Within hours, police had a suspect—a vodka-soaked village bumpkin named Anzor Sharmaidze. A tidy explanation quickly followed: It was a tragic accident. US diplomats hailed Georgia’s swift work, and both countries breathed a sigh of relief. Yet the bullet that killed Woodruff was never found and key witnesses have since retracted their testimony, saying they were beaten and forced to identify Sharmaidze. But if he didn’t do it, who did? Those who don’t buy the official explanation think the answer lies in the spy games that played out on Russia’s frontier following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Woodruff was an early actor in a dangerous drama. American spies were moving into newborn nations previously dominated by Soviet intelligence. Russia’s security apparatus, resentful and demoralized, was in turmoil, its nominal loyalty to a pro-Western course set by President Boris Yeltsin, shredded by hardline spooks and generals who viewed the Americans as a menace. At the time when Woodruff was stationed there, Georgia was a den of intrigue. It had a big Russian military base and was awash with former and not-so-former Soviet agents. Shortly before Woodruff was shot, veteran CIA officer Aldrich Ames—who would soon be unmasked as a KGB mole—visited him on agency business. In short order, Woodruff would be dead and Ames, in prison for life. Buckle up, because The Spy Who Was Left Behind reveals the full-throttle, little-known thrilling tale.

    Born under an Assumed Name portrays the thrilling and confusing life of a girl growing up abroad in a world of secrecy and diplomacy—and the heavy toll it takes on her and her father. As Taber leads us on a tour through the alluring countries to which her father is assigned, we track two parallel stories—those of young Sara and her Cold War spy father. Sara struggles for normalcy as the family is relocated to cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the constant upheaval eventually exacts its price. Only after a psychiatric hospitalization at age sixteen in a U.S. Air Force hospital with shell-shocked Vietnam War veterans does she come to a clear sense of who she is. Meanwhile, Sara's sweet-natured, philosophical father becomes increasingly disillusioned with his work, his agency, and his country. This is the question at the heart of this elegant and sophisticated work: what does it mean to be an American? In this fascinating, painful, and ultimately exhilarating coming-of-age story, young Sara confronts generosity, greatness, and tragedy—all that America heaps on the world.

    From her bestselling novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, to her brilliant memoir, Drinking the Rain, she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter--discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. Told with the grace, clarity, and insight we have come to expect from her, A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Shulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.

    The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their story - a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them - the School of the Holy Ghost - and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common."A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change - to save - our lives.

    She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive."

    A descendent of Founding Father John Jay, Susan Mary was an American aristocrat whose first marriage gave her full access to post-war diplomatic social life in Paris. There, her circle of friends included Winston Churchill, Isaiah Berlin, Evelyn Waugh, and Christian Dior, among other luminaries, and she had a passionate love affair with British ambassador Duff Cooper. During the golden years of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—after she had married the powerful journalist Joe Alsop—her Washington home was a gathering place for everyone of importance, including Katharine Graham, Robert McNamara, and Henry Kissinger. Dubbed “the second lady of Camelot,” she hosted dinner parties that were the epitome of political power and social arrival, bringing together the movers and shakers not just of the United States, but of the world. Featuring an introduction by Susan Mary Alsop’s goddaughter Frances FitzGerald, American Lady is a fascinating chronicle of a woman who witnessed, as Nancy Mitford once said, “history on the boil.”

    Compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after Fitzgerald's death, "The Crack-Up" tells the story of Fitzgerald's sudden descent at age thirty-nine from a life of success and glamor to one of emptiness and despair, and his determined recovery. This vigorous and revealing collection of essays and letters renders the tale of a man whose personality still charms us all and whose reckless gaiety and genious made him a living symbol and the Jazz Age. For those who grew up with "The Great Gatsby" or "Tender is the Night," this extraordinary autobiographical collection provides a unique personal blend of the romance and reality embodied by Fitzgerald's literature and his life.

    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.

    These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

    Bundy was an exceptionally evil, well-organized and calculating criminal who used his knowledge of law enforcement techniques to elude capture for years. The crime scenes, where he murdered women, were scattered over such wide geographic areas that it took police a very long time to recognize it was the work of one man. His fingerprints were never found at the scenes of the crimes and he had a strange chameleon-like ability to change his appearance at will. As one person said, 'Ted lured females the way a lifeless silk flower can dupe a honey bee.' All of Bundy's victims were white females, mainly college students aged between 15 and 25. He confessed to 30 killings but the real figure could have been 100 or more.

    Almost two hundred years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, constantly open to revival and reinterpretation and known to millions of people through film and television adaptations as much as through her books. In Jane's Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography―of both the author and her lasting cultural influence―making this essential reading for anyone interested in Austen's life, works, and remarkably potent fame.

    In the first week of October, 1918, six hundred men charged into the forbidding Argonne Forest. Against all odds, they surged through enemy lines--alone. They were soon surrounded and besieged. As they ran out of ammunition, water, and food, the battalion withstood constant mortar attack and relentless enemy assaults. Seven days later, only 194 soldiers from the original unit walked out of the forest. The stand of the "Lost Battalion" was--and remains--an unprecedented display of heroism under fire.The narrative of Never in Finer Company focuses on the stories of four men: the battalion's commander, Major Charles Whittlesey, a lawyer eager to prove his mettle; his New York stockbroker executive officer, Captain George McMurtry; Sergeant Alvin York, whose famous exploits help rescue the battalion; and Damon Runyon, the soon-to-be famous newspaper man who struggled to understand the events he witnessed. From the patriotic frenzy that sent young men "over there" to the hurried stateside training, shipping overseas, and encounters with life at the front, each man trod a unique path to the October days that engulfed them. And their stories did not end on the battlefield--each man was haunted by the experience as America tried to come to grips with the carnage of the war.Character-rich, abundantly textured, sometimes tragic, sometimes uplifting, but always compelling, Never in Finer Company is a deeply moving and dramatic story on an epic scale.

    And nobody witnessed Garland's fierce talent at closer range than Stevie Phillips. During the Mad Men era, Stevie Philips was a young woman muscling her way into the manscape of Manhattan's glittering office towers. After a stint as a secretary, she began working for Freddie Fields and David Begelman at Music Corporation of America (MCA) under the glare of legendary über-agent Lew Wasserman.When MCA blew apart, Fields and Begelman created Creative Management Associates (CMA), and Stevie went along. Fields convinced Garland to come on board, and Stevie became, as she puts it, "Garland's shadow," putting out fires-figurative and literal-in order to get her to the next concert in the next down-and-out town. Philips paints a portrait of Garland at the bitter end and although it was at times a nightmare, Philips says, "She became my teacher," showing her "how to" and "how not to" live.Stevie also represented Garland's fiercely talented daughter, Liza Minnelli, as well as Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, George Roy Hill, Bob Fosse, Cat Stevens, and David Bowie. She produced both films and Broadway shows and counted her colleague, the legendary agent Sue Mengers, among her closest confidantes. Now Stevie Phillips reveals all in Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me..., a tough-talking memoir by a woman who worked with some of the biggest names in show business. It's a helluva ride.

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    Perry captures Rose Kennedy's essential contributions to the incomparable Kennedy dynasty. This biography--the first to draw on an invaluable cache of Rose's newly released diaries and letters--unearths the complexities behind the impeccable persona she showed the world. The woman who emerges in these pages is a fascinating character: savvy about her family's reputation and resilient enough to persevere through the unfathomable tragedies that befell her. As a young woman, she defied her father, Boston mayor John Fitzgerald, by marrying ambitious businessman Joseph Kennedy. During Joe's diplomatic career, she began carefully calibrating her family's image, stage-managing photo shoots and interviews of her nine children and herself. After husband Joe's isolationist views on the eve of World War II made him a political liability, Rose took to the campaign trail for son Jack. Her perfectionism, initially a response to the strictures imposed on Catholic women, ultimately created a family portrait that resonated in modern politics and media. Perry's account looks past the fanfare, poignantly revealing the matriarch's vulnerability. Rose sought solace from crushing personal tragedies and a philandering husband in prayer, habitual shopping, travel, and medication. Initially ashamed and afraid of daughter Rosemary's mental disability, Rose ultimately shined a light on the affliction, raising millions of dollars for disabled children. An indefatigable campaigner for Jack, Bobby, and Teddy, she had an unshakable Catholic faith that informed their compassionate social policies and her daughters' philanthropies.The definitive biography, Rose Kennedy provides unequaled access to the life of a remarkable woman who witnessed a century of history and masked her family's more inconvenient truths while capturing the American imagination.