books tagged “Biography” (biography)

books tagged “Biography”

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Alan Turing: The Enigma
by Andrew Hodges

ISBN 0671528092 (0-671-52809-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:
Alan Turing died in 1954, but the themes of his life epitomize the turn of the millennium. A pure mathematician from a tradition that prided itself on its impracticality, Turing laid the foundations for modern computer science, writes Andrew Hodges:

Alan had proved that there was no "miraculous machine" that could solve all mathematical problems, but in the process he had discovered something almost equally miraculous, the idea of a universal machine that could take over the work of any machine.
During World War II, Turing was the intellectual star of Bletchley Park, the secret British cryptography unit. His work cracking the German's Enigma machine code was, in many ways, the first triumph of computer science. And Turing died because his identity as a homosexual was incompatible with cold-war ideas of security, implemented with machines and remorseless logic: "It was his own invention, and it killed the goose that laid the golden eggs."
Andrew Hodges's remarkable insight weaves Turing's mathematical and computer work with his personal life to produce one of the best biographies of our time, and the basis of the Derek Jacobi movie Breaking the Code. Hodges has the mathematical knowledge to explain the intellectual significance of Turing's work, while never losing sight of the human and social picture:

In this sense his life belied his work, for it could not be contained by the discrete state machine. At every stage his life raised questions about the connection (or lack of it) between the mind and the body, thought and action, intelligence and operations, science and society, the individual and history.
And Hodges admits what all biographers know, but few admit, about their subjects: "his inner code remains unbroken." Alan Turing is still an enigma. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]
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American Caesar : Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964
by William Manchester

ISBN 0440304245 (0-440-30424-5)
Softcover, Dell Publishing

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Book summary:
Inspiring, outrageous... A thundering paradox of a man. Douglas MacArthur, one of only five men in history to have achieved the rank of General of the United States Army. He served in World Wars I, II, and the Korean War, and is famous for stating that "in war, there is no substitute for victory." AMERICAN CAESAR exaines the exemplary army career, the stunning successes (and lapses) on the battlefield, and the turbulent private life of the soldier-hero whose mystery and appeal created a uniquely American legend. [via]
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- American Caesar : Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964: ISBN 0440304245 (0-440-30424-5)
  Softcover, Dell Publishing
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American Caesar, Douglas Macarthur, 1880-1964
by William Raymond Manchester

ISBN 0316544981 (0-316-54498-1)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
MacArthur, the public figure, the private man, the soldier-hero whose mystery and appeal created a uniquely American legend, portrayed in a brilliant biography that will challenge the cherished myths of admirers and critics alike. [via]
More editions of American Caesar, Douglas Macarthur, 1880-1964:
- American Caesar, Douglas Macarthur, 1880-1964: ISBN 0316544981 (0-316-54498-1)
  Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
Augustine of Hippo: A Biography
by Peter Brown

ISBN 0520227573 (0-520-22757-3)
Softcover, Univ of California Pr

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A reissue of Professor Peter Brown's biography of the 4th-century Bishop and author of "The Confessions". A new epilogue has been added in the light of the discovery of letters and sermons that offer insight into his final years as a bishop. [via]
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Billy
by Pamela Stephenson

ISBN 1585673080 (1-58567-308-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Billy Connolly is loud, hilarious and contradictory. His biography, written by his wife, former comedian and practising psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson, is pretty much the same. Over the years Connolly has grown from Glasgow shipyard welder to folk-singing beardy hard man (yes there is such a thing) to darling of the good and great (or at least famous) around the world. That he is so many things to so many people while in no way compromising his core self can only be good. It would be no mean feat for Stephenson, then, to pen a history to that would satisfy Connolly audiences of fans and contemporaries from all periods of his life's journey. In most places, but in truth, not all, the author manages to do this well.
The first half of the biography is somewhat anthropological in tone. Not surprisingly, a post-war Glasgow upbringing is somewhat alien to the antipodean author and Stephenson errs towards Angela's Ashes intonation as she describes her husband's tenement childhood (Scots readers may also find her regular translation of seemingly self-explanatory Scots phrases--which Connolly would use--obtuse). In contrast her examination of her experience of living with the comedian and his life from that point on is much better. Anecdotes which Connolly uses in his live shows pepper the text and laughs are raised as he tells of the time he was mistaken as a drug dealer on Speyside, of his cheeky friendships with cinema's elite and even through the more difficult times; the difficulty of balancing an almost manic humour with a troubled life. Pages turn quickly as we grow to understand more of what makes the man tick.
Certainly fans of Billy Connolly will enjoy this book. It is not perfect but it is certainly entertaining and should fill a gap in the market until Billy--with his half-remembered stories and off-centre view of the world--decides to let us into his head as well as his history. There's surely one ideal way to do this and that's by writing his story himself. --Helen Lamont [via]
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- Billy: ISBN 1585673080 (1-58567-308-0)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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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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Cicero: A Turbulent Life
by Anthony Everitt

ISBN 0719554918 (0-7195-5491-8)
Hardcover, John Murray

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This is one of those rare books, like I Claudius, that brings ancient Rome alive. The biography of a brilliant orator and writer, and a politician who twice held the reins of power, it is also the spectacular story of the fall of the Roman Republic. Cicero's speeches and ideas have influenced European civilized values for two thousand years. Personally, he is accessible to us in his hundreds of letters, many of them to his dear friend Atticus. We are able to follow his busy life as a lawyer and politician, and the historic events in which he took part from day to day (sometimes from hour to hour) as he nervously prepares a speech to deliver in the Forum or to the Senate, detects the supposedly incorruptible Brutus in a financial scam, puts a stop to a sexual escapade of the young Mark Antony, steadies Rome at a moment of acute vulnerability following Julius Caesar's assassination, vainly tries to prevent civil war...or, at more private moments, entertains dinner parties with his wit or irons out a problem with his wayward nephew. In this account of Cicero's career from his provincial origins - he was never entirely accepted by Rome's ruling class - to his tragic end as the Republic he revered crashed round his ears, Anthony Everitt makes full use of Cicero's own words and those of his contemporaries. The figure that emerges is intensely human - often dithering and uncertain, boastful from inner insecurity, emotional enough, beneath a near-Stoic exterior, to wander through the woods weeping in a way then thought unmanly when his daughter died in childbirth. This biography intimately and convincingly brings to life the man whose name has become emblematic of the last days of Republican Rome. [via]
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- Cicero: A Turbulent Life: ISBN 0719554918 (0-7195-5491-8)
  Hardcover, John Murray
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
by Anthony Everitt

ISBN 037575895X (0-375-75895-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.
John Adams

He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Romes most feared politician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of mankind.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these pages as a witty and cunning political operator.

Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age during Spartacus famous revolt of the gladiators and presided over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesars dictatorship and assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a model, later, to French and American revolutionaries who saw themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to tyranny.

Anthony Everitts biography paints a caustic picture of Roman politicswhere Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation, walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one anothers sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents. This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the storiesabout dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals, widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and so onmake the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.

Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the last days of Republican Rome.

On Cicero:

He taught us how to think."
Voltaire

I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.
Edward Gibbon

Who was Cicero: a great speaker or a demagogue?
Fidel Castro [via]
More editions of Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician:
- Cicero : The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician: ISBN 0375507469 (0-375-50746-9)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
- Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician: ISBN 037575895X (0-375-75895-X)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Enigma
by Alan Turing

ISBN 3211826270 (3-211-82627-0)
Hardcover, Springer

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Alan Turing, Enigma ist die Biographie des legendären britischen Mathematikers, Logikers, Kryptoanalytikers und Computerkonstrukteurs Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954). Turing war einer der bedeutendsten Mathematiker dieses Jahrhunderts und eine höchst exzentrische Persönlichkeit. Er gilt seit seiner 1937 erschienenen Arbeit "On Computable Numbers", in der er das Prinzip des abstrakten Universalrechners entwickelte, als der Erfinder des Computers. Er legte auch die Grundlagen für das heute "Künstliche Intelligenz" genannte Forschungsgebiet. Turings zentrale Frage "Kann eine Maschine denken?" war das Motiv seiner Arbeit und wird die Schlüsselfrage des Umgangs mit dem Computer werden. Die bis 1975 geheimgehaltene Tätigkeit Turings für den britischen Geheimdienst, die zur Entschlüsselung des deutschen Funkverkehrs führte, trug entscheidend zum Verlauf und Ausgang des Zweiten Weltkriegs bei. [via]
More editions of Enigma:
- Enigma: ISBN 3211826270 (3-211-82627-0)
  Hardcover, Springer
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The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
by H. W. Brands

ISBN 0385495404 (0-385-49540-4)
Softcover, Anchor Books

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Book summary:
Benjamin Franklin may have been the most remarkable American ever to live: a printer, scientist, inventor, politician, diplomat, and--finally--an icon. His life was so sweeping that this comprehensive biography by H.W. Brands at times reads like a history of the United States during the 18th century. Franklin was at the center of America's transition from British colony to new nation, and was a kind of Founding Grandfather to the Founding Fathers; he was a full generation older than George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, and they all viewed him with deep respect. "Of those patriots who made independence possible, none mattered more than Franklin, and only Washington mattered as much," writes Brands (author of a well-received Teddy Roosevelt biography, T.R.: The Last Romantic). Franklin was a complex character who sometimes came up a bit short in the personal virtue department, once commenting, "That hard-to-be-governed passion of youth had hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way." When he married, another woman was already pregnant with his child--a son he took into his home and had his wife raise.
Franklin is best remembered for other things, of course. His still-famous Poor Richard's Almanac helped him secure enough financial freedom as a printer to retire and devote himself to the study of electricity (which began, amusingly, with experiments on chickens). His mind never rested: He invented bifocals, the armonica (a musical instrument made primarily of glass), and, in old age, a mechanical arm that allowed him to reach books stored on high shelves. He served American interests as a diplomat in Europe; without him, France might not have intervened in the American Revolution. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He possessed a sense of humor, too. In 1776, when John Hancock urged the colonies to "hang together," Franklin is said to have commented, "We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." Franklin's accomplishments were so numerous and varied that they threaten to read like a laundry list. Yet Brands pours them into an engrossing narrative, and they leap to life on these pages as the grand story of an exceptional man. The First American is an altogether excellent biography. --John J. Miller [via]
More editions of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin:
- The First American : The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin: ISBN 0385493282 (0-385-49328-2)
  Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
- The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin: ISBN 0385495404 (0-385-49540-4)
  Softcover, Anchor Books
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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
by Joseph J. Ellis

ISBN 0375705244 (0-375-70524-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
In retrospect, it seems as if the American Revolution was inevitable. But was it? In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis reveals that many of those truths we hold to be self-evident were actually fiercely contested in the early days of the republic.
Ellis focuses on six crucial moments in the life of the new nation, including a secret dinner at which the seat of the nation's capital was determined--in exchange for support of Hamilton's financial plan; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; and the Hamilton and Burr duel. Most interesting, perhaps, is the debate (still dividing scholars today) over the meaning of the Revolution. In a fascinating chapter on the renewed friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at the end of their lives, Ellis points out the fundamental differences between the Republicans, who saw the Revolution as a liberating act and hold the Declaration of Independence most sacred, and the Federalists, who saw the revolution as a step in the building of American nationhood and hold the Constitution most dear. Throughout the text, Ellis explains the personal, face-to-face nature of early American politics--and notes that the members of the revolutionary generation were conscious of the fact that they were establishing precedents on which future generations would rely.
In Founding Brothers, Ellis (whose American Sphinx won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997) has written an elegant and engaging narrative, sure to become a classic. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
More editions of Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation:
- Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation: ISBN 0375405445 (0-375-40544-5)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation: ISBN 0375705244 (0-375-70524-4)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo
by Hayden Herrera

ISBN 0060085894 (0-06-008589-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Frida Kahlo
by Hayden Herrera

ISBN 084781517X (0-8478-1517-X)
Softcover, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

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- Frida Kahlo: ISBN 084781517X (0-8478-1517-X)
  Softcover, Rizzoli Intl Pubns
Jefferson and His Time
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0813923581 (0-8139-2358-1)
Hardcover, University of Virginia Press

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- Jefferson and His Time: ISBN 0813923581 (0-8139-2358-1)
  Hardcover, University of Virginia Press
Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0316544698 (0-316-54469-8)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
This is the third volume in Dumas Malone's monumental multi-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson and His Time. [via]
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Jefferson and the Rights of Man
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0316544701 (0-316-54470-1)
Softcover, Xlibris Corp

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The second volume in this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography tells the story of the eventful middle years in the life of Thomas Jefferson: his ministry to France in the years just before the French Revolution and during the early stages of that conflict; his service as secretary of state in President George Washington's first cabinet; the crucial period of his first differences with Alexander Hamilton and the beginnings of his long struggle with the Federalists. . [via]
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Jefferson the President Second Term 1805-1809
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0316544655 (0-316-54465-5)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
Dumas Malones classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jeffersons life.
Volume 4. Jefferson the President; First Term, 18011805
Examining the first four years of Jeffersons presidency, this volume provides a fascinating account of the Louisiana Purchase, Jeffersons continuing opposition to Hamiltons charge for an overriding central government, and his battle with the Supreme Court.
[via]
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Jefferson the Virginian
by Jefferson Malone

ISBN 0813923611 (0-8139-2361-1)
Softcover, Univ of Virginia Pr

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Dumas Malones classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jeffersons life.
Volume 1. Jefferson the VirginianThis first volume explores the early phases of Jeffersons life, from his youth, education, legal career, and marriage, to the building of Monticello, writing of the Declaration of Independence and his highly contentious governorship.
[via]
More editions of Jefferson the Virginian:
- Jefferson the Virginian: ISBN 0813923611 (0-8139-2361-1)
  Softcover, Univ of Virginia Pr
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Jefferson, the Virginian
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0316544728 (0-316-54472-8)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
The first of five volumes in a full-length biography of Jefferson. [via]
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Kate Remembered
by A. Scott Berg

ISBN 0425199096 (0-425-19909-6)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Published a mere 13 days after the death of Katharine Hepburn, Kate Remembered is best appreciated as a valentine of devoted friendship. It's a moving study of mutual trust and admiration between Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg and legendary Hollywood icon Hepburn, who'd established an instant rapport in 1983, beginning a 20-year conversation that blossomed into this enchanting "biographical memoir." As a casual but authoritative survey of Hepburn's career, Berg's book offers little new information to anyone who's read previous Hepburn biographies or Me: Stories of My Life, Hepburn's bestselling 1991 memoir. But the duality of Berg's title reinforces his purpose: "More than my remembrances," writes Berg in his author's note, "this book intends to convey hers." As such, Kate Remembered offers a rare, unvarnished portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential women, achieving a personal intimacy while making the reader feel welcomed in Hepburn's private world of privilege.

Although Berg (the acclaimed biographer of legendary editor Max Perkins, producer/mogul Samuel Goldwyn, and aviator Charles Lindbergh) had written all but the final paragraphs by 2001, Hepburn insisted this book remain unpublished until after her death, which came, in quiet dignity at age 96, on June 29, 2003. Given the book's pre-publication secrecy, it's hardly tabloid-worthy, serving instead to correct or clarify details from Hepburn's glory days--especially her long-term affair with Spencer Tracy--while offering choice bits of Hollywood gossip, Hepburn's frequently scathing assessments of other actors, and amusing encounters with such luminaries as Michael Jackson and Warren Beatty (both of whom appear as mock suitors with selfish motivations). It's a brisk read but a substantial one, richly emotional and as dignified as Hepburn herself, whose faults and foibles make her even more appealing than her beloved public persona. --Jeff Shannon [via]
More editions of Kate Remembered:
- Kate Remembered: ISBN 0399151648 (0-399-15164-8)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Kate Remembered: ISBN 0425199096 (0-425-19909-6)
  Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
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Kitchen Confidential
by Anthony Bourdain

ISBN 0747550727 (0-7475-5072-7)
Hardcover, Bloomsbury Pub Ltd

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Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn [via]
More editions of Kitchen Confidential:
- Kitchen Confidential: ISBN 0747550727 (0-7475-5072-7)
  Hardcover, Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
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Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain

ISBN 158234082X (1-58234-082-X)
Hardcover, Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA

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Book summary:
Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn [via]
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The Life of Charlotte Bronte
by Elizabeth Gaskell

ISBN 1417925434 (1-4179-2543-4)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell, 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:
All 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.

In 1855 Charlotte Brontë, pregnant and married less than a year, fell ill and died of tuberculosisthe same disease that had killed her sisters and brother. Two years after Charlottes death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, herself a well-known novelist, completed work on The Life of Charlotte Brontë, a biography that was met with immediate acclaim by readers curious to discover more about the enigmatic author of Jane Eyre.

Both a work of art and a well-documented interpretation of its subject, Gaskells biography is an extraordinarily vivid and sensitive account of Brontës outer and inner lives: her shyness and strangeness; her intense appreciation of the Bible, poetry, music, and the theater; her love of her family; and her fears of loneliness. Meant to be a defense and vindication of a noble, true, and tender woman, the book paints Brontë as an unforgettable figure careening between depression and exaltation. It also portrays her suffering. In her personal life, Brontë knew deprivation and loss, while in her artistic life, despite her fame, she had been taunted as coarse and had none of the advantages that a man might take for granted.

A powerful tribute from one writer to another, The Life of Charlotte Brontë remains one of the most evocative and perceptive biographies ever written.
Anne Taranto was educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities and at Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. She has taught courses on the novel and on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature at Georgetown University and is currently at work on a study of Charlotte Bront?s relationship to the literary marketplace.
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The Life of Charlotte Bronte
by Angus Easson, Elizabeth Gaskell

ISBN 0192828096 (0-19-282809-6)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) is a pioneering biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Bronte's and, having been invited to write the official life, determined to both tell the truth and honor her friend. This edition collates all three previous editions, as well as the manuscript, offering fuller information about the process of writing and a more detailed explanation of the text than any previous edition. [via]
More editions of The Life of Charlotte Bronte:
- The Life of Charlotte Bronte: ISBN 0192828096 (0-19-282809-6)
  Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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The Life of Charlotte Bronte
by Elisabeth Jay, Elizabeth Gaskell

ISBN 0140434933 (0-14-043493-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bronte was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Bronte's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work - the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist - explored the nature of Charlotte's genius and almost single-handedly created the Bronte myth. [via]
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- The Life of Charlotte Bronte: ISBN 0140434933 (0-14-043493-3)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
Lindbergh
by A. Scott Berg

ISBN 0425170411 (0-425-17041-1)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group

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Charles Lindbergh's solo flight from New York to Paris captured the imagination of a postwar generation hungry for heroes, and cemented an exalted spot for the 25-year-old pilot from Minnesota in the collective American imagination. A. Scott Berg's thorough new biography of the aviator suggests that despite the public scrutiny that accompanied his every move until his death in 1974, Lindbergh remained an intensely private man. The son of ill-matched parents who separated when he was 6, he was painfully shy and emotionally guarded. "Aviation created a brotherhood of casual acquaintances ... in which he felt comfortable," writes Berg with characteristic perceptiveness.
Lindbergh's wife, the writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, gave Berg unrestricted access to her husband's and her own voluminous personal papers--and he made good use of them to assess both the couple's relationship and their activities. Probably the most startling revelation is a brief but candid discussion of Anne's affair in the late 1950s with a New Jersey doctor, which helped assuage her need to vent emotions in a way her buttoned-up husband found insupportable. (During the horrendous days in 1932 when their 20-month-old son was kidnapped and killed, Berg notes, she never once saw Charles cry.) The biography is solid on all aspects of Lindbergh's career, including his notorious urging that America stay out of World War II; Berg rebuts charges that Lindbergh was a Nazi or a traitor, but rightly criticizes the anti-Semitism latent in some of his speeches. With this book, Berg succeeds in surveying Lindbergh's fascinating life and assessing its historic impact. [via]
More editions of Lindbergh:
- Lindbergh: ISBN 0399144498 (0-399-14449-8)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Lindbergh: ISBN 0425170411 (0-425-17041-1)
  Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
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Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
by Robert A. Caro

ISBN 0394720954 (0-394-72095-4)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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Robert Caro's Master of the Senate examines in meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson's career in that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after 12 years in the House of Representatives) until his election as JFK's vice president in 1960. This, the third of a projected four-volume series, studies not only the pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who wielded influence with both consummate skill and "raw, elemental brutality," but also the Senate itself, which Caro describes (pre-1957) as a "cruel joke" and an "impregnable stronghold" against social change. The milestone of Johnson's Senate years was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage he single-handedly engineered. As important as the bill was--both in and of itself and as a precursor to wider-reaching civil rights legislation--it was only close to Johnson's Southern "anti-civil rights" heart as a means to his dream: the presidency. Caro writes that not only does power corrupt, it "reveals," and that's exactly what this massive, scrupulously researched book does. A model of social, psychological, and political insight, it is not just masterful; it is a masterpiece. --H. O'Billovich [via]
More editions of Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson:
- Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: ISBN 0394720954 (0-394-72095-4)
  Softcover, Vintage Books
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Night
by Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel

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

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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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The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
by Robert A. Caro

ISBN 0679729453 (0-679-72945-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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- The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: ISBN 0679729453 (0-679-72945-3)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Personal History
by Katharine Graham

ISBN 0375701044 (0-375-70104-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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In lieu of an unrevealing Famous-People-I-Have-Known autobiography, the owner of the Washington Post has chosen to be remarkably candid about the insecurities prompted by remote parents and a difficult marriage to the charismatic, manic-depressive Phil Graham, who ran the newspaper her father acquired. Katharine's account of her years as subservient daughter and wife is so painful that by the time she finally asserts herself at the Post following Phil's suicide in 1963 (more than halfway through the book), readers will want to cheer. After that, Watergate is practically an anticlimax. [via]
More editions of Personal History:
- Personal History: ISBN 0394585852 (0-394-58585-2)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Personal History: ISBN 0375701044 (0-375-70104-4)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Running With Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs

ISBN 1417666943 (1-4176-6694-3)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe [via]
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The Sage of Monticello
by Dumas Malone

ISBN 0813923662 (0-8139-2366-2)
Softcover, Univ of Virginia Pr

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Book summary:
Dumas Malones classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jeffersons life.
Volume 6. The Sage of Monticello
This final volume provides an all-encompassing account of Jeffersons accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties in his last seventeen years, revealing his shift from the realm of politics to his roles as family man, architect, and educational enthusiast. Describing Jeffersons retirement from Washington, this volume recounts the events that formed Jeffersons final years, particularly the founding of the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, in which he played a major role.
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Seabiscuit: Library Edition
by Laura Hillenbrand

ISBN 0613647874 (0-613-64787-4)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:
He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.
Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.
Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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- Seabiscuit: Library Edition: ISBN 0613647874 (0-613-64787-4)
  Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Seabiscuit: An American Legend
by Laura Hillenbrand

ISBN 1400060982 (1-4000-6098-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Book summary:
He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.
Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.
Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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Six Wives of Henry VIII
by Alison Weir

ISBN 0802136834 (0-8021-3683-4)
Softcover, Grove Pr

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The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.
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Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
by Ron Chernow

ISBN 1400077303 (1-4000-7730-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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The patrician accent of George Plimpton (author of Truman Capote and The X Factor), with its edge of aristocracy and money, is perfectly suited for telling the rags-to-riches story of America's most famous businessman and philanthropist. Indeed, Plimpton seems to positively relish the superlatives that describe the life of John D. Rockefeller, who was far and away one of the most calculating, secretive, competitive, merciless, and talented figures ever to dominate the free market. Showing, early on, his keen attachment to hard work and keeping accounts, Rockefeller started out as an accountant in Cleveland. From there he went into the produce business, and then on to oil. By the time he was 31, he was the most powerful oil refinery owner in the world. His strategies for suppressing competition and controlling all aspects of the oil business while still paying attention to the smallest details make for dramatic listening in this well-documented and accessible narrative. Plimpton recounts how Rockefeller was the ultimate clutch player, calm in the face of adversity, a manager who was constantly searching for talented people and another way to grow Standard Oil into a megalithic modern corporation. Ultimately his rapacious business practices would make him head of the most powerful monopoly in America and the richest man in the world. Plimpton's engrossing reading of Titan brings out the human side of Rockefeller, a man of contradictions who was greedy yet giving, a capitalist villain and a do-gooder. A teetotalling Baptist, he began giving to charity when he was earning just a few dollars a week. As his wealth grew, so too his financial gifts. In the end, Rockefeller's philanthropic acts rivaled the precedents he set as a businessman. The oil baron died just short of his last goal--to reach the age of 100--but the indelible imprint he made on America's financial landscape will live on into the 21st century. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --A.E.D. [via]
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Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
by Robert D. Kaplan

ISBN 1588360806 (1-58836-080-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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- Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos: ISBN 1588360806 (1-58836-080-6)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
The Years of Lyndon Johnson
by Robert A. Caro

ISBN 039471654X (0-394-71654-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: ISBN 039471654X (0-394-71654-X)
  Softcover, Vintage Books
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The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
by Robert Caro

ISBN 0394499735 (0-394-49973-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
The profound understanding of the uses and abuses of power Robert Caro displayed in his 1974 biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, is a scathing achievement the author surpassed with panache in this, his second book. Caro's dogged research and refusal to accept received wisdom results in an eye-opening portrait that unforgettably captures the titanic personality of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973). Though stronger on Johnson's duplicity and naked self-promotion than his intelligence and charm, Caro nails it all. He chronicles the evolution of an attention-demanding youth from the Texas hill country into a seasoned congressman who would abandon his ardent espousal of the New Deal as soon as it ceased to be expedient. The dirty details begin with college elections that earn young Lyndon a reputation as a crook and a liar; Caro goes on to unravel financial shenanigans of impressive ingenuity. Johnson's consuming desire to get ahead and his political genius "unencumbered by philosophy or ideology" are staggering. The White House, Great Society, and Vietnam lie ahead when the main narrative closes in 1941, but the roots of Johnson's future achievements and tragic failures are laid bare. This biography may well stand as the best book written in the second half of the 20th century about personal ambition inextricably linked with historic change. --Wendy Smith [via]
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- The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power: ISBN 0394499735 (0-394-49973-5)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Zelda: A Biography
by Nancy Milford

ISBN 0060910690 (0-06-091069-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Zelda Sayre began as a Southern beauty, became an international wonder, and died by fire in a madhouse. With her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, she moved in a golden aura of excitement, romance, and promise. The epitome of the Jazz Age, together they rode the crest of the era: to its collapse and their own.
From years of exhaustive research, Nancy Milford brings alive the tormented, elusive personality of Zelda and clarifies as never before her relationship with` Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda traces the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing woman, torn by the clash between her husband's career and her own talent.
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- Zelda: A Biography: ISBN 0060910690 (0-06-091069-0)
  Softcover, Harpercollins

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