In the first comprehensive biography of John Fante, one of the great lost souls of twentieth-century literature, Stephen Cooper untangles the enigma of an authentic American original. By turns savage and poetic, violent and full of love, such underground novels as The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust; and Wait Until Spring, Bandini simultaneously reveal and disguise their author. Born in 1909 to poor Italian American parents in Colorado, Fante ventured west in 1930 to become a writer. Eventually settling in Los Angeles' faded downtown area of Bunker Hill, Fante starved between menial Depression-era jobs while writing story after story about the world he knew-full of poverty, hatred, and the madness of love. His first stories were published by H. L. Mencken in the American Mercury, but Fante also made a career in Hollywood working with the likes of Orson Welles and Darryl F. Zanuck. By the time of his death, though, he was nearly forgotten. Fortunately, readers such as Charles Bukowski began to recognize that Ask the Dust stands alongside the best work of Nathanael West and Sherwood Anderson. This exacting and vivid biography will help secure Fante's place in the American literary pantheon.

    An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours.He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical—though not most profound—political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances, local lending libraries and national legislatures. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation's federal compromise. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism.But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow "leather-aprons" more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

    The Romantic Egoists draws almost entirely from the scrap books and photograph albums which the Fitzgeralds scrupulously kept as their personal record. That record contains a wealth of material that had never before published.In a unique and permanent way this book gives Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's own story. The variety is surprising: a dance program of Zelda Sayre's; Scott's thoughts about his early loves in St. Paul, Minn.; a picture of the country club in Montgomery, Alabama, where the first two met; reviews of This Side of Paradise; poems to them from Ring Lardner; snapshots of their trips abroad; Scott's careful accounting of his earnings; a photograph of the house on Long Island where The Great Gatsby was conceived; the postcards drawn by Scott for his daughter. It all combines into a narrative in which the rare pictures and memorabilia are augmented by selections from Scott and Zelda's own writings, setting the spirit of a particular moment in their lives. Scottie Fitzgerald Smith says in her introduction, "We've tried hard to balance the literary with the personal, and the familiar with the more obscure...to make it their book, rather than a book about them."The Romantic Egoists has a special feature - a section of eight pages in color of Zelda Fitzgerald's paintings, most of them now reproduced for the first time.

    He left an enduring mark on our language and culture, with concepts such as 'Big Brother' and 'Room 101.' His reputation rests not only on his political shrewdness and his sharp satires (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four) but also on his marvellously clear style and superb essays, which rank with the best ever written. Gordon Bowker's new biography includes fascinating new material which brings Orwell'slife into unfamiliar focus. He writes revealingly about Orwell's family background; the lasting influence of Eton on his work and character; his superstitious streak and youthful flirtation with black magic; and his chaotic and reckless sex life, which included at least one homoerotic relationship. It highlights the strange circumstances of his first marriage and provides remarkable new evidence of his experiences in Spain and their nightmarish consequences. It also offers a fresh look at his peculiar deathbed marriage to a woman fifteen years his junior. All this has enabled Bowker to give Orwell's life a brilliantly fresh and distinctive interpretation.

     Robert Dallek succeeds as no other biographer has done in striking a critical balance -- never shying away from JFK's weaknesses, brilliantly exploring his strengths -- as he offers up a vivid portrait of a bold, brave, complex, heroic, human Kennedy.

    Jackson J. Benson's definitive biography explores every aspect of the author's life-his campaigns for the rights of the little people; his stand on the Vietnam War; his Hollywood film scripts; and his ongoing difficulties with fame, the press, and lack of privacy-to reveal the private man behind the public persona.* Winner of the PEN-USA West award for non-fictionAuthor Bio: Jackson J. Benson has published nine books on modern American literature, including Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, which won the David Woolley and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography award presented by Utah State University.

    

    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.

    Failing to take a degree, he struggled for more than a decade to establish himself as a writer, always putting his work first. Eventually he enjoyed an extraordinary period of creativity during which he summoned a powerful vision of the Depression. Books such as Of Mice and Men, The Long Valley, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath became battle cries that aroused international indignation and brought Steinbeck a world audience.Jay Parini explores Steinbeck's love-hate relationship with Hollywood and Broadway, his career as a war correspondent, his difficult first and second marriages, and his often tempestuous associations with numerous celebrities, among them Joseph Campbell, Charlie Chaplin, Lyndon Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Drawing on interviews with dozens of people who knew Steinbeck intimately - including his beloved third wife, Elaine - and on published and unpublished letters, diaries, and manuscripts, John Steinbeck is both an important reassessment and a masterful portrait of one of the greatest American novelists.Includes bibliographical references (p. [489-506]) and index

    MacArthur, the public figure, the private man, the soldier-hero whose mystery and appeal created a uniquely American legend, portrayed in a biography that will challenge the cherished myths of admirers and critics alike.IllustrationsPreamble: ReveilleFirst Call Ruffles & Flourishes (1880-1917)Charge (1917-1918) Call to Quarters (1919-1935)To the Colors (1935-1941)Retreat (1941-1942) The Green War (1942-1944)At High Port (1944-1945)Last Post (1945-1950) Sunset Gun (1950-1951) Recall (1951) Taps (1951-1964)AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyCopyright AcknowledgmentsIndex

    Their romance on and off screen made them Hollywood's most celebrated couple and together they produced some of the most electric scenes in movie history. But when Bogart died of cancer in 1957, Bacall had to find a way of living beyond the fairytale and ironic way she had evolved. In a time of post war communism, Hollywood blacklisting and revolutionary politics she moved with the legends: Hemingway, the Oliviers, Katharine Hepburn, Bobby Kennedy, an engagement to Frank Sinatra and a second turbulent marriage to Jason Robards. Now at 80, BY MYSELF AND THEN SOME brings her story up to date including her recent films and Broadway runs, fond memories of her children and many close lifelong friendships, not least the greatest love of her life, Humphrey Bogart.

    Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all."Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.

    It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

    Thirty years in the writing and drawn from a voluminous fund of letters and diaries, this exemplary biography conveys both the imaginative fancy and human complexity of the creator of Alice in Wonderland. Photos.

    Hemingway is considered one of the greatest writers in modern history, and his novels and stories are read, studied, and imitated around the world. His concise prose style earned him both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. But Hemingway also had a temper and a fondness for drinking and carousing that caused his work to suffer. He was a complex man, a hotheaded starter of arguments and a romantic who married four times. He, perhaps more than any other American writer, truly lived what he wrote. All this makes for a fascinating read. Author Catherine Reef has crafted a compelling biography that is not only a highly enjoyable account of an extraordinary life, but an accessible and tempting introduction to the work of one of our most revered--and sometimes reviled--American icons.