Best of
Memoir

1986

Life and Death in Shanghai


Nien Cheng - 1986
    Her background made her an obvious target for the fanatics of the Cultural Revolution: educated in London, the widow of an official of Chiang Kai-Shek's regime, and an employee of Shell Oil, Nien Cheng enjoyed comforts that few of her compatriots could afford. When she refused to confess that any of this made her an enemy of the state, she was placed in solitary confinement, where she would remain for more than six years. "Life and Death in Shanghai" is the powerful story of Nien Cheng's imprisonment, of the deprivation she endured, of her heroic resistance, and of her quest for justice when she was released. It is the story, too, of a country torn apart by the savage fight for power Mao Tse-tung launched in his campaign to topple party moderates. An incisive, rare personal account of a terrifying chapter in twentieth-century history, "Life and Death in Shanghai" is also an astounding portrait of one woman's courage.

Gathering Evidence


Thomas Bernhard - 1986
    Tormented as a young student in a right-wing, catholic Austria, Bernhard ran away from home aged fifteen. At eighteen he contracted pneumonia. Placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, he observed with unflinching acuity protracted suffering and death. From the age of twenty-one, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man's testament - his witness, the quintessence of his life and knowledge - and where this account of his life ends, his art begins.

Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography


Mark Mathabane - 1986
    Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do -- he escaped to tell about it.

Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea


Steven Callahan - 1986
    In some ways the model for the new wave of adventure books, Adrift is an undeniable seafaring classic, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived more than a month alone at sea, fighting for his life in an inflatable raft after his small sloop capsized only six days out. Adrift is a must-have for any adventure library.

One More Time


Carol Burnett - 1986
    The child of two alcoholic parents, Burnett presents a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age: from her sadly hopeful mother, who was hooked on Tinseltown fantasy, to the first signs of her own comic gift; from happy weekends spent with her father, to their last tragic meeting in a public sanatorium. Featuring a new Afterword by the author, about teaming up with her daughter to bring this story to Broadway, One More Time is an intimate, touching, and astonishing narrative of a financially desperate but emotionally rich childhood on the wrong side of Hollywood’s tracks.

Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag


Armando Valladares - 1986
    Arrested in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism, Valladares was not released until 1982, by which time he had become one of the world's most celebrated "prisoners of conscience." Interned all those years at the infamous Isla de Pinos prison (from whose windows he watched the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion), Valladares suffered endless days of violence, putrid food and squalid living conditions, while listening to Castro's firing squads eliminating "counter revolutionaries" in the courtyard below his cell. Valladares survived by prayer and by writing poetry whose publication in Europe brought his case to the attention of international figures such as French President Francois Mitterand and to human rights organizations whose constant pressure on the Castro regime finally led to his release.

I, Tina


Tina Turner - 1986
    From Nut Bush, Tennessee, to Hollywood stardom...from Ike's Kings of Rhythm to onstage with Mick Jagger and the Stones...from the lowest lows to the highest highs, Tina has seen, done, suffered and survived it all. And in her spectacular bestseller "I, TINA," she tells it like it really is...

The Cage


Ruth Minsky Sender - 1986
    Then the family is rounded up, deported to Auschwitz, and separated. Now Riva is alone. At Auschwitz, and later in the work camps at Mittlesteine and Grafenort, Riva vows to live, and to hope - for Mama, for her brothers, for the millions of other victims of the nightmare of the Holocaust. And through determination and courage, and unexpected small acts of kindness, she does live - to write the unforgettable memoir that is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

A Midwife's Story


Sheryl Feldman - 1986
    A gripping first-hand account of midwife Penny Armstrong’s journey from student midwife in Glasgow to running her own practice among the Amish in rural Pennsylvania, A Midwife’s Story never fails to enlighten, inform and surprise.Going far beyond mere biography, Armstrong’s journey of self-discovery is ultimately very moving, and it is the honesty with which she describes the world she discovers which makes this book a classic, and essential reading not just for aspiring midwives but to anyone interested in natural birth.

Emergence: Labeled Autistic


Temple Grandin - 1986
    An inspiring firsthand account of a courageous and determined autistic woman who makes a remarkable discovery that eventually helps her control her condition and virtually cure her disorder captures the isolation and fears suffered by autistic children.

Cape Horn to Starboard


John Kretschmer - 1986
    This is a notoriously difficult and dangerous passage, especially in a boat this size.

Turn: The Journal of an Artist


Anne Truitt - 1986
    The second journal of an artist by "an extraordinary woman: sensitive, intelligent, perceptive"--Doris Grumbach.

The Screaming Room: A Mother's Journal of Her Son's Struggle With AIDS--A True Story of Live, Dedication, and Courage


Barbara Peabody - 1986
    Peabody writes with a blunt straightforward style that hits home in our hearts, our minds, and our beliefs. She brings into sharp focus the very personal and real struggles that families, friends, and health care providers of AIDs patients undergo each day. This book is strongly recommended for all laypersons and health care workers for whom the term AIDS has a personal or professional significance. Mark L. Dembert, M.D., Navy Environmental Health Ctr., Norfolk, Va.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sex and Death to the Age 14


Spalding Gray - 1986
    Included are "Sex and Death at the Age of 14," "Booze, Cars, and College Girls," "47 Beds," "Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk," "Travels through New England," and "Terror of Pleasure: The House." Also includes a preface by the author.

Ahlerich: The Making of a Dressage World Champion


Reiner Klimke - 1986
    

Dune Boy: The Early Years of a Naturalist


Edwin Way Teale - 1986
    In Dune Boy, first published in 1943, he recounts these buccolic visits and his budding interest in the natural world around him. A loner, often bullied by other children, Teale escaped to the roof of the old house where he gazed at the golden dunes in the distance, and dreamed his own fantastic dreams.The young Teale was fascinated by moths, dragonflies, snakes, and the workings of the farm. He yearned to fly. He tried to hitch a calf to a cart, to ride a pig. He created a "museum" for his collections of arrowheads, stones, and fish skeletons. Most of all, he enjoyed his storytelling, hardworking grandfather, and his book-reading, equally hardworking grandmother. They reveled in and encouraged him. He returned to Lone Oak every summer until he was fifteen, when the old farm house caught fire and burned down.Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This Stubborn Soil


William A. Owens - 1986
    An eloquent chronicle of one man's insatiable desire for an education.

Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son


Adam Hochschild - 1986
    The author lyrically evokes his privileged childhood on an Adirondack estate, a colorful uncle who was a pioneer aviator and fighter ace, and his first explorations of the larger world he encountered as he came of age in the tumultuous 1960s. But above all this is a story of a father and his only son and of the unexpected peace finally made between them.

Home Life One


Alice Thomas Ellis - 1986
    She discusses the behaviour of children and animals, horticulture and neighbours to the ability of the domestic appliance to do its own thing

Born to Run


Bruce Springsteen - 1986
    

The Perfect London Walk


Roger Ebert - 1986
    Describes a walking tour in London, off the beaten path, and shares observations on British customs and history, and points of interest along the way.

Sound-Shadows of the New World


Ved Mehta - 1986
    This is the fifth in a series of autobiographical books that Ved Megta is writing about himself and his family.

The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival


Alicia Partnoy - 1986
    Smuggled out and published anonymously, The Little School is Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment.

Derek Jarman's Caravaggio: The Complete Film Script and Commentaries


Derek Jarman - 1986
    

Cambodian Witness: An Autobiography of Someth May


Someth May - 1986
    

The Woman Said Yes: Encounters with Life and Death


Jessamyn West - 1986
    In a memoir filled with compassion and deep resolve, West celebrates the lives of three women-her strong Quaker mother, her beloved and courageous sister, and herself-and gives personal insight into her own battle to survive tuberculosis.

Forty Acres and a Goat: A Memoir


Will D. Campbell - 1986
    Campbell has earned a notable place among America's favorite storytellers. Detailing his harrowing exploits during the racially charged 1960s as a liberal white man of God, this memoir brilliantly describes Campbell's attempt to live a spiritual life in a time of mistrust, racial intolerance, and violence. Despite such a dire backdrop, Campbell serves as a guide through the events with his patented humor and poignancy. In one instance he notes that black Muslims protected the grand dragon of the KKK in an upstate New York prison, demonstrating the contradictions and strange circumstances that bring people together.

Catherine Cookson Country


Catherine Cookson - 1986
    

My Longest Night


Genevieve Dubosq - 1986
    

Plaintext: Essays


Nancy Mairs - 1986
    The provocative collection includes the widely anthologized essays “On Being a Cripple” and “On Not Liking Sex.”

Full House: The Story of the Anderson Quintuplets


Karen Anderson - 1986
    

Capitol Hill In Black And White


Robert Parker - 1986
    There he heard many scandalous secrets first-hand. Now, he tells all.

A Life In Jazz


Danny Barker - 1986
    A jazz guitarist, Danny Barker played with many importantNew Orleans bands in the 1920s and then moved to New York to play with swing bands in the 1930s, notably Cab Calloway's band, at a time when several future pioneers of the bop movement were in the band, including Dizzie Gillespie. (It is Barker who made famous the scene when Gillespie and severalcohorts began playing bop during a Calloway band stage show, which produced the angry blast from Calloway, I won't have any of that Chinese music in my band!) Barker's memoirs brilliantly recreate the jazz world of New Orleans (parades, funerals, brothels, dance halls, and more) and the pioneermusicians of the day. The book is also a knowing account of the big band swing world. It will surely rank as one of the basic documents in jazz history.

Waiting in the Wings


Doreen Tovey - 1986
    But the author copes with this shattering blow, and gradually regains her sense of humor as she attempts to drive a car on her own, tow a trailer, paint a cottage, and deal with the lugubrious Mrs. Binney and the antisocial handyman Mr. Panting.