Biography/MemoirHome > Biography/Memoir
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In American Legacy, #1 New York Times bestselling author C. David Heymann draws upon a voluminous archive of personal interviews to present a telling portrait of John and Caroline Kennedy. A longtime biographer of various members of the Kennedy clan, including Jackie and Robert Kennedy, Heymann covers John's and Caroline's childhood in the White House, the dark aftermath of their father's assassination, their uneasy adolescence, and the many challenges they faced as adults, all under the glaring... more info>>
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In the ten years since Princess Diana's shocking and tragic death in 1997, her hold on the world's imagination has only increased. For The People's Princess, Larry King asked many people who knew Diana, some officially and some more personally, for their favorite memories. Sir Richard Branson recalls Diana sitting in the cockpit of one of his private planes with baby Prince William on her lap; as they flew past Windsor Castle she announced, "On our right you have Grandma's house!" Heather Mills,... more info>>
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The sixties were a time of restlessness, inner turmoil, and exuberance for Merton during which he closely followed the careening development of political and social activism--Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, the Vietnam war, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Volume 5 chronicles the approach of Merton's fiftieth birthday and marks his move to Mount Olivet, his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he was finally able to fully embrace the... more info>>
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The long-awaited memoir/manifesto from legendary climber, businessman, and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of one of the world's most inspiring companies, Patagonia, Inc. Whether you care about adventure sports, the fate of the natural world, or pure brand maintenance and business success, Patagonia, Inc. is one of the earth's most interesting and inspiring companies. For almost forty years, its reputation for unsurpassed high quality, maverick innovation, and long-term enviro... more info>>
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During a forty-year career in politics, Vice President Dick Cheney has been involved in some of the most consequential decisions in recent American history. He was one of a few select advisers in the room when President Gerald Ford decided to declare an end to the Vietnam War. Nearly thirty years later, from the presidential bunker below the White House in the moments immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, he helped shape the response: America's global war on terror. Yet for al... more info>>
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A celebration of the most important relationship in a straight girl's life--her gay best friend. Thanks to iconic duos such as Sex and the City's Carrie and Stanford and the title characters of Will & Grace, the love affair between straight women and gay men has moved into the mainstream. Never before, though, has a book looked at these friendships in the real world. The editors, themselves best friends, have put together this collection of hilarious and poignant never-before-published essays th... more info>>
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When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was ten years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, and eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search and rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness. Whether she is with parents whose 6-year-old daughter has wandered into the woods, or wardens as they se... more info>>
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America's finest literary Italy watcher uses the incredible and appallingly entertaining story of Silvio Berlusconi's rise to power to paint a portrait of Italy today that's invaluable for anyone who wants to understand that country or put our own country's problems in perspective. Imagine if the president of the United States was also the Senate majority leader, possessed Rupert Murdoch's and Mike Bloomberg's media holdings, was as rich as Bill Gates, had the real estate empire and personal arr... more info>>
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An epic, scandal-plagued story of the immigrant family that built--and then spectacularly lost--a global wine empire Set in California's lush Napa Valley and spanning four generations of a talented and visionary family, The House of Mondavi is a tale of genius, sibling rivalry, and betrayal. From 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mondavi passed through Ellis Island, to the Robert Mondavi Corp.'s twenty-first-century battle over a billion-dollar fortune, award-winning journalist Julia Flynn bri... more info>>
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Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with Far from the Madding Crowd, and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he published Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure late in his career, Hardy explored a very different world than that of his rural tales, one in which the plight of lower classes and women take center stage while the higher classes are damned. Ironical... more info>>
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The author of Population: 485 returns, delivering a truckload of humor, heart, and ... gardening tips.... Think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, complete with stock cars, sexy vegetables, and a laugh track. "All I wanted to do was fix my old pickup truck," says Michael Perry. "That, and plant my garden. Then I met this woman...." Truck: A Love Story recounts a year in which Perry struggles to grow his own food ("Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron an... more info>>
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In 1917, the notorious Oriental dancer Mata Hari was arrested on the charge of espionage; less than one year later she was tried and executed--charged with the deaths of at least 50,000 gallant French soldiers. The mistress of many senior Allied officers and government officials, even the French minister of war, she had a sharp intellect and a golden tongue fluent in several languages; she also traveled widely throughout wartorn Europe, with seeming disregard for the political and strategic alli... more info>>
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A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock 'n' roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In Country. To this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock 'n' roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist's insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was "one of us." Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking... more info>>
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This all-access, inside-out view of what the American occupation of Iraq really looks like on the ground is the story of two young Americans who went to Baghdad without any real plan and discovered they weren't the only ones. Underqualified but ingenious, Ray and Jeff found work with the Coalition Provisional Authority providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people amid an appalling atmosphere of corruption, incompetence, and horror. Gritty and irreverent, this is a wild ride inside the Red Zone... more info>>
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Dina Matos McGreevey speaks out for the first time in her New York Times bestselling memoir. In August 2004, New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey resigned from office, announcing that he was a "gay American." His wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, the picture of grace and loyalty, perfectly composed in her pale blue suit, gave no sign of the tangled emotions she felt that day, no hint of the devastation that was to come. Since then she has been asked repeatedly about the nature of her marriage, about what... more info>>
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She is a fashion icon with a lust for fame. He is possibly the most famous athlete on the planet. Together they are one of the most loved--and hated--pairs on Earth. This sensational, highly addictive biography delves beneath the Beckhams' glossy, glamorous facade to expose the real Posh and Becks behind the headlines and the hype. Celebrity biographer Andrew Morton, hailed for his insightful, in-depth coverage of luminaries such as Princess Diana and Madonna, explores in detail how David and Vi... more info>>
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Faison was a ninth grade dropout who earned more than $100,000 a week selling cocaine in Harlem, New York, during the peak of America's "War on Drugs" between 1983 and 1990. Faison, along with two partners, was an urban prince with cars, jewels, and people--in awe of this million-dollar phenomenon--at his feet. His legacy has been praised by hip-hop's top names in their lyrics, and his life was the basis for the urban cult classic film Paid in Full starring Mekhi Phifer, Wood Harris, and rapper ... more info>>
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The second volume of Thomas Merton's "gutsy, passionate journals" (Thomas Moore) chronicles Merton's advancements to priesthood and emergence as a bestselling author with the surprise success of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Spanning an eleven-year period, Entering the Silence reflects Merton's struggle to balance his vocation to solitude with the budding literary career that would soon established him as one of the most important spiritual writers of our century.
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Lamont be my government, but Hood be my name. I earned my stripes chilling up in Fat Daddy's joint, a Brownsville barbershop in the belly of Brooklyn. Some called me a street savior ... others said I was just another Brownsville boy gone bad. Whatever. I brung it and I took it too. But when it was all said and done, I walked away with a lesson learned in street loyalty: ain't no need in looking over your shoulder in this game. Because your real enemies ain't aiming at your back. They lunging str... more info>>
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Forced from her downtown Manhattan apartment by the terrorist attack of September 11, journalist Wendy Bounds was delivered to Guinan's doorstep--a legendary Irish drinking hole and country store nestled along the banks of the Hudson River in the small town of Garrison, New York--by a friend. Captivated by the bar's charismatic but ailing owner and his charming, motley clientele, Bounds uprooted herself permanently and moved to tiny Garrison, the picturesque river town they all call home. There ... more info>>
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Part sports star, part antihero, part hip-hop icon, Allen Iverson has managed to cross over into the mainstream of American culture--without compromise. Defiantly tattooed, with his hair in cornrows, the six-foot Philadelphia 76ers point guard is one of the most recognizable and controversial stars of the sports world. His meteoric rise from a troubled childhood in the ghetto to NBA superstardom has been marked by five straight playoff appearances, including a finals berth in 2001 and an MVP awa... more info>>
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An irresistible, entertaining peek into the privileged realm of Wordsworth and Wodehouse, Chelsea Clinton and Hugh Grant, Looking for Class offers a hilarious account of one man's year at Oxford and Cambridge--the garden parties and formal balls, the high-minded debates and drinking Olympics. From rowing in an exclusive regatta to learning lessons in love from a Rhodes Scholar, Bruce Feiler's enlightening, eye-popping adventure will forever change your view of the British upper class, a world ro... more info>>
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Gospel music was a significant part of not only who Elvis became as a man, but as an artist as well. As Elvis mania continues to consume generation after generation throughout the world, fans still crave new insights into the person of Elvis Presley.
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Wedged between the hustle of New York and the grandeur of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia is America's smallest big city, America's biggest small city, and America's most American city. It is also a city in flux. Bruce Buschel is a native Philadelphian who revisits his hometown and, in doing so, revisits his personal history and the city's complex identity. Buschel was born on Broad Street, his father died on Broad Street; he flunked out of college, sold cameras, and purchased drugs on Broad Stre... more info>>
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A masterly and beautifully written account of the impact of Alexander von Humboldt on nineteenth-century American history and culture. The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) achieved unparalleled fame in his own time. Today, however, he and his enormous legacy to American thought are virtually unknown. In The Humboldt Current, Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt's pervasive influence on American history through examining the work of four explorers--J. N. Reynolds, Clarence King, ... more info>>
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