Biographies & Memoirs - Books

Summary of Joseph Campbell's The Heros Journey

Biographies & Memoirs

Get the Summary of Joseph Campbell's The Heros Journey in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" delves into his lifelong exploration of mythology, influenced by his Irish heritage, early mentorship, and academic pursuits. He emphasizes the cyclical nature of life, the importance of aligning with nature, and the role of sacred places. Campbell discusses symbols and mythic motifs that connect humanity to the earth and the unconscious...

Diamonds and Deadlines

Biographies & Memoirs

Betsy Prioleau’s biography of Gilded Age female tycoon Miriam Leslie is “an appropriately twisty tale of someone trying to outrun her origins. . . . Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for” (New York Times Book Review). Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt—is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal: she flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both during and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth. Diamonds and Deadlines reveals the previously unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: she left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage—a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In this dazzling biography, cultural historian Betsy Prioleau draws from diaries, genealogies, and published works to provide an intimate look at the life of one of the Gilded Age’s most complex, powerful women and unexpected feminist icons. Ultimately, Diamonds and Deadlines restores Mrs. Frank Leslie to her rightful place in history as a monumental businesswoman who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic, and vivid epochs in American history. Includes Black-and-White Images

I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself

Biographies & Memoirs

“A delight, the literary equivalent of a long catch-up with a brilliant friend.” —New York Times“One of the most talked-about books of the year.” —Gayle KingWhen you’re a woman of a certain age, you are only promised that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie?Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.In the spirit of Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy (think Colette . . . if she’d had access to dating apps), I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.Here’s the proof.

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

Biographies & Memoirs

In this third self-contained volume of her autobiography, which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou moves into the adult world, and the white world as well, as she marries, enters show business, and tours Europe and Africa in Porgy and Bess.As the book opens, Maya, in order to support herself and her young son, gets a job in a record shop run by a white woman. Suspicious of almost any kindness shown her, she is particularly confused by the special attentions of a young white customer. Soon the relationship grows into love and then marriage, and Maya believes a permanent relationship is finally possible. But it is not to be, and she is again forced to look for work.This time she finds a job as a dancer in a sleazy San Francisco bar. Her remarkable talent, however, soon brings her attention of a different kind, and before long she is singing in one of the most popular nightclubs on the coast. From there, she is called to New York to join the cast of Porgy and Bess, which is just about to begin another tour abroad.The troupe’s joyous and dramatic adventure through Italy, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt becomes the centerpiece of Singin’ and Swingin’. This remarkable portrayal of one of the most exciting and talented casts ever put together, and of the encounters between these larger-than-life personalities and audiences who had rarely seen black people before, makes a hilarious and poignant story. The excitement of the journey—full of camaraderie, love affairs, and memorable personalities—is dampened only by Maya's nagging guilt that she has once again abandoned the person she loves most in life, her son.Back home, and driven close to suicide by her guilt and concern, she takes her son with her to Hawaii, where she discovers that devotion and love, in spite of forced absence, have the power to heal and sustain.As always, Maya Angelou’s writing is charged with that remarkable sense of life and love and unique celebration of the human condition that have won her such a loyal following.

Caravaggio

Biographies & Memoirs

“Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both.” — Boston Sunday GlobeIn Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, made him an artist who speaks across the centuries to modern day.Called “racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable” by the New York Times Book Review, Caravaggio includes eight pages of color illustrations, and is sure to appeal to art enthusiasts interested in one of history’s true innovators. Caravaggio is part of the “Eminent Lives” series from HarperCollins, a selection of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Biographies & Memoirs

The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated.Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand.Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March.But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heavenends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.

With Bare Hands

Biographies & Memoirs

Alain Robert spent his youth on the unforgiving cliffs of southern France, climbing with his bare hands, with no ropes for protection. In 1982 he fell head-first onto solid rock, suffering a five-day coma and multiple fractures. He was told he would never climb again. But this didn't stop him. In 1994, he climbed his first skyscraper, in Chicago ? and the 'Human Spider' was born. Warning: this gripping autobiography may induce serious vertigo.

Lebensgeschichten & Lebensweisheiten der größten Herrscher

Biographies & Memoirs

Die Anthologie ‚Lebensgeschichten & Lebensweisheiten der größten Herrscher‘ entführt den Leser in die faszinierende Welt historischer Führungsfiguren und ihrer bewegenden Lebenswege. Durch eine fesselnde Mischung aus biographischen Skizzen und tiefsinnigen Betrachtungen vereint diese Sammlung eine Vielzahl literarischer Stile und Epochen, von antiken Philosophiestücken bis hin zu modernen literarischen Essays. Stücke wie jene von Marc Aurel verknüpfen stoische Maximen mit dem pragmatischen Ideal eines Philosophen-Kaisers, während Stefan Zweigs Erzählkunst die Menschlichkeit in den Entscheidungen historischer Führer offenlegt. Die versammelten Autoren und Herausgeber, darunter Historiker wie Johann Gustav Droysen und Leopold von Ranke, bieten durch ihre tiefgründigen Analysen und Erzählungen einen umfassenden Einblick in die historischen und kulturellen Kontexte der abgebildeten Herrscher. Diese geschichtlichen und literarischen Werke spiegeln die Vielseitigkeit und Komplexität der Epochen wider, in denen sie entstanden sind. Autoren wie Karel Čapek und Max Nordau erweitern das Verständnis durch ihre kritischen Betrachtungen gesellschaftspolitischer Entwicklungen. Dadurch wird eine Brücke zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart geschlagen, die es dem Leser ermöglicht, die Auswirkungen historischer Entscheidungen auf heutige gesellschaftliche Strukturen zu reflektieren. Für den Leser stellt dieses Buch eine einzigartige Gelegenheit dar, in die unterschiedlichen Lebensphilosophien und Regierungsstile der porträtierten Persönlichkeiten einzutauchen und dabei die Bandbreite kultureller und intellektueller Hintergründe zu entdecken. Es lädt dazu ein, sich auf die inspirierende Reise dieser Herrscher einzulassen und aus ihren Lebensgeschichten vielfältige Erkenntnisse und Weisheiten zu schöpfen. Diese Anthologie ist ein wertvolles Kompendium für jeden, der sich für historische, philosophische und literarische Entdeckungen begeistert, und bietet einen fundierten Dialog zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, der zu neuen Einsichten und Reflexionen anregt.

The Garner Files

Biographies & Memoirs

Told in the charming and self-deprecating style that has made him one of America’s most beloved celebrities—the real story behind Hollywood legend James Garner, from his Depression-era childhood to his colorful career.His incredible story, in his own words. One of Hollywood’s all-time great leading men, James Garner enjoyed a remarkable career spanning six decades, and whether you know him as Bret Maverick or Jim Rockford, his appeal bridges generations. Few know the real story, now told in this intimate memoir of growing up in Depression-era Oklahoma and triumphing in Hollywood. After physical abuse at the hands of his stepmother, Garner left home at fourteen. He was Oklahoma’s first draftee of the Korean War, receiving two Purple Hearts for combat wounds. Back in Los Angeles in need of a job, Garner reluctantly tried acting and was surprised to find his career taking off. Working with such luminaries as Julie Andrews, Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood, he became a star in his own right. He threw himself into his work, and despite stage fright and bouts of depression, constant physical pain and epic battles with the Hollywood establishment, he became the acting equivalent of a national monument. Written with Jon Winokur, The Garner Files is a wry, engaging self-portrait chronicling the vagaries of a screen career along with the cast of personal and professional characters that helped shape a great American life.

An Honest Woman

Biographies & Memoirs

Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a “rigorous and compulsively readable memoir” (New York magazine) exploring what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society.“A memoir of sex work that is also a poignant love story” —The Washington PostIn her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results.Shane uses her “unsparing honestly” (The New York Times Book Review) and her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at a romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.”Braiding the personal and the universal, An Honest Woman is a merciless and moving love letter to men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

Biographies & Memoirs

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first published in 1789, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. The book describes Equiano's time spent in slavery, and documents his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual conversion to Christianity.Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) also known as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African involved in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade. He was enslaved as a child, purchased his freedom, and worked as an author, merchant, and explorer in South America, the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, and the United Kingdom, where he settled by 1792. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, depicts the horrors of slavery and influenced the enactment of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

One Hundred Autobiographies

Biographies & Memoirs

In One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery.This "fake memoir," as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. Dostoyevsky shows up, as does Graham Greene. Keith Richards and Patti Hansen put in an appearance, Edith Piaf sings, Clint Eastwood saves the neighborhood, and the Rat Pack comes along for the ride. These and other avatars of popular culture help Lehman to make sense of his own mortality and life story. One Hundred Autobiographies reveals a stunning portrait of a mind against the ropes, facing its own extinction, surviving and enduring.

The Lenin Scenario

Biographies & Memoirs

The revolutionary world leader’s extraordinary life, published for the centenary of Lenin’s deathCommissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015 to commemorate the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali’s captivating screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin puts flesh on the bones of the historical record and gets its pulse racing. From the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, the drama captures the enigma of its central character. Ali shows Lenin in his rush from Switzerland to Petrograd by train to grasp his moment in history and the force of his personality on the tumult he found there. He made a revolution and remade a nation. Interwoven with the politics is an exploration of Lenin’s personal life, especially his love for Inessa Armand.In the introduction, Ali argues that, despite the difficulties, a serious cinematic assessment of Lenin is still needed. Unfortunately, two very different attempts to film one failed. This first draft provides the basis for something on a grander scale at some stage in the future.Praise for The Dilemmas of Lenin ‘Aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and Soviet hag- iography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his political thought’ David Sessions, Nation‘An incredibly powerful, panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure of the twentieth century’ Paul LeBlanc, author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party

Walter Benjamin's Archive

Biographies & Memoirs

An absorbing selection of Walter Benjamin’s personal manuscripts, images, and documents The work of the great literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin is an audacious plotting of history, art, and thought; a reservoir of texts, commentaries, scraps, and fragments of everyday life, art, and dreams. Throughout his life, Benjamin gathered together all kinds of artifacts, assortments of images, texts, and signs, themselves representing experiences, ideas, and hopes, each of which was enthusiastically logged, systematized, and analyzed by their author. In this way, Benjamin laid the groundwork for the salvaging of his own legacy. Intricate and intimate, Walter Benjamin’s Archive leads readers to the heart of his intellectual world, yielding a rich and detailed portrait of its author.

Won by Love

Biographies & Memoirs

In Roe v. Wade, perhaps the most controversial United States Supreme Court decision, Norma McCorvey fought for and won the right to secure an abortion. Though she never had an abortion, under the pseudonym "Jane Roe," Norma reluctantly became the poster child for the pro-choice movement.Over the next two decades, Norma experienced the grief and despair of millions of women who chose to abort their babies; she witnessed the destruction of thousands of human lives in abortion clinics where she worked; and the "champion" of the pro-choice movement was soon being crushed by the weight of so much pain, so much death, and so many ill-considered "choices."Finally, she began to break. She found out that the real choice she had been burdened with was not about abortion but about eternal life. It was a choice that would shock the world and change Norma's life forever.

Life, Explorations and Public Services of John Charles Fremont

Biographies & Memoirs

This illustration volume describes the life of John Frémont, who was the first governor of Arizona as well as the first republican candidate for U.S. President who was openly against slavery. This book was created from a scan of the original artifact, and as such the text of the book is not selectable or searchable.

The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.

Biographies & Memoirs

An electrifying cultural biography of the greatest and last American rock band of the millennium, whose music ignited a generation—and reasserted the power of rock and roll"[Carlin's] unique gift for capturing the sweep and tenor of a cultural moment...is here on brilliant display." —Michael ChabonIn the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world – with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R.E.M.’s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s, R.E.M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound.In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends – Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry – who stuck together at any cost, until the end. Deeply descriptive and remarkably poetic, steeped in 80s and 90s nostalgia, The Name of This Band is R.E.M. paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of a great music era, and the story of the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock.

Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised

Biographies & Memoirs

From iconic NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony comes a New York Times bestselling memoir about growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and Baltimore—a brutal world Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised.For a long time, Carmelo Anthony’s world wasn’t any larger than the view of the hoopers and hustlers he watched from the side window of his family’s first-floor project apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He couldn’t dream any bigger than emulating his older brothers and cousin, much less going on to become a basketball champion on the world stage.He faced palpable dangers growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and West Baltimore’s Murphy Homes (a.k.a. Murder Homes, subject of HBO’s The Wire). He navigated an education system that ignored, exploited, or ostracized him. He suffered the untimely deaths of his closely held loved ones. He struggled to survive physically and emotionally. But with the strength of family and the guidance of key mentors on the streets and on the court, he pushed past lethal odds to endure and thrive.By the time Carmelo found himself at the NBA Draft at Madison Square Garden in 2003 preparing to embark on his legendary career, he wondered: How did a kid who’d had so many hopes, dreams, and expectations beaten out of him by a world of violence, poverty, and racism make it here at all?Carmelo’s story is one of strength and determination; of dribbling past players bigger and tougher than him, while also weaving around vial caps and needles strewn across the court; where dealers and junkies lined one side of the asphalt and kids playing jacks and Double Dutch lined the other; where rims had no nets, and you better not call a foul—a place Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised.

Uma mulher sem importância

Biographies & Memoirs

A vida cinematográfica da maior espiã da Segunda Guerra Mundial Em 1942, a Gestapo, polícia secreta nazista, enviou uma mensagem urgente: "Ela é a mais perigosa de todos os espiões aliados. Devemos encontrá-la e destruí-la." O alvo era Virginia Hall, uma socialite americana que se transformou em espiã do Ministério da Guerra britânico e, posteriormente, dos Estados Unidos. Chamada pelos alemães de "a dama que manca", Virginia, que possuía uma prótese de madeira na perna esquerda, nunca foi capturada por eles. Para enganá-los, usava maquiagem, peruca e outros subterfúgios tipicamente femininos. Uma mulher sem importância conta a história dessa que foi a mulher civil mais condecorada no final da Segunda Guerra Mundial. E com a razão: ela treinou células de resistência que realizaram sabotagem de guerrilha como explodir pontes e até mesmo descarrilar um trem de carga. Hall também ajudou a preparar o terreno para que as forças aliadas invadissem a Normandia e a Provença. Segundo estimativas, ela e sua equipe capturaram quinhentos oficiais alemães e mataram outros 150. Além de ter estabelecido uma vasta rede de espionagem em toda a França, Virginia Hall também convenceu oficiais britânicos e militares a enviar outras mulheres como espiãs durante a guerra. Até hoje, a CIA usa táticas de espionagem desenvolvidas por ela.

Life of Robert Burns

Biographies & Memoirs

Thomas Carlyle (4 Dec 1795 – 5 Feb 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and satirical writer, known for works like Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the Great Man". The Life of Robert Burns is a biographical work on life of famous Scottish poet, Robbie Burns, by Thomas Carlyle. This volume is not just a compilation of known fact about Burns, but also a vivid, detailed and sincere portrait of a great author, made by a fellow writer. The life of Robert Burns is proof that reality can be much more sophisticated than any fiction.

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