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Two-Way Mirror: The Life Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
By Fiona Sampson. 2021
Finalist for the 2022 Plutarch Award Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A Washington Post Best Book…
of 2021 “An elegant act of rehabilitation.”—New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A "nuanced and insightful" (New Statesman) portrait of Britain’s most famous female poet, a woman who invented herself and defied her times. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention. Born in 1806, Barrett Browning lived in an age when women could not attend a university, own property after marriage, or vote. And yet she seized control of her private income, defied chronic illness and disability, became an advocate for the revolutionary Italy to which she eloped, and changed the course of cultural history. Her late-in-life verse novel masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, reveals both the brilliance and originality of her mind, as well as the challenges of being a woman writer in the Victorian era. A feminist icon, high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery, and international literary superstar, Barrett Browning inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Two-Way Mirror is the first biography of Barrett Browning in more than three decades. With unique access to the poet’s abundant correspondence, “astute, thoughtful, and wide-ranging guide” (Times [UK]) Fiona Sampson holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir (P. S. Ser.)
By Josh Kilmer-Purcell. 2006
“A glittering, bittersweet vision of an outsider who turned himself into the life and soul of the party. Kilmer-Purcell’s cast…
is part freak-show, part soap-opera, but his prose is graced with such insight and wit that the laughter is revelatory, and the tears—and there are tears to be shed along this extraordinary journey—are shed for people in whom everybody will find something of themselves. In a word, wonderful.” — Clive Barker“Absolutely hilarious and heartbreaking and heartfelt.” —Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the CityThe New York Times bestselling, darkly funny memoir of a young New Yorker's daring dual life—advertising art director by day, glitter-dripping drag queen and nightclub beauty-pageant hopeful by night—was a smash literary debut for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, now known for his popular Planet Green television series The Fabulous Beekman Boys. His story begins here—before the homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gathered honeys, before his memoir of the city mouse’s move to the country, The Bucolic Plague—in I Am Not Myself These Days, with “plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight” (Washington Post).The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America
By Jim Acosta. 2019
A New York Times bestseller.From CNN’s veteran Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers he faces…
reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth, featuring new material exclusive to the paperback edition. In Mr. Trump’s campaign against what he calls “Fake News,” CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, is public enemy number one. From the moment Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has attacked the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”Acosta presents a damning examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy. When the leader of the free world incites hate and violence, Acosta doesn’t back down, and he urges his fellow citizens to do the same.At Mr. Trump’s most hated network, CNN, Acosta offers a never-before-reported account of what it’s like to be the President’s most hated correspondent. Acosta goes head-to-head with the White House, even after Trump supporters have threatened his life with words as well as physical violence.From the hazy denials and accusations meant to discredit the Mueller investigation, to the president’s scurrilous tweets, Jim Acosta is in the eye of the storm while reporting live to millions of people across the world. After spending hundreds of hours with the revolving door of White House personnel, Acosta paints portraits of the personalities of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner and more. Acosta is tenacious and unyielding in his public battle to preserve the First Amendment and #RealNews.The Years with Ross
By James Thurber. 1957
From iconic American humorist James Thurber, a celebrated and poignant memoir about his years at The New Yorker with the…
magazine’s unforgettable founder and longtime editor, Harold Ross“Extremely entertaining. . . . life at The New Yorker emerges as a lovely sort of pageant of lunacy, of practical jokes, of feuds and foibles. It is an affectionate picture of scamps playing their games around a man who, for all his brusqueness, loved them, took care of them, pampered and scolded them like an irascible mother hen.” —New York TimesWith a foreword by Adam Gopnik and illustrations by James ThurberAt the helm of America’s most influential literary magazine from 1925 to 1951, Harold Ross introduced the country to a host of exciting talent, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Ogden Nash, Peter Arno, Charles Addams, and Dorothy Parker. But no one could have written about this irascible, eccentric genius more affectionately or more critically than James Thurber, whose portrait of Ross captures not only a complex literary giant but a historic friendship and a glorious era as well. "If you get Ross down on paper," warned Wolcott Gibbs to Thurber," nobody will ever believe it." But readers of this unforgettable memoir will find that they do.Offering a peek into the lives of two American literary giants and the New York literary scene at its heyday, The Years with Ross is a true classic, and a testament to the enduring influence of their genius.Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder
By Salman Rushdie. 2024
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company
By Michael S. Malone. 2014
Based on unprecedented access to the corporation’s archives, The Intel Trinity is the first full history of Intel Corporation—the essential…
company of the digital age— told through the lives of the three most important figures in the company’s history: Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove.Often hailed the “most important company in the world,” Intel remains, more than four decades after its inception, a defining company of the global digital economy. The legendary inventors of the microprocessor-the single most important product in the modern world-Intel today builds the tiny “engines” that power almost every intelligent electronic device on the planet.But the true story of Intel is the human story of the trio of geniuses behind it. Michael S. Malone reveals how each brought different things to Intel, and at different times. Noyce, the most respected high tech figure of his generation, brought credibility (and money) to the company’s founding; Moore made Intel the world’s technological leader; and Grove, has relentlessly driven the company to ever-higher levels of success and competitiveness. Without any one of these figures, Intel would never have achieved its historic success; with them, Intel made possible the personal computer, Internet, telecommunications, and the personal electronics revolutions.The Intel Trinity is not just the story of Intel’s legendary past; it also offers an analysis of the formidable challenges that lie ahead as the company struggles to maintain its dominance, its culture, and its legacy.With eight pages of black-and-white photos.Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir
By Agatha Christie Mallowan. 2012
Over the course of her long, prolific career, Agatha Christie gave the world a wealth of ingenious whodunits and page-turning…
locked-room mysteries featuring Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and a host of other unforgettable characters. She also gave us Come, Tell Me How You Live, a charming, fascinating, and wonderfully witty nonfiction account of her days on an archaeological dig in Syria with her husband, renowned archeologist Max Mallowan. Something completely different from arguably the best-selling author of all time, Come, Tell Me How You Live is an evocative journey to the fascinating Middle East of the 1930s that is sure to delight Dame Agatha’s millions of fans, as well as aficionados of Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody mysteries and eager armchair travelers everywhere.Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White
By Melissa Sweet. 2016
6 Starred Reviews! New York Times Bestseller! A People Magazine Best Children&’s Book! A Washington Post Best Book! A Publishers…
Weekly Best Book! Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Award Honor recipient Caldecott Honor winner Sweet mixes White&’s personal letters, photos, and family ephemera with her own exquisite artwork to tell the story of this American literary icon. Readers young and old will be fascinated and inspired by the journalist, New Yorker contributor, and children&’s book author who loved words his whole life. This authorized tribute, a New York Times bestseller, includes an afterword by Martha White, his granddaughter.To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before: A Joyous Journey Through All of Science
By Luke O'Neill. 2023
Science is a serious business, right? Wrong. Scientists have been participants in the best reality show of all time, with…
all the highs, lows, bust-ups, and strange personalities of any show on telly today. From Luke O'Neill - the science teacher you wish you'd had - this hugely accessible history of science reveals the human stories behind the biggest discoveries.For example, we meet Charles Darwin as he weighs up the pros and cons of marrying his cousin: 'constant companion' vs 'less money for books'. Tough call.To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before covers everything from space travel and evolution to alchemy and AI. Written by one of our leading scientists, this is an insider's account that celebrates the joy of science. It is filled with all the juicy bits that other histories leave out.A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria
By Caroline Crampton. 2024
Part cultural history, part literary criticism, and part memoir, A Body Made of Glass is a definitive biography of hypochondria.Caroline Crampton’s life was upended at…
the age of seventeen, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a relatively rare blood cancer. After years of invasive treatment, she was finally given the all clear. But being cured of the cancer didn’t mean she felt well. Instead, the fear lingered, and she found herself always on the alert, braced for signs that the illness had reemerged. Now, in A Body Made of Glass, Crampton has drawn from her own experiences with health anxiety to write a revelatory exploration of hypochondria—a condition that, though often suffered silently, is widespread and rising. She deftly weaves together history, memoir, and literary criticism to make sense of this invisible and underexplored sickness. From the earliest medical case of Hippocrates to the literary accounts of sufferers like Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust to the modern perils of internet self-diagnosis, Crampton unspools this topic to reveal the far-reaching impact of health anxiety on our physical, mental, and emotional health.At its heart, Crampton explains, hypochondria is a yearning for knowledge. It is a never-ending attempt to replace the edgeless terror of uncertainty with the comforting solidity of a definitive explanation. Through intimate personal stories and compelling cultural perspectives, A Body Made of Glass brings this uniquely ephemeral condition into much-needed focus for the first time.Frail Riffs: The Rules of the Game, Volume 4 (The Margellos World Republic of Letters #4)
By Michel Leiris. 2024
The fourth and final volume of Michel Leiris’s renowned autobiography, now available in English for the first time, translated by…
Richard Sieburth Ex-surrealist and maverick anthropologist Michel Leiris (1901–1990) crafted his multivolume autobiography over the course of thirty-five years, profoundly influencing generations of French writers, from Sartre and Beauvoir to Modiano and Ernaux. In this fourth and final volume, Richard Sieburth completes the project of bringing Leiris’s monumental experiment in self-portraiture into English. With wit and playfulness, Leiris assembled a scrapbook of fragments—journal extracts, travel notes, transcriptions of dreams, poems—to document the vagaries of a life committed to the difficult marriage of poetry and revolutionary politics, which he witnessed firsthand in Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, and on the Paris streets in May ’68. Frail Riffs is a jazz improvisation on the twilight of a life, at once a painstaking self-examination and a chronicle of a century. As Leiris wrote, it is "neither a private diary nor a formal work, neither an autobiographical narrative nor a work of the imagination, neither prose nor poetry, but all this at the same time. . . . A perpetual work in progress.&rdquo'This book should rock Whitehall to its foundations.' - Andy Burnham'This is crusading journalism at its best.' - Lord OwenIn…
the 1970s and 1980s almost 5,000 people in the UK contracted HIV or hepatitis C after being infected by contaminated NHS blood products, including the notorious Factor VIII, yet no organisation or individual has ever been held to account. So far, more than 2,800 are known to have died, while tens of thousands more lives have been destroyed in the families of those affected.Caroline Wheeler has been reporting on this scandal - the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS - for over two decades. She has been integral to the campaign for justice for the victims and their families, and played a pivotal role in persuading Prime Minister Theresa May to agree to the infected blood inquiry in 2019, the findings of which are expected to be published in late 2023.Death in the Blood will be based on thousands of government documents, court and inquiry transcripts, plus interviews with prime ministers, cabinet ministers, Downing Street advisers, senior civil servants, doctors, and above all the victims and their families whose personal testimony forms the beating heart of this book.All Aboard!: Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine (Great Idea Series #2)
By Monica Kulling. 2010
In the second of Tundra's Great Idea series, biographies for children who are just starting to read, Monica Kulling presents…
the life of an extraordinary man.There were few opportunities for the son of slaves, but Elijah McCoy's dreams led him to study mechanical engineering in Scotland. He learned everything there was to know about engines - how to design them and how to build them. But when he returned to the United States to look for work at the Michigan Central Railroad, the only job Elijah could get was shoveling coal into a train's firebox.Undaunted, he went on to invent a means of oiling the engine while the train was running, changing the face of travel around the world.With playful text and lively illustrations, All Aboard! Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine may be the first biography a child discovers, and it will whet the appetite for many more.The Stolen Light: Continents of Exile: 6 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1989
Book 6 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.The Stolen Light engages with the particular difficulties of Mehta's experience: he was blind in a college made for the seeing, he was an Indian in the United States, a Hindu in a Christian environment, a dark-skinned man surrounded by white people. With compelling honesty and humour, Mehta describes his struggles to live an ordinary university life - dating, riding a bicycle, keeping up with his studies - while dealing with incredible obstacles.Stephen Hawking: A Life Well Lived
By Kitty Ferguson. 2016
In 1963 Stephen Hawking was given two years to live. Defying all the odds, he died in March 2018 at…
age seventy-six as the most celebrated scientist in the world. This carefully researched and updated biography and tribute gives a rich picture of Hawking's remarkable life - his childhood, the heart-rending beginning of his struggle with motor neurone disease, his ever-increasing international fame, and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe. From more recent years, Kitty Ferguson describes his inspiring leadership at the London Paralympic Games, the release of the film The Theory of Everything, his continuing work on black holes and the origin of the universe, the discovery of 'supertranslations', and the astounding 'Starshot' program. Here also are his intense concern for the future of the Earth and his use of his celebrity to fight for environmental and humanitarian causes, and, finally, a ground-breaking paper he was working on at the time of his death, in which he took issue with some of his own earlier theories. Throughout, Ferguson summarizes and explains the cutting-edge science in which Hawking was engaged and offers vivid first-hand descriptions of his funeral in Cambridge and the interment of his ashes in Westminster Abbey. This is an amazing and revealing tribute, assessing Hawking's legacy in and out of science.Book 5 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.In 1949, fifteen-year-old Ved Mehta -- blind since the age of four -- left his native India and travelled alone to a school for the blind in Arkansas, USA. For the next three years he studied with over a hundred blind or partially sighted children at the school. Here, he would learn how to deal with Western teachers, date girls, and begin to perceive objects by means of 'sound-shadows'. Sound-Shadows of the New World brilliantly traces the emigrant experience amid the difficult transition from adolescence into adulthood.So Much To Tell
By Valerie Grove. 2010
Kaye Webb, a journalist with no publishing experience, burst into the world of children's books in 1961 and changed the…
face of children's publishing forever. Her child-like enthusiasm and shrewd business mind led her to become Puffin's most successful editor and the genius behind the Puffin Club, which opened up the exciting world of authors and books to children across Britain. But whilst Kaye's professional life had worked out beautifully, her private life had been the reverse. Kaye had two husbands before her marriage to the artist Ronald Searle, and the torment of his sudden and shocking departure never left her.Yet to the outside world Kaye Webb remained passionate and unstoppable. This is the unknown story of the woman who brought the joy of books to children everywhere whilst battling the emotional pain that plagued her private life.Sheepwrecked
By Jackie Ellis. 2013
This journey through the changing seasons at Rowfoot Farm - tupping time in the autumn, winters as wet, bleak and…
cold here in Cumbria as elsewhere, lambing and the glories of spring, a bucolic, bee-filled Eden Valley summer with its many shows and fairs - will reveal much that you need to know about the countryside, its quirky customs and ways, and most likely a great deal that you don't. They no longer burn witches (not because they're lily-livered, it's just that getting the necessary timber from sustainable forests is a real chore). You'll find nothing here about welly-wanging either. Jackie doesn't wang her wellies, she just gets them muddy. You won't need to, of course, as this book will ensure you experience rural life vicariously and very cleanly.Along the way, Jackie bumps into friends old and new, peeps back over her shoulder every now and then to recall times past, oh and it wouldn't be her if she didn't have the occasional impassioned rant or take the odd pop at the establishment, but rest assured she's quite gentle with them. So join Jackie (and Katie the Lurcher, Blossom the Cob and Rowfoot's many other residents, four- and two-legged) as she recounts the occasional pitfall and many pleasures of running a small farm in one of the most beautiful parts of England.Shades Of Green: A (mostly) practical A-Z for the reluctant environmentalist
By Paul Waddington. 2010
Few of us have what it takes to go 'all the way' on the green scale. Yet as fears about…
the food chain, climate change, plummeting biodiversity and the sustainability of our current lifestyles take hold, wouldn't it be good to be clear about our range of options?Whether you are pondering bicycles or baths, holidays or heating, pets or pasta, washing dishes or wine, Shades of Green is the book for you. It's an easy-to-use, A-Z guide which sets out your choices on a scale from 'completely green' to 'not even a little bit green'. No preaching. No finger-wagging.Whether you're an eco-warrior or a planet-trasher or, like most of us, something in between, Shades of Green will give you all you need to know so you can choose what suits you best. This is essential and often surprising reading.Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
By Elizabeth Winkler. 2023
An &“extraordinarily brilliant&” and &“pleasurably naughty&” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare…
wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard&’s biography is a &“black hole,&” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) &“immoral.&” In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo. Whisking you from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries. As she considers the writers and thinkers—from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices—who have grappled with the riddle of the plays&’ origins, she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. A forgotten woman? A disgraced aristocrat? A government spy? Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare&’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem. As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler&’s interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth—and of how human imperfections (bias, blindness, subjectivity) shape our construction of the past. History is a story, and the story we find may depend on the story we&’re looking for. &“Lively&” (The Washington Post), &“fascinating&” (Amanda Foreman), and &“intrepid&” (Stacy Schiff), Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare…and of how we as a society decide what&’s up for debate and what&’s just nonsense, just heresy.