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Biography
In 1967, at age nineteen, John Stillman--refusing to wait for the draft--voluntarily enlisted in the Army to aid his fellow countrymen in one of the most opposed involvements in our nation's history: the Vietnam War. Quickly falling in love with the rush of being a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, he believed his service would honorably help the South Vietnamese protect their country from the ruthless communist North and their Southern allies. But once in the volatile jungles of Vietnam, the merciless hunting and killing of the enemy, constant threat of landmines and booby traps, ambushes that could easily backfire, and deaths of his comrades made Stillman question how any man--if he survived--could ever return to his life as he'd known it.
Written with John's daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths fifty years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details. Interwoven with the author's own journal entries and including thirty-five photographs, it is a story that will open your eyes to what these brave young men witnessed and endured, and why they returned facing a lifetime of often unspoken unrest, persistent nightmares, and forced normalcy, haunting even the strongest of soldiers.
The last thing I ever dreamed of when I was daily battling for survival and for an identity other than that of inferiority and fourth-class citizen, which apartheid foisted on me, was that someday I would attend an American college, edit its newspaper, graduate with honors, practise journalism and write a book.
How could I have dreamed of all this when I was born of illiterate parents who could not afford to pay my way through school, let alone pay the rent for our shack and put enough food on the table; when black people in Alexandra lived under constant police terror and the threat of deportation to impoverished tribal reserves; when at ten I contemplated suicide because I found the burden of living in a ghetto, poverty-stricken and without hope, too heavy to shoulder; when in 1976 I got deeply involved in the Soweto protests, in which hundreds of black students were killed by the police, and thousands fled the country to escape imprisonment and torture?
In "Kaffir Boy" I have re-created, as best as I can remember, all these experiences. I have sought to paint a portrait of my childhood and youth in Alexandra, a black ghetto of Johannesburg, where I was born and lived for eighteen years, with the hope that the rest of the world will finally understand why apartheid cannot be reformed: it has to be abolished.
Much has been written and spoken about the politics of apartheid: the forced removals of black communities from theirancestral lands, the Influx Control and Pass laws that mandate where blacks can live, work, raise families, be buried; the migrant labour system that forces black men to live away from their families eleven months out of a year; the breaking up of black families in the ghettos as the authorities seek to create a so-called white South Africa; the brutal suppression of the black majority as it agitates for equal rights. But what does it all mean in human terms?
When I was growing up in Alexandra it meant hate, bitterness, hunger, pain, terror, violence, fear, dashed hopes and dreams. Today it still means the same for millions of black children who are trapped in the ghettos of South Africa, in a lingering nightmare of a racial system that in many respects resembles Nazism. In the ghettos black children fight for survival from the moment they are born. They take to hating and fearing the police, soldiers and authorities as a baby takes to its mother's breast.
In my childhood these enforcers of white prerogatives and whims represented a sinister force capable of crushing me at will; of making my parents flee in the dead of night to escape arrest under the Pass laws; of marching them naked out of bed because they did not have the permit allowing them to live as husband and wife under the same roof. They turned my father -- by repeatedly arresting him and denying him the right to earn a living in a way that gave him dignity -- into such a bitter man that, as he fiercely but in vain resisted the emasculation, he hurt those he loved the most.
The movies, with their lurid descriptions of white violence, reinforced this image of white terror and power. Often the products of abjectpoverty and broken homes, many black children, for whom education is inferior and not compulsory, have been derailed by movies into the dead-end life of crime and violence. It is no wonder that black ghettos have one of the highest murder rates in the world, and South African prisons are among the most packed. It was purely by accident that I did not end up a "tsotsi" (thug, mugger, gangster). It was no coincidence that, until the age of ten, I refused to set foot in the white world.
The turning point came when one day in my eleventh year I accompanied my grandmother to her gardening job and met a white family that did not fit the stereotypes I had grown up with. Most blacks, exposed daily to virulent racism and dehumanized and embittered by it, do not believe that such whites exist. From this family I started receiving "illegal books" like "Treasure Island" and "David Copperfield, " which revealed a different reality and marked the beginning of my revolt against Bantu education's attempts to proscribe the limits of my aspirations and determine my place in South African life.
At thirteen I stumbled across tennis, a sport so "white" most blacks thought I was mad for thinking I could excel in it; others mistook me for an Uncle Tom. Through tennis I learned the important lesson that South Africa's 4.5 million whites are not all racists. As I grew older, and got to understand them more -- their fears, longings, hop
Making use of much hitherto unpublished archive material such as letters, diaries, and photographs, this book gives a fascinating insight into life in both pre-revolutionary Russia and the Siamese court.
Bill O'Reilly is one of the most recognized and talked-about journalists of our time. With an unparalleled track record as an author and with the #1-rated Fox News show, The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly has become a veritable institution of political insight and keen advice. In Keep It Pithy, O'Reilly offers a classic collection of the most memorable writings from his bestselling books, and looks back at how his opinions and ideas have been proven right or wrong by the passage of time. With his trademark candor and no-nonsense approach, each chapter focuses on a core theme as it gathers O'Reilly's thoughts on the most compelling issues of our time and provides readers an illuminating guide to the American cultural landscape. A spirited and personal book, Keep It Pithy is the perfect addition to an O'Reilly fan's library, or the best introduction for the few left uninitiated.
PRE-ORDER "KID NUMBER ONE" TODAY! -- All books will ship prior to release date of 9/28/19.
Having escaped religious persecution in Eastern Europe in 1903, Alan Hassenfeld’s grandfather and great-uncle arrived in America as penniless teenage immigrants – refugees who went from hawking rags on the streets of New York City to building what became the world’s largest toy company, Hasbro. Alan’s father, Merrill, brought Mr. Potato Head and G.I. Joe to consumers and his only brother, Stephen, made Hasbro a Fortune 500 company and Hollywood player. Alan was the free spirit who wanted to write novels, date beautiful women and travel the world. He never wanted to run Hasbro, and no one ever believed he would – or could.
And then Stephen died, tragically of AIDS. “Kid Number One,” as Alan liked to call himself, was suddenly chairman and CEO. Silencing the skeptics, he took the company to greater heights – and then almost killed it with a series of bad decisions including Hasbro’s acquisition of rights to POKéMON. Putting ego aside, Hassenfeld gave his long-time lieutenant Al Verrecchia command and set in motion a plan whereby he would leave the corner office. Verrecchia saved the company, and after renewed success, he himself retired, leaving Hasbro in the hands of current CEO and chairman Brian Goldner, so highly regarded that he was brought onto the board of CBS.
With his fortune, Hassenfeld could have sailed into the sunset on a yacht, but instead, he went to work expanding the long family tradition of Tikkun Olam – “repairing the world” – begun by his grandfather and great-uncle, who, grateful to have survived, tirelessly helped immigrants and needy citizens of their new country. Alan Hassenfeld’s philanthropy has helped build two children’s hospitals, establish numerous educational and health programs, train young doctors and scientists, resettle refugees, promote peace in the Mideast and more. For decades, he also has been a highly visible advocate for national political and ethics reform, despite personal threats and the scorn of crooked politicians.
Kid Number One: A story of heart, soul and business, featuring Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro, weaves these stories into a seamless, dramatic narrative that begins with the slaughter of Jews in 1903 Poland and continues to today -- when in an era of unchecked narcissism and greed, Hassenfeld, like Bill Gates, serves as a model for what people of great wealth can do when they put self aside. Kid Number One also chronicles the history of American toys -- and not just such Hasbro classics as Monopoly, Transformers and Star Wars, but also Mattel’s timeless brands including Barbie and many lesser-known toys by companies large and small, many no longer in existence.
Granted exclusive and unprecedented access inside a $5-billion toy and family-entertainment company and one of America’s leading if largely unknown philanthropies, G. Wayne Miller, author of the best-selling Toy Wars: The epic struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie and the companies that make them, is uniquely qualified to tell this tale.
About the Author:
This is G. Wayne Miller’s 17th book. He is also a filmmaker, a podcaster, a Providence Journal staff writer, a visiting fellow at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and co-host and co-producer of the Telly Award-winning weekly national PBS TV and SiriusXM Satellite Radio show “Story in the Public Square.”
Miller was a member of The Providence Journal team that was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the newspaper’s coverage of The Station nightclub fire that killed 100, and he has been honored for his work more than 50 times. His fiction and non-fiction books have won wide critical acclaim and been translated into several languages. Visit Miller at gwaynemiller.com
By any measure, 1973 was not an ordinary year. It should have been Kissinger's year of triumph -- a time to bask in his hard-won achievements and build on his successes. Kissinger's strategy of opening the door to China and detente with the Soviet Union had been judged an overwhelming success. After furthering his policy of realpolitik through backchannel diplomacy during Nixon's first term, Kissinger was finally awarded the plum position of secretary of state. But then major events shattered whatever peace and calm America had attained in the early part of the decade: first came defeat in Vietnam; then Watergate, culminating in the president's resignation; war in the Middle East; and finally an economic collapse caused by the Arab oil embargo. All of these momentous blows to the country's security occurred on Henry Kissinger's watch. Rather than progressing on all fronts, as he had expected, Kissinger would confront some of the most critical policy challenges of his career.
Based on full access to the subject and his papers, Kissinger is an intimate portrait of a man, a country, and a presidency at a critical point. From the blowup in the Middle East, to detente with Russia, to the opening of the door to China, the United States' response to the pivotal events of 1973 -- and Kissinger's crucial role in the formulation of that response -- continues to shape and influence United States foreign policy today.
Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer. The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would later use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories about the people and things she observed.
Along with all Americans, those who lived in New York City's borough of the Bronx suffered during the Depression. So it followed that when Mary's father died, her mother, deciding to open the family home to boarders, placed a discreet sign next to the front door that read, FURNISHED ROOMS. KITCHEN PRIVILEGES. Very shortly the first in a succession of tenants arrived: a couple dodging bankruptcy who moved in with their wild-eyed boxer; a teacher who wept endlessly over her lost love; a deadbeat who tripped over a lamp while trying to sneak out in the middle of the night...
The family's struggle to make ends meet; her days as a scholarship student in an exclusive girls' academy; her after-school employment as a hotel switchboard operator (happily listening in on the guests' conversations); the death of her beloved older brother in World War II; her brief career as a flight attendant for Pan Am (a job taken after a friend who flew with the airline said ever so casually, "God, it was beastly hot in Calcutta"); her marriage to Warren Clark, on whom she'd had a crush for many years; sitting at the kitchen table, writing stories, and finally selling the first one for one hundreddollars (after six years and some forty rejections!) -- all these experiences figure into "Kitchen Privileges," as does her husband's untimely death, which left her a widowed mother of five young children.
Determined to care for her family and to make a career for herself, she went to work writing scripts for a radio show, but in her spare time she began writing novels. Her first, a biographical novel about the life of George Washington titled "Aspire to the Heavens," found a publisher but disappeared without a trace when the publisher folded. (Recently it was rediscovered by a descendant of the Washington family and was reissued under the title "Mount Vernon Love Story.)" The experience, however, gave her the background and the preparation for writing "Where Are the Children?" which went on to become an international bestseller. That novel launched her career and was the first of twenty-seven (and still counting!) bestselling books of suspense.
As Mary Higgins Clark has said when asked if she might consider giving up writing for a life of leisure, "Never! To be happy for a year, win the lottery. To be happy for life, love what you do."
In "Kitchen Privileges," she reflects on the joy that her life as a writer has brought her, and shares with readers the love that she has found.
"A terrific book about one of baseball's most underrated pitchers, not to mention baseball's most misunderstood pitch." - Stephen King
Tim Wakefield is an enigma. At forty-four years old, he is the longest-serving member of one of baseball's most popular franchises. He has pitched more games than any other player in Red Sox history, and in 2011 he reached the milestone of 200 career victories. Yet few realize the full measure of his success. In fact, that his career can be characterized by such words as longevity and consistency defies all odds, because he has achieved all of this with the game's most mercurial weapon--the knuckleball. Knuckler is the story of how a struggling position player risked his future on a fickle pitch that would eventually define his career, making him one of the most respected players in the game. It is also a lively and entertaining meditation on the dancing pitch, its history, its mechanics, its mystique, and the inevitable ironies it brings to bear. "This book is about resiliency, diligence, and the tunnel vision required to live by what appears to be the most fanciful pitch thrown by man." - Peter Gammons, MLB analyst "Knuckler gives readers a rare glimpse of the man behind the baseball and his remarkable work on and off the field." - Carlton Fisk, Hall of Fame catcher
As Peter S. Canellos and his team of "Boston Globe" reporters show in this revealing and intimate biography, the gregarious, pudgy, and least academically successful of the Kennedy boys has witnessed greater tragedy and suffered greater pressure than any of his siblings. At the age of thirty-six, Ted Kennedy found himself the last brother, the champion of a generation's dreams and ambitions. He would be expected to give the nation the confidence to confront its problems and to build a fairer society at home and abroad.
He quickly failed in spectacular fashion. Late one night in the summer of 1969, he left the scene of a fatal automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island. The death there of a young woman from his brother's campaign would haunt and ultimately doom his presidential ambitions. Political rivals turned his all-too-human failings -- drinking, philandering, and divorce -- into a condemnation of his liberal politics.
But as the presidency eluded his grasp, Kennedy was finally liberated from the expectations of others, free to become his own man. Once a symbol of youthful folly and nepotism, he transformed himself in his later years into a symbol of wisdom and perseverance. He built a deeply loving marriage with his second wife, Victoria Reggie. He embraced his role as the family patriarch. And as his health failed, he anointed the young and ambitious presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom many commentators compared to his brother Jack. The Kennedy brand of liberalism was rediscovered by a new generation of Americans.
Perceptive and carefully reported, drawing heavily from candid interviews with the Kennedy family and inner circle, "Last Lion" captures magnificently the life and historic achievements of Ted Kennedy, as well as the personal redemption that he found.
Léon Blum (1872-1950), France's prime minister three times, socialist activist, and courageous opponent of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, profoundly altered French society. It is Blum who is responsible for France's forty-hour week and its paid holidays, which were among the many reforms he championed as a deputy and as prime minister, while acting as a proudly visible Jew, a Zionist, and eventually a survivor of Buchenwald.
This biography fully integrates Blum's Jewish commitments into the larger story of his life. Unlike previous biographies that downplay the significance of Blum's Jewish heritage on his progressive politics, Pierre Birnbaum's portrait depicts an extraordinary man whose political convictions were shaped and driven by his cultural background. The author powerfully demonstrates how Blum's Jewishness was central to his outlook and mission, from his earliest entry into the political arena in reaction to the Dreyfus Affair, and how it sustained and motivated him throughout the remainder of his life. Birnbaum's Léon Blum is a critical chapter in the larger history of Jews in France.
A seeker in the truest sense of the word, Jenkins went to Korea on a whim, hoping to find the answers to her deepest, most pressing questions about how to find peace and her purpose in life. During her first months there, she sought out a remote temple, where she unknowingly crossed paths with an unassuming Buddhist monk. Months later, they met again by chanceand fell in love. Though their courtship was long, mostly secretive, and fraught with logistical and spiritual considerations, Jenkins and Lee were ultimately married in Korea in 2003. Through their relationship, Jenkins discovered the most important lesson of all: No one holds the keys to peace and happinessyou have walk your own path and find your own wisdom through your own experiences.
More than the improbable story of a girl from Seattle who found peace of mind (and love) with a Buddhist monk, Lessons from the Monk I Married is an approachable guide to the most elemental spiritual questions of our day."
The life story of Chris Kyle, the American Sniper
A brutal warrior but a gentle father and husband, Chris Kyle led the life of an American hero. His renowned courage and skill in military service earned him two nicknames--The Devil among insurgents and The Legend among his Navy SEAL brethren--but his impact extended beyond that after he came home from combat and began working with fellow veterans.
Journalist Michael J. Mooney reveals Kyle's life story, from his Texas childhood up through his death in February 2013. Mooney interviews those closest to the late SEAL and also sheds light on the life of the suffering veteran who killed Kyle. "The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle" is a candid, essential portrait of a celebrated warrior--a man about whom a movie has only added to the legend.
StoryCorps began with the idea that everyone has an important story to tell. And since 2003, this remarkable project has been collecting the stories of everyday Americans and preserving them for future generations. In New York City and in mobile recording booths traveling the country-from small towns to big cities, at Native American reservations and an Army post-StoryCorps is collecting the memories of Americans from all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life. The project represents a wondrous nationwide celebration of our shared humanity, capturing for posterity the stories that define us and bind us together.
In "Listening Is an Act of Love," StoryCorps founder and legendary radio producer Dave Isay selects some of the most remarkable stories from the already vast collection and arranges them thematically into a moving portrait of American life. The voices here connect us to real people and their lives-to their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds.
To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or caricature. Above all, this book honors the gift each StoryCorps participant has made, from the raw material of his or her life, to the Americans who will come after. We are our history, individually and collectively, and "Listening Is an Act of Love" touchingly reminds us of this powerful truth.
The product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, Lives and Letters spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achievements of a vast array of celebrated writers and performers in film, theater, and dance, and some of the more curious iconic public figures of our times.
From the world of literature, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Judith Krantz, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling; the controversies surrounding Bruno Bettelheim and Elia Kazan; and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her editor, Maxwell Perkins.
From dance and theater, Isadora Duncan and Margot Fonteyn, Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse.
In Hollywood, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks and Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Anna May Wong.
In New York, Diana Vreeland, the Trumps, and Gottlieb's own take on the contretemps that followed his replacing William Shawn at The New Yorker.
And so much more . . .
James Rufus Agee (1909 - 1955) was was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. He was the author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (to which he contributed the text and Walker Evans contributed the photographs) which grew out of an assignment the two men accepted in 1936 to produce a magazine article on the conditions among white sharecropper families in the American South. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Simone Weil (1909 - 1943) was a French philosopher, activist, and religious searcher, whose death in 1943 was hastened by starvation. Weil published during her lifetime only a few poems and articles. With her posthumous works --16 volumes in all -- Weil has earned a reputation as one of the most original thinkers of her era. T.S. Eliot described her as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints." William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963), was an American poet who was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin; but during his long lifetime, Williams excelled at both. He considered himself a socialist and opponent of capitalism and is probably spinning in his grave at the current state of things, economically and socially. One of his best known poems is an "apology poem" taught to most American children in elementary school called "This Is Just to Say": "I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox / and which / you were probably /saving / for breakfast. / Forgive me / they were delicious / so sweet /and so cold." Dorothy Day (1897 - 1980) was an American journalist and social activist who became most famous for founding, with Peter Maurin, the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement which combines direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.
Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965) was a hugely influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best know for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography, one of Robert Coles' great passions. Erik Erikson (1902 - 1994) was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theories on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase "identity crisis." Erikson's greatest innovation was to postulate not five stages of development, as Freud has done with his psychosexual stages, but eight. Erik Erikson believed that every human being goes through a certain number of stages to reach his or her full development, theorizing eight stages, that a human being goes through from birth to death. Walker Percy (1916 - 1990) was an American southern author best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a unique combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith -- all themes of great interest to Coles. Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), has long been in Robert Coles' orbit and he once held a concert as a fundraisr for Coles' magazine Double Take (now defunct). Springsteen's most successful studio albums, Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily life in America, and the latter album made him one of the most recognized artists of the 1980s within the United States.
Rick Moody, the award-winning author of The Ice Storm, shares the harrowing true story of the first year of his second marriage--an eventful month-by-month account--in The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony
At this story's start, Moody, a recovering alcoholic and sexual compulsive with a history of depression, is also the divorced father of a beloved little girl and a man in love; his answer to the question "Would you like to be in a committed relationship?" is, fully and for the first time in his life, "Yes."
And so his second marriage begins as he emerges, humbly and with tender hopes, from the wreckage of his past, only to be battered by a stormy sea of external troubles--miscarriages, the deaths of friends, and robberies, just for starters. As Moody has put it, "this is a story in which a lot of bad luck is the daily fare of the protagonists, but in which they are also in love." To Moody's astonishment, matrimony turns out to be the site of strength in hard times, a vessel infinitely tougher and more durable than any boat these two participants would have traveled by alone. Love buoys the couple, lifting them above their hardships, and the reader is buoyed along with them.
In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized "safety-bicycle" with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for "Outing" magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg.
He never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled "Outing" to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz's trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, Herlihy's gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles. This untold story culminates with Sachtleben's heroic effort to bring Lenz's accused murderers to justice, even as troubled Turkey teetered on the edge of collapse.
"Mom, I'm gay." With three little words, gay sons and daughters can change their parents' lives forever. Twenty years ago, during a walk on a Mississippi beach, Ellen DeGeneres spoke those simple, powerful words to her mother. That emotional moment eventually brought mother and daughter closer than ever, but it was not without a struggle. In Love, Ellen, Betty DeGeneres tells her story: the complicated path to acceptance and the deepening of her friendship with her daughter, the media's scrutiny of their family life, and the painful and often inspiring stories she's heard on the road as the first nongay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project.
Insightful, universally touching, and uncommonly wise, Love, Ellen is a story of friendship between mother and daughter and a lesson in understanding for all parents and their children.
"Mom, I'm gay." With three little words, gay children can change their parents' lives forever. Yet at the same times it's a chance for those parents to realize nothing, really, has changed at all; same kid, same life, same bond of enduring love.Twenty years ago, during a walk on a Mississippi beach, Ellen DeGeneres spoke those simple, powerful words to her mother. That emotional moment eventually brought mother and daughter closer than ever, but not without a struggle. Coming from a republican family with conservative values, Betty needed time and education to understand her daughter's homosexuality -- but her ultimate acceptance would set the stage for a far more public coming out, one that would change history.
In Love, Ellen, Betty DeGeneres tells her story; the complicated path to acceptance and the deepening of her friendship with her daughter; the media's scrutiny of their family life; the painful and often inspiring stories she's heard on the road as the first non-gay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaigns National Coming Out Project.
With a mother's love, clear minded common sense, and hard won wisdom, Betty DeGeneres offers up her own very personal memoir to help parents understand their gay children, and to help sons and daughters who have been rejected by their families feel less alone."Mom, I'm gay." With three little words, gay children can change their parents' lives forever. Yet at the same times it's a chance for those parents to realize nothing, really, has changed at all; same kid, same life, same bond of enduring love.
Twenty years ago, during a walk on a Mississippi beach, Ellen DeGeneres spoke those simple, powerful words to her mother. That emotional moment eventually brought mother and daughter closer than ever, but not without a struggle. Coming from a republican family with conservative values, Betty needed time and education to understand her daughter's homosexuality -- but her ultimate acceptance would set the stage for a far more public coming out, one that would change history.
In Love, Ellen, Betty DeGeneres tells her story; the complicated path to acceptance and the deepening of her friendship with her daughter; the media's scrutiny of their family life; the painful and often inspiring stories she's heard on the road as the first non-gay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaigns National Coming Out Project.
With a mother's love, clear minded common sense, and hard won wisdom, Betty DeGeneres offers up her own very personal memoir to help parents understand their gay children, and to help sons and daughters who have been rejected by their families feel less alone.
Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, calling the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of St. Louis. Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. They don't know how he almost blew his career. They haven't read his funniest and most embarrassing stories or heard about his interactions with the biggest sports stars of this era. They don't know how hard he can laugh at himself--or that he thinks some of his critics have a point. And they don't know what it was really like to grow up in his father's shadow. Joe and Jack were best friends, but it wasn't that simple. Jack, the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals for almost fifty years, helped Joe get his broadcasting start at eighteen. But Joe had to prove himself, first as a minor league radio announcer and then on local TV, national TV with ESPN, and then finally on FOX. He now has a successful, Emmy-winning career, but only after a lot of dues-paying, learning, and pretty damn entertaining mistakes that are recounted in this book. In his memoir, Joe takes us through his life on and off the field. He shares the lessons he learned from his father, the errors he made along the way, and the personal mountain he climbed and conquered, all of which have truly made him a Lucky Bastard.
In the vein of Alan Brinkley's The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century and Katharine Graham's Personal History comes the first comprehensive chronicle of the Medill family--a riveting true story of the country's first media dynasty whose power and influence shaped the story of America for four generations.
Evicted meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid, a beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in America. Includes a foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich.
At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly. She wrote the true stories that weren't being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn't feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless ghost," Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients' lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path. Her compassionate, unflinching writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not her alone. It is an inspiring testament to the strength, determination, and ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcom X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.
The Mamba Mentality: How I Play is Kobe Bryant's personal perspective of his life and career on the basketball court and his exceptional, insightful style of playing the game--a fitting legacy from the late Los Angeles Laker superstar.
In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe "The Black Mamba" Bryant decided to share his vast knowledge and understanding of the game to take readers on an unprecedented journey to the core of the legendary "Mamba mentality." Citing an obligation and an opportunity to teach young players, hardcore fans, and devoted students of the game how to play it "the right way," The Mamba Mentality takes us inside the mind of one of the most intelligent, analytical, and creative basketball players ever. In his own words, Bryant reveals his famously detailed approach and the steps he took to prepare mentally and physically to not just succeed at the game, but to excel. Readers will learn how Bryant studied an opponent, how he channeled his passion for the game, how he played through injuries. They'll also get fascinating granular detail as he breaks down specific plays and match-ups from throughout his career. Bryant's detailed accounts are paired with stunning photographs by the Hall of Fame photographer Andrew D. Bernstein. Bernstein, long the Lakers and NBA official photographer, captured Bryant's very first NBA photo in 1996 and his last in 2016--and hundreds of thousands in between, the record of a unique, twenty-year relationship between one athlete and one photographer. The combination of Bryant's narrative and Bernstein's photos make The Mamba Mentality an unprecedented look behind the curtain at the career of one of the world's most celebrated and fascinating athletes.
Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.
A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York.
Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.
Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house
with the enticing local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined. Love lost with the gardener is found instead with Marcus, an abandoned English pointer that she
rescues. With Marcus by her side, Justine discovers the bliss and hardship of living in the countryside:
herding sheep, tending to wild horses, picking olives with her adopted Italian family, and trying her best to learn the regional dialect. The result is a rich, comic, and unconventional portrait about learning to live and love in the most unexpected ways.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography
"Thoroughly absorbing, lively . . . Fuller, so misunderstood in life, richly deserves the nuanced, compassionate portrait Marshall paints." -- Boston Globe
Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall recounts the trailblazing life of Margaret Fuller: Thoreau's first editor, Emerson's close friend, daring war correspondent, tragic heroine. After her untimely death in a shipwreck off Fire Island, the sense and passion of her life's work were eclipsed by scandal. Marshall's inspired narrative brings her back to indelible life.
Whether detailing her front-page New-York Tribune editorials against poor conditions in the city's prisons and mental hospitals, or illuminating her late-in-life hunger for passionate experience--including a secret affair with a young officer in the Roman Guard--Marshall's biography gives the most thorough and compassionate view of an extraordinary woman. No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving.
"Megan Marshall's brilliant Margaret Fuller brings us as close as we are ever likely to get to this astonishing creature. She rushes out at us from her nineteenth century, always several steps ahead, inspiring, heartbreaking, magnificent." -- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
"Shaping her narrative like a novel, Marshall brings the reader as close as possible to Fuller's inner life and conveys the inspirational power she has achieved for several generations of women." -- New Republic
"[The] rare biography of a public figure that's not only beautifully written, but also shockingly revelatory." -- The Atlantic
A vivid biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most influential and under-appreciated women in American political history. Barbara Pierce Bush was one of the country's most popular and powerful figures, yet her full story has never been told.
THE MATRIARCH tells the riveting tale of a woman who helped define two American presidencies and an entire political era. Written by USA TODAY's Washington Bureau chief Susan Page, this biography is informed by more than one hundred interviews with Bush friends and family members, hours of conversation with Mrs. Bush herself in the final six months of her life, and access to her diaries that spanned decades. THE MATRIARCH examines not only her public persona but also less well-known aspects of her remarkable life.
As a girl in Rye, New York, Barbara Bush weathered criticism of her weight from her mother, barbs that left lifelong scars. As a young wife, she coped with the death of her three-year-old daughter from leukemia, a loss that changed her forever. In middle age, she grappled with depression so serious that she contemplated suicide. And as first the wife and then the mother of American presidents, she made history as the only woman to see -- and advise -- both her husband and son in the Oval Office.
As with many women of her era, Barbara Bush was routinely underestimated, her contributions often neither recognized nor acknowledged. But she became an astute and trusted political campaign strategist and a beloved First Lady. She invested herself deeply in expanding literacy programs in America, played a critical role in the end of the Cold War, and led the way in demonstrating love and compassion to those with HIV/AIDS. With her cooperation, this book offers Barbara Bush's last words for history -- on the evolution of her party, on the role of women, on Donald Trump, and on her family's legacy.
Barbara Bush's accomplishments, struggles, and contributions are many. Now, Susan Page explores them all in THE MATRIARCH, a groundbreaking book certain to cement Barbara Bush as one of the most unique and influential women in American history.