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The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld
by Tom FolsomA powerful collision of true crime and pop culture, The Mad Ones captures the revolutionary spirit of the sixties and brings to life one of the most vibrant antiheroes in American history.
The Mad Traveller: Waking up from Fugue (Inspirational Series)
by Imogen GroomeHow terrifying is it when you disappear from your everyday life and wake up somewhere else, without even knowing how you got there? That is the experience of someone with dissociative fugue – and that was the life Imogen Groome lived. A clever and quiet child, Imogen was marginalised and bullied at school. Sometimes she walked out of lessons, because she simply couldn’t cope; sometimes, something inside her woke up, and “The Mad Traveller” took over.Imogen was the girl who kept going missing. And as she struggled to deal with a life that just kept on getting harder, she zoned out more and more. But even when she found herself homeless in London, abused by the people she trusted, and forced to endure a life of compromise, Imogen never lost her faith in her ability to recover.The Mad Traveller is a very relatable story for anyone who has ever found themselves marginalised, alone or afraid. At its heart, this is a story for anyone who has ever dared to dream big.
Mad Woman: The hotly anticipated follow-up to lifechanging bestseller, MAD GIRL
by Bryony GordonBryony Gordon presents the long-anticipated follow up to her phenomenal Number One Sunday Times Bestseller, Mad Girl.Ten years on from first writing about her own experiences of mental illness, Bryony Gordon still receives messages about the effects it has on people. Now perimenopausal and well into the next stage of her life, parenting an almost-adolescent, just what has that help - and that connection with other unwell people - taught Bryony about herself, and the society we live in? What has she learned, and why have her views on mental health changed so radically? After coming out the other side of the biggest trauma of our living memory - a global pandemic - existing in a state of perma-crisis has now become our new normal.From burnout and binge eating, to living with fluctuating hormones and the endless battle to stay sober, Bryony begins to question whether she got mental illness wrong in the first place. Is it simply a chemical imbalance, or rather a normal response from your brain telling you that something isn't right? Mad Woman explores the most difficult of all the lesson she's learned over the last decade - that our notion of what makes a happy life is the very thing that's making us so sad.(P)2024 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
Mad Woman: The hotly anticipated follow-up to lifechanging bestseller, MAD GIRL
by Bryony Gordon'Visceral and honest' Telegraph'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer' Elizabeth Day'Bryony writes with such entertaining and brazen candour about mental illness...she really helps people tackle their own stuff. Her writing has helped me before and this will be another hit' Matt HaigTHE HOTLY ANTICIPATED FOLLOW-UP TO SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*, MAD GIRLWhat if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that's making us so sad?Ten years on from first writing about her own experiences of mental illness, Bryony Gordon still receives messages about the effect it has on people. Now perimenopausal and well into the next stage of her life, parenting an almost-adolescent, just what has that help - and that connection with other unwell people - taught Bryony about herself, and the society we live in? What has she learned, and why have her views on mental health changed so radically? After coming out the other side of the biggest trauma of our living memory - a global pandemic - existing in a state of perma-crisis has now become our new normal.From burnout and binge eating, to living with fluctuating hormones and the endless battle to stay sober, Bryony begins to question whether she got mental illness wrong in the first place. Is it simply a chemical imbalance, or rather a normal response from your brain telling you that something isn't right? Mad Woman explores the most difficult of all the lessons she's learned over the last decade - that our notion of what makes a happy life is the very thing that's making us so sad.Bestselling author Bryony Gordon is unafraid to write with her trademark blend of compassion, honesty and humour about her personal challenges and demons, which means her books and journalism have had profound impact on readers. She founded the mental health charity, Mental Health Mates, which has become a vast online community.*Bryony Gordon's Mad Girl was a number one Sunday Times bestseller on 12th June 2016.
Mad Woman: The hotly anticipated follow-up to lifechanging bestseller, MAD GIRL
by Bryony Gordon'Visceral and honest' Telegraph'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer' Elizabeth Day'Bryony writes with such entertaining and brazen candour about mental illness...she really helps people tackle their own stuff. Her writing has helped me before and this will be another hit' Matt HaigTHE HOTLY ANTICIPATED FOLLOW-UP TO SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*, MAD GIRLWhat if our notion of what makes us happy is the very thing that's making us so sad?Ten years on from first writing about her own experiences of mental illness, Bryony Gordon still receives messages about the effect it has on people. Now perimenopausal and well into the next stage of her life, parenting an almost-adolescent, just what has that help - and that connection with other unwell people - taught Bryony about herself, and the society we live in? What has she learned, and why have her views on mental health changed so radically? After coming out the other side of the biggest trauma of our living memory - a global pandemic - existing in a state of perma-crisis has now become our new normal.From burnout and binge eating, to living with fluctuating hormones and the endless battle to stay sober, Bryony begins to question whether she got mental illness wrong in the first place. Is it simply a chemical imbalance, or rather a normal response from your brain telling you that something isn't right? Mad Woman explores the most difficult of all the lessons she's learned over the last decade - that our notion of what makes a happy life is the very thing that's making us so sad.Bestselling author Bryony Gordon is unafraid to write with her trademark blend of compassion, honesty and humour about her personal challenges and demons, which means her books and journalism have had profound impact on readers. She founded the mental health charity, Mental Health Mates, which has become a vast online community.*Bryony Gordon's Mad Girl was a number one Sunday Times bestseller on 12th June 2016.
Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the '60s and Beyond
by Jane Maas"Breezy and salty." -The New York Times"Hilarious! Honest, intimate, this book tells it as it was." -Mary Wells Lawrence, author of A Big Life (In Advertising) and founding president of Wells Rich Greene "Breezy and engaging [though] ...The chief value of Mad Women is the witness it bears for younger women about the snobbery and sexism their mothers and grandmothers endured as the price of entry into mid-century American professional life." -The Boston Globe"A real-life Peggy Olson, right out of Mad Men." -Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & MatherWhat was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the 60s and 70s - that Mad Men era of casual sex and professional serfdom? A real-life Peggy Olson reveals it all in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.Mad Women is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world by Jane Maas, a copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male jungle depicted in the hit show Mad Men. Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: was there really that much sex at the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally "yes." Her book, based on her own experiences and countless interviews with her peers, gives the full stories, from the junior account man whose wife almost left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he'd used to find "a date" for a client, to the Ogilvy & Mather's annual Boat Ride, a sex-and-booze filled orgy, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also tackles some of the tougher issues of the era, such as unequal pay, rampant, jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and their careers.
Mad Women
by Jane MaasPrimero el trabajo, luego el marido y después los niños: esas eran las reglas de Jane Maas cuando trabajaba como redactora en una agencia de Madison Avenue en los años sesenta, una época en que las mujeres con hijos eran franca minoría en estos cargos. Abrirse camino en una jungla poblada de caballeros con corbata no fue fácil para la joven Jane: las pocas mujeres publicistas se hacían cargo solo de cuentas pequeñas, percibían salarios menores, estaban sujetas a sufrir acoso sexual y no contaban con herramientas para defenderse más allá de su astucia y voluntad de triunfar.En Madison Avenue la creatividad, el sexo, el alcohol, el tabaco y las fiestas estaban a la orden del día, y Jane Maas evoca, con más humor que nostalgia esos días en que no existían los ordenadores, Internet y la telefonía móvil, cuando el papel carbón campaba a sus anchas y una señorita tenía que llevar guantes y saber sentarse en el taburete de un bar si quería conquistar el mundo.A través de anécdotas insólitas y divertidos chismorreos, Maas recorre su trayectoria profesional y revela cuánto hay de cierto -y de incierto- en la famosa serie de televisión Mad Men.¿Alguien quiere imaginarse paseando por las calles de Manhattan y trabajando al lado de Don Draper? Mad Women es su libro.«Devoré Mad Women de un bocado... y fue delicioso.»Jane Fonda
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead
by Paula ByrneA terrifically engaging and original biography of one of England's greatest novelists, Evelyn Waugh, and the glamorous, eccentric, debauched, and ultimately tragic family that provided him with the most significant friendships of his life and inspired his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited. Fans of The Mitfords, D. J. Taylor's Bright Young People, and Alexander Waugh's Fathers and Sons, as well as Anglophiles in general, will find much to savor in Paula Byrne's wonderful Mad World. A major theme of the book and part of its original research relates to Waugh's bisexuality and how this, at the time, criminal offense effected him and his friends. In addition the thread of homosexuality runs continually through the book.
Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
by Debby ApplegateThe compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America.&“Applegate&’s tour de force about Jazz Age icon Polly Adler will seize you by the lapels, buy you a drink, and keep you reading until the very last page.... A treat for fiction and nonfiction fans alike." —Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author (as Karen Abbott) of The Ghosts of Eden ParkSimply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it. As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.
Madam Ambassador
by Eleni KounalakisA helicopter ride to visit troops in the Afghanistan war zone, a tense meeting with the newly elected Prime Minister, and...a wild boar hunt! Eleni Kounalakis was forty-three and a land developer in Sacramento, California, when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During her tenure, from 2010 to 2013, Hungary was a key ally in the U.S. military surge, held elections in which a center-right candidate gained a two-thirds supermajority and rewrote the country's constitution, and grappled with the rise of Hungarian nationalism and anti-semitism.The first Greek-American woman ever to serve as a U.S. ambassador, Kounalakis recounts her training at the State Department's "charm school" and her three years of diplomatic life in Budapest--from protocols about seating, salutations, and embassy security to what to do when the deposed King of Greece hands you a small chocolate crown (eat it, of course!). A cross between a foreign policy memoir and an inspiring personal family story--her immigrant Greek father went from agricultural day laborer to land developer and major Democratic party activist--Madam Ambassador draws back the curtain on what it is like to represent the U.S. government abroad as well as how American embassies around the world function.
Madam C. J. Walker: The Beauty Boss (Bright Minds)
by Janel RodriguezMeet the inventors and scientists of color who changed the world!Born Sarah Breedlove near Delta, Louisiana, in 1867, Madam C. J. Walker was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America. Among her many accomplishments, she invented a Black hair care method, known as the “Walker system,” as a treatment for scalp disorders like alopecia, along with many other Black hair care products. It is time to remember how Madam C. J. Walker's inventions and her contributions changed our society… and our world!ABOUT THE SERIES:Many inventors and scientists of color have made incredible contributions to our modern life. Each volume in this much-needed new series will be devoted to the life and work of one of these inventors and scientists. With a vivid writing style that will use humor as one of its primary ingredients, and illustrated with a combination of real photos and pictures featuring graphic art, each title in this series will describe how these heroes of diverse backgrounds faced the challenges of their times, and how their inventions and contributions changed our society.
Madam C. J. Walker
by Robin SpevacekMadam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 and rose from poverty to become one of the richest African American women of her time. Her determination to succeed never faltered, and she helped many people along the way.
Madam C. J. Walker: The Inspiring Life Story of the Hair Care Entrepreneur (Inspiring Stories)
by Darlene R. StilleMadam C.J. Walker worked hard her entire life. The nationally known business leader gave generously of her time and money to further the cause of civil rights. She brought hope and optimism to African-Americans and tirelessly fought for racial equality.
Madam C. J. Walker Builds a Business (Rebel Girls Chapter Books)
by Rebel Girls Denene MillnerFrom the world of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls comes a story based on the life of Madam C.J. Walker, America's first female self-made millionaire.Sarah is the first person in her family who wasn't born into slavery in Delta, Louisiana. But being free doesn't mean that Sarah doesn't have to work. She cooks, she cleans, she picks cotton, she does laundry, and she babysits. And when she works, she wraps up her hair.One day, Sarah's hair starts to fall out! It's itchy, crunchy, patchy, and won't grow. Instead of giving up, Sarah searches for the right products. And then she invents something better than any shampoo or hair oil she's used before. Her hair grows and grows! That's when she decides to rebrand herself as "Madam C. J. Walker," and begins her business empire.Madam C. J. Walker Builds a Business is the story of a leader in the hair care industry, but it's also an inspiring tale about the importance of empowering women to become economically independent.This historical fiction chapter book includes additional text on Madam C. J. Walker's lasting legacy, as well as educational activities designed to encourage entrepreneurship.About the Rebel Girls Chapter Book SeriesMeet extraordinary real-life heroines in the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls chapter book series! Introducing stories based on the lives of extraordinary women in global history, each stunningly designed chapter book features beautiful illustrations from a female artist as well as bonus activities in the backmatter to encourage kids to explore the various fields in which each of these women thrived. The perfect gift to inspire any young reader!
Madam C. J. Walker's Gospel of Giving: Black Women's Philanthropy during Jim Crow (New Black Studies Series)
by Tyrone McKinley FreemanFounder of a beauty empire, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated as America's first self-made female millionaire in the early 1900s. Known as a leading African American entrepreneur, Walker was also devoted to an activist philanthropy aimed at empowering African Americans and challenging the injustices inflicted by Jim Crow. Tyrone McKinley Freeman's biography highlights how giving shaped Walker's life before and after she became wealthy. Poor and widowed when she arrived in St. Louis in her twenties, Walker found mentorship among black churchgoers and working black women. Her adoption of faith, racial uplift, education, and self-help soon informed her dedication to assisting black women's entrepreneurship, financial independence, and activism. Walker embedded her philanthropy in how she grew her business, forged alliances with groups like the National Association of Colored Women, funded schools and social service agencies led by African American women, and enlisted her company's sales agents in local charity and advocacy work. Illuminating and dramatic, Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving broadens our understanding of black women’s charitable giving and establishes Walker as a foremother of African American philanthropy.
Madam Chief Justice: Jean Hoefer Toal of South Carolina
by W. Lewis Burke Jr. Joan P. AsseyIn Madam Chief Justice, editors W. Lewis Burke Jr. and Joan P. Assey chronicle the remarkable career of Jean Hoefer Toal, South Carolina's first female Supreme Court Chief Justice. As a lawyer, legislator, and judge, Toal is one of the most accomplished women in South Carolina history. In this volume, contributors, including two United States Supreme Court Justices, federal and state judges state leaders, historians, legal scholars, leading attorneys, family, and friends, provide analysis, perspective, and biographical information about the life and career of this dynamic leader and her role in shaping South Carolina. Growing up in Columbia during the 1950s and 60s, Jean Hoefer was a youthful witness to the civil rights movement in the state and nation. Observing the state's premier civil rights lawyer Matthew J. Perry Jr. in court encouraged her to attend law school, where she met her husband, Bill Toal. When she was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1968, fewer than one hundred women had been admitted in the state's history. From then forward she was both a leader and a role model. As a lawyer she excelled in trial and appellate work and won major victories on behalf of Native Americans and women. In 1975, Toal was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and despite her age and gender quickly became one of the most respected members of that body. During her fourteen years as a House member, Toal promoted major legislation on many issues including constitutional law, criminal law, utilities regulation, local government, state appropriations, workers compensation, and freedom of information. In 1988, Toal was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court of South Carolina, where she made her mark through her preparation and insight. She was elected Chief Justice in 2000, becoming the first woman ever to hold the highest position in the state's judiciary. As Chief Justice, Toal not only modernized her court, but also the state's judicial system. As Toal's two daughters write in their chapter, the traits their mother brings to her professional life—exuberance, determination, and loyalty—are the same traits she demonstrates in her personal and family life. As a child, Toal loved roller skating in the lobby of the post office,a historic building that now serves as the Supreme Court of South Carolina. From a child in Columbia to Madam Chief Justice, her story comes full circle in this compelling account of her life and influence. Madam Chief Justice features a foreword by Sandra Day O'Connor, retired associate justice of the United State Supreme Court, and an introduction by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.Contributors:Joseph F. Anderson, Jr.Joan P. AsseyJay BenderC. Mitchell BrownW. Lewis Burke Jr.M. Elizabeth (Liz) CrumTina CundariCameron McGowan CurrieWalter B. EdgarJean Toal EisenRobert L. FelixRichard Mark GergelRuth Bader GinsburgElizabeth Van Doren GraySue Erwin HarperJessica Childers HarringtonKaye G. HearnBlake HewittI. S. Leevy JohnsonJohn W. KittredgeLilla Toal MandsagerMary Campbell McQueenJames E. MooreSandra Day O'ConnorRichard W. RileyBakari T. SellersRobert J. SheheenAmelia Waring WalkerBradish J. Waring
Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson
by William HazelgroveAfter President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, began to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the Executive Office. <P><P>Mrs. Wilson had had little formal education and had only been married to President Wilson for four years; yet, in the tenuous peace following the end of World War I, Mrs. Wilson assumed the authority of the office of the president, reading all correspondence intended for her bedridden husband and assuming his role for seventeen long months. <P><P>Though her Oval Office presence was acknowledged in Washington, D.C. circles at the time-one senator called her "the Presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man"-her legacy as "First Woman President" is now largely forgotten. <P><P>William Hazelgrove's Madam President is a vivid, engaging portrait of the woman who became the acting President of the United States in 1919, months before women officially won the right to vote.
Madam Secretary
by Madeleine AlbrightMadeleine Albright was for eight years during the first and second Clinton terms privy to some of the most fascinating and controversial episodes in recent memory. Her refreshingly candid memoir brings to life the world leaders with whom she worked and the joys and difficulties of her own private life: her daughters, the painful break-up of her marriage, and the discovery late in life of her Jewish grandparents' fate. Weaving together the public and the private, the national and the intimate, Madam Secretary is a valuable contribution to political history and destined to become a classic of its kind. 'It is a mark of the excellence of this memoir by the highest-ranking woman in American history . . . that it could not have been written by a man . . . Ms Albright’s authentic voice is vivid . . . [an] unusually honest book' Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator 'It is fashionable in some of the more rabid right-wing Washington salons to look at the Clinton years as ones of drift and equivocation. [ Madam Secretary] makes a case for the defence - in foreign policy at least - that largely avoids the partisan sniping . . . If that were this book's only quality it would be worth noting' Alex Massie,Scotland on Sunday
Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power
by Susan PageThe definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page. <P><P>Featuring more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know her best—and a series of in-depth, news-making interviews with Pelosi herself—MADAM SPEAKER is unprecedented in the scope of its exploration of Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable life and of her indelible impact on American politics. <P><P>Before she was Nancy Pelosi, she was Nancy D’Alesandro. Her father was a big-city mayor and her mother his political organizer; when she encouraged her young daughter to become a nun, Nancy told her mother that being a priest sounded more appealing. She didn’t begin running for office until she was forty-six years old, her five children mostly out of the nest. <P><P>With that, she found her calling. Nancy Pelosi has lived on the cutting edge of the revolution in both women’s roles and in the nation’s movement to a fiercer and more polarized politics. She has established herself as a crucial friend or formidable foe to U.S. presidents, a master legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior. She took on the Democratic establishment to become the first female Speaker of the House, then battled rivals on the left and right to consolidate her power. She has soared in the sharp-edged inside game of politics, though she has struggled in the outside game—demonized by conservatives, second-guessed by progressives, and routinely underestimated by nearly everyone. <P><P>All of this was preparation for the most historic challenge she would ever face, at a time she had been privately planning her retirement. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House, Nancy Pelosi became the Democratic counterpart best able to stand up to the disruptive president and to get under his skin. The battle between Trump and Pelosi, chronicled in this book with behind-the-scenes details and revelations, stands to be the titanic political struggle of our time. <P><P><b>A New York Times Best Seller</b>
Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi's Life, Times, and Rise to Power
by Marc SandalowUnthinkable just a generation ago, Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency and Nancy Pelosi's ascension to Speaker of the House have cast the spotlight on American political women as never before. In the 230 years of this country's history, never has a woman—let alone a mother and a grandmother—risen to such a position of power as Nancy Pelosi did when she assumed her role as the first female Speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency. In Madam Speaker, Marc Sandalow, an esteemed journalist and political analyst who covered Pelosi for decades, offers a richly nuanced portrait of the woman who made history. He charts Pelosi's political roots, honing in on her father, who spent five terms in Congress and stored hundreds of copies of the Congressional Record under her bed, and goes on to examine how Pelosi, who didn't run for political office until she was 47 years old, juggled her family life and fought hard to forge a place for herself in Washington, ultimately becoming one of the most influential voices in our nation. Based on hundreds of interviews with Pelosi's colleagues, family, and friends—and the Speaker herself—Sandalow culls together insightful anecdotes and political analysis to chronicle Pelosi's meteoric rise and controversial tenure. Madam Speaker illuminates the inspiring life of a woman who has already made history.
Madame Alexander: The Creator of the Iconic American Doll
by Susan Goldman RubinAn inspiring, uplifting picture book biography about iconic doll creator, Madame Alexander, whose love for dolls and bringing joy to others began at a young age and only continued to grow.Someday, she thought, I will make dolls that don’t break so children will never be unhappy.Beatrice Alexander’s family ran a doll hospital in their home in New York’s Lower East Side, where she grew to love fixing and making dolls. Beatrice dreamed of becoming an artist, but her family couldn’t afford to send her to sculpting school. She never stopped dreaming, even as she stayed home, graduated from high school, and got married. When World War I broke out, she came up with the idea to make unbreakable, cloth dolls modeled after nurses to support the war effort and help keep children happy. After the war, Beatrice founded Madame Alexander and redefined the doll industry, creating some of the first plastic and collectible dolls, dolls that never break.With beautiful, vivid art by Sarah Dvojack, author Susan Goldman Rubin tells the powerful story of savvy, feminist entrepreneur Beatrice Alexander, who founded the Madame Alexander Doll Company and became one of America’s most celebrated toy makers.
Madame Blavatsky
by Gary LachmanA thoughtful biography of one of the most polarizing pioneers of alternative spirituality, the occult-mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Pioneer. Visionary. Provocateur. Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky—mystic, occult writer, child of Russian aristocrats, spiritual seeker who traveled five continents, and founder (with Henry Steel Olcott) of the Theosophical Society—is still being hailed as an icon and scorned as a fraud more than 120 years after her death. But despite perennial interest in her life, writings, and philosophy, no single biography has examined the controversy and legacy of this influential thinker who helped define modern alternative spirituality—until now. Gary Lachman, the acclaimed spiritual biographer behind volumes such as Rudolf Steiner and Jung the Mystic, brings us an in-depth look at Blavatsky, objectively exploring her unique and singular contributions toward introducing Eastern and esoteric spiritual ideas to the West during the nineteenth century, as well as the controversies that continue to color the discussions of her life and work. .
Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth
by Marion MeadeThe life and times of Helena Blavatsky, the controversial religious guru who cofounded the Theosophical Society and kick-started the New Age movement. Recklessly brilliant, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky scandalized her 19th century world with a controversial new religion that tried to synthesize Eastern and Western philosophies. If her contemporaries saw her as a freak, a charlatan, and a snake oil salesman, she viewed herself as a special person born for great things. She firmly believed that it was her destiny to enlighten the world. Rebelliously breaking conventions, she was the antithesis of a pious religious leader. She cursed, smoked, overate, and needed to airbrush out certain inconvenient facts, like husbands, lovers, and a child. Marion Meade digs deep into Madame Blavatsky&’s life from her birth in Russia among the aristocracy to a penniless exile in Europe, across the Atlantic to New York where she became the first Russian woman naturalized as an American citizen, and finally moving on to India where she established the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society in 1882. As she chased from continent to continent, she left in her aftermath a trail of enthralled followers and the ideas of Theosophy that endure to this day. While dismissed as a female messiah, her efforts laid the groundwork for the New Age movement, which sought to reconcile Eastern traditions with Western occultism. Her teachings entered the mainstream by creating new respect for the cultures and religions of the East—for Buddhism and Hinduism—and interest in meditation, yoga, gurus, and reincarnation. Madame Blavatsky was one of a kind. Here is her richly bizarre story told with compassion, insight, and an attempt to plumb the truth behind those astonishing accomplishments.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady (Biography And Memoir Ser.)
by Laura Tyson LiThe first biography of one of the most controversial and fascinating women of the twentieth century. Beautiful, brilliant, and captivating, Madame Chiang Kai-shek seized unprecedented power during China&’s long and violent civil war. She passionately argued against Chinese Communism in the international arena and influenced decades of Sino-American relations and modern Chinese history. Raised in one of China&’s most powerful families and educated at Wellesley College, Soong Mayling went on to become wife, chief adviser, interpreter, and propagandist to Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. She sparred with international leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a manipulative Dragon Lady,&” and despised for living in American-style splendor while Chinese citizens suffered under her husband&’s brutal oppression. The result of years of extensive research in the United States and abroad, and written with access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, Madame Chiang Kai-shek objectively evaluates one of the most powerful and fascinating women of the twentieth century. &“Li brilliantly analyzes a fearless and profoundly conflicted woman of extraordinary force.&” —Booklist
Madame Chrysantheme
by Terence Barrow Pierre LotiPierre Loti's Madame Chrysantheme is a charming story, a real life tale of love between the Frenchman Pierre Loti and a geisha. At times the story is happy, at other times it is sad. The setting is a summer in Nagasaki almost a century ago. <P><P>Loti, as a young naval officer on station in harbor, had sufficient time on his hands to establish a home ashore with fragile and beautiful Madame Chrysantheme. In these days of fast jet travel such romances are scarcely possible for travelers, yet the appeal of them remains.Here is a novel based on a real experience written by one of France's greatest masters of description. The theme is love in the exotic Japan of the late nineteenth century. At times the scenario resembles comic opera in the vein of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, but at other times emotional feeling runs as deep as in Puccini's Madame Butterfly. The mixed denizens of the Nagasaki waterfront and the teahouses of those long-ago days provided Loti with very rich material indeed. This is a book all lovers of the romantic side of traditional Japan will be sure to appreciate.