About this item
Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends.Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he and his younger brother were sent to America on a ship in 1939.
About the Author
Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and the author of the signature book on green burial, Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial (Scribner, 2007). The book follows a dozen families who conduct natural burials for their dead, including burials in backyard grave sites and "natural cemeteries," as well as sea burials and funerals at home, among other strategies.He lives with his family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
