books tagged “Biography” (biography)

books tagged “Biography”

English

The Agony and the Ecstasy
by Irving Stone

ISBN 1568493401 (1-56849-340-1)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:
Fictional depiction of Michelangelo. Includes bibliography, glossary and a list of the artist's works. [via]
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American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird

ISBN 0375726268 (0-375-72626-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generationone of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.

He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materialsan idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Forces plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with Americas nuclear secrets.

American Prometheus sets forth Oppenheimers life and times in revealing and unprecedented detail. Exhaustively researched, it is based on thousands of records and letters gathered from archives in America and abroad, on massive FBI files and on close to a hundred interviews with Oppenheimers friends, relatives and colleagues.

We follow him from his earliest education at the turn of the twentieth century at New York Citys Ethical Culture School, through personal crises at Harvard and Cambridge universities. Then to Germany, where he studied quantum physics with the worlds most accomplished theorists; and to Berkeley, California, where he established, during the 1930s, the leading American school of theoretical physics, and where he became deeply involved with social justice causes and their advocates, many of whom were communists. Then to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he transformed a bleak mesa into the worlds most potent nuclear weapons laboratoryand where he himself was transformed. And finally, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he directed from 1947 to 1966.

American Prometheus is a rich evocation of America at midcentury, a new and compelling portrait of a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man profoundly connected to its major eventsthe Depression, World War II and the Cold War. It is at once biography and history, and essential to our understanding of our recent pastand of our choices for the future. [via]
More editions of American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer:
- American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer: ISBN 0375412026 (0-375-41202-6)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer: ISBN 0375726268 (0-375-72626-8)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein

ISBN 067972463X (0-679-72463-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin : And Selections from His Other Writings
by Benjamin Franklin, Stacy Schiff

ISBN 0679641033 (0-679-64103-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Book summary:
Franklins Autobiography is one of the most famous works in American literature. He started it as a private collection of anecdotes for his son, but soon it was transformed into a work of history, both personal and national, revealing Franklin as the man who, as Herman Melville said, possessed deep worldly wisdom and polished Italian tact, gleaming under an air of Arcadian unaffectedness. [via]
More editions of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin : And Selections from His Other Writings:
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin : And Selections from His Other Writings: ISBN 0679641033 (0-679-64103-3)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Autobiography, and Other Writings
by Benjamin Franklin, Kenneth Silverman

ISBN 0142437603 (0-14-243760-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Franklin's writings span a long and distinguished career of literary, scientific, and political inquiry--the work of a man whose life lasted for nearly all of the 18th century, and whose achievements ranged from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanac to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime, Franklin knew prominence not only in America but also in Britain and France. Here was a cosmopolitan statesman, public servant, inventor, and editor with a distinctly Yankee sensibility; here was a moral philosopher who divided his faith between the natural sciences and the American experiment. This volume includes Franklin's reflections on such diverse issues as reason and religion, social status, electricity, America's national character and characters, war, and the societal status of women. Also included is a new transcription of his 1726 journal, and several pieces that have only recently been identified as Franklin's work. [via]
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The Biography of J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle-Earth
by Daniel Grotta

ISBN 1561381128 (1-56138-112-8)
Hardcover, Running Pr Book Pub

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Book summary:
A biography of J R R Tolkien. [via]
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Careless Love
by Peter Guralnick

ISBN 0316332976 (0-316-33297-6)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
Until Peter Guralnick came out with Last Train to Memphis in 1994, most biographies of Elvis Presley--especially those written by people with varying degrees of access to his "inner circle"--were filled with starstruck adulation, and those that weren't in awe of their subject invariably went out of their way to take potshots at the rock & roll pioneer (with Albert Goldman's 1981 Elvis reaching now-legendary levels of bile and condescension). Guralnick's exploration of Elvis's childhood and rise to fame was notable for its factual rigorousness and its intimate appreciation of Presley's musical agenda.
Picking up where the first volume left off, Guralnick sees Elvis through his tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Germany, where he first met--and was captivated by--a 14-year-old girl named Priscilla Beaulieu. We may think we know the story from this point: the return to America, the near-decade of B-movies, eventual marriage to Priscilla, a brief flash of glory with the '68 comeback, and the surrealism of "fat Elvis" decked out in bejeweled white jumpsuits, culminating in a bathroom death scene. And while that summary isn't exactly false, Guralnick's account shows how little perspective we've had on Elvis's life until now, how a gross caricature of the final years has come to stand for the life itself. He treats every aspect of Presley's life--including forays into spiritual mysticism and the growing dependency on prescription drugs--with dignity and critical distance. More importantly, Careless Love continues to show that Guralnick "gets" what Presley was trying to do as an artist: "I see him in the same way that I think he saw himself from the start," the introduction states, "as someone whose ambition it was to encompass every strand of the American musical tradition." From rock to blues to country to gospel, Guralnick discusses how, at his finest moments, Elvis was able to fulfill that dream. --Ron Hogan [via]
More editions of Careless Love:
- Careless Love: ISBN 0316332224 (0-316-33222-4)
  Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
- Careless Love: ISBN 0316332976 (0-316-33297-6)
  Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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The Color of Water
by James McBride

ISBN 159448192X (1-59448-192-X)
Softcover, Riverhead Books

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Order this book ... and please don't be put off by its pallid subtitle, A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, which doesn't begin to do justice to the utterly unique and moving story contained within. The Color of Water tells the remarkable story of Ruth McBride Jordan, the two good men she married, and the 12 good children she raised. Jordan, born Rachel Shilsky, a Polish Jew, immigrated to America soon after birth; as an adult she moved to New York City, leaving her family and faith behind in Virginia. Jordan met and married a black man, making her isolation even more profound. The book is a success story, a testament to one woman's true heart, solid values, and indomitable will. Ruth Jordan battled not only racism but also poverty to raise her children and, despite being sorely tested, never wavered. In telling her story--along with her son's--The Color of Water addresses racial identity with compassion, insight, and realism. It is, in a word, inspiring, and you will finish it with unalloyed admiration for a flawed but remarkable individual. And, perhaps, a little more faith in us all. [via]
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The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
by James McBride

ISBN 1573225789 (1-57322-578-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Book summary:
Order this book ... and please don't be put off by its pallid subtitle, A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, which doesn't begin to do justice to the utterly unique and moving story contained within. The Color of Water tells the remarkable story of Ruth McBride Jordan, the two good men she married, and the 12 good children she raised. Jordan, born Rachel Shilsky, a Polish Jew, immigrated to America soon after birth; as an adult she moved to New York City, leaving her family and faith behind in Virginia. Jordan met and married a black man, making her isolation even more profound. The book is a success story, a testament to one woman's true heart, solid values, and indomitable will. Ruth Jordan battled not only racism but also poverty to raise her children and, despite being sorely tested, never wavered. In telling her story--along with her son's--The Color of Water addresses racial identity with compassion, insight, and realism. It is, in a word, inspiring, and you will finish it with unalloyed admiration for a flawed but remarkable individual. And, perhaps, a little more faith in us all. [via]
More editions of The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother:
- The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother: ISBN 1573225789 (1-57322-578-9)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Dutch
by Edmund Morris

ISBN 0375756450 (0-375-75645-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Why did Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris controversially choose to write his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan in the form of a historical novel? There's a clue in a quote the book attributes to Jane Wyman, Reagan's first wife. As Ronnie speechified about the Red Menace at a 1940s Hollywood party, Wyman allegedly whispered to a friend, "I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself." This anecdote, if true, is more revealing than Nancy Reagan's charge in the book that Jane had attempted suicide to get Ronnie to marry her in the first place. Jane was no intellectual--Morris cracks that "If Jane had ever heard of Finland, she probably thought it was an aquarium"--but he found to his horror, after years of research, that he felt much the same as Wyman. Reagan was as boring as a box of rocks, as elusive as a ghost.
Decades before Alzheimer's clouded Reagan's mind, he showed a terrifying lack of human presence. "I was real proud when Dad came to my high school commencement," reports his son, Michael Reagan. After posing for photos with Michael and his classmates, the future president came up to him, looked right in his eyes, and said, "Hi, my name's Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" Poor Michael replied, "Dad, it's me. Your son. Mike."
Despite deep research and unprecedented access--no previous biography has ever been authorized by a sitting president--Morris could get no closer to Reagan's elusive soul than Reagan's own kids could. So Morris decided to dramatize Reagan's life with several invented characters--including a fictionalized version of himself and an imaginary gossip columnist who makes wicked comments on Reagan's career. This is one weird tactic, forcing the reader constantly to consult the footnotes at the back of the book to sort things out, and Morris makes it tougher by presenting his invented characters as real, even in the footnotes.
Ultimately, the hubbub over Morris's odd method is beside the point. His speculative entry into Reagan's life and mind is plausible, dramatic, literary, and lit by dazzling flashes of insight. The narrator watches the young Reagan as a lifeguard (years before the real Morris was born):

One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles, insulated from any sight or sound.... Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan's cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics and personnel, and thought to myself, He sees the world as a swimmer sees it.
We cannot verify Morris's notion that Reagan probably approved the illegal Iran-Contra funding without having a clue it was illegal, or that the "Star Wars" program sprang from his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's first novel, A Princess of Mars, which featured glass-domed cities. But however bizarre and ignorant his thoughts were, however cold his heart, Morris believes, the guy did crush the Evil Empire and achieve greatness. Morris achieves a kind of greatness, too, but one wishes he had written a more straightforward dramatization of history. --Tim Appelo [via]
More editions of Dutch:
- Dutch: ISBN 0394555082 (0-394-55508-2)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- Dutch: ISBN 0375756450 (0-375-75645-0)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings
by Amy Kelly

ISBN 0674242505 (0-674-24250-5)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr

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Was there ever a ruler, man or woman, quite as fascinating as Eleanor of Aquitaine? The ruler of France's largest kingdom from the age of 15, Eleanor (1122- 1204) was renowned for beauty, intelligence, and the thoughtful application of power. Her marriage to her second husband, Henry Plantagenet of Normandy, brought her to the English throne; the birth of their sons John Lackland and Richard I Lionheart forever changed the face of medieval European history. Always at the center of her world, Eleanor remains a fascinating figure even today, and Amy Kelly captures the whirlwind of her life in this entrancing biography. [via]
More editions of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings:
- Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings: ISBN 0674242505 (0-674-24250-5)
  Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings
by Amy Ruth Kelly

ISBN 0674242548 (0-674-24254-8)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr

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Book summary:
Was there ever a ruler, man or woman, quite as fascinating as Eleanor of Aquitaine? The ruler of France's largest kingdom from the age of 15, Eleanor (1122- 1204) was renowned for beauty, intelligence, and the thoughtful application of power. Her marriage to her second husband, Henry Plantagenet of Normandy, brought her to the English throne; the birth of their sons John Lackland and Richard I Lionheart forever changed the face of medieval European history. Always at the center of her world, Eleanor remains a fascinating figure even today, and Amy Kelly captures the whirlwind of her life in this entrancing biography. [via]
More editions of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings:
- Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings: ISBN 0674242548 (0-674-24254-8)
  Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Elegy for Iris
by John Bayley

ISBN 0312253826 (0-312-25382-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr

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Book summary:
In one of literary history's ghastlier ironies, Iris Murdoch, the author of such highly intellectual and philosophical novels as A Severed Head and Under the Net, was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease, which slowly destroys reasoning powers, memory, even the ability to speak coherently. Her husband, English literary critic John Bayley, unsparingly depicts his wife's affliction in prose as elegant and accessible as hers always was. Readers may wince at the spectacle of Murdoch glued to the TV watching the Teletubbies program, unable to perform tasks as simple as dressing herself and prey to devastating anxiety as the world becomes less and less comprehensible to her. We understand Bayley's occasional fits of rage when his caretaking chores overwhelm him. Yet in the end his memoir is touching, even inspiring. As he recalls their first meetings and marriage in the 1950s, it becomes clear that theirs was always an unconventional union, in which solitude was as important to each of them as togetherness and Bayley was content to let Murdoch keep her inner life to herself. He loves Iris, the woman, not the intellect, and he conveys an essential sweetness about his wife that endures even as her mental faculties deteriorate. This totally unsentimental account of their life and her illness is nonetheless a heartbreaker. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Hitler
by Ian Kershaw

ISBN 0582437563 (0-582-43756-3)
Softcover, Longman Pub Group

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Book summary:
How could such an unprepossessing figure as Adolf Hitler gain control of the machinery of a complex modern state? Why -- contrary to all expectations -- was his authority not curtailed by the traditional ruling classes and constitutional constraints? This innovative study of Hitler's political life addresses these problems by focusing directly upon the nature and mechanics, the character and exercise of Hitler's dictatorial power. This is a powerful piece of analysis that belies its relatively modest dimensions. It will be invaluable to students and teachers of German and world history, and politics, as well as the interested general reader. [via]
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Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris
by Ian Kershaw

ISBN 0393320359 (0-393-32035-9)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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Book summary:
Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness.From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitler's rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 1920s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right and the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 and then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews and others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race. In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a "drummer" sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch and, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people.This volume, the first of two, ends with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg laws that pushed German Jews to the outer fringes of society, and with the march of the German army into the Rhineland, Hitler's initial move toward the abyss of war. Black-and-white photos throughout [via]
More editions of Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris:
- Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris: ISBN 0393046710 (0-393-04671-0)
  Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
- Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris: ISBN 0393320359 (0-393-32035-9)
  Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Their Friends
by Humphrey Carpenter

ISBN 0345295528 (0-345-29552-8)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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More editions of The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Their Friends:
- The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Their Friends: ISBN 0345295528 (0-345-29552-8)
  Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends
by Humphrey Carpenter

ISBN 0048090115 (0-04-809011-5)
Hardcover, Allen and Unwin

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More editions of The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends:
- The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends: ISBN 0048090115 (0-04-809011-5)
  Hardcover, Allen and Unwin
J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth
by Daniel Grotta

ISBN 0762413379 (0-7624-1337-9)
Softcover, Running Pr Book Pub

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Book summary:
J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most beloved and enigmatic writers of the twentieth century, yet surprisingly little is known about the personal life of the author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. After a traumatic childhood, Tolkien experienced the bloody trenches of World War I, then lived most of his life as an Oxford scholar in a cloistered academic community. In this fascinating illustrated biography, author Daniel Grotta examines how much of Tolkien's personal experience fired his incredible imagination and led to the creation of Middle-earth and its inhabitants.
[via]
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J.R.R.Tolkien
by Daniel Grotta-Kurska

ISBN 0446301116 (0-446-30111-6)
Softcover, Grand Central Pub

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J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most beloved and enigmatic writers of the twentieth century, yet surprisingly little is known about the personal life of the author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. After a traumatic childhood, Tolkien experienced the bloody trenches of World War I, then lived most of his life as an Oxford scholar in a cloistered academic community. In this fascinating illustrated biography, author Daniel Grotta examines how much of Tolkien's personal experience fired his incredible imagination and led to the creation of Middle-earth and its inhabitants.
[via]
More editions of J.R.R.Tolkien:
- J.R.R.Tolkien: ISBN 0446301116 (0-446-30111-6)
  Softcover, Grand Central Pub
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Jane Austen: A Life
by Carol Shields

ISBN 0143035169 (0-14-303516-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
It's a perennial source of frustration to Jane Austen's admirers that so little is known about her quiet existence as an unmarried woman seeking an outlet for her ferocious intelligence in genteel, rural England at the turn of the 19th century. Carol Shields, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Stone Diaries, has already proved herself a writer who can convey large truths with an economical amount of material, which makes her an excellent choice as Austen's biographer. Shields's brief but cogent text makes persuasive connections between Austen's novels and her life (the plethora of unsatisfactory mothers, for example, and the obvious sympathy for women barred from marriage by poverty and from careers by social custom), but she never forgets that fiction expresses first and foremost an artist's response to the world around her, not actual personal history. In fact, Shields argues, it may well have been Austen's sense that the novels she loved to read didn't provide a very accurate picture of the society she knew that fired her own work. Her merciless portraits of the economic underpinnings of marriage and family relations are in many ways more "realistic" than male writers' dramas of battle or females' fantasies of romantic bliss. As for her life's lack of incident, its one major disruption--her parents' move to Bath--prompted a nine-year silence from their formerly prolific daughter. Shields gleans as much as she can from Austen's letters, while remembering that they too gave voice to a persona, not the whole truth, in order to delineate a quirky, sometimes cranky, sometimes catty woman who was by no means the perfect maiden lady her surviving relatives sought to immortalize. An Austen biography will never be as much fun as an Austen novel, but Shields does a remarkably entertaining job of discerning the links between the two. --Wendy Smith [via]
More editions of Jane Austen: A Life:
- Jane Austen: A Life: ISBN 0670894885 (0-670-89488-5)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
- Jane Austen: A Life: ISBN 0143035169 (0-14-303516-9)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Jonathan Edwards: A Life
by George M. Marsden

ISBN 0300105967 (0-300-10596-7)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr

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Book summary:
Jonathan Edwards (17031758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.

In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reareda frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwardss life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwardss life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture.

Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of an eminent American.
[via]
More editions of Jonathan Edwards: A Life:
- Jonathan Edwards: A Life: ISBN 0300096933 (0-300-09693-3)
  Hardcover, Yale Univ Pr
- Jonathan Edwards: A Life: ISBN 0300105967 (0-300-10596-7)
  Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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Last Train to Memphis Careless Love
by Peter Guralnick

ISBN 0316345237 (0-316-34523-7)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
Peter Guralnick's definitive and award-winning two-volume biography of Elvis Presley

This deluxe paperback boxed set includes Guralnick's two bestselling books about Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley.

From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Peter Guralnick's biography is the first to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed, creating a completely fresh portrait of Elvis and his world.

The first volume, Last Train to Memphis, tracks the first twenty-four years of Elvis' life, covering his childhood, the stunning first recordings at Sun Records ("That's All Right," "Mystery Train"), and the early RCA hits ("Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel"). These were the years of his improbable self-invention and unprecedented triumphs, when it seemed that everything that Elvis tried succeeded wildly. There was scarcely a cloud in sight through this period until, in 1958, he was drafted into the army and his mother died shortly thereafter.

Careless Love, the second volume, recounts the second half of Elvis' life in rich and previously unimagined detail, beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977. Guralnick chronicles the unraveling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis' relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking revelatory drama that for the first time places the events of a too-often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context.

This is the quintessential American story, encompassing elements of race, class, wealth, sex, music, religion, and personal transformation. Written with grace, sensitivity, and passion, this two-volume biography is a unique contribution to our understanding of American popular culture and the nature of success, giving us true insight at last into one of the most misunderstood public figures of our times. [via]
More editions of Last Train to Memphis Careless Love:
- Last Train to Memphis Careless Love: ISBN 0316345237 (0-316-34523-7)
  Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
by Peter Guralnick

ISBN 0316332259 (0-316-33225-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
There's no mention of sequins, drugs, or peanut butter in this understated biography of the teenaged Elvis, a serious and worthy attempt to answer the question, "Who was this guy before he was an icon, the voice of a generation, the King?" The essential clarity and honesty of Guralnick's prose clearly limns the eager, malleable boy whose immense talent changed the course of American music. [via]
More editions of Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley:
- Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley: ISBN 0316332208 (0-316-33220-8)
  Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
- Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley: ISBN 0316332259 (0-316-33225-9)
  Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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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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Portrait of a Marriage
by Nigel Nicolson, V. Sackville-West

ISBN 0226583570 (0-226-58357-0)
Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr

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Book summary:
One of the love stories of our century which has become a literary classic. [via]
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Portrait of a Marriage: V. Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson
by Nigel Nicolson

ISBN 0689705972 (0-689-70597-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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- Portrait of a Marriage: V. Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson: ISBN 0689705972 (0-689-70597-2)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Profiles in Courage
by John F. Kennedy

ISBN 1579120148 (1-57912-014-8)
Hardcover, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Incorporated

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Book summary:
The Illustrated Edition: The Pulitzer-Prize winning account of men of principle, integrity and bravery in American politics is now available in a handsome, illustrated format . Eight men who served in the United States Senate were selected by John F. Kennedy as models of virtue and courage under pressure. [via]
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Profiles in Courage
by Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy

ISBN 0060806982 (0-06-080698-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Political Studies, American Studies [via]
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- Profiles in Courage: ISBN 0060806982 (0-06-080698-2)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Saint Thomas Aquinas/the Dumb Ox
by G. K. Chesterton

ISBN 0385090021 (0-385-09002-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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Book summary:
It is known that when the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton began his book on Saint Thomas Aquinas--who is, quite possibly, the most influential of all Christian theologians--"his research for the project consisted of a very casual perusal of a few books on his subject". To say that Chesterton was no authority is an understatement. To say further that he has written a masterpiece of elucidation may also be an understatement. Etienne Gilson, the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century, said flatly:
I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement ... Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep.
So how has he accomplished this feat? By simplifying, as his editor says, without oversimplifying. He turns his own lack of intimate knowledge to his advantage by concentrating on the core elements of Aquinas' thinking: his affirmation of the goodness of creation; his defence of common sense; and "the primacy of the doctrine of being". In this way he grasps--and helps us grasp--the importance of Aquinas for us today. As Raymond Dennehy has written, it's as if Chesterton is saying to us "the truths [Aquinas] was getting at--the basic principles of reality and reason--are in themselves really quite simple. Your basic intuitions were right all along". --Doug Thorpe [via]
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- Saint Thomas Aquinas/the Dumb Ox: ISBN 0385090021 (0-385-09002-1)
  Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
by Judith Thurman

ISBN 0345371038 (0-345-37103-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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The same keen yet affectionate gaze Judith Thurman trained on Isak Dinesen in her 1983 National Book Award winner, The Life of a Storyteller, distinguishes her robust portrait of the great French writer Colette. In Secrets of the Flesh, Thurman shrewdly disentangles fact from legend during the course of the writer's long and turbulent life (1873-1954), yet she doesn't question Colette's right to mythologize herself. The fictions Colette created about herself were part of a lifelong attempt to make sense, not just of her own experience, but of the "secrets of the flesh" (André Gide's phrase in an admiring letter), the bonds that link women to men, parents to children, in an eternal search for love that is also a struggle for dominance. Chronicling Colette's scandalous life--male and female lovers, a stint in vaudeville, an affair with her stepson, a final happy marriage to a younger man--Thurman makes it clear that the writer's adored yet dominating mother and exploitative first husband made it difficult for her to conceive of amorous equality. Yet she nonetheless created a satisfying, creative existence, firmly rooted in the senses and filled with artistic achievement, from the bestselling Claudine novels to the mature insights of The Vagabond and Chéri. Thurman assesses with equal acuity the bleakness of Colette's world-view and a zest for life that it never seemed to dampen. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by T. E. Lawrence

ISBN 022400896X (0-224-00896-X)
Hardcover, Cape

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- Seven Pillars of Wisdom: ISBN 022400896X (0-224-00896-X)
  Hardcover, Cape
St. Thomas Aquinas
by G. K. Chesterton

ISBN 0755100255 (0-7551-0025-5)
Hardcover, House of Stratus, Incorporated

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- St. Thomas Aquinas: ISBN 0755100255 (0-7551-0025-5)
  Hardcover, House of Stratus, Incorporated
St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi: With Introductions by Ralph McLnerny and Joseph Pearce
by G. K. Chesterton

ISBN 0898709458 (0-89870-945-8)
Softcover, Ignatius Pr

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- St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi: With Introductions by Ralph McLnerny and Joseph Pearce: ISBN 0898709458 (0-89870-945-8)
  Softcover, Ignatius Pr
Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar
by Simon Sebag Montefiore

ISBN 1400076781 (1-4000-7678-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books

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Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimesas many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulaghas given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century. But though the facts of Stalins reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundationhuman, psychological and physicalthat supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalins court from the time of his acclamation as leader in 1929, five years after Lenins death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of seventy-three. Through the lens of personalityStalins as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among themthe author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalins favorites in music, movies, literature (Hemmingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list), food and history (he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenins dictum, A revolution without firing squads is meaningless). We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalins inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine.

With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalins court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalins rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II (there has never been as acute an account of Stalins meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt) and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalins dictatorship, and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor-sharp, sensitive and unforgiving. [via]
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Tesla
by Margaret Cheney

ISBN 158663187X (1-58663-187-X)
Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Called a madman by some, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla created astonishing, world-transforming devises that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating current machinery, but also introduced the fundamentals of robotry, computers, and missile science and helped pave the way for such technologies as satellites, microwaves, beam weapons, and nuclear fusion.
Almost supernaturally gifted, Tesla was also unusually erratic, flamboyant, and neurotic. He was J. P. Morgan's client, counted Mark Twain as a friend, and considered Thomas Edison an enemy. But above all, he was the hero and mentor to many of the last century's most famous scientists.
In a meticulously researched, engagingly written biography, Margaret Cheney presents the many different dimensions of this extraordinary man, capturing his human qualities and quirks as she chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that continue to alter our world. [via]
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Tesla: Man Out of Time
by Margaret Cheney

ISBN 044039077X (0-440-39077-X)
Softcover, Dell Publishing

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Book summary:
Called a madman by some, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla created astonishing, world-transforming devises that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating current machinery, but also introduced the fundamentals of robotry, computers, and missile science and helped pave the way for such technologies as satellites, microwaves, beam weapons, and nuclear fusion.
Almost supernaturally gifted, Tesla was also unusually erratic, flamboyant, and neurotic. He was J. P. Morgan's client, counted Mark Twain as a friend, and considered Thomas Edison an enemy. But above all, he was the hero and mentor to many of the last century's most famous scientists.
In a meticulously researched, engagingly written biography, Margaret Cheney presents the many different dimensions of this extraordinary man, capturing his human qualities and quirks as she chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that continue to alter our world. [via]
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An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963
by Robert Dallek

ISBN 0316907928 (0-316-90792-8)
Softcover, Back Bay Books

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Book summary:
An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. [via]
More editions of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963:
- An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963: ISBN 0316172383 (0-316-17238-3)
  Hardcover, Little Brown & Company
- An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963: ISBN 0316907928 (0-316-90792-8)
  Softcover, Back Bay Books
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Wellington
by Elizabeth Longford

ISBN 0750942134 (0-7509-4213-4)
Softcover, Sutton Pub Ltd

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Wellington achieved fame as a soldier fighting the Mahratta in India. His later generalship fighting the French in Spain was rewarded by a dukedom and a grant from the house of Commons worth ?8 million in today's terms. After his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo he became a politician. Unhappily married, he had several mistresses. [via]
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Wellington: Pillar of State
by Elizabeth Longford

ISBN 0586041559 (0-586-04155-9)
Softcover, Academy Chicago Pub

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- Wellington: Pillar of State: ISBN 0586041559 (0-586-04155-9)
  Softcover, Academy Chicago Pub
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Wellington: The Years of the Sword
by Elizabeth Longford

ISBN 0831756462 (0-8317-5646-2)
Hardcover, Smithmark Publishers, Incorporated

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More editions of Wellington: The Years of the Sword:
- Wellington: The Years of the Sword: ISBN 0586035486 (0-586-03548-6)
  Softcover, Academy Chicago Pub
- Wellington: The Years of the Sword: ISBN 0831756462 (0-8317-5646-2)
  Hardcover, Smithmark Publishers, Incorporated