Book picks similar to
John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson
biography
non-fiction
nonfiction
biography-memoir
C. S. Lewis: Christian and Storyteller
Beatrice Gormley - 1997
Readers of all ages will enjoy stories of Lewis's boyhood in Ireland and the imaginary world he and his brother created. They will also gain an understanding of Lewis's quest for joy, his personal struggles, and the ways his stories reflect his deep and powerful experience of God.
Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1981
This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth."Vonnegut is at the top of his form, and it is wonderful."--Newsday
Joni: An Unforgettable Story
Joni Eareckson Tada - 1976
She went from being an active young woman to facing every day in a wheelchair. In this unforgettable autobiography, Joni reveals each step of her struggle to accept her disability and discover the meaning of her life. The hard-earned truths she discovers and the special ways God reveals his love are testimonies to faith's triumph over hardship and suffering.The new 25th Anniversary edition of this award-winning story--which has more than 3,000,000 copies in print in over 40 languages--will introduce a new generation of readers to the incredible greatness of God's power and mercy at work in those who fully give their hearts and lives to him. Joni has written an afterword in which she describes the events that have occurred in her life since the book's publication in 1976, including her marriage to Ken Tada and the expansion of her worldwide ministry to families affected by disability.Joni is now available for the first time in an unabridged audio version read by the author.
Melville: His World and Work
Andrew Delbanco - 2005
With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and in conversations with friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne and with his literary cronies in Manhattan — an incomparable chapter of American history. From the bawdy storytelling of Typee to the spiritual preoccupations building up to and beyond Moby Dick, Delbanco brilliantly illuminates Melville’s life and work, and his crucial role as a man of American letters.
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
Jon Meacham - 2008
Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson's election in 1828 ushered in a new and lasting era in which the people, not distant elites, were the guiding force in American politics. Democracy made its stand in the Jackson years, and he gave voice to the hopes and the fears of a restless, changing nation facing challenging times at home and threats abroad. To tell the saga of Jackson's presidency, acclaimed author Jon Meacham goes inside the Jackson White House. Drawing on newly discovered family letters and papers, he details the human drama-the family, the women, and the inner circle of advisers- that shaped Jackson's private world through years of storm and victory.One of our most significant yet dimly recalled presidents, Jackson was a battle-hardened warrior, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the architect of the presidency as we know it. His story is one of violence, sex, courage, and tragedy. With his powerful persona, his evident bravery, and his mystical connection to the people, Jackson moved the White House from the periphery of government to the center of national action, articulating a vision of change that challenged entrenched interests to heed the popular will- or face his formidable wrath. The greatest of the presidents who have followed Jackson in the White House-from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Truman-have found inspiration in his example, and virtue in his vision.Jackson was the most contradictory of men. The architect of the removal of Indians from their native lands, he was warmly sentimental and risked everything to give more power to ordinary citizens. He was, in short, a lot like his country: alternately kind and vicious, brilliant and blind; and a man who fought a lifelong war to keep the republic safe-no matter what it took.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Ernest J. Gaines - 1971
She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.
Black Boy
Richard Wright - 1945
An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.
Oscar Wilde
Richard Ellmann - 1987
alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.
Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg
Carolyn Cassady - 1990
In 1948, at the age of 25, she married Neal Cassady. Less than ten years after their marriage, he had become a living legend, his wild spirit immortalized in the character of Dean Moriarty, the heroic traveller in Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Carolyn Cassady reveals how she had to compete for Neal's attention with his friends and lovers. Their marriage at first alienated poet Allen Ginsberg, who wanted Neal to himself. Even after the civil ceremony, Neal continued to see and test other women.
Settle for More
Megyn Kelly - 2016
She goes behind-the-scenes of her career, sharing the stories and struggles that landed her in the anchor chair and taught her to ask the tough questions. Speaking candidly about her decision to "settle for more"—a motto she credits as having dramatically transformed her life at home and at work—Megyn discusses how she abandoned a thriving legal career to follow her journalism dreams.Admired for her hard work, humor, and authenticity, Megyn sheds light on the news business, her time at Fox News, the challenges of being a professional woman and working mother, and her most talked about television moments. She also speaks openly about Donald Trump’s feud with her, revealing never-before-heard details about the first Republican debate, its difficult aftermath, and how she persevered through it all.Deeply personal and surprising, Settle for More offers unparalleled insight into this charismatic and intriguing journalist, and inspires us all to embrace the principles—determination, honesty, and fortitude in the face of fear—that have won her fans across the political divide.
Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
Mimi Alford - 2010
She'd attended the same exclusive girls' school as Jackie Bouvier, now installed in the White House as the first lady. Which is also where Mimi found herself, as an 18-year-old intern. JFK's White House was a place for which she wasn't remotely prepared, dominated by the charismatic & sexually rapacious figure of the president. Within four days, they'd started a relationship. There are several extraordinary things about Mimi's story. One is that she'd evaded notice from any of the biographers of JFK & other chroniclers of the heady days & sexual shenanigans of Camelot. Only by chance did a reporter in 2006 follow up a mention of her name in a JFK book, & doorstep her--a married NY grandmother--to find out whether she was the Mimi Beardsely mentioned in a passing reference. This is all the more surprising given the length of the affair--18 months--& the fact that it was ended only by his death. Mimi Beardsley Alford has decided, after decades of silence & reflection, to tell her story. This is not just a memoir of a young woman of her generation & class coming of age in the 60s, & her relationship with JFK. She also examines the significance it had in her life & relationships since, why she chose to be silent for so long & why she feels this is the time to speak out.
Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag
Sigrid Nunez - 2011
Sontag introduced Núñez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. Soon Núñez moved into the apartment that Rieff and Sontag shared. As Sontag told Núñez, “Who says we have to live like everyone else?”Sontag’s influence on Núñez, who went on to become a successful novelist, would be profound. Described by Núñez as “a natural mentor,” who saw educating others as both a moral obligation and a source of endless pleasure, Sontag inevitably infected those around her with her many cultural and intellectual passions. In this poignant, intimate memoir, Núñez speaks of her gratitude for having had, as an early model, “someone who held such an exalted, unironic view of the writer’s vocation.” For Sontag, she writes, “there could be no nobler pursuit, no greater adventure, no more rewarding quest.” Núñez gives a sharp sense of the charged, polarizing atmosphere that enveloped Sontag whenever she published a book, gave a lecture, or simply walked into a room. Published more than six years after Sontag’s death, Sempre Susan is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History
Norman Mailer - 1968
Winner of America’s two highest literary awards, The Armies of the Night uniquely and unforgettably captures the Sixties’ tidal wave of love and rage at its crest and a towering genius at his peak. The time is October 21, 1967. The place is Washington, D.C. Depending on the paper you read, 20,000 to 200,000 protestors are marching to end the war in Vietnam, while helicopters hover overhead and federal marshals and soldiers with fixed bayonets await them on the Pentagon steps. Among the marchers is a writer named Norman Mailer. From his own singular participation in the day’s events and his even more extraordinary perceptions comes a classic work that shatters the mold of traditional reportage. Intellectuals and hippies, clergymen and cops, poets and army MPs crowd the pages of a book in which facts are fused with techniques of fiction to create the nerve-end reality of experiential truth.
Jane Austen: A Life
Carol Shields - 2001
In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award–winning novelist, Carol Shields’s magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
Stacy Schiff - 1999
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.