Biographies & Memoirs Books - Page 7

George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals--and a Few Unappreciative ...

Amazon Price: $19.80 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $17.80

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Actors & Actresses
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Journalists

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. For more than fifty years, his friends made a circle whose circumference was vast and whose center was a fashionable tenement on New York’s East Seventy-second street. Taxi drivers, hearing his address, would ask, “Isn’t that George Plimpton’s place?” George was always giving parties for his friends. It was one of the ways this generous man gave back.

This book is the party that was George’s life–and it’s a big one–attended by scores of people, including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Silvers, Jean Stein, William Styron, Maggie Paley, Gay Talese, Calvin Trillin, and Gore Vidal, as well as lesser-known intimates and acquaintances, each with candid and compelling stories to tell about George Plimpton and childhood rebellion, adult indiscretions, literary tastes, ego trips, loyalties and jealousies, riches and drugs, and embracing life no matter the consequences.

In George, Being George people feel free to say what guests say at parties when the subject of the conversation isn’t around anymore. Some even prove the adage that no best-loved man goes unpunished. Together, they provide a complete portrait of George Plimpton. They talk about his life: its privileged beginnings, its wild and triumphant middle, its brave, sad end. They say that George was a man of many parts: “the last gentleman”; founder and first editor of one of our best literary magazines, The Paris Review; the graceful writer who brought the New Journalism to sports in bestsellers such as Paper Lion, Bogey Man, and Out of My League; and Everyman’s proxy boxer, trapeze artist, stand-up comic, Western movie villain, and Playboy centerfold photographer. And one of the brave men who wrestled Sirhan Sirhan, the armed assassin of his friend Bobby Kennedy, to the ground.

A Plimpton party was full of intelligent, funny, articulate people. So is this one. Many try hard to understand George, and some (not always the ones you would expect) are brilliant at it. Here is social life as it’s actually lived by New York’s elites. The only important difference between a party at George’s and this book is that no one here is drunk. They just talk about being drunk.

George’s last years were awesome, truly so. His greatest gift was to be a blessing to others–not all, sadly–and that gift ended only with his death. But his parties, if this is one, need never end at all.

Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

Anthony Bourdain

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 94 new & used starting at $5.89

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 576 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It's amazing where writing talent is found. I originally discovered Bourdain via his "Les Halles Cookbook" -- one of the funniest cookbooks I have ever read. And then slowly, I began to remember -- hadn't this same guy written an earlier book, much more scandalous?

Well, this is that earlier book. You may not care for the tales it tells, or think very highly of the author, but the man writes like a god! Most of his best jokes are on himself, and all of the wimped-out sissy mistakes he made on the way to becoming a member of The Brotherhood, and its storyteller.

One of his bottom lines: "This stuff is EASY. My cooks are all recent immigrants from Latin America who had never tasted anything better than a taco in their lives. If they can learn, so can you."

It is also, for me, quite amazing to really sit back and think about a gang of five or six guys who actually manage to serve dinner to 600 people! Not once, but day in and day out! For this, you don't want no inspiration, you are not in the market for genius, man, you are a member of the freeping army/ballet corps, and everything depends on precise execution of tasks you have done a kazillion times before. (Oops, I slipped into quasi-Bourdain mode there.)

This book is really a lot better than Orwell's pretentious "Down and Out in Paris in London," especially when you learn that Orwell was basically a middle-class guy who volunteered to go slumming, and left when he got tired of it. This is not the case with Bourdain. This is HIS LIFE, and I for one really appreciate his gusto, his zest, and his willingness to work hard for what he wants.

Enjoy, enjoy (and don't order fish from a restaurant on Monday!)

Editorial Review:

A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 78 new & used starting at $7.19

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Political
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 273 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West.

One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission.

Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced.

Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.

America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation

Kenneth C. Davis

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 7 to 12 days By: Collins Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $16.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don't Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis's dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation's fate hung in the balance.

Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, America's Hidden History details these episodes, among others:

• The story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists
• The coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella, who suggested that Columbus pack the moving mess hall of pigs that may have spread disease to many Native Americans
• The long, bloody relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians that runs counter to the idyllic scene of the Thanksgiving feast
• The little-known story of George Washington as a headstrong young soldier who committed a war crime, signed a confession, and started a war!

Full of color, intrigue, and human interest, America's Hidden History is an iconoclastic look at America's past, connecting some of the dots between history and today's headlines, proving why Davis is truly America's Teacher.

Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project

Amazon Price: $9.75 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $7.97

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

great stories 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you love the real life stories you hear on NPR this is for you. Touching and poignant, listening to these give you hope and understanding for people in many different walks of life.

Profound 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I first heard about the StoryCorps Project a few years ago and was immediately charmed by the idea of it. Two people important to one another enter a soundproof booth and spend 40 minutes as interviewer and interviewee. The interview is recorded. They are provided with suggested questions, but more often than not it seems that once the conversation gets rolling, it becomes just that - a conversation, and not so much an interview after all. Their stories unfold, and what happens is almost magical. At the end of the session, a high-quality copy of the recording is given to the participants, and another copy is sent to the Library of Congress. The whole point is to give a voice to everyone willing to sound it. A collection of some of these recordings has been compiled by Dave Isay in the amazing book Listening Is an Act of Love.

The stories shared here are conversations between husbands and wives, aunts and nephews, coworkers, friends. The stories are funny, shocking, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. I am haunted by the stories of those closely impacted by 9/11. I cried when I read a story about a daughter asking her father to remember his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. Some of the "how we met and fell in love" stories made me chuckle. The stories included in this book are from such different people in such different walks of life, yet so many common themes arise. Everyone wants to love and be loved, everyone makes mistakes, everyone hurts.

I borrowed this book from the library and read it in one sitting. It was so moving, so profound, that I want my own copy to keep. I want to hear these voices again and again, to remind myself that we all - all of us - have a story to tell.

Editorial Review:

As heard on NPR—a wondrous nationwide celebration of our shared humanity

StoryCorps founder and legendary radio producer Dave Isay selects the most memorable stories from StoryCorps’ collection, creating a moving portrait of American life.

The voices here connect us to real people and their lives—to their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage, and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds. To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or stereotype. We are our history, individually and collectively, and Listening Is an Act of Love touchingly reminds us of this powerful truth.

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Ted Kerasote

Amazon Price: $9.75 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvest Books Amazon Marketplace: 59 new & used starting at $6.43

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 190 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Book Every Dog Lover Will Enjoy. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought Merle's Door because the sub-title "Lessons from a Freethinking Dog" caught my eye. I was in Pet Smart buying a bag of Eukaneuba kibble for my nine-month old Standard Schnauzer puppy named Otto, who is about as freethinking a dog as you are ever going to meet.

Ted Kerasote leads the reader/dog owner-lover on a wonderful adventure into the hidden life of dogs; not simply "what dogs think," from a Pavlovian standpoint, but why dogs are the way they are.

On more than one occasion, this book brought a smile to my face, or tears to my eyes as I learned something new about dogs. This book will bring you closer to your companion animal in a way you never dreamed possible. Dogs are a lot more than pets we shape, mold, and train to our liking; they can be companions with whom we can connnect and share experiences with, if we will let dogs be themselves.

Editorial Review:

Now including a wonderful new photo insert chronicling Merle’s life, this national bestseller explores the relationship between humans and dogs. How would dogs live if they were free? Would they stay with their human friends?

Merle and Ted found each other in the Utah desert— Merle was living wild and Ted was looking for a pup to keep him company. As their bond grew, Ted taught Merle how to live around wildlife, and Merle taught Ted about the benefits of letting a dog make his own decisions.

Using the latest in wolf research and exploring issues of animal consciousness and leadership and the origins of the human-dog relationship, Ted Kerasote takes us on the journey he and Merle shared. As much a love story as a story of independence and partnership, Merle’s Door is tender, funny, and ultimately illuminating.

Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back

Josh Hamilton

Amazon Price: $16.31 List Price: $23.99 Usually ships in 7 to 11 days By: FaithWords Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $15.27

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character " superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a 4-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

BEYOND BELIEF details the events that led up to the derailment. Josh explains how a young man destined for fame and wealth could allow his life to be taken over by drugs and alcohol. But it is also the memoir of a spiritual journey that breaks through pain and heartbreak and leads to the rebirth of his major-league career.

Josh Hamilton makes no excuses and places no blame on anyone other than himself. He takes responsibility for his poor decisions and believes his story can help millions who battle the same demons. "I have been given a platform to tell my story" he says. "I pray every night I am a good messenger."

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

Amazon Price: $9.60 List Price: $12.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Amazon Marketplace: 85 new & used starting at $4.46

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 424 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.”

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Audition: A Memoir

Barbara Walters

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Knopf Amazon Marketplace: 102 new & used starting at $14.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Television Performers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Journalists

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 242 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”

And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.

Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that gave Barbara her first taste of glamour. It also made her aware of the ups and downs, the insecurities, and even the tragedies that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks, for Lou Walters didn’t just make several fortunes—he also lost them. Barbara learned early about the damage that such an existence can do to relationships—between husband and wife as well as between parent and child. Through her roller-coaster ride of a childhood, Barbara had a close companion, her mentally challenged sister, Jackie. True, Jackie taught her younger sister much about patience and compassion, but Barbara also writes honestly about the resentment she often felt having a sister who was so “different” and the guilt that still haunts her.

All of this—the financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love—played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She was the first woman cohost of the Today show, the first female network news coanchor, the host and producer of countless top-rated Specials, the star of 20/20, and the creator and cohost of The View. She has not just interviewed the world’s most fascinating figures, she has become a part of their world. These are just a few of the names that play a key role in Barbara’s life, career, and book: Yasir Arafat, Warren Beatty, Menachem Begin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Katharine Hepburn, King Hussein, Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Monica Lewinsky, Richard Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Christopher Reeve, Anwar Sadat, John Wayne . . . the list goes on and on.

Barbara Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down

Kaylene Johnson

Amazon Price: $8.77 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tyndale House Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 59 new & used starting at $5.99

Buy at Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 136 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good read about an extraordinary woman 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 4 people found this review helpful.

For just a few short month's Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been in the media spotlight. However, the residents of Alaska have known her for some time.

The book "Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down" chronicles everything from the youth to the family life to the political career of this accomplished woman.

Along with 2008 presidential candidate John McCain, Palin championed the story of the average person. And, through the words of author Kaylene Johnson and a number of personal photographs, readers come to learn that in many cases, her story is their story.

All in all, the book is a quick read. At times, it delves into some statistical information but for the most part it offers a more intimate reflection on the life and times of the most popular governor in the United States.

Editorial Review:

In Sarah, the first biography released of Governor Palin, author Kaylene Johnson draws upon personal interviews with Palin, her family, and other highly placed sources to explore Palin's family life, her upbringing in a devout Christian home, her political rise, and how she went from being a long-shot candidate to--potentially--one of the world's most powerful women and political figures. The book features dozens of family and political photos and contains source notes. An Epicenter Press book, distributed by Tyndale House. Tyndale will also provide a free online discussion guide designed to engage readers on the subject of faith and politics: www.FaithandPoliticsDiscussionGuide.com.