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books tagged “memoir”
books tagged “memoir”
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Alternadadby Neal PollackISBN 0375423621 (0-375-42362-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Among Schoolchildrenby Tracy KidderISBN 0380710897 (0-380-71089-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Among Schoolchildren'Book summary:Tracy Kidder -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and the extraordinary national bestseller House -- spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher -- sharings their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America . . . and his most memorable, emotionally charged, and important book to date.
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And No Birds Sangby Farley MowatISBN 0316586951 (0-316-58695-1)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
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Apple of My Eyeby Helene HanffISBN 038512483X (0-385-12483-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Arthur Corunna's Storyby Sally MorganISBN 0316582891 (0-316-58289-1)
Softcover, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
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The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translationby John Skinner, Margery KempeISBN 0385490372 (0-385-49037-2)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation'Book summary:The first autobiography written in English--by a brewery owner, Christian mystic, and mother of 14 named Margery Kempe, who died in the 15th century--is now available in a lively, modern translation by John Skinner. It begins with her stark conversion experience, heralded by a vision of Christ in her bedroom one night. The story follows Margery through pilgrimages across Europe and to the Holy Land, through a heresy trial in England, and her burgeoning mystical life. Similar in many ways to Showings by Julian of Norwich and the Confessions of Augustine, The Book of Margery Kempe is a beautiful description of medieval daily life and religious experience. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticismby Lynn Staley, Margery KempeISBN 0393976394 (0-393-97639-4)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism'Book summary:The text presented here remains as faithful to the original Middle English as possible, without sounding archaic.
Kempe's work is accompanied by an introduction, a map of medieval England, a Kempe lexicon, and explanatory annotations.
"Contexts" collects primary readings that illuminate The Book of Margery Kempe. Included are excerpts from The Constitutions of Thomas Arundel, Meditations on the Life of Christ, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Saint Bride, and The Life of Marie d'Oignies by Jacques de Vitry.
"Criticism" includes nine varied interpretations of the autobiography, written by Clarissa W. Atkinson, Lynn Staley, Karma Lochrie, David Aers, Kathleen Ashley, Gail McMurray Gibson, Sarah Beckwith, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Nicholas Watson.
A Selected Bibliography is also included. [via]More editions of The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism:
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Bound for Gloryby Woody GuthrieISBN 0330241664 (0-330-24166-4)
Hardcover, Pan Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bound for Glory'Book summary:The original road novel--even though it takes the form of autobiography. If Guthrie didn't actually invent the footloose, no- strings-attached American hero (remember this guy Twain who wrote something about lighting out for the territory?), he certainly solidified the 20th-century version. Guitar slung over the shoulder as he sprinted to boost himself aboard freight trains, a man of the people equally at home with urban intellectuals, Guthrie incarnated for generations of Americans the artist as free spirit. This is the book that created the legend. [via]
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The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Storyby Ken DornsteinISBN 0375503595 (0-375-50359-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story'Book summary:In this stunning, emotionally charged memoir, Ken Dornstein interweaves the moving story of his own coming-of-age with the promise of greatness his brother never lived to fulfill. The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is a heartbreaking but profoundly hopeful book about finding beauty in the midst of tragedy and making sense of it.
David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, a handsome, charismatic young man on the verge of becoming an extraordinary writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 from London on the evening of December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, he died, along with the 258 other passengers and crew, when a terrorists plastic explosive ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Davids brother, Ken, was nineteen, a college sophomore home on winter break, when the call came. All his life Ken had looked up to David, confided in him, followed where he led. Davids death left Ken with a void that both crushed and consumed him. What were his brothers plans when he died? Was David really carrying home a draft of the great novel everyone knew was in him? Was he in love with the woman he was living with overseas? Ken Dornstein needed to learn the truth about his brothers life and death. In this harrowing and affecting memoir, he records what he found out.
It was years before Ken could bring himself to confront the stacks of notebooks and letters David left behind, but once he began to read he was drawn deep into his brothers world. From Davids early obsession with writing down his every thought to his misadventures on the streets of New York, from an unraveling love affair in Israel to a devastating childhood secret, piece by piece Ken assembles a complex, disturbing portrait of an artist struggling to find a voice for passions that often threatened to tear him apart. Then, by chance, Ken runs into Davids college girlfriend on a train and everything changes once again. He starts to question his motives and his memories, and finally sets off on a complicated journey to finish the book that his brother started.
As haunting as a dream, as electrifying as the days news, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is an incandescent and unforgettable account of one mans struggle to find inspiration in his brothers life and create a life of his own. What begins as a tragedy turns into a love story of deeply affirming power. [via]More editions of The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story:
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Bring on the Empty Horsesby David NivenISBN 0241892732 (0-241-89273-2)
Hardcover, Hamilton
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The City of Falling Angelsby John BerendtISBN 0375435387 (0-375-43538-7)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The City of Falling Angels'Book summary:Past Midnight: John Berendt on the Mysteries of Venice
Just as John Berendt's first book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, was settling into its remarkable four-year run on The New York Times bestseller list, he discovered a new city whose local mysteries and traditions were more than a match for Savannah, whose hothouse eccentricities he had celebrated in the first book. The new city was Venice, and he spent much of the last decade wandering through its canals and palazzos, seeking to understand a place that any native will tell you is easy to visit but hard to know. For travelers to Venice, whether by armchair or vaporetto, he has selected his 10 (actually 11) Books to Read on Venice. And he took the time to answer a few of our questions about his charming new book, The City of Falling Angels: Amazon.com: The lush, cloistered southern city of Savannah was the locale of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Venice, the setting for The City of Falling Angels, is vastly different. Was it the difference itself that drew you to Venice?
John Berendt: Savannah and Venice actually have quite a lot in common. Both are uniquely beautiful. Both are isolated geographically, culturally, and emotionally from the world outside. Venice sits in the middle of a lagoon; Savannah is surrounded by marshes, piney woods, and the ocean. Venetians think of themselves as Venetian first, Italian second; Savannahians rarely even venture forth as far as Atlanta or Charleston. So both cities offer a writer a rich context in which to set a story, and the stories provide readers a means of escape from their own environment into another world.
Amazon.com: I enjoyed your rather declarative author's note: that this is a work of nonfiction, and that you used everyone's real names. In your previous book you did use pseudonyms for some characters and you explained that you took a few small liberties in the service of the larger truth of the story. Why the change this time?
Berendt: When I wrote Midnight I thought I would do a few people the favor of changing their names for the sake of privacy. But when the book came out, several of the pseudonymous characters told me they wished I'd used their real names instead. So this time, no pseudonyms. As for the storytelling liberties I took in writing Midnight, they were minor and did not change the story, but my mention of it in the author's note caused some confusion, with the result that Midnight is sometimes referred to now as a novel, which it most certainly is not. Neither is The City of Falling Angels. In fact, I dispensed with the liberties this time and made it as close to the truth as I could get it.
Amazon.com: In The City of Falling Angels, a number of fascinating people serve as guides to the city, each with a different idea of the true nature of Venice. Who was your favorite?
Berendt: I don't have a favorite, but Count Girolamo Marcello is certainly a memorable, highly quotable commentator. "Everyone in Venice is acting," he told me. "Everyone plays a role, and the role changes. The key to understanding Venetians is rhythm, the rhythm of the lagoon, the water, the tides, the waves. It's like breathing. High water, high pressure: tense. Low water, low pressure: relaxed. The tide changes every six hours."
I nodded that I understood.
"How do you see a bridge?" he went on.
"Pardon me?" I asked, "A bridge?"
"Do you see a bridge as an obstacle--as just another set of steps to climb to get from one side of a canal to the other? We Venetians do not see bridges as obstacles. To us, bridges are transitions. We go over them very slowly. They are part of the rhythm. They are the links between two parts of a theater, like changes in scenery. Our role changes as we go over bridges. We cross from one reality ... to another reality. From one street ... to another street. From one setting ... to another setting."
Once I had absorbed that notion, Count Marcello continued: "Sunlight on a canal is reflected up through a window onto the ceiling, then from the ceiling onto a vase, and from the vase onto a glass. Which is the real sunlight? Which is the real reflection? What is true? What is not true? The answer is not so simple, because the truth can change. I can change. You can change. That is the Venice effect."
I was not terribly surprised when he later told me, "Venetians never tell the truth. We mean precisely the opposite of what we say."
Amazon.com: Now that you know Venice well enough to be a guide yourself, what would you say to a visitor looking for insight into the character of the city?
Berendt: Tourists generally shuffle along, on narrow streets so crowded as to be nearly impassable, between the major sights of St. Mark's Square, the Rialto Bridge, and the Accademia Museum. All you have to do is to step off these heavily traveled alleyways, and in a few moments you will find yourself in quiet, much emptier surroundings. This is more like the real Venice. Another thing to do is to go into the wine bars where Venetians stand around drinking and talking. They will very likely be speaking the Venetian dialect, so you won't be able to understand them, but you will get a sampling of the true Venetian ambiance enlivened by the pronounced sing-song rhythm of the language. I'd also suggest stopping someone in the street and asking for directions. Almost invariably, you will be rewarded with a genial smile and the instructions, Sempre diritto, meaning "Straight ahead." This will only leave you more confused, because when you attempt to follow a straight line, you will be confronted by more twists and turns and forks in the road than you thought possible, given the instructions. This is part of what Count Marcello described as "the Venice effect."
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The Cliff Walkby Don J. SnyderISBN 0316803480 (0-316-80348-0)
Softcover, Back Bay Books
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The Climbby Anatoli Boukreev, Weston Dewalt, G. Weston DewaltISBN 0312206372 (0-312-20637-2)
Softcover, Griffin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Climb'Book summary:The Climb is Russian mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev's account of the harrowing May 1996 Mount Everest attempt, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of eight people. The book is also Boukreev's rebuttal to accusations from fellow climber and author Jon Krakauer, who, in his bestselling memoir, Into Thin Air, suggests that Boukreev forfeited the safety of his clients to achieve his own climbing goals. Investigative writer and Climb coauthor G. Weston DeWalt uses taped statements from the surviving climbers and translated interviews from Boukreev to piece together the events and prove to the reader that Boukreev's role was heroic, not opportunistic. Boukreev refers to the actions of expedition leader Scott Fischer throughout the ascent, implying that factors other than the fierce snowstorm may have caused this disaster. This new account sparks debate among both mountaineers and those who have followed the story through the media and Krakauer's book. Readers can decide for themselves whether Boukreev presents a laudable defense or merely assuages his own bruised ego. [via]
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The Cuckoo's Egg: Inside the World of Computer Espionageby Clifford StollISBN 0385249462 (0-385-24946-2)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cuckoo's Egg: Inside the World of Computer Espionage'Book summary:A sentimental favorite, The Cuckoo's Egg seems to have inspired a whole category of books exploring the quest to capture computer criminals. Still, even several years after its initial publication and after much imitation, the book remains a good read with an engaging story line and a critical outlook, as Clifford Stoll becomes, almost unwillingly, a one-man security force trying to track down faceless criminals who've invaded the university computer lab he stewards. What first appears as a 75-cent accounting error in a computer log is eventually revealed to be a ring of industrial espionage, primarily thanks to Stoll's persistence and intellectual tenacity. [via]
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Dandelion Wineby Ray BradburyISBN 0380977265 (0-380-97726-5)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dandelion Wine'Book summary:World-renowned fantasist Ray Bradbury has on several occasions stepped outside the arenas of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. An unabashed romantic, his first novel in 1957 was basically a love letter to his childhood. (For those who want to undertake an even more evocative look at the dark side of youth, five years later the author would write the chilling classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.)
Dandelion Wine takes us into the summer of 1928, and to all the wondrous and magical events in the life of a 12-year-old Midwestern boy named Douglas Spaulding. This tender, openly affectionate story of a young man's voyage of discovery is certainly more mainstream than exotic. No walking dead or spaceships to Mars here. Yet those who wish to experience the unique magic of early Bradbury as a prose stylist should find Dandelion Wine most refreshing. --Stanley Wiater [via]
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Dear Exile: The True Story of Two Friends Separated (For a Year) by an Oceanby Kate Montgomery, Hilary LiftinISBN 0375703675 (0-375-70367-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Dear Meby Peter UstinovISBN 0316890510 (0-316-89051-0)
Hardcover, Little, Brown
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dear Me'Book summary:Autobiography of Peter Ustinov. [via]
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Defying Hitler: A Memoirby Sebastian Haffner, Oliver PretzelISBN 0312421133 (0-312-42113-3)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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The Disappointment Artist: And Other Essaysby Jonathan LethemISBN 0385512171 (0-385-51217-1)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Disappointment Artist: And Other Essays'Book summary:In a volume he describes as a series of covert and no-so-covert autobiographical pieces, Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsessionin his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these voyages out from himself have led him homehome to his father's life as a painter, and to the source of his beginnings as a writer. THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST is a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Lethems richly imaginative, searingly honest perspective on life as a human creature in the jungle of culture at the end of the twentieth century.
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From a confession of the sadness of a Star Wars nerd to an investigation into the legacy of a would-be literary titan, Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In The Disappointment Artist, a letter from his aunt, a childrens book author, spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In Defending The Searchers Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In Identifying with Your Parents, an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generations cultural artifacts. And 13/1977/21, which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, slipping past ushers whod begun to recognize me . . . occult as a porn customer, becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary movie-goer.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST confirms Lethem's unique ability to illuminate the way life, his and ours, can be read between the lines of art and culture.More editions of The Disappointment Artist: And Other Essays:
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The Dog Who Wouldn't Beby Farley MowatISBN 0316586366 (0-316-58636-6)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dog Who Wouldn't Be'Book summary:Farely Mowat's best loved book tells the splendidly entertaining story of his boyhood on the Canadian prairies. Mutt's pedigree was uncertain, but his madness was indisputable. He climbed tress and ladders, rode passenger in an open car wearing goggles and displaying hunting skills that bordered on sheer genius. He was a marvelous dog, worthy of an unusual boy growing up a raw, untamed wilderness. [via]
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Eden Expressby Mark VonnegutISBN 0275225305 (0-275-22530-5)
Hardcover, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated
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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Testby Tom WolfeISBN 0374147043 (0-374-14704-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'Book summary:They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.
Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Family Manby Calvin TrillinISBN 0374525838 (0-374-52583-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Five Men Who Broke My Heartby Susan ShapiroISBN 0385337795 (0-385-33779-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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For the Time Beingby Annie DillardISBN 0375703470 (0-375-70347-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'For the Time Being'Book summary:Over the last three decades, Annie Dillard has written about an uncommon number of things--predators and prose, astronomy and evolution, the miraculous survival of mangroves. Yet the sheer range of her interests can be deceptive. Whatever the subject, Dillard is always (as she wrote in Living by Fiction) practicing unlicensed metaphysics in a teacup, always asking the fundamental questions about life and death. And this epistemological interrogation continues in For the Time Being. Here Dillard alternates accounts of her own travels to China and Israel with ruminations on sand, clouds, obstetrics, and Hasidic thought. She also records the wanderings of paleontologist and spade-wielding spiritualist Teilhard de Chardin, whose itinerary (geographical and philosophical) has certain similarities to her own. But as she ties together these disparate threads with truly Emersonian eloquence, it becomes clear that God's presence--or absence--is at the heart of her book.
There are, of course, facts aplenty here: the author is among our keenest living observers of the natural world (check out her soft-core account of two snails mating in chapter 7). But all roads lead Dillard back to God, who seems to be practicing a divine variant of benign neglect:
God is no more cogitating which among us he plans to be born as bird-headed dwarfs or elephant men--or to kill by AIDS or kidney failure, heart disease, childhood leukemia, or sudden infant death syndrome--than he is pitching lightning bolts at pedestrians, triggering rock slides, or setting fires. The very least unlikely things for which God might be responsible are what insurers call "acts of God."
Natural calamity is an old fascination of the author's, going clear back to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm. Here it allows her to make her strongest argument yet on behalf of the Almighty's laissez-faire policy--while suggesting that His immanence in fact depends on our belief.Yet even in her earnest pursuit of holiness, Dillard tends to hit the occasional speed bump. At one point she throws up her hands in exasperation and declares: "I don't know beans about God." This is hardly the stuff of an airtight theological argument, is it? But happily, Dillard possesses the same quality she ascribes to Teilhard, "a sort of anaerobic capacity to batten and thrive on paradox." So her contradictions are worth more to the reader than her consistencies. They enrich her narrative, yanking her back from the precipice of easy (or even moderately easy) belief. And Dillard's penchant for paradox ensures that For the Time Being--which aims, after all, to encompass God and all his works--always operates on a human, heartbreaking scale. --James Marcus [via]
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French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasureby Mireille GuilianoISBN 0375435484 (0-375-43548-4)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure'Book summary:The message of this book could be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. There is no hard science, no clearly-defined plan, and no lists of food to have or have not; instead, you'll find simple tricks that boil down to eating carefully prepared seasonal food, exercising more and refusing to think of food as something that inspires guilt. It's both a practical message and far easier said than done in today's "no pain, no gain" culture.
Author Mireille Guiliano is CEO of Veuve Clicquot, and French Women Don't Get Fat offers a concept of sensible pleasures: If you have a chocolate croissant for breakfast, have a vegetable-based lunch--or take an extra walk and pass on the bread basket at dinner. Guiliano's insistence on simple measures slowly creating substantial improvements are reassuring, and her suggestion to ignore the scale and learn to live by the "zipper test" could work wonders for those who get wrapped up in tiny details of diet. She sympathizes that deprivation can lead straight to overindulgence when it comes to favorite foods, but then, in a most French manner, treats them as a pleasure that needs to be sated, rather than a battle to be fought.
A number of recipes are included, from a weight-loss enhancing leek soup to a lush chocolate mousse; they read more like what you'd find in a French cookbook rather than an American diet book. Most appealingly, these are guidelines and tricks that could be easily sustainable over a lifetime. If you agree that food is meant to be appreciated--but no more so than having a trim waist--these charmingly French recommendations could set you on the path to a future filled with both croissants and high fashion. --Jill Lightner
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The Gateby Francois Bizot, John Le CarreISBN 037572723X (0-375-72723-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gate'Book summary:French ethnologist Francois Bizot's The Gate offers a unique insight into the rise of the Khmer Rouge. In 1971 Bizot was studying ancient Buddhist traditions and living with his Khmer partner and daughter in a small village in the environs of the Angkor temple complex. The Khmer Rouge was fighting a guerilla war in rural Cambodia; during a routine visit to a nearby temple, Bizot and his two Khmer colleagues were captured by them and imprisoned deep in the jungle on suspicion of working for the CIA. On trial for his life, over the next three months Bizot developed a strong relationship with his captor, Comrade Douch, who would later become the Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator and commandant of the horrifying Tuol Sleng prison where thousands of captives were tortured prior to execution. The portrait Bizot gives of the young schoolteacher-turned revolutionary and their interaction is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
Finally freed after Douch had pleaded his case with the leadership, Bizot became the only Western captive of the Khmer Rouge ever to be released alive, but his story does not end there. On his return to Phnom Penh, due to his fluency in Khmer, he was appointed interpreter between the occupying forces and the remaining western nationals holed up in the French embassy. As the interlocutor at the eponymous gate, he relates with dreadful resignation the moment when the Khmer nationals in the compound were ordered out by the Khmer Rouge forces for "resettlement."
Bizot's is a touching and gripping account of one of the darkest moments in modern history and it is told with a unique voice. As a Cambodian resident, a lover of Cambodia and a fluent Khmer speaker, Bizot shows an understanding of the prevailing mood in the country that other Western commentators have failed to capture effectively, while as a Western academic he is able to see the forces at work and how Cambodia fits into the bigger picture of South East Asian conflict. What emerges is a tale of a land plunged into insanity and Bizot tells it like a eulogy for a dead friend and a confrontation of old demons. The Gate is a stunning book and a must for anyone interested in this grim period of Asian history. --Duncan Thomson [via]
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The Greatest Generationby Tom BrokawISBN 0375502025 (0-375-50202-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Greatest Generation'Book summary:Veteran reporter and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw went to France to make a documentary marking the 40th anniversary of D-day in 1984. Although he was thoroughly briefed on the historical background of the invasion, he was totally unprepared for how it would affect him emotionally. Flooded with childhood memories of World War II, Brokaw began asking veterans at the ceremony to revisit their past and talk about what happened, triggering a chain reaction of war-torn confessions and Brokaw's compulsion to capture their experiences in what he terms "the permanence a book would represent."
After almost 15 years and hundreds of letters and interviews, Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, a representative cross-section of the stories he came across. However, this collection is more than a mere chronicle of a tumultuous time, it's history made personal by a cast of everyday people transformed by extraordinary circumstances: the first women to break the homemaker mold, minorities suffering countless indignities to boldly fight for their country, infantrymen who went on to become some of the most distinguished leaders in the world, small-town kids who became corporate magnates. From the reminiscences of George Bush and Julia Child to the astonishing heroism and moving love stories of everyday people, The Greatest Generation salutes those whose sacrifices changed the course of American history. --Rebekah Warren [via]
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The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflectionsby Tom BrokawISBN 037540922X (0-375-40922-X)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections'Book summary:The popularity and credibility of charismatic news anchor Tom Brokaw ensured bestseller status for The Greatest Generation, Brokaw's homage to the Americans who survived and overcame the depression and World War II. The Greatest Generation Speaks expands his thesis that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those tough and courageous men and women for ensuring the freedoms and comforts that Americans enjoy today. Their stories, culled from letters, interviews, and personal histories of the Greatest Generation and their family members, are anecdotal but extremely powerful, showing how men and women were sustained by simple ideals of patriotism, family, and fair play. This individualistic portrait is exactly how Americans saw themselves: Brokaw's book is a valid reflection of the times.
During a period of economic hardship and in a country united by the war effort, choices were simple; few people questioned why America was fighting Germany and Japan. Adversity brought out the best, especially in an optimistic culture like America's. As the soldier who found Beethoven's pianos in a Weimar house says after his unit is shelled, "Nothing like a close call to make the morning more beautiful." The greatest impression that war veterans seem to carry back from war is a sense of comradeship that, in spite of pain and loss, render their war years the most rewarding of all their life experiences. Modern life doesn't necessarily have the same certainties. The Greatest Generation Speaks is a healthy reminder of the foundations on which American society is built. --John Stevenson [via]
More editions of The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections:
- The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections: ISBN 0375503943 (0-375-50394-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections: ISBN 0385335385 (0-385-33538-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group - The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections: ISBN 037540922X (0-375-40922-X)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
- The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections: ISBN 0375503943 (0-375-50394-3)
The Hills of Tuscany: A New Life in an Old Landby Ferenc MateISBN 0385334419 (0-385-33441-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Hollywood Animalby Joe EszterhasISBN 0375718958 (0-375-71895-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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In the Shadow of No Towersby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0375423079 (0-375-42307-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In the Shadow of No Towers'Book summary:For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks , he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey-with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit-the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. [via]
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The Journals of Sylvia Plathby Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Frances Monson McCulloughISBN 0385493916 (0-385-49391-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Journals of Sylvia Plath'Book summary:No other major contemporary American writer has inspired such intense curiosity about her life as Sylvia Plath. Now the intimate and eloquent personal diaries of the twentieth century's most important female poet reveal for the first time the true story behind "The Bell Jar" and her tragic suicide at thirty. They paint, as well, a revealing portrait of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose stature has seldom been equalled.
"A revelation." The New York Times [via]More editions of The Journals of Sylvia Plath:
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Letters and Papers from Prisonby Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard BethgeISBN 0334008891 (0-334-00889-1)
Hardcover, SCM Press
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters and Papers from Prison'Book summary:Letters and Papers from Prison is a collection of notes and correspondence covering the period from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's arrest in 1943 to his execution by the Gestapo in 1945. The book is probably most famous, and most important, for its idea of "religionless Christianity"--an idea Bonhoeffer did not live long enough fully to develop, but whose timeliness only increases as the lines between secular and ecclesial life blur. Bonhoeffer's first mention of "religionless Christianity" came in a letter in 1944:
What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience--and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."
The pleasures of Letters and Papers from Prison, however are not all so profound. Occasionally, Bonhoeffer's letters burst into song--sometimes with actual musical notations, other times with unforgettable phrases. Looking forward to seeing his best friend, Bonhoeffer writes, "To meet again is a God." --Michael Joseph Gross [via]More editions of Letters and Papers from Prison:
Live from Death Rowby Mumia Abu-JamalISBN 0380727668 (0-380-72766-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldierby Ishmael BeahISBN 0374105235 (0-374-10523-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the Worldby Ewan McGregor, Charley BoormanISBN 0316731706 (0-316-73170-6)
Hardcover, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World'Book summary:Poring over a map one day, Ewan McGregorfilm star and bike nutnoticed it was possible to ride all the way around the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait. So he called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor, and bike nut. From London to New York, Ewan and Charley rode their BMWs through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. Exhaustion, injury, and accidents tested their strength, as did treacherous roads and weather. They were pursued by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with guns in the Ukraine, and served bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. Yet despite the many obstacles, they managed to ride over 20,000 miles in four months. As they traveled, they documented their trip, taking photos and writing diaries.[via]More editions of Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World:
Mary Chesnut's Civil Warby C.V. WoodwardISBN 0300029799 (0-300-02979-9)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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Memoirsby Tennessee WilliamsISBN 0385191863 (0-385-19186-3)
Softcover, Bookthrift Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs'Book summary:When "Memoirs" was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by "The New York Times Book Review". As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of "The Glass Menagerie" in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays. [via]
Memoirs of General William T. Shermanby William ShermanISBN 0306802139 (0-306-80213-9)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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My Cat Spit McGeeby Willie MorrisISBN 0375706933 (0-375-70693-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Cat Spit McGee'Book summary:With endearing humor and unabashed compassion, Willie Morris--a self-declared dog man and author of the classic paean to canine kind, My Dog Skip--reveals the irresistible story of his unlikely friendship with a cat. Forced to confront a lifetime of kitty-phobia when he marries a cat woman, Willie discovers that Spit McGee, a feisty kitten with one blue and one gold eye, is nothing like the foul felines that lurk in his nightmares.
For when Spit is just three weeks old he nearly dies, but is saved by Willie with a little help from Clinic Cat, which provides a blood transfusion. Spit is tied to Willie thereafter, and Willie grows devoted to a companion who won't fetch a stick, but whose wily charm and occasional crankiness conceal a fount of affection, loyalty, and a "rare and incredible intelligence." My Cat Spit McGee is one of the finest books ever written about a cat, and a moving and entertaining tribute to an enduring friendship. [via] 
My Detachment: A Memoirby Tracy KidderISBN 0375506152 (0-375-50615-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collageby Kurt VonnegutISBN 0385334265 (0-385-33426-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage'Book summary:In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonneguts singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage:
- Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage: ISBN 038528747X (0-385-28747-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group - Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage: ISBN 0385287488 (0-385-28748-8)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group - Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage: ISBN 0385334265 (0-385-33426-5)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
- Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage: ISBN 038528747X (0-385-28747-X)
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Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Danceby Harvey Arden, Leonard PeltierISBN 0312203543 (0-312-20354-3)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance'Book summary:Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
In 1977, Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents. He has affirmed his innocence ever sincehis case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horseand many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. This wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicles his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him. He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices.
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Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Danceby Leonard PeltierISBN 0312263805 (0-312-26380-5)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance'Book summary:Edited by Harvey Arden, with an Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and a Preface by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
In 1977, Leonard Peltier received a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents. He has affirmed his innocence ever since--his case was made fully and famously in Peter Matthiessen's bestselling In the Spirit of Crazy Horse--and many remain convinced he was wrongly convicted. Prison Writings is a wise and unsettling book, both memoir and manifesto, chronicling his life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Invoking the Sun Dance, in which pain leads one to a transcendent reality, Peltier explores his suffering and the insights it has borne him. He also locates his experience within the history of the American Indian peoples and their struggles to overcome the federal government's injustices. [via]
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The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967by Douglas Brinkley, Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0345377966 (0-345-37796-6)
Softcover, Del Rey
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Recovering: A Journalby May SartonISBN 039331717X (0-393-31717-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Recovering: A Journal, 1979-1980by May SartonISBN 0393014029 (0-393-01402-9)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Lifeby Abigail ThomasISBN 0385720556 (0-385-72055-6)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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Sailing Alone Around the Worldby Joshua SlocumISBN 0393032779 (0-393-03277-9)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sextonby Linda Gray SextonISBN 0316782084 (0-316-78208-4)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Shantaramby Gregory David RobertsISBN 0312330537 (0-312-33053-7)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shantaram'Book summary:Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in Shantaram, a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means "man of God's peace," which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies peformed to support his heroin addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that's only the beginning.
He arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident "doctor." With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karlas connections are murky from the outset.
Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughought the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel. --Valerie Ryan [via]
Sky of Stoneby Hickam, Homer H., Jr.ISBN 0385335229 (0-385-33522-9)
Hardcover, Dell Publishing
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Slouching Towards Bethlehemby Joan DidionISBN 0374521727 (0-374-52172-7)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem'Book summary:Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. These essays, keynoted by an extraordinary report on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, all reflect that, in one way or another, things are falling apart, "the center cannot hold." An incisive look at contemporary American life, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for several decades as a stylistic masterpiece.[via]
Contents:
I. LIFE STYLES IN THE GOLDEN LAND
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
John Wayne: A Love Song
Where the Kissing Never Stops
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
II. PERSONALS
On Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind
On Morality
On Going Home
III. SEVEN PLACES OF THE MIND
Notes from a Native Daughter
Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All ThatMore editions of Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
A Small Placeby Jamaica KincaidISBN 0374527075 (0-374-52707-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Somebody Else's Kidsby Torey L. HaydenISBN 038059949X (0-380-59949-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Somebody Else's Kids'Book summary:"Were all just somebody else's kids . . . "
A small seven-year-old boy who couldn't speak except to repeat weather forecasts and other people's words . . . A beautiful little girl of seven who had been brain damaged by terrible parental beatings and was so ashamed because she couldn't learn to read . . . A violently angry ten-year-old who had seen his stepmother murder his father and had been sent from one foster home to another . . . A shy twelve-year-old from a Catholic school which put her out when she became pregnant . . .
"What do we matter?"
"Why do you care?"They were four problem children-put in Torey Hayden's class because no one else knew what to do with them. Together, with the help of a remarkable teacher who cared too much to ever give up, they became almost a family, able to give each other the love and understanding they had found nowhere else.
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Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmerby Lynne CoxISBN 0375415076 (0-375-41507-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer'Book summary:" At age fourteen, she swam twenty-six miles from Catalina Island to the California mainland.
" At ages fifteen and sixteen, she broke the mens and womens world records for swimming the English Channela thirty-three-mile crossing in nine hours, thirty-six minutes.
" At eighteen, she swam the twenty-mile Cook Strait between North and South Islands of New Zealand, was caught on a massive swell, found herself after five hours farther from the finish than when she started, and still completed the swim.
" She was the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, the most treacherous three-mile stretch of water in the world.
" The first to swim the Bering Straitthe channel that forms the boundary line between the United States and Russiafrom Alaska to Siberia, thereby opening the U.S.-Soviet border for the first time in forty-eight years, swimming in thirty-eight-degree water in four-foot waves without a shark cage, wet suit, or lanolin grease.
" The first to swim the Cape of Good Hope (a shark emerged from the kelp, its jaws wide open, and was shot as it headed straight for her).
In this extraordinary book, the worlds most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself.
Lynne Cox trained hard from age nine, working with an Olympic coach, swimming five to twelve miles each day in the Pacific. At age eleven, she swam even when hail made the water like cold tapioca pudding and was told she would one day swim the English Channel. Four years laternot yet out of high schoolshe broke the mens and womens world records for the Channel swim. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Uniona feat that, according to Gorbachev, helped diminish tensions between Russia and the United States.
Lynne Coxs relationship with the water is almost mystical: she describes swimming as flying, and remembers swimming at night through flocks of flying fish the size of mockingbirds, remembers being escorted by a pod of dolphins that came to her off New Zealand.
She has a photographic memory of her swims. She tells us how she conceived of, planned, and trained for each, and re-creates for us the experience of swimming (almost) unswimmable bodies of water, including her most recent astonishing one-mile swim to Antarctica in thirty-two-degree water without a wet suit. She tells us how, through training and by taking advantage of her naturally plump physique, she is able to create more heat in the water than she loses.
Lynne Cox has swum the Mediterranean, the three-mile Strait of Messina, under the ancient bridges of Kunning Lake, below the old summer palace of the emperor of China in Beijing. Breaking records no longer interests her. She writes about the ways in which these swims instead became vehicles for personal goals, how she sees herself as the lone swimmer among the waves, pitting her courage against the odds, drawn to dangerous places and treacherous waters that, since ancient times, have challenged sailors in ships. [via]More editions of Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer:
The Tale of the Rose : The Passion That Inspired the Little Princeby Consuelo De Saint-Exupery, Esther AllenISBN 0375505644 (0-375-50564-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Ten Days That Shook the Worldby John Reed, Harold ShukmanISBN 0312177119 (0-312-17711-9)
Hardcover, Palgrave Macmillan
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Tennessee Williams: Memoirsby Tennessee WilliamsISBN 0385005733 (0-385-00573-3)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tennessee Williams: Memoirs'Book summary:When "Memoirs" was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by "The New York Times Book Review". As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of "The Glass Menagerie" in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays. [via]
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Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisisby Robert F. Kennedy, Arthur Meier SchlesingerISBN 0393318346 (0-393-31834-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis'Book summary:A memoir on the threat and aversion of the world's first great nuclear crisis in October, 1962. [via]
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Travels With Aliceby Calvin TrillinISBN 0374526001 (0-374-52600-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Up from Slaveryby Booker T. Washington, W. Fitzhugh BrundageISBN 0312394489 (0-312-39448-9)
Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up from Slavery'Book summary:Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like "cast down your buckets," which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, believed that "political agitation alone would not save [the Negro]," and that "property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character" would prove necessary to black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society. [via]
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We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnamby Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. GallowayISBN 0345472640 (0-345-47264-0)
Softcover, Presidio Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam'Book summary:Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects one book that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading by all Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.
In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam:
Weird Like Us: My Bohemian Americaby Ann PowersISBN 0306810247 (0-306-81024-7)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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West of Kabul, East of New Yorkby Mir Tamim AnsaryISBN 0312421516 (0-312-42151-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story'Book summary:The day after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Tamim Ansary sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends, discussing the attack from his perspective as an Afghan American. The message reached millions. Born to an Afghan father and American mother, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life and emigrated to San Francisco thinking hed left Afghan culture behind forever. At the height of the Iranian Revolution, however, he took a harrowing journey through the Islamic world, and in the years that followed, he struggled to unite his divided self and to find a place in his imagination where his Afghan and American identities might meet.[via] 
Winter Countby Barry Holstun LopezISBN 0380719371 (0-380-71937-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Wisdom of Big Bird: (And the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch) Lessons from a Life in Feathersby Jason Milligan, Caroll SpinneyISBN 0375507817 (0-375-50781-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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A World of Light: Portraits and Celebrationsby May SartonISBN 0393305007 (0-393-30500-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do Itby Geoff DyerISBN 0375422145 (0-375-42214-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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