Best of
Memoir

1972

No Name in the Street


James Baldwin - 1972
    This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works.  In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

All Creatures Great and Small


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

The Water is Wide


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

Will There Really Be a Morning?


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

P.S. Your Not Listening


Eleanor Craig - 1972
    How do you teach long division to a child who believes the banana in his lunchbox is alive and trying to escape? How do you maintain control when one of your students has locked you in a closet? How do you convince a child that people are not for hurting when he is constantly battered and rejected at home?Five children, five universes, five enemies - and Eleanor Craig, teacher extraordinaire, who battled to make them face the real world and survive.

The Making of a Surgeon


William A. Nolen - 1972
    It is William Nolen's story of his transformation from student to practitioner, from a brash medical school graduate to a surgeon possessing skill and judgment. And, as happens in the best memoirs, with his brilliant flash of self-discovery William Nolen illuminates the world outside himself.First published in 1970, The Making of a Surgeon received critical acclaim and touched a world audience. The book's universal themes propelled it to the rarefied heights of a best seller. In this reprinted edition, with a foreword by the author's daughter, his classic returns.

The Silence of the North


Olive A. Fredrickson - 1972
    The incredible true story of one woman's fight for survival in the Arctic wilderness.

Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan: An Armenian Boy's Memoir of Survival


Aram Haigaz - 1972
    He and his mother were put into a forced march and deportation of Armenians into the Turkish desert, part of the systematic destruction of the largely Christian Armenian population in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. His mother urged Aram to convert to Islam in order to survive, and on the fourth day of the march, a Turk agreed to take this young convert into his household. Aram spent four long years living as a slave, servant and shepherd among Kurdish tribes, slowly gaining his captors trust. He grew from a boy to a man in these years and his narrative offers readers a remarkable coming of age story as well as a valuable eyewitness to history. Haigaz was able to escape to the United States in 1921."

Boyhood with Gurdjieff


Fritz Peters - 1972
    Long out of print, this special hardcover reissue of Fritz Peters' account of his five years with G.I. Gurdjieff ranks among the classics of Gurdjieffian literature. Only 11 years old when his aunt, Margaret Anderson, brought him to the Prieuré in June 1924, he immediately became devoted to Gurdjieff. Within weeks, however, Gurdjieff suffered a near fatal car crash. During his recovery the young boy became his "chair carrier." Other tasks included mowing the château's great lawns, kitchen boy, waiter and gatekeeper. He also was to clean Gurdjieff's room, no small task as Gurdjieff delighted in wrecking it. Peters was among the few to whom Gurdjieff gave individual lessons on the teaching. An acute observer and talented writer, Peters' crisp images and scenes, often hilarious, give a rare look at what life was like at Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Peters' interactions with Miss Madison (Ethel Merston), Rachmilevitch, and Gurdjieff's dog Philos, as well as A. R. Orage and Gertrude Stein are quite telling. Said the writer Henry Miller of Peters' book, "It's full of amazing anecdotes and the wisdom of life."

On The Other Side: 23 Days With The Viet Cong


Kate Webb - 1972
    

Bonney's Place


Leon Hale - 1972
    Somebody stole a sum of money from his father and he wants retribution. At least, he wants the money back. It's his inheritance. And it surely looks as though the person doing the stealing was Bonney McCamey himself, except Bonney's not the type of person to steal from an old man, is he? Johnny decides to hang around awhile and find out.   What Johnny discovers—along with the limits of his personal endurance—is that passing judgment is a perilous endeavor. This Texas tavern and the unforgettable characters for whom it provides recreation and, in some cases a reason for living, reflect a far more complex reality than Johnny had anticipated. And in the person of Bonney himself, Johnny finds a man who is more than capable of stretching small truths and shading small sins, in order to prevent a larger miscarriage of justice.   This classic novel immerses the reader in a richly layered and vivid assemblage of rural Texas characters such as Rose- Mama, Turnip, Slat, Samuel Wilkerson Hobbs, Jr., and, of course, Bonney himself. Often hilariously funny, Bonney's Place is a world of obvious weaknesses, enduring strengths, and the many small exaltations of life.

Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861--1868


Kate Stone - 1972
    Kate Stone was twenty when the war began, living with her widowed mother, five brothers, and younger sister at Brokenburn, their plantation home in northeastern Louisiana. When Grant moved against Vicksburg, the family fled before the invading armies, eventually found refuge in Texas, and finally returned to a devastated home.Kate began her journal in May, 1861, and made regular entries up to November, 1865. She included briefer sketches in 1867 and 1868. In chronicling her everyday activities, Kate reveals much about a way of life that is no more: books read, plantation management and crops, maintaining slaves in the antebellum period, the attitude and conduct of slaves during the war, the fate of refugees, and civilian morale. Without pretense and with almost photographic clarity, she portrays the South during its darkest hours.

Beyond Dark Hills: A Personal Story


Jesse Stuart - 1972
    Assigned to write an 18 page personal narrative, he turned in 322 pages about a seemingly simple farm boy and his family. His professor said, "I have been teaching for forty years and I have never read anything so...beautiful, tremendous and powerful..." Stuart shares with the reader all his youthful anxieties as he prepares for life and then ventures forth on his own. He freely shares his frustrations and successes, as he examines the forces that mold and shape him into a worldfamous author and educator.

The Patton Papers: 1885-1940 (Book I)


Martin Blumenson - 1972
    Book 1 of 2

A Victorian Son: An Autobiography, 1897-1922


Stuart Cloete - 1972
    His work has been intimately connected with the three ruling influences in his life: his birth and childhood in Paris, his World War One experiences an his growing consciousness of his Boer heritage, stemming from his father's people who came to South Africa with Van Riebeeck.In this first volume of autobiography, Stuart Cloete describes with loving nostalgia Paris of La Belle Epoque, when women were feminine, fathers were stern and children seen and seldom heard except by their wet-nurses and uniformed nannies.After attending public school in England, Stuart Cloete went straight into the army, being one of the youngest commissioned officers in the war, in which he served in the Yorkshire Light Infantry, transferring later to the Coldstream Guards. Twice wounded in action, the second time very seriously, readers of How Young They Died will soon realise how much of his own story went into that superb novel of life in the trenches, with the blood and mud relieved only occasionally by the gaiety of London. This first volume ends in 1922 when Major Stuart Cloete, now married, resumes life in France.

How I Wrote Jubilee: And Other Essays on Life and Literature


Margaret Walker - 1972
    The autobiographical essays reflect on her work and her life as an artist, as African-American, and a woman, while the literary essays examine the writings of such giants as Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Phyllis Wheatley, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others. "Spanning a half-century (1943to 1988), these brilliant, intimate writings capture the flavor of the times and powerfully convey the social and literary thoughts that distinguishes Walker as one of the intellectual beacons of her generation."-Booklist