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Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
Julie Andrews Edwards - 2008
But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until now.In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world's most famous nanny.Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents' painful divorce; her mother's turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie's professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom.Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter, Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond.Julie Andrews' career has flourished over seven decades. From her legendary Broadway performances, to her roles in such iconic films as The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, 10, and The Princess Diaries, to her award-winning television appearances, multiple album releases, concert tours, international humanitarian work, best-selling children's books, and championship of literacy, Julie's influence spans generations. Today, she lives with her husband of thirty-eight years, the acclaimed writer/director Blake Edwards; they have five children and seven grandchildren.
Alicia
Alicia Appleman-Jurman - 1988
Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality.
In Contempt
Christopher Darden - 1996
Simpson trial and shares the author's observations on legal strategy, racial issues, and the principal lawyers, officials, and witnesses involved in the case.
Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home
Laura Ling - 2010
This riveting true account of the first ever trial of an American citizen in North Korea’s highest court carries readers deep inside the world’s most secretive nation while it poignantly explores the powerful, inspiring bonds of sisterly love.
Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir
Domingo Martinez - 2012
Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author’s boyhood spent in his sister’s hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring, complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed but fiercely protective older brother, Daniel. It features a cast of memorable characters, including his gun-hoarding former farmhand, Gramma, and “the Mimis”— two of his older sisters who for a short, glorious time manage to transform themselves from poor Latina adolescents into upper-class white girls. Martinez provides a glimpse into a society where children are traded like commerce, physical altercations routinely solve problems, drugs are rampant, sex is often crude, and people depend on the family witch doctor for advice. Charming, painful, and enlightening, this book examines the traumas and pleasures of growing up in South Texas and the often terrible consequences when different cultures collide on the banks of a dying river.
Papillon
Henri Charrière - 1969
Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.
Nothing's Sacred
Lewis Black - 2005
You've seen his energetic stand-up performances on HBO, Comedy Central, and in venues across the globe. Now, for the first time, Lewis Black translates his volcanic eruptions into book form in Nothing's Sacred, a collection of rants against stupidity and authority, which oftentimes go hand in hand. With subversive wit and intellectual honesty, Lewis examines the events of his life that shaped his antiauthoritarian point of view and developed his comedic perspective. Growing up in 1950s suburbia when father knew best and there was a sitcom to prove it, he began to regard authority with a jaundiced eye at an early age. And as that sentiment grew stronger with each passing year, so did his ability to hone in on the absurd. True to form, he puts common sense above ideology and distills hilarious, biting commentary on all things politically and culturally relevant. "No one is safe from Lewis Black's comic missiles." (New York Times) You have been warned....
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson - 2006
Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien - 1981
The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on Tolkien's creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume provides a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
The Woman Warrior
Maxine Hong Kingston - 1976
A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity.
True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa
Michael Finkel - 2005
A young, highly intelligent man named Christian Longo, on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for killing his entire family, has recently been captured in Mexico, where he'd taken on a new identity -- Michael Finkel of the New York Times.The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, comes another bit of troubling news: a note, written by the paper's editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified parts of an investigative article and has been fired. This unlikely confluence sets the stage for a bizarre and intense relationship. After Longo's arrest, the only journalist the accused murderer will speak with is the real Michael Finkel. And as the months until Longo's trial tick away, the two men talk for dozens of hours on the telephone, meet in the jailhouse visiting room, and exchange nearly a thousand pages of handwritten letters.With Longo insisting he can prove his innocence, Finkel strives to uncover what really happened to Longo's family, and his quest becomes less a reporting job than a psychological cat-and-mouse game -- sometimes redemptively honest, other times slyly manipulative. Finkel's pursuit pays off only at the end, when Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally says what he wouldn't even admit in court -- the whole, true story. Or so it seems.
Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind
Chuck Barris - 1984
What most people don't know is that Barris allegedly spent close to two decades as a decorated covert assassin for the CIA.Barris, who achieved tremendous success as the creator and producer of hit TV game shows such as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, claims to have joined the CIA as an agent in the early 1960s, infiltrated the Civil Rights movement, met with militant Muslims in Harlem, and traveled abroad in order to kill enemies of the United States.Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is now a movie directed by and starring George Clooney, with Sam Rockwell as the author, but the original story is wild and gripping, spiced with intrigue, sex, bad behavior and plenty of great one-liners. It is destined to become a classic.
Knight: My Story
Bob Knight - 2002
Few people in sports have had more books written about them. This is the first by Bob Knight - one of the most literate, candid, quoted and outspoken men in American public life telling in this first-person account of his full, rich life.Much of that life has been in basketball, most of it because of basketball, but it also has brought him forward as a coach who has proved academic responsibility and production of championship college athletic teams not only can co-exist but should.His excitement as things start anew for him at Texas Tech is matched here by his characteristic frankness and remarkable recollection of a life he clearly has enjoyed. You'll see why, as he tells story after story - some delightful, some hilarious, some poignant, none of them dull.Knight, as a sophomore front-line reserve on the Ohio State team that won the NCAA championship, became the first man to play on and coach a championship team when he led his 1975-76 Indiana team to a 32-0 season that was capped by an 86-68 victory over Michigan in the NCAA championship game at Philadelphia.His Indiana teams in 1980-81 and 1986-87 also won NCAA titles, making him one of just four coaches in history to win as many as three championships. Twenty-six years later, the 1975-76 Indiana team still stands as the last unbeaten team in major- college men's basketball. Knight's coaching career includes six seasons at Army, where his teams - during the years when the Vietnam War made recruiting for West Point difficult - won 102 games and lost 50. He is one of five coaches who have won seven hundred games, and the only coach whose teams have won championships in the NCAA tournament, the National Invitation Tournament, the Olympic Games and the Pan American Games.During all that he has been at the heart of more controversies while running a winning and squeaky-clean program than any coach of any sport any time or anywhere.His excitement as things start anew for him is matched here by his candor and remarkable recollection of a life he clearly has enjoyed. You'll see why, with story after story - some delightful, some hilarious, some poignant, none of them dull: the story of Bob Knight's life.
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
This remarkable book is his odyssey, first written in 1542 as an official report to the king of Spain under the title La Relacion.
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
Humphrey Carpenter - 1977
In the decades since his death in September 1973, millions have read THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and THE SILMARILLION and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in South Africa in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood and brought up in near-poverty. He served in the first World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost many of the closest friends he'd ever had. After the war he returned to the academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford where he was a close friend of C.S. Lewis and the other writers known as The Inklings.Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while grading essay papers he found himself writing 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit' -- and worldwide renown awaited him. Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE SILMARILLION and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century's most cherished author.