The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America's greatest writers, based on newly available letters and journals. V. S. Pritchett called her "a genius." Gore Vidal described her as a "beloved novelist of singular brilliance . . . Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure . . ." And Tennessee Williams said, "The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson.". She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she'd been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. As a child, she said she'd been "born a man." At twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, a fellow southerner, ex-soldier, and aspiring writer ("He was the best-looking man I had ever seen") .
Knopf
|
9780525521013
|
Hardcover
John Lewis
By Arsenault, Raymond
The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis
For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble."
In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."
Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change.
Yale University Press
|
9780300253757
|
Hardcover
A Very Private School
By Spencer, Charles
In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.. A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.
Gallery Books
|
9781668046388
|
Hardcover
The Rebel's Clinic
By Shatz, Adam
A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today's movements for social and racial justice. In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|
9780374176426
|
Hardcover
What Have We Here?
By Williams, Billy Dee
A film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades - a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, from Brian's Song to Lando in the Star Wars universe - unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed.Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.
Random House Audio
|
9780593318607
|
Audiobook
Errand into the Maze
By Jowitt, Deborah
The definitive biography of the visionary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.. Between 1926 and 1991, the year of her death, Martha Graham choreographed close to one hundred masterpieces. She changed how dancers were perceived onstage, devised new ways of moving, and pioneered a revolutionary dance technique. Along the way, Graham engaged with the debates, ideas, and events of the twentieth century - creating dances of social comment and human experiences. Graham, the first dancer and choreographer to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and named Time's "Dancer of the Century," was a visionary artistic force. Hers was the iconic face of what came to be called modern dance.. In Errand into the Maze, the legendary dance critic Deborah Jowitt gives us the definitive portrait of this great American artist.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|
9780374280628
|
Hardcover
Royal Audience
By Charter, David
70 years on the throne. 13 American presidents. One extraordinary queen.. From the moment she first enchanted the world as a youthful princess, Queen Elizabeth II found a unique place in American hearts - and she also played an unprecedented role in forging transatlantic ties. Over her seventy-year reign, she developed extraordinary and varied personal bonds with thirteen U.S. presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, both Bush Sr. and Jr., Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden - that other diplomats and leaders could only dream of.. A fascinating, in-depth look at international relations and interpersonal intrigue, Royal Audience peels back the curtain on the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K. as embodied by the Queen herself - charting Elizabeth II's distinctive brand of one-to-one diplomacy through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand.
G.P. Putnam's Sons
|
9780593712870
|
Hardcover
Slow Noodles
By Nguon, Chantha
A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen. . Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and one wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains. In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone - her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends - everything but the memories of her mother's kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart in the 1970s, killing millions of her compatriots.
Algonquin Books
|
9781643753492
|
Hardcover
The Story of The Bee Gees
By Stanley, Bob
A dazzling biography of one of the bestselling bands of all time, told with brilliant insight by renowned pop music scholar Bob Stanley.. The world is full of Bee Gees fans. Yet for a band of such renown, little is known about Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb. People tend to have their favorite era of the Bee Gees's career, but many listeners are also conscious that there is more to uncover about the band. This book will provide the perfect solution, by pulling together every fascinating strand to tell the story of a group with the imagination of the Beatles, the pop craft of ABBA, the drama of Fleetwood Mac, and the emotional heft of the Beach Boys. Uniquely, the Bee Gees's tale spans the entire modern pop era - they are the only group to have scored British top-ten singles in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s - and includes world-conquering disco successes like 'Stayin' Alive' and 'More Than a Woman', both from the soundtrack of the hit film Saturday Night Fever.
Pegasus Books
|
9781639365531
|
Hardcover
The Last Fire Season
By Martin, Manjula
H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman's experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record.Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means - now - to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County. But the landscape that Martin treasured was an ecosystem already in crisis.
Carson McCullers
By Dearborn, Mary V.
The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America's greatest writers, based on newly available letters and journals. V. S. Pritchett called her "a genius." Gore Vidal described her as a "beloved novelist of singular brilliance . . . Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure . . ." And Tennessee Williams said, "The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson.". She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she'd been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. As a child, she said she'd been "born a man." At twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, a fellow southerner, ex-soldier, and aspiring writer ("He was the best-looking man I had ever seen") .
John Lewis
By Arsenault, Raymond
The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble." In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress." Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change.
A Very Private School
By Spencer, Charles
In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.. A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.
The Rebel's Clinic
By Shatz, Adam
A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today's movements for social and racial justice. In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of Existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city.
What Have We Here?
By Williams, Billy Dee
A film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades - a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, from Brian's Song to Lando in the Star Wars universe - unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed.Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.
Errand into the Maze
By Jowitt, Deborah
The definitive biography of the visionary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.. Between 1926 and 1991, the year of her death, Martha Graham choreographed close to one hundred masterpieces. She changed how dancers were perceived onstage, devised new ways of moving, and pioneered a revolutionary dance technique. Along the way, Graham engaged with the debates, ideas, and events of the twentieth century - creating dances of social comment and human experiences. Graham, the first dancer and choreographer to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and named Time's "Dancer of the Century," was a visionary artistic force. Hers was the iconic face of what came to be called modern dance.. In Errand into the Maze, the legendary dance critic Deborah Jowitt gives us the definitive portrait of this great American artist.
Royal Audience
By Charter, David
70 years on the throne. 13 American presidents. One extraordinary queen.. From the moment she first enchanted the world as a youthful princess, Queen Elizabeth II found a unique place in American hearts - and she also played an unprecedented role in forging transatlantic ties. Over her seventy-year reign, she developed extraordinary and varied personal bonds with thirteen U.S. presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, both Bush Sr. and Jr., Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden - that other diplomats and leaders could only dream of.. A fascinating, in-depth look at international relations and interpersonal intrigue, Royal Audience peels back the curtain on the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K. as embodied by the Queen herself - charting Elizabeth II's distinctive brand of one-to-one diplomacy through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand.
Slow Noodles
By Nguon, Chantha
A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen. . Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and one wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains. In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone - her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends - everything but the memories of her mother's kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart in the 1970s, killing millions of her compatriots.
The Story of The Bee Gees
By Stanley, Bob
A dazzling biography of one of the bestselling bands of all time, told with brilliant insight by renowned pop music scholar Bob Stanley.. The world is full of Bee Gees fans. Yet for a band of such renown, little is known about Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb. People tend to have their favorite era of the Bee Gees's career, but many listeners are also conscious that there is more to uncover about the band. This book will provide the perfect solution, by pulling together every fascinating strand to tell the story of a group with the imagination of the Beatles, the pop craft of ABBA, the drama of Fleetwood Mac, and the emotional heft of the Beach Boys. Uniquely, the Bee Gees's tale spans the entire modern pop era - they are the only group to have scored British top-ten singles in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s - and includes world-conquering disco successes like 'Stayin' Alive' and 'More Than a Woman', both from the soundtrack of the hit film Saturday Night Fever.
The Last Fire Season
By Martin, Manjula
H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman's experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record.Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means - now - to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County. But the landscape that Martin treasured was an ecosystem already in crisis.