Best of
Memoir

1954

The Family Nobody Wanted


Helen Grigsby Doss - 1954
    She writes of the way the "unwanted" feeling was erased with devoted love and understanding and how the children united into one happy family. Her account reads like a novel, with scenes of hard times and triumphs described in vivid prose. The Family Nobody Wanted, which inspired two films, opened doors for other adoptive families and was a popular favorite among parents, young adults, and children for more than thirty years. Now this edition will introduce the classic to a new generation of readers. An epilogue by Helen Doss that updates the family's progress since 1954 will delight the book's loyal legion of fans around the world.

My Several Worlds


Pearl S. Buck - 1954
    A memoir of the life of the first female Nobel Laureate for Literature, who was also a world citizen and a major humanitarian, Pearl (Sydenstricker) Buck (1892-1973) three quarters of the way through her life. Published by the John Day Company to whose president, Richard John Walsh (1886-1960), she was then married, the book was successful and temporarily revived her waning reputation. The China oriented writer Helen Foster Snow described her partnership with John Day and Walsh as "the most successful writing and publishing partnership in the history of American letters." The firm had published everything she'd written since their marriage in 1935. Her biographer, Professor Peter Conn, describes the book as "a thickly textured representation of the Chinese and American societies in which she had lived." Friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, cultural ambassador between China and America, tireless advocate for racial democracy and women's rights and founder of the first international adoption agency, this is a book by and about a special American citizen of the twentieth century

The Dancing Bear


Frances Faviell - 1954
    ‘In a few days you’ll be so used to it that you’ll like them. Berlin’s a grand place! I’d rather be here than anywhere else in the world, and that’s a fact.’ ‘No more perceptive portrait of Germany in defeat has been etched in word than Frances Faviell’s first book, The Dancing Bear, which made so powerful an impact upon me that I read it in a single sitting.’ Guy Ramsey, Daily Telegraph‘Berlin during the decisive years from 1946 to 1949. … The prostitution which paid so handsomely; the black market which brought in rich rewards, although it meant that the Berliners had to part with treasured possessions; the night clubs which catered for still baser tastes; the impoverished intellectuals and the starving professors and the poor who had only their wits with which to eke out a bare sustenance—all this and much else the author describes with insight, incisiveness, and realism.’ Times Literary Supplement‘There is great charity in this book; there is the sharp, limpid eye of the artist; there is sound realism; and there is an unswerving, passionate desire to tell the truth.” John Connell, Evening News‘They were hard and terrible times, and brilliantly does Frances Faviell describe them for us. We meet the Altmann family and follow their joys and troubles. … The book is a brilliant pen-picture of the post-war years. We have British, French, American and Russian characters, but the background is always Berlin, and the strange tunes to which its bear danced.’ Liverpool Daily PostThis new edition includes an afterword by Frances Faviell’s son, John Parker, and other supplementary material.

A Child of the Century


Ben Hecht - 1954
    His works uniquely reflect the man, and this is the landmark work of the journalist and co-author of plays, The Front Page and Twentieth Century.As Sidney Zion observes in his introduction: "To write a great autobiography, you have to live it. And while most writers are lucky to life half a life and are seldom comfortable doing it, Ben Hecht lived a dozen worlds, enjoying them as if he were a citizen of each. Acrobat, magician, poet, newspaperman, author, screenwriter, propagandist---Hecht was all of these and then some. He lived with passion and wit This book is loaded with marvelous tales of Chicago, New York and Hollywood, of H.L. Mencken, Charles MacArthur, John Barrymore, Harpo Marx, Sherwood Anderson, Fanny Brice, Dorothy Parker..."

Doctor At Dien Bien Phu


Paul Grauwin - 1954
    The memoir was originally published in French as "J'Étais Médecin à Dien-Bien-Phu" and was translated by James Oliver in 1955. The siege of the French garrison lasted fifty-seven days, from 5:30PM on March 13 to 5:30PM on May 7, 1954. The memoir survived, but Dr. Grauwin. On May 8, the day after the French garrison surrendered, the Viet Minh counted 11,721 prisoners, of whom 4,436 were wounded. This was the greatest number the Viet Minh had ever captured: one-third of the total captured during the entire war. The prisoners were divided into groups. Able bodied soldiers were force-marched over 250 miles to prison camps to the north and east, intermingled with Viet Minh soldiers to discourage French bombing retaliatory runs. Hundreds died of disease on the way. The wounded were given basic first aid until the Red Cross arrived, who were only able to remove 858 POWS. Those wounded who were not evacuated by the Red Cross were sent into prison camps, among them Paul Grauwin.Remaining French POW survivors of the battle at Dien Bien Phu, were starved, beaten, and abused, most dying. Of 10,863 survivors held as prisoners, only 3,290 were officially repatriated to France four months later. The author's fate is unknown.

I'll Cry Tomorrow


Lillian Roth - 1954