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The author transformed his political beliefs after a visit to a Salvation Army shelter and then became a popular liberal…
radio talk show host. Here he offers his views on international relations, freedom of the press, the federal deficit, struggling rural America, public education, trade policy, and more. He outlines what he calls the "Four Pillars of a Great Nation" as well as asserts that the current US government is run by and for the rich.The End of San Francisco
By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. 2013
"Mattilda is a dazzling writer of uncommon truths, a challenging writer who refuses to conform to conventionality. Her agitation is…
an inspiration."-Justin Torres, author of We the Animals"Author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the artistic love child of John Genet and David Wojnarowicz, deconstructing language swathed in unbridled sensuality, while flinging readers into a disrupted, chaotic life of queer anarchy."-- Gay and Lesbian ReviewThe End of San Francisco breaks apart the conventions of memoir to reveal the passions and perils of a life that refuses to conform to the rules of straight or gay normalcy. A budding queer activist escapes to San Francisco, in search of a world more politically charged, sexually saturated, and ethically consistent-this is the person who evolves into Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder, and anti-assimilationist commentator. Here is the tender, provocative, and exuberant story of the formation of one of the contemporary queer movement's most savvy and outrageous writers and spokespersons.Using an unrestrained associative style to move kaleidoscopically between past, present, and future, Sycamore conjures the untidy push and pull of memory, exposing the tensions between idealism and critical engagement, trauma and self-actualization, inspiration and loss. Part memoir, part social history, and part elegy, The End of San Francisco explores and explodes the dream of a radical queer community and the mythical city that was supposed to nurture it.Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the editor of four anthologies, including Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots, That's Revolting, and Nobody Passes, and two novels."Bring on The End of San Francisco! And Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, whose new book has reinvented memoir without the predictable gloss of passive resolution. This book is undeniably brave and new, and the internal energy churning at its core is like nothing you've seen, heard or read before. I swear."-T Cooper, author of Real Man AdventuresThe Awakener
By Helen Weaver. 2009
". . . [Weaver] paints a romantic picture of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and '60s, when she worked in…
publishing and hung out with Allen Ginsberg and the poet Richard Howard and was wild and loose, getting high and falling into bed almost immediately with her crushes, including Lenny Bruce. . . . Her descriptions of the Village are evocative, recalling a time when she wore long skirts, Capezio ballet shoes and black stockings,' and used to sit in the Bagatelle and have sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist of lemon.' Early on, she quotes Pasternak: You in others: this is your soul.' Kerouac's soul lives on through many people -- Joyce Johnson, for one -- but few have been as adept as Weaver at capturing both him and the New York bohemia of the time. He was lucky to have met her." --Tara McKelvey, The New York Times Book Review"There is a tendency for memoirs written by women about The Great Man to be self-abnegating exercises in a kind of inverted narcissism-the author seeking to prove her worth as muse, as consort, as chosen one. Not so with Helen Weaver's beautiful, plainspoken elegy for her time spent with Jack Kerouac, who suddenly appeared at her door in the West Village one white, frosty morning with Allen Ginsberg, who knew Weaver's roommate, in tow."-New York Post"Helen Weaver's book was a revelation to me! . . . This is the most graphic, honest, shameless, and moving documentary of what the newly liberated women in cities got up to-how they lived, loved, and created. Who knew? It is time they did! And here's how."-Carolyn Cassady"The book recounts her affair with Kerouac in 1956 during the period when he signed his literary contract for On the Road, butMark Twain's America
By Lewis H. Lapham, Library Of Congress, Harry L. Katz. 2014
Mark Twain is an American icon. We now know him as the author of classics, but in his day he…
was a controversial satirist and public figure who traveled the world and healed post-Civil War America with his tall tales, witty anecdotes, and humorous but insightful novels and stories. Twain's legacy continues to flourish over 100 years after his death. MARK TWAIN'S AMERICA features spectacular examples of Twain memorabilia and period Americana from the unsurpassed collections of the Library of Congress: rare illustrations, vintage photographs, popular and fine prints, period views, caricatures, cartoons, maps, and more. Excerpts from Twain's writings are framed in a lively narrative by author Harry L. Katz. Covering the years between 1850 and 1910, the book gives readers an intimate view of Twain's many roles in life: Mississippi river boat pilot, California gold prospector, "printer's devil" at a small-town newspaper, muckraking journalist, novelist, public speaker extraordinaire, our first major celebrity author. Through letters, political cartoons, photographs and more, MARK TWAIN'S AMERICA offers an inside look into Twain's life as well as the literary. social, and political life of America during his time.Surrendering Oz
By Bonnie Friedman. 2014
Surrendering Oz is a memoir in essays that charts the emotional awakening of a bookish Bronx girl. From her early…
job as a proofreader at The Guinness Book of World Records through an illicit liaison which threatens to destroy her marriage, the author takes charge of her life as a Texas professor, writer and wise student of her own soul.Reader's Digest says reading Surrendering Oz "is like having a conversation with a bracingly honest but fundamentally kind friend. In 15 pitch-perfect essays, she chronicles her hard-earned rejection of the cultural fairytales of womanhood as she comes fully into possession of her life."Gerard Manley Hopkins
By Paul Mariani. 2008
An insightful and inspirational biography of the heroic and spiritual poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844?1889) may well have been the…
most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins?s descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies. Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins?s spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death.White Hand Society
By Peter Conners. 2010
In 1960 Timothy Leary was not yet famous-or infamous-and Allen Ginsberg was both. Leary, eager to expand his psychedelic experiments…
at Harvard to include accomplished artists and writers, knew that Ginsberg held the key to bohemia's elite. "America's most conspicuous beatnik" was recruited as Ambassador of Psilocybin under the auspices of an Ivy League professor, and together they launched the psychedelic revolution and turned on the hippie generation. A who's who of artists, pop culture, and political figures people this story of the life, times, and friendship of two of the most famous, charismatic, and controversial members of America's counterculture.Peter Conners is the author of Growing Up Dead, The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead.My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud
By Janna Malamud Smith. 2013
Bernard Malamud was one of the most accomplished American novelists of the postwar years. From the Pulitzer Prize winner The…
Fixer as well as The Assistant, named one of the best "100 All-Time Novels" by Time Magazine-to mention only two of the more than a dozen published books-he not only established himself in the first rank of American writers but also took the country's literature in new and important directions.In her signature memoir, Smith explores her renowned father's life and literary legacy. Malamud was among the most brilliant novelists of his era, and counted among his friends Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Theodore Roethke, and Shirley Jackson. Yet Malamud was also very private. Only his family has had full access to his personal papers, including letters and journals that offer unique insight into the man and his work. In her candid, evocative, and loving memoir, his daughter brings Malamud to vivid life.Real Man Adventures
By T Cooper. 2012
A few years ago, the novelist T Cooper wrote his parents a letter telling them he "wasn't their daughter anymore."…
And that was the "good news."Real Man Adventures is Cooper's brash, wildly inventive, and often comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity. He takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children. Alternately bemused and exasperated when he feels compelled to explain all this, Cooper never loses his sense of humor. "Ten Things People Assume I Understand About Women But Actually Don't," reads one chapter title, while another proffers: "Sometimes I Think the Whole of Modern History Can Be Explained by Testosterone."A brilliant collage of letters, essays, interviews (with his brother, with his wife, with the parents of other transgender children), artwork, and sharp evocations of difficult conversations with old friends and puzzled bureaucrats, Real Man Adventures will forever change what you think about what it means to be a man.Letters From the Palazzo Barbaro
By Henry James. 1997
The novelist Henry James arrived in Venice as a tourist, and instantly fell in love with the city - particularly…
with the splendid Palazzo Barbaro, home of the expatriate American Curtis family. This selection of letters covers the period 1869-1907 and provides a unique record of the life and work of this great writer.Includes historical photographs and a foreword by Leon Edel, Henry James's biographer.Stories My Father Told Me: Notes From The Lyons Den
By Charles Osgood, Jeffrey Lyons. 2011
This amazing collection of choice anecdotes takes us right back to the Golden Age of New York City nightlife, when…
top restaurants like Toots Shor's, "21," and Sardi's, as well as glittering nightclubs like the Stork Club, Latin Quarter, and El Morocco, were the nightly gathering spots for great figures of that era: movie and Broadway stars, baseball players, champion boxers, comedians, diplomats, British royalty, prize-winning authors, and famous painters. From Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, from Ethel Barrymore to Sophia Loren, from George Burns to Ernest Hemingway, from Joe DiMaggio to the Duke of Windsor: Leonard Lyons knew them all. For forty glorious years, from 1934 to 1974, he made the daily rounds of Gotham nightspots, collecting the exclusive scoops and revelations that were at the core of his famous newspaper column, "The Lyons Den."In this entertaining volume Jeffrey Lyons has assembled a considerable compilation of anecdotes from his father's best columns, and has also contributed a selection of his own interviews with stars of today, including Penélope Cruz and George Clooney, among others. Organized chronologically by decade and subdivided by celebrity, Stories My Father Told Me offers fascinating, amusing stories that are illustrated by approximately seventy photographs. He so captured the tenor of those exciting times that the great Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg said: "Imagine how much richer American history would have been had there been a Leonard Lyons in Lincoln's time."Sugarhouse
By Matthew Batt. 2012
An improbably funny account of how the purchase and restoration of a disaster of a fixer-upper saves a young marriageWhen…
a season of ludicrous loss tests the mettle of their marriage, Matthew Batt and his wife decide not to call it quits. They set their sights instead on the purchase of a dilapidated house in the Sugarhouse section of Salt Lake City. With no homesteading experience and a full-blown quarter-life crisis on their hands, these perpetual grad students/waiters/nonprofiteers decide to seek salvation through renovation, and do all they can to turn a former crack house into a home. Dizzy with despair, doubt, and the side effects of using the rough equivalent of napalm to detoxify their house, they enter into full-fledged adulthood with power tools in hand.Heartfelt and joyous, Sugarhouse is the story of how one couple conquers adversity and creates an addition to their family, as well as their home.nt, or wondered what an orbital sander is will enjoy this charming book." -- Anthony Doerr, author of Memory WallBuilding Art
By Paul Goldberger. 2015
From Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger: an engaging, nuanced exploration of the life and work of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly…
the most famous architect of our time. This first full-fledged critical biography presents and evaluates the work of a man who has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture in his innovative use of materials, design, and form, and who is among the very few architects in history to be both respected by critics as a creative, cutting-edge force and embraced by the general public as a popular figure. Building Art shows the full range of Gehry's work, from early houses constructed of plywood and chain-link fencing to lamps made in the shape of fish to the triumphant success of such late projects as the spectacular art museum of glass in Paris. It tells the story behind Gehry's own house, which upset his neighbors and excited the world with its mix of the traditional and the extraordinary, and recounts how Gehry came to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his remarkable structure of swirling titanium that changed a declining city into a destination spot. Building Art also explains Gehry's sixteen-year quest to complete Walt Disney Concert Hall, the beautiful, acoustically brilliant home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although Gehry's architecture has been written about widely, the story of his life has never been told in full detail. Here we come to know his Jewish immigrant family, his working-class Toronto childhood, his hours spent playing with blocks on his grandmother's kitchen floor, his move to Los Angeles when he was still a teenager, and how he came, unexpectedly, to end up in architecture school. Most important, Building Art presents and evaluates Gehry's lifetime of work in conjunction with his entire life story, including his time in the army and at Harvard, his long relationship with his psychiatrist and the impact it had on his work, and his two marriages and four children. It analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which a casual, amiable "aw, shucks" surface masks a driving and intense ambition. And it explores his relationship to Los Angeles and how its position as home to outsider artists gave him the freedom in his formative years to make the innovations that characterize his genius. Finally, it discusses his interest in using technology not just to change the way a building looks but to change the way the whole profession of architecture is practiced. At once a sweeping view of a great architect and an intimate look at creative genius, Building Art is in many ways the saga of the architectural milieu of the twenty-first century. But most of all it is the compelling story of the man who first comes to mind when we think of the lasting possibilities of buildings as art. From the Hardcover edition.Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex
By Susan Shapiro. 2005
In the critically acclaimed Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Manhattan journalist Susan Shapiro revisited five self-destructive romances. In her…
hilarious, illuminating new memoir, Lighting Up, she rejects five self-destructive substances. This difficult quest for clean living starts with Shapiro's shocking revelation that, at forty, her lengthiest, most emotionally satisfying relationship has been with cigarettes. A two-pack-a-day smoker since the age of thirteen, Susan Shapiro quickly discovers that it's impossible to be a writer, a nonsmoker, sane, and slender in the same year. The last time she tried to quit, she gained twenty-three pounds, couldn't concentrate on work, and wanted to kill herself and her husband, Aaron, a TV comedy writer who hates her penchant for puffing away. Yet just as she's about to choose her vice over her marriage vows, she stumbles upon a secret weapon. Dr. Winters, "the James Bond of psychotherapy," is a brilliant but unorthodox addiction specialist, a former chain-smoker himself. Working his weird magic on her psyche, he unravels the roots of her twenty-seven-year compulsion, the same dangerous dependency that has haunted her doctor father, her grandfather, and a pair of eccentric aunts from opposite sides of the family, along with Freud and nearly one in four Americans. Dr. Winters teaches her how to embrace suffering, then proclaims that her months of panic, depression, insecurity, vulnerability, and wild mood swings win her the award for "the worst nicotine withdrawal in the history of the world." Shapiro finally does kick the habit--while losing weight and finding career and connubial bliss--only to discover that the second she's let go of her long-term crutch, she's already replaced it with another fixation. After banishing cigarettes, alcohol, dope, gum, and bread from her day-to-day existence, she conquers all her demons and survives deprivation overload. But relying religiously on Dr. Winters, she soon realizes that the only obsession she has left to quit is him. Never has the battle to stem substance abuse been captured with such wit, sophisticated insight, and candor. Lighting Up is so compulsively readable, it's addictive.Writing America
By Shelley Fisher Fishkin. 2015
American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature "endows places with meaning." Yet, as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates,…
understanding the places that shaped American writers' lives and their art can provide deep insight into what makes their literature truly meaningful. Published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Historic Preservation Act, Writing America is a unique, passionate, and eclectic series of meditations on literature and history, covering over 150 important National Register historic sites, all pivotal to the stories that make up America, from chapels to battlefields; from plantations to immigration stations; and from theaters to internment camps. The book considers not only the traditional sites for literary tourism, such as Mark Twain's sumptuous Connecticut home and the peaceful woods surrounding Walden Pond, but also locations that highlight the diversity of American literature, from the New York tenements that spawned Abraham Cahan's fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzaldúa's poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authors' achievements, acclaimed literary scholar and cultural historian Shelley Fisher Fishkin offers a deep and personal reflection on how key sites bore witness to the struggles of American writers and inspired their dreams. She probes the global impact of American writers' innovative art and also examines the distinctive contributions to American culture by American writers who wrote in languages other than English, including Yiddish, Chinese, and Spanish. Only a scholar with as wide-ranging interests as Shelley Fisher Fishkin would dare to bring together in one book writers as diverse as Gloria Anzaldúa, Nicholas Black Elk, David Bradley, Abraham Cahan, S. Alice Callahan, Raymond Chandler, Frank Chin, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jessie Fauset, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Jovita González, Rolando Hinojosa, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Lawson Fusao Inada, James Weldon Johnson, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Irena Klepfisz, Nella Larsen, Emma Lazarus, Sinclair Lewis, Genny Lim, Claude McKay, Herman Melville, N. Scott Momaday, William Northup, John Okada, Miné Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Américo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomás Rivera, Wendy Rose, Morris Rosenfeld, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Yoshiko Uchida, Tino Villanueva, Nathanael West, Walt Whitman, Richard Wright, Hisaye Yamamoto, Anzia Yezierska, and Zitkala-Ša. Leading readers on an enticing journey across the borders of physical places and imaginative terrains, the book includes over 60 images, and extended excerpts from a variety of literary works. Each chapter ends with resources for further exploration. Writing America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process. Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Literary Landscape1 Celebrating the Many in One Walt Whitman Birthplace, Huntington, Long Island, New York2 Living in Harmony with Nature Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts3 Freedom's Port The New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, New Bedford, Massachusetts4 The House that Uncle Tom's Cabin Built Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Hartford, Connecticut5 The Irony of American History The Mark Twain Boyhood Home, Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut6 Native American Voices Remember Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota7 "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" The Paul Laurence Dunbar House, Dayton, Ohio8 Leaving the Old World for the New The Tenement Museum, New York City9 The Revolt from the Village The Original Main Street, Sauk Centre, Minnesota10 Asian American Writers and CreKay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise
By Sam Irvin. 2010
Kay Thompson's larger-than-life story is an effervescent toast to show business with a shot of Auntie Mame and a twist…
of The Devil Wears Prada. A multi-threat entertainer and a world-class eccentric, Kay Thompson was the mentor/best friend of Judy Garland, the vocal guru for Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne, and the godmother/Svengali of Liza Minnelli (who recreated Thompson's nightclub act in her 2009 Tony Award-winning event, Liza's at the Palace). She went to school with Tennessee Williams, auditioned for Henry Ford, got her first big break from Bing Crosby, trained Marilyn Monroe, channeled Elvis Presley, rejected Andy Warhol, rebuffed Federico Fellini, got fired by Howard Hughes, and snubbed Donald Trump. She coached Bette Davis and Eleanor Roosevelt; she created nightclub acts for Marlene Dietrich and Ginger Rogers; and when Lucille Ball had to sing on Broadway, Kay was the wind beneath her wings, too. Kay's legion of fans included Queen Elizabeth of England, King Juan Carlos of Spain, and Princess Grace (Kelly) of Monaco. Danny Kaye masqueraded in drag as her; Noël Coward and Cole Porter wrote musicals for her; and The Beatles wanted to hold her hand. She was a charter member of the Rat Pack, costarred in a whodunit with Ronald Reagan, and directed John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Gala. The dame cut a wide swath through the arts. After conquering radio in the 1930s she commandeered MGM's vocal department in the 1940s, where she revolutionized the studio's greatest musicals with her audacious arrangements, from The Harvey Girls to Ziegfeld Follies. In the 1950s she became the highest-paid cabaret attraction in the world with her groundbreaking act "Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers," featuring her young protégé--and secret lover--Andy Williams. In a stunning feat of reinvention, Thompson next became the bestselling author of Eloise (first published by Simon & Schuster in 1955), chronicling the mischievous adventures of the six-year-old mascot of The Plaza, spawning an industry that is still going strong today. Then Kay took the silver screen by storm as the "Think Pink!" fashion magazine editor in Funny Face, stealing the film right out from under Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. The Thompson saga swells from small town wannabe to international headliner, dissolving into self-destruction and madness--the storyline usually reserved for a rags-to-riches potboiler--yet with unexpected twists, outlandish turns, and a last-minute happy ending that, even by Hollywood's standards, is nothing short of preposterous. But that is Kay Thompson. Fascinating. Frustrating. Fabulous!Mad Girl's Love Song
By Andrew Wilson. 2013
A new biography of Sylvia Plath, a literary icon who continues to haunt, fascinate, and enthrall even now, fifty years…
after her death On February 25 , 1956, twenty-three-year-old Sylvia Plath walked into a party and immediately spotted Ted Hughes. This encounter--now one of the most famous in all of literary history--was recorded by Plath in her journal, where she described Hughes as a "big, dark, hunky boy." Sylvia viewed Ted as something of a colossus, and to this day his enormous shadow has obscured her life and work. The sensational aspects of the Plath-Hughes relationship have dominated the cultural landscape to such an extent that their story has taken on the resonance of a modern myth. Before she met Ted, Plath had lived a complex, creative, and disturbing life. Her father had died when she was only eight; she had gone out with literally hundreds of men, had been unofficially engaged, had tried to commit suicide, and had written more than two hundred poems. Mad Girl's Love Song chronicles these early years, traces the sources of her mental instability, and examines how a range of personal, economic, and societal factors--the real disquieting muses-- conspired against her. Drawing on exclusive interviews with friends and lovers who have never spoken openly about Plath before and using previously unavailable archives and papers, this is the first book to focus on the early life of the twentieth century's most popular and enduring female poet. Mad Girl's Love Song reclaims Sylvia Plath from the tangle of emotions associated with her relationship with Ted Hughes and reveals the origins of her unsettled and unsettling voice.Ezra Pound
By John Tytell. 1984
William Butler Yeats, his friend and fellow poet, called Pound (1885-1972) a "solitary volcano. " Drawing on unpublished letters, published…
personal accounts, psychiatric reports, FBI files, and interviews, a Greenwich Village writer explores the turmoil that informed Pound's influential Imagist poems (e. g. The Cantos), including his arrest for treason in 1945. Tytell includes photos. A new introduction might have shed light on the timing of this reprint; the biography was originally published in 1987 by Anchor Press, New York. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)Marmee & Louisa
By Eve Laplante. 2012
Louisa May Alcott was one of the most successful and bestselling authors of her day, earning more than any of…
her male contemporaries. Her classic Little Women has been a mainstay of American literature since its release nearly 150 years ago, as Jo March and her calm, beloved "Marmee" have shaped and inspired generations of young women. Biographers have consistently attributed Louisa's uncommon success to her father, Bronson Alcott, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of his daughter's progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante explodes these myths, drawing from a trove of surprising new documents to show that it was Louisa's actual "Marmee," Abigail May Alcott, who formed the intellectual and emotional center of her world. Abigail, whose difficult life both inspired and served as a warning to her devoted daughters, pushed Louisa to excel at writing and to chase her unconventional dreams in a male-dominated world. In Marmee & Louisa, LaPlante, Abigail's great-niece and Louisa's cousin, re-creates their shared story from diaries, letters, and personal papers, some recently discovered in a family attic and many others that were thought to have been destroyed. Here at last Abigail is revealed in her full complexity--long dismissed as a quiet, self-effacing background figure, she comes to life as a fascinating writer and thinker in her own right. A politically active feminist firebrand, she was a highly opinionated, passionate, ambitious woman who fought for universal civil rights, publicly advocating for abolition, women's suffrage, and other defin-ing moral struggles of her era. In this groundbreaking work, LaPlante paints an exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time, and the fiercely independent daughter whose life was deeply entwined with her mother's dreams of freedom. This gorgeously written story of two extraordinary women is guaranteed to transform our view of one of America's most beloved authors.South to a Very Old Place
By Albert Murray. 1971
The highly acclaimed novelist and biographer Albert Murray tells his classic memoir of growing up in Alabama during the 1920s…
and 1930s in South to a Very Old Place. Intermingling remembrances of youth with engaging conversation, African-American folklore, and astute cultural criticism, it is at once an intimate personal journey and an incisive social history, informed by "the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling" (The New Yorker).