Biographies & Memoirs Books - Page 4

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Windsor Selection)

Amanda Foreman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Incredibly Dry 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Based on all the glowing reviews, I was expecting a fascinating read. But this book was anything but exciting. I found it really hard to get into the story. About halfway through, I finally gave up and just skimmed the rest of the book. This reads more like a history book than a biography. The author goes into a lot of detail, but she fails to get into Georgiana's head. I'm giving this 3 stars because the author did an incredible amount of research. But it's too bad her writing style is so dull. At the end, I couldn't understand why this book was written or why Georgiana was supposedly such an intriguing person. Hopefully, the movie does a better job of making Georgiana seem like a real person.

Editorial Review:

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was one of the most flamboyant women of the eighteenth century. Foreman's biography of the great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales presents a picture of political and sexual intrigue and shows that Georgiana was a gambler, a drug addict, an adultress and the darling of the common people.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))

Joan Didion

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 505 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”


From the Hardcover edition.

It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Lance Armstrong, Sally Jenkins

List Price: $29.95 By: Thorndike Press Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $1.05

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Total reviews: 720 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The inspiring journey of world-class hero Lance Armstrong, from the dark night of advanced cancer through his dramatic victory in the 1999 Tour de France, and beyond.

In 1996, twenty-four-year-old Lance Armstrong was ranked the number-one cyclist in the world. But that October, "The Golden Boy of American Cycling" was sidelined by excruciating pain. Tests revealed advanced testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. His chance for recovery was as low as twenty percent.

Armstrong embarked on the most aggressive form of chemotherapy available and underwent surgery to remove cancer that the treatments couldn't reach. Five months after his diagnosis, he resumed training under a cloud of uncertainty, and the path back to competition wasn't smooth. It took a ride with friends through the mountains of North Carolina for Armstrong to rediscover his genuine love of the sport, and to rededicate himself to its pursuit.

Scarred physically and emotionally, Lance Armstrong considered his cancer "a special wake-up call," one that crystallized for him the blessings of good health, family, friends, and marriage. In October 1999, just months after his astonishing triumph in the Tour, his wife, Kristin, gave birth to their son, Luke David Armstrong.

Filled with the nutritional, physical, emotional, and spiritual details of his recovery, It's Not About the Bike traces the wondrous journey of one of America's greatest athletes to a singularly inspiring appreciation of life lived to the fullest.

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, And Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Bill Buford

Amazon Price: $29.95 List Price: $29.95 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Thorndike Press Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $2.96

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Heat" is the story of an amateur cook surviving - or, perhaps more accurately, trying to survive - in a professional kitchen. Until recently, Bill Buford was an enthusiastic, if rather chaotic, home cook. His meals were characterized by two incompatible qualities: their ambition and his inexperience at preparing them. Nevertheless, his lifelong regret was that he'd never worked in a professional kitchen. Then, three years ago, an opportunity presented itself. Buford was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of Mario Batali, a Falstaffian figure of voracious appetites who ran one of New York's most successful three-star restaurants. Batali had learned his craft by years of training - first, working in London with the young Marco Pierre White; then in California during the Food Revolution; and finally in Italy, being taught how to make pasta by hand in a hillside trattoria. Buford accepted the commission, if Batali would let him work in his kitchen, as his slave. He worked his way up to being a 'line cook' and then left New York to apprentice himself under the very teachers who had taught his teacher: preparing game with Marco Pierre White, making pasta in a hillside trattoria, and finally, in a town in Northern Italy, becoming an Italian butcher. "Heat" is a marvellous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventure, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.

Gift from the Sea (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 107 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Hardly touching 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book came very highly recommended by two friends who are avid book readers. However I hate to admit that the book did not move me as much as my friends claimed that it moved them. I was more interested about the background references to the author's personal life and how the book came into being. That I would have read voraciously. The book is short but I don't intend to read it again to see what I missed. I believe a book either moves you or it doesn't. This particular book despite other rave reviews did not move me despite my great affinity for the sea and women writers. I wonder if perhaps if the book would have touched me differently if I read it in the beach rather than on a plane which I did.

A Few Shells 5 out of 5 stars.
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What timeless wisdom there is in this little book. Although it was written many decades ago, the challenges and issues faced by Anne Morrow Lindbergh are the same ones faced by women in today's crazy, bustling world. In fact, although women in Siberia, Cameroon, or Ceylon might not have her specific set of circumstances, they can still identify with Lindbergh's ponderings about a woman's life, her obligations, her relationships, and her needs. She lived in an upscale suburb of Connecticut and was the mother of five children, and yet there's something in her writing that can touch the souls of women everywhere whether in a grass hut or trailer beside a busy highway

The chapters in Gift from the Sea center on Lindbergh's musings during a two-week vacation at the shore. Leaving husband, children, and house behind, she lives in a bare beach cabin without heat, telephone, plumbing, hot water, rugs, or curtains. She finds simplicity beautiful and longs to take it home to Connecticut when her vacation ends.

Lindbergh takes a shell at a time and describes it in relation to other things in a woman's life. For instance, the moon shell reminds her that quiet time, solitude, contemplation, and "something of one's own" is needed. The double-sunrise represents the pure relationship found in early stages of friendship and marriage, and she reminds the reader that there is no permanent return to an old form of relationship since all are in the process of change. The oyster bed symbolizes the middle years of marriage and family, especially as the home itself grows and expands to accommodate the growing family.

I first read this book when I was a young mother and could readily understand Lindbergh's comment that saints were so rarely married woman because of the distractions inherent in raising children and running a house. "Human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life." Now in midlife, I can better understand her affinity for all the shells as reminders that each cycle of the wave, the tide, and the relationship is valid.

Editorial Review:

Over a quarter of a century after its first publication, the great and simple wisdom in this book continues to influence women's lives.

The Bell Jar (G K Hall Large Print Perennial)

Sylvia Plath

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 485 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The most famous book you've never read 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

How did I go 34 years without picking up and reading this gem? I'll tell you...It is not included on any public school reading list that I have ever seen and every college literature course that I took (just for fun) never examined Sylvia Plath's writing. Instead I had the misfortune of several lit. courses that focused on less talented modern poets/writers.

In 1963, this book would have been shocking. The main theme is mental disturbia, suicide, losing virginity, (an all out attack on the quiet suburban status quo.)

As I read this book with the jaded perspective of a modern day American citizen, I couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling of innocence this 40 year old story emits.

This book is like a three year old child attempting to shock her parents with something "provocative" but falling short of the parental outrage so desired and ending up with parental amusement.

It is only a sign of the times. In 1963 this story of Esther Greenwood most likely provided the 1-2 punch. (Only a feeling on my part, as I was not around in those days.)

Don't think I am putting this book down in my review. I enjoyed every minute I spent reading this story. There was a time that I would read a book in two days. I haven't done that in several years. Too busy, too tired, too distracted.
I couldn't stop reading the Bell Jar. My laundry, dishes, and vacuuming took a hit on this one. I was tempted to take it to work with me. Thankfully it was not a 1000 page book. I am back to full capacity once again.

I suggest you read this classic and keep one thing in mind, Sylvia Plath based this on her own crack-up in college. It is a heavy thought to me,the reader, knowing that she eventually lost her battle to her mental demons years later while living with her two young children.

Editorial Review:

Autobiographical novel about a brilliant young woman's search for identity and eventual breakdown.

His Excellency: George Washington (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))

Joseph J. Ellis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 221 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of seven highly acclaimed books, Joseph J. Ellis has crafted a landmark biography that brings to life in all his complexity the most important and perhaps least understood figure in American history, George Washington. With his careful attention to detail and his lyrical prose, Ellis has set a new standard for biography.

Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, Joseph Ellis paints a full portrait of George Washington’s life and career–from his military years through his two terms as president. Ellis illuminates the difficulties the first executive confronted as he worked to keep the emerging country united in the face of adversarial factions. He richly details Washington’s private life and illustrates the ways in which it influenced his public persona. Through Ellis’s artful narration, we look inside Washington’s marriage and his subsequent entrance into the upper echelons of Virginia’s plantation society. We come to understand that it was by managing his own large debts to British merchants that he experienced firsthand the imperiousness of the British Empire. And we watch the evolution of his attitude toward slavery, which led to his emancipating his own slaves in his will. Throughout, Ellis peels back the layers of myth and uncovers for us Washington in the context of eighteenth-century America, allowing us to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments and the character of his spirit and mind.

When Washington died in 1799, Ellis tells us, he was eulogized as “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Since then, however, his image has been chisled onto Mount Rushmore and printed on the dollar bill. He is on our landscape and in our wallets but not, Ellis argues, in our hearts. Ellis strips away the ivy and legend that have grown up over the Washington statue and recovers the flesh-and-blood man in all his passionate and fully human prowess.

In the pantheon of our republic’s founders, there were many outstanding individuals. And yet each of them–Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison– acknowledged Washington to be his superior, the only indispensable figure, the one and only “His Excellency.” Both physically and politically, Washington towered over his peers for reasons this book elucidates. His Excellency is a full, glorious, and multifaceted portrait of the man behind our country’s genesis, sure to become the authoritative biography of George Washington for many decades.

All Creatures Great and Small

James Herriot

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 110 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Twenty years ago, St. Martin's Press published a volume of memoirs by an unknown Scottish veterinarian named James Herriot. Its title was All Creatures Great and Small.

Within a year, the book had become recognized as a masterpiece. In the two decades that have followed, James Herriot has become one of the most universally loved authors of our time.

Now, as we celebrate the publication of Every Living Thing-- the country vet's fifth book of memoirs-- St. Martin's is proud to reissue the book that started it all. Its pages, now as then, are full of humor, warmth, pathos, drama, and James Herriot's unique, richly justified love of life. His journeys across the Yorkshire dales, his encounters with humans and dogs, cows and kittens are illumined by his infinite fascination and affection, and rendered with all the infectious joy of a born storyteller.

As one reviewer wrote," If you ever loved a friend, human or otherwise, this is the book for you."

My Grandfather's Son : A Memoir

Clarence Thomas

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Total reviews: 307 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.

Thomas was born in rural Georgia into a life marked by poverty and hunger. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.

Thomas witnessed his grandparents' perseverance despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet determination would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually—despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation—to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six Mit Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

Ben Mezrich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 426 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Liked the book, but not the crude language. 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I didn't understand why the book said the F word so many times. I know that it is based in Vegas, but I just don't think that it was necessary and got very annoying towards the end. It also makes me hesitate to recommend this book because I don't want to offend anyone and them thinking that I didn't mind the crude language.

After I read the book I looked up the story on the Internet about what happened with these MIT guys and I was annoyed to find that most of the stuff that was in the novel was untrue or exageratted. I just wish he wouldn't of made up some of the stuff in the book. I am sure it would of still been interesting if he told the truth of what the students did.

Editorial Review:

Real-life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. Bringing Down the House is one of the exceptions. Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting - making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck - is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises, banning them and using private detectives to share information on suspected and known counters. Bringing Down the House tells the true story of the most successful scam ever,. In which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas, being drawn in the process into the high-life of drugs, high-spending and sex. Bringing Down the House is as readable and as fascinating as Liar's Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world.