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Henry VIII: King of England 1509 - 1547 (History's Great Leaders )
by Ben HubbardDelve into the past and explore the life and reign of Henry VIII in this biography for children brought to you by the publisher of Queen Elizabeth: A Platinum Jubilee Celebration and King Charles III.The third book in this captivating series on British monarchs, Henry VIII covers all the key moments in the fascinating man's life, from his struggles to father a son and the fates of his six wives, to the formation of the Church of England and wars with France and Scotland.Bright, playful illustrations and simple, age-appropriate text ensure that this book is the perfect introduction to the infamous Tudor king for little historians everywhere. It will supplement your child's learning and curiosity as it reveals the secrets of a larger-than-life king from long ago.
Henry VIII: Royal Beheader
by Sean PriceA children's biography of Henry VIII, King of England, who had 6 wives and beheaded 2 of them.
Henry VIII: The Decline and Fall of a Tyrant
by Robert HutchinsonThe Tudors retained only a precarious grip on the crown of England, founded on a title that was both tenuous and legally flimsy. This left them preoccupied by two major obsessions: the necessity for a crop of lusty male heirs to continue the bloodline, and the elimination of threats from dynastic rivals. None was cursed more by this rampant insecurity than Henry VIII, who embodied not only the power and imperial majesty of the monarchy, but also England's military might. His health always had huge political consequences at home and overseas - hence his unbridled hypochondria.Drawing on the latest historical and medical research, Robert Hutchinson reveals the extent to which the king also grappled with accelerating geriatric decay in his last six years, made more acute by medical conditions that were not only painful but transformed the monarch into a 28-stone psychotic monster, suspicious of everyone around him, including those most dear to him.
Henry VIII: The Decline and Fall of a Tyrant
by Robert HutchinsonThe Tudors retained only a precarious grip on the crown of England, founded on a title that was both tenuous and legally flimsy. This left them preoccupied by two major obsessions: the necessity for a crop of lusty male heirs to continue the bloodline, and the elimination of threats from dynastic rivals. None was cursed more by this rampant insecurity than Henry VIII, who embodied not only the power and imperial majesty of the monarchy, but also England's military might. His health always had huge political consequences at home and overseas - hence his unbridled hypochondria.Drawing on the latest historical and medical research, Robert Hutchinson reveals the extent to which the king also grappled with accelerating geriatric decay in his last six years, made more acute by medical conditions that were not only painful but transformed the monarch into a 28-stone psychotic monster, suspicious of everyone around him, including those most dear to him.
Henry VIII: The King and His Court
by Alison WeirHenry VIII, renowned for his command of power, celebrated for his intellect, presided over the most stylish--and dangerous--court in Renaissance Europe. Scheming cardinals vied for power with newly rich landowners and merchants, brilliant painters and architects introduced a new splendor into art and design, and each of Henry's six queens brought her own influence to bear upon the life of the court. In her new book, Alison Weir, author of the finest royal chronicles of our time, brings to vibrant life the turbulent, complex figure of Henry VIII and the glittering court he made his own. In an age when a monarch's domestic and political lives were inextricably intertwined, a king as powerful and brilliant as Henry VIII exercised enormous sway over the laws, the customs, and the culture of his kingdom. Yet as Weir shows in this swift, vivid narrative, Henry's ministers, nobles, and wives were formidable figures in their own right, whose influence both enhanced and undermined the authority of the throne. On a grand stage rich in pageantry, intrigue, passion, and luxury, Weir records the many complex human dramas that swirled around Henry, while deftly weaving in an account of the intimate rituals and desires of England's ruling class--their sexual practices, feasts and sports, tastes in books and music, houses and gardens. Stimulating and tumultuous, the court of Henry VIII attracted the finest minds and greatest beauties in Renaissance England--poets Wyatt and Surrey, the great portraitist Hans Holbein, "feasting ladies" like Elizabeth Blount and Elizabeth FitzWalter, the newly rich Boleyn family and the ancient aristocratic clans like the Howards and the Percies, along with the entourages and connections that came and went with each successive wife. The interactions between these individuals, and the terrible ends that befell so many of them, make Henry VIII: The King and His Court an absolutely spellbinding read. Meticulous in historic detail, narrated with high style and grand drama, Alison Weir brilliantly brings to life the king, the court, and the fascinating men and women who vied for its pleasures and rewards. NOTE: This edition does not contain illustrations.
Henry VIII: The Quest for Fame (Penguin Monarchs)
by John GuyCharismatic, insatiable and cruel, Henry VIII was, as John Guy shows, a king who became mesmerized by his own legend - and in the process destroyed and remade England. Said to be a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most instantly recognizable of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: magnificent and vengeful; a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, towering figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people's eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy looks behind the mask into Henry's mind to explore how he understood the world and his place in it - from his isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession, to his desperate quest for fame and an heir and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonising, 54-inch-waisted years.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Portland: The Fireside Poet of Maine
by John William Babin Allan M. LevinskyA look at the beloved American poet&’s home and family, and a glimpse at the early years of Portland, Maine. When a former Revolutionary War general named Peleg Wadsworth finished building a two-story brick house on Congress Street in 1786, the &“province of Maine&” was still considered part of Massachusetts, and he could see the Fore River from his front door. The city would grow up around the structure, as the Wadsworth-Longfellow family flourished and made history within its walls—and in the fabric of young America&’s culture and government. Peleg&’s daughter, Zilpah, married Stephen Longfellow IV on the first floor, and they raised their eight children in the home with love and high standards. Their second-eldest son, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote his first childhood poem there before going on to pen great classics including &“Paul Revere&’s Ride&” and Evangeline. Young Henry also watched his father help craft the Maine Constitution, and experienced revolutionary ideals of his home city. This book takes you inside the historic Longfellow House—and lets you explore the city that shaped a renowned American poet. Includes photos and illustrations
Henry Works
by D. B. JohnsonWithout Henry, wildflowers would go unwatered in dry weather and rivers would have no crossing stones. Without him, who would bring news of coming storms? Henry works, but no one seems to notice. "You’re not doing anything today,” his friend says. "Come fishing with me. ” "Not today,” says Henry as he digs up a healing plant for a neighbor. Though he never gets paid, Henry works for more than money. In this fourth book about Henry David Thoreau, D. B. Johnson’s quiet story flows through morning’s mist to evening’s glow, when, at last, Henry’s most important work is revealed!
Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) of Anaïs Nin
by Anaïs NinThis bestseller covers a single momentous year during Nin’s life in Paris, when she met Henry Miller and his wife, June. “Closer to what many sexually adventuresome women experience than almost anything I’ve ever read....I found it a very erotic book and profoundly liberating” (Alice Walker). The source of a major motion picture from Universal. Preface by Rupert Pole; Index.
Henry the VIII and His Chopping Block
by Alan MacdonaldThis biography series is filled with humorous and gory details that children are not likely to learn in any history class. In this biography, readers learn all about the most famous of England's many kings, from the food that Henry VIII ate to his six wives.
Henry the Young King, 1155-1183
by Matthew StricklandThis first modern study of Henry the Young King, eldest son of Henry II but the least known Plantagenet monarch, explores the brief but eventful life of the only English ruler after the Norman Conquest to be created co-ruler in his father's lifetime. Crowned at fifteen to secure an undisputed succession, Henry played a central role in the politics of Henry II's great empire and was hailed as the embodiment of chivalry. Yet, consistently denied direct rule, the Young King was provoked first into heading a major rebellion against his father, then to waging a bitter war against his brother Richard for control of Aquitaine, dying before reaching the age of thirty having never assumed actual power. In this remarkable history, Matthew Strickland provides a richly colored portrait of an all-but-forgotten royal figure tutored by Thomas Becket, trained in arms by the great knight William Marshal, and incited to rebellion by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, while using his career to explore the nature of kingship, succession, dynastic politics, and rebellion in twelfth-century England and France.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (Volume 1): 1918-38
by Chips ChannonThe Sunday Times bestselling edition of Chips Channon's remarkable diaries.Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, or the mood in the House of Commons in the lead up to the Munich crisis, his sense of drama and his eye for the telling detail are unmatched. These are diaries that bring a whole epoch vividly to life. A heavily abridged and censored edition of the diaries was published in 1967. Only now, sixty years after Chips's death, can an extensive text be shared.________________________________'Chips perfectly embodied the qualities vital to the task: a capacious ear for gossip, a neat turn of phrase, a waspish desire to tell all, and easy access to the highest social circles across Europe.[...] Blending Woosterish antics with a Lady Bracknellesque capacity for acid comment. Replete with fascinating insights.' Jesse Norman, Financial Times
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (Volume 2): 1938-43
by Chips ChannonThe second volume of the remarkable, Sunday Times bestselling diaries of Chips Channon.'A masterpiece - a time machine that transports the reader back to British politics and high society at the end of the 1930s.' Robert Harris'The uncensored, unvarnished thought of one of the 20th century's greatest diarists. - Best Biographies of the Year, Telegraph'An unrivalled guide to the social and political life of Britain in the first half of the 20th century.' Books of the Year, The Times'Fascinating.' New Statesman'Never a dull day, never a dull sentence.' Daily Mail_______________________________________________This second volume of the bestselling diaries of Henry 'Chips' Channon takes us from the heady aftermath of the Munich agreement, when the Prime Minister so admired by Chips was credited with having averted a general European conflagration, through the rapid unravelling of appeasement, and on to the tribulations of the early years of the Second World War. It closes with a moment of hope, as Channon, in recording the fall of Mussolini in July 1943, reflects: 'The war must be more than half over.'For much of this period, Channon is genuinely an eye-witness to unfolding events. He reassures Neville Chamberlain as he fights for his political life in May 1940. He chats to Winston Churchill while the two men inspect the bombed-out chamber of the House of Commons a few months later. From his desk at the Foreign Office he charts the progress of the war. But with the departure of his boss 'Rab' Butler to the Ministry of Education, and Channon's subsequent exclusion from the corridors of power, his life changes - and with it the preoccupations and tone of the diaries. The conduct of the war remains a constant theme, but more personal preoccupations come increasingly to the fore. As he throws himself back into the pleasures of society, he records his encounters with the likes of Noël Coward, Prince Philip, General de Gaulle and Oscar Wilde's erstwhile lover Lord Alfred Douglas. He describes dinners with members of European royal dynasties, and recounts gossip and scandal about the great, the good and the less good. And he charts the implosion of his marriage and his burgeoning, passionate friendship with a young officer on Wavell's staff.These are diaries that bring a whole epoch vividly to life.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57
by Chips ChannonThe third and final volume of the remarkable Sunday Times bestselling diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon___________________________________________'An utterly addictive glimpse of London high society and politics in the 40s and 50s.' Robert Harris'An instant classic . . . quite simply the greatest social and political diaries of the 20th century.' Daily Telegraph'Rich, exuberant, copious and shatteringly honest.' Spectator'A scurrilous read. Fascinating. Gripping!' Alan Titchmarsh'Chips writes with such vividness that one feels one is living each day in his exalted company.' The Oldie_______________________________________This final volume of the unexpurgated diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon begins as the Second World War is turning in the Allies' favour. It ends with Chips descending into poor health but still able to turn a pointed phrase about the political events that swirl around him and the great and the good with whom he mingles.Throughout these final fourteen years Chips assiduously describes events in and around Westminster, gossiping about individual MPs' ambitions and indiscretions, but also rising powerfully to the occasion to capture the mood of the House on VE Day or the ceremony of George VI's funeral. His energies, though, are increasingly absorbed by a private life that at times reaches Byzantine levels of complexity. We encounter the London of the theatre and the cinema, peopled by such figures as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, as well as a seemingly endless grand parties at which Chips might well rub shoulders with Cecil Beaton, the Mountbattens, or any number of dethroned European monarchs.He has been described as 'The greatest British diarist of the 20th century'. This final volume fully justifies that accolade.
Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story
by Patrick Cockburn Henry CockburnOn a cold February day two months after his twentieth birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the Newhaven estuary outside Brighton, England, and nearly drowned. Voices, he said, had urged him to do it. Nearly halfway around the world in Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned from his wife, Jan, that his son had suffered a breakdown and had been admitted to a hospital. Ten days later, Henry was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Narrated by both Patrick and Henry, this is the extraordinary story of the eight years since Henry's descent into schizophrenia--years he has spent almost entirely in hospitals--and his family's struggle to help him recover. With remarkable frankness, Patrick writes of Henry's transformation from art student to mental patient and of the agonizing and difficult task of helping his son get well. Any hope of recovery lies in medication, yet Henry, who does not believe he is ill, secretly stops taking it and frequently runs away. Hopeful periods of stability are followed by frightening disappearances, then relapses that bleed into one another, until at last there is the promise of real improvement. In Henry's own raw, beautiful chapters, he describes his psychosis from the inside. He vividly relates what it is like to hear trees and bushes speaking to him, voices compelling him to wander the countryside or live in the streets, the loneliness of life within hospital walls, harrowing "polka dot days" that incapacitate him, and finally, his steps towards recovery. Patrick's and Henry's parallel stories reveal the complex intersections of sanity, madness, and identity; the vagaries of mental illness and its treatment; and a family's steadfast response to a bewildering condition. Haunting, intimate, and profoundly moving, their unique narrative will resonate with every parent and anyone who has been touched by mental illness.
Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son's Story
by Patrick Cockburn Henry CockburnOn a cold February day two months after his 20th birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the Newhaven estuary outside Brighton and tried to swim across, almost drowning in the process. The trees, he said, had told him to do it. Nearly halfway around the world, in Kabul, Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned that Henry, his son, had been admitted to a hospital mental ward and appeared to be suffering a mental breakdown. Ten days later, Henry was officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Thus begins Patrick and Henry's extraordinary account of Henry's steep descent into mental illness and of Patrick's journey towards understanding the changes it has wrought. With remarkable candour, Patrick writes of the seven years since, years Henry has spent almost entirely in mental hospitals. Schizophrenics are at high risk for suicide, and Patrick and his wife live in constant fear for Henry's life. Patrick also provides a fascinating glimpse into the conflicted history of schizophrenia's diagnosis and treatment and shows how little we still know about this debilitating condition. The book also includes Henry's own account of his experiences. In these raw and eerily beautiful chapters written from the hospital, he tells of the visions and voices that urge him on and of the sense that he has discovered something magical and profound. Together, Patrick's and Henry's stories create one of the most nuanced and revealing portraits of mental illness ever written, and a stirring memoir of family, parenthood, and the courage it takes to persevere and emerge, at last, whole.
Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a Father and Son’s Story
by Patrick Cockburn Henry CockburnOn a cold February day two months after his 20th birthday, Henry Cockburn waded into the Newhaven estuary outside Brighton and tried to swim across, almost drowning in the process. The trees, he said, had told him to do it. Nearly halfway around the world, in Kabul, Afghanistan, journalist Patrick Cockburn learned that Henry, his son, had been admitted to a hospital mental ward and appeared to be suffering a mental breakdown. Ten days later, Henry was officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Thus begins Patrick and Henry's extraordinary account of Henry's steep descent into mental illness and of Patrick's journey towards understanding the changes it has wrought. With remarkable candour, Patrick writes of the seven years since, years Henry has spent almost entirely in mental hospitals. Schizophrenics are at high risk for suicide, and Patrick and his wife live in constant fear for Henry's life. Patrick also provides a fascinating glimpse into the conflicted history of schizophrenia's diagnosis and treatment and shows how little we still know about this debilitating condition. The book also includes Henry's own account of his experiences. In these raw and eerily beautiful chapters written from the hospital, he tells of the visions and voices that urge him on and of the sense that he has discovered something magical and profound. Together, Patrick's and Henry's stories create one of the most nuanced and revealing portraits of mental illness ever written, and a stirring memoir of family, parenthood, and the courage it takes to persevere and emerge, at last, whole.
Henry: Libro Tres de la Trilogía Tudor (DA TRILOGIA TUDOR #3)
by Tony RichesBosworth 1485. Tras su victoria sobre el rey Richard III, Henry Tudor se convierte en rey de Inglaterra. Rebeldes e impostores conspiran para quitarle el trono. Los barones se oponen a los planes de Henry tendientes a disminuir su poder, y él no está seguro de en quién puede confiar. Su deseo es unir las casa de Lancaster y de York a través de su matrimonio con la bella Elizabeth de York. Con la ayuda de su madre, lady Margaret Beaufort, consigue mantener una paz frágil. Escoge una princesa española, Catalina de Aragón, como esposa para su hijo, el príncipe Arthur. Sus hijas se casarán con el rey de Escocia y con el hijo del emperador de Roma. Cuando parece que sus plegarias han sido escuchadas, la tragedia lo golpea y Henry deberá asegurar el futuro de los Tudor.
Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep
by Michael SchulmanA portrait of a woman, an era, and a profession: the first thoroughly researched biography of Meryl Streep that explores her beginnings as a young woman of the 1970s grappling with love, feminism, and her astonishing talentIn 1975 Meryl Streep, a promising young graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was finding her place in the New York theater scene. Burning with talent and ambition, she was like dozens of aspiring actors of the time—a twenty-something beauty who rode her bike everywhere, kept a diary, napped before performances, and stayed out late “talking about acting with actors in actors’ bars.” Yet Meryl stood apart from her peers. In her first season in New York, she won attention-getting parts in back-to-back Broadway plays, a Tony Award nomination, and two roles in Shakespeare in the Park productions. Even then, people said, “Her. Again.”Her Again is an intimate look at the artistic coming-of-age of the greatest actress of her generation, from the homecoming float at her suburban New Jersey high school, through her early days on the stage at Vassar College and the Yale School of Drama during its golden years, to her star-making roles in The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and Kramer vs. Kramer.New Yorker contributor Michael Schulman brings into focus Meryl’s heady rise to stardom on the New York stage; her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with fellow actor John Cazale; her marriage to sculptor Don Gummer; and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love, and sacrifice.Featuring eight pages of black-and-white photos, this captivating story of the making of one of the most revered artistic careers of our time reveals a gifted young woman coming into her extraordinary talents at a time of immense transformation, offering a rare glimpse into the life of the actress long before she became an icon.
Her Beautiful Brain: A Memoir
by Ann HedreenHer Beautiful Brain is Ann Hedreen&’s story of what it was like to become a mom just as her beautiful, brainy mother began to lose her mind to an unforgiving disease. Arlene was a copper miner&’s daughter who was divorced twice, widowed once, raised six kids singlehandedly, survived the turbulent &‘60s, and got her B.A. and M.A. at 40 so she could support her family as a Seattle schoolteacher—only to start showing signs of Alzheimer&’s disease in her late fifties, taking Ann and her siblings on a long descent they never could have anticipated or imagined. For two decades—as Ann married, had a daughter and a son, navigated career changes and marital crises and built a life making documentary films with her husband—she watched her once-invincible mom disappear. From Seattle to Haiti to the mine-gouged Finntown neighborhood in Butte, Montana where she was born and grew up; from Arlene&’s favorite tennis club to a locked geropsychiatric ward, Her Beautiful Brain tells the heartbreaking story of a daughter&’s love for a mother who is lost in the wilderness of an unpredictable and harrowing illness.
Her Brilliant Career
by Rachel CookeIn Her Brilliant Career, acclaimed journalist Rachel Cooke goes back in time to offer an entertaining and iconoclastic look at ten women in the 1950s--pioneers whose professional careers and complicated private lives helped to create the opportunities available to today's women. These intrepid and ambitious individuals--among them a film director, a cook, an architect, an editor, an archaeologist, and a race car driver--left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman.Daring and independent, these remarkable, unsung heroines--whose obscurity makes their accomplishments all the more astonishing and relevant--loved passionately, challenged men's control, made their own mistakes, and took life on their own terms, breaking new ground and offering inspiration. Their individual portraits gradually form a landscape of 1950s culture, and of women's unique--and rapidly evolving--role.Before there could be a Danica Patrick, there had to be a Sheila van Damm; before there was Barbara Walters, there was Nancy Spain; before Kathryn Bigelow came Muriel Box. The pioneers of Her Brilliant Career forever changed the fabric of culture, society, and the workforce. This is the Fifties retold: vivid, surprising, and, most of all, modern.
Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be
by Marissa R. MossThe full and unbridled inside story of the last twenty years of country music through the lens of Maren Morris, Mickey Guyton, and Kacey Musgraves—their peers and inspirations, their paths to stardom, and their battles against a deeply embedded boys’ club, as well as their efforts to transform the genre into a more inclusive place for all (and not just white men in trucker hats), as told by award-winning Nashville journalist Marissa R. Moss.It was only two decades ago, but, for the women of country music, 1999 seems like an entirely different universe. With Shania Twain, country’s biggest award winner and star, and The Chicks topping every chart, country music was a woman’s world: specifically, country radio and Nashville’s Music Row.Cut to 2021, when women are only played on country radio 16% of the time, on a good day, and when only men have won Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards for a decade. To a world where artists like Kacey Musgraves sell out arenas but barely score a single second of airplay. But also to a world where these women are infinitely bigger live draws than most male counterparts, having massive pop crossover hits like Maren Morris’s “The Middle,” pushing the industry to confront its deeply embedded racial biases with Mickey Guyton’s “Black Like Me,” winning heaps of Grammy nominations, banding up in supergroups like The Highwomen and taking complete control of their own careers, on their own terms. When the rules stopped working for the women of country music, they threw them out and made their own: and changed the genre forever, and for better. Her Country is veteran Nashville journalist Marissa R. Moss’s story of how in the past two decades, country’s women fought back against systems designed to keep them down, armed with their art and never willing to just shut up and sing: how women like Kacey, Mickey, Maren, The Chicks, Miranda Lambert, Rissi Palmer, Brandy Clark, LeAnn Rimes, Brandi Carlile, Margo Price and many more have reinvented the rules to find their place in an industry stacked against them, how they’ve ruled the century when it comes to artistic output—and about how women can and do belong in the mainstream of country music, even if their voices aren’t being heard as loudly.
Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995
by Patricia Highsmith'Offers the most complete picture ever published of how Highsmith saw herself' New York Times'One of the finest writers in the English language' Richard Osman'I love Highsmith so much. What a revelation her writing was' Gillian Flynn 'My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white.'Published for the very first time for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries and notebooks offer an unforgettable insight into the life and mind of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating writers.Though the famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorise a biography during her lifetime, she left behind 8,000 pages of notebooks and diaries, along with tantalising instructions on how they should be read. This one-volume assemblage reveals, at last, the inscrutable figure behind the pen. The diaries show Highsmith's unwavering literary ambitions - coming often at huge personal sacrifice. We see Highsmith drafting Strangers on a Train while attending the Yaddo artists' colony in 1948, alongside Flannery O'Connor and at Truman Capote's recommendation. We feel her euphoria writing The Price of Salt (later adapted into the film Carol), one of the first mainstream novels to depict two women in love. And we watch Highsmith in Positano, subsisting on little more than cigarettes and gleefully conjuring Mr Ripley, the sociopathic anti-hero that would cement her reputation.In these pages Highsmith reflects on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy, sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. She describes her tumultuous romantic relationships, alongside her sometimes dizzying social life involving Jane Bowles, Peggy Guggenheim, Carson McCullers, Arthur Koestler and W. H. Auden. And in her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art and ever-percolating prejudices, we see Highsmith revealing the roots of her psychological angst and acuity.At once lovable, detestable and mesmerising, Highsmith put her turbulent life to paper for five decades. Offering all the pleasures of Highsmith's novels, the result is one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations
Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker
by Beverly Lowry"I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South; I was promoted from there to the wash-tub; then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations." --Madam C. J. Walker, National Negro Business League Convention, 1912 Now, from a writer acclaimed for her novels and the memoir Crossed Over, a remarkable biography of a truly heroic figure. Madam C. J. Walker created a cosmetics empire and became known as the first female self-made millionaire in this nation's history, a noted philanthropist and champion of women's rights and economic freedom. These achievements seem nothing less than miraculous given that she was born, in 1867, to former slaves in a hamlet on the Mississippi River. How she came to live on another river, the Hudson, in a Westchester County mansion, and in a New York City town house, is at once inspirational and mysterious, because for all that is known about the famous entrepreneur, much that occurred before her magnificent transformation--years that trace a circuitous route across the country--remains obscure. By breathing life into scattered clues and dry facts, and with a deep understanding of the times and places through which Madam Walker moved, Beverly Lowry tells a story that stretches from the antebellum South to the Harlem Renaissance and bridges nearly a century of our history in her search for the distant truths of a woman who defied all odds and redefined conventional expectations."Wherever there was one colored person, whether it was a city, a town, or a puddle by the railroad tracks, everybody knew her name." --Violet Davis Reynolds, Stenographer, Madam C. J. Walker CoFrom the Hardcover edition.
Her Finest Hour: One Teen's Personal War with Hitler's Germany
by Stephen DosterIn this WWII memoir, a woman recounts her struggle to survive and serve her country in the Women&’s Auxiliary Air Force. Marjorie Terry Smith was a teenage girl living in the suburbs of London when the Second World War began. Before it was over, her family would be bombed out of three homes, her fiancé would be killed fighting Rommel&’s forces in North Africa, and she would join the WAAF. Stationed in the operations rooms on seven different Royal Air Force bases, she encountered RAF legends Douglas Bader and Leonard Cheshire, as well as the indomitable Winston Churchill. In Her Finest Hour, Smith recounts a youth in England leading up to the war, her six years of service, and life in a recovering England, in which she worked for the British Overseas Airways Corporation as well as the BBC. Vividly recalling how the war changed her life and the world around her, Smith offers a rare insider&’s view of WWII military operations from a woman&’s perspective, as told to her son, Stephen Doster.