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James Stewart
By Donald Dewey. 1996
In this penetrating and riveting biography of one of Hollywood's most beloved screen icons, Donald Dewey probes beneath Jimmy Stewart,…
the conservative image and ideal, to reveal James Stewart, the actor and the man. Through hundreds of interviews and in-depth analysis of his seventy-five films, the author assesses how the Hollywood man-about-town of the 1930's and 40's - Stewart's lovers included Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland and Marlene Dietrich - became the epitome of American family values who remained married for forty-five years; and how the studio-bred, effervescent star of It's a Wonderful Life developed into the brilliant actor whose performances in films such as Vertigo and Shenandoah exposed a vulnerability unseen in his personal relationships. With many insights into the turmoil of his private life, the artistry behind his cinematic craft and his heroic military record in the Second World War, Dewey gives us much more than a legend to love.The Moon's Our Nearest Neighbour
By Ghillie Basan. 2001
Chasing dreams of their own photographic business, Ghillie Basan and her husband Jonathan swap the comfort of their Edinburgh home…
for Corrunich - a remote cottage at the foot of the Cairngorms. With jumping cows for company, the Basans begin their new life with no electricity and heavy snowstorms. Generators break down and roads quickly become blocked, but the couple have a series of adventures with a fascinating mix of local farmers, terrified tourists, an African president, and their two babies, Yasmin and Zeki. The Moon's our Nearest Neighbour is a heart-warming, amusing account of a life lived in the picturesque beauty of highland Scotland; of the ferocious weather and the spectacularly starry skies; and, most of all, of the tremendous strength of spirit in coming to terms with the hardships and isolation of a new lifestyle.Vanished Years
By Rupert Everett. 2012
'[An] instant classic' IndependentRupert Everett's first memoir - Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins - was an international bestseller and…
an instant classic on publication in 2006. Reviewers compared him to Evelyn Waugh, David Niven, Noel Coward and Lord Byron. But Rupert Everett is - of course - one of a kind.Mischievous, touching and nothing less than brilliant, this new memoir is filled with stories, from childhood to the present. Astonishing encounters; tragedy and comedy; vivid portraits of friends and rivals; razor-sharp observations of the celebrity circus from LA to London and beyond... there is something extraordinary on every page. A pilgrimage to Lourdes with his father is both hilarious and moving. A misguided step into reality TV goes horribly wrong. From New York to Moscow to Berlin to Phnom Penh, Vanished Years takes the reader on a wild and wonderful new journey with a charming (and rather disreputable) companion.Today in History: Disney
By Eve Zibart. 2006
This irresistible read is packed with fun facts and tasty tidbits about Disney, from stories about the entertainment empire's founding…
family to the inspiration for many of the popular theme park attractions. Memorable dates include: May 11, 1904 - The great surrealist painter Salvador Dali was born in Igueras, Catalonia. His 1946 collaboration with Walt Disney was one of the most unusual partnerships in the entertainment industry. December 2, 1929 - The Haunted House, in which Mickey Mouse takes shelter from the storm in what turns out to be a well populated mansion, was released in theaters. This movie was the first time animators created what was to become a popular Disney setting. January 9, 1937 - The release of Donald Duck's second film, Don Donald, proved that Donald was capable of carrying a series without any help from Mickey. It also served as the debut vehicle for a ducky girlfriend called Donna, who was later renamed Daisy.Released to coincide with the company's 18-month-long 50th anniversary celebrations, Today in History: Disney has something for Disney fans of every generation.Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family
By Condoleezza Rice. 2010
Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to…
oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman - and the first black woman ever -- to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim. Not because she wouldn't have loved to, but because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, when Rice was applying herself to her fourth grader's lessons, the situation had grown intolerable. Birmingham was an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told -- or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice's neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza's passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents' fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university's second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news - just shortly before her father's death - that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother's cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling. This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl - and a young woman -- trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world and of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community, that made all the difference.From the Hardcover edition.These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries 1939-1945
By Juliet Gardiner, May Smith. 2012
May Smith is twenty-four at the outbreak of World War Two; at night, the sirens wail, and the young men…
of the village leave to fight. But still, ordinary life goes on: May goes shopping, plays tennis, takes holidays and even falls in love - while recording it faithfully in her diary.'May is simply a joy, a bright spark in dark times' The TimesChildhood Interrupted: Growing up in an industrial school
By Kathleen O'Malley. 2005
In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school…
ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the notorious Magdalene Homes. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She married and had a son. A turning point in Kate's life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is her inspiring story.Up from Slavery
By Booker T. Washington. 2014
Booker T. Washington’s classic memoir of enslavement, emancipation, and community advancement in the Reconstruction Era. Born into slavery on a…
tobacco farm in nineteenth-century Virginia, Booker T. Washington became one of the most powerful intellectuals of the Reconstruction Era. As president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he advocated for the advancement of African Americans through education and entrepreneurship. In Up from Slavery, Washington speaks frankly and honestly about his enslavement and emancipation, struggle to receive an education, and life’s work as an educator. In great detail, Washington describes establishing the Tuskegee Institute, from teaching its first classes in a hen house to building a prominent institution through community organization and a national fundraising campaign. He also addresses major issues of the era, such as the Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan, and “false foundation” of Reconstruction policy. Up From Slavery is based on biographical articles written for the Christian newspaper Outlook and includes the full text of Washington’s revolutionary Atlanta Exposition address. First published in 1901, this powerful autobiography remains a landmark of African American literature as well as an important firsthand account of post–Civil War American history. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.Nobody's Child
By Kate Adie. 2005
What's your name? Where were you born? What is your date of birth?Simple questions that we are asked throughout our…
life ? but what if you didn?t know the answers? Kate Adie uncovers the extraordinary, moving and inspiring stories of just such children ? without mother or father, any knowledge of who they might be, or even a name to call their own.With a curiosity inspired by her own circumstances as an adopted child, Kate shows how the most remarkable adults have survived the experience of abandonment.From every perspective Kate Adie brings us a personal, moving and fascinating insight into the very toughest of childhood experiences - and shows what makes us who we really are.Amateurs In Eden: Nancy and Lawrence Durrell
By Joanna Hodgkin. 2012
Nancy Durrell was a woman famous for her silences. Anaïs Nin said 'I think often of Nancy's most eloquent silences,…
Nancy talking with her fingers, her hair, her cheeks, a wonderful gift. Music again.' As the first wife Lawrence Durrell, author of The Alexandria Quartet, it is perhaps surprising that she is an unknown entity, a constant presence in the biographies of Durrell and others in the Bloomsbury set, yet always a shadowy figure, beautiful and enigmatic. But who was the woman who was with Durrell during the most important years of his development as a writer? Joanna Hodgkin decides to retrace her mother's fascinating story: the escape from her toxic and mysterious family; the years in bohemian literary London and Paris in the 1930s; marriage to Durrell and their discovery of the 'Eden' of pre-war Corfu and her desperate struggle to survive in Palestine alone with a small child as the British Mandate collapsed. Amateurs in Eden is a fascinating biography of a literary marriage and of an unusual woman struggling to live an independent life.Criminal Sociology
By Enrico Ferri.
A new departure in science is a simple phenomenon of nature, determined in its origin and progress, like all such…
phenomena, by conditions of time and place. Attention must be drawn to these conditions at the outset, for it is only by accurately defining them that the scientific conscience of the student of sociology is developed and confirmed. The experimental philosophy of the latter half of our century, combined with human biology and psychology, and with the natural study of human society, had already produced an intellectual atmosphere decidedly favourable to a practical inquiry into the criminal manifestations of individual and social life. To these general conditions must be added the plain and everyday contrast between the metaphysical perfection of criminal law and the progressive increase of crime, as well as the contrast between legal theories of crime and the study of the mental characteristics of a large number of criminals.Storming The Falklands: My War and After
By Tony Banks. 2012
Thirty years after the Falklands War 'Secret Millionaire' Tony Banks is still haunted by his experiences in the South Atlantic.…
As a member of the crack Parachute Regiment his unit was the first to land on the Falklands and he fought in the bloody first and last battles of the war before liberating Port Stanley.In this memoir Tony vividly recalls the fighting in the Falklands. He relives the bombing raids in San Carlos bay, the Battle of Goose Green, the Argentinian attack on the Sir Galahad and the Battle of Wireless Ridge. But he also tells of his own battles with Combat Stress and of how three decades on the war is still claiming victims.He tells the stories of British and Argentine veterans and travels to Argentina to return a war trophy - a trumpet he had taken from a prisoner - to its rightful owner. The return of the trumpet brings closure to both men. And finally Tony returns to the Falklands to lay the ghosts that have haunted him to rest.Mozambique Mysteries
By Lisa St. Aubin De Teran. 2010
MOZAMBIQUE MYSTERIES is about turning fifty and finding a new direction. Lisa St Aubin de Terán travelled to Mozambique and,…
for the first time in her much-travelled life, felt at home - in a place 'so remote that few have visited it since the time of Vasco da Gama'. After three marriages and various affairs, she also fell in love. She set up a school and, together with her niece, the Terán Foundation. From the acclaimed author of THE HACIENDA, Mozambique Mysteries is a story of new beginnings in a country of contrasts and challenges - her most inspiring story yet.Twenty Years at Hull House
By Jane Addams.
The classic memoir of one of the Progressive Era s most important reformers and social activists …
If it is natural to feed the hungry it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young comfort to the aged and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all men feel In 1889 Jane Addams and her partner Ellen Starr opened the first settlement house in the United States On Chicago s West Side Hull House was devoted to the city s poor and forgotten from immigrants and unwed mothers to the elderly homeless and hungry Its charter proclaimed its mission to provide a center for higher civic and social life to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago In Twenty Years at Hull House Addams chronicles her revolutionary work from its conception in the Gilded Age through the dawn of the Progressive Era A cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize Addams devoted her life to realizing a more noble vision of democracy More than a personal memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House is a landmark document of social theory and political history This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devicesOne Girl And Her Dogs: Life, Love and Lambing in the Middle of Nowhere
By Emma Gray. 2012
What happens when you swap 'I do' for pastures new?When twenty-three-year-old shepherdess Emma Gray breaks off her engagement, the chance…
to take over an isolated Northumberland farm seems just the fresh start she needs. But while the beautiful scenery certainly offers plenty of scope for contemplation, a night out with an eligible bachelor soon seems more remote than the farm itself. And once you add fugitive sheep and freak blizzards into the mix, Emma's dreams of a happy future at Fallowlees Farm quickly begin to fade.Throughout the long nights of lambing, the highs and lows of the local sheepdog trials and the day-to-day chores of maintaining a large, ramshackle farm, Emma's collies are her most loyal companions. With Bill, Fly, Roy and Alfie by her side, she'll never really be alone. Emma's remarkable first year at Fallowlees - the triumphs, the disasters, the heartbreak and the glimmer of romance on the horizon - is an inspiration for anyone who has ever dreamt of changing their life and starting all over again.What's Tha Up To?: Memories of a Yorkshire Bobby
By Martyn Johnson. 2012
'I've turned boys into men and policemen into coppers,' said the Sergeant. 'Policemen have got brains, but coppers, they've got…
brains and common sense.'No two days were ever the same for bobby-on-the-beat Martyn Johnson. Come rain or come shine, he patrolled his patch with a sharp eye for troublemakers and a kind word for those in need of a friend. Whether he was pursuing unlikely coal thieves, tracking down peacocks gone AWOL or investigating mysterious flying saucers over Sheffield, PC Johnson faced every new challenge with a smile and a healthy dose of his copper's common sense. In his charming and funny memoir, Martyn Johnson recalls the rogues, cheats and scoundrels - as well as the many friends - who made his life on the beat so unforgettable.Call Me When You Get To Heaven: Our Amazing True Story of Messages From the Other Side
By Jacky Newcomb, Madeline Richardson. 2011
In this fascinating and moving memoir, sisters Jacky and Madeline share the communications they have received from their beloved father,…
Ron, since he passed away in February 2008. Ron reaches out to them from 'the other side' to show his family that there most certainly is life after death. Ron visits family and friends in dreams, shows them the future in visions, and plays havoc with door bells, light switches and alarms. He reaches out to them to prove that he is safe in the afterlife, and to offer reassurance and guidance from beyond.This extraordinary book shows that this life is not the end, and that happiness can be found in the afterlife. It is a touching and emotional tribute to their father that will offer comfort and hope to anyone who has lost someone they love.Freddie Mercury: The Biography
By Laura Jackson. 2011
This fascinating biography of Freddie Mercury which received outstanding acclaim from Queen and rock fans worldwide, has now been updated…
for reissue to coincide with the release of the film about his life. Laura Jackson addresses topics including:* The reality behind Queen's flamboyant front man and lead singer* Mercury the star of mystery - amusing, loyal and generous, yet revealing a dark side to his personality* His frequent use of cocaine and how it heightened his tendency to excess - both on and off stage* The women in his life - his bizarrely enduring relationships with his first love, Mary Austin, and his long-time confidante, Barbara Valentin, who speaks for the first time in this bookThe book also includes new and intimate stories by those who knew him well, such as Tim Rice, Richard Branson, Cliff Richard, Bruce Dickinson, Mike Moran, Wayne Eagling, Zandra Rhodes and Susannah York.Four Meals for Fourpence: A Heartwarming Tale of Family Life in London's old East End
By Grace Foakes. 2011
I was born in a tenement flat in the East End of London in the year in which Queen Victoria…
died.'FOUR MEALS FOR FOURPENCE is Grace Foakes's memories of her girlhood in Wapping in the early 1900s. With a child's uncluttered eye, she describes the small details - shopping in the market, men waiting for work at the dock gates, the rituals of washday, the sights, sounds and smells of the old East End of London. She also describes the fear - of illness, of unemployment, of the workhouse - that hung over her family and thousands like them, and her determination that her own children would never know the kind of poverty she had experienced.Bhai Vir Singh
By Harbans Singh. 1972