- Table View
- List View
Love, Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt
by Amy ClampittThis extraordinary collection of letters sheds light on one of the most important postwar American poets and on a creative woman's life from the 1950s onward. Amy Clampitt was an American original, a literary woman from a Quaker family in rural Iowa who came to New York after college and lived in Manhattan for almost forty years before she found success (or before it found her) at the age of 63 with the publication of The Kingfisher. Her letters from 1950 until her death in 1994 are a testimony to her fiercely independent spirit and her quest for various kinds of truth-religious, spiritual, political, and artistic.Written in clear, limpid prose, Clampitt's letters illuminate the habits of imagination she would later use to such effect in her poetry. She offers, with wit and intelligence, an intimate and personal portrait of life as an independent woman recently arrived in New York City. She recounts her struggle to find a place for herself in the world of literature as well as the excitement of living in Manhattan. In other letters she describes a religious conversion (and then a gradual religious disillusionment) and her work as a political activist. Clampitt also reveals her passionate interest in and fascination with the world around her. She conveys her delight in a variety of day-to-day experiences and sights, reporting on trips to Europe, the books she has read, and her walks in nature. After struggling as a novelist, Clampitt turned to poetry in her fifties and was eventually published in the New Yorker. In the last decade of her life she appeared like a meteor on the national literary scene, lionized and honored. In letters to Helen Vendler, Mary Jo Salter, and others, she discusses her poetry as well as her surprise at her newfound success and the long overdue satisfaction she obviously felt, along with gratitude, for her recognition.
Love Always, Petra: A story of courage and the discovery of life's hidden gifts
by Petra NemcovaA true tale of courage, tragedy, and love. At the age of twenty-five, Petra Nemcova was leading a charmed life, complete with a busy modeling career (including a Sports Illustrated cover), a handsome and loving photographer boyfriend, and a jetsetting lifestyle. This was a far cry from her childhood, which she spent under the specter of communism in the former Czechoslovakia. But her world changed forever on December 26, 2004 when a powerful tsunami hit the resort of Khaolak, Thailand, where she was vacationing with her boyfriend, Simon Atlee. As he was swept away by the fierce waves, Petra managed to cling to a tree for nearly eight hours, even as her pelvis was shattered by the oceans ferocious power and her legs lost all feeling. Petras remarkable grace under pressure and the brave rescue by heroic Thai natives and tourists has been reported around the world. But now, for the first time, she will tell her entire story and share her amazing journey back: from her agonizing physical rehabilitation to confronting the pain of losing the love of her life to her tireless efforts to help with Thailand relief efforts. Petra will also reflect on her struggle through a poor childhood, and how, at eighteen, this shy young woman managed to launch a modeling career in the fashion capitals of the worlda glitzy and glamorous time in her life. But most of all, Love, Petra is the story of her love for Simon Atleea love that has not been extinguished by his untimely death. A heartbreaking, touching, and finally uplifting account, Love, Petra will share an inspirational message of hope, faith, and love to readers everywhere.
Love All the People (New Edition): Letters, Lyrics, Routines
by Bill HicksBill Hicks was arguably the most influential stand-up comedian of the last 30 years. He was funny, out of hand, impossible to ignore and genuinely disturbing. His work has inspired Michael Moore, Mark Thomas and Robert Newman among others. The trade paperback published in February 2003 was the first collected work and included major stand-up routines, diary, notebook and letters extracts, plus his final writings, most previously unpublished. This smaller format paperback has extra material discovered subsequently.
Love, Again
by Eve PellIn Love, Again, Eve Pell beautifully and thoughtfully concludes that life experience adds dimensions to the art of connection--and that we all stand to learn something from unexpected romance. How do old people meet new loves? Eve Pell was 68 when she convinced a friend to set her up with Sam Hirabayashi. Ten years her senior, Sam, a fellow runner, was handsome and sweet. Soon Eve and Sam were plunged into a giddy romance that began with a movie date. "It was crazy," Pell writes. "It was wonderful." Pell wrote about their romance in a New York Times Modern Love column and received a wave of responses from people who recognized their own stories in hers. This thing, this late-in-life love: It's growing, it's everywhere, and it's transformative. In staggering numbers, old people are meeting and falling in love--in senior living facilities, in retirement homes, in bars, in grocery stores, on cruise ships, on the Internet--brazenly, quietly, unexpectedly. People once written off as too old for intimacy are having romances, beginning intense affairs once thought to be for the young. Part memoir, part journey to a new frontier, Love, Again is illuminating and heartwarming. Speaking with poets and artists, a retired nurse and a retired coach, environmentalists, philanthropists, and teachers--couples whose partners' ages range from 61 to 96--Pell reports on their relationships, from saying hello to knowing they'd found the one, from blending routines and traditions to overcoming judgments and challenges. These widows, widowers, divorcés, and never-marrieds open up about old love versus young, the thrill of sex, and the looming shadow of mortality. At the core of this book is wisdom: what we all can learn from the experience, regardless of age. * Fall in love with who someone is now--not who they someday might be. * Always be honest, but don't feel pressure to share everything. * And most of all: The heart can continue to expand. Advance praise for Love, Again "A heartwarming, eye-opening, life-affirming journey to the final frontier of romance, this is a beautiful book about the possibility of late-in-life love and the life-changing lessons we all can learn from those who have been lucky enough to find it."--Katie Couric"Eve Pell's career as an investigative reporter served her in discovering such couples and learning their stories, which, along with her own love story, she imparts with fluency and zest. Love, Again is a joy to read, full of humor and heart and sweet collective wisdom, a book for all ages."--Susan Trott, author of the Holy Man Trilogy "I remarried at 75 and have followed one hundred marriages from age 50 on. Eve Pell knows what she is talking about. Her book is touching, eye-opening, inspiring, and wise. In addition, it is beautifully written."--George E. Vaillant, M.D., author of Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study "In this inspiring exploration of fifteen late-in-life romances, Eve Pell illustrates the human appetite and capacity for romantic love at any age. As these men and women--widowed and divorced, gay and straight--share their stories of forging deep connections in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and, yes, 90s, they deliver a heartwarming message: We are never too old for new love."--Jill Smolowe, author of Four Funerals and a Wedding: Resilience in a Time of GriefFrom the Hardcover edition.
Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
by Jeffrey GettlemanFrom Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, comes a passionate, revealing story about finding love and finding a calling, set against one of the most turbulent regions in the world.A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling a teenage dream.At nineteen, Gettleman fell in love, twice. On a do-it-yourself community service trip in college, he went to East Africa—a terrifying, exciting, dreamlike part of the world in the throes of change that imprinted itself on his imagination and on his heart.But around that same time he also fell in love with a fellow Cornell student—the brightest, classiest, most principled woman he’d ever met. To say they were opposites was an understatement. She became a criminal lawyer in America; he hungered to return to Africa. For the next decade he would be torn between these two abiding passions.A sensually rendered coming-of-age story in the tradition of Barbarian Days, Love, Africa is a tale of passion, violence, far-flung adventure, tortuous long-distance relationships, screwing up, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places.
Love Affair in the Garden of Milton: Loss, Poetry, and the Meaning of Unbelief
by Susannah B. MintzLove Affair in the Garden of Milton interweaves the private story of a marriage coming apart with readings of John Milton’s poetry and prose. Connected essays chart the chaos of loss and the discovery of how a writer can inhabit our emotional as well as our intellectual selves. Inflected by the principles of mindfulness, Susannah B. Mintz’s memoir explores how we reconstruct ourselves and find our way back to meaning in the aftermath of trauma.Formally inventive and engaging dynamic philosophical ideas, Love Affair in the Garden of Milton raises questions of forgiveness, desire, identity, grief, and the counterintuitive relevance of literary tradition. This lyric memoir offers readers a sense of partnership, with the author and Milton as companionable guides through the wilds of love and loss.
Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World
by Anna Lekas MillerWe are told that love conquers all, but what happens when you don&’t have the right passport? With deep empathy, rigorous reporting, and the irresistible perspective of a true romantic, journalist Anna Lekas Miller tells the stories of couples around the world who must confront Kafkaesque immigration systems to be together—as she did to be with her partner. Written with suspenseful storytelling worthy of the greatest love stories, Love Across Borders takes readers across contentious frontiers around the world, from Turkey to Iraq, Syria to Greece, Mexico to the United States, to reveal the widespread prejudicial laws intent on dividing people. Lekas Miller tells her own story of meeting and falling deeply in love with Salem Rizk, in Istanbul, where they were both reporting on the Syrian War. But when Turkey started cracking down on refugees, Salem, who is Syrian, wasn&’t allowed to stay in the country, nor could he safely return to Syria. He was a man without a country. So Lekas Miller had to decide her next move: she has an American passport, but deep personal ties to the Middle East, and knew it was unfair that Salem couldn&’t travel freely the way she could. More important, she loved him. Over the next few years, as they navigated Salem&’s asylum claims, the United States&’ Muslim ban, and labyrinthine regulations in several different countries, Lekas Miller learned about—and bonded with—other people whose spouses had been deported, who found love in refugee camps, whose differing immigration statuses caused complicated power dynamics and financial hardship or threatened the wellbeing of their children. Here, offering a uniquely diverse, international, and intimate look at the global immigration crisis, she interweaves these rich, complicated love stories with a fascinating look at the history of passports (a surprisingly recent institution), the legacy of colonialism, and the discriminatory laws shaping how people move through the world every day. Ultimately, she builds a powerful, moving case for a borderless society—one where a border patrol agent can&’t keep anyone&’s love story from its happy ending
Love: The Saint And The Seeker
by Christina Stevens"God will write through you." Those were almost the last private words Mother Teresa spoke to acclaimed filmmaker Christina Stevens ~ urging her to share her story with the world. A similar calling had come months earlier, when Mother Teresa appeared to Christina in a dream, summoning her to India to film her message to the world. Without hesitation, she gathered a film crew and boarded a plane for Calcutta.Little did she know that when destiny beckons and a Saint-to-be takes your hand, startling events and profound discoveries are around every corner. Told through the lens of Christina’s colorful youth, her mind-expanding adventure may prod you to recognize your own life’s calling, and that will lead you to the most powerful and transformative place in the cosmos ~ love.
Lourdes Arizpe
by Lourdes ArizpeThis book presents major texts by Prof. Dr. Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser, a pioneering Mexican anthropologist, on the occasion of her 70th birthday. She is a leading researcher into indigenous peoples, an innovator in women's studies and a global scientific leader who has inspired the international research and policy communities. Throughout her distinguished career she has analysed ethnicism and indigenous peoples, women in migratory flows, cultural and social sustainability and intangible cultural heritage as social capital, placing these issues on the world agenda for research and policy. Several of the 12 major texts in this volume have been published since 1972 in the US, Europe, Latin America and India; some were first published in Spanish and are available in English for the first time. This anthology also includes recent unpublished texts on culture, development and international cultural policy delivered at high-level international meetings.
Louisiana's Zydeco
by Sherry T. BroussardThe bayou sings and the trees sway with the untold stories of many unsung heroes, including Louisiana's amazing Zydeco musicians. The music is an extraordinary blend of the accordion, the bass and electric guitars, the drums, the rub or scrub board, and other instruments. It tells stories about finding and losing love, life lessons, and other revelatory events that rise from the skillful hands of musicians playing the diatonic and piano accordions. The diverse population of Louisiana creates a rich culture with Zydeco festivals, Creole foods, and the unique music that fills the air with a foot-stomping beat like no other. Louisiana's Zydeco is a snapshot of some of the many musicians who live and play the homegrown music known as Zydeco.
The Louisiana Purchase: Would You Close The Deal?
by Elaine LandauAt the dawn of the nineteenth century, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched Robert Livingston and James Monroe to negotiate with the temperamental French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. <P><P>Originally charged with only securing the Port of New Orleans and access to the Mississippi River, they soon were presented with the deal of a lifetime—the purchase of the whole Louisiana Territory. With no time to contact the president, they had to make the decision themselves. What would you do if faced with the same decision?
Louisiana Creole Literature: A Historical Study
by Catharine Savage BrosmanLouisiana Creole Literature is a broad-ranging critical reading of belles lettres—in both French and English—connected to and generally produced by the distinctive Louisiana Creole peoples, chiefly in the southeastern part of the state. The book covers primarily the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the flourishing period during which the term Creole had broad and contested cultural reference in Louisiana. The study consists in part of literary history and biography. When available and appropriate, each discussion—arranged chronologically—provides pertinent personal information on authors, as well as publishing facts. Readers will find also summaries and evaluation of key texts, some virtually unknown, others of difficult access. Brosman illuminates the biographies and works of Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn, George Washington Cable, Grace King, and Adolphe Duhart, among others. In addition, she challenges views that appear to be skewed regarding canon formation. The book places emphasis on poetry and fiction, reaching from early nineteenth-century writing through the twentieth century to selected works by poets still writing in the early twenty-first century. A few plays are treated also, especially by Victor Séjour. Louisiana Creole Literature examines at length the writings of important Francophone figures, and certain Anglophone novelists likewise receive extended treatment. Since much of nineteenth-century Louisiana literature was transnational, the book considers Creole-based works which appeared in Paris as well as those published locally.
Louise Thompson Patterson: A Life of Struggle for Justice
by Keith GilyardBorn in 1901, Louise Thompson Patterson was a leading and transformative figure in radical African American politics. Throughout most of the twentieth century she embodied a dedicated resistance to racial, economic, and gender exploitation. In this, the first biography of Patterson, Keith Gilyard tells her compelling story, from her childhood on the West Coast, where she suffered isolation and persecution, to her participation in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. In the 1930s and 1940s she became central, along with Paul Robeson, to the labor movement, and later, in the 1950s, she steered proto-black-feminist activities. Patterson was also crucial to the efforts in the 1970s to free political prisoners, most notably Angela Davis. In the 1980s and 1990s she continued to work as a progressive activist and public intellectual. To read her story is to witness the courage, sacrifice, vision, and discipline of someone who spent decades working to achieve justice and liberation for all.
The Louise Parker Method: Lean for Life
by Louise Parker'Louise Parker, AKA the figure magician, has worked her magic on actors, athletes, pop stars, politicians and princesses and believes absolutely anyone can have a sensational body.'Glamour'Louise Parker is one of the very few weight-loss experts worth the title. A genius method, an unbelievable client list and years of experience.'Good Housekeeping'Clever, kind and committed to getting you the best body possible. Louise Parker really does think of everything.'Tatler'Quite simply the most intelligent weight-loss programme out there.'IndependentIt is not a diet - it is an inspiring, easy-to-follow programme for life, consisting of two phases:TRANSFORM - taking the direct route to your best bodyLIFESTYLE - protecting your results for lifeThe method is the best-kept secret of A-list celebrities, royals, global CEOs, entrepreneurs and London society - the quickest, most do-able approach of total body and lifestyle transformation. It contains over 80 effortless recipes to help you 'Eat Beautifully' and avoid being 'Organically Overweight'. Many of the recipes call for fewer than 8 ingredients and take just 8 minutes to prepare.For the first time, Louise shares her unique four-pronged approach to lasting success that has made her method the mecca for worldwide clients demanding the most intelligent, focused and practical solution to permanent weight loss and habit change. The book details four simple pillars that promise you can drop two dress sizes in six weeks without a chia seed in sight. Think Successfully - positivity, keeping inspiring company and making time for simple pleasures every single dayLive Well - de-cluttering your surroundings, a Digital Detox after 9pm every night, sleeping 7-8 hours a night and taking 20 minutes a day to 'brain nap'Eat Beautifully - eating 3 meals and 2 snacks daily from any of the 80 delicious recipes in the book Exercise Intelligently - achievable goals of walk a minimum of 10,000 steps, exercise for 30 minutes, following Louise's workouts or other exercises you enjoy
Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life
by Laurie LisleLouise Nevelson, one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, was a beautiful woman who lived so audacious a life that by the time of her death she was a legend both inside and outside the art world. Born Leah Berliawsky in Czarist Russia in 1899, she grew up in Maine, ostracized as a Jew and a foreigner. At twenty she escaped to Manhattan as Mrs. Charles Nevelson, eventually leaving her husband for a life devoted to art. She lived and loved with lusty abandon, often in poverty and obscurity, until she finally achieved fame and fortune at sixty. "This biography of a monstre sacre is a tale of hard-tacks heroism and heedless swipes at those who dared to love her," said Interview magazine. Nevelson found inspiration in cubism, primitive art, and her own unconscious, creating a rich iconography of images. With black, white, or gold paint and perfect placement, she transformed old pieces of wood picked up on the street into powerful sculptures. In later years she appeared in mink eyelashes and flamboyant costumes, all the while going to her studio every day before dawn to add to the astonishing body of work now in collections of museums around the world. Laurie Lisle interviewed Nevelson before the artist's death in 1988, as well as her lovers, family members, artist friends, and many others. This biography provides fascinating insights and information discovered in archives and public records, letters and diaries, and the artist's own prose and poetry. Now in a revised e-book edition, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life is the only biography of this important American sculptor. It is "impressive in its thoroughness, which nonetheless results in 'good reading' by virtue of its interweaving of personal and professional information, its eclectic introduction of psychological analysis, and a phraseology that appreciates both the pain and the joy surrounding Nevelson's eccentric behavior," according to Woman's Art Journal.
Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow
by Laurie WilsonThe most complete biography of the iconic sculptor Louise Nevelson, the groundbreaking artist and fixture of New York’s art world based on hours of interviews the author conducted at the height of Nevelson’s fame In 1929, Louise Nevelson was a disappointed housewife with a young son, surrounded by New York’s vibrant artistic community but unable to fully engage with it. By 1950, she was an artist living on her own, financially dependent on her family, but she had received a glimmer of recognition from the establishment: inclusion in a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1980, Nevelson celebrated her second Whitney retrospective. Her work was held in public collections around the world; her massive steel sculptures appeared in public spaces in seventeen states, including the Louise Nevelson Plaza in New York City’s Financial District. The story of Nevelson’s artistic, spiritual, even physical transformation (she developed a taste for outrageous outfits and false eyelashes made of mink) is dramatic, complex, and inseparable from major historical and cultural shifts of the twentieth century, particularly in the art world. Art historian and psychoanalyst Laurie Wilson brings a unique and sensitive perspective to Nevelson’s story, drawing on hours of interviews she conducted with Nevelson and her circle. Over 100 images, many of them drawn from personal archives and never before published, make this the most visually and narratively comprehensive biography of this remarkable artist yet published.
Louise Brooks
by Barry ParisLouise Brooks left Wichita, Kansas, for New York City at age fifteen and lived the kind of life of which legends are made. From her beginnings as a dancer to her years in Hollywood, Berlin, and beyond, she was hailed and reviled as a new type of woman: independent, intellectually daring, and sexually free. In this widely acclaimed, first and only comprehensive biography, Barry Paris traces Brooks's trajectory from her childhood through her fall into obscurity and subsequent "resurrection" as a brilliant writer and enduring film icon.
Louise Bogan: A Portrait
by Elizabeth FrankA full-scale biography of the distinguished lyric poet, translator, and critic details the highs and lows of her elegant and sorrowful life and the steady growth and influence of her work. <P><P> Winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Louise: A Memoir
by Louise Krug"A massive brain trauma robbed fashionable young Louise of the shallow currency she'd banked on all her life, and the resulting struggle is a page-turner in which a person's very soul deepens before your eyes. Louise: Amended rewards a reader's time-a must read."-Mary KarrA beautiful young woman from Kansas is about to embark on the life of her dreams-California! Glossy journalism! French boyfriend!-only to suffer a brain bleed that collapses the right side of her body, leaving her with double vision, facial paralysis, and a dragging foot. An unflinching, wise, and darkly funny portrait of sudden disability and painstaking recovery, the memoir presents not only Louise's perspective, but also the reaction of her loved ones-we see, in fictional interludes, what it must have been like for Louise's boyfriend to bathe her, or for her mother to apply lipstick to her nearly immobile mouth. Challenging the notion that one person's tragedy is a single person's story, Louise: Amended depicts a dismantling-and rebirth-of an entire family.At age twenty-two, Louise Krug suffered a brain bleed and underwent an emergency craniotomy that disrupted her ability to walk, see, and move half her face. Now, six years later, Louise has astounded doctors and loved ones by recovering not only much of her vision and mobility, but a ferocious spirit and enviable grace. She currently lives with her husband Nick and daughter Olive in Lawrence, Kansas, where she's a PhD candidate and teacher.
Louisa Stuart Costello
by Clare Broome SaundersLouisa Stuart Costello (1799-1870) was a popular and critically acclaimed poet, novelist, travel writer, historian, biographer, artist, and medieval scholar, whose long life spanned the nineteenth century. Her wide ranging choice of genre demonstrates her skill as a writer and artist, and her acute understanding of contemporary reading trends and publishing markets. Exploring how Costello writes, what she writes, and when she writes it, provides a rich source of information about literary history, and the career of a professional woman writer in the nineteenth century. Louisa Stuart Costello: A Nineteenth-century Writing Life provides a wealth of extracts from her diverse writings, with reader responses from critics and peers, examples of her illustrations, and literary and historical contexts.
Louisa on the Front Lines: Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War
by Samantha SeipleAn eye-opening look at Little Women author Louisa May Alcott's time as a Civil War nurse, and the far-reaching implications her service had on her writing and her activism Louisa on the Frontlines is the first narrative nonfiction book focusing on the least-known aspect of Louisa May Alcott's career - her time spent as a nurse during the Civil War. Though her service was brief, the dramatic experience was one that she considered pivotal in helping her write the beloved classic Little Women. It also deeply affected her tenuous relationship with her father, and inspired her commitment to abolitionism. Through it all, she kept a journal and wrote letters to her family and friends. These letters were published in the newspaper, and her subsequent book, Hospital Sketches spotlighted the dire conditions of the military hospitals and the suffering endured by the wounded soldiers she cared for. To this day, her work is considered a pioneering account of military nursing. Alcott's time as an Army nurse in the Civil War helped her find her authentic voice--and cemented her foundational belief system. Louisa on the Frontlines reveals the emergence of this prominent feminist and abolitionist--a woman whose life and work has inspired millions and continues to do so today,
Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (Library Of America Louisa May Alcott Edition Ser. #2)
by Susan CheeverLouisa May Alcott never intended to write Little Women. She had dismissed her publisher's pleas for such a novel. Written out of necessity to support her family, the book had an astounding success that changed her life, a life which turned out very differently from that of her beloved heroine Jo March. In Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever, the acclaimed author of American Bloomsbury, returns to Concord, Massachusetts, to explore the life of one of its most iconic residents. Based on extensive research, journals, and correspondence, Cheever's biography chronicles all aspects of Alcott's life, from the fateful meeting of her parents to her death, just two days after that of her father. She details Bronson Alcott's stalwart educational vision, which led the Alcotts to relocate each time his progressive teaching went sour; her unsuccessful early attempts at serious literature, including Moods, which Henry James panned; her time as a Civil War nurse, when she contracted pneumonia and was treated with mercury-laden calomel, which would affect her health for the rest of her life; and her vibrant intellectual circle of writers and reformers, idealists who led the charge in support of antislavery, temperance, and women's rights. Alcott's independence defied the conventional wisdom, and her personal choices and literary legacy continue to inspire generations of women. A fan of Little Women from the age of twelve, and a distinguished author in her own right, Cheever brings a unique perspective to Louisa May Alcott's life as a woman, a daughter, and a working writer.
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.
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
by Harriet ReisenPBS and HBO documentary scriptwriter Harriet Reisen reveals the extraordinary woman behind the beloved American classic as never before. Louisa May Alcott is the perfect gift for fans of Little Women and of Greta Gerwig's adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Emma Watson, and Saoirse Ronan.“At last, Louisa May Alcott has the biography that admirers of Little Women might have hoped for.” —The Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of the YearA fresh, modern take on the remarkable Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Reisen's vivid biography explores the author's life in the context of her works, many of which are to some extent autobiographical. Although Alcott secretly wrote pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and served as a Civil War nurse, her novels went on to sell more copies than those of Herman Melville and Henry James. Stories and details culled from Alcott's journals, together with revealing letters to family, friends, and publishers, plus recollections of her famous contemporaries, provide the basis for this lively account of the author's classic rags-to-riches tale.
Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams
by Margery M. Heffron David L. MichelmoreLouisa Catherine Johnson Adams, wife and political partner of John Quincy Adams, became one of the most widely known women in America when her husband assumed office as sixth president in 1825. Shrewd, intellectual, and articulate, she was close to the center of American power over many decades, and extensive archives reveal her as an unparalleled observer of the politics, personalities, and issues of her day. Louisa left behind a trove of journals, essays, letters, and other writings, yet no biographer has mined these riches until now. Margery Heffron brings Louisa out of the shadows at last to offer the first full and nuanced portrait of an extraordinary first lady. The book begins with Louisa’s early life in London and Nantes, France, then details her excruciatingly awkward courtship and engagement to John Quincy, her famous diplomatic success in tsarist Russia, her life as a mother, years abroad as the wife of a distinguished diplomat, and finally the Washington, D. C. , era when, as a legendary hostess, she made no small contribution to her husband’s successful bid for the White House. Louisa’s sharp insights as a tireless recorder provide a fresh view of early American democratic society, presidential politics and elections, and indeed every important political and social issue of her time.