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Laura Ingalls Wilder: Young Pioneer (Childhood of Famous Americans Series)
by Beatrice GormleyThis fictionalized biography of the author of the popular "Little House" books tells her family's real life on the American frontier, and of the events that surpassed the drama of her stories.
Louisa May Alcott: Young Novelist (Childhood of Famous Americans Series)
by Beatrice GormleyA fictionalized biography that traces the life of the author of the well-loved story of the March sisters, Little Women, and its sequels.
Marie Curie: Young Scientist (Childhood of World Figures Series)
by Beatrice GormleyMarie Curie was a world-renowned scientist who made many important discoveries, as well as a great teacher and a mother, but her accomplishments didn't come easily. Born Maria Sklodovska in 1867, Marie grew up in Russia-occupied Poland where schools were not allowed to teach Polish history or language, and lab experiments were forbidden in science classes. When Marie was young,her mother and eldest sister both passed away. Marie was determined not to let hardships get in the way of her dreams. She went on to win two Nobel Prizes, one each in physics and chemistry, making her the first woman to win the award and first person ever honored with two of them. Read all about the clever young girl whose hard work lead to brilliant contributions in the field of science.
Nelson Mandela
by Beatrice GormleyGet a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it takes to change the world in this comprehensive biography that tells the complete life story of internationally renowned peacemaker Nelson Mandela.Civil rights activist. World leader. Writer. Throughout his life, Nelson Mandela took on many roles, all in the pursuit of peace. Born in 1918 in South Africa, he grew up in a culture of government-enforced racism and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement at a young age. Deeply committed to nonviolent activism, Mandela directed a peaceful campaign against the racist policies of his South African government, and spent twenty-seven years in prison as a result. In the years following his emergence as a free man, he continued his efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside South African President F.W. de Klerk. In 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president and served until his retirement from active politics in 1999 at the age of eighty-one. He continued to promote global peace until his death in 2013, and his legacy lives on. From Nelson Mandela's childhood to his monumental impact on race relations and nonviolent activism, this comprehensive biography shares the truth about the man behind the iconic smile: his struggles, his triumphs, and the sacrifices along the way.
Pope Francis: The People's Pope
by Beatrice GormleyBea Gormley tells the story of Pope Francis, known as the People’s Pope, who has humbly said, “My people are poor and I am one of them.”Ordained as Pope on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis became the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Known worldwide for his great humility and approachability, he is the first citizen from the Americas, the first non-European, and first Jesuit priest to be named Pope. Gormley explores Bergoglio’s, his given surname, early years, growing up as the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants in Argentina, working as a chemical technician before venturing in the priesthood as a Jesuit novice. He went from Bishop to Archbishop to Cardinal—and gained a reputation for personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and a commitment to social justice, which stands to this day. Named Person of the Year by Time magazine in December 2013, Pope Francis remains outspoken in support of the world’s poor and marginalized people, and he has been involved actively in areas of political diplomacy and environmental advocacy.
President George W. Bush
by Beatrice GormleyOur new president, George W. Bush, once said: "I never dreamed about becoming president. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Willie Mays." George W. was born in 1946 and attended Yale University. As a young man, he trained as a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard before beginning a career in business. He then turned to Texas politics and served as governor there from 1994 to 2000. This is the first biography for young people to be published about the forty-third president of the United States, George W. Bush. With up-to-the-minute information and quotes from our new president -- including details of the final days of the campaign and a description of the events from Election Day to acceptance speech -- this book is essential reading for every young student of American history.
The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr
by Ken GormleyTen years after one of the most polarizing political scandals in American history, author Ken Gormley offers an insightful, balanced, and revealing analysis of the events leading up to the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. From Ken Starr's initial Whitewater investigation through the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit to the Monica Lewinsky affair, The Death of American Virtue is a gripping chronicle of an ever-escalating political feeding frenzy.In exclusive interviews, Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and many more key players offer candid reflections on that period. Drawing on never-before-released records and documents--including the Justice Department's internal investigation into Starr, new details concerning the death of Vince Foster, and evidence from lawyers on both sides--Gormley sheds new light on a dark and divisive chapter, the aftereffects of which are still being felt in today's political climate.From the Hardcover edition.
The Presidents and the Constitution, Volume Two: From World War I to the Trump Era
by Ken GormleyA revealing look at the constitutional issues that confronted and shaped each presidency from Woodrow Wilson through Donald J. TrumpDrawing from the monumental publication The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History in 2016, the nation’s foremost experts in the American presidency and the US Constitution tell the intertwined stories of how the last eighteen American presidents have interfaced with the Constitution and thus defined the most powerful office in human history.This volume leads off with Woodrow Wilson, the president who led the nation through World War I, and ends with Donald J. Trump, who ushered the US into uncharted political and legal territory. In between, the country was confronted with international wars, the civil rights movement, 9/11, and the advent of the internet, all of which presented unique and pressing constitutional issues. The last one hundred years reveals the awesome powers of the American presidency in domestic and foreign affairs, illustrating how they have stood up to modern and novel legal challenges. The Presidents and the Constitution is for anyone interested in a captivating and illuminating account of one of the most compelling subjects in our American democracy.
Mother Jones: An American Life
by Elliott J. GornHer rallying cry was famous: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." A century ago, Mother Jones was a celebrated organizer and agitator, the very soul of the modern American labor movement. At coal strikes, steel strikes, railroad, textile, and brewery strikes, Mother Jones was always there, stirring the workers to action and enraging the powerful. In this first biography of "the most dangerous woman in America," Elliott J. Gorn proves why, in the words of Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones "has won her way into the hearts of the nation's toilers, and . . . will be lovingly remembered by their children and their children's children forever."
How to Build a Boat: A Father, His Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea
by Jonathan GornallPart ode to building something with one’s hands in the modern age, part celebration of the beauty and function of boats, and part moving father-daughter story, How to Build a Boat is a bold adventure.Once an essential skill, the ability to build a clinker boat, first innovated by the Vikings, can seem incomprehensible today. Yet it was the clinker, with its overlapping planks, that afforded us access to the oceans, and its construction has become a lost art that calls to the do-it-yourselfer in all of us. John Gornall heard the call. A thoroughly unskilled modern man, Gornall set out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It was, he recognized, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who knew little about woodworking and even less about boat-building. He wasn’t even sure what type of wood he should use, the tools he’d need, or where on earth he'd build the boat. He had much to consider…and even more to learn. But, undaunted, he embarked on a voyage of rediscovery, determined to navigate his way back to a time when we could fashion our future and leave our mark on history using only time-honored skills and the materials at hand. His journey began in East Anglia, on England’s rocky eastern coast. If all went according to plan, it would end with a great adventure, as father and daughter cast off together for a voyage of discovery that neither would forget, and both would treasure until the end of their days. How to Build a Boat celebrates the art of boat-building, the simple pleasures of working with your hands, and the aspirations and glory of new fatherhood. John Gornall “tells the inspiring story of how even the least skilled of us can make something wonderful if we invest enough time and love” (The Daily Mail) and taps into the allure of an ancient craft, interpreting it in a modern way, as tribute to the generations yet to come. “Both the book, and place, are magical” (The Sunday Telegraph).
How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea
by Jonathan GornallOne man learns the ancient skills of boat-building to connect with fatherhood. How to Build a Boat is the story of a thoroughly unskilled modern man who, inspired by his love of the sea and what it has taught him about life, sets out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It is, he recognises, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who, with a family and mortgage to support, knows little about woodworking and even less about boat-building. He isn’t even sure what type of boat he should build, what type of wood he should use, the tools he will need or, come to that, where on earth he will build it. He has much to consider, and even more to learn.But, undaunted by his ignorance, he embarks on a voyage of rediscovery, determined to navigate his way back to a time when a man could fashion his future and leave his mark on history using only time-honoured skills and the ancient tools and materials at hand. The journey begins with a search for clues in the once bustling, but now still, creeks and backwaters of his beloved East Anglia, where men once fashioned the might of Nelson’s navy from the great oaks that shadowed the water’s edge. If all goes to plan, it will end with a great little adventure, as father and daughter cast off together for a voyage of discovery that neither will forget, and both will treasure until the end of their days. A writer following in the bestselling footsteps of Adam Nicolson, Tim Moore and Charlie Connelly – discovering what make modern man tick through the discovery of a craft long forgotten.
Approaching Eye Level
by Vivian GornickSeminal essays on loneliness, living in New York, friendship, feminism, and writing from nonfiction master Vivian GornickVivian Gornick's Approaching Eye Level is a brave collection of personal essays that finds a quintessentially contemporary woman (urban, single, feminist) trying to observe herself and the world without sentiment, cynicism, or nostalgia. Whether walking along the streets of New York or teaching writing at a university, Gornick is a woman exploring her need for conversation and connection—with men and women, colleagues and strangers. She recalls her stint as a waitress in the Catskills and a failed friendship with an older woman and mentor, and reconsiders her experiences in the feminist movement, while living alone, and in marriage.Turning her trademark sharp eye on herself, Gornick works to see her part in things—how she has both welcomed and avoided contact, and how these attempts at connections have enlivened and, at times, defeated her. First published in 1996, Approaching Eye Level is an unrelentingly honest collection of essays that finds Gornick at her best, reminding us that we can come to know ourselves only by engaging fully with the world.
Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
by Vivian GornickEmma Goldman is the story of a modern radical who took seriously the idea that inner liberation is the first business of social revolution. Her politics, from beginning to end, was based on resistance to that which thwarted the free development of the inner self. The right to stay alive in one's senses, to enjoy freedom of thought and speech, to reject the arbitrary use of power--these were key demands in the many public protest movements she helped mount. Anarchist par excellence, Goldman is one of the memorable political figures of our time, not because of her gift for theory or analysis or even strategy, but because some extraordinary force of life in her burned, without rest or respite, on behalf of human integrity--and she was able to make the thousands of people who, for decades on end, flocked to her lectures, feel intimately connected to the pain inherent in the abuse of that integrity. To hear Emma describe, in language as magnetic as it was illuminating, what the boot felt like on the neck, was to experience the mythic quality of organized oppression. As the women and men in her audience listened to her, the homeliness of their own small lives became invested with a sense of drama that acted as a catalyst for the wild, vagrant hope that things need not always be as they were. All you had to do, she promised, was resist. In time, she herself would become a world-famous symbol for the spirit of resistance to the power of institutional authority over the lone individual. In Emma Goldman, Vivian Gornick draws a surpassingly intimate and insightful portrait of a woman of heroic proportions whose performance on the stage of history did what Tolstoy said a work of art should do: it made people love life more.
Fierce Attachments: A Memoir
by Vivian GornickThere have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the prinicpal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.
The Romance of American Communism
by Vivian GornickWriter and critic Vivian Gornick&’s long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life&“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.&” So begins Vivian Gornick&’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin&’s crimes became public.
Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton
by Vivian GornickA champion of the women's movement of the 1970s, Gornick reviews the life of one of the 19th-century founders of the movement for women's rights. For more than 50 years Elizabeth Cady Stanton battled for equal rights for women, educating, inspiring, and organizing women across the country. Gornick looks at parallels between the movements and draws upon her own life and evolution as a feminist.
Taking A Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature and Feminism in Our Time
by Vivian GornickOne of our most vital and incisive writers on literature, feminism, and knowing one's selfFor nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick's essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, Taking a Long Look illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick's work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what binds us to the larger world.In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, Taking a Long Look brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.Alternately crackling with urgency or lucid with insight, the essays in Taking a Long Look demonstrate one of America's most beloved critics at her best.
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader
by Vivian GornickA New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceOne of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her lifeI sometimes think I was born reading . . . I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading—and re-reading—as life progresses. Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette’s The Vagabond and The Shackle, and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover. She revisits Great War novels by J. L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen’s prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, “a writer whose work has often made me love life more.” After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats. Guided by Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature’s power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who “still read[s] to feel the power of Life with a capital L.”
The Maisky Diaries
by Gabriel Gorodetsky Ivan MaiskyThe terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary, never before published in English, grippingly documentsBritain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Churchill's rise to power, the German invasion of Russia, and the intense debate over the opening of the second front. Maisky was distinguished by his great sociability and access to the key players in British public life. Among his range of regular contacts were politicians (including Churchill, Chamberlain, Eden, and Halifax), press barons (Beaverbrook), ambassadors (Joseph Kennedy), intellectuals (Keynes, Sidney and Beatrice Webb), writers (George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells), and indeed royalty. His diary further reveals the role personal rivalries within the Kremlin played in the formulation of Soviet policy at the time. Scrupulously edited and checked against a vast range of Russian and Western archival evidence, this extraordinary narrative diary offers a fascinating revision of the events surrounding the Second World War. "
A Mountain of Crumbs
by Elena GorokhovaElena Gorokhova grows up in 1960's Leningrad where she discovers that beauty and passion can be found in unexpected places in Soviet Russia.
Russian Tattoo: A Memoir
by Elena GorokhovaAn exquisite portrait of mothers and daughters that reaches from Cold War Russia to modern-day New Jersey, from the author of A Mountain of Crumbs--the memoir that "leaves you wanting more" (The Daily Telegraph, UK).In A Mountain of Crumbs Elena Gorokhova describes coming of age behind the Iron Curtain and leaving her mother and her Motherland for a new life in the United States. Now, in Russian Tattoo, Elena learns that the journey of an immigrant is filled with everyday mistakes, small humiliations, and a loss of dignity. Cultural disorientation comes in the form of not knowing how to eat a hamburger, buy a pair of shoes, or catch a bus. But through perseverance and resilience, Elena gradually adapts to her new country. With the simultaneous birth of her daughter and the arrival of her Soviet mother, who comes to the US to help care for her granddaughter and stays for twenty-four years, it becomes the story of a unique balancing act and a family struggle. Russian Tattoo is a poignant memoir of three generations of strong women with very different cultural values, all living under the same roof and battling for control. Themes of separation and loss, grief and struggle, and power and powerlessness run throughout this story of growing understanding and, finally, redemption. "Gorokhova writes about her life with a novelist's gift," says The New York Times, and her latest offering is filled with empathy, insight, and humor.
A Life Of Triumph: How A Girl With Cerebral Palsy Beat The Odds To Achieve Success
by Karen A. Gorr Duane HicklerA Life of Inspiration and Hope Karen A. Gorr was born in 1937 and developed debilitating physical challenges shortly thereafter due to a prolonged illness. Her mother was a single parent with another disabled child and no familial support. When her mother became ill, she placed her children in an institution for the "feeble-minded" since no other facilities stepped up to help. Karen spent 10 years of her childhood there, and she constantly longed to escape the abuse, isolation, hunger, and neglect. A Life of Triumph is Ms. Gorr's story of how her own determination, grit, stubbornness, and a sense of humor - and the help of friends and professionals - enabled her to find a life beyond an institution. She shares her transformation from a "limp rag doll" into a scholarship student, teacher, public speaker, board member, and advocate for those with mental and physical disabilities. Along the way, Ms. Gorr learns to forgive those who caused her so much suffering, and she's blessed with what she calls the "ultimate gift" - her own perfect daughter who has made the whole journey worthwhile.
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
by Michael GorraA revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel. Henry James (1843-1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James's masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel--the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer--came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James's family, the European literary circles--George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev--in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand's The Metaphysical Club and McCullough's The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own.
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
by Michael GorraHow do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy. William Faulkner, one of America’s most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such classic novels as Absolom, Absolom! and The Sound and The Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha county one of the most memorable gallery of characters ever assembled in American literature. Yet, as acclaimed literary critic Michael Gorra explains, Faulkner has sustained justified criticism for his failures of racial nuance—his ventriloquism of black characters and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South—demanding that we reevaluate the Nobel laureate’s life and legacy in the twenty-first century, as we reexamine the junctures of race and literature in works that once rested firmly in the American canon. Interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words argues that even despite these contradictions—and perhaps because of them—William Faulkner still needs to be read, and even more, remains central to understanding the contradictions inherent in the American experience itself. Evoking Faulkner’s biography and his literary characters, Gorra illuminates what Faulkner maintained was “the South’s curse and its separate destiny,” a class and racial system built on slavery that was devastated during the Civil War and was reimagined thereafter through the South’s revanchism. Driven by currents of violence, a “Lost Cause” romanticism not only defined Faulkner’s twentieth century but now even our own age. Through Gorra’s critical lens, Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County comes alive as his imagined land finds itself entwined in America’s history, the characters wrestling with the ghosts of a past that refuses to stay buried, stuck in an unending cycle between those two saddest words, “was” and “again.” Upending previous critical traditions, The Saddest Words returns Faulkner to his sociopolitical context, revealing the civil war within him and proving that “the real war lies not only in the physical combat, but also in the war after the war, the war over its memory and meaning.” Filled with vignettes of Civil War battles and generals, vivid scenes from Gorra’s travels through the South—including Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi—and commentaries on Faulkner’s fiction, The Saddest Words is a mesmerizing work of literary thought that recontextualizes Faulkner in light of the most plangent cultural issues facing America today.