Biographies & Memoirs Books

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin

List Price: $35.00 By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $19.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Political

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 374 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Three Cups of Tea with Headphones (Playaway Adult Nonfiction)

Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

Amazon Price: $64.99 List Price: $64.99 Usually ships in 11 to 14 days By: Playaway Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $64.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Educators
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1448 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

3 and a half stars 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The story itself was quite amazing but I found it difficult to read at times. I think it could have been much shorter... I could not keep all of the people straight about halfway through the book. It must have been difficult to write this book with so many stories to tell but it bordered on boring and tedious at times. It would pick up for a while and then I'd be bleary-eyed again a few pages later.

I really liked the beginning of the story and felt connected to his mission and promise but then I started to think he was a bit off (good intentions surely) with his devotion and passion for these people at the expense of his own family. I also felt like he was a bit of a control-freak at times... Is there no one else who can accomplish this? Is he really the only one who can meet with so and so? Does he have to fly back to Pakistan or Afghanistan so quickly after the birth of his child... etc...etc.

I really enjoyed the cultural insights and appreciate Mortenson's perseverance to follow through with his promises. Kudos to his wife Tara Bishop for her perseverance as well. When they got married she sort of "signed up" for the building of the Korphe school but the endless promises to do more and more for people on the other side of the world while leaving his own family behind, would have sent many a wife packing.

One last thing that concerns me is that while the intentions are great, I can't help but wonder if the schools will be able to continue to be used for their original intent or if they will be taken over by extremist groups that will use them to promote their own hateful agendas.

BOTTOM LINE: THIS BOOK IS DEFINITELY WORTH READING - IT GIVES ONE MUCH TO THINK ABOUT AND OPENS OUR EYES TO THE INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO ARE HURT IN THE MIDST OF POLITICAL TURMOIL.

Editorial Review:

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (Audio Editions Mystery Masters)

Jonathan Alter

Amazon Price: $26.55 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks By: Audio Partners Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $19.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Presidents & Heads of State
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the story of a political miracle -- the perfect match of man and moment. Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March of 1933 as America touched bottom. Banks were closing everywhere. Millions of people lost everything. The Great Depression had caused a national breakdown. With the craft of a master storyteller, Jonathan Alter brings us closer than ever before to the Roosevelt magic. Facing the gravest crisis since the Civil War, FDR used his cagey political instincts and ebullient temperament in the storied first Hundred Days of his presidency to pull off an astonishing conjuring act that lifted the country and saved both democracy and capitalism.

Who was this man? To revive the nation when it felt so hopeless took an extraordinary display of optimism and self-confidence. Alter shows us how a snobbish and apparently lightweight young aristocrat was forged into an incandescent leader by his domineering mother; his independent wife; his eccentric top adviser, Louis Howe; and his ally-turned-bitter-rival, Al Smith, the Tammany Hall street fighter FDR had to vanquish to complete his preparation for the presidency.

"Old Doc Roosevelt" had learned at Warm Springs, Georgia, how to lift others who suffered from polio, even if he could not cure their paralysis, or his own. He brought the same talents to a larger stage. Derided as weak and unprincipled by pundits, Governor Roosevelt was barely nominated for president in 1932. As president-elect, he escaped assassination in Miami by inches, then stiffed President Herbert Hoover's efforts to pull him into cooperating with him to deal with a terrifying crisis. In the most tumultuous and dramatic presidential transition in history, the entire banking structure came tumbling down just hours before FDR's legendary "only thing we have to fear is fear itself" Inaugural Address.

In a major historical find, Alter unearths the draft of a radio speech in which Roosevelt considered enlisting a private army of American Legion veterans on his first day in office. He did not. Instead of circumventing Congress and becoming the dictator so many thought they needed, FDR used his stunning debut to experiment. He rescued banks, put men to work immediately, and revolutionized mass communications with pioneering press conferences and the first Fireside Chat. As he moved both right and left, Roosevelt's insistence on "action now" did little to cure the Depression, but he began to rewrite the nation's social contract and lay the groundwork for his most ambitious achievements, including Social Security.

From one of America's most respected journalists, rich in insights and with fresh documentation and colorful detail, this thrilling story of presidential leadership -- of what government is for -- resonates through the events of today. It deepens our understanding of how Franklin Delano Roosevelt restored hope and transformed America.

The Defining Moment will take its place among our most compelling works of political history.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

Jeannette Walls

List Price: $79.75 By: Recorded Books Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $49.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Television Performers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Family & Childhood

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1138 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Library Edition

Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver

Amazon Price: $62.74 List Price: $85.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Blackstone Audiobooks Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $54.14

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 321 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

John Adams

David McCullough

List Price: $35.00 By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $1.54

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Artists, Architects & Photographers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 779 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who thought, wrote, and spoke out for the "Great Cause" come what might, who traveled far and wide in all seasons and often at extreme risk; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was rightly celebrated for his integrity, and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

Much about John Adam's life will come as a surprise to many. His rocky relationship with friend and eventual archrival Thomas Jefferson, his courageous voyage on the frigate Boston in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits few would have dared and that few listeners will ever forget.

Like his masterful, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, David McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. This is history on a grand scale -- an audiobook about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, it is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II

Doris Kearns Goodwin

List Price: $25.00 By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $8.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Presidents & Heads of State

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 124 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the bestselling author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedysand Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream comes a compelling chronicle of a nation and its leaders during the period when modern America was created. Presenting an aspect of American history that has never been fully told, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become, only five years later, the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

Using diaries, interviews, and White House records of the president's and first lady's comings and goings, Goodwin paints a detailed, intimate portrait not only of the daily conduct of the presidency during wartime but of the Roosevelts themselves and their extraordinary constellation of friends, advisers, and family, many of whom lived with them in the White House.

Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, No Ordinary Time relates the unique story of how Franklin Roosevelt led the nation to victory against seemingly insurmountable odds and, with Eleanor's essential help, forever changed the fabric of American society.

Into the Wild

Jon Krakauer

List Price: $18.00 By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $3.56

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> West
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Travel
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1220 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Poorly Equipped Dreamer 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

It's ok to be a dreamer. It's ok to want to 'find yourself.' It's really ok to hike and backpack. I've done it myself, but I would never, never enter a wilderness area without, at least, a topographical map. Chris McCandless' story is nothing short of tragic.
Jon Krakauer does a fine job of getting you into the mind of this doomed traveler while also taking you into the adventure and beauty of the wilderness.

Dull 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Why would I read a book that basically tells me the plot and resolution of the book on the cover? Way to keep readers engaged with the summary of the novel on the cover. I knew what happened without even opening the book, and when I was forced to read it, I found it quite dull and pointless.

Editorial Review:

This is the haunting story of 22-year-old Chris McCandless, who walked into the Alaskan wilderness in the spring of 1992 and whose body--along with a camera with five rolls of film, an SOS note, and a cryptic diary written in the back pages of a book about edible plants--was found six months later by a hunter. Simultaneous hardcover release from Villard. 2 cassettes.

Kitchen Confidential

List Price: $18.60 By: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $12.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 574 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Yes and No.... 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Maybe because I am a chef I did not find the book hilarious as would probably a person who is not in the business. But, there were times when I found myself laughing out loud. Unfortunately, not enough times. I also found myself skipping paragraphs and a few pages. I did not find it boring but it was too cutesy of writing. I enjoyed how it showed his time line and if you put your mind to it you can succeed. After awhile I was tired of his long winded decriptions of whatever he was trying to describe. It was okay at first but then became trite. The book was 310 pages and it could have been successful at 200 pages. I had to nudge myself at times to get through. I enjoyed reading about his misadventures with incompentent owners which I could definitely relate to. Also, enjoyed the makeup of the different cooks.

I would be reading and enjoying the book and I would think to myself that I was being too harsh on the author when I would get to the next paragraph and I would see that my original opionion of it only being 3 stars was correct. I would reccommend this book to everyone because everyone has different tastes.

Editorial Review:

After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he first experiences the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny. This unforgettable book will change the way you view restaurants for ever.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Amazon Price: $16.49 List Price: $24.98 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hachette Audio Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $0.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> Essays

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 736 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not as funny as I'd hoped. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sedaris describes vignettes from his life in this wry-humored self-deprecating autobiography.

He and I do not share the same sense of humor, so though I did find some of his stories throughout the middle of the text quite funny (particularly the way he described learning French and moving to France), I found the beginning and end of the book tedious reading. Perhaps I didn't read it in the right frame of mind. If I had approached it as a collection of short stories instead of a continuing narrative, I might have enjoyed it better, and I am willing to take the blame for that oversight, though I didn't see any reference to this book as a collection of short stories in any reviews.

In the beginning, Sedaris describes himself as a vapid and shallow child, and a pretentious and annoying art student. As a reader, I simply didn't care about him.

If you can stick with this novel until chapter nine, when Sedaris moves to NYC, his humor kicks into gear and the book becomes very amusing through chapter twenty-three.

After that, subsequent chapters about uncomfortable self-revelations and insomniac fantasies are at times both repulsive and tedious, and divorced from any of the previous text. But then Sedaris finishes with one of the funniest chapters of the whole lot which leaves the reader laughing, but does nothing to draw the whole book together in conclusion.

Many people have loved this book, but I did not find it very appealing or satisfying.

C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail

Editorial Review:

David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that "every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section". His family is another inspiration. "You Can't Kill the Rooster" is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.