Best of
Memoir

1989

Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anne Frank


Eva Schloss - 1989
    Like many jews they fled to Amsterdam where they hid from the Nazis until they were betrayed and arrested in 1944. Eva was 15 years old when she was sent to Auschwitz - the same age as her friend Anne Frank. Together with her mother she endured the daily degradation that robbed so many of their lives - including her father and brother. After the war her mother married Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the Frank family. Only now, 40 years later has Eva felt able to tell her story.

Maiden Voyage


Tania Aebi - 1989
    She was going nowhere until her father offered her a challenge. He would offer her either a college education or a twenty-six-foot sloop in which she had to sail around the world alone. She chose the boat and for two years it was her home, as she negotiated weather, illness, fear, and ultimately, a spiritual quest that brought her home to herself....From the Paperback edition.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace


Le Ly Hayslip - 1989
    When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down.The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children. Before the age of sixteen, Le Ly had suffered near-starvation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to America, she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, offering a poignant picture of Vietnam, then and now, and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story.

The Girl with the White Flag


Tomiko Higa - 1989
    There, as some of the fiercest fighting of the war rages around her, she must live alone, with nothing to fall back on but her own wits and daring. Fleeing from encroaching enemy forces, searching desperately for her lost sisters, taking scraps of food from the knapsacks of dead soldiers, risking death at every turn, Tomiko somehow finds the strength and courage to survive.Many years later she decided to tell this story. Originally intended for juvenile readers, it is sure to move adults as well, because it is such a vivid portrait of the unintended civilian casualties of any war.

It's Always Something


Gilda Radner - 1989
    I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end."The world fondly remembers the many faces of Gilda Radner: the adamant but misinformed Emily Litella; the hyperkinetic Girl Scout Judy Miller; the irrepressibly nerdy Lisa Loopner; the gross-out queen of local network news, Rosanne Rosannadanna. A supremely funny performer, Gilda lost a long and painful struggle in May 1989 to "the most unfunny thing in the world"--cancer. But the face she showed the world during this dark time was one of great courage and hope. "It's Always Something is the story of her struggle told in Gilda's own remarkable words--a personal chronicle of strength and indomitable spirit and love undiminished by the cruel ravages of disease.This is Gilda, with whom we laughed on Saturday Night Live: warm, big-hearted, outrageous, and real. This is Gilda's last gift to us: the magnificent final performance of an incomparable entertainer whose life, though tragically brief, enriched our own lives beyond measure.

The Earth Is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout & Old Men


Harry Middleton - 1989
    It is the year1965, a year rife with change in the world---and in the life of a boy whose tragic loss of innocence leads him to the healing landscape of the Ozarks. Haunted by indescribable longing, twelve-year-old Harry is turned over to two enigmatic guardians, men as old as the hills they farm and as elusive and beautiful as the trout they fish for---with religious devotion. Seeking strength and purpose from life, Harry learns from his uncle, grandfather, and their crazy Sioux neighbor, Elias Wonder, that the pulse of life beats from within the deep constancy of the earth, and from one’s devotion to it. Amidst the rhythm of an ancient cadence, Harry discovers his home: a farm, a mountain stream, and the eye of a trout rising.

A Place for Us: A Greek Immigrant Boy's Odyssey to a New Country and an Unknown Father


Nicholas Gage - 1989
    Inthis sequel to the bestselling ELENI Nicholas gage tells the moving story of meeting his father and growing up in Worcester, Mass.

The Snows of Yesteryear


Gregor von Rezzori - 1989
    Growing up after World War I and the collapse of the empire, Rezzori lived in a twilit world suspended between the formalities of the old nineteenth-century order which had shaped his aristocratic parents, and the innovations, uncertainties, and raw terror of the new century. The haunted atmosphere of this dying world is beautifully rendered in the pages of The Snows of Yesteryear. The book is a series of portraits—amused, fond, sometimes appalling—of Rezzori’s family: his hysterical and histrionic mother, disappointed by marriage, destructively obsessed with her children’s health and breeding; his father, a flinty reactionary, whose only real love was hunting; his haughty older sister, fated to die before thirty; his earthy nursemaid, who introduced Rezzori to the power of storytelling and the inevitability of death; and a beloved governess, Bunchy. Telling their stories, Rezzori tells his own, holding his early life to the light like a crystal until it shines for us with a prismatic brilliance

Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor


Judith Isaacson - 1989
    

Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet


Pauli Murray - 1989
    Roy Wilson

Approaching the Magic Hour: Memories of Walter Anderson


Agnes Grinstead Anderson - 1989
    A widow�s riveting yet poignant memoir of her marriage to a prolific creator, the extremely inspired Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson, whose splendid art was heightened and enriched by his madness

Christmas Gift!


Ferrol Sams - 1989
    Available in book form or as an unabridged audio cassette read by Sams.

I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes


Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer - 1989
    She has never spoken a word; never walked, never fed herself, never combed her own hair. Trapped in a body that is functionally useless, her mind works perfectly. This is her story. Absorbing and heartbreaking, it was written with the collaboration of Ruth's friend, Steven Kaplan. Without any self pity Ruth recounts her early childhood with a loving family and some happy years at a rehabilitation center, then virtual incarceration at the notorious Belchertown State School in Massachusetts. After 16 years she was released and now she enjoys a life of purpose and personal triumph. I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes will permanently alter your perception of the severely disabled and it will inspire you with the extraordinary power of love, thought, and the human spirit.

The Road from Coorain


Jill Ker Conway - 1989
    At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slide—bereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled her—into depression and dependency.We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planet—the suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessons—Jill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self.Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to place—or to a dream—can at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free.

Sweet Summer: Growing up with and without My Dad


Bebe Moore Campbell - 1989
    I am grateful for Bebe Moore Campbell and for such a Sweet Summer." --Maya Angelou"Mature insight, as well as a deft gift for language, gives this memoir its poignant, honest shape." --Chicago Tribune"An uplifting reflection on family love." --San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle"A remarkable achievement." --Philadelphia Inquirer"Poignant...a beautiful tribute." --Newsday"Campbell is a master." --Entertainment Weekly"Touching....[A] candid account and loving tribute to a special man." --New York Daily News

Education of a Wandering Man


Louis L'Amour - 1989
    Like classic L'Amour fiction, Education of a Wandering Man mixes authentic frontier drama--such as the author's desperate efforts to survive a sudden two-day trek across the blazing Mojave desert--with true-life characters like Shanghai waterfront toughs, desert prospectors, and cowboys whom Louis L'Amour met while traveling the globe. At last, in his own words, this is a story of a one-of-a-kind life lived to the fullest . . . a life that inspired the books that will forever enable us to relive our glorious frontier heritage.

I'm Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten


Eartha Kitt - 1989
    She is still drawing crowds to her concerts and cabaret appearances. She is a familiar face on television and films and her voice is heard by taxi riders of N.Y.C. Ms. Kitt is forthright in talking about her relationships with the great and near-great personalities of the past half century.

Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker's State


Rostislav Dubinsky - 1989
    Dubinsky was the founder and for 30 years the first violinist of the Borodin String Quartet, one of the supreme ensembles of its kind. Here he describes a musician's life under a totalitarian regime: the soul-destroying restrictions and constant dangers, exacerbated by a pervasive anti-Semitism--officially illegal but actively encouraged and ruthlessly practiced by the authorities. The quartet's original players were all Jews, though the cellist was a half-Jew who passed as Russian; the second violinist and violist were eventually replaced by Russians. Dubinsky was the "artistic director" in charge of rehearsals and musical decisions, but the quartet's activities, including the members' personal interrelationships, were completely dominated by politics. And indeed so is the narrative: Dubinsky only rarely talks about music, though always movingly and with insight, and never explains how the group attained its greatness. Certain scenes stand out: Stalin's and Prokofiev's deaths on the same day; vignettes of Russia's greatest musicians, such as Shostakovich (whose quartets they played), Oistrakh, Richter, and Rostropovich; the group's tours abroad, affording the first, overwhelmingly tempting glimpse of freedom; an anti-Russian demonstration in Cincinnati, defused when Dubinsky confronted the crowd; and the cellist's near-fatal automobile accident in California. Ever present is the paralyzing fear of the mercenary, soulless Russian bureaucracy. Dubinsky emigrated to America in 1975, formed the Borodin Trio with his wife, pianist Luba Edina, and was chairman of the Chamber Music Department at Indiana University until his death not long ago. --Edith Eisler

Conversations with Maya Angelou


Jeffrey M. Elliot - 1989
    I had obviously been invented by someone else–by a whole society– and I did't like their invention.All those years in that little town in Arkansas, I learned through the literature. So much that when I later grew to be six feet tall, and at sixteen had a child and was unmarried, years later I decided that this is my world. My grandparents' and great grandparents' and great, great, great grandparents' blood and sweat enriched this soil. So this is my country.The black writer in particular should throw out all of that propaganda and pressure, disbelieve everything one is told to believe and believe everything one is told not to believe. Start with a completely clean slate and decide, "I will put it out."To begin with, if you're black and every model of beauty is either white or dark-skinned black, then it has to create some insecurity in a person like me, who couldn't conform. But I was blessed with the advantage of anger. It was a kind of hauteur. I could withdraw from such plebeian company and stand tall and sneer.

Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath


John Steinbeck - 1989
    Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion.The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions—of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American masterpiece.

Sketches from a Life


George F. Kennan - 1989
    Whether relating the perils of Hitler's Germany or revisiting Kennan's days as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sketches from a Life is as riveting as great literature, and one of the most invaluable documents of our time.

Double Feature


Terence Stamp - 1989
    His tales include mixing with stars and Hollywood directors, and meeting Jean Shrimpton, the girl of his dreams.

A Year in Provence


Peter Mayle - 1989
    He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

The Scent of Snowflowers


R.L. Klein - 1989
    The effects of the war were felt, to be sure: all able-bodied males over 18 years of age had been drafted into slave-labor camps; food and fuel supplies were short; and for the first time in their lives, Jewish women went out to work. But for the most part, life went on in Budapest as it always had and the loyal Jewish citizens remained blissfully ignorant of the holocaust that raged on all sides.Little more than a child when she married, Rivka Leah Klein found her beautiful, tranquil world torn apart by the War. This memoir, eloquently written and eminently compelling, takes the reader back in time, to an era of ruthlessness, terror, and devastation, while painting vivid lessons for life in faith and fortitude. An electrifying, stirring read.

Hurdles Of Life "1 Litre Of Tears," Notes From Mother [Japanese Edition]


木藤 潮香 - 1989
    

Family


Susan Hill - 1989
    This is the true story of her quest for motherhood, and the death of her daughter, at five weeks old.

Neon Angel


Cherie Currie - 1989
    The author recounts her teenaged years as the lead singer of the all-girl rock band, the Runaways, her career as a movie actress, and her battle with drugs and alcohol.

True North: A Journey into Unexplored Wilderness


Elliott Merrick - 1989
    One exception was twenty-four-year-old Elliott Merrick, who in 1929 left his advertising job in New Jersey and moved to Labrador, one of Canada’s most remote regions. First published by Scribner’s in 1933, True North tells the captivating story of one of the high points of Merrick’s years there: a hunting trip he and his wife, Kay, made with trapper John Michelin in 1930. Covering 300 miles over a harsh winter, they experienced an unexplored realm of nature at its most intense and faced numerous challenges. Merrick accidentally shot himself in the thigh and almost cut off his toe. Freezing cold and hunger were constant. Nonetheless, the group found beauty and even magic in the stark landscape. The couple and the trappers bonded with each other and their environment through such surprisingly daunting tasks as fabricating sunglasses to avoid snow blindness and learning to wash underwear without it freezing. Merrick’s intimate style, rich with narrative detail, brings readers into a dramatic story of survival and shares the lesson the Merricks learned: that the greatest satisfaction in life can come from the simplest things.

On the Far Side of Liglig Mountain: Adventures of an American Family in Nepal


Thomas Hale - 1989
    With beguiling humor and humility, Dr. Hale recounts his often amazing (and sometimes almost unbelievable) experiences in bringing western medicine to people who distrust -- even fear -- the introduction of ideas different from their own. He and his family work as a team to dispel that distrust and fear, and in the process have experienced incredible adventures. On the Far Side of Liglig Mountain is a book about - faith and courage - laughter and loving your neighbor - the hardships and the blessings of self-denial -- a book that you will not easily lay aside. Just as he has gained the trust and affection of his Nepalese patients and neighbors by his love for people and his eagerness to share his love of Christ, Thomas Hale will captivate the reader with his intriguing account of the joys and realities of ministering to the human condition.

Downstream from Trout Fishing in America: A Memoir of Richard Brautigan


Keith Abbott - 1989
    10 photos.

Straight from the Heart: My Life in Politics and Other Places


Ann Richards - 1989
    Ann Richards--keynote speaker of the 1988 Democratic convention and front-runner in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial race--offers a smart, candid look at her life in politics and the struggles she has won.

When Summer's in the Meadow


Niall Williams - 1989
    Details the experiences of two novice farmers on a farm in western Ireland, relating their experiences at animal husbandry, their attempts to have a child, and their assimilation into Irish life.

Being Brown: A Very Public Life


Rosemary Brown - 1989
    

Saddletramp


Jeremy James - 1989
    Jeremy arrived in Turkey in the winter of 1987, spending some time looking for a horse before finding Ahmed Pa a, an untried, old and wormy Arab stallion who had never before been ridden. The two of them set out across Turkey on an unplanned route with an inaccurate compass, unreadable map and the unfailing aid of villagers who seemed to have as little sense of direction as he had. He found himself in difficulties often, once having to swim a mile-wide river estuary with Ahmed Pa a, and on another occasion having to scramble down a cliff face together. They regularly slept out, sharing meals, bugs and discomfort. Unable to take his beloved horse out of Turkey he then went to Greece where he bought Maria, a three-year-old unbroken filly, property of the local knackerman. Again, foiled by bureaucracy, he left Maria with friends at the Greek border and bought Gonzo, his third horse, in Italy. They travelled haphazardly up through Umbria and Tuscany, then over the Alps and into the French wine harvest, where both of them sampled the local drink, and suffered the consequences. They arrived in Britain in November. By turns thoughtful and sensitive, he paints a remarkable picture of rural life, taking the reader through the extremes of climate he met, the four seasons and four countries he passed through. Jeremy s descriptions of the places he found himself in with his horses will captivate readers and leave them with the scent of leather, horses, and the lingering taste of vin du paradis.

Lima-6


R.D. Camp - 1989
    As much as it is about the Vietnam War, Lima-6 is also a candid account of the camaraderie that a Marine infantry company forges in battle, and the compelling human drama of an infantry company at war as seen through the eyes of a lonely leader upon whom all others depend for guidance and strength.

No Love Without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva's Daughter


Ariadna Efron - 1989
    Never before translated into English, these memoirs provide the insider’s view of Tsvetaeva’s daughter and "first reader."No Love Without Poetry gives us Efron’s wrenching story of the difficulty of living with genius. The hardships imposed by early twentieth-century Russian political upheaval placed incredible strain on her already fraught, intense relationship with her mother. Efron recounts the family’s travels from Moscow to Germany, to Czechoslovakia, and finally to France, where, against her mother’s advice, Efron decided to return to Russia. Nemec Ignashev draws on new materials, including Efron’s short stories and her mother’s recently published notebooks, to supplement the original memoirs. No Love Without Poetry completes extant historical records on Marina Tsvetaeva and establishes Ariadna Efron as a literary force.

Down to Earth: Taking the Biscuit


Faith Addis - 1989
    

Jean Howard's Hollywood: A Photo Memoir


Jean Howard - 1989
    346 duotone photos.

An Autobiography of Black Chicago


Dempsey J. Travis - 1989
    This seminal paperback reissue, An Autobiography of Black Chicago, emulates the best works of Studs Terkel � portraying the African American Chicago community through the personal experiences of Dempsey Travis, his family, and his fellow Chicagoans. Through his family's and his own experiences, plus those of the book's numerous well-respected contributors, Travis tells a comprehensive, intimate story of African Americans in Chicago. Starting with John Baptiste Point du Sable, who was the first non�Native American to settle on the mouth of the Chicago River, and ending with Travis's successes providing equal housing opportunities for Chicago African Americans, An Autobiography of Black Chicago acquaints the reader with the city's most prominent African American figures � told through their own words.

In the Shadow of the Sacred Grove


Carol Spindel - 1989
    The author brings to life a world of herders, potters, farmers and diviners--all the rituals and the daily life of an Ivory Coast community.

Morphine, Ice Cream, Tears: Tales of a City Hospital


Joseph Sacco - 1989
    

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth in America (1945-1962): The Story of One Western Convert's Quest for Truth


Maryam Jameelah - 1989
    An epistolary memoir of the author's life in the United States.

Enchanted Cornwall: Her Pictorial Memoir


Daphne du Maurier - 1989
    Her narrative is interlaced with selections from her novels and stories and her autobiographical writings.

Tales of an American Hobo


Charles Elmer Fox - 1989
    From Indiana to British Columbia, from Arkansas to Texas, from Utah to Mexico, he was part of the grand hobo tradition that has all but passed away from American life.He camped in hobo jungles, slept under bridges and in sand houses at railroad yards, ate rattlesnake meat, fresh California grapes, and fish speared by the Indians of the Northwest. He quickly learned both the beauty and the dangers of his chosen way of life. One lesson learned early on was that there are distinct differences among hoboes, tramps, and bums. As the all-time king of hoboes, Jeff Davis, used to say, "Hoboes will work, tramps won't, and bums can't."Tales of an American Hobo is a lasting legacy to conventional society, teaching about a bygone era of American history and a rare breed of humanity who chose to live by the rails and on the road.

Caucasian Journey


Negley Farson - 1989
    The intrepid reporter saddled up in the spring of 1929, accompanied by an aging, eccentric Englishman who lived in Moscow. With no prior equestrian travel experience between them, the two would-be explorers were soon discovering the harsh realities of life on the road. They were lashed by hailstorms, threatened by skeptical Soviet commissars, denied shelter by suspicious natives, and spent night after night in rain-soaked misery.A personal chronicle of an already exciting life, “Caucasian Journey” tells how Farson also discovered the seldom-seen splendors of this mountainous region with its alpine snowfields painted gold by the sun, picturesque villages forgotten by the outer world, and magnificent horsemen who were practically born in the saddle.A thrilling account and a poetic remembrance, “Caucasian Journey” is an amply illustrated adventure classic.

For the Love of Lesley: The Moors Murders Remembered by a Victim's Mother


Ann West - 1989