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Showing 2541 - 2560 of 4276 items
The autobiography of famous actor and vaudevillian Otis Skinner who trod the boards in the early 1900's, this book is…
filled with anecdotes of a bygone age. He travelled the globe and played many roles but is best remembered for his most famous role as the beggar Hajj in the original theatrical version of Kismet.By Andre Dubus. 2011
By Larry Mcmurtry. 2009
By Kathleen V. Kudlinski. 2005
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991) was destined to grow up to become the most beloved, bestselling children's…
book writer of all time. This biography explores the events of his childhood. Illustrations.By James Shapiro. 2010
For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since…
then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories--and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination. As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare's plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them? Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination.Louisa May Alcott never intended to write Little Women. She had dismissed her publisher's pleas for such a novel. Written…
out of necessity to support her family, the book had an astounding success that changed her life, a life which turned out very differently from that of her beloved heroine Jo March. In Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever, the acclaimed author of American Bloomsbury, returns to Concord, Massachusetts, to explore the life of one of its most iconic residents. Based on extensive research, journals, and correspondence, Cheever's biography chronicles all aspects of Alcott's life, from the fateful meeting of her parents to her death, just two days after that of her father. She details Bronson Alcott's stalwart educational vision, which led the Alcotts to relocate each time his progressive teaching went sour; her unsuccessful early attempts at serious literature, including Moods, which Henry James panned; her time as a Civil War nurse, when she contracted pneumonia and was treated with mercury-laden calomel, which would affect her health for the rest of her life; and her vibrant intellectual circle of writers and reformers, idealists who led the charge in support of antislavery, temperance, and women's rights. Alcott's independence defied the conventional wisdom, and her personal choices and literary legacy continue to inspire generations of women. A fan of Little Women from the age of twelve, and a distinguished author in her own right, Cheever brings a unique perspective to Louisa May Alcott's life as a woman, a daughter, and a working writer.By Carolyn Cassady. 2007
Off the Road tells the intimate story of the legendary Neal Cassady and his remarkable friendships with Jack Kerouac (who…
immortalized Cassady as Dean Moriarty in On the Road) and Allen Ginsberg. Written by the woman who loved them all--as wife of Cassady, lover of Kerouac, and friend of Ginsberg--this riveting and intimate memoir spans one of the most vital eras in twentieth-century literature and culture, including the explosive successes of Kerouac's On the Road and Ginsberg's Howl, the flowering of the Beat movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s. Carolyn Cassady reveals a side of Neal Cassady rarely seen-that of husband and father, a man who craved respectability, yet could not resist the thrills of a wilder and ultimately more destructive lifestyle.By Valerie Boyd. 2003
From critically acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd comes an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the…
twentieth century--Zora Neale Hurston.A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance--including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker--acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon. Wrapped in Rainbows, the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston's history--her youth in the country's first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, Wrapped in Rainbows not only positions Hurston's work in her time but also offers riveting implications for our own.By Virginia Spencer Carr. 2004
Paul Bowles, best known for his classic 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, is one of the most compelling yet elusive…
figures of twentieth-century American counterculture. In this definitive biography, Virginia Spencer Carr has captured Bowles in his many guises-gifted composer, expatriate novelist, and gay icon, to name only a few.By Michel Leiris. 2017
One of the most versatile and beloved French intellectuals of the twentieth century, Michel Leiris reconceives the autobiography as a…
literary experiment that sheds light on the mechanisms of memory and on the way the unconnected events of a life become connected through invented narrative. In this volume, the second in his four-volume epic autobiographical enterprise, Leiris merges quotidian events with profound philosophical self-exploration. He also wrangles with the disillusionment that accompanies his own self-reflection. In the midst of struggling with his own motives for writing an autobiographical essay, he comes to the revelation that life, after all, has aspects worth remembering even if moments of beauty are bookended by misery. Yet what can be said of human life, of his own life, when his memory is unreliable, his eyesight is failing, and his mood is despairing?By Billie Burke. 2015
The popular comedienne's account of her theatrical career and her married life with Florenz Ziegfeld.This is the life story of…
an actress, a beautiful redheaded actress who lived and played in a glittering era now gone but fondly remembered. Although she attained moments of great fame and happiness, she never knew security. Like her father, the well-known clown, she went through life with a feather on her nose.--Print Ed.By Bonnie M. Craig. 2013
Moving away from territorially-bound narratives toward a more kinetic conceptualization of identity, this book represents the first analysis of the…
politics of American identity within the fiction and memoirs of Isabel Allende. Craig offers a radical transformation of societal frameworks through revised notions of place, temporality, and space.By Eleanor Roosevelt. 2015
In this volume the greatest and best-loved woman of her time shares the experiences - private and public - of…
her thirteen years since the death of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She describes in intimate detail the problems she had to solve after her husband's death, winding up his affairs and working out a pattern for her new life. That new life would include much traveling and diplomatic work around Europe, Russia and Asia for the United Nations, for her forthright humanitarian endeavors she was voted as ninth in Gallup's List Of Most Widely Admired People Of The 20th Century.By Linda Wagner-Martin. 2013
Now published in paperback for the first time, this literary biography study offers a comprehensive account of Emily Dickinson's life,…
as a poet as well as a daughter of a prominent Amherst, Massachusetts, family. For many years accompanied by her large dog, she well knew the worlds of nature and natural beauties. For many more years, she chronicled her life - especially her life of the imagination - in hundreds of letters, as well as the nearly 1,800 poems that have been found. Such rich material informs this book's narrative, building a picture of a woman loyal to her parents and her myriad of friends, as well as siblings, niece and nephews, and her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, her constant muse. Never content with passive acceptance, or a life that conformed to the dutiful unmarried daughter's role, Dickinson the poet worked all her mature life to bring her art to its consistently firm - and always brilliant - greatness.By Frank O’hara. 2015
This slim, but richly illustrated, biography of Jackson Pollock has stood the test of time since its first publication in…
1959. Still a sound, but laudatory, study of all of Pollock's periods; which are weighed and appreciated in chronological order. Frank O'Hara was a well-known and universally respected poet who was an integral part of the New York artistic scene until his death in 1966.By Anthony J. Funari. 2011
This book explores the resistance of three English poets to Francis Bacon's project to restore humanity to Adamic mastery over…
nature, moving beyond a discussion of the tension between Bacon and these poetic voices to suggest theywere also debating the narrative of humanity's intellectual path.By Valerie Purton, Norman Page. 2010
Tennyson is the most important English poet of the Victorian age. He knew its key figures and was deeply involved…
in its science, religion, philosophy and politics. The Palgrave Literary Dictionary for the first time gives easily accessible information, under more than 400 headings, on his poetry, his circle, the period and its contexts.By Linda Wagner-Martin. 2017
This book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It begins with his immersion in…
the short story, some years after he stopped attending Stanford University. Aside from a weak first novel, his professional writing career began with the publication in 1932 of The Pastures of Heaven, stories set in the Salinas Valley and dedicated to his parents. From that book he wrote truly commanding stories such as The Red Pony. Intermixed with Steinbeck's journalism about California's labor difficulties, his writing skill led to his 1930 masterpieces, Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940, led eventually to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He continued producing such wide-ranging works as The Pearl, East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent, and Travels with Charley up to just a few months before his death in 1968.By Gretchen Carlson. 2016
In the wake of Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit against former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, her memoir of her…
time at Fox—working alongside Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and other prominent conservative news personalities—is more relevant than ever.In this candid memoir, celebrity news anchorwoman Gretchen Carlson shares her inspiring story and offers important takeaways about what it means to strive for and find success in the real world. With warmth and wit, she takes readers from her Minnesota childhood, when she became a violin prodigy, through attending Stanford and later rising to anchor of The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News after working her way up from local television stations. Carlson addresses the intense competitive effort of winning the Miss America Pageant, the challenges she’s faced as a woman in broadcast television, and how she manages to balance work and family as the wife of high-profile sports agent Casey Close and devoted mother to their two children. An unceasing advocate for respect and equality for women, Carlson writes openly about her own struggles with body image, pageant stereotypes, building her career, and having the courage to speak her mind. Encouraging women to believe in themselves, chase their dreams, and never give up, Carlson emerges in Getting Real as a living example of personal strength and perseverance.From the Hardcover edition.By Prof. Avner Holtzman. 2017
A moving inquiry into the dramatic life, epic success, and ultimate tragedy of the great Hebrew poet By the time…
he was twenty-eight, Hayim Nahman Bialik was already considered the National Hebrew Poet. He had only published a single collection, but his deeply personal poetry established a profound link between the secular and the traditional that would become paramount to a national Jewish identity in the twentieth century. When he died unexpectedly in 1934, the outpouring of grief was unprecedented, confirming him as a father figure for the Zionist movement in Palestine, and around the world. Using extensive research and elegant readings of Bialik's poems, Avner Holtzman investigates the poet's dramatic life, complex personality, beloved verse, and continued popularity. This clear-eyed and thorough biography explores how Bialik overcame intense personal struggles to become a charismatic literary leader at the core of modern Hebrew culture.