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The Great Justices 1941-54
by William DomnarskiDomnarski is a practicing intellectual property attorney in California and the author of a previous book on the history and nature of federal court judicial opinions. In this text, the author compares four brilliant and diverse jurists of the Roosevelt-era Court--Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson--during the period from 1941 to 1954. The study explores the Court's evolving civil rights jurisprudence that was born in the period during which the four justices served together, considers the Court as an institution and its relation to the American public, and analyzes how four individual justices sharing core jurisprudential beliefs and ambitions before appointment would later divide into competing liberal and conservative factions. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
It's All In The Playing
by Shirley MaclaineThe fifth volume in one of the most extraordinary personal odysseys of the twentieth century. Don't Fall Off the Mountain, You Can Get There From Here, Out on a Limb, Dancing in the Light and now the most intimate and compelling book of all, It's All in the Playing. Oscar-winning actress, social activist, singular entertainer, best-selling author Shirley MacLaine has the courage to be both candid and controversial. In this book, she casts herself in her most challenging role yet--as seeker of personal and metaphysical truth. It began in Peru ten years ago and ended in Peru ten years later. But the steps along the way were the real story. In filming the miniseries Out on a Limb, Shirley MacLaine was forced to recreate herself ten years earlier. to journey back from Malibu to London, from Sweden to the mysterious landscape of Peru... to the places, the perceptions and profound emotions she experienced then. And to journey beyond, exploring new personal and cosmic dimensions, the choices of her lifetimes, who she was and who she would become. As the heart of Shirley MacLaine's testament is a compelling challenge: we choose our own destinies, create our own illusions. We have the power to design the world in which we live, and the strength to remake ourselves in the image of our dreams.From the Paperback edition.
Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World
by Catalina De ErausoOne of the earliest known autobiographies by a woman, this is the extraordinary tale of Catalina de Erauso, who in 1599 escaped from a Basque convent dressed as a man and went on to live one of the most wildly fantastic lives of any woman in history. A soldier in the Spanish army, she traveled to Peru and Chile, became a gambler, and even mistakenly killed her own brother in a duel. During her lifetime she emerged as the adored folkloric hero of the Spanish-speaking world. This delightful translation of Catalina's own work introduces a new audience to her audacious escapades.
Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview
by Jacques Derrida Jean Birnbaum Pascal-Anne BraultWith death looming, Jacques Derrida, the world's most famous philosopher--known as the father of "deconstruction"--sat down with journalist Jean Birnbaum of the French daily Le Monde. They revisited his life's work and his impending death in a long, surprisingly accessible, and moving final interview. Sometimes called "obscure" and branded "abstruse" by his critics, the Derrida found in this book is open and engaging, reflecting on a long career challenging important tenets of European philosophy from Plato to Marx. The contemporary meaning of Derrida's work is also examined, including a discussion of his many political activities. But, as Derrida says, "To philosophize is to learn to die"; as such, this philosophical discussion turns to the realities of his imminent death--including life with a fatal cancer. In the end, this interview remains a touching final look at a long and distinguished career.
My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir Mike Davis Herbert W. GleasonJohn Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, had not yet become a famed conservationist when he first trekked into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, not long after the Civil War. He was so captivated by what he saw that he decided to devote his life to the glorification and preservation of this magnificent wilderness. My First Summer in the Sierra, whose heart is the diary Muir kept while tending sheep in Yosemite country, enticed thousands of Americans to visit this magical place, and resounds with Muir's regard for the "divine, enduring, unwasteable wealth" of the natural world. A classic of environmental literature, My First Summer in the Sierra continues to inspire readers to seek out such places for themselves and make them their own.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Happy Bottom Riding Club
by Lauren KesslerPancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend. Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, she took to the skies, one of a handful of female pilots. She was a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier, and a Hollywood stunt pilot. She was, for a time, "the fastest woman on earth," flying the fastest civilian airplane in the world. She was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim, and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. She ran a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Lauren Kessler presents a portrait, both authoritative and affectionate, of a woman who didn't play by women's rules, a woman of large appetites--emotional, financial, and sexual--who called herself "the greatest conversation piece that ever existed."From the Hardcover edition.
Pierre
by Nancy Southam#1 national bestsellerWhen Pierre Elliott Trudeau died in 2000, the outpouring of emotion was extraordinary. Thousands of people across Canada -- and all over the world -- mourned the loss of one of our greatest prime ministers, a man who touched the hearts and challenged the minds of a nation. In this book, Trudeau's close friend Nancy Southam has gathered more than 140 reminiscences and anecdotal narratives from journalists, former world leaders, politicians who battled and debated him, his sons' friends, RCMP bodyguards, girlfriends, canoeing buddies, and household staff. Among the contributors are luminaries as diverse as Conrad Black, Jean Chrétien, Leonard Cohen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ivan Head, Jacques Hébert, Karen Kain, Margot Kidder, Harrison McCain, Toni Onley, Gordon Pinsent, Christopher Plummer, Roy Romanow, Ed Schreyer, and Barbra Streisand. With the blessing of his sons, Justin and Sacha, Southam has put together a remarkably transparent account of a deeply private person that is funny, honest, affectionate, and illuminating.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Peking Story
by John Lanchester David KiddFor two years before and after the 1948 Communist Revolution, David Kidd lived in Peking, where he married the daughter of an aristocratic Chinese family. "I used to hope," he writes, "that some bright young scholar on a research grant would write about us and our Chinese friends before it was too late and we were all dead and gone, folding into the darkness the wonder that had been our lives." Here Kidd himself brings that wonder to life.
Annie's Coming Out
by Rosemary Crossley Anne McdonaldA story which is a triumph for the human spirit and for the power of compassion Confined to an institution because of her physical disabilities since the age of three, Annie is hardly alive when Rosemary, an assistant to the hospital psychiatrist, discovers her. Together they battle against physical impediment, obdurate and uncaring bureaucracy and public apathy to find a new life for Annie outside--a life which has dignity, hope and love.
Sally Ride
by Sue HurwitzSally RideShooting for the StarsAstronaut Dr. Sally Ride took a deep breath and nervously waited as the powerful engines of the Space Shuttle Challenger roared to life. This was the most frightening, yet exciting moment of Sally's life! She was determined to prove that an American woman could perform in space as well as a man.Countdown to History!Sally Ride: Shooting for the Stars profiles the life of America's first woman astronaut to fly in space. Jain Sally's astronaut training as she learns to fly jets, practices sea rescue missions, and floats weightlessly in a special "zero gravity" aircraft. Witness her breathtaking view of Earth from 184 miles out in space while traveling aver 17,400 miles per hour! Then dare to share her dream of joining NASA's astronaut program.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House
by Cormac O'BrienYour high school history teachers never gave you a book like this one! Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House - complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts. You'll discover that: - George Washington spent a whopping 7% of his salary on booze - John Quincy Adams loved to skinny-dip in the Potomac River - Warren G. Harding gambled with White House china when he ran low on cash - Jimmy Carter reported a UFO sighting in Georgia - And Richard Nixon ... sheesh, don't get us started on Nixon! With chapters on everyone from George Washington to G. W. Bush, Secret Lives of the U. S. Presidents tackles all the tough questions that other history books are afraid to answer: Are there really secret tunnels underneath the White House? How many presidential daughters have bared their all for Playboy? And what was Nancy Reagan thinking when she appeared on Diff'rent Strokes? American history was never this much fun in school!
The Tao of Bruce Lee
by Davis MillerIn this companion volume to his critically acclaimed first book, The Tao of Muhammad Ali, Davis Miller turns his attention to a second iconic figure of the twentieth century--and another of Miller's own seminal influences: film star and martial arts legend Bruce Lee.Just weeks after completing Enter the Dragon, his first vehicle for a worldwide audience, Bruce Lee--the self-proclaimed world's fittest man--died mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. The film has since grossed over $500 million, making it one of the most profitable in the history of cinema, and Lee has acquired almost mythic status.Lee was a flawed, complex, yet singular talent. He revolutionized the martial arts and forever changed action moviemaking. But what has his legacy truly meant to the fans he left behind? To author Davis Miller, Lee was a profound mentor and a transformative inspiration. As a troubled young man in rural North Carolina, Miller was on a road to nowhere when he first saw Enter the Dragon, an encounter that would lead him on a physical, emotional, and spiritual journey and would change his life.As in The Tao of Muhammad Ali, Miller brilliantly combines biography--the fullest, most unflinching and revelatory to date--with his own coming-of-age story. The result is a unique and compelling book.From the Hardcover edition.
Valkyrie: The Plot to Kill Hitler
by Steven Rendall Jerome Fehrenbach Florence Fehrenbach Philip Freiherr Von BoeselagerWhen the Second World War broke out, Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, then 25-years-old, fought enthusiastically for Germany as a cavalry officer. But after discovering Nazi crimes, von Boeselager's patriotism quickly turned to disgust, and he joined a group of conspirators who plotted to kill Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. In this elegant but unflinching memoir, von Boeselager gives voice to the spirit of the small but determined band of men who took a stand against the Third Reich in what culminating in the failed "Valkyrie" plot--one of the most fascinating near misses of twentieth-century history.
To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson
by Heidi SwintonBiography of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties
by Bill ZimmermanThe political memoir as rousing adventure story--a sizzling account of a life lived in the thick of every important struggle of the era. April 1973: snow falls thick and fast on the Badlands of South Dakota. It has been more than five weeks since protesting Sioux Indians seized their historic village of Wounded Knee, and the FBI shows no signs of abandoning its siege. When Bill Zimmerman is asked to coordinate an airlift of desperately needed food and medical supplies, he cannot refuse; flying through gunfire and a mechanical malfunction, he carries out a daring dawn raid and successfully parachutes 1,500 pounds of food into the village. The drop breaks the FBI siege, and assures an Indian victory. This was not the first--or last--time Bill Zimmerman put his life at risk for the greater social good. In this extraordinary memoir, Zimmerman takes us into the hearts and minds of those making the social revolution of the sixties. He writes about registering black voters in deepest, most racist Mississippi; marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago; helping to organize the 1967 march on the Pentagon; fighting the police at the 1968 Democratic convention; mobilizing scientists against the Vietnam War and the military's misuse of their discoveries; smuggling medicines to the front lines in North Vietnam; spending time in Hanoi under U.S. bombardment; and founding an international charity, Medical Aid for Indochina, to deliver humanitarian assistance. Zimmerman--who crossed paths with political organizers and activists like Abbie Hoffman, Daniel Ellsberg, César Chávez, Jane Fonda, and Tom Hayden--captures a groundbreaking zeitgeist that irrevocably changed the world as we knew it.
The Kidnapped Prince
by Ann CameronKidnapped at the age of 11 from his home in Benin, Africa, Olaudah Equiano spent the next 11 years as a slave in England, the U.S., and the West Indies, until he was able to buy his freedom. His autobiography, published in 1789, was a bestseller in its own time. Cameron has modernized and shortened it while remaining true to the spirit of the original. It's a gripping story of adventure, betrayal, cruelty, and courage. In searing scenes, Equiano describes the savagery of his capture, the appalling conditions on the slave ship, the auction, and the forced labor. . . . Kids will read this young man's story on their own; it will also enrich curriculum units on history and on writing.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-trading Dynasty in U. S. History
by Thomas DewolfIn 2001, Thomas DeWolf discovered that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in U.S. history, responsible for transporting at least ten thousand Africans. This is his memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced their ancestors' steps through the notorious triangle trade route--from New England to West Africa to Cuba--and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states.
I Once Knew an Indian Woman
by Ebbitt Cutler Bruce E. JohnsonA memoir of childhood summers spent in a Laurentian village and of an Indian woman who lived according to her ancient code of courage and humanity. A heartwarming story.From the Trade Paperback edition.
A Guest in my Own Country
by George KonradWinner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Biography, Autobiography & MemoirA powerful memoir of war, politics, literature, and family life by one of Europe's leading intellectuals.When George Konrad was a child of eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins managed to flee to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his home town. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust.A Guest in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of the war. Konrad captures the dangers, the hopes, the betrayals and courageous acts of the period through a series of carefully chosen episodes that occasionally border on the surreal (as when a dead German soldier begins to speak, attempting to justify his actions).The end of the war launches the young man on a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrad reflects insightfully on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration" - the fate of many writers who, like Konrad, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism - and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.
Sister Age
by M. F. K. FisherIn these fifteen remarkable stories, M.F.K. Fisher, one of the most admired writers of our time, embraces age as St. Francis welcomed Brother Pain. With a saint to guide us, she writes in her Foreword, perhaps we can accept in a loving way "the inevitable visits of a possibly nagging harpy like Sister Age" But in the stories, it is the human strength in the unavoidable encounter with the end of life that Mrs. Fisher dramatizes so powerfully. Other themes -- the importance of witnessing death, the marvelous resilience of the old, the passing of vanity -- are all explored with insight, sympathy and, often, a sly wit.
As They Were
by M. F. K. FisherThis marvelous collection of autobiographical essays by the celebrated, much-adored Fisher covers her life, family, food and adventures.
Younger Than That Now: A Shared Passage from the Sixties
by Jeff Durstewitz Ruth WilliamsHe was a rabble-rousing New York high school senior. She was a fiercely proud daughter of the Deep South. In 1969 these two strangers exchanged angry letters, igniting a lifetime friendship and an extraordinary personal chronicle of our times. She was a conservative Mississippi girl. He was a self-styled firebrand from New York. In 1969, in an America torn apart by differences, two very dissimilar teens put their hearts on paper and began a friendship that would span thirty years. Now, in this collaborative memoir, they tell an unforgettable story that is a testament to who we were yesterday... and who we are now. It began when a group of bored Long Island high school newspaper reporters wrote, for a lark, an obnoxious note to Ruth Tuttle, the editor of a Deep South school paper. The New York teens included a future documentary filmmaker, a concert violinist, and the founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream--but in those days they were typical high school seniors, quick to imagine they knew all about a girl they'd never met. The ringleader, Jeff Durstewitz, impulsively dropped the letter into a mailbox, never suspecting that within a few days he'd receive an electrifying response. In the following flurry of letters, genteelly Southern Ruth and brash Jeff explored their feelings--sometimes heatedly--about God, race, sex, and life. Within a month of receiving Ruth's first letter, Jeff was planning a Yankee invasion of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Spring break brought a wild drive from New York to Yazoo City with his two friends in a psychedelic VW Bug, a "Heat of the Night" encounter between a cop and these three headstrong teens, and a culture clash in Ruth's living room that neither she nor her proper parents would ever forget. It was a night that shattered stereotypes--and their hopes for a romance. But it didn't derail the long-distance friendship that would sustain them both through thirty years of love affairs, heartbreaking disappointments, social change, divorce, and the loss of a cherished friend as they negotiated the passages from youth to middle age. And with each move, the packet of precious letters traveled, too. These letters form the heart of a wonderful memoir that captures not just the hopes of a generation and the soul of the South on the brink of inexorable change, but the experience of being young, bright, and passionate. Younger Than That Now is as achingly expressive as Janis Joplin singing "Me and Bobby McGee," as revealing of youth's wild yearnings as a Woodstock documentary. It is sharp, funny, and true, a mirror for a generation--both then and now.
Who the Hell's in It: Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Actors
by Peter BogdanovichPeter Bogdanovich, known primarily as a director, film historian and critic, has been working with professional actors all his life. He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian's Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director).Now, in his new book, Who the Hell's in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart.Bogdanovich captures--in their words and his--their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they've continued to be America's iconic actors.On Lillian Gish: "the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress." On Marlon Brando: "He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon--the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando's charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. " Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: "I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made--I worked in the borscht circuit with them--and I came out and I sang, 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show--naturally--a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed--they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning."John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne's career when he was working as a prop man: "Well, I've naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I'd been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford's need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol."These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich's book is a celebration and a farewell.From the Hardcover edition.
The Gate
by Francois BizotIn 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot was taken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained in a jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years later Bizot became the intermediary between the now victorious Khmer Rouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in Phnom Penh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safety across the Thai border. Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its center lies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a man named Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the Khmer Rouge's torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot's protector and friend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing in its understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at once wrenching and redemptive.
The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder, and the Making of a Great President
by Julie M. FensterThe Case of Abraham Lincoln offers the first-ever account of the suspenseful Anderson Murder Case, and Lincoln's role in it. Fenster not only examines the case that changed Lincoln's fate, but portrays his day-to-day life as a circuit lawyer and how it shaped him as a politician. Drawing a picture of Lincoln in court and at home during that season of 1856, Fenster also offers a close-up look at Lincoln's political work in building the party that would change his fate - and that of the nation.