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Amazing Mistresses - A short eBook
By Charles Margerison. 2011
Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution
By Alma Guillermoprieto. 2004
In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba's National School…
of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever. In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto-now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America- resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act. Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.Wisdom Keeper: One Man's Journey to Honor the Untold History of the Unangan People
By Nina Simons, Ilarion Merculieff. 2016
Ilarion Merculieff weaves the remarkable strands of his life and culture into a fascinating account that begins with his traditional…
Unangan (Aleut) upbringing on a remote island in the Bering Sea, through his immersion in both the Russian Orthodox Church and his tribe's holistic spiritual beliefs. He recounts his developing consciousness and call to leadership, and describes his work of the past thirty years bringing together Western science and Indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge and wisdom to address the most pressing issues of our time. Tracing the extraordinary history of his ancestors--who mummified their dead in a way very similar to the Egyptians, constructed one of the most sophisticated high seas kayaks in the world, and densely populated shorelines in North America for ten thousand years--Merculieff describes the rich traditions of spirituality, art, dance, music, storytelling, science, and technology that enabled them to survive their harsh conditions. The Unangan people of the Aleutian Islands endured slavery at the hands of the U.S. government and were placed in an internment camp during WWII, where they suffered malnutrition and disease that decimated 10 percent of their population. Merculieff movingly describes how the compassion of Indigenous Elders has guided him in his work and life, which has been rife with struggle and hardship. He explains that environmental degradation, the extinction of species, pollution, war, and failing public institutions are all reflections of our relationships with ourselves. In order to deal with these critical challenges, he argues, we must reenter the chaos of the natural world, rediscover our balance of the masculine and the sacred feminine, and heal ourselves. Then, perhaps, we can heal the world.Release Me: My Life, My Words
By Olivia Longott. 2014
This is not a game . . . this is life!From the day she discovered she had a voice that…
could touch millions, Olivia Longott put in long, hard hours in the studio, trying to achieve her dreams of R and B superstardom. With such royal talents, she fully deserved the title she was given as First Lady of J, the legendary Clive Davis's label, and then First Lady of G-Unit, when she landed a second deal with G Unit/Interscope Records. Olivia quickly made it clear that she is nobody's number two. With dual recording deals in hand, Olivia thought her dream had manifested--until she left both labels in what felt like a nightmare. Being the fighter her daddy taught her to be, Olivia would not let these challenges hold her back from the industry. Instead, she used the experiences as a setup for something new. The world saw her jump back into the ring swinging on the Love & Hip Hop reality show. Sometimes, though, reality isn't always what it seems. That's why Olivia has taken the time to sit down and pen what it truly is. During her unfolding journey in the music industry, Olivia has seen, heard, and experienced a lot. Now it's time to bring you into her world.Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption
By E. Wayne Carp. 2014
Jean Paton (1908-2002) fought tirelessly to reform American adoption and to overcome prejudice against adult adoptees and women who give…
birth out of wedlock. Paton wrote widely and passionately about the adoption experience, corresponded with policymakers as well as individual adoptees, promoted the psychological well-being of adoptees, and facilitated reunions between adoptees and their birth parents. This masterful biography brings to light the accomplishments of this neglected civil-rights pioneer, who paved the way for the explosive emergence of the adoption reform movement in the 1970s. Her unflagging efforts over five decades helped reverse harmful policies, practices, and laws concerning adoption and closed records, struggles that continue to this day.Growing Up in Italy in a Time of War
By Gioietta Vitale. 2012
The wonderful reality is that there is no escape. It is our maturity which keeps us linked to our past…
like prisoners. Sometimes we tend not to remember, and we lock up our memories in the most remote place in our brain cells. Memories fill up our minds, together with our sensations, images, and impulses. I am determined to dedicate my time to recalling the years of my childhood before and during World War II. It seems ages since my childhood in Italy. In my memory, however, it feels like yesterday. Good and bad memories are as vivid as ever, imprinted on my mind. It is amazing how quickly they come back. All it takes to make them click into focus is a smell, a sound, a snapshot, a sensation . . . feelings, smells, colors, words of the past are all recorded in our memory and will never leave us. They are part of us, who we are, even if we do not realize it. The past as well as the present will mold the future.I will try to capture those images of everyday life that are kept locked in my memory, not only for my personal satisfaction, but for my children and grandchildren, so that they may learn how life used to be. Everything changes in the span of one lifetime, some for the better, some for the worse. However, memories, like knowledge, cannot be taken away from you.So here are my memories, recaptured for those who are curious to know how life was in Italy before, during, and after the Second World War.Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams
By Margery M. Heffron, David L. Michelmore. 2014
Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, wife and political partner of John Quincy Adams, became one of the most widely known women…
in America when her husband assumed office as sixth president in 1825. Shrewd, intellectual, and articulate, she was close to the center of American power over many decades, and extensive archives reveal her as an unparalleled observer of the politics, personalities, and issues of her day. Louisa left behind a trove of journals, essays, letters, and other writings, yet no biographer has mined these riches until now. Margery Heffron brings Louisa out of the shadows at last to offer the first full and nuanced portrait of an extraordinary first lady. The book begins with Louisa’s early life in London and Nantes, France, then details her excruciatingly awkward courtship and engagement to John Quincy, her famous diplomatic success in tsarist Russia, her life as a mother, years abroad as the wife of a distinguished diplomat, and finally the Washington, D. C. , era when, as a legendary hostess, she made no small contribution to her husband’s successful bid for the White House. Louisa’s sharp insights as a tireless recorder provide a fresh view of early American democratic society, presidential politics and elections, and indeed every important political and social issue of her time.¿Muerta?... ¡Pero de la risa!
By Maria Antonieta Collins. 2014
Con el candor de siempre y la honestidad y el humor que la definen, María Antonieta Collins relata cómo su…
carrera periodística se esfumó de repente pero regresó mejor que nunca. Escribe sobre el camino espiritual que la ayudo a superar una época oscura y como su fe la ayudó recuperar y mejorar su vida. Tanto los éxitos como los obstáculos en la vida tienen varias facetas - María Antonieta delinea paso a paso lo que debes hacer para maniobrar los retos tanto de tu vida personal como profesional, y vas descubriendo que los dos giran uno alrededor del otro.Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
By Sheila Weller. 2008
A groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly…
Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.A Plague of Sheep
By Elinor G. K. Melville. 1997
This is a book about the biological conquest of the New World. Taking as a case study the sixteenth-century history…
of a region of highland central Mexico, it shows how the environmental and social changes brought about by the introduction of Old World species aided European expansion. The book spells out in detail the environmental changes associated with the introduction of Old World grazing animals into New World ecosystems, demonstrates how these changes enabled the Spanish takeover of land, and explains how environmental changes shaped the colonial societies.Cheap Cabernet
By Cathie Beck. 2010
I didn't know that people come into our lives, and sometimes, if we're terribly lucky, we get the chance to…
love them, that sometimes they stay, that sometimes you can, truly, depend on them.Cathie Beck was in her late thirties and finally able to exhale after a lifetime of just trying to get by. A teenage mother harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, Cathie had spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability--or at least the illusion of it--that she'd never had. More than that, through sheer will and determination, she had educated them and herself too. With her kids in college, Cathie was at last ready to have some fun. The only problem was that she had no idea how to do it and no friends to do it with. So she put an ad in the paper for a made-up women's group: WOW . . . Women on the Way. Eight women showed up that first night, and out of that group a friendship formed, one of those meteoric, passionate, stand-by-you friendships that come around once in a lifetime and change you forever . . . if you're lucky.Coming Out Swiss
By Anne Herrmann. 2014
Anne Herrmann, a dual citizen born in New York to Swiss parents, offers in Coming Out Swiss a witty, profound,…
and ultimately universal exploration of identity and community. #147;Swissness”#151;even on its native soil a loose confederacy, divided by multiple languages, nationalities, religion, and alpen geography#151;becomes in the diaspora both nowhere (except in the minds of immigrants and their children) and everywhere, reflected in pervasive clichés. In a work that is part memoir, part history and travelogue, Herrmann explores all our Swiss clichés (chocolate, secret bank accounts, Heidi, Nazi gold, neutrality, mountains, Swiss Family Robinson) and also scrutinizes topics that may surprise (the #147;invention” of the Alps, the English Colony in Davos, Switzerland’s role during World War II, women students at the University of Zurich in the 1870s). She ponders, as well, marks of Swissness that have lost their identity in the diaspora (Sutter Home, Helvetica, Dadaism) and the enduring Swiss American community of New Glarus, Wisconsin. Coming Out Swiss will appeal not just to the Swiss diaspora but also to those drawn to multi-genre writing that blurs boundaries between the personal and the historical.A Mirror Garden: A Memoir
By Zara Houshmand, Monir Farmanfarmaian. 2007
In Persia in 1924, when a child still had to worry about hostile camels in the bazaar and a nanny…
might spin stories at her pillow until her eyes fell shut, the extraordinary and irresistible Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was born. From the enchanted basement storeroom where she played as a girl to the penthouse high above New York City where she would someday live, this is the delightful and inspiring story of her life as an artist, a wife and mother, a collector, and an Iranian. Here we see a mischievous girl become a spirited woman who defies tradition. Both a love story and a celebration of the warmth and elegance of Iranian culture, A Mirror Garden is a genuine fairy tale of an exuberant heroine who has never needed rescuing.From the Trade Paperback edition.Perfectly Miserable
By Sarah Payne Stuart. 2014
A wryly comic memoir that examines the pillars of New England WASP culture--class, history, family, money, envy, perfection, and, of…
course, real estate--through the lens of mothers and daughters. At eighteen, Sarah Payne Stuart fled her mother and all the other disapproving mothers of her too perfect hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, only to return years later when she had children of her own. Whether to defy the previous generation or finally earn their approval and enter their ranks, she hurled herself into upper-crust domesticity full throttle. In the twenty years Stuart spent back in her hometown--in a series of ever more magnificent houses in ever grander neighborhoods--she was forced to connect with the cultural tradition of guilt and flawed parenting of a long legacy of local, literary women from Emerson's wife, to Hawthorne's, to the most famous and imposing of them all, Louisa May Alcott's iconic, guilt-tripping Marmee. When Stuart's own mother dies, she realizes that there is no one left to approve or disapprove. And so, with her suddenly grown children fleeing as she herself once did, Stuart leaves her hometown for the final time, bidding good-bye to the cozy ideals invented for her by Louisa May Alcott so many years ago, which may or may not ever have been based in reality.Amazing Women: Inspirational Stories
By Charles Margerison. 2010
Who was the first woman to qualify as a doctor? Who is the only woman to have won two Nobel…
Prizes? Explore these and other amazing stories in Amazing Women. In this unique story collection from The Amazing People Club, the real lives of iconic women including Coco Chanel, Sojourner Truth, Maria Montessori, Eva Peron and Helen Keller come to life. Understand their real lives and challenges and be inspired by what they did and how they achieved it. This is a must-read for every woman seeking inspiration. Meet some of the world's most amazing women through BioViews. ~~~ A BioView- is a short biographical story, similar to an interview. These unique stories provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions to our world and can help you achieve your ambitions in your journey through life.Gathering Together
By Sami Lakomaki. 2014
Weaving Indian and Euro-American histories together in this groundbreaking book, Sami Lakomäki places the Shawnee people, and Native peoples in…
general, firmly at the center of American history. The book covers nearly three centuries, from the years leading up to the Shawnees' first European contacts to the post-Civil War era, and demonstrates vividly how the interactions between Natives and newcomers transformed the political realities and ideas of both groups. Examining Shawnee society and politics in new depth, and introducing not only charismatic warriors like Blue Jacket and Tecumseh but also other leaders and thinkers, Lakomäki explores the Shawnee people's debates and strategies for coping with colonial invasion. The author refutes the deep-seated notion that only European colonists created new nations in America, showing that the Shawnees, too, were engaged in nation building. With a sharpened focus on the creativity and power of Native political thought, Lakomäki provides an array of insights into Indian as well as American history.Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century
By Hilary Fraser. 2014
This book sets out to correct received accounts of the emergence of art history as a masculine field. It investigates…
the importance of female writers from Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake and George Eliot to Alice Meynell, Vernon Lee and Michael Field in developing a discourse of art notable for its complexity and cultural power, its increasing professionalism and reach, and its integration with other discourses of modernity. Proposing a more flexible and inclusive model of what constitutes art historical writing, including fiction, poetry and travel literature, this book offers a radically revisionist account of the genealogy of a discipline and a profession. It shows how women experienced forms of professional exclusion that, whilst detrimental to their careers, could be aesthetically formative; how working from the margins of established institutional structures gave women the freedom to be audaciously experimental in their writing about art in ways that resonate with modern readers.Malalai Joya has been called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan." At a constitutional assembly in Kabul in 2003, she stood…
up and denounced her country's powerful NATO-backed warlords. She was twenty-five years old. Two years later, she became the youngest person elected to Afghanistan's new Parliament. In 2007, she was suspended from Parliament for her persistent criticism of the warlords and drug barons and their cronies. She has survived four assassination attempts to date, is accompanied at all times by armed guards, and sleeps only in safe houses. Often compared to democratic leaders such as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, this extraordinary young woman was raised in the refugee camps of Iran and Pakistan. Inspired in part by her father's activism, Malalai became a teacher in secret girls' schools, holding classes in a series of basements. She hid her books under her burqa so the Taliban couldn't find them. She also helped establish a free medical clinic and orphanage in her impoverished home province of Farah. The endless wars of Afghanistan have created a generation of children without parents. Like so many others who have lost people they care about, Malalai lost one of her orphans when the girl's family members sold her into marriage. While many have talked about the serious plight of women in Afghanistan, Malalai Joya takes us inside the country and shows us the desperate dayto-day situations these remarkable people face at every turn. She recounts some of the many acts of rebellion that are helping to change the country -- the women who bravely take to the streets in peaceful protest against their oppression; the men who step forward and claim "I am her mahram," so the fundamentalists won't punish a woman for walking alone; and the families that give their basements as classrooms for female students. A controversial political figure in one of the most dangerous places on earth, Malalai Joya is a hero for our times, a young woman who refused to be silent, a young woman committed to making a difference in the world, no matter the cost.Split
By Lisa Michaels. 1998
In Split, Lisa Michaels offers a strikingly textured portrait of her days of communes and road trips, of antiwar protests…
and rallies --- and of what came after, for her parents and herself --- as the radicalism of the 1960s and '70s gave way to conservative times. As a young child, Michaels visited her father in prison, where he was serving a two-year sentence for his part in an antiwar protest. In the early '70s, she toured the country with her mother and stepfather in a customized mail truck, complete with oriental rugs and a wood stove, until the family settled in a small northern California town. Her father later moved to the Bay Area, where he worked in auto plants and served as a labor organizer. By the age of eight Michaels was a veteran leaflet-folder, and she consecrated her father's second marriage in a Berkeley park by reading from Quotations from Chairman Mao. Not surprisingly, Michaels grew up craving conformity --- giving her mother makeovers and arranging their secondhand furniture in inspired ways --- but she also came to share the values her parents held dear: independence, frankness, and unsparing self-examination. In the buttoned-up world of UCLA during the Reagan years, she went through a hippie revival phase, wearing batik dresses and Chairman Mao pins, a throwback amid the campus's Greek revivalists and young Republicans. Against that traditional backdrop her parents' longtime activism took on new meaning, and at twenty-two, much in the spirit of her upbringing, Michaels embarked on a trip through Asia. Observant, luminous, and wry, Split captures both the vulnerability and heady freedom of a counterculture childhood. It is a powerful blend of social reflection and personal reminiscence, a memoir that paints a clear-eyed and unforgettable picture of the ways in which the legacy of the '60s impacted one remarkable family.Sophia Tolstoy
By Alexandra Popoff. 2010
As Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. She was admired as the…
muse and literary assistant to one of the world’s most celebrated novelists. But when in later years Tolstoy became a towering public figure and founded a new brand of religion, she was scorned for her disagreements with him. And it is this version of Sophia—malicious, shrill, perennially at war with Tolstoy—that has gone down in the historical record. Drawing on newly available archival material, including Sophia’s unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage. This lively, well-researched biography demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, Sophia was remarkably supportive of Tolstoy and was, in fact, key to his fame. Gifted and versatile, Sophia assisted Tolstoy during the writing ofWar and PeaceandAnna Karenina. Having modeled his most memorable female characters on her, Tolstoy admired his wife’s boundless energy, which he called “the force of life. ” Sophia’s letters, never before translated, illuminate the couple’s true relationship and provide insights into Tolstoy’s creative laboratory. Although long portrayed as an elitist and hysterical countess, Sophia was in reality a practical, independent-minded, generous, and talented woman who shared Tolstoy’s important values and his capacity for work. Mother of thirteen, she participated in Tolstoy’s causes and managed all business a airs. Popoff describes in haunting detail the intrusion into their marriage by Tolstoy’s religious disciple Vladimir Chertkov, who controlled Tolstoy at the end of his life and led a smear campaign against Sophia, branding her evil and mad. She is still judged by Chertkov’s false accounts, which dismissed her valuable achievements and contributions. During his later religious phase, Tolstoy renounced his property and copyright, and Sophia had to become the breadwinner. She published Tolstoy’s collected works and supported their large family. Despite the pressures of her demanding life, she realized her own talents as a writer, photographer, translator, and aspiring artist This vigorous, engrossing biography presents in fascinating depth and detail the many ways in which Sophia Tolstoy enriched the life and work of one of the world’s most revered authors.