father, Tom, the man whose wisdom, boundless optimism, and colorful speech figure prominently in Rawlings's Cross Creek. (Of his famous neighbor, Tom once commented that "when she gets her tail up above her head, her brain don't work.") Glisson's own finely detailed pencil and pen-and-ink drawings illustrate these vignettes, and he explains that the idea of earning his living as an artist first came to him when he saw Rawlings's books illustrated with such vivid pictures that he could smell the sawgrass, sweat, and gunpowder of the Creek. No wonder: One edition of The Yearling--the story of a deer and a boy Jake's own age--was illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, who visited Cross Creek and chatted about drawing ("it's a matter of seeing and practice") while eleven-year-old Jake watched him sketch. Tom Glisson died while his son was enrolled in art school in Sarasota; three years later Miz Rawlings died, and an era ended. Today J. T. Glisson lives four and a half miles from the house where he grew up. When there's a breeze from the south, he writes, he sits on his porch and listens to the soft rustling of palmetto fronds, almost embarrassed by the beauty of his memories. J. T. Glisson has been an illustrator, publisher, and businessman

City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara


Brad Gooch - 1993
    Gooch presents an unforgettable story of a man who was struck down at the height of his powers. 55 photos.

Mankiller: A Chief and Her People


Wilma Mankiller - 1993
    Mankiller's life unfolds against the backdrop of the dawning of the American Indian civil rights struggle, and her book becomes a quest to reclaim and preserve the great Native American values that form the foundation of our nation. Now featuring a new Afterword to the 2000 paperback reissue, this edition of Mankiller completely updates the author's private and public life after 1994 and explores the recent political struggles of the Cherokee Nation.

I Took a Lickin' and Kept on Tickin': And Now I Believe in Miracles


Lewis Grizzard - 1993
    That's the classic credo of the funnyman. And that's just what Georgia's favorite son -- and one of America's best-loved humorists -- has done right here. Whether he's taking pointed potshots at blood-stealing orderlies, guffawing in the face of mortality, or talking poignantly about family, friends, and lovers, Lewis Grizzard makes his exit with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a poke in the ribs, a slap on the back, and a promise that his irresistible sense of humor and humanity will always keep on tickin'."Imagine Andy Rooney with a Georgia accent . . . and a sense of humor." -- The Houston Post"A natural-born storyteller with a deft hand for reducing everyday occurrences into uproarious nuggets of prose." -- The Orlando SentinelFrom the Paperback edition.

Eastern Sun, Winter Moon: An Autobiographical Odyssey


Gary Paulsen - 1993
    “An indelible account...hallmarked by Paulsen’s sinewy writing” (Kirkus Reviews).

Wilfred Owen


Jon Stallworthy - 1993
    Reproducing some of Owen's drawings and facsimile manuscripts of many of his greatest poems, this portrait is indispensable to any student of Wilfred Owen and the poetry of the First World War.

Bette Davis


James Spada - 1993
    Pub Date: October 1994 Pages: 528 in Publisher: Warner A biography of Bette Davis. Revealing a life replete with scandal. The sex. Violence courage sacrifice and hearteak. After three years of research and more than 150 It doesn'' James Spada has written a revealing biography of one of the greatest Hollywood Legends. Spada has convinced Bette Davis's relatives and friends to speak out for the first time. and he has gained new access to court documents. long-lost inquest transcript. and personal correspondence to paint a portrait of one of the most complex and misrepresented women in Hollywood history. This book reveals Bette Davis' oddly close relationship with her mother (who bathed her until she was in her teens); her ambivalent feelings about the sex act. as revealed by a directorlover; her possible role in the ain damage of her adopted daughter; the bizarre be...

Hunting Trips of a Ranchman & the Wilderness Hunter


Theodore Roosevelt - 1993
    The narratives provide vivid portraits of the land as well as the people and animals that inhabited it, underscoring Roosevelt's abiding concerns as a naturalist.Originally published in 1885, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman chronicles Roosevelt's adventures tracking a twelve-hundred-pound grizzly bear in the pine forests of the Bighorn Mountains. Yet some of the best sections are those in which Roosevelt muses on the beauty of the Bad Lands and the simple pleasures of ranch life. The British Spectator said the book "could claim an honorable place on the same shelf as Walton's Compleat Angler." The Wilderness Hunter, which came out in 1893, remains perhaps the most detailed account of the grizzly bear ever recorded. Introduction by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Alex Haley: The Playboy Interviews


Alex Haley - 1993
    What many people don't know is that Alex Haley began his professional writing career as a journalist. It was his experience in this arena that earned him the plum assignment as Playboy's first -- and foremost -- interviewer. Witness Haley's work with the pre-Ali Cassius Clay, in which the posture of the young rebel fell away and a sensitive, intelligent young man emerged. He lured Malcolm X beyond his scathing Black Muslim rhetoric to reveal the agile, perceptive mind of a charismatic leader. With Johnny Carson, Haley revealed the man behind the mask of a charming television raconteur. And, in a devasting interview with George Lincoln Rockwell, the self-appointed fuhrer of the American Nazi Party, Haley deftly exposed the frightening heart and soul of the twisted man and his racist ideology.A fascinating slice of recent history, an extraordinarily candid collection of celebrity interviews and personal reminiscences, ALEX HALEY: THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEWS anthologizes for the first time a gifted writer's finest work at its controversial and informative best.

Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary


Walter Dean Myers - 1993
    In this highly praised, award-winning biography, Walter Dean Myers portrays Malcolm X as prophet, dealer, convict, troublemaker, revolutionary, and voice of black militancy.

Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz)


Etel Adnan - 1993
    Written against the background of war at the turn of this century, this millennium--the Gulf War, the Lebanese civil war and the military occupations of that country, the author's country of origin--these letters, OF CITIES AND WOMEN, are in their turn now letters to cities and women--that we, that is, women and men alike, might eventually, before it is too late, 'find the right geography for our revelations.'--Barbara Harlow

Daphne du Maurier


Margaret Forster - 1993
    du Maurier was immediately established as the queen of the psychological thriller. But the more fame this and her other books encouraged, the more reclusive Daphne du Maurier became.Margaret Forster's award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier's family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life - the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, 'Boy' Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father's actress loves, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman.Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming facade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could ever have imagined.

Fishing in the Styx


Ruth Park - 1993
    They share their dreams and disappointments and rejoice in each other's triumphs. This is the second part of Ruth Park's autobiography.

Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life


Liyi He - 1993
    In 1979, his wife sold her fattest pig to buy him a shortwave radio. He spent every spare moment listening to the BBC and VOA in order to improve the English he had learned at college between 1950 and 1953. For "further practice," he decided to write down his life story in English. Humorous and unfiltered by translation, his autobiography is direct and personal, full of richly descriptive images and phrases from his native Bai language.At the time of He Liyi's graduation, English was being vilified as the language of the imperialists, so the job he was assigned had nothing to do with his education. In 1958, he was labeled a rightist and sent to a "reeducation-through-labor farm." Spirited away by truck on the eve of his marriage, Mr. He spent years in the labor camp, where he schemed to garner favor from the authorities, who nevertheless shamed him publicly and told him that all his problems "belong to contradictions between the people and the enemy." After his release in 1962, the talented Mr. He had no choice but to return to his native village as a peasant. His stratagems for survival, which included stealing "nightsoil" from public toilets and extracting peach-pit oil from thousands of peaches, personify the peasant's universal struggle to endure those difficult years.He Liyi's autobiography recounts nearly all the major events of China's recent history, including the Japanese occupation, the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the experience of labor camps, changes brought about by China's dramatic re-opening to the world after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, and the recent social and economic changes occurring in the post-Deng China. No other book so poignantly reveals the travails of the common person and village life under china's tempestuous Communist government, which He Liyi ironically refers to as "Mr. China." Yet he describes his saga of poverty and hardship with humor and a surprising lack of bitterness. And rarely has there been such an intimate, frank view of how a Chinese man thinks and feels about personal relationships, revealed in dialogue and letters to his two wives.He Liyi's autobiography stands as perhaps the most readable and authentic account available in English of life in rural China.

Elizabeth


Sarah Bradford - 1993
    This definitive, widely-praised biography includes many never-before-seen photographs.

Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era


Allen Ginsberg - 1993
    These candid photographs are intimate, behind-the-scenes portraits of the legendary Beat writers and personalities who inspired a generation and are a vital part of the American literary landscape. (Adapted from jacket copy.)

I Don't Want To Be Inside Me Anymore: Messages From An Autistic Mind


Birger Sellin - 1993
    Judged incurably autistic, mute since the age of 2, a remarkable young man in Germany astonishes the world with a firsthand account of rare eloquence and immediacy.

Maybe I'll Pitch Forever


Leroy Satchel Paige - 1993
    Although the oldest rookie around, he was already a legend. For twenty-two years, beginning in 1926, Paige dazzled throngs with his performance in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Then he outlasted everyone by playing professional baseball, in and out of the majors, until 1965. Struggle—against early poverty and racial discrimination—was part of Paige's story. So was fast living and a humorous point of view. His immortal advice was "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End: A Life and Photographs


Imogen Cunningham - 1993
    One of the first women to make her living as a photographer, Cunningham consistently experimented with a wide range of techniques during her remarkable career. Ideas without End offers the first complete retrospective of 100 of her photographs -- the majority of which have never been published -- from her earliest efforts at the turn of the century to the many now-famous images. A biographical essay by Richard Lorenz, a chronology of Cunningham's life and work, and a bibliography are also included in this superb collection, at once a beautiful portfolio and an enduring tribute to a gifted and compelling artist.

From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter


David T. Dellinger - 1993
    The son of a well-to-do Boston lawyer, Dellinger left Yale during the Depression to ride the freight trains, sleep in hobo camps, and stand in bread lines. A community activist, Vietnam protestor, and member of the Chicago Seven, he has been one the front lines of the fight for the weak against the strong. 16 pages of photos.

The Day Christ Was Born/The Day Christ Died


Jim Bishop - 1993
    This collection of two bestsellers presents the immensely dramatic and ultimately uplifting events as though they were related for the first time.

In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley


Jonathan Waterman - 1993
    In his exhilarating and stunning narratives, Jonathan Waterman paints a startlingly intimate portrait of the white leviathan and brings to vivid life men and women whose fates have entwined on its sheer icy peak.Jonathan Waterman has forged an international reputation as an alpinist, adventurer, writer, and photographer. He has written or compiled six other books, including "Kayaking the Vermilion Sea, A Most Hostile Mountain, The Quotable Climber, " and "Surviving Denali."

Extra Innings: A Memoir


Doris Grumbach - 1993
    That earlier book chronicles the author's seventy-first year, a time of both struggle against and acceptance of the encroachments of old age. Extra Innings begins two years later, on the publication date of its predecessor, its author exposed to all the exquisitely mingled hopes and fears of sending a book into the world. In this case, though, each review offered Doris Grumbach not only an opinion of her book, but something of a mirror in which she could see herself as the world sees her - or her self-portrait. It proves a somewhat disorienting route to self-knowledge. And so begins another eventful year - crowded with the literary pleasures (and pains) of a life spent reading and writing; the natural beauties and social particulars of life in coastal Maine; the mingled joys and affronts of travel to New York, Washington, Mexico; and, always, the looming presence of illness and mortality, the author's own and her daughter's as well. Extra Innings is, finally, a book about the successful search for home, the end of a journey to the Cove in Sargentville, Maine, where the serene landscape to be viewed from Grumbach's study comes to match the inward landscape of memory and well-earned peace.

Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist


William F. Buckley Jr. - 1993
    This volume covers a wide range of enthusiasms, criticisms, tributes, and reflections from the former National Review editor.

Tin Can Sailor


C. Raymond Calhoun - 1993
    This is the story of those men and their beloved ship, recorded by a junior officer who served on the famous destroyer from her commissioning in 1939 to April 1943, when he was wounded at the Battle of Tulagi. Peppered with the kind of vivid, authentic details that could only be provided by a participant, the book is the saga of a gallant fighting ship that earned a Presidential Unit Citation for her part in the Third Battle of Savo Island, where she took on a battleship, cruiser, and destroyer and was the last to leave the fray. Calhoun's gripping and colorful account tells what it was like to be there during those furiously fought, close-range engagements. When published in hardcover in 1993, the book was widely praised as a good read loaded with rich and interesting details.

Bloody Skies: A 15th AAF B-17 Combat Crew: How They Lived and Died


Melvin W. McGuire - 1993
    'Lady Luck' was the llth member of this crew until the day she deserted them. Bloody Skies captures the humor, tragedy, and ordinariness of life on a B-17 combat air crew flying out of Italy in the latter days of World War II.

Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: Journals and Stories, 1933-1941


M.F.K. Fisher - 1993
    The book reveals Fisher's "magnificent resilience, the comfort she took from daily writing, her marvelous powers of observation and humor, and, of course, her lifelong attractions to good food and drink."--San Francisco Chronicle.

Adieu Audrey: Memories of Audrey Hepburn


Klaus-Jürgen Sembach - 1993
    It was Colette who discovered the too tall and too thin girl with expressive eyes, then a complete unknown, and made her the lead in the 1951 Broadway production of Gigi. Her film triumphs were all the more astonishing since she didn't match the usual Hollywood cliches. Petite, almost androgynous, and with a disarming naturalness, she had a worldwide impact on fashion and beauty trends and was enthusiastically welcomed as an alternative to the sex bombs and pin-up girls of the 50s. This book, with an essay by Klaus-Jurgen Sembach, is dedicated to Audrey Hepburn who died in 1993. It includes the best film stills, portraits, and private photographs by well-known and by unknown photographers from all over the world who have provided us with an immortal image of Hollywood's most endearing star.

Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in Counter-Culture


Paul Krassner - 1993
    From his notorious parody of William Manchester's book on Kennedy--reprinted here in full--to his descent into paranoia in the '70s and reemergence in the '80s, Krassner gives a highly irreverent look at life in the "alternate lane". 16-page photo insert.

The Adventures and Misadventures of Peter Beard in Africa


Jon Bowermaster - 1993
    170 photos, 20 in color.

The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt


Henry Hazlitt - 1993
    A collection of some of the most incisive Hazlitt articles and essays prepared by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

The Illustrated Life & Times of Wyatt Earp


Bob Boze Bell - 1993
    

A Right Royal Bastard: The Autobiography of Sarah Miles


Sarah Miles - 1993
    

When Justice Failed the Fred Korematsu Story: Student Reader


Steven A. Chin - 1993
    For over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans, the war brings special tragedy. One and all, they are rounded up by the United States Army and imprisoned in internment camps. Fred Korematsu challenges his arrest and the treatment of Japanese Americans during the war.

Presenting Madeleine L'Engle (Young Adult Authors Series)


Donald R. Hettinga - 1993
    Hettinga guides readers through L'Engle's essential novels, exploring the inner workings of some of her richest characters, examining the connections between her life and fiction, and identifying significant themes that run through the novels. Hettinga's perceptive analysis of these important themes will serve readers of all ages.

Marlene Dietrich: Life And Legend


Steven Bach - 1993
    Based on six years of research and hundreds of interviews—including conversations with Dietrich herself—this is the last, best word on one of the century's greatest movie actresses and performers, an icon who embodied glamour and sophistication for audiences around the globe.

One Particular Harbor


Janet Lee James - 1993
    Hoping she'll be one of the vast majority of those who go on to lead full, productive lives relatively undisturbed by the disease, she takes off alone for the wilds of Alaska, leaving home, work, and family behind to live out her dream of a life filled with excitement and adventure. Janet spends the next several years amidst the spectacular beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, migrating with the change in seasons from her log cabin in the woods to a tiny fishing village on the coast. Her summers are spent climbing glaciers, fishing for crab, and sailing classic schooners. Winters are filled with dogsled racing, hot-air ballooning, and putting out to sea on a working ship. The MS begins to re-assert itself, however, in a chronic pattern of attacks and remissions, and she struggles to adjust - even submitting to twenty-six barehanded operations by the "psychic surgeons" of the Philippine Islands. As the disease progresses in rare, unexpected ways, a wheelchair finally becomes a necessity. She then enters a rehabilitation center and provides us with a graphic, unflinching look at what it takes to prepare for life with a serious disability. Janet James's penchant for black humor, cold beer, and handsome men results in numerous outsized tales. Her story is a frank, detailed account of life with a profound disability - a rare example of what MS can do. But through it all, she reminds us that life, regardless of its circumstances, truly is whatever we choose to make it.

Your Name Is Renee: Ruth Kapp Hartz's Story as a Hidden Child in Nazi-Occupied France


Stacy Cretzmeyer - 1993
    "Remember," her older cousin Jeannette warns her, "your name is Renee and you are French!" A deeply personal book, this true story recounts the chilling experiences of a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust. The Kapp family flees one home after another, helped by simple, ordinary people from the French countryside who risk their lives to protect them. Eventually the family is forced to separate, and young Ruth survives the war in an orphanage where she is not allowed to see or even mention her parents. Without the trappings of lofty language or the faceless perspective of history, this first-person account poignantly recreates the terror of war seen through the eyes of an innocent child. Your Name Is Renee is a tale of suffering and redemption, fear and hope, which is bound to stir even the most hardened heart.

Stitching Stars: The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers (African-American Artists and Artisans)


Mary E. Lyons - 1993
    Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century America, the artistry of Harriet Powers, a skilled seamstress and deeply religious woman born into slavery, is captured in reproductions of panels from her magnificent story quilts.

Wilhelm II: Die Jugend des Kaisers 1859-1888


John C.G. Röhl - 1993
    Its aim is to set the characters on the stage and let them speak for themselves, which in their letters and diaries the Victorians and Wilhelminians did with quite extraordinary clarity and persuasive power. The central theme is the bitter conflict between the handicapped Prince and his liberal parents, and in particular with his mother, the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the utter failure of a daring educational experiment intended to turn the young Prince into a liberal Anglophile.

The Little Flowers of Saint Clare


Piero Bargellini - 1993
    

Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir


Mary Ellin Barrett - 1993
    His tunes created a golden age in American music and influenced every singer, songwriter, and composer of the last century. The Russian-born cantor's son composed more than 1,000 popular songs, including White Christmas, God Bless America, and Puttin' On the Ritz. He lived a full century and died only recently -- still a very private man. What was he like?This charming reminiscence by Berlin's eldest daughter illuminates that private life. Mrs. Barrett describes an idyllic childhood with servants, homes in New York City, California, and the Catskills, and such family friends as the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin. He was an exciting father to grow up with. Her recollection: candid and affectionate.

Kepler


Max Caspar - 1993
    At a time when the Ptolemaic view still prevailed in official circles, Kepler undertook to prove the truth of the Copernican world view and through exceptional perseverance and force of intellect achieved that goal. His epochal intellectual feats are completely and thoroughly described in this splendid work, considered the definitive biography of Kepler. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, the author presents a fascinating and erudite picture of Kepler's scientific accomplishments, his public life (work with Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer; mathematical appointments at Graz, Prague, and Linz; pioneering work with calculus and optics, and more) and his personal life: childhood and youth, financial situation, his mother's trial as a witch, his own lifelong fear of religious persecution, his difficulties in choosing one of eleven possible young women as his second wife, and more, through his last years in Ulm and death in Regensburg.Until his death in 1956, Professor Max Caspar was the world's foremost Kepler scholar. He had spent over two-thirds of his life assembling, cataloging, describing, analyzing, and editing Kepler's works. To this biography he brought tremendous learning and passionate enthusiasm for his subject, creating an unsurpassed resource on the life and work of one of history's greatest scientific minds. Originally published in German and superbly translated into English by C. Doris Hellman, Kepler will fascinate scholars and general readers alike.

Landscape without Gravity: A Memoir of Grief


Barbara Lazear Ascher - 1993
    With an older sister's efficiency, she notified her parents and arranged Bobby's cremation; then, almost against her will, she began to grieve. This extraordinary book is a record of what she encountered in that "landscape without gravity."Here is a bold account of a sister coming to terms with her brother's death and with the type of grief that arises only when one sibling loses another—a grief that is all too often unacknowledged and borne in silence. Here too is a map for that "hero's journey" we call mourning. Ascher locates the moments of healing inside the kind of hurt that seems to last forever, making this profoundly comforting, invaluable reading for anyone—especially brothers and sisters faced with loss.

Words for a Deaf Daughter and Gala: A Fictional Sequel


Paul West - 1993
    While Words is an account of Mandy's diagnosis and treatment, Gala is "the scenario of a wish-fulfillment" (as West writes in the preface), a continuation of the father and daughter's joyful investigation of the richness of life and its amazing possibilities. Ranging across natural history and astronomy in his effort to understand his daughter's handicap, West finds in Mandy/Michaela an irrepressible and unpredictable guide to the mysteries of the universe. Brought together in the same volume, the books also allow a unique look at how nonfiction and fiction techniques can be used to the same ends in the hands of a master of prose.

Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger (Annotated): or, an excursion through Ireland, in 1844 & 1845, for the purpose of personally investigating the condition of the poor


Asenath Nicholson - 1993
    Her object was to determine the condition of the poor and discover why so many were emigrating to America. Eschewing fancy hotels and fine carriages, she travelled a good deal on foot and rested at common lodging-houses and even peasant cabins. This provided a unique opportunity to study the lifestyle and character of the ordinary folk at close quarters, and what the pious Mrs. Nicholson observed has left posterity with an invaluable record of the customs and traditions of the Irish peasantry, from faction fights to funeral cries, and a graphic account of the hardships that Ireland's poor had to bear. This new edition has had notes added to aid the reader who is perhaps less familiar with Irish history and social history.

The Awakened One: A Life Of The Buddha


Sherab Chödzin Kohn - 1993
    He was born Siddhartha Gautama in the sixth century BCE, the son of a prince who ruled a small kingdom in what is now Nepal. Siddhartha led a sheltered existence until the age of twenty-nine, when he left his life of ease and set out to find a solution to the problem of suffering. For years he wandered as a homeless ascetic, practicing severe austerities that brought him to the brink of death but no nearer to his goal. He then abandoned asceticism for a "middle way." Sitting down under a tree, he vowed to remain there until he realized the truth. After a night of deep meditation, his Enlightenment came at dawn, and he was thereafter known as the Buddha, the "Awakened One."

This Side Of Glory


David Hilliard - 1993
    Written with the participation of many other Party members, this book provides firsthand accounts of Huey Newton's infamous shootout with the police, the murder of Fred Hampton, how Panther money was raised and spent, the sexual mores of the Party, and how illegal activities erupted and were controlled.

How Am I to Be Heard?: Letters of Lillian Smith


Margaret Rose Gladney - 1993
    Smith devoted her life to lifting the veil of southern self-deception about race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her books, essays, and especially her letters explored the ways in which the South's attitudes and institutions perpetuated a dehumanizing experience for all its people--white and black, male and female, rich and poor. Her best-known books are Strange Fruit (1944), a bestselling interracial love story that brought her international acclaim; and Killers of the Dream (1949), an autobiographical critique of southern race relations that angered many southerners, including powerful moderates. Subsequently, Smith was effectively silenced as a writer. Rose Gladney has selected 145 of Smith's 1500 extant letters for this volume. Arranged chronologically and annotated, they present a complete picture of Smith as a committed artist and reveal the burden of her struggles as a woman, including her lesbian relationship with Paula Snelling. Gladney argues that this triple isolation--as woman, lesbian, and artist--from mainstream southern culture permitted Smith to see and to expose southern prejudices with absolute clarity.