An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar - the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress.Ilhan Omar was only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia. The youngest of seven children, her mother had died while Ilhan was still a little girl. She was being raised by her father and grandfather when armed gunmen attacked their compound and the family decided to flee Mogadishu. They ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, where Ilhan says she came to understand the deep meaning of hunger and death. Four years later, after a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia.Aged twelve, penniless, speaking only Somali and having missed out on years of schooling, Ilhan rolled up her sleeves, determined to find her American dream.
Dey Street Books
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9780062954213
|
Hardcover
When Time Stopped
By Neumann, Ariana
In this remarkably moving memoir, Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father's past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.
In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later, his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book.
Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo's eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn't bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened.
When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later, Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.
When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life. In uncovering her father's story after all these years, she discovers nuance and depth to her own history and liberates poignant and thought-provoking truths about the threads of humanity that connect us all.
SCRIBNER BOOKS CO
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9781982106379
|
Book
City of Light, City of Poison
By Tucker, Holly
"A fierce tale of conspiracy and retribution ... Thanks to Tucker's sympathetic necromancy and her luscious resurrection of everyday detail, even in gilded palaces the human psyche seems familiarly deceitful and self-justifying." -- Michael Sims, author of The Story of Charlotte's Web and Arthur and SherlockAppointed to conquer the "crime capital of the world," the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic -- not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly back-stabbing world of the king's court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris's most illustrious churches and cathedrals.As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis's mistresses could be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie's compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker's riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page. 8 pages of illustrations; 1 map
W W Norton
|
9780393239782
|
Hardcover
Renia's Diary
By Spiegel, Renia
The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into EnglishRenia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. "I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that's why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form of a diary." And so begins an extraordinary document of an adolescent girl's hopes and dreams. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister Elizabeth (ne Ariana) were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl, a city in the south, just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.Like Anne Frank, Renia's diary became a record of her daily life as the Nazis spread throughout Europe. Renia writes of her mundane school life, her daily drama with best friends, falling in love with her boyfriend Zygmund, as well as the agony of missing her mother, separated by bombs and invading armies. Renia had aspirations to be a writer, and the diary is filled with her poignant and thoughtful poetry. When she was forced into the city's ghetto with the other Jews, Zygmund is able to smuggle her out to hide with his parents, taking Renia out of the ghetto, but not, ultimately to safety. The diary ends in July 1942, completed by Zygmund, after Renia is murdered by the Gestapo.Renia's Diary has been translated from the original Polish, and includes a preface, afterword, and notes by her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak. An extraordinary historical document, Renia Spiegel survives through the beauty of her words and the efforts of those who loved her and preserved her legacy.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781250244024
|
Hardcover
How to Forget
By Mulgrew, Kate
In this profoundly honest and examined memoir about returning to Iowa to care for her ailing parents, the star of Orange Is the New Black and bestselling author of Born with Teeth takes us on an unexpected journey of loss, betrayal, and the transcendent nature of a daughter's love for her parents. They say you can't go home again. But when her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and her mother with atypical Alzheimer's, New York-based actress Kate Mulgrew returns to her hometown in Iowa to spend time with her parents and care for them in the time they have left.The months Kate spends with her parents in Dubuque - by turns turbulent, tragic, and joyful - lead her to reflect on each of their lives and how they shaped her own. Those ruminations are transformed when, in the wake of their deaths, Kate uncovers long-kept secrets that challenge her understanding of the unconventional Irish Catholic household in which she was raised.Breathtaking and powerful, laced with the author's irreverent wit, How to Forget is a considered portrait of a mother and a father, an emotionally powerful memoir that demonstrates how love fuses children and parents, and an honest examination of family, memory, and indelible loss.
William Morrow
|
9780062846815
|
Hardcover
Words and Music
By Rubin, Stephen
From his earliest days as a culture-beat reporter, through a wildly successful four decades in the book business, to his latest philanthropic ventures, Stephen Rubin has witnessed up close the highs and lows of publishing, music, and entertainment over the last half-century. Now, in this refreshingly forthright and uninhibited memoir, he shares the stories and secrets of a legendary career.Freshly graduated from New York University, Rubin parlayed what had been a music column in his college paper into a freelance writing gig, covering culture, pop and classical music, and Hollywood. This landed him spots in major newspapers and put him in the company of fabulous opera divas, pop singers, and other unforgettable personalities (including his future wife Cynthia, a talent manager) .
Applause
|
9781493065103
|
Hardcover
Every Day Is a Gift
By Duckworth, Tammy
In EVERY DAY IS A GIFT, Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing - and amazingly true - stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in EVERY DAY IS A GIFT, that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns. The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war - all before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii.
Twelve
|
9781538718506
|
Hardcover
Rock Concert
By Myers, Marc
A lively, entertaining, wide-ranging oral history of the golden age of the rock concert based on over ninety interviews with musicians, promoters, stagehands, and others who contributed to the huge cultural phenomenon that is live rock Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and its power as a unifying experience - and as an influential multi-billion-dollar industry. In Rock Concert, acclaimed interviewer Marc Myers sets out to uncover the history of this compelling phenomenon, weaving together ground-breaking accounts from the people who were there. Myers combines the tales of icons like Joan Baez, Ian Anderson, Alice Cooper, Steve Miller, Roger Waters, and Angus Young with figures such as the disc jockeys who first began playing rock on the radio, like Alan Freed in Cleveland and New York; the audio engineers that developed new technologies to accommodate ever-growing rock audiences; music journalists, like Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe; and the promoters who organized it all, like Michael Lang, co-founder of Woodstock, to create a rounded and vivid account of live rock's stratospheric rise.
Grove Press
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9780802157911
|
Hardcover
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
By Li, Yiyun
In her first nonfiction book, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li explores a question we ask ourselves: How does one make life livable"What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance"Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter - and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Sren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write And why live Dear Friend is a beautiful, interior exploration of selfhood and a journey of recovery through literature: a long letter from a writer to like-minded readers.Advance praise for Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life "In this exquisite, intimate, lyrical memoir, Yiyun Li reveals her life in flashes appended to an arrestingly coherent philosophy of time, self, and place. Uniting the discipline of a scientist with the empathy of a novelist, she scatters profound and often difficult truths through these generous, wise, challenging pages." - Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree "Yiyun Li has written a remarkable account of her literary life, begun in her youth in China with the books that first engaged her in the great conversations of literature. In her own emergence as an important and gifted writer in English she has brought a new voice to that great world. She has also been, in the deepest sense, sustained by it. Her new book is a meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life." - Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead "Literature, national identity versus the individual self, the clash of public and private, the mysterious nature of relationship, indeed, human nature itself - these subjects and more are explored with remarkable subtlety and rare, limpid mental beauty. A must-read for anyone trying to stay sane in a world that might be perceived as insane." - Mary Gaitskill, author of The Mare "This extraordinary book is the story of a writer being made and making herself. It is the story of depression coming in waves and being beaten back through love and stubbornness. And also it is one of our finest writers scrutinizing the books that have mattered most to her." - Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life "Reading Yiyun Li feels like being inside a mind - a quietly forceful, unrelenting mind. Within the limits of language, which she all but touches, she unfolds an argument with the self. She is suspicious of the very concept of the self, but she does not, ultimately, refuse its possibilities. 'What a long way it is from one life to another,' she writes, while closing that space." - Eula Biss, author of On Immunity
Random House
|
9780399589096
|
Print book
Warrior
By Matzen, Robert
Warrior: Audrey Hepburn completes the story arc of Robert Matzen's Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II. Hepburn's experiences in wartime, including the murder of family members, her survival through combat and starvation conditions, and work on behalf of the Dutch Resistance, gave her the determination to become a humanitarian for UNICEF and the fearlessness to charge into war-torn countries in the Third World on behalf of children and their mothers in desperate need. She set the standard for celebrity humanitarians and--according to her son Luca Dotti--ultimately gave her life for the causes she espoused.
This Is What America Looks Like
By Omar, Ilhan
An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar - the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress.Ilhan Omar was only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia. The youngest of seven children, her mother had died while Ilhan was still a little girl. She was being raised by her father and grandfather when armed gunmen attacked their compound and the family decided to flee Mogadishu. They ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, where Ilhan says she came to understand the deep meaning of hunger and death. Four years later, after a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia.Aged twelve, penniless, speaking only Somali and having missed out on years of schooling, Ilhan rolled up her sleeves, determined to find her American dream.
When Time Stopped
By Neumann, Ariana
In this remarkably moving memoir, Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father's past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.
In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later, his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book.
Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo's eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn't bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened.
When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later, Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.
When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life. In uncovering her father's story after all these years, she discovers nuance and depth to her own history and liberates poignant and thought-provoking truths about the threads of humanity that connect us all.
City of Light, City of Poison
By Tucker, Holly
"A fierce tale of conspiracy and retribution ... Thanks to Tucker's sympathetic necromancy and her luscious resurrection of everyday detail, even in gilded palaces the human psyche seems familiarly deceitful and self-justifying." -- Michael Sims, author of The Story of Charlotte's Web and Arthur and SherlockAppointed to conquer the "crime capital of the world," the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic -- not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly back-stabbing world of the king's court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris's most illustrious churches and cathedrals.As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis's mistresses could be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie's compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker's riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page. 8 pages of illustrations; 1 map
Renia's Diary
By Spiegel, Renia
The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into EnglishRenia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. "I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that's why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form of a diary." And so begins an extraordinary document of an adolescent girl's hopes and dreams. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister Elizabeth (ne Ariana) were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl, a city in the south, just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.Like Anne Frank, Renia's diary became a record of her daily life as the Nazis spread throughout Europe. Renia writes of her mundane school life, her daily drama with best friends, falling in love with her boyfriend Zygmund, as well as the agony of missing her mother, separated by bombs and invading armies. Renia had aspirations to be a writer, and the diary is filled with her poignant and thoughtful poetry. When she was forced into the city's ghetto with the other Jews, Zygmund is able to smuggle her out to hide with his parents, taking Renia out of the ghetto, but not, ultimately to safety. The diary ends in July 1942, completed by Zygmund, after Renia is murdered by the Gestapo.Renia's Diary has been translated from the original Polish, and includes a preface, afterword, and notes by her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak. An extraordinary historical document, Renia Spiegel survives through the beauty of her words and the efforts of those who loved her and preserved her legacy.
How to Forget
By Mulgrew, Kate
In this profoundly honest and examined memoir about returning to Iowa to care for her ailing parents, the star of Orange Is the New Black and bestselling author of Born with Teeth takes us on an unexpected journey of loss, betrayal, and the transcendent nature of a daughter's love for her parents. They say you can't go home again. But when her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and her mother with atypical Alzheimer's, New York-based actress Kate Mulgrew returns to her hometown in Iowa to spend time with her parents and care for them in the time they have left.The months Kate spends with her parents in Dubuque - by turns turbulent, tragic, and joyful - lead her to reflect on each of their lives and how they shaped her own. Those ruminations are transformed when, in the wake of their deaths, Kate uncovers long-kept secrets that challenge her understanding of the unconventional Irish Catholic household in which she was raised.Breathtaking and powerful, laced with the author's irreverent wit, How to Forget is a considered portrait of a mother and a father, an emotionally powerful memoir that demonstrates how love fuses children and parents, and an honest examination of family, memory, and indelible loss.
Words and Music
By Rubin, Stephen
From his earliest days as a culture-beat reporter, through a wildly successful four decades in the book business, to his latest philanthropic ventures, Stephen Rubin has witnessed up close the highs and lows of publishing, music, and entertainment over the last half-century. Now, in this refreshingly forthright and uninhibited memoir, he shares the stories and secrets of a legendary career.Freshly graduated from New York University, Rubin parlayed what had been a music column in his college paper into a freelance writing gig, covering culture, pop and classical music, and Hollywood. This landed him spots in major newspapers and put him in the company of fabulous opera divas, pop singers, and other unforgettable personalities (including his future wife Cynthia, a talent manager) .
Every Day Is a Gift
By Duckworth, Tammy
In EVERY DAY IS A GIFT, Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing - and amazingly true - stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in EVERY DAY IS A GIFT, that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns. The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war - all before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii.
Rock Concert
By Myers, Marc
A lively, entertaining, wide-ranging oral history of the golden age of the rock concert based on over ninety interviews with musicians, promoters, stagehands, and others who contributed to the huge cultural phenomenon that is live rock Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and its power as a unifying experience - and as an influential multi-billion-dollar industry. In Rock Concert, acclaimed interviewer Marc Myers sets out to uncover the history of this compelling phenomenon, weaving together ground-breaking accounts from the people who were there. Myers combines the tales of icons like Joan Baez, Ian Anderson, Alice Cooper, Steve Miller, Roger Waters, and Angus Young with figures such as the disc jockeys who first began playing rock on the radio, like Alan Freed in Cleveland and New York; the audio engineers that developed new technologies to accommodate ever-growing rock audiences; music journalists, like Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe; and the promoters who organized it all, like Michael Lang, co-founder of Woodstock, to create a rounded and vivid account of live rock's stratospheric rise.
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
By Li, Yiyun
In her first nonfiction book, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li explores a question we ask ourselves: How does one make life livable"What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance"Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter - and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Sren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write And why live Dear Friend is a beautiful, interior exploration of selfhood and a journey of recovery through literature: a long letter from a writer to like-minded readers.Advance praise for Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life "In this exquisite, intimate, lyrical memoir, Yiyun Li reveals her life in flashes appended to an arrestingly coherent philosophy of time, self, and place. Uniting the discipline of a scientist with the empathy of a novelist, she scatters profound and often difficult truths through these generous, wise, challenging pages." - Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree "Yiyun Li has written a remarkable account of her literary life, begun in her youth in China with the books that first engaged her in the great conversations of literature. In her own emergence as an important and gifted writer in English she has brought a new voice to that great world. She has also been, in the deepest sense, sustained by it. Her new book is a meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life." - Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead "Literature, national identity versus the individual self, the clash of public and private, the mysterious nature of relationship, indeed, human nature itself - these subjects and more are explored with remarkable subtlety and rare, limpid mental beauty. A must-read for anyone trying to stay sane in a world that might be perceived as insane." - Mary Gaitskill, author of The Mare "This extraordinary book is the story of a writer being made and making herself. It is the story of depression coming in waves and being beaten back through love and stubbornness. And also it is one of our finest writers scrutinizing the books that have mattered most to her." - Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life "Reading Yiyun Li feels like being inside a mind - a quietly forceful, unrelenting mind. Within the limits of language, which she all but touches, she unfolds an argument with the self. She is suspicious of the very concept of the self, but she does not, ultimately, refuse its possibilities. 'What a long way it is from one life to another,' she writes, while closing that space." - Eula Biss, author of On Immunity
Warrior
By Matzen, Robert
Warrior: Audrey Hepburn completes the story arc of Robert Matzen's Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II. Hepburn's experiences in wartime, including the murder of family members, her survival through combat and starvation conditions, and work on behalf of the Dutch Resistance, gave her the determination to become a humanitarian for UNICEF and the fearlessness to charge into war-torn countries in the Third World on behalf of children and their mothers in desperate need. She set the standard for celebrity humanitarians and--according to her son Luca Dotti--ultimately gave her life for the causes she espoused.