Best of
Biography-Memoir

1996

Go Forward with Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley


Sheri Dew - 1996
    This book shares a behind-the-scenes look a a spiritual leader who has spent a great deal of time in the forefront. It is a story filled with work humor, dedication, and testimony.

Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio


Peg Kehret - 1996
    The book deeply touched readers of all ages and received many awards and honors. This anniversary edition includes an updated and extended Epilogue, 12 pages of new photos, and a new section about polio.

Morrie: In His Own Words


Morrie Schwartz - 1996
    Sadly, Morrie died before the book was published. A year later,though, a former student of Morrie's, Mitch Albom, wrote Tuesdays withMorrie, chronicling Morrie's impact on his life. This book is, as the title says, Morrie in his own words, his invaluable legacy to us all.

Love, Lucy


Lucille Ball - 1996
    The legendary star of the classic sitcom I Love Lucy was at the pinnacle of her success when she sat down to record the story of her life. No comedienne had made America laugh so hard, no television actress had made the leap from radio and B movies to become one of the world's best-loved performers. This is her story--in her own words.The story of the ingenue from Jamestown, New York, determined to go to Broadway, destined to make a big splash, bound to marry her Valentino, Desi Arnaz. In her own inimitable style, she tells of their life together--both storybook and turbulent; intimate memories of their children and friends; wonderful backstage anecdotes; the empire they founded; the dissolution of their marriage. And, with a heartfelt happy ending, her enduring marriage to Gary Morton.Here is the lost manuscript that her fans and loved ones will treasure. Here is the laughter. Here is the life. Here's Lucy...

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa


Peter Godwin - 1996
    He recounts the story of that country's violent transformation into Zimbabwe, as well as his own personal metamorphoses from privileged boy to reluctant soldier to investigative journalist. Godwin's story begins, "I think I first realized something was wrong when our next door neighbor, Oom Piet Oberholzer, was murdered. I must have been about five then. It was still five years before the real war would start." The Godwins enjoyed a typical genteel existence in 1960 rural Rhodesia, their household including a "garden boy," a "cook boy," and a nanny. Peter's father managed a wood- and sugarcane-processing plant. His mother, a rural government doctor, was often called to pronounce deaths or conduct autopsies, for which she brought along her "assistant," five-year-old Peter, who was responsible for shooing away the flies. Godwin's plans for attending college were squashed when he was drafted into the Rhodesian army and assigned to the "Anti-Terrorist Unit," which proved to be an important experience in his life. When he later looked at himself, he saw a man "coursed through with anger and despair. It was the face of someone who would kill an unarmed civilian for withholding information." Disturbed by what he had become, Godwin left Rhodesia after he got out of the army, only to return in 1981 as a journalist. Rhodesia was now Zimbabwe, and the "terrorists" he had reluctantly fought against were now the country's rulers. Godwin reported on theutterbrutalities in Zimbabwe and the fate of Matabeleland, a black minority region in Zimbabwe. He described the army style of interrogation, in which "before they even began to question you, they would break one wrist," and wrote about the old mines where bodies of the dead were buried. When Godwin's writings received worldwide attention, the Zimbabwean government tried to discredit him, and he received numerous death threats, escaping the country just hours before the police came looking for him. Mukiwa is not only a memoir but also a compelling adventure story that tells a personal saga that needs to be heard.

Mother Teresa: In My Own Words


Mother Teresa - 1996
    Her words and actions have inspired millions of people from every race and religion and country to help the poor and needy, a legacy that is her gift to all mankind for generations to come.From 1950, when she founded the order of Missionaries of Charity, to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and then, in 1985, being awarded the Medal of Freedom—the United States' highest civilian award—to her final days, Mother Teresa served the world as a beacon shedding the light of hope, comfort, and peace on all.Mother Teresa: In My Own Words is a timeless testament to the power of her words. Here are the same quotes, stories, and prayers that helped strengthen and inspire the poor, the dying, the suffering, and the doubting who she met during her lifetime, and that will continue to strengthen and inspire all who read them.

Heaven's Coast: A Memoir


Mark Doty - 1996
    His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor and, perhaps most importantly, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for the HIV virus. From diagnosis to the initial signs of deterioration to the heartbreaking hour when Wally is released from his body's ruined vessel, Heaven's Coastis an intimate chronicle of love, its hardships, and its innumerable gifts. We witness Doty's passage through the deepest phase of grief -- letting his lover go while keeping him firmly alive in memory and heart -- and, eventually beyond, to the slow reawakening of the possibilities of pleasure. Part memoir, part journal, part elegy for a life of rare communication and beauty, Heaven's Coast evinces the same stunning honesty, resplendent descriptive power and rapt attention to the physical landscape that has won Doty's poetry such attention and acclaim.

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood


bell hooks - 1996
    A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child's journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman's color—worn when earned—daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. hooks finds good company in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is her most vital breath.

Still Life With Rice: A Young American Woman Discovers the Life and Legacy of Her Korean Grandmother


Helie Lee - 1996
    Petersburg Times) this is a radiant and engaging story about a young American woman’s discovery about the life of her Korean grandmother.Helie Lee’s grandmother, Hongyong Baek, came of age in a unified but socially repressive Korea, where she was taught the roles that had been prescribed for her: obedient daughter, demure wife, efficient household manager. Ripped from her home first during the Japanese occupation and again during the bloody civil war that divided her country, Hongyong fought to save her family by drawing from her own talents and values. Over the years she proved her spirit indomitable, providing for her husband children by running a successful restaurant, building a profitable opium business, and eventually becoming adept at the healing art of ch’iryo. When she was forced to leave her country, she moved her family to California, where she reestablished her ch’iryo practice. Writing in her grandmother’s voice, Helie Lee recreates an individual experience in a unique culture that is both seductively exotic and strangely familiar. With wit and verve, she claims her own Korean identity and illuminates the intricate experiences of Asian-American women in this century.

Angela's Ashes


Frank McCourt - 1996
    This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic."When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

I Was Right On Time


Buck O'Neil - 1996
    As a first baseman and then manager of the legendary Kansas City Monarchs, O'Neil witnessed the heyday of the Negro leagues and their ultimate demise. In I Was Right on Time, he charmingly recalls his days as a ballplayer and as an African-American in a racially divided country. Whether he's telling of his barnstorming days with the likes of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson or the day in 1962 when he became the first African-American coach in the major leagues, O'Neil takes us on a trip not only through baseball's past but through America's as well.

Waylon: An Autobiography


Waylon Jennings - 1996
    His beginnings were poor but he became Buddy Holly's protege before sinking into drug abuse and 3 failed marriages. His success came when he met his present wife, Jessi Colter.

History of Joseph Smith by His Mother: Revised and Enhanced


Lucy Mack Smith - 1996
    

Duchamp


Calvin Tomkins - 1996
    One of the giants of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp changed the course of modern art. Visual arts, music, dance, performance--nothing was ever the same again because he had shifted art's focus from the retinal to the mental. Duchamp sidestepped the banal and sentimental to find the relationship between symbol and object and to unearth the concepts underlying art itself. The author's intimacy with the subject and glorious prose style, wit, and deep sense of irony--"the only antidote to despair"--make him the perfect writer to bring this stunning life story to intelligent readers everywhere.

Drinking: A Love Story


Caroline Knapp - 1996
    Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anorexia and alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: she found inspiration in Pete Hamill's 'A Drinking Life' and sobered up. Her tale is spiced up with the characters she has known along the way. A journalist describes her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic, explaining how she used alcohol to escape personal relationships and the realities of life until a series of personal crises forced her to confront her problem.

Wild Steps of Heaven


Victor Villaseñor - 1996
    In Wild Steps Of Heaven, he turns to his father's family, the Villase-ors. Against a vivid backdrop of love and war, magic and heroism, the author breathes life into his father's people--and in particular, the Villase-or women*Margarita, the indomitable matriarch who was swept away by Don Juan Jesus Villase-or on the eve of the Mexican revolution*their beautiful daughters, who find strength and endurance in their mother's faith, and searing passion amidst the turmoil of war. But it is little Juan, the youngest son, through whose eyes this tumultuous saga unfolds. Juan would learn from his brother Jose, a hero of the revolution, how to be a man; and from his beloved mother, how to live and love con gusto y amor. A story of madness and miracles, rage and redemption, In Wild Steps Of Heaven creates a riveting portrait of an extraordinary family and the country whose earth gave them roots.

Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett


James Knowlson - 1996
    Professor James Knowlson, Beckett's chosen biographer and a leading authority on Beckett, vividly recreates Beckett's life from his birth in a rural suburb of Dublin in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989, revealing the real man behind the literary giant. Scrupulously researched and filled with previously unknown information garnered from interviews with the author and his friends, family, and contemporaries, Knowlson's unparalleled work is the definitive Beckett biography of our time.Nearing the end of his life, Samuel Beckett chose James Knowlson to be his biographer because he "knows my work best." One of the world's leading authorities on Beckett, Knowlson has drawn on his twenty-year friendship with the Nobel Prize winner, more than one hundred interviews, and research in dozens of archival collections-many previously untapped by scholars-to produce this definitive biography of one of the century's leading writers in both English and French.Damned to Fame follows the reclusive literary giant's life from his birth in Foxrock, a rural suburb of Dublin, in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989. Knowlson brilliantly re-creates Beckett's early years as a struggling author in Paris, his travels through Germany in 1936-37 as the Nazis were consolidating their power, his service in the French Resistance during World War II, and the years of literary fame and financial success that followed the first performance of his controversial Waiting For Godot (1953).Paris between the wars was a city vibrant with experimentation, both in the arts and in personal lifestyle, and Knowlson introduces us to the writers and painters who, along with the young Beckett, populated his bohemian community. Most notable was James Joyce, a fellow Irishman who became Beckett's friend and mentor and influenced him to devote his life to writing. We also meet the women in Beckett's life-his domineering mother, May; his cousin Peggy Sinclair, who died at a tragically young age; Ethna McCarthy, his first love, whom he immortalized in his poetry and prose; Peggy Guggenheim, the American heiress and patron of the arts; and the strong and independent Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, whom he met in the late 1930s and married in 1961.Beyond recounting many previously unknown aspects of the writer's life, including his strong support for human rights and other political causes, Knowlson explores in fascinating detail the roots of Beckett's works. He shows not only how the relationship between Beckett's own experiences and his work became more oblique over time, but also how his startling postmodern images were inspired by the paintings of the Old Masters, such as Antonello da Messina, Durer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio.Perhaps most striking of all is Knowlson's portrait of Beckett's complex personality. Although Beckett is often depicted as melancholic, self-critical, and intensely preoccupied with his work, his own letters reveal him to have been also a witty, resilient, and compassionate man who could respond to adversity with humor and who inspired deep affection in his friends.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto


Dawid Sierakowiak - 1996
    In politics there's absolutely nothing new. Again, out of impatience I feel myself beginning to fall into melancholy. There is really no way out of this for us." This is Dawid Sierakowiak's final diary entry. Soon after writing it, the young author died of tuberculosis, exhaustion, and starvation―the Holocaust syndrome known as "ghetto disease." After the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto, his notebooks were found stacked on a cookstove, ready to be burned for heat. Young Sierakowiak was one of more than 60,000 Jews who perished in that notorious urban slave camp, a man-made hell which was the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe. The diary comprises a remarkable legacy left to humanity by its teenage author. It is one of the most fastidiously detailed accounts ever rendered of modern life in human bondage. Off mountain climbing and studying in southern Poland during the summer of 1939, Dawid begins his diary with a heady enthusiasm to experience life, learn languages, and read great literature. He returns home under the quickly gathering clouds of war. Abruptly Lodz is occupied by the Nazis, and the Sierakowiak family is among the city's 200,000 Jews who are soon forced into a sealed ghetto, completely cut off from the outside world. With intimate, undefended prose, the diary's young author begins to describe the relentless horror of their predicament: his daily struggle to obtain food to survive; trying to make reason out of a world gone mad; coping with the plagues of death and deportation. Repeatedly he rallies himself against fear and pessimism, fighting the cold, disease, and exhaustion which finally consume him. Physical pain and emotional woe hold him constantly at the edge of endurance. Hunger tears Dawid's family apart, turning his father into a thief who steals bread from his wife and children. The wonder of the diary is that every bit of hardship yields wisdom from Dawid's remarkable intellect. Reading it, you become a prisoner with him in the ghetto, and with discomfiting intimacy you begin to experience the incredible process by which the vast majority of the Jews of Europe were annihilated in World War II. Significantly, the youth has no doubt about the consequence of deportation out of the ghetto: "Deportation into lard," he calls it. A committed communist and the unit leader of an underground organization, he crusades for more food for the ghetto's school children. But when invited to pledge his life to a suicide resistance squad, he writes that he cannot become a "professional revolutionary." He owes his strength and life to the care of his family.

The Angela's Ashes/'Tis Boxed Set


Frank McCourt - 1996
    From the heartwrenching times young Frank spent in the slums of Ireland to his struggle for the American dream as an impoverished immigrant, readers can now have both of McCourt's remarkable memoirs conveniently combined in one elegant package.

My Sergei: A Love Story


Ekaterina Gordeeva - 1996
    The Olympic gold medalist offers an account of her life with her skating partner and husband, Sergei Grinkov, from their first introduction and successive skating championships, to their marriage, to the fatal heart attack that took Sergei's life.

John Marshall: Definer of a Nation


Jean Edward Smith - 1996
    An apt symbol of the man who shaped both court and country.Working from primary sources, Jean Edward Smith has drawn an elegant portrait of a remarkable man. Lawyer, jurist, scholars; soldier, comrade, friend; and, most especially, lover of fine Madeira, good food, and animated table talk: the Marshall who emerges from these pages is noteworthy for his very human qualities as for his piercing intellect, and, perhaps most extraordinary, for his talents as a leader of men and a molder of consensus. A man of many parts, a true son of the Enlightenment, John Marshall did much for his country, and John Marshall: Definer of a Nation demonstrates this on every page.

Forever Flying


R.A. Hoover - 1996
    Now, in Forever Flying, he tells his amazing story, sharing all the thrills and chills, spectacular stunts and death-defying exploits that have made him a living aviation legend.The true story of one man’s flight into history. Barnstormer, World War II fighter, pioneering test pilot, aerobatic genius—Bob Hoover is a true American hero. Now, in FOREVER FLYING, he tells his amazing story, sharing all the thrills and chills, spectacular stunts and death-defying exploits that have made him a living aviation legend. Climb into the cockpit with America’s original top gun for an astonishing inside look at flight in action—and on the edge. Read about: • Hoover’s dramatic dogfights as a decorated World War II fighter pilot...including the encounter that knocked him out of the sky • His daring escape from the Nazis’ infamous Stalag I prison camp—when he stole a German plane and flew it to Holland • The great aviators he has known, such as Orville Wright, Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh, and Neil Armstrong • Hoover’s one-of-a-kind maneuvers that have dazzled air-show crowds the world over.

Rewrites


Neil Simon - 1996
    Today he is recognized not only as the most successful American playwright of all time, but also as one of the greatest. More than the humor, however, it is the humanity of Neil Simon's vision that has made him America's most beloved playwright and earned him such enduring success. Now, in Rewrites, he has written a funny, deeply touching memoir, filled with details and anecdotes of the writing life and rich with the personal experiences that underlie his work.Since Come Blow Your Horn first opened on Broadway in 1960, few seasons have passed without the appearance of another of his laughter-filled plays, and indeed on numerous occasions two or more of his works have been running simultaneously. But his success was something Neil Simon never took for granted, nor was the talent to create laughter something that he ever treated carelessly: it took too long for him to achieve the kind of acceptance -- both popular and critical -- that he craved, and the path he followed frequently was pitted with hard decisions.All of Neil Simon's plays are to some extent a reflection of his life, sometimes autobiographical, other times based on the experiences of those close to him. What the reader of this warm, nostalgic memoir discovers, however, is that the plays, although grounded in Neil Simon's own experience, provide only a glimpse into the mind and soul of this very private man.In Rewrites, he tells of the painful discord he endured at home as a child, of his struggles to develop his talent as a writer, and of his insecurities when dealing with what proved to be his first great success -- falling in love. Supporting players in the anecdote-filled memoir include Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis, Walter Matthau, Robert Redford, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, Maureen Stapleton, George C. Scott, Peter Sellers, and Mike Nichols. But always at center stage is his first love, his wife Joan, whose death in the early seventies devastated him, and whose love and inspiration illuminate this remarkable and revealing self-portrait. Rewrites is rich in laughter and emotion, and filled with the memories of a sometimes sweet, sometimes bittersweet life.

Geography of the Heart: A Memoir


Fenton Johnson - 1996
    With grace and affectionate humor, he follows their relationship from their first meeting through Larry's death. "I'm so lucky, " his lover told him repeatedly, even as he was confronting HIV. "Denial, pure and simple, " Johnson told himself, "until our third and final trip to Paris, where on our last night in the city we sat together in the courtyard of the Picasso Museum. There I turned to him and said 'I'm so lucky, ' and it was as if the time allotted to him to teach me this lesson, the time allotted to me to learn it had been consumed, and there was nothing left but the facts of things to play out."

Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma


Michael Peppiatt - 1996
    Bacon was also a legend in the London demimonde, a man who followed long nights of drinking, gambling, and sexual adventure with intense early morning encounters with the blank canvas.When Michael Peppiatt first met him in 1963, Bacon, then in his early fifties, was at the height of his powers. Over the next thirty years, Peppiatt became a close friend of Bacon's and one of his most perceptive critics, and he has produced a fascinating, disturbing portrait of this agonized modern artist.Bacon (1909–92) was raised in large country houses in rural Ireland by a family whose conventional expectations he rebelled against early on. As a young man he was introduced to the seamy side of life in London and Paris; but only after seeing a Picasso retrospective in 1928 did he become an artist. He sprang into prominence in 1944 with a triptych which shocked the art world with its sheer ferocity, and he soon emerged, with his friend Lucian Freud, as a leader of an informal “School of London,” which favored figurative painting in an age dominated by abstraction.As retrospectives of Bacon's work in Paris, London, and New York made his reputation soar, his nighttime exploits grew wilder and wilder; charming and confident, with a strong sadomasochistic streak, he was drawn to “rough trade” in London clubs and pushed all situations to the edge. At the same time, he was a deeply cultivated and thoughtful artist who was obsessively guarded about the sources of his inspiration.Peppiatt has unlocked many of the enigmas of Bacon's life and work. Bacon talked openly to Peppiatt about his early life, his sexuality, his fantasies, and his ambitions, aware that all was being recorded for publication. At the suggestion that some of his remarks would sound indiscreet, Bacon replied: “The more indiscreet, the more interesting it will be.” Together with many new facts, unpublished documents, and penetrating analyses of key paintings, these conversations have been integrated into what is the most complete and riveting account of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House


Steve Stoliar - 1996
    Presents an intimate portrait of the legendary comedian by a young fan who became Groucho's personal secretary during the last three years of the comedian's life.

Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey


David Horowitz - 1996
    Originally a radical socialist, the current driving force behind the rise of the Hollywood right recounts how he moved from one set of political convictions to another over the course of thirty years, and challenges readers to consider how they came by their own convictions.

Faith Rewarded: A Personal Account of Prophetic Promises to the East German Saints


Thomas S. Monson - 1996
    Taken from President Monson's personal journal accounts over a 40 year span, Faith Rewarded is a great testimony of faith for the oppressed people of East Germany and those behind the iron curtain.

Hogan


Curt Sampson - 1996
    Included are quotes and tributes from many of golf's greats such as Byron Nelson and a perceptive assessment of the life and legend of the man who may have been the greatest golfer ever-Ben Hogan.

Gift and Mystery: On the fifteth anniversary of my priestly ordination


Pope John Paul II - 1996
    In concluding Gift and Mystery, the pope writes to his brother priests, 'Learn to see in your priesthood the Gospel treasure for which it is worth giving up everything.' Surely in the life of this pope we see an extraordinary example of someone who has treasured the gift of his priestly ministry for more than fifty years."- From the foreword of Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus

The Cloister Walk


Kathleen Norris - 1996
    John's Abbey in Minnesota. Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world -- its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community -- can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.* A New York Times bestseller for 23 weeks* A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Audrey Hepburn


Barry Paris - 1996
    The most ambitious and personal account ever written about Hollywood's most gracious star-Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris is a "moving portrayal" (The New York Times Book Review) that truly captures the woman who captured our hearts...With the insights of family and friends who never before spoke to a Hepburn biographer-and never-before-published photographs-Paris has created an in-depth portrait of the actress, from her childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe, through her legendary career, and into her UN ambassadorship.

First Comes Love


Marion Winik - 1996
    A New York Times Notable Book of the Year   When Marion Winik fell in love with Tony Heubach during a wild Mardi Gras in New Orleans, her friends shook their heads.  For starters, she was straight and he was gay.  But Marion and Tony's impossible love turned out to be true enough to produce a marriage and two beautiful sons, true enough to weather drug addiction, sexual betrayal, and the AIDS that would kill Tony at the age of thirty-seven, twelve years after they met.    In a memoir heartbreaking and hilarious by turns, Marion Winik tells a story that is all more powerful for the way in which it defies easy judgments.  As it charts the trajectory of a marriage so impossible that it became inevitable, First Comes Love reminds us—poignantly indelibly—that every story is a special case.

Great Fool: Zen Master Ryōkan; Poems, Letters, and Other Writings


Ryōkan - 1996
    Despite his religious and artistic sophistication (he excelled in scriptural studies, in calligraphy, and in poetry), Ryokan referred to himself as "Great Fool, " refusing to place himself within any established religious institution. In contrast to Zen masters of his time who presided over large monasteries, trained students, or produced recondite treatises, Ryokan followed a life of mendicancy in the countryside. Instead of delivering sermons, he expressed himself through kanshi (poems composed in classical Chinese) and waka (poems in Japanese syllabary) and could typically be found playing with the village children in the course of his daily rounds of begging. Great Fool is the first study in a Western language to offer a comprehensive picture of the legendary poet-monk and his oeuvre. It includes not only an extensive collection of the master's kanshi, topically arranged to facilitate an appreciation of Ryokan's colorful world, but selections of his waka, essays, and letters. The volume also presents for the first time in English the Ryokan zenji kiwa (Curious Accounts of the Zen Master Ryokan), a firsthand source composed by a former student less than sixteen years after Ryokan's death. Consisting of anecdotes and episodes, sketches from Ryokan's everyday life, the Curious Accounts is invaluable for showing how Ryokan was understood and remembered by his contemporaries. To further assist the reader, three introductory essays approach Ryokan from the diverse perspectives of his personal history and literary work.

7 Miles a Second


David Wojnarowicz - 1996
    The graphic novel depicts Wojnarowicz’s childhood of prostitution and drugs on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. Originally published as a comic book in 1996 by DC’s Vertigo Comics, an imprint best-known for horror and fantasy material such as The Sandman, 7 Miles a Second was an instant critical success, but struggled to find an audience amongst the typical Vertigo readership. It has become a cult classic amongst fans of literary and art comics, just as Wojnarowicz’s influence and reputation have widened in the larger art world. Romberger and Van Cook’s visuals give stunning life to Wojnarowicz’s words, blending the gritty naturalism of Lower East Side street life with a hallucinatory, psychedelic imagination that takes perfect advantage of the comics medium. This new edition will finally present the artwork as it was intended: oversized, and with Van Cook’s elegant watercolors restored. It also includes several new pages created for this edition.

Collision with the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self


Suzanne Segal - 1996
    This is the incredible story of a young woman who irrevocably lost all sense of personal self, or an "I".It is the story of her mind's desperate attempts to come to grips with -- or deny -- her spiritual condition, a process which took eight years.

Michael Jordan: On the Court with (Matt Christopher Sports Bio Bookshelf)


Matt Christopher - 1996
    The name conjures up images of buzzer-beating jump shots, gravity-defying slam dunks, and precision ballhandling. For over a decade, Michael Jordan has been showing the world how the game of basketball should be played. He led his former team, the Chicago Bulls, to six NBA championships and has racked up more awards than any player in recent NBA history. The winner of two Olympic gold medals, a onetime minor-league baseball player, and the most recognized athlete in professional sports today, Michael Jordan continues to make us believe that humans can fly. In this exciting biography, Matt Christopher, the number one sports series for children, goes on the court for an inside look at the triumphs and tragedies, the struggles and statistics, of superstar Michael Jordan. For more information on the Matt Christopher Sports Bio Bookshelf, please turn to the last pages of this book.

Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert


William Langewiesche - 1996
    Its loneliness is so extreme it is said thatmigratory birds will land beside travelers, just for the company. William Langewiesche came to the Sahara to see it as its inhabitants do, riding its public transport, braving its natural and human dangers, depending on its sparse sustenance and suspect hospitality. From his journey, which took him across the desert's hyperarid core from Algiers to Dakar, he has crafted a contemporary classic of travel writing.In a narrative studded with gemlike discourses on subjects that range from the physics of sand dunes to the history of the Tuareg nomads, Langewiesche introduces us to the Sahara's merchants, smugglers, fixers, and expatriates. Eloquent and precise, Sahara Unveiled blends history and reportage, anthropology and anecdote, into an unforgettable portrait of the world's most romanticized yet most forbidding desert.

Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry


Julia Fox Garrison - 1996
    . .You get up, fix breakfast for your three-year-old son, drive yourself to work -- a day like any other. You're running late for a meeting, and as you hurry down the hall, the light is getting brighter and brighter, and suddenly your vision explodes and . . . you're gone.When you wake up, you're in a hospital bed. You can't talk, move your left side, or get out of bed. You can't comb your own hair, much less walk to the bathroom. You've had a massive brain hemorrhage. Your doctors tell you you're lucky to be alive. Even though they don't know the cause of your hemorrhage, they tell you whatever it is, it's incurable and you'll most likely die. But then they tell you the good news: If you do live and manage to get into a wheelchair, at least you can always find parking.Julia Fox Garrison refused to listen to the professionals she called Dr. Jerk, Dr. Panic, and Nurse Doom. She clung to the advice of the kind and gifted Dr. Neuro, who told her "I have to treat your mind as well as your body." After many months in the hospital and then rehab, after coping with the shock of learning what had caused her stroke, and with the help of family and friends and her own indomitable spirit, Julia not only got into a wheelchair, she got back out and learned to walk again.Funny, touching, and profoundly moving, Don't Leave Me This Way is the true story of a woman's fight for her life -- and for her dignity -- as she struggles to overcome the debilitating effects of her stroke. She battles an entrenched medical community with wit and grit, challenging her doctors to always remember that she's a human being and to think beyond the pages of their textbooks and show her the encouragement and optimism that she knows is going to make the difference between life and death.

Jack and Jackie: Portrait of an American Marriage


Christopher Andersen - 1996
    Indeed, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Lee Bouvier captured and have held the world's imagination as perhaps no other husband and wife in modern history. Yet despite the billions of words that have been written about this most golden of couples, the true nature of their relationship has been veiled in mystery and mystique.Until now. With stunning information from important sources and previously sealed archival material, No. 1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Christopher Andersen examines their unique partnership and the courage, grace, and humor that defined it.Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Kennedy intimates--many speaking here for the first time--Andersen delivers an important work packed with startling revelations and penetrating insights into the secrets and events that shaped America's ultimate power couple, including:*Never-before-known details of their courtship, and the other man Jackie almost married*The world-famous women whose romances with JFK have previously been unreported,including Audrey Hepburn*Their concerns about infertility, and Jackie's troubled pregnancies; the way Caroline and John Jr. transformed their lives--and the story of how the death of their infant son Patrick brought them closer together than ever before*Moving first-hand accounts of the family's most private moments, before and after DallasAn inspiring, sympathetic, and compelling look at two mythic figures, JACK AND JACKIE is more than just the definitive portrait of their marriage. It is a glittering fairy tale, a stirring saga of triumph and tragedy, and--above all else--an American love story."The most worth reading of the recent Jackie books."--The New York Times Book Review"Heartbreaking…First rate…A great American love story. This may be the best Kennedy book ever--meticulously researched, elegantly written, a biography worthy of its brilliant subjects." --USA Today"Swift and astounding reading." Time Magazine"Andersen tells us not only about the hero and heroine we created, but about ourselves." Newsday

Conversations with Iannis Xenakis


Bálint András Varga - 1996
    He first studied as an architect, but then turned to composition and put to musical use his knowledge of higher mathematics. In these conversations he talks about his life and music.

There but for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs


Michael Schumacher - 1996
    His music had been a spark firing 60s political idealism. His death signaled the end of an era. There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs is both an in-depth biography & a significant musical history, focusing on the importance of Ochs' topical songs addressing the civil rights, anti-war & labor movements. With the full cooperation of his family, & with unprecedented access to his diaries & notebooks, biographer Michael Schumacher tells the story of this gifted artist--from his early years as a musical prodigy & aspiring journalist in Ohio, where he earned his 1st guitar after betting on a Presidential election, to his initial performances in Greenwich Village's cafes & folk clubs; from his headline-making appearances at Carnegie Hall to his ambitious consciousness-raising political rallies. Rich in anecdotal detail, this biography recounts his travels round the globe, including his involuntary prison tour of S. America, as well as his associations with some of the most notable figures of his generation, including Bob Dylan, Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Joan Baez & John Lennon. The story of Phil Ochs is ultimately the chronicle not only of a man but of the singular times in which he lived.

Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography


Nelson Mandela - 1996
    Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most inspiring political drama in the world. Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography tells the extraordinary story of Nelson Mandela's life, an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph. With nearly 200 stunning photographs - many of them published here for the first time - and with text adapted from his remarkable memoir Long Walk to Freedom, this moving book captures the indomitable spirit of a moral giant and dramatically portrays his struggle toward freedom. Mandela's journey is vividly and eloquently recounted: the development of his political consciousness, his pivotal role in the formation of the African National Congress Youth League, his years underground - which led to a sentence of life imprisonment in 1964 - and his twenty-seven years behind bars. He also movingly recounts the momentous events leading up to his victory in South Africa's first-ever multiracial elections in 1994.

Nobody Owns the Sky: The Story of "Brave Bessie" Coleman


Reeve Lindbergh - 1996
    But she never let her dream die and became the first licensed African-American aviator. Reeve Lindbergh honors her memory with a poem that sings of her accomplishment. With bold illustrations by Pamela Paparone, NOBODY OWNS THE SKY will inspire readers to follow their dreams.

Yorkie Doodle Dandy: A Memoir


William A. Wynne - 1996
    Wynne's story about Smoky a tiny Yorkshire Terrier found in a New Guinea foxhole during World War II. Smoky helped save the lives of servicemen who were faced with imminent airfield attack. Wynne's own life was spared while under a shipboard kamikaze attack--led by Smoky. Smoky is credited internationally for her therapy work in hospitals and care facilities. Post-war Smoky continued therapy work and performed on live television with Bill as trainer. Smoky ultimately proved to the world the therapeutic value of dogs to people during war conflict and recovery as well as in friendship entertainment and hope.

Carry a Big Stick: The Uncommon Heroism of Theodore Roosevelt


George Grant - 1996
    This volume in the Leaders in Action series presents the life of Teddy Roosevelt: adventurer, journalist, rancher, legislator, governor, vice president and president of the United States, and an inspiration to people of his own time and of ours.

Bad Boy: The Life And Politics Of Lee Atwater


John Joseph Brady - 1996
    He helped to create a solid Republican south. And he became notorious for turning national politics back into a blood sport, not only using nasty attacks but reveling in his image as the bad boy of Washington. Then, at the age of 39, Atwater was struck by a brain tumor. In thirteen months, cancer ended the most controversial career in modern politics—the charismatic, colorful, and contradictory life of Lee Atwater.Even today Atwater is a fallen leader Republicans love and a rival Democrats love to hate. He was the first political handler as mediagenic as his candidates—certainly the first chairman of the Republican National Committee to record a blues album. His campaigns represent the high-water mark of the GOPs postwar dominance of the presidency, and his techniques set the tone for races across the country. Watching Washington since his death, politicians and pundits still wonder, What if Lee Atwater had lived? Bad Boy reveals how Lee Atwater began his career controlling crowds as jittery class clown, traumatized by the agonizing death of his little brother. In college he discovered the subtle intercourse of policy and public opinion and grew from party animal to party man. Bad Boy details Atwater's political strategies from the grass roots to the national level. Even more ruthless were the behind-the-scenes power games as he crossed paths, and occasionally crossed swords, with nearly every major Republican of the 1980s: Reagan, Bush, Baker, Ailes, Rollins, and many more.In Bad Boy, we also see the faces Atwater tried to spin away. He was a compulsive womanizer, climbing through windows to avoid reporters. He played radical politics but promoted ”big tent” Republicanism. Even his last public moment is controversial. Did Atwater's deathbed words really repudiate entire campaigns, or were they twisted by political enemies and second-hand reporting? Was his repentance sincere or simply one last gasp of press manipulation? Was he responsible for the infamous Willie Horton ads, or was he unfairly blamed by 1988s losers, trying for a moral victory? Is Lee Atwater, a master of spin, now being spun in his grave?In its sudden end, Atwater's remarkable life resembled the rise and fall of a fine political novel. With the probing insights of an expert interviewer and a rare stylistic verve, John Brady tells that whole frantic, fascinating story—the life of the baddest boy in D.C.

The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth


Bill Holm - 1996
    Finding pleasure in the customs and characters of small-town life, in The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth he writes with affection about the town elders, seen by those in the outside world as misfits and losers. “They taught me what to value, what to ignore, what to embrace, and what to resist.” In his trek through the heartland, Holm covers a satisfyingly wide emotional terrain, from scandalous affairs in the 1950s to his aunt’s touching attempts to transcend poverty with perfume and movie-star airs.

Growing Up in Zion: True Stories of Young Pioneers Building the Kingdom


Susan Arrington Madsen - 1996
    Includes longer reminiscences which describe experiences of Mormon youth growing up in Utah between 1847 and 1900, shorter excerpts which complement these writings, and letters written by children.

Loh e Ayyam / لوح ایام


Mukhtar Masood - 1996
    Mukhtar Masood was in Tehran as the Secretary-General of Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD)

Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?: The Autobiography of Hollywood's Pioneer Child Star


Diana Serra Cary - 1996
    She was the original child star produced by Hollywood and her amazing journey set the pattern for all those who followed. Discovered when she was only nineteen months old, Baby Peggy with her angelic face and expert mugging for the camera entertained audiences across the nation and around the world. She starred in a series of short two-reel comedies, completing 150 of them by the time she turned three. By her fifth birthday, Baby Peggy's films were earning as much as Charlie Chaplin's, and she herself was a millionaire, having signed a three-film $3.5 million contract. Establishing a disgraceful tradition for the parents of child performers, Baby Peggy's mother and father, emotional children themselves, squandered her fortune. In What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy? Diana Serra Cary (as Baby Peggy is now called) looks back over her incredible life as a child superstar. She reveals the awesome burdens she carried. Seen through her memories, the turbulent lives of child stars such as Gary Coleman, Michael Jackson, and Drew Barrymore make much more sense.

Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life


Beth Powning - 1996
    Filled with rare insight into the earth beneath and the sky above, Home is a powerful celebration of the paths we choose and the journey we take to find a home. 70 photos.

Reggie White in the Trenches: The Autobiography


Reggie White - 1996
    Packed with insights, observations, and war stories of his twelve years in the NFL--including his championship season--"In the Trenches" delves into the heart of an amazing athlete who balances an array of extremes: he is both beloved and feared, tough and gentle, competitive and compassionate, fierce and generous.

Magic Hour: A Life in Movies


Jack Cardiff - 1996
    The 'Magic Hour' is the special light that occurs just at twilight, and a very special light is what cameraman Jack Cardiff brought to films such as The Red Shoes, The African Queen, and Black Narcissus for which he won an Oscar. In Magic Hour Jack Cardiff details the adventures of his life: on tour on the music-hall circuit with his parents; acting in silent films; being chosen by Technicolor as the first British cameraman to be trained in colour photography; filming with British convoys in the Atlantic during World War II; his big break when Michael Powell asked him to photograph A Matter of Life and Death; his rambunctious expolits with Errol Flynn; and his triumph at the Cannes Film Festival as the director of Sons and Lovers.As a master of light, Cardiff came to photograph some of the most beautiful women in cinema history: Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn and Ava Gardner, to name but a few.Cardiff's bold and imaginative photography enhanced not only the work of Powell and Pressburger, but also that of Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston. Told with modesty and charm, Magic Hour is the personal journey of an extraordinary craftsman of cinema.

Eleanor


Barbara Cooney - 1996
    Years passed before Eleanor began to discover in herself the qualities of intelligence, compassion, and strength that made her a remarkable woman. In Eleanor, two-time Caldecott Medal winner Barbara Cooney paints a meticulously researched, lushly detailed picture of Eleanor's childhood world--but most importantly, she captures the essence of the little girl whose indomitable spirit would make her one of the greatest and most beloved first ladies of all time. "There are many biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, but this one is special?Cooney is at her artistic best." --Booklist

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy


Carolyn Burke - 1996
    Born in London of mixed Jewish and English parentage, and a restless and much photographed beauty, she moved in the pivotal circles of international modernism, where her friends and lovers included Gertrude Stein, Marinetti, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Djuna Barnes, the poet-boxer Arthur Cravan, and the Surrealists and Man Ray. Carolyn Burke's riveting, authoritative biography brings this highly original and representative figure wonderfully alive, in the process giving us a new picture of modernism—and one woman's important contribution to it.

The Owl Pen


Kenneth McNeill Wells - 1996
    When Ken and Lucille found an old abandoned log cabin up in medonte township, Ontario, they were delighted.

Exploring the 46 Adirondack High Peaks: With 282 Photos, Maps & Mountain Profiles, Excerpts from the Author's Journal, & Historical Insights


James R. Burnside - 1996
    Book by Burnside, James R.

Echoes From The Holocaust: A Memoir


Mira Ryczke Kimmelman - 1996
    I lived in total isolation, not knowing what was taking place outside the ghetto gates, outside the barbed wires of concentration camps. After the war, would anyone ever believe my experiences?"Kimmelman had no way of preserving her experiences on paper while they happened, but she trained herself to remember. And now, as a survivor of the Holocaust, she has preserved her recollections for posterity in this powerful and moving book—one woman's personal perspective on a terrible moment in human history.The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home. In calm, straightforward prose—which makes her story all the more harrowing—Kimmelman recalls the horrors that befell her and those she loved. Sent to Auschwitz in 1944, she escaped the gas chambers by being selected for  slave labor. Finally, as the tide of war turned against Germany, Mira was among those transported to Bergen-Belsen, where tens of thousands were dying from starvation, disease, and exposure. In April 1945, British troops liberated the camp, and Mira was eventually reunited with her father. Most of the other members of her family had perished.In the closing chapters, Kimmelman describes her marriage, her subsequent life in the United States, and her visits to Israel and to the places in Europe where the  events of her youth transpired. Even when confronted with the worst in humankind, she observes, she never lost hope or succumbed to despair. She concludes with an eloquent reminder: "If future generations fail to protect the truth, it vanishes. . . . Only by remembering the bitter lesson of Hitler’s legacy can we hope it will never be repeated. Teach it, tell it, read it."The Author: Mira Ryczke Kimmelman is a resident of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and lectures widely in schools about her experiences during the Holocaust.

The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York


Anthony Bianco - 1996
    The Reichmanns is filled with fascinating characters, epic scope, and an illuminating look at the world of the ultra-orthodox. 16 pp. of photos. 608 pp. Author tour. Targeted ads. Online promotion. 35,000 print.

Maria Rosa Henson: Comfort Woman, Slave of Destiny


Maria Rosa Henson - 1996
    

The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis


Lance Woolaver - 1996
    She offered her endearing, whimsical, vibrant images to the passing world through her roadside sign, "Paintings for Sale," and was rewarded by the enthusiastic response from the local community, tourists, as well as from serious art collectors. The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis is an invitation to share once again with the world the perceptions of this celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist in prose, photographs, and reproductions of her works.Maud Lewis is the subject of the film Maudie (2016), starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke.

Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire


Marybeth Lorbiecki - 1996
    Aldo Leopold, author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, founder of the field of wildlife management, and originator of the national wilderness system, is revealed in this short, illustrated biography by Marybeth Lorbiecki.Leopold dedicated his life to answering the question: "How do we live on the land without spoiling it?" And his work and writings inspire millions of people in their continued pursuit of the answers.

Running With Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults


John Neal Phillips - 1996
    At nineteen he met Clyde Barrow in a Texas prison, and the two men together founded what would later be known as the Barrow gang. Running with Bonnie and Clyde is the story of Fults's experiences in the Texas criminal underworld between the years 1925 and 1935 and the gripping account of his involvement with the Barrow gang, particularly its notorious duo, Bonnie and Clyde.Fults's "ten fast years" were both dramatic and violent. As an adolescent he escaped numerous juvenile institutions and jails, was shot by an Oklahoma police officer, and was brutalized by prison guards. With Clyde, following their fateful meeting in 1930, he robbed a bank to finance a prison raid. After the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, in 1934, he joined forces with Raymond Hamilton; together the two robbed more banks and eluded countless posses before Hamilton's capture and 1935 execution. One of the few survivors among numerous associates who ended up shot, stabbed, beaten to death, or executed, Fults was later able to reform himself, believing that the only reason he was spared was to reveal the darkest aspects of his past-and in so doing expose the circumstances that propel youth into crime.Author John Neal Phillips tells Fults's story in vivid and at times raw detail, recounting bank robberies, killings, and prison escapes, friendships, love affairs, and marriages. Dialogues based on actual conversations amongst the participants enhance the narrative's authenticity. Whereas in books and mms, Fults, Parker, Barrow, and Hamilton have been romanticized or depicted as one-dimensional, depraved characters, Running with Bonnie and Clyde shows them as real people, products of social, political, and economic forces that directed them into a life of crime and bound them to it for eternity.Although basing his account primarily on Fults's testimony, Phillips substantiates that viewpoint with references to scores of eyewitness interviews, police files and court documents, and contemporary news accounts. An important contribution to criminal and social history, Running with Bonnie and Clyde will be fascinating reading for scholars and general readers alike.

SCTV: Behind the Scenes


Dave Thomas - 1996
    Over 15,000 sold! Relive some of the most hilarious moments in television with the SCTV troupe.

My Conversion


Charles Haddon Spurgeon - 1996
    That day was full of glory and gladness and indescribably joy for him. As Spurgeon shares his personal journey, you will experience the Holy Spirit's convicting power that leads from death unto eternal life.

A Talent For Trouble: The Life Of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler


Jan Herman - 1996
    His great ability to conceal his directorial presence in order to better serve his material, coupled with the variety of genres in which he excelled, have earned his films 127 Academy Award nominations, winning Wyler three best-director Oscars. Based on his previously undiscovered papers, and hundreds of interviews, this perceptive, spellbinding biography reveals both the director and the private man in startling close-ups as he lived his turbulent life at a bit more than twenty-four frames per second.

Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz


Thomas Merton - 1996
    Milosz replied and thus began an animated correspondence which lasted until Merton's death in 1968. During this highly productive decade, Merton continued, a Trappist, to write about nonviolence and the monastic life. Milosz, meanwhile, was writing influential essays and translating the poetry of Aleksander Wat and Anna Swir. In this dynamic correspondence, Milosz and Merton differ in their views of the role of Communism, share thoughts about the power of literature, and contrast their views on the natural world. As different as Milosz and Merton were, they found common ground in their spiritual search and in a desire to understand the human race. A memorial to a great friendship between two of this century's celebrated men of letter, Striving Towards Being is a testament to the examined life.

Chanel (The Universe of Fashion)


François Baudot - 1996
    Born into the French peasantry and then raised in a convent orphanage, Chanel grew up an authentic beauty with a gift for fashion, social trends, and business that enabled her literally to invent the look of the 20th century as well as its fragrance. She also had a profound effect upon both its art and culture, using her immense wealth, wit, and social access to support Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the plays of Jean Cocteau, the music of Igor Stravinsky, and the poems of Pierre Reverdy. Bit by bit, this fearless young genius stripped women of their corsets and feathers, bobbed their hair as well as their skirts, put them in bathing suits, and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced slacks, dark-toed sling pumps, the "little black dress, " quilted handbags, and the braid-trimmed, brass-buttoned two-piece suit that became her trademark. As for the fabulous costume jewelry, she piled it on mainly because of its power to make simplicity look glorious. Early in the 1920s Chanel launched the first couture perfume - No. 5 - bottled in the famous square-cut flacon, a Cubist-inspired Art Deco icon. She was the first haute-couture designer to work in ballet, theatre, and even film, beginning with a stint in Hollywood for Sam Goldwyn and moving on to Jean Renoir, Lucchino Visconti, and Alain Resnais.

Doris Kearns Goodwin on Franklin D. Roosevelt


Doris Kearns Goodwin - 1996
    Recorded live at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, Goodwin launches a series of lectures delivered by a team of historians, biographers, and journalists assembled by Robert Wilson to explore the Presidential character. Sharing their insight into the Presidents they have written about, these authors and scholars address the larger issue of the impact of the Presidential character on leadership and the creation of trust. A master historian speaking on the towering subject she knows best, Goodwin discusses Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the master politician who always waited for the right moment to convince people to go where he wished to take them. "Character Above All is incomparable audio, crackling with the energy and excitement of a great mind at work and the intellectual urgency befitting a topic of lasting national importance.

Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Oklahoma Narratives


Work Projects Administration - 1996
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings


John Muir - 1996
    Includes Studies in the Sierra; Picturesque California; Cruise of the Corwin; Stickeen; and more.

Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence


Niccolò Machiavelli - 1996
    Spanning the years of Machiavelli's adult life, from 1497 until his death in 1527, this correspondence between Machiavelli and his friends, colleagues and compatriots— some of whom were the most influential thinkers of the day—presents a panorama of life, people and critical events in Renaissance Italy.

Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 1996
    In this ideal introduction to black history, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar examines the lives of heroic African Americans and offers their stories as inspiring examples for young people, who too rarely encounter positive black role models in history books or in the media.Profiled here are Peter Salem, the volunteer soldier who turned the tide at Bunker Hill; Joseph Cinque, leader of a daring revolt on the slave ship Amistad; Frederick Douglass, self-taught writer-orator and escaped slave who forced President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation years ahead of schedule; Harriet Tubman, who led at least three hundred slaves to freedom; Lewis Latimer, whose scientific work was integral to the achievements of Bell and Edison; and many more.Shining a bright light on the touchstones of character, these exemplary stories reemphasize the integral role of African Americans in weaving the fabric of our nation and form an empowering legacy from which Americans of all ages can draw inspiration, wisdom, and pride.

Coming of Age With Elephants: A Memoir


Joyce Poole - 1996
    The educational and inspirational biography of Joyce Poole describes the life of a courageous woman who struggled with loneliness, sexism, and the threat of bandit-poachers to make her contribution to the conservation of the endangered African elephant.

Marcel Proust: A Life


Jean-Yves Tadié - 1996
    This fascinating, definitive biography by the premier world authority on Proust redefines the way we look at both the artist and the man. A bestseller in France, where it was originally published to great critical acclaim, Jean-Yves Tadie's monumental life of Proust makes use of a wealth of primary material only recently made available, Marcel Proust: A Life provides a scrupulously researched and engaging picture of the intellectual and social universe that fed Proust's art, along with an indispensable critical reading of the work itself. The result is authoritative, magisterial, and a beautiful example of the art of biography.

Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu


Ted Anton - 1996
    The crime stunned the school, terrified students, and mystified the FBI. The case remains unsolved. In Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu, award-winning investigative reporter Ted Anton shows that the murder is what Culianu's friends suspected all along: the first political assassination of a professor on American soil.

The Complete Films Of Audrey Hepburn


Jerry Vermilye - 1996
    

Who's There?: The Life and Career of William Hartnell


Jessica Carney - 1996
    It wasn't quite the TARDIS (after all you could never guarantee where the TARDIS was going to land), but it was spectacular enough for Pembury, the village in Kent where my parents lived...William Hartnell took the leading role of Doctor Who towards the end of a long acting career that was as successful as it was varied.He played musical light comedy; he played a succession of mean, crooked and bullying sergeant-majors; he played a time-travelling eccentric.He appeared in more than 75 feature films, in countless stage performances and in several television programmes in addition to Doctor Who.Jessica Carney's closely-researched biography of her grandfather includes stories from many of the hundreds of stars and screen with whom he worked, among them Richard Attenborough, Verity Lambert, Bob Monkhouse, Carole Ann Ford, David Langton and Lindsay Anderson.

More Lives Than One: A Biography of Hans Fallada


Jenny Williams - 1996
    Yet he was also one of the most extraordinary storytellers of the twentieth century, whose novels, including Every Man Dies Alone, portrayed ordinary people in terrible times with a powerful humanity.This acclaimed biography, newly revised and completely updated, tells the remarkable story of Hans Fallada, whose real name was Rudolf Ditzen. Jenny Williams chronicles his turbulent life as a writer, husband, and father, shadowed by mental torment and long periods in psychiatric care. She shows how Ditzen's decision to remain in Nazi Germany in 1939 led to his self-destruction, but also made him a unique witness to his country's turmoil.More Lives Than One unpicks the contradictory, flawed and fascinating life of a writer who saw the worst of humanity, yet maintained his belief in the decency of the "little man."

Michael Collins: Screenplay and Film Diary


Neil Jordan - 1996
    In addition to Neil Jordan's complete screenplay for Michael Collins, this book includes the writer-director's personal journal of the making of the movie from its initial conception through its development, on-the-set-shooting and first triumphal screening.

Alice Walker Banned


Alice Walker - 1996
    Alice Walker Banned explores just what it is that various groups have found so threatening in Walker's work, bringing together the short stories "Roselily" and "Am I Blue?," an excerpt from the novel The Color Purple, as well as testimonies, letters, and essays about attempts to censor Walker's work by the California State Board of Education. The introduction by San Francisco Chronicle Book Review editor Patricia Holt offers insightful and ironic commentary on the efforts of the Traditional Values Coalition to pressure the State Board of Education into withdrawing Walker's stories from a statewide exam, while excerpts from a Board of Education hearing offer views from across the political spectrum on these efforts to censor Walker's work.…a fascinating, frightening book…—Mirabella…an invaluable contribution to the literature of censorship…—Booklist…this book will allow a cooler, more informed discussion of an important debate.—Library Journal

Doing Life: Reflections Of Men And Women Serving Life Sentences


Howard Zehr - 1996
    Readers see the prisoners as people, de-mystified.           Brief text accompanies each portrait, the voice of each prisoner speaking openly about the crime each has committed, the utter violation of another person each has caused. They speak of loneliness, missing their children growing up, dealing with the vacuum, caught between death and life. A timely book.

Howard Hughes: The Untold Story


Peter Harry Brown - 1996
    He was the billionaire head of a giant corporation, a genius inventor, an ace pilot, a matinee-idol-handsome playboy, a major movie maker who bedded a long list of Hollywood glamour queens, a sexual sultan with a harem of teenage consorts, a political insider with intimate ties to Watergate, a Las Vegas kingpin, and ultimately a bizarre recluse whose final years and shocking death were cloaked in macabre mystery. Now he is the subject of Martin Scorsese's biopic The Aviator. Few people have been able to penetrate the wall of secrecy that enshrouded this complex man. In this fascinating, revelation-packed biography, the full story of one of the most daring, enigmatic, and reclusive power brokers America has ever known is finally told.

The Virus Hunters: Dispatches from the Frontline


Joseph B. McCormick - 1996
    This is their story of a quarter-of-a-century on the front lines of the struggle to hold the narrow line separating humankind from what might well be the true inheritors of the Earth: viruses.

No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II


Diane Burke Fessler - 1996
    Fessler has meticulously compiled and transcribed more than 200 interviews with American military nurses of the Army, Army Air Force, and Navy who were present in all theaters of WWII. Their stories bring to life horrific tales of illness and hardship, blinding blizzards, and near starvation—all faced with courage, tenacity, and even good humor. This unique oral-history collection makes available to readers an important counterpoint to the seemingly endless discussions of strategy, planning, and troop movement that often characterize discussions of the Second World War.

Ernest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour


Ronnie Pugh - 1996
    Tracing a career that began in the 1930s and continued until just a few years before Tubb’s death in 1984, Pugh presents not only the long and legendary life of the Texas Troubadour but also an unparalleled view of the world of country music in which Ernest Tubb played an essential part.Tubb began his career as an imitator of Jimmie Rodgers, but stormed the country music scene in the 1940s with a new honky tonk sound and a string of hits that included “Walking the Floor Over You.” His innovations marked an important transition in country music to a style and lyric in tune with modern American working people, or at least that offered the real-life themes of hard drinking, divorce, tough times, and ruined lives—changes that helped define the music we recognize today as “country.” A member of the Grand Ole Opry until 1982, Tubb hosted a live radio broadcast from the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville for years and became one of the first country music stars to host his own television show in the mid-1960s. Always popular and on the road much of the time even after his prime hit-making years had ended, he was well-known for promoting the careers of many new performers on the rise.Delving into fan club journals, songbooks, newspaper broadcast logs, record company files, and hundreds of interviews, Ronnie Pugh draws a picture of Tubb—exploring both his personal and professional life—that is unprecedented in its intimacy, detail, and vitality. We get a close-up view of Tubb riding the crest of his popularity, setting the pace for Nashville, facing the onslaught of Elvis Presley and rock ’n roll, and surviving as a country music legend. Richly illustrated with almost a hundred photographs, many of which are rare unpublished shots from private collections, Ernest Tubb also contains a detailed and complete sessionography, a resource that will be of continuing importance for serious record collectors.A biography that has been long awaited from Ronnie Pugh, unquestionably the leading authority on Ernest Tubb, this book will delight readers from among the fans of country music, those interested in the history of country music or American popular music and culture generally, and, of course, Ernest Tubb fans.

The Marquis of Montrose


John Buchan - 1996
    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Light Years


Le Anne Schreiber - 1996
    Deeply moving, graced with subtle intelligence and humor, Light Years looks mortality in the eye and stares it down. In the background are three deaths occurring over five years--those of the author's mother, father, and brother. In the foreground are stories of certain simple elements of her life during this period--of a barn cat, impaled by a hunter's arrow, that she patiently nurses back to health; of a trout stream, whose raging waters thwart her attempt to release her father's ashes; of an overgrown acre that stubbornly refuses to be tamed.Gradually, she traces the impact of these deaths on her understanding of such basic concepts as home, time, and territory, and her own textured past. Searching throughout this remarkable book for this-worldly sources of consolation, she finds them in unexpected places: long swims, a dream, an ancient oak, a book on Einstein, the view from a nearby hilltop.Light Years bears witness to the shock of death, but even more to a vital and questing inner life, a rare triumph of understanding, and the discovery of vast open horizons, only light years away. This unforgettable memoir is filled with light.

Purr--: Children's Book Illustrators Brag about Their Cats


Michael J. Rosen - 1996
    In this tribute to the lovable, enigmatic, and mischievous cat, over 40 illustrators celebrate their favorite felines. All artists' royalties will be donated to The Company of Animals Fund to care for abused, needy, and neglected animals. Full color.

Otto Klemperer: Volume 1, 1885-1933: His Life and Times


Peter Heyworth - 1996
    Volume 1 of Peter Heyworth's biography follows the conductor's career from early days in Prague through the innovative period of the Weimar Republic and his appointment as director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin to his abrupt departure from Germany in 1933. This book has become established as a classic account of one of the crucial figures in the musical life of the early twentieth century. With the publication of the long-awaited sequel covering the subsequent years from 1933–1973, this widely acclaimed first volume is now made available in a newly designed format as a companion to volume 2.

A Marathon of Faith


Rex E. Lee - 1996
    

Tammy: Telling It My Way


Tammy Faye Messner - 1996
    16 pages of photos.

A Promise Is A Promise


Wayne W. Dyer - 1996
    Dyer brings you this extraordinary true story about two ordinary people whose lives were touched by miracles–and he shows us what these miracles can teach all of us.

A New Ireland: Politics, Peace, and Reconciliation


John Hume - 1996
    Hume recounts the struggle for the nationalist community's rights and presents a blueprint for peace.

Patrick White: Letters


Patrick White - 1996
    These letters, edited by his biographer David Marr, chronicle White's gradual reluctant engagement with the world: his interest in Jewish culture after an early ignorant anti-Semitism; his idyllic wartime period in West Africa; his passionate and rancorous anti-royalism, sparked by the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis when the British Queen's representative sacked the Prime Minister; his deep held belief in the validity of homosexual unions, based on his own life-long relationship. These letters give an inner glimpse of a mostly private life.

The Agony of the Leaves: The Ecstasy of My Life with Tea


Helen Gustafson - 1996
    Gustafson's approach to the minutiae of the tea experience is a magically macroscopic one--she makes the subject of tea come alive as a nexus of biographical detail, stories, recipes and reminiscences. Full-color illustrations.

David Brainerd - Pioneer Missionary to the American Indians


John Thornbury - 1996
    William Carey, often called the father of modern missions, valued the story of Brainerd's life so highly that he encouraged his co-workers to read it through three times a year. John Wesley urged all his preachers to read carefully the life of Brainerd and to 'be followers of him, as he was of Christ'. Henry Martyn, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Jim Eliot and Oswald J. Smith all testified to their esteem of David Brainerd and to the encouragement to greater holiness and faithfulness in service for God that they derived from his example. In making the life of Brainerd available for the modern reader John Thornbury draws frequently on Brainerd's own account in his personal Diary and his letters as well as the writings of his friend and mentor Jonathan Edwards. He also helps us to understand and evaluate the life and achievements of Brainerd in the context of the times in which he lived. The story of this remarkable man, whose life was so short but so full, will encourage God's people today, like those of previous generations, in their pilgrim walk and inspire them to greater commitment to evangelism and missions.

Flippin' : Filipinos on America


Luis H. Francia - 1996
    What we know of this archipelago is very often condensed, filtered, or distorted by Western preconceptions and interpretations. Here, for the first time, are Filipino and Filipino American writers telling their lives in their own words. Here are stories of passion and betrayal, home and exile, the politics of the self and a nation in search of itself. Here are poems of such power and beauty that can rank among the best in the world. In these pages the reader will find familiar figures-the greedy Marcoses, teenage gangs, game shows, rock star clones-as well as characters and themes of every stripe and hue, from gay youngsters checking out surfer jocks in Hawai'i to Westernized girls coming out of convent school, from a searing recollection of gang rape to meditations on the spirit.Altogether, these works provide a deeper image of the Philippines and of Filipinos in America, as seen by some of the best writers from both sides of the world. Ultimately, it gives a unique and vivid perspective of America as well.

Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood


Rachel Manley - 1996
    This is a world vividly recreated, and an intimate memoir of the people who changed Jamaica's intellectual, social and cultural landscape for all time.