books tagged “autobiography”

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The Autobiography and Other Writings
by Benjamin Franklin

ISBN 0451528107 (0-451-52810-7)
Softcover, Signet Classic

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Book summary:
OTHER WRITINGS INCLUDE: A RECEIPT TO MAKE A NEW ENGLAND FUNERAL ELEGY; ADVICE TO A FRIEND ON CHOOSING A MISTRESS; THE SPEECH OF MISS POLLY BAKER; HOW TO SECURE HOUSES, &C. FROM LIGHTNING; THE KITE EXPERIMENT; THE WAY TO WEALTH; AN EDICT BY THE KING OF PRUSSIA; THE MORALS OF CHESS (EXCERPT); THE ELYSIAN FIELDS; INFORMATION TO THOSE WHO WOULD REMOVE TO AMERICA (EXCERPT); AN ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY; A MISCELLANY OF FRANKLIN'S OPINIONS. [via]
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Autobiography and Selected Writings
by Benjamin Franklin

ISBN 0451522028 (0-451-52202-8)
Softcover, Penguin USA

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- Autobiography and Selected Writings: ISBN 0451522028 (0-451-52202-8)
  Softcover, Penguin USA
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin

ISBN 0300098588 (0-300-09858-8)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr

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Book summary:
One of the most popular works of American literature, this charming self-portrait has been translated into nearly every language. It covers Franklin's life up to his prewar stay in London as representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, including his boyhood years, work as a printer, experiments with electricity, political career, much more.
[via]
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: With Related Documents
by Louis P. Masur

ISBN 0312404158 (0-312-40415-8)
Softcover, Bedford/st Martins

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Book summary:
This new edition of "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" is built around J.A. Leo Lemay and P.R. Zall's text. Louis Masur's introduction sets the work in its historical context. Masur also discusses America after Franklin and why the autobiography has had such a tremendous impact on 19th- and 20th-century society and culture. The book prompts students to think critically about the text by raising fundamental issues, such as the inherent distortion that occurs in autobiography. The book also contains six portraits of Franklin. Louis Masur is the author of "Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865". [via]
More editions of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: With Related Documents:
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: With Related Documents: ISBN 0312084463 (0-312-08446-3)
  Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: With Related Documents: ISBN 0312404158 (0-312-40415-8)
  Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
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Benjamin Franklin:a Biography in His Own Words: A Biography in His Own Words
by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas J. Fleming

ISBN 0060112867 (0-06-011286-7)
Hardcover

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Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds Criticism
by Benjamin Franklin

ISBN 0393952940 (0-393-95294-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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Book summary:
Franklins Autobiography is the only enduring best-seller written in America before the nineteenth century, as well as the most popular autobiography ever written.
As such it deserves to be offered to twentieth-century readers in the most accurate form possible, and so it is, in this Norton Critical Edition, the first text to be edited directly from the manuscripts, rather than perpetuating the errors of previous editions.

The text is fully annotated, and the reading is assisted by helpful footnotes, biographical sketches, and two maps.

In "Backgrounds", the editors collect Franklins most important reflections on the Autobiographys purpose, some anecdotes, and a number of Franklins statements on wealth, the art of virtue, and perfection. Materials in "Criticism" range from contemporary opinionswhich reveal that readers were divided then as they are now about the art of the Autobiographyto essays written in the twentieth century.

Nineteenth-century opinions include those of John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells, among others.

The twentieth-century materials include D. H. Lawrences celebrated essay, an excerpt from Max Webers Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and the perspectives of such recent critics as Charles L. Sanford, Robert Freeman Sayre, John William Ward, and David Devin. [via]
More editions of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds Criticism:
- Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds Criticism: ISBN 0393017370 (0-393-01737-0)
  Hardcover, Norton
- Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds Criticism: ISBN 0393952940 (0-393-95294-0)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Chronicles
by Bob Dylan

ISBN 0743244583 (0-7432-4458-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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As the first volume of Chronicles, Bob Dylans long-anticipated autobiography, finally appears, we are given a forcible reminder how it has never been easy to be a Dylan admirer. How could the fiercely anti-establishment composer of With God on Our Side embrace (in turn) orthodox Judaism, then fundamentalist Christianity two religions absolutely antithetical to his celebration of the unfettered human spirit ? How could the demigod of folk (and disciple of Woody Guthrie) make his controversial move into electric rock? How could this man of the streets become the arch capitalist? If no answers to these questions are to be found within the pages of Chronicles, there is nevertheless a whole host of pleasures to be encountered: literary felicities, brilliantly etched pen portraits of musical personalities he has encountered, the biting wit one might expect not to mention a thousand surprises (how could a man hardly noted for the beauty of his vocal tones be such an admirer of composers whose work he could never tackle, such as Harold Arlen, composer of Over the Rainbow?.
Those who have loved Dylans lyrics (and thats a good chunk of the academic world these days) will find the same coruscating prose here: idea and image fused into brilliant (if often opaque) word pictures, as Dylan takes us back to his early days on the New York folk scene, before he became the face of rebellion in music. There are insights into his reluctance to conform to the image his fans have of him (hence his highly unlikely conversion to religious dogmas?), and this inaugural volume of his autobiography takes the reader up to the moment of his first real celebrity. Its a fascinating and infuriating read, of a piece with Dylan the Enigma. And perhaps answers to those unanswered questions will appear in succeeding volumes. --Barry Forshaw [via]
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Chronicles: A Bob Dylan Series
by Bob Dylan

ISBN 0786273410 (0-7862-7341-0)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr

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One would not anticipate a conventional memoir from Bob Dylan--indeed, one would not have foreseen an autobiography at all from the pen of the notoriously private legend. What Chronicles: Volume 1 delivers is an odd but ultimately illuminating memoir that is as impulsive, eccentric, and inspired as Dylan's greatest music.
Eschewing chronology and skipping over most of the "highlights" that his many biographers have assigned him, Dylan drifts and rambles through his tale, amplifying a series of major and minor epiphanies. If you're interested in a behind-the-scenes look at his encounters with the Beatles, look elsewhere. Dylan describes the sensation of hearing the group's "Do You Want to Know a Secret" on the radio, but devotes far more ink to a Louisiana shopkeeper named Sun Pie, who tells him, "I think all the good in the world might already been done" and sells him a World's Greatest Grandpa bumper sticker. Dylan certainly sticks to his own agenda--a newspaper article about journeymen heavyweights Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis and soul singer Joe Tex's appearance on The Tonight Show inspire heartfelt musings, and yet the 1963 assassination of John Kennedy prompts nary a word from the era's greatest protest singer.
For all the small revelations (it turns out he's been a big fan of Barry Goldwater, Mickey Rourke, and Ice-T), there are eye-opening disclosures, including his confession that a large portion of his recorded output was designed to alienate his audience and free him from the burden of being a "the voice of a generation."
Off the beaten path as it is, Chronicles is nevertheless an astonishing achievement. As revelatory in its own way as Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited, it provides ephemeral insights into the mind one of the most significant artistic voices of the 20th century while creating a completely new set of mysteries. --Steven Stolder [via]
More editions of Chronicles: A Bob Dylan Series:
- Chronicles: A Bob Dylan Series: ISBN 0786273410 (0-7862-7341-0)
  Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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The Education of Henry Adams
by Henry Adams

ISBN 1406802786 (1-4068-0278-6)
Softcover, Echo Library

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Book summary:
Many great artists have had at least intermittent doubts about their own abilities. But The Education of Henry Adams is surely one of the few masterpieces to issue directly from a raging inferiority complex. The author, to be sure, had bigger shoes to fill than most of us. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were U.S. presidents. His father, a relative underachiever, scraped by as a member of Congress and ambassador to the Court of St. James. But young Henry, born in Boston in 1838, was destined for a walk-on role in his nation's history--and seemed alarmingly aware of the fact from the time he was an adolescent.
It gets worse. For the author could neither match his exalted ancestors nor dismiss them as dusty relics--he was an Adams, after all, formed from the same 18th-century clay. "The atmosphere of education in which he lived was colonial," we are told,
revolutionary, almost Cromwellian, as though he were steeped, from his greatest grandmother's birth, in the odor of political crime. Resistance to something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked out on the world with the instinct of resistance; for numberless generations his predecessors had viewed the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly succeeded in the abolition; the duty was unchanged.
Here, as always, Adams tells his story in a third-person voice that can seem almost extraplanetary in its detachment. Yet there's also an undercurrent of melancholy and amusement--and wonder at the specific details of what was already a lost world.
Continuing his uphill conquest of the learning curve, Adams attended Harvard, which didn't do much for him. ("The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.") Then, after a beer-and-sausage-scented spell as a graduate student in Berlin, he followed his father to Washington, D.C., in 1860. There he might have remained--bogged down in "the same rude colony ... camped in the same forest, with the same unfinished Greek temples for workrooms, and sloughs for roads"--had not the Civil War sent Adams père et fils to London. Henry sat on the sidelines throughout the conflict, serving as his father's private secretary and anxiously negotiating the minefields of English society. He then returned home and commenced a long career as a journalist, historian, novelist, and peripheral participant in the political process--a kind of mouthpiece for what remained of the New England conscience.
He was not, by any measure but his own, a failure. And the proof of the pudding is The Education of Henry Adams itself, which remains among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. It contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture, and transatlantic relations: "The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest." There are astonishing glimpses of the high and mighty: "He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism..." (That would be Abraham Lincoln; the "melancholy function" his Inaugural Ball.) But most of all, Adams's book is a brilliant account of how his own sensibility came to be. A literary landmark from the moment it first appeared, the Autobiography confers upon its author precisely that prize he felt had always eluded him: success. --James Marcus [via]
More editions of The Education of Henry Adams:
- The Education of Henry Adams: ISBN 1404350160 (1-4043-5016-0)
  Hardcover, Indypublish.Com
- The Education of Henry Adams: ISBN 1406802786 (1-4068-0278-6)
  Softcover, Echo Library
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers

ISBN 1568959095 (1-56895-909-5)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Book summary:
National Bestseller The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author. [via]
More editions of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius:
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: ISBN 0375725784 (0-375-72578-4)
  Softcover, Vintage Books
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: ISBN 1568959095 (1-56895-909-5)
  Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius : A Memoir Based on a True Story
by Dave Eggers

ISBN 0684863472 (0-684-86347-2)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:
Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:").
But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.)
The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting.
All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park [via]
More editions of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius : A Memoir Based on a True Story:
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius : A Memoir Based on a True Story: ISBN 0684863472 (0-684-86347-2)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou

ISBN 0553279378 (0-553-27937-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant." [via]
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I know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Blooms Guides)
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791077683 (0-7910-7768-3)
Softcover, Facts on File

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- I know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Blooms Guides): ISBN 0791077683 (0-7910-7768-3)
  Softcover, Facts on File
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Lo Es: Una Memoria
by Frank McCourt

ISBN 8495354446 (84-95354-44-6)
Hardcover, Distribooks Inc

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The Spanish edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller, TIS is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes, and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, then by New York University-- which admitted him on a trial basis, though he had no high school diploma-- Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight, and still has today. And TIS is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and often hilarious as ANGELA'S ASHES. Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. TIS blesses readers with another chapter of McCourt's story, but as it closes, they will want still more. [via]
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- Lo Es: Una Memoria: ISBN 8495354446 (84-95354-44-6)
  Hardcover, Distribooks Inc
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Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791036669 (0-7910-3666-9)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings accomplishes a controlled poignance in representing a portrait of the young artist as a black woman. Her novel is the focus of this edition of Bloom's Notes. Along with a collection of some of the best criticism available on his work, this text includes a brief biography of the author, structural and thematic analysis, an index of themes and ideas, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters. [via]
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- Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: ISBN 0791036669 (0-7910-3666-9)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
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My Life
by Bill Clinton

ISBN 140003003X (1-4000-3003-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Loved and reviled, respected and resented, Bill Clinton is one of the more polarizing and complex politicians of our age. As the 42nd President, he presided over a period of dizzying economic growth and technological progress, and achieved such foreign policy successes as the ratification of NAFTA, helping to bring several former Eastern Bloc nations into NATO, and assisting China's entrance into the World Trade Organization. His time in office was also marked by a string of scandals, most notably the Monica Lewinsky debacle and the subsequent impeachment trial, which largely overshadowed his triumphs.
Just 53 years old when he left office, Clinton continues to keep a high profile, having formed the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation to focus on the battle against HIV/AIDS around the world; racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation; economic empowerment of poor people; nd leadership development and citizen service. His memoir, My Life, due out on June 30, 2004, is an opportunity for Clinton to reveal his political philosophy and perspective on past events as well as a chance to influence his own place in history. [via]
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Narrative of the Life & Times of Frederick Douglass
by Frederick Douglass

ISBN 1930097115 (1-930097-11-5)
Softcover, Lushena Books

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This Eloquent and dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its author was twenty eight years old & had just achieved his freedom. Although it was not uncommon during the era of American slavery for articulate Blacks who escaped to have their experiences published, Narraive Of The Life & Times Of Frederick Douglass is unique among these slave narratives because of Douglass's eloquent power of expression. [via]
More editions of Narrative of the Life & Times of Frederick Douglass:
- Narrative of the Life & Times of Frederick Douglass: ISBN 1930097115 (1-930097-11-5)
  Softcover, Lushena Books
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
by Frederick Douglass

ISBN 1420922378 (1-4209-2237-8)
Softcover, Digireads.Com

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Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895) was born into slavery by a slave mother and an unknown father. At the age of 8, he started to educate himself with the help of his master's wife. In 1838, he fled Baltimore for the North. There he soon became a noted author and speaker on slavery.
Douglass wrote three autobiographies, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845), "My Bondage and My Freedom" (1855) and "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" (1881). Quiet Vision publishes all three plus the "Selected Works of Frederick Douglass", a collection of short works and speeches.
A man ahead of his time, in the 1840's he had to be dragged from the railroad cars reserved for whites. He also protested the dual standard of certain churches in having separate worship. [via]
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
by Not Available

ISBN 1580495761 (1-58049-576-1)
Softcover, Prestwick House Inc

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Born into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of Americas best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass own account of his journey from slave to one of Americas great statesmen, writers, and orators is as fascinating as it is inspiring.
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and readers notes to help the modern reader contend with Douglass nineteenth-century style and vocabulary. [via]
More editions of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: ISBN 1580495761 (1-58049-576-1)
  Softcover, Prestwick House Inc
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave
by Robert G. O'Meally, Frederick Douglass

ISBN 1593080417 (1-59308-041-7)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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Book summary:
Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

No book except perhaps Uncle Toms Cabin had as powerful an impact on the abolitionist movement as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. But while Stowe wrote about imaginary characters, Douglasss book is a record of his own remarkable life.

Born a slave in 1818 on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. In 1845, seven years after escaping to the North, he published Narrative, the first of three autobiographies. This book calmly but dramatically recounts the horrors and the accomplishments of his early yearsthe daily, casual brutality of the white masters; his painful efforts to educate himself; his decision to find freedom or die; and his harrowing but successful escape.

An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.

Robert OMeally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of Literature at Columbia University and the Director of Columbia Universitys Center for Jazz Studies. He wrote the introduction and notes to the Barnes & Noble classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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More editions of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave: ISBN 1593083572 (1-59308-357-2)
  Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
- Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave: ISBN 1593080417 (1-59308-041-7)
  Softcover, Barnes & Noble
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
by Frederick Douglass

ISBN 0131166158 (0-13-116615-8)
Softcover, Pearson Prentice Hall

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Book summary:
Published in 1845, this autobiography powerfully details the life of the internationally famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838 - how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In his introduction, Houston A. Baker, Jr., discusses the slave narrative as a distinct American literary genre and points out its social, political, historical, and literary significance, past and present. [via]
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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl
by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs

ISBN 0345478231 (0-345-47823-1)
Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.

Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations. [via]
More editions of Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl:
- Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl: ISBN 0679783288 (0-679-78328-8)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
- Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl: ISBN 0345478231 (0-345-47823-1)
  Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave : Written by Himself
by John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, Peter P. Hinks, Frederick Douglass

ISBN 0300088310 (0-300-08831-0)
Hardcover, Yale University Press

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Book summary:
In 1845, just seven years after his escape from slavery, the young Frederick Douglass published this powerful account of his life in bondage and his triumph over oppression. The book, which marked the beginning of Douglass's career as an impassioned writer, journalist, and orator for the abolitionist cause, reveals the terrors he faced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North. It has become a classic of American autobiography. This edition of the book, based on the authoritative text that appears in Yale University Press's multivolume edition of the Frederick Douglass Papers, is the only edition of Douglass's Narrative designated, as an Approved Text by the Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions. It includes a chronology of Douglass's life, a thorough introduction by the eminent Douglass scholar John Blassingame, historical notes, and reader responses to the first edition of 1845. [via]
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- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave : Written by Himself: ISBN 0300088310 (0-300-08831-0)
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism
by Frederick Douglass, William L. Andrews, William S. McFeely

ISBN 0393969665 (0-393-96966-5)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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Book summary:
Upon its publication in 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself became an immediate best-seller.
In addition to its far-reaching impact on the antislavery movement in the United States and abroad, Douglasss fugitive slave narrative won recognition for its literary excellence, which has since earned it a place among the classics of nineteenth-century American autobiography. This Norton Critical Edition reprints the 1845 first edition of Douglasss compelling work. Explanatory annotations accompany the text.

A rich selection of "Contexts" provides the reader with contemporary perspectives. Included are the little-known preface that Douglass wrote in 1846 for the second Irish edition; a public exchange of letters between A. C. C. Thompson, a former slaveholder, and Douglass; three autobiographical portraits of Douglass's parents; Douglasss account of his escape from slavery, which he chose not to include in the 1845 Narrative; samples of Douglasss use of his slave experience in two of his most influential antislavery speeches; and reminiscences by James Monroe Gregory and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Douglass as both orator and friend.

"Criticism" collects six essential assessments of the Narratives historical and literary aspects, by William S. McFeely, Peter Ripley, Robert B. Stepto, William L. Andrews, Houston A. Baker, Jr., and Deborah E. McDowell. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included. [via]
More editions of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism:
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism: ISBN 0393969665 (0-393-96966-5)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Night
by Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel

ISBN 0374500010 (0-374-50001-0)
Softcover, Hill & Wang Pub

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Book summary:
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died. [via]
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On Writing
by Stephen King

ISBN 1416549862 (1-4165-4986-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books

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- On Writing: ISBN 1416549862 (1-4165-4986-2)
  Softcover, Pocket Books
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Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi

ISBN 1594970351 (1-59497-035-1)
Softcover, Public Square Books

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Book summary:
Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is an exemplary autobiographical graphic novel, in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's classic Maus. Set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, young Satrapi is the six-year-old daughter of two committed and well-to-do Marxists. As she grows up, she witness first-hand the effects that the revolution and the war with Iraq have on her home, family and school.
Like Maus, the main strength of Persepolis is its ability to make the political personal.
Told through the eyes of a child (as reflected in Satrapi's simplistic yet expressive black-and-white artwork), young Marjane learns about her family history and how it is entwined with the history of Iran, and watches her liberal parents cope with a fundamentalist regime that gets increasingly rigid as it gains more power. Outspoken and intelligent, Marjane chafes at Iran's increasingly conservative interpretation of Islamic law, especially as she grows into a bright and independent teenager. Throughout, Marjane remains a hugely likeable young woman
Persepolis gives the reader a snapshot of daily life in a country struggling with an internal cultural revolution and a bloody war, but within an intensely personal context. It's a very human history, beautifully and sympathetically told. --Robert Burrow [via]
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Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov

ISBN 0679723390 (0-679-72339-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
Even if you already own Nabokov's earthy, otherworldly account of his astounding life, you must buy this 1999 edition. And if you've never read Speak, Memory, you must do so at once. This volume is essential because it includes the unpublished last chapter, a pseudo-review comparing Speak, Memory with another, nonexistent memoir called When Lilacs Last. (That title refers to Whitman's poem on Lincoln's assassination and to the lilacs of Nabokov's childhood home) Chapter 16 is a key to what the imaginary reviewer accurately calls a "unique freak as autobiographies go," revealing its novel-like nature and unifying themes and images (chess, puzzles, spirals, jewels, rainbows, exile, the stained-glass shadow patterns that the future casts on the present). Maybe Nabokov thought he gave too much away, and one sees the formal superiority of ending the book with chapter 15. But the added essay is a gem that dazzles and illuminates.
You have to consult biographies like Brian Boyd's for the full, remarkable facts of Nabokov's life. A millionaire at 17 (his sister danced in Diaghilev gowns with Fabergé gems at the Winter Palace), repeatedly exiled, forced to bust out of one chrysalis after another into new lives, the writer retained only the infinite wealth of his memory and art. This book is a mosaic shaped by a mind so metaphorical that, as a babe, Nabokov perceived letters as colors, the alphabet as a rainbow.
The loss of his father is at Speak, Memory's core. This memoir is worth owning for a single paragraph alone, about the sight of Nabokov senior being tossed aloft by grateful peasants he'd been generous to--a dozen or so with locked arms flinging him up in a hip-hip-hooray ritual.
There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawled in midair.... Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up ... and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.
Nabokov recaptures the paradise of his youth, and acquits himself of the coldness of which some accuse him. He plays literary games, but he plays for keeps. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
by Richard Feynman

ISBN 0613181468 (0-613-18146-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:
A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]
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- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: ISBN 0613181468 (0-613-18146-8)
  Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard P Feynman

ISBN 0553276646 (0-553-27664-6)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
by Ralph Leighton, Richard P Feynman, Edward Hutchings

ISBN 0393316041 (0-393-31604-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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Book summary:
A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]
More editions of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character:
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character: ISBN 0393316041 (0-393-31604-1)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard Phillips Feynman

ISBN 0553256491 (0-553-25649-1)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]
More editions of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character:
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character: ISBN 0553256491 (0-553-25649-1)
  Softcover, Bantam Books
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
by C. S. Lewis

ISBN 0156870118 (0-15-687011-8)
Softcover, Harcourt

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Book summary:
In this book Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity. This book, together with his early diary All My Road Before Me, form the closest thing we have to an autobiography.
[via]
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Tis: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt

ISBN 0684864495 (0-684-86449-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:
'Tis a blessing that the author narrates his own work. McCourt follows up his Audie Award-winning performance in Angela's Ashes with another brilliant reading as he chronicles his return to post-World War II New York. Like all good storytellers, McCourt has good stories to tell; 'Tis pulses with grim adversity and quiet triumphs--character-shaping moments that gain the listener's empathy. What makes McCourt a great storyteller is his ability to give these moments just the right amount of humor and perspective. His lyrical tones are wise but not weary; he's survived life's challenges to tell his tale. And while it may be trite to credit McCourt's verbal skills to his Irish heritage, these war stories were undoubtedly polished amongst friends in the pubs. 'Tis is Grammy material, and a perfect example of how an author's voice can enhance the written word. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Rob McDonald [via]
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Spanish

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Lo Es: Una Memoria
by Frank McCourt, Alejandro Pareja

ISBN 0743204239 (0-7432-0423-9)
Softcover, Fireside

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Book summary:
The Spanish edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller, TIS is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes, and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, then by New York University-- which admitted him on a trial basis, though he had no high school diploma-- Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight, and still has today. And TIS is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and often hilarious as ANGELA'S ASHES. Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. TIS blesses readers with another chapter of McCourt's story, but as it closes, they will want still more. [via]
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- Lo Es: Una Memoria: ISBN 0743204239 (0-7432-0423-9)
  Softcover, Fireside
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Persepolis 2
by Marjane Satrapi

ISBN 8484315622 (84-8431-562-2)
Softcover, Norma Editorial Sa

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- Persepolis 2: ISBN 8484315622 (84-8431-562-2)
  Softcover, Norma Editorial Sa

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