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Prison Baby
by Deborah Jiang SteinA deeply personal and inspiring memoir recounting one woman's struggles--beginning with her birth in prison--to find self-acceptance Prison Baby is a revised and substantially expanded version of Deborah Jiang Stein's self-published memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus. Even at twelve years old, Deborah, the adopted daughter of a progressive Jewish couple in Seattle, felt like an outsider. Her mixed Asian features set her apart from her white, well-intentioned parents who evaded questions about her past. But when she discovered a letter revealing the truth of her prison birth to a heroin-addicted mother--and that she spent the first year of life in prison--Deborah spiraled into emotional lockdown. For years she turned to drugs, violence, and crime as a way to cope with her grief. Ultimately, Deborah overcame the stigma, shame, and secrecy of her birth, and found peace by helping others--proving that redemption and acceptance are possible even from the darkest corners.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Mother Daughter Me
by Katie HafnerThe complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old woman set in her ways. Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories of her parents' painful divorce, of her mother's drinking, of dislocating moves back and forth across the country, and of Katie's own widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding difficult issues at bay. How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny--and always insightful--Katie Hafner's brave and loving book answers questions about the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many. Advance praise for Mother Daughter Me "This brilliant, funny, poignant, and wrenching story of three generations under one roof is quite unlike anything else I have ever read. I love Katie Hafner's prose, her humor, the images she conjures, her choices of what to tell and when, the weaving together of family threads to produce this luminous and lasting tapestry. The story lingered with me long after I read the last page."--Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone "Brilliant . . . Mother Daughter Me is a beautifully written, intimately provocative, and courageous unpeeling of the deep rhythms of love, hate, fear, and redemption in three generations of females. I love this book!"--Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain "An emotional whodunit that uses brilliant journalistic acumen to crack the code of old family secrets."--Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Uphill Walkers "Heartbreakingly honest . . . In a narrative that skillfully moves between her present predicament and her difficult childhood, Hafner offers a compelling portrait of her remarkable mother and their troubled relationship."--Kirkus ReviewsFrom the Hardcover edition.
Buchanan Dying
by John UpdikeTo the list of John Updike's well-intentioned protagonists--Rabbit Angstrom, George Caldwell, Piet Hanema, Henry Bech--add James Buchanan, seen above as a young Congressman in the 1820's, and on the front cover as the harried fifteenth President of the United States (1857-1861). In a play meant to be read, Buchanan's political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. A wide-ranging Afterword rounds out the dramatic portrait of one of America's lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders.
Low Down
by A. J. AlbanyA. J. Albany's recollection of life with her father, the great jazz pianist Joe Albany, is the story of one girl's unsentimental education. Joe played with the likes of Charles Mingus, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, but between gigs he slipped into drug-induced obscurity. It was during these times that his daughter knew him best. After her mother disappeared, six-year-old Amy Jo and her charming, troubled father set up housekeeping in a seamy Hollywood hotel. While Joe finished a set in some red-boothed dive, chances were you'd find Amy curled up to sleep on someone's fur coat, clutching a 78 of Louis Armstrong's "Sugar Blues" or, later, a photograph of the man himself, inscribed, "To little Amy Jo, always in love with you--Pops."Wise beyond her years and hip to the unpredictable ways of Old Lady Life at all too early an age, A. J. Albany guides us through the dope and deviance of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Hollywood's shadowy underbelly and beyond. What emerges is a raw, gripping, and surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a young girl trying to survive among the outcasts, misfits, and artists who surrounded her.
Amazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions
by Maxine AndersonAmazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions You Can Build Yourself introduces readers to the life, world, and incredible mind of Leonardo da Vinci through hands-on building projects that explore his invention ideas. Most of Leonardo's inventions were never made in his lifetime-they remained sketches in his famous notebooks. Amazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions You Can Build Yourself shows you how to bring these ideas to life using common household supplies. Detailed step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and templates for creating each project combine with historical facts and anecdotes, biographies and trivia about the real-life models for each project. Together they give kids a first-hand look intothe amazing mind of one the world's greatest inventors.
Shanti Bloody Shanti
by Aaron SmithJournalist Aaron Smith never planned to go to India before he had a contract put on his life by a drug dealer, when suddenly India seemed like the perfect place to get lost. In the process, he ended up finding himself, as well as encountering a dead body or two, witnessing the tragic death of a friend, dodging terrorist attacks and a revolution, and befriending a colorful cast of characters.Pulling no punches, this Gonzo-styled, page-turning Indian adventure has pathos, self-deprecation, and a wicked sense of humor. It provides a raw, honest, and amusing appraisal of traveling through contemporary India.
Kiss and Make-Up
by Gene SimmonsYou wanted the truth, you got the truth--the hottest book in the world!Fueled by an explosive mix of makeup, costumes, and attitude, KISS burst onto the music scene thirty years ago and has become a rock institution. The band has sold more than eighty million records, has broken every concert attendance record set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles, stands behind the Beatles alone in number of gold records from any group in history, and has spawned more than 2,500 licenses. There would have been no KISS without Gene Simmons, the outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon. KISS and Make-Up is the wild, shocking, unbelievable story, from the man himself, about how an immigrant boy from Israel studied to be a rabbi, was saved by rock and roll, and became one of the most notorious rock stars the world has ever seen.Before Gene Simmons there was Chaim Witz, a boy from Haifa, Israel, who had no inkling of the life that lay ahead of him. In vivid detail Gene recounts his childhood growing up in Haifa under the watchful eye of his beloved, strong-willed mother, a concentration camp survivor; his adolescent years attending a Jewish theological center for rabbinical studies in Brooklyn; his love of all things American, including comic books, superheroes, and cowboys; and his early fascination with girls and sex, which prompted him to start a rock band in school after he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.KISS and Make-Up is not just the classic story of achieving the American dream through the eyes of an immigrant boy making good, but a juicy, rollicking rock and roll read that takes you along for the ride of your life with KISS, from the 1970s, when they were the biggest band in the world, through the '80s, when they took off their world-famous war paint, and into the '90s, when they came back bigger and badder than ever to become the number one touring band in the world. In his own irreverent, unapologetic voice, Gene talks about the girls (4,600 of them and counting); his tight bond with KISS cofounder Paul Stanley; the struggles he and Paul had with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and their departures from the group; the new band members and Eric Carr's untimely death; the enormous love and affection he has for the people who put him there in the first place--the KISS Army and the ever-loyal KISS fans around the world; his love life, including stories about his relationships with Cher and Diana Ross and with Shannon Tweed, Playmate of the Year, mother of his son and daughter, and his companion of eighteen years; and much more.Full of dozens of photographs, many never-before-seen pictures from Gene's private collection, KISS and Make-Up is a surprising, intimate look at the man behind the mask. For the first time Gene reveals all the facets of his complex personality--son, rock star, actor, record producer, businessman, ladies' man, devoted father, and now author.From the Hardcover edition.
If a Place Can Make You Cry
by Daniel GordisIn the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, during which time Daniel would be a Fellow at the Mandel Institute in Jerusalem. This was a euphoric time in Israel. The economy was booming, and peace seemed virtually guaranteed. A few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Israel permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his and his family's life to friends and family abroad. These missives--passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative--began reaching a much broader readership than he'd ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, If a Place Can Make You Cry is a first-person, immediate account of Israel's post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. Above all, Gordis tells the story of a family that must cope with the sudden realization that they took their children from a serene and secure neighborhood in Los Angeles to an Israel not at peace but mired in war. This is the chronicle of a loss of innocence--the innocence of Daniel and his wife, and of their children. Ultimately, through Gordis's eyes, Israel, with all its beauty, madness, violence, and history, comes to life in a way we've never quite seen before.Daniel Gordis captures as no one has the years leading up to what every Israeli dreaded: on April 1, 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel was at war. After an almost endless cycle of suicide bombings and harsh retaliation, any remaining chance for peace had seemingly died.If a Place Can Make You Cry is the story of a time in which peace gave way to war, when childhood innocence evaporated in the heat of hatred, when it became difficult even to hope. Like countless other Israeli parents, Gordis and his wife struggled to make their children's lives manageable and meaningful, despite it all. This is a book about what their children gained, what they lost, and how, in the midst of everything, a whole family learned time and again what really matters.From the Hardcover edition.
Reagan's War
by Peter SchweizerReagan's War is the story of Ronald Reagan's personal and political journey as an anti-communist, from his early days as an actor to his years in the White House. Challenging popular misconceptions of Reagan as an empty suit who played only a passive role in the demise of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer details Reagan's decades-long battle against communism.Bringing to light previously secret information obtained from archives in the United States, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia--including Reagan's KGB file--Schweizer offers a compelling case that Reagan personally mapped out and directed his war against communism, often disagreeing with experts and advisers. An essential book for understanding the Cold War, Reagan's War should be read by open-minded readers across the political spectrum.From the Trade Paperback edition.the USSR drew the attention of Soviet officials, who began a KGB file on him when he was still governor of California. By the time he was elected president, they viewed him as a serious threat to their interests. Reagan's War shows just how right they were, presenting compelling evidence that Reagan personally mapped out and directed a campaign to bankrupt the Soviet Union and wage an economic and political war against Moscow.In telling the story of Reagan's ultimate triumph, Schweizer also brings to light dozens of previously unknown facts about the Cold War, based on secret documents obtained from archives in Russia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and the United States. Among his many startling revelations are Kissinger's private deals with Soviet leaders that protected his own political viability while allowing the Soviets to pursue their goals within their own sphere; a North Korean and East German plot to assassinate Reagan in 1983; Reagan's secret funding of Solidarity in Poland; and the behind-the-scenes support Soviets and East Germans provided for European and American peace movements, as well as their clandestine contacts with U.S. government officials.A fresh, often startling look at Ronald Reagan and his central role in winning the war for global dominance in the 1980s, Reagan's War is a major work of twentieth-century history.From the Hardcover edition.
Imagined London
by Anna QuindlenThe author writes about London's place in literature from the days of Chaucer to the present. She shares her impressions of the authors iinvolved both past and present and revives wonderful memories for lovers of the English novel.
1001 People Who Made America
by Alan AxelrodFrom the famous to the infamous, from the virtuous to the notorious, from Thomas Jefferson to Madonna, historian Axelrod profiles key figures in American politics, arts, science, business, religion, and popular culture. The brief profiles are arranged alphabetically, about three to a page, and describe each person's major contributions. The book's scope begins centuries before there was a United States and continues through the 21st century. Without a timeline, chronology, or categories, the book will probably be more comfortable on general reader's coffee tables than in students' backpacks. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
True North
by Elliott Merrick Lawrence MillmanWhile many people dream of abandoning civilization and heading into the wilderness, few manage to actually do it. One exception was twenty-four-year-old Elliott Merrick, who in 1929 left his advertising job in New Jersey and moved to Labrador, one of Canada's most remote regions. First published by Scribner's in 1933, True North tells the captivating story of one of the high points of Merrick's years there: a hunting trip he and his wife, Kay, made with trapper John Michelin in 1930. Covering 300 miles over a harsh winter, they experienced an unexplored realm of nature at its most intense and faced numerous challenges. Merrick accidentally shot himself in the thigh and almost cut off his toe. Freezing cold and hunger were constant. Nonetheless, the group found beauty and even magic in the stark landscape. The couple and the trappers bonded with each other and their environment through such surprisingly daunting tasks as fabricating sunglasses to avoid snow blindness and learning to wash underwear without it freezing. Merrick's intimate style, rich with narrative detail, brings readers into a dramatic story of survival and shares the lesson the Merricks learned: that the greatest satisfaction in life can come from the simplest things.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut's Journey to the Moon
by Tom Stafford Dick Gordon Francis French Al WordenAs command module pilot for the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971, Al Worden flew on what is widely regarded as the greatest exploration mission that humans have ever attempted. He spent six days orbiting the moon, including three days completely alone, the most isolated human in existence. During the return from the moon to earth he also conducted the first spacewalk in deep space, becoming the first human ever to see both the entire earth and moon simply by turning his head. The Apollo 15 flight capped an already-impressive career as an astronaut, including important work on the pioneering Apollo 9 and Apollo 12 missions, as well as the perilous flight of Apollo 13. Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave. What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. Worden has never before told the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. Readers will learn them here for the first time, along with the exhilarating account of what it is like to journey to the moon and back. It's an unprecedentedly candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory but also its pitfalls.
The Truth Is...: My Life in Love and Music
by Melissa Etheridge Laura Mortonln the ten years since she burst on to the international music scene, Melissa Etheridge has released six albums that have sold more than 25 million records worldwide, garnering not only public adoration for her uncompromising honesty but numerous critical awards, including two Grammys and the prestigious ASCAP Songwriter of the Year award. She has given the world unforgettable hits such as "Bring Me Some Water," "Similar Features," "Come to My Window," and "I'm the Only One," with lyrics that touch on a universal nerve and the deeply human side of relationships. Her personal journey has been captured over the years through her music, transforming her voice and musicianship into inspiring messages of love, consciousness, hope, longing, desire, and pure passion. <P> The Truth Is... is a bold and unflinching account of an extraordinary life, described as only Melissa can: from her Kansas roots through her early love of music to her brilliant rise to stardom, becoming a female superstar in a male-dominated rock world. Melissa will openly discuss the massive impact of her public coming-out, a revelation that only increased her popularity and made her a highly visible spokesperson for the gay and lesbian community. The Truth Is ... shares Melissa Etheridge's fascinating story--sometimes shocking, always inspiring--with unprecedented candor and insight.<P> Filled with personal insights, the stories behind the music and lyrics, and never-before-seen personal photographs, The Truth Is ... is a poignant, thoughtful, sometimes difficult expression of who Melissa Etheridge has been, who she is, and who she hopes to become.
Savage Beauty
by Nancy MilfordThirty years after the smashing success of Zelda, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning second act. Savage Beauty is the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed American ever as she tormented herself.If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. The first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction and her impact on crowds, and on men, was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well. Milford calls her book "a family romance"--for the love between the three Millay sisters and their mother was so deep as to be dangerous. As a family, they were like real-life Little Women, with a touch of Mommie Dearest.Nancy Milford was given exclusive access to Millay's papers, and what she found was an extraordinary treasure. Boxes and boxes of letter flew back and forth among the three sisters and their mother--and Millay kept the most intimate diary, one whose ruthless honesty brings to mind Sylvia Plath. Written with passion and flair, Savage Beauty is an iconic portrait of a woman's life.
Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911
by Ruth Bader Ginsburg Malvina Shanklin Harlan Linda PrzybyszewskiLike Abigail Adams, Malvina Shanklin Harlan witnessed--and gently influenced--national history from the unique perspective of a political leader's wife. Her husband, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), played a central role in some of the most significant civil rights decisions of his era, including his lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous case that endorsed separate but equal segregation. And for fifty-seven years he was married to a woman who was busy making a mental record of their eventful lives.After Justice Harlan's death in 1911, Malvina wrote Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911, as a testament to her husband's accomplishments and to her own. The memoir begins with Malvina, the daughter of passionate abolitionists, becoming the teenage bride of John Marshall Harlan, whose family owned more than a dozen slaves. Malvina depicts her life in antebellum Kentucky, and her courageous defense of the Harlan homestead during the Civil War. She writes of her husband's ascent in legal circles and his eventual appointment to the Supreme Court in 1877, where he was the author of opinions that continued to influence American race relations deep into the twentieth century. Yet Some Memories is more than a wife's account of a famous and powerful man. It chronicles the remarkable evolution of a young woman from Indiana who became a keen observer of both her family's life and that of her nation.When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg began researching the history of the women associated with the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress sent her Malvina Harlan's unpublished manuscript. Recalling Abigail Adams's order to "remember the ladies," Justice Ginsburg has guided its long journey from forgotten document to published book. Some Memories of a Long Life includes a Foreword by Justice Ginsburg, as well as an Afterword by historian Linda Przybyszewski and an Epilogue of the Harlan legacy by Amelia Newcomb. According to Library Journal, "This is the sort of book you call a publishing event."From the Hardcover edition.
The Story of My Life
by Helen Keller<P>An American classic rediscovered by each generation, The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's account of her triumph over deafness and blindness. Popularized by the stage play and movie The Miracle Worker, Keller's story has become a symbol of hope for people all over the world. <P>This book-published when Keller was only twenty-two-portrays the wild child who is locked in the dark and silent prison of her own body. With an extraordinary immediacy, Keller reveals her frustrations and rage, and takes the reader on the unforgettable journey of her education and breakthroughs into the world of communication. <P>From the moment Keller recognizes the word "water" when her teacher finger-spells the letters, we share her triumph as "that living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!" An unparalleled chronicle of courage, The Story of My Life remains startlingly fresh and vital more than a century after its first publication, a timeless testament to an indomitable will.
A Look Over My Shoulder
by William Hood Richard Helms Henry A. KissingerA Look over My Shoulder begins with President Nixon's attempt to embroil the Central Intelligence Agency, of which Richard Helms was then the director, in the Watergate cover-up. Helms then recalls his education in Switzerland and Germany and at Williams College; his early career as a foreign correspondent in Berlin, during which he once lunched with Hitler; and his return to newspaper work in the United States. Helms served on the German desk at OSS headquarters in London; subsequently, he was assigned to Allen Dulles's Berlin office in postwar Germany.On his return to Washington, Helms assumed responsibility for the OSS carryover operations in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe. He remained in this post until the Central Intelligence Agency was formed in 1947. At CIA, Helms served in many positions, ultimately becoming the organization's director from 1966 to 1973. He was appointed ambassador to Iran later that year and retired from government service in January 1977. It was often thought that Richard Helms, who served longer in the Central Intelligence Agency than anyone else, would never tell his story, but here it is-revealing, news-making, and with candid assessments of the controversies and triumphs of a remarkable career.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Boys' Crusade
by Paul FussellThe Boys' Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussell's unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantryman's experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the author's own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children--for children they were--who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veil of feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war's brutal essence. "A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth," Fussell writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on World War II, The Boys' Crusade stands wholly apart. Fussell's profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and a valuable lesson for future generations.From the Hardcover edition.
Bill Clinton: An American Journey
by Nigel HamiltonBill Clinton, forty-second president of the United States, is the quintessential baby boomer: on the one hand blessed with a near-genius IQ, on the other, beset by character flaws that made his presidency a veritable soap opera of high ideals, distressing incompetence, model financial stewardship, and domestic misbehavior. In an era of cultural civil war, the Clinton administration fed the public an almost daily diet of scandal and misfortune.Who is Bill Clinton, though, and how did this baby-boom saga begin? Clinton's upbringing in Arkansas and his student years at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale universities help us to see his life not only as a personal story but as the story of modern America. Behind the closed doors of the house on the hill above Park Avenue in Hot Springs, the struggle between Clinton's stepfather and mother became ultimately unbearable, causing Virginia to move out and divorce Roger Clinton. Dreading confrontation, Bill Clinton excelled in almost every field save athletics. But the fabled success of the scholarship boy would be marred by the decisions he came to make regarding Vietnam and military service--choices that haunt him to this day.We watch with a mixture of alarm, fascination, and awe as Bill Clinton does so much that is right--and so much that is wrong. He sets his cap for the star student at Yale, young Hillary Rodham, seducing her with his dreams of a better America and an aw-shucks grin. Wherever he goes, he charms and disarms--young and old, men and women...and more women. He becomes a law professor straight out of college; he contests a congressional election in his twenties--and almost wins it. He becomes attorney general of his state and within two years is set to become the youngest-ever governor of Arkansas, at only thirty-two.Yet, always, there is a curse, a drive toward personal self-destruction--and with that the destruction of all those who are helping him on his legendary path. His affair with Gennifer Flowers strains his marriage and later nearly scuttles his bid for the presidency. He is thrown out of the governor's office after only one term and suffers a life-shaking crisis of confidence. Though with the stalwart help of a female chief of staff he regains his crown, it is clear that Bill Clinton's charismatic career is a ceaseless tightrope walk above the forces that threaten to pull him down--the most potent of them residing in his own being.Imbued with sympathy, deep intelligence, and the storyteller's art, this extraordinary biography helps us, at last, to understand the real Bill Clinton as he stumbles and withdraws from the 1988 presidential nomination race but enters it four years later, to make one of the most astonishing bids for the presidency in the twentieth century: the climax of this gripping political, social, and scandalous journey.From the Hardcover edition.
The Life of Alexander the Great
by Plutarch Arthur Hugh Clough John Dryden Victor HansonIn 336 b.c. Philip of Macedonia was assassinated and his twenty-year-old son, Alexander, inherited his kingdom. Immediately quelling rebellion, Alexander extended his father's empire through-out the Middle East and into parts of Asia, fulfilling the soothsayer Aristander's prediction that the new king "should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him." The Life of Alexander the Great is one of the first surviving attempts to memorialize the achievements of this legendary king, remembered today as the greatest military genius of all time. This exclusive Modern Library edition, excerpted from Plutarch's Lives, is a riveting tale of honor, power, scandal, and bravery written by the most eminent biographer of the ancient world.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Banquet at Delmonico's
by Barry WerthIn Banquet at Delmonico's, Barry Werth, the acclaimed author of The Scarlet Professor, draws readers inside the circle of philosophers, scientists, politicians, businessmen, clergymen, and scholars who brought Charles Darwin's controversial ideas to America in the crucial years after the Civil War.The United States in the 1870s and '80s was deep in turmoil-a brash young nation torn by a great depression, mired in scandal and corruption, rocked by crises in government, violently conflicted over science and race, and fired up by spiritual and sexual upheavals. Secularism was rising, most notably in academia. Evolution-and its catchphrase, "survival of the fittest"-animated and guided this Gilded Age.Darwin's theory of natural selection was extended to society and morals not by Darwin himself but by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, father of "the Law of Equal Freedom," which holds that "every man is free to do that which he wills," provided it doesn't infringe on the equal freedom of others. As this justification took root as a social, economic, and ethical doctrine, Spencer won numerous influential American disciples and allies, including industrialist Andrew Carnegie, clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, and political reformer Carl Schurz. Churches, campuses, and newspapers convulsed with debate over the proper role of government in regulating Americans' behavior, this country's place among nations, and, most explosively, the question of God's existence.In late 1882, most of the main figures who brought about and popularized these developments gathered at Delmonico's, New York's most venerable restaurant, in an exclusive farewell dinner to honor Spencer and to toast the social applications of the theory of evolution. It was a historic celebration from which the repercussions still ripple throughout our society.Banquet at Delmonico's is social history at its finest, richest, and most appetizing, a brilliant narrative bristling with personal intrigue, tantalizing insights, and greater truths about American life and culture.From the Hardcover edition.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw
by Bruce Barcott"The first time we came here I didn't know what to expect," she told me as we paddled upstream. "What we found just blew me away. Jaguars, pumas, river otters, howler monkeys. The place was like a Noah's Ark for all the endangered species driven out of the rest of Central America. There was so much life! That expedition was when I first saw the macaws."As a young woman, Sharon Matola lived many lives. She was a mushroom expert, an Air Force survival specialist, and an Iowa housewife. She hopped freight trains for fun and starred as a tiger tamer in a traveling Mexican circus. Finally she found her one true calling: caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the Central American country of Belize. Beloved as "the Zoo Lady" in her adopted land, Matola became one of Central America's greatest wildlife defenders. And when powerful outside forces conspired with the local government to build a dam that would flood the nesting ground of the last scarlet macaws in Belize, Sharon Matola was drawn into the fight of her life. In The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, award-winning author Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola's inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. Ferocious in her passion, she and her confederates-a ragtag army of courageous locals and eccentric expatriates-endure slander and reprisals and take the fight to the courtroom and the boardroom, from local village streets to protests around the world. As the dramatic story unfolds, Barcott addresses the realities of economic survival in Third World countries, explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, and puts a human face on the battle over globalization. In this marvelous and spirited book, Barcott shows us how one unwavering woman risked her life to save the most beautiful bird in the world. "Barcott's compelling narrative is suspenseful right up to the last moment." -Publisher's Weekly"An engrossing but sad account of a brave and quirky champion of nature."-Kirkus"...A riveting account of one woman's fight to save one of the last bastions of an endangeredSpecies. . . Barcott writes of international politics, ecology and endangered species, and human relations with equal facility. This real page-turner of narrative nonfiction is hard to put down."-BooklistFrom the Hardcover edition.
The Broken Road
by Patrick Leigh FermorIn the winter of 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick ("Paddy") Leigh Fermor set out on a walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in Constantinople, a trip that took him almost a year. Decades later, Leigh Fermor told the story of that life-changing journey in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, two books now celebrated as among the most vivid, absorbing, and beautifully written travel books of all time.The Broken Road is the long-awaited account of the final leg of his youthful adventure that Leigh Fermor promised but was unable to finish before his death in 2011. Assembled from Leigh Fermor's manuscripts by his prizewinning biographer Artemis Cooper and the travel writer Colin Thubron, this is perhaps the most personal of all Leigh Fermor's books, catching up with young Paddy in the fall of 1934 and following him through Bulgaria and Romania to the coast of the Black Sea. Days and nights on the road, spectacular landscapes and uncanny cities, friendships lost and found, leading the high life in Bucharest or camping out with fishermen and shepherds-in the The Broken Road such incidents and escapades are described with all the linguistic bravura, odd and astonishing learning, and overflowing exuberance that Leigh Fermor is famous for, but also with a melancholy awareness of the passage of time, especially when he meditates on the scarred history of the Balkans or on his troubled relations with his father. The book ends, perfectly, with Paddy's arrival in Greece, the country he would fall in love with and fight for. Throughout it we can still hear the ringing voice of an irrepressible young man embarking on a life of adventure.
Your Voice in My Head
by Emma ForrestA dazzling and devastating memoir -- Girl Interrupted for the Juno generation.Talented, prolific and charming, Emma Forrest was settled in Manhattan at twenty-two and on contract to the Guardian when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity, past the warm waters of weird and into those cold, deep patches of the sea where people lose their lives.Lonely, in a dangerous cycle of cutting and bulimia, and drawn inexplicably to damaging and cruel relationships, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist -- a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the vibrant and dangerous tide of herself, and who would help her to recover when she tried to end her life.Emma's loving and supportive family and friends circled around her in panic. Like Ophelia, Emma was on the brink of drowning. But she was also still working, still exploring, still writing. And then she fell in love.One day, when Emma called to make an appointment with her psychiatrist, she found no one there. He had died, shockingly, at the age of fifty-three, leaving behind a young family for whom he had fought to survive. Processing the premature doorstep, a failed suicide, she was adrift. And when her significant and all-consuming relationship also fell apart, she was forced to cling to the page for survival.Your Voice in My Head is spiked with wit, humour and unique perception. It not only explores the crashing weight of depression, mania and suffering, but also the beauty of love and the heartbreak of loss. It is also, fundamentally, about our relationship with ourselves.From the Hardcover edition.