Book picks similar to
A Fence Around The Cuckoo by Ruth Park


biography
non-fiction
australian
new-zealand

The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt


Eleanor Roosevelt - 1960
    The niece of Theodore Roosevelt, she married a distant relative and Columbia University law student named Franklin Delano Roosevelt; he gradually ascended throughout the world of New York politics to reach the U.S. presidency in 1932. Throughout his three terms, Eleanor Roosevelt was not only intimately involved in FDR’s personal and political life, but led women’s organizations and youth movements and fought for consumer welfare, civil rights, and improved housing. During World War II she traveled with her husband to meet leaders of many powerful nations; after his death in 1945 she worked as a UN delegate, chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, newspaper columnist, Democratic party activist, world-traveler, and diplomat. By the end of her life, Eleanor Roosevelt was recognized throughout the world for her fortitude and commitment to the ideals of liberty and human rights. Her autobiography constitutes a self-portrait no biography can match for its candor and liveliness, its wisdom, tolerance, and breadth of view—a self-portrait of one of the greatest American humanitarians of our time.

Wonderful Tonight


Pattie Boyd - 2007
    8-page color insert.

Eggshell Skull


Bri Lee - 2018
    If a single punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime. But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done?Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case. This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.Bri Lee has written a fierce and eloquent memoir that addresses both her own reckoning with the past as well as with the stories around her, to speak the truth with wit, empathy and unflinching courage. Eggshell Skull is a haunting appraisal of modern Australia from a new and essential voice.

Me: Stories of My Life


Katharine Hepburn - 1991
    Now Miss Hepburn breaks her long-kept silence about her private life in this absorbing and provocative memoir.A NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book of the YearA Book-of-the-Month-Club Main Selection

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.

Chronicles: Volume One


Bob Dylan - 2004
    But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

It's a Long Story: My Life


Willie Nelson - 2015
    Funny. Leaving no stone unturned." . . . So say the publishers about this book I've written. What I say is that this is the story of my life, told as clear as a Texas sky and in the same rhythm that I lived it. It's a story of restlessness and the purity of the moment and living right. Of my childhood in Abbott, Texas, to the Pacific Northwest, from Nashville to Hawaii and all the way back again. Of selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias while hosting radio shows and writing song after song, hoping to strike gold. It's a story of true love, wild times, best friends, and barrooms, with a musical sound track ripping right through it. My life gets lived on the road, at home, and on the road again, tried and true, and I've written it all down from my heart to yours. Signed,Willie Nelson

Untwisted: The Story of My Life


Paul Jennings - 2020
    Sometimes, rather than making you laugh or cry out in surprise, a story will instead leave you wondering about human fragility... In the telling of his own tale, children's author and screenwriter Paul Jennings demonstrates how seemingly small events can combine into a compelling drama. As if assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, he puts together fragments, memories and anecdotes to reveal the portrait of a complex and weathered soul. 'Untwisted' is revealing, moving and very funny. It will appeal to all students of creative writing and all those who wonder about the origins and outcomes of success – and, of course, to Paul's many fans around the world.

My Own Story


Emmeline Pankhurst - 1914
    Written at the onset of the First World War, My Own Story brings attention to Pankhurst's cause while defending her decision to cease activism until the end of the war. Notable for its descriptions of the British prison system, My Own Story is an invaluable document of a life dedicated to others, of a historical moment in which an oppressed group rose up to advocate for the simplest of demands: equality.Born in a politically active household, Emmeline Pankhurst was introduced to the women's suffrage movement at a young age. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to the suffragette movement. As their speeches, rallies, and petitions failed to make headway, they turned to militant protest, and in 1908 Emmeline was arrested for attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a document to Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Imprisoned for six weeks, she observed the horrifying conditions of prison life, including solitary confinement. This experience changed her outlook on the struggle for women's suffrage, and she increasingly saw imprisonment as a means of radical publicity. Over the next several years, she would be arrested seven times for rioting, destroying property, and assaulting police officers, and while in prison staged hunger strikes in order to gain the attention of the press and political establishment. My Own Story is a record of one woman's tireless advocacy for the sake of countless others.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics


Dolly Parton - 2020
    Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished images from Dolly Parton's personal and business archives.Mining over 60 years of songwriting, Dolly Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics.• Packed with never-before-seen photographs and classic memorabilia• Explores personal stories, candid insights, and myriad memories behind the songsDolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics reveals the stories and memories that have made Dolly a beloved icon across generations, genders, and social and international boundaries. Containing rare photos and memorabilia from Parton's archives, this book is a show-stopping must-have for every Dolly Parton fan.• Learn the history behind classic Parton songs like "Jolene," "9 to 5," "I Will Always Love You," and more.• The perfect gift for Dolly Parton fans (everyone loves Dolly!) as well as lovers of music history and countryAdd it to the shelf with books like Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles, and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.

Nancy Wake


Peter FitzSimons - 2001
    While I was doing that work I used to think that it didn't matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living'.Nancy WakeIn the early 1930's, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War she was the Gestapo's most wanted person.As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazi presence. What began as a courier job here and there, became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers, perfectly camouflaged by Nancy's high-society life in Marseille. Her network was soon so successful - and so notorious - that he had to flee France to escape the Gestapo who had dubbed her 'the white mouse' for her knack of slipping through its traps.But Nancy was a passionate enemy of the Nazis and refused to stay away. She trained with the British Special Operations Executive and parachuted back into France behind enemy lines. Again, this singular woman rallied to the cause, helping to lead a powerful underground fighting force, the Maquis. Supplying weapons and training the civilian Maquis, organising Allied parachute drops, cycling four hundred kilometres across a mountain range to find a new transmitting radio - nothing seemed too difficult in her fight against the Nazis.Peter FitzSimons reveals Nancy Wake's compelling story, a tale of an ordinary woman doing extraordinary things.

My Sergei: A Love Story


Ekaterina Gordeeva - 1996
    The Olympic gold medalist offers an account of her life with her skating partner and husband, Sergei Grinkov, from their first introduction and successive skating championships, to their marriage, to the fatal heart attack that took Sergei's life.

Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman


Nuala O'Faolain - 1996
    There are thousands who have yet to discover this extraordinary memoir of an Irish woman who has stepped away from the traditional roles to define herself and find contentment. They will make this paperback a long-selling classic.

Born to Run


Bruce Springsteen - 2016
    In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.” —Bruce Springsteen, from the pages of Born to RunIn 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized. Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The River,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “The Rising,” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.

Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith


Joe Perry - 2014
    He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock-gods on stage. The nearly five-decade saga of Aerosmith is epic, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll.With record-making hits and colossal album sales, Aerosmith has earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But theirs is ultimately a story of endurance, and it starts almost half a century ago with young Perry, the rebel whose loving parents wanted him to assimilate, but who quits school because he doesn’t want to cut his hair. He meets Tyler in a restaurant in New Hampshire, sways him from pop music to rock-and-roll, and it doesn’t take long for the “Toxic Twins” to skyrocket into a world of fame and utter excess. From the mega-successful song and music video with Run DMC, “Walk This Way,” to the realization that he can’t pay his room service bill, Perry takes a personal look into the human stories behind Aerosmith, the people who enabled them, the ones who controlled them, and the ones who changed them. In his own words, Rocks is the whole story: “the loner’s story, the band’s story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, the post-destructive rebirth story.”Foreward by Johnny Depp.