Best of
Memoir

1977

A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph


Sheldon Vanauken - 1977
    S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death. Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith--the existence of God and the reasons behind tragedy.

Holy the Firm


Annie Dillard - 1977
    In Holy the Firm she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things -- rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.This is a profound book about the natural world -- both its beauty and its cruelty -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dillard knows so well.

A Rumor of War


Philip Caputo - 1977
    Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history’s ugliest wars, he returned home—physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.A Rumor of War is far more than one soldier’s story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America’s indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as the author writes, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to them.""Heartbreaking, terrifying, and enraging. It belongs to the literature of men at war."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Brother to a Dragonfly


Will D. Campbell - 1977
    One is of his youth in rural Mississippi and his devotion to his brother whose life ended in seeming tragedy. The other tells of his ordination at age 17 and gradual realization that civil rightsfor blacks, for women, for gays was an essential part of a ministry that has not yet ended.

A Time of Gifts


Patrick Leigh Fermor - 1977
    A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies. His powers of recollection have astonishing sweep and verve, and the scope is majestic. First published to enormous acclaim, it confirmed Fermor's reputation as the greatest living travel writer, and has, together with its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (the third volume is famously yet to be published), been a perennial seller for 25 years.

The House by the Sea


May Sarton - 1977
    The journal records the renewing of her life and work in this place.

Midnight Express


Billy Hayes - 1977
    A classic story of survival and human endurance, told with humor, honesty, and heart, it became a worldwide best-seller and the Academy Award-winning blockbuster film of the same name. In 1970 Billy Hayes was an English major who left college in search of adventures to write about, like his hero Jack London. He had a rude awakening when he was arrested at the airport in Istanbul trying to board a plane while carrying four pounds of hashish, and given a life sentence. After five brutal years, relentless efforts by his family to gain his release, and endless escape plotting, Hayes finally took matters into his own hands. On a dark night, in a wailing storm he began a desperate and daring escape to freedom... This is the astounding journey, told in Billy Hayes's own words, of those five years of living hell and of the harrowing ordeal of his time on the run.

At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf


Bennett Cerf - 1977
    We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random. Let’s call it Random House.” So recounts Bennett Cerf in this wonderfully amusing memoir of the making of a great publishing house. An incomparable raconteur, possessed of an irrepressible wit and an abiding love of books and authors, Cerf brilliantly evokes the heady days of Random House’s first decades. Part of the vanguard of young New York publishers who revolutionized the book business in the 1920s and ’30s, Cerf helped usher in publishing’s golden age. Cerf was a true personality, whose other pursuits (columnist, anthologist, author, lecturer, radio host, collector of jokes and anecdotes, perennial judge of the Miss America pageant, and panelist on What’s My Line?) helped shape his reputation as a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm and brought unprecedented attention to his company and to his authors. At once a rare behind-the-scenes account of book publishing and a fascinating portrait of four decades’ worth of legendary authors, from James Joyce and William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison and Eudora Welty, At Random is a feast for bibliophiles and anyone who’s ever wondered what goes on inside a publishing house.

The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-Five Years in the Alaska Wilderness


John Meade Haines - 1977
    As New York Newsday has said of his work, "If Alaska had not existed, Haines might well have invented it."

A Fine Old Conflict


Jessica Mitford - 1977
    It tells of her experiences in the Communist Party which she joined in California during World War II and left in 1958, illustrating, with biting humour, a neglected chapter of American radical history. She and her husband, lawyer Bob Treuhaft, campaigned passionately for civil rights in the face of great personal danger, particularly during the McCarthy witch-hunts.

He Sets The Captive Free


Corrie ten Boom - 1977
    

Walking Through The Fire


Laurel Lee - 1977
    

Crying Wind: Beaten, Deserted, and Afraid of Both Death and Life, a Young Indian Girl Finds Life


Crying Wind - 1977
    Simply and sensitively written, Crying Wind's true story gives insights into American Indian culture and the cultural barriers an Indian must hurdle when he accepts Christ.

Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa


John Heilpern - 1977
    In December 1972, the director Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors (Helen Mirren and Yoshi Oida among them) left their Paris base to emerge again in the Sahara desert. It was the start of an 8,500-mile expedition through Africa without precedent in the history of theater. Brook was in search of a new beginning that has since been revealed in all his work--from Conference of the Birds and Carmen to The Mahabharata and beyond. At the heart of John Heilpern's brilliant account of the African experiment is a story that became a search for the miraculous.

Pearl, her love touched two worlds


Donita Dyer - 1977
    

Soldiering: Diary Rice C. Bull: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull


Rice C. Bull - 1977
    It is a masterful description of war's grim reality."--VFW Magazine

A Cornish Summer


Derek Tangye - 1977
    Delving into the mass of letters and papers in the abandoned stable at Minack, the remote Cornish cottage where he lived alone after the death of his wife Jeannie, Derek weaves pieces of his past into the story of those last peaceful years spent in the company of his donkeys Merlin and Susie. Poignant and deeply evocative, The Confusion Room is a marvelous tribute to the memory of Derek Tangye.

Beaversprite: My Years Building an Animal Sanctuary


Dorothy Richards - 1977
    of Environmental Protection. Dorothy and her husband Al lived on a land that was lush with creeks in the headlands of the Hudson River, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The land was wooded with poplars and sugar maples. It was a perfect place for beavers to live and yet there were none in the entire state of New York - they had all been killed by trappers for that beautiful fur. The Richards began with just that one pair - they simply protected them and let them live. They lived naturally and produced liter after litter of kits. Dorothy came to know them, love them, and to realize that she would dedicate her life to saving them.

Please Remember Me: A Young Woman's Story of Her Friendship with an Unforgettable Fifteen-Year Old Boy


Mari Brady - 1977
    

Too Much Anger, Too Many Tears: A Personal Triumph over Psychiatry


Janet Gotkin - 1977
    

Friends in High Places


Webb Hubbell - 1977
    His current publisher, Beaufort Books, recognized its importance to the political discussion going on right now and has decided to make sure it is available to a much broader audience by way of e-books and paperback. It offers a different picture of Hillary Clinton than is being offered by the media these days.Before the nation came to know them as the President and First Lady, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were close friends of Webb Hubbell’s. Hubbell offers insight into how he and the Clintons climbed the political ranks from Arkansas to the White House.Included in this book are intricate tales of Hubbell’s support of Bill Clinton in his tensest moments; his friendship with Hillary Rodham Clinton; the tragic death of Vince Foster; details of involvement in Whitewater; an inside look at the Justice Department and partnership with Janet Reno; and insights into famous personalities such as Mac McLarty, Bernie Nussbaum, Bruce Lindsey, Mickey Kantor, and George Stephanopoulos.Hubbell’s story is told from the perspective of one who personally knows the President and First Lady. Their friendship began when Hubbell and Hilary Rodham Clinton were partners at Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm; and when Bill Clinton worked as Governor of Arkansas, Hubbell served with him as Mayor of Little Rock, and later as chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Hubbell joined the Clintons in the White House as associate attorney general, the third highest ranking member of the Justice Department. His political career ended, however, with the Whitewater scandal and incarceration in federal prison. Hubbell comments on his resignation and prison sentence, and reflects on his old friends whom have since isolated him from the White House.The journey is Webb Hubbell’s, yet his recounting resonates with the humanity in us all: the love he shares with his wife and family, the grief over losing friends to death or circumstances, and humility when faced with calamity. In the end Hubbell faces the truth with a steadfastness seldom seen in Washington.This new edition includes a new introduction and epilogue.

Once to Every Man: A Memoir


William Sloane Coffin Jr. - 1977
    stands out as that unique individual whose life and career epitomize the dramatic issues and conflicts - social, political, spiritual and academic - of his time.CIA operative and civil rights activist, clergyman and iconoclast, army officer and champion of draft resisters, aspiring concert pianist and formidable athlete - Coffin truly has been a child of the century. Here is a man of unquenchable vitality and prodigious capabilities: relishing the challenges to advocates of liberty, equality and fraternity, posed by a complex and contradictory universe. Here is a man to whom civil disobedience has been more than a lofty abstraction: jailed in Alabama with Ralph Abernathy, on trial in Boston with Dr. Spock, at odds with the trustees and officers of Yale, he has never hesitated to risk the worst in order to achieve the best. And here is a profoundly reflective and deeply humorous man, whose tough-minded spirituality has been tempered in the furnace of public action.Once To Every Man encompasses five tumultuous decades, and sweeps the reader from the fashionable world of New York society to the chaos of Europe at war, from Ivy League campuses to Peace Corps training camps in Puerto Rican jungles, from clandestine anti-Communist operations to the March on the Pentagon, from racial strife in the South to a Black Panther rally in New Haven. It offers an indispensable perspective on many of the crucial events of the past fifty years, and an unforgettable portrait of the man who figured so prominently in them.