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The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America
By Christopher C. Gorham. 2023
Perfect for readers of A Woman of No Importance, Three Ordinary Girls, and Eleanor: A Life comes the first-ever biography…
of Anna Marie Rosenberg, the Hungarian Jewish immigrant who became FDR&’s closest advisor during World War II and, according to Life, &“the most important official woman in the world&”—a woman of many firsts, whose story, forgotten for too long, is extraordinary, inspiring, and uniquely American. Her life ran parallel to the front lines of history yet her influence on 20th century America, from the New Deal to the Cold War and beyond, has never before been told.A Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee "What The Confidante provides, with cinematic color and encyclopedic clarity, is a resurrection.&” —THE WALL STREET JOURNAL As Franklin Delano Roosevelt&’s special envoy to Europe in World War II she went where the president couldn&’t go. She was among the first Allied women to enter a liberated concentration camp, and stood in the Eagle&’s Nest, Hitler&’s mountain retreat, days after its capture. She guided the direction of the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Manhattan Project. Though Anna Rosenberg emerged from modest immigrant beginnings, equipped with only a high school education, she was the real power behind national policies critical to America winning the war and prospering afterward. Astonishingly, her story remains largely forgotten. With a disarming mix of charm and Tammany-hewn toughness, Rosenberg began her career in public relations in 1920s Manhattan. She became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, who recommended Anna to her husband, who was then running for Governor of New York. As FDR&’s unofficial adviser, Rosenberg soon wielded enormous influence—no less potent for being subtle. Roosevelt dubbed her &“my Mrs. Fix-It.&” Her extraordinary career continued after his death. By 1950, she was tapped to become the assistant secretary of defense—the highest position ever held by a woman in the US military—prompting Senator Joe McCarthy to wage an unsuccessful smear campaign against her. In 1962, she organized John F. Kennedy&’s infamous birthday gala, sitting beside him while Marilyn Monroe sang. Until the end of her life, Rosenberg fought tirelessly for causes from racial integration to women&’s equality to national health care. More than the story of one remarkable woman, The Confidante explores who gets to be at the forefront of history, and why. Though she was not quite a hidden figure, Rosenberg&’s position as &“the power behind,&” combined with her status as an immigrant and a Jewish woman, served to diminish her importance. In this inspiring, impeccably researched, and revelatory book, Christopher C. Gorham at last affords Anna Rosenberg the recognition she so richly deserves.&“Far and away the most important woman in the American government, and perhaps the most important official female in the world.&” —LIFE magazine, 1952The Contribution of Universities Towards Education for Sustainable Development (World Sustainability Series)
By Walter Leal Filho, Thais Dibbern, Salvador Ruiz de Maya, María-del-Carmen Alarcón-del-Amo, Longinos Marin Rives. 2024
The book gathers inputs from universities and research organizations working on matters related to sustainable development in a variety of…
contexts. It also provides a platform for the dissemination of information on the latest initiatives, paving the way for technology transfer and networking. Furthermore, the book intends to provide a fertile basis upon which universities may cooperate more closely in this key area. Universities, as centers of education, research, and innovation, have a unique position and responsibility in promoting sustainability. They can offer degree programs, courses, and workshops focused on sustainability, environmental studies, and related fields, educating students and the wider community about the principles and challenges of sustainability. Also, universities can conduct cutting-edge research to address sustainability challenges, such as climate change, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss. They can develop innovative technologies and solutions that promote sustainable practices in various sectors, including energy, agriculture, transportation, and urban planning. There is a perceived need to better understand and engage universities further on sustainability initiatives. Against this backdrop and in order to facilitate a broad discussion on the contribution of universities toward sustainability, this book is being produced.Last but not least, a further aim of the book is to present methodological approaches and experiences deriving from case studies and projects, which aim to show how sustainability may be incorporated as part of university programs.Life B: Overcoming Double Depression
By Bethanne Patrick. 2023
A bracing and fresh look at a lifelong struggle with depression and mental illnessPlagued by depression her entire life, it…
wasn&’t until her early fifties that writer and book critic Bethanne Patrick, advocating for her own care, received a medical diagnosis that would set her on the path to wellness and stability.Recognizing the intergenerational effects of trauma and mental health struggles, Patrick unearths the stories of her past in order to forge a better future for herself and her two daughters, dismantling the stigmas surrounding mental health challenges that can plague families into silence and resignation. Life B is an intimate portrait we haven&’t yet seen—of a lifelong struggle with depression, of midlife diagnosis and newly found strength. Most important, it&’s a life-affirming blueprint of how to accept and transcend the limitations of mental illness.Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir of Motherhood and Absence
By Beth Nguyen. 2023
Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily • Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book…
of 2023 &“This book…is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.&” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha&’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement.At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth&’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is &“a portrait of things left unsaid&” (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth&’s relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an &“unforgettable&” (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.**A New York Times Bestseller!** Based on the wildly popular Instagram account, Subpar Parks features both the greatest hits and…
brand-new content, all celebrating the incredible beauty and variety of America&’s national parks juxtaposed with the clueless and hilarious one-star reviews posted by visitors. Subpar Parks, both on the popular Instagram page and in this humorous, informative, and collectible book, combines two things that seem like they might not work together yet somehow harmonize perfectly: beautiful illustrations and informative, amusing text celebrating each national park paired with the one-star reviews disappointed tourists have left online. Millions of visitors each year enjoy Glacier National Park, but for one visitor, it was simply "Too cold for me!" Another saw the mind-boggling vistas of Bryce Canyon as "Too spiky!" Never mind the person who visited the thermal pools at Yellowstone National Park and left thinking, &“Save yourself some money, boil some water at home.&” Featuring more than 50 percent new material, the book will include more depth and insight into the most popular parks, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Acadia National Parks; anecdotes and tips from rangers; and much more about author Amber Share's personal love and connection to the outdoors. Equal parts humor and love for the national parks and the great outdoors, it's the perfect gift for anyone who loves to spend time outside as well as have a good read (and laugh) once they come indoors.Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya
By Charis Enns, Brock Bersaglio. 2024
Settler Ecologies tells the story of how settler colonialism becomes memorialized and lives on through ecological relations. Drawing on eight…
years of research in Laikipia, Kenya, Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio use immersive methods to reveal how animals and plants can be enrolled in the reproduction of settler colonialism. The book details how ecological relations have been unmade and remade to enable settler colonialism to endure as a structure in this part of Kenya. It describes five modes of violent ecological transformation used to prolong structures of settler colonialism: eliminating undesired wild species; rewilding landscapes with more desirable species to settler ecologists; selectively repeopling wilderness to create seemingly more inclusive wild spaces and capitalize on biocultural diversity; rescuing injured animals and species at risk of extinction to shore up moral support for settler ecologies; and extending settler ecologies through landscape approaches to conservation that scale wild spaces. Settler Ecologies serves as a cautionary tale for future conservation agendas in all settler colonies. While urgent action is needed to halt global biodiversity loss, this book underscores the need to continually question whether the types of nature being preserved advance settler colonial structures or create conditions in which ecologies can otherwise be (re)made and flourish.My Fishing Life: A Story of the Sea
By Ashley Mullenger. 2024
'A beautiful, heartfelt love letter to the sea, and a cherished industry. Ash is a force of nature, she's a…
testament to working hard and dreaming big' Dermot O'LearyAshley Mullenger had never planned to become a fisherman. A chance fishing trip - catching mackerel off the Norfolk coast - was the start of an obsession. One that resulted in a transformation from clean-cut office worker to commercial 'Fisherman of the Year', and proud working owner of two boats, Fairlass and Saoirse, alongside skipper Nigel.This is a memoir of that journey, a life swept up in tides and elements, strength of mind and body, of old ways and new struggles. It's about the bravery of crews, early mornings, weather-beaten characters and those that can sink pints as fast as they can haul pots. These coastal communities and age-old livelihoods are built on trust, courage and skill - but they are also fraying against politics, poverty and climate change. The reality of commercial fishing is rarely seen, but Ashley carries us across the waves and around the UK's waters in vivid detail to show what is really happening at sea to land the fish on our plates.My Fishing Life is both a rallying cry and a love letter, rinsed down with salty humour, to an industry often misunderstood. One woman's unique story of boat, skipper, sea and catch ultimately becomes a transformative view of a world that impacts deeply on us all.My Fishing Life: A Story of the Sea
By Ashley Mullenger. 2024
'A beautiful, heartfelt love letter to the sea, and a cherished industry. Ash is a force of nature, she's a…
testament to working hard and dreaming big' Dermot O'LearyAshley Mullenger had never planned to become a fisherman. A chance fishing trip - catching mackerel off the Norfolk coast - was the start of an obsession. One that resulted in a transformation from clean-cut office worker to commercial 'Fisherman of the Year', and proud working owner of two boats, Fairlass and Saoirse, alongside skipper Nigel.This is a memoir of that journey, a life swept up in tides and elements, strength of mind and body, of old ways and new struggles. It's about the bravery of crews, early mornings, weather-beaten characters and those that can sink pints as fast as they can haul pots. These coastal communities and age-old livelihoods are built on trust, courage and skill - but they are also fraying against politics, poverty and climate change. The reality of commercial fishing is rarely seen, but Ashley carries us across the waves and around the UK's waters in vivid detail to show what is really happening at sea to land the fish on our plates.My Fishing Life is both a rallying cry and a love letter, rinsed down with salty humour, to an industry often misunderstood. One woman's unique story of boat, skipper, sea and catch ultimately becomes a transformative view of a world that impacts deeply on us all.Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds
By Sophie A. Osborn. 2024
The story of one woman’s remarkable work with a trio of charismatic, endangered bird species—and her discoveries about the devastating…
threats that imperil them. In Feather Trails, wildlife biologist and birder Sophie A. H. Osborn reveals how the harmful environmental choices we’ve made—including pesticide use, the introduction of invasive species, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction—have decimated Peregrine Falcons, Hawaiian Crows, and California Condors. In the Rocky Mountains, the cloud forests of Hawai’i, and the Grand Canyon, Sophie and her colleagues work day-to-day to try to reintroduce these birds to the wild, even when it seems that the odds are steeply stacked against their survival. With humor and suspense, Feather Trails introduces us to the fascinating behaviors and unique personalities of Sophie’s avian charges and shows that what endangers them ultimately threatens all life on our planet. More than a deeply researched environmental investigation, Feather Trails is also a personal journey and human story, in which Sophie overcomes her own obstacles—among them heat exhaustion, poachers, rattlesnakes, and chauvinism. Ultimately, Feather Trails is an inspiring, poignant narrative about endangered birds and how our choices can help to ensure a future not only for the rarest species, but for us too. "An intimate look at the wonder and effort needed for working with endangered species in the wild. [Osborn's] matter-of-fact writing style and wry humor make the reader part of the action."—Booklist (starred review)Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala
By John Mathias. 2024
How can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? Uncommon…
Cause follows environmental justice activists in Kerala, India, as they seek out, avoid, or strive to overcome conflicts between their causes and their community ties. John Mathias finds two contrasting approaches, each offering distinct possibilities for an activist life. One set of activists repudiates community ties and resists normative pressures; for them, environmental justice becomes a way of transcending all local identities and affiliations, even humanity itself. Other activists seek to ground their activism in community belonging, to fight for their own people. Each approach produces its own dilemmas and offers its own insights into ethical tensions we all face between taking a stand and standing with others. In sharing Kerala activists’ diverse stories, Uncommon Cause offers a fresh perspective on environmental ethics, showing that environmentalism, even as it looks beyond merely human concerns, is still fundamentally about how we relate to other people.Both a history of fine jewelry coming out of Paris in the Golden Age and a tour through the secretive…
world of high-end, privately-sold jewelry, Diving for Starfish is a stylish detective story with a glittering piece of jewelry at its heart. In the mid 1930s, in the workroom of the famous Parisian jeweler Boivin, a young jewelry designer named Juliette Moutard created one of the most coveted pieces of jewelry in the world—the famous starfish pin—still sought after today by aficionados of fine jewelry. The starfish, created out of gold and encrusted with 71 cabochon rubies and 241 small amethysts, was distinctive because its five rays were articulated, meaning that they could curl and conform to the bustline or shoulder of the women who wore it. The House of Boivin made three of them. Two of the women who bought and wore the starfish were Claudette Colbert and Millicent Rogers. Obsessed with the pin after she saw it in the private showroom of a Manhattan jewelry merchant, Cherie Burns set off on a journey to find out all she could about the elusive pins and the women who owned them. Her search took her around the world to Paris, London, New York, and Hollywood. Diving for Starfish is the story of these marvelous pieces of jewelry and the equally dazzling women who loved them.Global Forest Visualization: From Green Marbles to Storyworlds (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
By Lynda Olman, Birgit Schneider. 2024
This book project examines global forest monitoring as a means to understand the promises and problems of global visualization for…
climate management.Specifically, the book focuses on Global Forest Watch, the most developed and widely available forest-monitoring platform, created in 1997 by the World Resource Institute. Forest maps are always political as they visualize power relations and form the grid within which forests become commodities. This dislocation of the idea of the forest from its literal roots in the ground has generated problems for forest visualization efforts designed to empower local communities. This book takes a critical humanistic approach to this problem, combining methods from the fields of rhetoric and media studies to suggest solutions to these problems for designers and users of platforms like the Global Forest Watch. To explain why global views of forests can be disempowering, the book relies on biopolitical and rhetorical theories of panopticism and how these views unfold a different violence on different regions of the Earth in relation to colonial history. Using this theoretical framework, the book explains the historical process by which forests came to be classified, quantified, and mapped on a global scale. Interviews with end-users of global forest visualization platforms reveal if and how these platforms support local action. Lastly, the book provides rhetorical solutions to articulate global and local views of forests without reducing one view to the other. These solutions involve looking to forests themselves for clues about how to generate more broadly effective and resilient visualizations.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of forest studies, climate change, science communication, visualization studies, environmental communication, and environmental conservation.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke
By Sallie Bingham. 2020
"Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie…
Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropistIn The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. “Don’t touch that girl, she’ll burn your fingers,” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke’s billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon’s Lair overlooking Beverly Hills. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy
By Wallis Wilde-Menozzi. 1997
A probing and poetic examination of language, food, faith, and family attachment in Italian life through the eyes of an…
American who moved to Parma with her husband and family. In the 1980s, the American writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi moved permanently with her Italian husband and her daughter to Parma, a sophisticated city in northern Italy, where he became a professor of biology. Her search for rootedness in the city that was to be her home introduced her to complexities in her identity as she migrated into another language and looked for links beyond the joys of Verdi, Correggio, and Parmesan cheese, which visitors have rightly extolled for centuries. The local resistance to change perceived as individualistic led Wilde-Menozzi to explore the pull and challenge of difference and discover the backbone she needed for artistic freedom. In Mother Tongue, Wilde-Menozzi offers stories of far-sighted lives, remarkable Parma men and remarkable women, including the Renaissance abbess Giovanna Piacenza, the fighting Donella Rossi Sanvitale, and her own indefatigable mother-in-law. Framed with a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Patricia Hampl, this classic on diversity and tolerance, family, faith, and food in Italy and the United States is at once timeless and timely, a “large, beautiful window into the intelligent, literate, reflective life of Italy” (Shirley Hazzard).Shakespeare, or, The Man Who Pays the Rent
By Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea. 2024
Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig... Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green... …
Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head... These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare. For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans. Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now. Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent. New York Times BestsellerWandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape
By Bill McKibben. 1998
"[McKibben is] a marvelous writer who has thought deeply about the environment, loves this part of the country, and knows…
how to be a first-class traveling companion."—Entertainment WeeklyIn Wandering Home, one of his most personal books, Bill McKibben invites readers to join him on a hike from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks. Here he reveals that the motivation for his impassioned environmental activism is not high-minded or abstract, but as tangible as the lakes and forests he explored in his twenties, the same woods where he lives with his family today.Over the course of his journey McKibben meets with old friends and kindred spirits, including activists, writers, organic farmers, a vintner, a beekeeper, and environmental studies students, all in touch with nature and committed to its preservation. For McKibben, there is no better place than these woods to work out a balance between the wild and the cultivated, the individual and the global community, and to discover the answers to the challenges facing our planet today.A Common Fate: Endangered Salmon and the People of the Pacific Northwest
By Joseph Cone. 1995
Though life on earth is the history of dynamic interactions between living things and their surroundings, certain powerful groups would…
have us believe that nature exists only for our convenience. One consequence of such thinking is the apparent fate of the Pacific salmon--a key resource and preeminent symbol of America's wildlife--which is today threatened with extinction. Drawing on abundant data from natural science, Pacific coast culture, and a long association with key individuals on all sides of the issue, Joseph Cone's A Common Fate employs a clear narrative voice to tell the human and natural history of an environmental crisis in its final chapter.As inevitable as the November rains, countless millions of wild salmon returned from the ocean to spawn in the streams of their birth. In the wake of an orgy of dam building and habitat destruction, the salmon's majestic abundance has been reduced to a fleeting shadow. Neglect is the word the author uses to describe more recent losses, "by exactly the ones--state and federal fish managers--who should have acted."To signal a new awareness that action is needed, scientists charged with restocking the Columbia River Basin are receiving significant support, while ordinary citizens are beginning to recognize the relationship between cheap power and the absences of chinook, coho, sockeye, and other species from the coasts of Oregon and Washington and from Idaho's Snake River. As desperate as the salmon's future appears, the book is not an elegy for a lost resource. Instead, it bears witness to hope. In addition to concrete plans for the wild salmon's renewal, the reader will hear a growing chorus of informed individuals of differing values and beliefs who recognize that our fate is inextricably bound to the salmon's; for many it is a new understanding.Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide
By Charles Foster. 2016
A passionate naturalist explores what it’s really like to be an animal—by living like themHow can we ever be sure…
that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds. A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals—human and other—Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.Forecast: The Surprising—and Immediate—Consequences of Climate Change
By Stephan Faris. 2009
A vivid and illuminating portrayal of the surprising ways that climate change will affect the world in the near future—politically,…
economically, and culturallyWhile reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and began to wonder what current and impending—and largely unanticipated—crises such changes have in store for the world. Forecast provides the answers.Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has already experienced its first climate-change epidemic of a tropical disease, and malaria is gaining ground in Africa. The warming world will shift huge populations and potentially redraw political alliances around the globe, driving environmentalists into the hands of anti-immigrant groups. America's coasts are already more difficult places to live as increasing insurance rates make the Gulf Coast and other gorgeous spots prohibitively expensive. Crops will fail in previously lush places and thrive in some formerly barren zones, altering huge industries and remaking traditions. Water scarcity in India and Pakistan have the potential to inflame the conflict in Kashmir to unprecedented levels and draw the United States into the troubles there, and elsewhere.Told through the narratives of current, past, and future events, the result of astonishingly wide travel and reporting, Forecast is a powerful, gracefully written, eye-opening account of this most urgent issue and how it has altered and will alter our world.Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, from Scout to Go Set a Watchman
By Charles J. Shields. 2006
An extensively revised and updated edition of the bestselling biography of Harper Lee, reframed from the perspective of the recent…
publication of Lee's Go Set a WatchmanTo Kill a Mockingbird—the twentieth century's most widely read American novel—has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. In this in-depth biography, first published in 2006, Charles J. Shields brings to life the woman who gave us two of American literature's most unforgettable characters, Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout.Years after its initial publication—with revisions throughout the book and a new epilogue—Shields finishes the story of Harper Lee's life, up to its end. There's her former agent getting her to transfer the copyright for To Kill a Mockingbird to him, the death of Lee's dear sister Alice, a fuller portrait of Lee’s editor, Tay Hohoff, and—most vitally—the release of Lee's long-buried first novel and the ensuing public devouring of what has truly become the book of the year, if not the decade: Lee's Go Set a Watchman.