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A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston
by Robyn CrawfordAfter decades of silence, Robyn Crawford, close friend, collaborator, and confidante of Whitney Houston, shares her story. Whitney Houston is as big a superstar as the music business has ever known. She exploded on the scene in 1985 with her debut album and spent the next two decades dominating the charts and capturing the hearts of fans around the world. One person was there by her side through it all—her best friend, Robyn Crawford. <P><P>Since Whitney’s death in 2012, Robyn has stayed out of the limelight and held the great joys, wild adventures, and hard truths of her life with Whitney close to her heart. Now, for the first time ever, Crawford opens up in her new memoir, A Song for You. With warmth, candor, and an impressive recall of detail, Robyn describes the two meeting as teenagers in the 1980s, and how their lives and friendship evolved as Whitney recorded her first album and Robyn pursued her promising Division I basketball career. <P><P>Together during countless sold-out world tours, behind the scenes as hit after hit was recorded, through Whitney’s marriage and the birth of her daughter, the two navigated often challenging families, great loves, and painful losses, always supporting each other with laughter and friendship. <P><P>Deeply personal and heartfelt, A Song for You is the vital, honest, and previously untold story that provides an understanding of the complex life of Whitney Houston. Finally, the person who knew her best sets the record straight. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
A Song for the Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington
by Carole Boston Weatherford Rob SandersA singular, richly illustrated picture book biography of Bayard Rustin, the gay Black man behind the March on Washington of 1963, by the acclaimed authors of Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre and Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag. <p><p> On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million activists and demonstrators from every corner of the United States convened for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was there and then that they raised their voices in unison to call for racial and economic justice for all Black Americans, to call out inequities, and ultimately to advance the Civil Rights Movement. <p><p> Every movement has its unsung heroes: individuals who work in the background without praise or accolades, who toil and struggle without notice. One of those unsung heroes was at the center of some of the most important decisions and events of the Civil Rights Movement. <p><p> That hero was a quiet man, a gay African American man. He was Bayard Rustin. <p><p> Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders's A Song for the Unsung, featuring illustrations from artist Byron McCray, is an inspiring story that answers one of our nation’s greatest calls to action by honoring one of the men who made it happen.
A Song in the Night
by Bob MassieIn this inspiring memoir of faith and perseverance, Bob Massie recounts how a childhood illness laid the foundation for a life filled with compassion and activism.Bob Massie was born with classical hemophilia, a painful disorder that caused repeated bleeding in his joints and slowly robbed him of the ability to walk. Though bound to leg braces and wheelchairs as a child, his curiosity and enthusiasm pulled him relentlessly outward toward knowledge and people. Gradually he fought back and eventually succeeded not only in walking again but in traveling widely through a life of passion and commitment. He graduated in history from Princeton, where he organized the opening up of the university's exclusive club system, and later was ordained as an Episcopal minister. After several years teaching children and working with the homeless in New York City, he moved to the challenging halls of Harvard Business School, where he earned a doctorate while tending to a devoted but struggling congregation in the working-class city of Somerville, Massachusetts.Though the medical dangers increased--he had acquired the HIV and hepatitis through transfusions for hemophilia--he continued to press for justice. He wrote a prizewinning book on South African apartheid, led one of America's most innovative environmental groups, ran for lieutenant governor in Massachusetts, and created the world's leading standard for corporate sustainability. Then, in 2002, the same year Massie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the field of finance by CFO magazine, he received more devastating health news. The hepatitis was causing his liver to fail, and Massie was brought close to death in 2009.After surviving these remarkable challenges, Bob Massie is now ready to share his story. Though his journey has not been easy, he writes about it with tremendous grace and candor. In an era rife with disillusionment, A Song in the Night will inspire everyone who reads it."A good friend and a visionary leader, Bob Massie has combined foresight, passion, and skill to create lasting change in the US and around the world. In A Song in the Night, Bob shares deeply personal stories that help describe how he overcame great challenges to forge such strong commitments for his work and family. Bob has lived an incredible life, and we are so fortunate that he has shared it with us in this wonderful new book." --Al Gore"I admire and deeply respect Bob Massie's courage, his compassion, and his eloquence. He is a good man. His life's work has focused on social justice, public service, and faith, and I know he will continue to work tirelessly to make this a more just world." --Elizabeth WarrenFrom the Hardcover edition.
A Song of Sun and Sky
by Jason CockcroftA seemingly endless road trip for Lula and her father only seems to get worse when the car breaks down in the middle of the desert. Things are too boring and too orange until Lula encounters a mysterious painter who shows her that the desert is full of so much more to explore. This is an exploration of color, lighting, and the magic of art and nature, filtered through the lens of a fictional interaction with the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Learn about the colors you bring along everywhere you go.
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
by Ralph Manheim Peter Handke"My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks: I had better go to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the nerves of her suicide."So begins Peter Handke's extraordinary confrontation with his mother's death. In a painful and courageous attempt to deal with the almost intolerable horror of her suicide, he sets out to piece together the facts of her life, as he perceives them. What emerges is a loving portrait of inconsolable grief, a woman whose lively spirit has been crushed not once but over and over again by the miseries of her place and time. Yet well into middle age, living in the Austrian village of her birth, she still remains haunted by her dreams.
A Southern Moderate in Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808-1892 (Southern Biography Series)
by David I. DurhamIn A Southern Moderate in Radical Times, David I. Durham offers a comprehensive and critical appraisal of one of the South's famous dissenters. Against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent periods in American history, he explores the ideological and political journey of Henry Washington Hilliard (1808--1892), a southern politician whose opposition to secession placed him at odds with many of his peers in the South's elite class. Durham weaves threads of American legal, social, and diplomatic history to tell the story of this fascinating man who, living during a time of unrestrained destruction as well as seemingly endless possibilities, consistently focused on the positive elements in society even as forces beyond his control shaped his destiny.A three-term congressman from Alabama, as well as professor, attorney, diplomat, minister, soldier, and author, Hilliard had a career that spanned more than six decades and involved work on three continents. He modeled himself on the ideal of the erudite statesman and celebrated orator, and strove to maintain that persona throughout his life. As a member of Congress, he strongly opposed secession from the Union. No radical abolitionist, Hilliard supported the constitutional legality of slavery, but working in the tradition of the great moderates, he affirmed the status quo and warned of the dangers of change. For a period of time he and like-minded colleagues succeeded in overcoming the more radical voices and blocking disunion, but their success was short-lived and eventually overwhelmed by the growing appeal of sectional extremism. As Durham shows, Hilliard's personal suffering, tempered by his consistent faith in Divine Providence, eventually allowed him to return to his ideological roots and find a lasting sense of accomplishment late in life by becoming the unlikely spokesman for the Brazilian antislavery cause.Drawing on a large range of materials, from Hilliard's literary addresses at South Carolina College and the University of Alabama to his letters and speeches during his tenure in Brazil, Durham reveals an intellectual struggling to understand his world and to reconcile the sphere of the intellectual with that of the church and political interests. A Southern Moderate in Radical Times opens a window into Hilliard's world, and reveals the tragedy of a visionary who understood the dangers lurking in the conflicts he could not control.
A Spark of Light: THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
by Jodi PicoultTHE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A writer the world needs to be reading right now' The Independent'An apposite and nuanced novel... Picoult writes about an emotive, controversial issue with unflinching precision.' Red'A very special novel about a very difficult subject.' Grazia****The Center for women's reproductive health offers a last chance at hope - but nobody ends up there by choice.Its very existence is controversial, and to the demonstrators who barricade the building every day, the service it offers is no different from legalised murder.Now life and death decisions are being made horrifyingly real: a lone protester with a gun has taken the staff, patients and visitors hostage.Starting at the tensest moment in the negotiations for their release, A Spark of Light unravels backwards, revealing hour by urgent hour what brought each of these people - the gunman, the negotiator, the doctors, nurses and women who have come to them for treatment - to this point.And certainties unwind as truths and secrets are peeled away, revealing the complexity of balancing the right to life with the right to choose.(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
A Spark of Light: THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
by Jodi PicoultTHE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A writer the world needs to be reading right now' The Independent'An apposite and nuanced novel... Picoult writes about an emotive, controversial issue with unflinching precision.' Red'Incredibly compelling and page turning' Dolly Alderton'A very special novel about a very difficult subject.' Grazia'Her intelligent, meticulously researched novels explore ethical dilemmas through heartrending, headline-grabbing scenarios' The Sunday TimesA lone gunman takes the women and doctors at a controversial abortion clinic hostage. Nobody has ended up there by choice.As the tense negotiation for their release unfolds, hour by crucial hour, back in time through the day that brought the hostages and their captor to this moment, every certainty is questioned, every judgement thrown into sharp relief.Because matters of life and death look very different when you, or the ones you love, are staring down the barrel of a gun . . .Powerful, thought-provoking and deeply involving, Jodi Picoult's new novel is told in reverse, propelling the reader through intertwining characters and uncovering motives in this unflinching exploration of what makes a life.THE BOOK OF TWO WAYS, Jodi's stunning new novel about life, death and missed opportunities is available to pre-order now.
A Special Day
by Adriana Hunter Anne-Dauphine JulliandFebruary 29th is a date that comes into existence just once every four years. It is also the birthday of Thaïs-author Anne-Dauphine Julliand's darling daughter-who died of a genetic disease. Thaïs lived just shy of her fourth birthday. She had a short life but good one.As this special day is about to reappear on her calendar for the first time since her daughter passed away, Anne-Dauphine struggles with how to mark this momentous occasion. She wants to live fully on this special day: Thais would have been eight years old. Vivid memories of life with her daughter begin to blend with the present-every gesture, every word evokes a buried memory, arouses laughter or tears. Yet as the date of her daughter's birthday approaches, she knows she must not lose sight of the family who needs her now: her sons Gaspard and Arthur, and Azylis, her other daughter who is also sick.Anne-Dauphine's message remains simple, true, and strong: we all need to be loved and we all need to be happy despite our ordeals. This is both lesson in happiness and a wonderful love story-A Special Day is an honest, inspirational tale that has touched the hundreds of thousands of lives. It will leave the reader breathless with its beauty.
A Special Day: A Mother?s Memoir of Love, Loss, and Acceptance After the Death of Her Daughter
by Anne-Dauphine JulliandFebruary 29th is a date that comes into existence just once every four years. It is also the birthday of Thaïs-author Anne-Dauphine Julliand’s darling daughter-who died of a genetic disease. Thaïs lived just shy of her fourth birthday. She had a short life but good one.As this special day is about to reappear on her calendar for the first time since her daughter passed away, Anne-Dauphine struggles with how to mark this momentous occasion. She wants to live fully on this special day: Thais would have been eight years old. Vivid memories of life with her daughter begin to blend with the present-every gesture, every word evokes a buried memory, arouses laughter or tears. Yet as the date of her daughter's birthday approaches, she knows she must not lose sight of the family who needs her now: her sons Gaspard and Arthur, and Azylis, her other daughter who is also sick.Anne-Dauphine's message remains simple, true, and strong: we all need to be loved and we all need to be happy despite our ordeals. This is both lesson in happiness and a wonderful love story-A Special Day is an honest, inspirational tale that has touched the hundreds of thousands of lives. It will leave the reader breathless with its beauty.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
A Special Education: One Family's Journey Through the Maze of Learning Disabilities
by Dana Buchman Charlotte FarberDesigner Dana BuchmanOCOs chronicle of her daughterOCOs struggle with learning disabilities and of her own journey to become the mother Charlotte needs her to be"
A Speck in the Sea: A Story of Survival and Rescue
by Anthony Sosinski John AldridgeThe harrowing adventure-at-sea memoir recounting the 2013 search-and-rescue mission for lost Montauk fisherman John Aldridge - first a New York Times Magazine feature story, now in priority development as a major motion picture from The Weinstein Company."A Speck in the Sea is a terrific read--harrowing and inspiring at the same time. In the end it's a moving testament both to our individual will to survive and to our collective will to come to the aid of others in distress. I couldn't put it down." --Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the BoatIn the dead of night on July 24, 2013, John Aldridge was thrown off the back of the Anna Mary while his fishing partner, Anthony Sosinski, slept below. As desperate hours ticked by, Sosinski, the families, the local fishing community, and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized in an unprecedented search effort that culminated in a rare and exhilarating success.A tale of survival, perseverance, and community, A Speck in the Sea tells of one man's struggle to survive as friends and strangers work separately, and together, to bring him home. Aldridge's wrenching first-person account intertwines with the narrative of the massive, constantly evolving rescue operation designed to save him.
A Spectacle of Dust: The Autobiography
by Pete Postlethwaite Sean BeanVibrant and candid memoirs of the late, great British character actor, Pete Postlethwaite. After training as a teacher, Pete Postlethwaite started his acting career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre where his colleagues included Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Antony Sher and Julie Walters. After routine early appearances in small parts for television programmes such as THE PROFESSIONALS, Postlethwaite's first success came with the acclaimed British film DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES in 1988. He then received an Academy Award nomination for his role in THE NAME OF THE FATHER in 1993. His performance as the mysterious lawyer "Kobayashi" in THE USUAL SUSPECTS is well-known, and he appeared in many successful films including ALIEN 3, BRASSED OFF, THE SHIPPING NEWS, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, as Friar Lawrence in Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET, and in INCEPTION with Leonardo diCaprio. Pete Postlethwaite was one of the best-loved and widely admired performers on stage, TV (SHARPE, THE SINS) and in cinema. In THE ART OF DISCWORLD, Terry Pratchett said that he had always imagined Sam Vimes as 'a younger, slightly bulkier version of Pete Postlethwaite', while Steven Spielberg called him 'the best actor in the world', about which Postlethwaite said: 'I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, "the thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world."' This is the story of a diverse and multi-talented actor's eventful life, told in his own candid and vibrant words.
A Spectacle of Dust: The Autobiography
by Pete PostlethwaiteVibrant and candid memoirs of the late, great British character actor, Pete Postlethwaite.After training as a teacher, Pete Postlethwaite started his acting career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre where his colleagues included Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Antony Sher and Julie Walters. After routine early appearances in small parts for television programmes such as THE PROFESSIONALS, Postlethwaite's first success came with the acclaimed British film DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES in 1988. He then received an Academy Award nomination for his role in THE NAME OF THE FATHER in 1993. His performance as the mysterious lawyer "Kobayashi" in THE USUAL SUSPECTS is well-known, and he appeared in many successful films including ALIEN 3, BRASSED OFF, THE SHIPPING NEWS, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, as Friar Lawrence in Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET, and in INCEPTION with Leonardo diCaprio. Pete Postlethwaite was one of the best-loved and widely admired performers on stage, TV (SHARPE, THE SINS) and in cinema. In THE ART OF DISCWORLD, Terry Pratchett said that he had always imagined Sam Vimes as 'a younger, slightly bulkier version of Pete Postlethwaite', while Steven Spielberg called him 'the best actor in the world', about which Postlethwaite said: 'I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, "the thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world."' This is the story of a diverse and multi-talented actor's eventful life, told in his own candid and vibrant words.
A Spectacle of Dust: The Autobiography
by Pete PostlethwaiteAfter training as a teacher, Pete Postlethwaite started his acting career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre where his colleagues included Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Antony Sher and Julie Walters. After routine early appearances in small parts for television programmes such as THE PROFESSIONALS, Postlethwaite's first success came with the acclaimed British film DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES in 1988. He then received an Academy Award nomination for his role in THE NAME OF THE FATHER in 1993. His performance as the mysterious lawyer "Kobayashi" in THE USUAL SUSPECTS is well-known, and he appeared in many successful films including ALIEN 3, BRASSED OFF, THE SHIPPING NEWS, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, as Friar Lawrence in Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET, and in INCEPTION with Leonardo diCaprio. Pete Postlethwaite was one of the best-loved and widely admired performers on stage, TV (SHARPE, THE SINS) and in cinema. In THE ART OF DISCWORLD, Terry Pratchett said that he had always imagined Sam Vimes as 'a younger, slightly bulkier version of Pete Postlethwaite', while Steven Spielberg called him 'the best actor in the world', about which Postlethwaite said: 'I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, "the thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world."' This is the story of a diverse and multi-talented actor's eventful life, told in his own candid and vibrant words.Read by Philip Jackson (BRASSED OFF), with an introduction by Sean Bean.(p) 2011 Orion Publishing Group
A Spectacular Ride
by Drollene P. BrownThe true story of a courageous teenage girl, Sybil Ludington, who rode 40 miles in one night on horseback to muster the militia in response to an impending invasion by British soldiers.
A Spiritual Journey Through Breast Cancer
by Judy AstiTraces the author's journey--physically, psychologically, and spiritually--through her bout with breast cancer
A Spitfire Girl: One of the World's Greatest Female ATA Ferry Pilots Tells Her Story
by Mary Ellis Melody ForemanWe visualize dashing and daring young men as the epitome of the pilots of the Second World War, yet amongst that elite corps was one person who flew no less than 400 Spitfires and seventy-six different types of aircraft and that person was Mary Wilkins. Her story is one of the most remarkable and endearing of the war, as this young woman, serving as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary, transported aircraft for the RAF, including fast fighter planes and huge four-engine bombers. On one occasion Mary delivered a Wellington bomber to an airfield, and as she climbed out of the aircraft the RAF ground crew ran over to her and demanded to know where the pilot was! Mary said simply: "I am the pilot!" Unconvinced the men searched the aircraft before they realized a young woman had indeed flown the bomber all by herself. After the war she accepted a secondment to the RAF, being chosen as one of the first pilots, and one of only three women, to take the controls of the new Meteor fast jet. By 1950 the farmer's daughter from Oxfordshire with a natural instinct to fly became Europe's first female air commandant. In this authorized biography the woman who says she kept in the background during her ATA years and left all the glamour of publicity to her colleagues, finally reveals all about her action-packed career which spans almost a century of aviation, and her love for the skies which, even in her nineties, never falters.
A Spitfire Girl: One of the World's Greatest Female ATA Ferry Pilots Tells Her Story
by Mary Ellis Melody ForemanThis WWII biography recounts the heroic contributions of a female pilot who flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and Wellington Bombers for the RAF. A farmer&’s daughter from Oxfordshire, Mary Ellis fell in love with flying at the age of eleven, when she rode in a biplane at a flying circus. Already a licensed pilot by the time the Second World War broke out, Mary joined the Air Transit Auxiliary in 1941. As a ferry pilot, she transported aircraft for the Royal Air Force, including more than four hundred Spitfires and seventy-six different kinds of aircraft. After the war, Mary accepted a secondment to the RAF as one of the first pilots to fly the new Gloster Meteor, Britain&’s first fighter jet. By 1950, she became Europe's first female air commandant. In this authorized biography, Mary and biographer Melody Foreman vividly recount her action-packed career spanning almost a century of aviation. Mary says: I am passionate for anything fast and furious. I always have been since the age of three and I always knew I would fly. The day I stepped into a Spitfire was a complete joy and it was the most natural thing in the world for me.
A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin
by Jen Bryant Melissa SweetAs a child in the late 1800s, Horace Pippin loved to draw: He loved the feel of the charcoal as it slid across the floor. He loved looking at something in the room and making it come alive again in front of him. He drew pictures for his sisters, his classmates, his co-workers. Even during W.W.I, Horace filled his notebooks with drawings from the trenches . . . until he was shot. Upon his return home, Horace couldn't lift his right arm, and couldn't make any art. Slowly, with lots of practice, he regained use of his arm, until once again, he was able to paint--and paint, and paint! Soon, people--including the famous painter N. C. Wyeth--started noticing Horace's art, and before long, his paintings were displayed in galleries and museums across the country. Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet team up once again to share this inspiring story of a self-taught painter from humble beginnings who despite many obstacles, was ultimately able to do what he loved, and be recognized for who he was: an artist. <P><P> Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award and a Sibert Honor
A Splendid Intelligence: The Life Of Elizabeth Hardwick
by Cathy CurtisThe first biography of the extraordinary essayist, critic, and short story writer Elizabeth Hardwick, author of the semiautobiographical novel Sleepless Nights. Born in Kentucky, Elizabeth Hardwick left for New York City on a Greyhound bus in 1939 and quickly made a name for herself as a formidable member of the intellectual elite. Her eventful life included stretches of dire poverty, romantic escapades, and dustups with authors she eviscerated in The New York Review of Books, of which she was a cofounder. She formed lasting friendships with literary notables—including Mary McCarthy, Adrienne Rich, and Susan Sontag—who appreciated her sharp wit and relish for gossip, progressive politics, and great literature. Hardwick’s life and writing were shaped by a turbulent marriage to the poet Robert Lowell, whom she adored, standing by faithfully through his episodes of bipolar illness. Lowell’s decision to publish excerpts from her private letters in The Dolphin greatly distressed Hardwick and ignited a major literary controversy. Hardwick emerged from the scandal with the clarity and wisdom that illuminate her brilliant work—most notably Sleepless Nights, a daring, lyrical, and keenly perceptive collage of reflections and glimpses of people encountered as they stumble through lives of deprivation or privilege. A Splendid Intelligence finally gives Hardwick her due as one of the great postwar cultural critics. Ranging over a broad territory—from the depiction of women in classic novels to the civil rights movement, from theater in New York to life in Brazil, Kentucky, and Maine—Hardwick’s essays remain strikingly original, fiercely opinionated, and exquisitely wrought. In this lively and illuminating biography, Cathy Curtis offers an intimate portrait of an exceptional woman who vigorously forged her own identity on and off the page.
A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham
by Steve KemperA life of adventure and military daring on violent frontiers across the American West, Africa, Mexico, and the Klondike. Frederick Russell Burnham’s (1861–1947) amazing story resembles a newsreel fused with a Saturday matinee thriller. One of the few people who could turn his garrulous friend Theodore Roosevelt into a listener, Burnham was once world-famous as “the American scout.” His expertise in woodcraft, learned from frontiersmen and Indians, helped inspire another friend, Robert Baden-Powell, to found the Boy Scouts. His adventures encompassed Apache wars and range feuds, booms and busts in mining camps around the globe, explorations in remote regions of Africa, and death-defying military feats that brought him renown and high honors. His skills led to his unusual appointment, as an American, to be Chief of Scouts for the British during the Boer War, where his daring exploits earned him the Distinguished Service Order from King Edward VII. After a lifetime pursuing golden prospects from the deserts of Mexico and Africa to the tundra of the Klondike, Burnham found wealth, in his sixties, near his childhood home in southern California. Other men of his era had a few such adventures, but Burnham had them all. His friend H. Rider Haggard, author of many best-selling exotic tales, remarked, “In real life he is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance.” Among other well-known individuals who figure in Burnham’s story are Cecil Rhodes and William Howard Taft, as well as some of the wealthiest men of the day, including John Hays Hammond, E. H. Harriman, Henry Payne Whitney, and the Guggenheim brothers. Failure and tragedy streaked his life as well, but he was endlessly willing to set off into the unknown, where the future felt up for grabs and values worth dying for were at stake. Steve Kemper brings a quintessential American story to vivid life in this gripping biography.
A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards (Wesleyan Film)
by Sam WassonWith one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic directors: Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known.
A Spoke in the Wheel: The Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
by Renate WindThis is an ideal book to introduce Dietrich Bonhoeffer to new generation of readers. Vividly and concisely written, critical as well as appreciative, and containing material which has not been published in English before, it paints an unforgettable portrait of the great German theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945. What emerges most clearly is the complexity of Bonhoeffer's personality and the lonely course he pursued: sensitive, but taught always to repress his feelings; moving away from his family to read theology, but not feeling at home in his church; ready to sacrifice everything but dogged by a tendency towards narcissism; finding the woman he loved and at that very moment put in a prison from which he would never emerge. Above all, Renate Wind brings out Bonhoeffer's early realization of the horror of Nazi treatment of the Jews and the bravery of his involvement in the resistance against Hitler, his resolve to become a 'spoke in the wheel'. To their shame, many in the churches never forgave Dietrich Bonhoeffer this involvement, and in also calling attention to their failing, this book helps to explain why.
A Spoonful of Sugar
by Brenda AshfordBrenda Ashford is the quintessential British nanny. Prim and proper, gentle and kind, she seems to have stepped straight out of Mary Poppins. For more than six decades Nanny Brenda swaddled, diapered, dressed, played with, sang to, cooked for, and looked after more than one hundred children. From the pampered sons and daughters of lords ensconced in their grand estates to the children of tough war evacuees in London's East End, Brenda has taught countless little ones to be happy, healthy, and thoroughly well bred. In this delightful memoir, Brenda shares her endearing, amusing, and sometimes downright bizarre experiences turning generations of children into successful adults.From the moment Brenda first held her baby brother David she was hooked. She became a second mother to him, changing his nappies, reading him stories, and giving him all the love her warm heart contained. Knowing a career caring for children was her calling in life, Brenda attended London's prestigious Norland College, famous for producing top-notch nannies. It was a sign of privilege and good taste for the children of the well-to-do to be seen being pushed in their Silver Cross prams by Norland nannies, who were recognizable by their crisp, starched black uniforms with white bib collars, and their flowing black capes lined with red silk. And what skills were these trainees tested on daily? Lullaby singing, storytelling, pram shining, bed making, all forms of sewing, cooking simple meals, and dispensing first aid--including knowing the best way to help the medicine go down.In A Spoonful of Sugar, Brenda recalls her years at Norland and her experiences during the war (after all, even if bombs are dropping, there's no reason to let standards slip), and recounts in lovely detail a life devoted to the care of other people's children.Sprinkled throughout with pearls of wisdom (you can never give children too much love, and you should learn how to sew a button, for goodness' sake), this delightful memoir from Britain's oldest living nanny is practically perfect in every way.