Biographies & Memoirs - Books

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Biographies & Memoirs

Benjamin Franklin is a man who needs little introduction. He wore many hats over the course of his fascinating life, from that of a printer, to an inventor, to a scientist, to a politician, a founding father and statesman, and even a postmaster-general. He was famous for all of these things in his day, but he was also famed for his keen insight into people and human nature, and his sparkling talent as a conversationalist.Despite his accomplishments, Franklin seemed to keep a down-to-earth demeanor, favoring home-spun sayings and simple, direct, honest prose—the kind of prose that shines in this autobiography.The autobiography itself has a long and complex publication history. Franklin composed it in fits and spurts between 1771 and 1790, and never had a chance to complete it, let alone publish it, in his lifetime. It was first published as a poor French translation of an unrevised edition of the manuscript, and then as a heavily-editorialized and inaccurate English edition by Franklin’s son, William Temple Franklin. In 1868 John Bigelow purchased the original copy of the autobiography and published the first accurate edition, which is what subsequent publications, including this one, are based on.Though incomplete, this autobiography is a highly readable and fascinating insight into the legendary life of the man some people call the “First American.”

CHER. Die Autobiografie, Teil eins

Biographies & Memoirs

Das außergewöhnliche Leben von CHER kann nur von einer Person erzählt werden ... Von Cher selbstCHER – DIE ERSTE UND EINZIGE AUTOBIOGRAFIE DER IKONE DER POPKULTURSeit über siebzig Jahren kämpft Cher dafür, ihr Leben nach ihren eigenen Vorstellungen zu leben. In ihrer zweiteiligen Autobiografie enthüllt sie nun endlich die wahre Geschichte ihres Lebens.Ihre Karriere ist einzigartig und unvergleichlich: Cher ist die einzige Frau, die in sieben aufeinanderfolgenden Jahrzehnten die Billboard-Charts anführte. Sie hat einen Academy Award, einen Emmy, einen Grammy und einen Cannes Film Festival Award gewonnen, sie wurde in die Rock and Roll Hall of Fame aufgenommen und vom Kennedy Center geehrt.Sie ist langjährige Aktivistin und Philanthropin, Vorbild und Ikone.Als legasthenisches Kind träumte sie davon, berühmt zu werden. Sie wuchs in oft instabilen Verhältnissen auf, umgeben von Sängern und Schauspielerinnen und einer Mutter, die sie trotz des schwierigen Verhältnisses, das sie miteiander hatten, inspirierte und beeinflusste. Mit der ihr eigenen Komik und Ehrlichkeit erzählt Cher in CHER. Die Autobiografie, wie ein ungeschliffener Rohdiamant ohne Plan und großes Selbstvertrauen zu dem bahnbrechenden Superstar werden konnte, an dem für Welt seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert kein Weg vorbei führt.Der erste Teil handelt von ihren ungewöhnlichen Anfängen: von ihrer Kindheit und Jugend bis zur Begegnung und Heirat mit Sonny Bono – und von ihrer ziemlich komplizierten Beziehung, die die beiden weltberühmt machte, sie aber schließlich auseinandertrieb.CHER. Die Autobiografie zeigt uns Cher als die Tochter, die Schwester, die Ehefrau, die Geliebte, die Mutter und den Superstar.

Ten Years' Exile

Biographies & Memoirs

This is the powerful memoir of Germaine de Staël, the most politically outspoken woman of the Napoleonic era. During the French Revolution, Mme. de Staël's salon was visited by the most brilliant politicians and intellectuals. Staël herself helped to introduce Napoleon to French society, yet like other liberals, she soon opposed the politic of Buonaparte. He, in turn, banished her from Paris in 1803. During the Russian campaign, Staël was forced to flee through Austria, Poland, Russian, and Britain. Her memoirs of these times are full of dangerous situations and penetrating insights into the Napoleonic society. As a well-read intellectual and a friend of Talleyrand, Schiller, and Goethe, she draws the reader with the depth of thought and the delicacy of literary style.

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800

Biographies & Memoirs

Written over the course of four decades, Francois-ReneÅL de Chateaubriand’s epic autobiography has drawn the admiration of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Proust, Roland Barthes, Paul Auster, and W. G. Sebald. In this unabridged section of the Memoirs, spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygone world of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beaches of Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg, hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried on pikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia, and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to France after eight years of exile in England. In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer of great wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaning of history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy and memorable gloom.

American Century

Biographies & Memoirs

American Century Roots in Texas A Narrative and Photographic Memoir by Malcolm Harris Malcolm Harris, a native of Austin, Texas, has prepared a remarkable historical memoir and photographic record of a lifetime that covers a greater part of the 20th Century now well into the 21st. The book now available from Apple iBooks describes growing up in Austin and Wimberley, college years at the University of Texas, active duty at sea with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, a hugely successful career as a Texas trial lawyer in Austin and El Paso, a rise to prominence as a Naval Intelligence Reserve officer, and the management and preservation of beautiful properties in and around the Texas Hill Country. Perhaps most amazing of all is the scope of the photographic record that actually extends to three centuries, 19th, 20th and 21st. Malcolm’s lifetime infatuation with the art and science of photography has allowed him to make and preserve a delightful photographic description not only of his own lifetime but extending to that of his Texas ancestors as well. The digital publication with Apple iBooks provides not only a revealing biographical narrative but also whole galleries of photography, many dozens of stunningly beautiful images, that Malcolm has prepared and preserved throughout his long life.

Unchiul Tungsten

Biographies & Memoirs

Cu mult înainte să devină un mare neurolog, Oliver Sacks era un băiețel fascinat de metale, reacții chimice, fotografie, radioactivitate, de poveștile lui H.G. Wells și, mai ales, de tabelul lui Mendeleev. În această fermecătoare carte de amintiri care îi completează memoriile (În mişcare. O viaţă, Humanitas, 2015), Sacks scrie povestea lui de dragoste cu știința și își evocă viața din copilărie în mijlocul unei numeroase familii, ale cărei personaje principale sunt o mamă chirurg, un tată medic de familie și, firește, unchiul Tungsten, fabricantul de becuri atotştiutor care i-a dezvăluit secretele chimiei. Acest volum nu conţine însă doar amintiri, ci şi o istorie a ştiinţei minunat de simplă şi clară – o istorie a chimiei şi fizicii aşa cum le-a descoperit şi le-a înţeles treptat mintea curioasă și pasionată a unui copil. „Viaţa mea s-a schimbat atunci când am văzut tabelul lui Mendeleev, când l-am «înţeles». L-am copiat în caietul meu de exerciţii şi l-am purtat cu mine peste tot; am ajuns să-l ştiu atât de bine – şi vizual, şi con-ceptual –, încât puteam să-l urmăresc mintal în orice direcţie, urcând într-o grupă, apoi cotind la dreapta într-o perioadă, oprindu-mă, coborând o treaptă, dar ştiind mereu unde mă aflu. Era ca o grădină, ca grădina numerelor pe care o îndrăgisem în copilărie – însă, spre deosebire de ea, era adevărată, era o cheie ce deschidea universul. Am petrecut ore întregi, fermecat, complet absorbit, hoinărind şi descoperind prin grădina fermecată a lui Mendeleev.“ (OLIVER SACKS)

Twilight of Camelot

Biographies & Memoirs

From the author of the “insightful and well-crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) Kennedy and King comes a heart-wrenching and sensitive examination of the tragic loss of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s premature son, Patrick, and how their shared grief brought them closer together in the months leading up to his assassination. In April 1963, President Kennedy and the First Lady announced the pregnancy of their third child—joyful news after years of miscarriages and the stillborn birth of a daughter in 1956. But on August 7th, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born six weeks premature and died less than two days later. In this probing, soulful account of the struggle to save Patrick, Steven Levingston takes us inside the long-troubled relationship of Jack and Jackie as they faced one of the most difficult experiences of their marriage. With a “perceptive and eloquent” (The Christian Science Monitor) voice, Levingston reveals how Patrick’s death, tragic as it was, ultimately brought the couple closer together and set the President on a trajectory to be a better husband and father in the months leading up to their fateful campaign trip to Dallas. For his definitive account of Patrick’s brief but influential life, Levingston draws on first-ever interviews with doctors who treated Jackie and Patrick, never-published revelations of the Secret Service agent in whose speeding car Jackie in-premature-labor nearly gave birth, and on new archival documents. Twilight of Camelot is a fresh and humanizing portrait of one of the most famous and complicated couples of the 20th century, and a pulsating drama that illuminates one of the least-known periods in Kennedy family history.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Biographies & Memoirs

Harriet Ann Jacob’s autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob’s slave narrative is notable for its appeal to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved for a time before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

Das Feuer (Autobiographischer Roman)

Biographies & Memoirs

Dieses eBook: "Das Feuer (Autobiographischer Roman)" ist mit einem detaillierten und dynamischen Inhaltsverzeichnis versehen und wurde sorgfältig korrekturgelesen. Das Feuer ist ein Roman des italienischen Schriftstellers Gabriele d'Annunzio. In diesem Buch verarbeitet er seine fünf Jahre andauernde Liebesbeziehung zu der Schauspielerin Eleonora Duse. Das Buch war ein großer Skandalerfolg in Italien, aber auch im übrigen Europa und Amerika. Zum Inhalt: Der junge Dichter Stelio Effrena (das Alter Ego des Autors) trifft in Venedig die berühmte und attraktive Schauspielerin Foscarina (das Alter Ego von Eleonora Duse). Es entwickelt sich eine dramatische Liebesgeschichte. Stelio erobert zunächst die Massen durch eine Preisrede zum Epiphanie-Fest des Feuers und anschließend die berühmte Schauspielerin Foscarina. Etwas später wird Stelio Zeuge eines Sturzes von Richard Wagner in einer Gondel und begleitet ihn nach Hause... Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) war ein italienischer Schriftsteller und Dichter des Fin de Siècle und spätromantischer Vertreter des Symbolismus. Er gilt als ein Ideengeber für den italienischen Faschismus und als einer der Mentoren Benito Mussolinis, ohne allerdings jemals bekennender Faschist oder Mitglied der Faschistischen Partei gewesen zu sein. Aus dem Buch: ""Wollen Sie mich berauschen?" - sagte er mit plötzlicher Heiterkeit. - "Das ist der Becher, den man denen reicht, die zum Tode geführt werden. Nun wohl, meine Freundin, ich gestehe Ihnen, mein Herz klopft ein wenig.""

Mes souvenirs

Biographies & Memoirs

BnF collection ebooks - "Je n'ai jamais rien été, je ne suis rien, et je ne serai jamais rien. Pourquoi alors, me demandera-t-on, raconter vos souvenirs ? Pourquoi ? Parce que, favorisé par le hasard, j'ai eu cette bonne fortune, depuis 1840, d'être toujours placé aux premières loges pour voir et entendre les comédies et les tragédies qui ont été jouées à Paris, et approcher de très près les grands comédiens qui ont tour à tour paru sur la scène."

Mick Jagger

Biographies & Memoirs

Mick Jagger es una biografía tan aguda como su protagonista, que explora la astuta, calculadora inteligencia que ha conseguido mantener a los Stones en el pedestal de «el mejor grupo de rock and roll del mundo» durante medio siglo.Mick Jagger, en sus cinco décadas al frente de los Rolling Stones, ha sido visto como la más arrogante y narcisista de las súper estrellas, con un apetito sexual y un comportamiento con las mujeres que rivalizaba con el del legendario Casanova, y cuyo imprudente –y presunto– consumo de drogas desencadenó el escándalo más famoso de la historia del rock and roll. Y en nuestros días, cuando ya es un abuelo de setenta años y Caballero del Imperio Británico, Jagger continúa siendo el modelo a seguir para todo joven cantante de rock. La magistral biografía de Philip Norman nos muestra al más notorio –y sin embargo enigmático–, de los iconos del rock, como alguien mucho más complejo que el frío e insaciable seductor de la mitología pop. Y nos cuenta por fin la historia verdadera de cómo Andrew Oldham, ese Svengali del pop, transformó a un tímido estudiante de economía en el moderno anticristo. O el papel heroico –y jamás publicitado– que desempeñó Jagger en el festival de Altamont, donde los alegres años sesenta encontraron un horrible final. O el desfile de hermosas mujeres, desde Chrissie Shrimpton hasta Jerry Hall, con las que se ha acostado pero no siempre dominado. Y la prolongada y creativa pero siempre tormentosa colaboración con Keith Richards, su «Glimmer Twin». Y también encontramos aquí el tardío reconocimiento de Jagger como compositor. Para Norman, «Simpathy for the Devil» es una de las pocas canciones épicas del pop. Y descubrimos que era un notable intérprete de armónica, a la altura de los grandes maestros del blues, que inspiraron a los Stones antes de que ellos encontraran en el dinero su principal fuente de «Satisfaction». Mick Jagger es una biografía tan aguda como su protagonista, que explora la astuta, calculadora inteligencia que ha conseguido mantener a los Stones en el pedestal de «el mejor grupo de rock and roll del mundo» durante medio siglo. «Norman considera a los Beatles y a los Stones como “una única historia épica”, una narrativa entrelazada que él ha contado y vuelto a contar durante las últimas tres décadas. Aporta al tema un extenso y profundo conocimiento, y una distancia crítica que eleva su escritura muy por encima del nivel de otros libros sobre intérpretes o grupos de rock» (Fiona MacCarthy, The Guardian). «Una sardónica historia de la década más loca de los últimos cien años, y el estudio fascinante de un rebelde inventado, que se reinventó a sí mismo como conformista reticente» (John Walsh, The Independent).

Nuggets Of Nostalgia

Biographies & Memoirs

A budding film director and a wannabe film producer are in need of a movie script that can upsurge the box office. The would -be director approaches a novice but promising writer who writes a romantic story for the film. The story portrays childhood love and lost friendship. It is a touching story of a group of four childhood friends and girlfriends who are separated due to various reasons. Years later the protagonist attempts to track down his companions and this forms the background of the story. The protagonist who is a now renowned doctor easily forgets his early love for the sake of his career. But finally he understands that the real meaning of success lies in contentment.

Palæstinas Røde Rose. Laila Atshan

Biographies & Memoirs

Palæstinas Røde Rose. Laila Atshan er en nutidsdokumentar, der fortæller historien om den seende blinde kvinde fra Palæstina. Hun blev født blind og er seende som få. Lad os møde kvinden, der hellere tænder et lys end forbander mørket. Lad os se hende som hun træder os i møde gennem sine mails til en dansk ven. Lad os følge hendes tanker om liv, død og eksistens. Lad os høre hende fortælle om, hvordan det er som familie at miste sin rodfæstelse og genvinde sin eksistens. En kvindeskæbne indlejret i Palæstinas aktuelle historie.

Londongrad

Biographies & Memoirs

The amazing true story of how London became home to the Russian super-rich – told for the first time ever. A dazzling tale of incredible wealth, ferocious disputes, beautiful women, private jets, mega-yachts, the world’s best footballers – and chauffeur-driven Range Rovers with tinted windows.A group of buccaneering Russian oligarchs made colossal fortunes after the collapse of communism – and many of them came to London to enjoy their new-found wealth. Londongrad tells for the first time the true story of their journeys from Moscow and St Petersburg to mansions in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Surrey – and takes you into a shimmering world of audacious multi-billion pound deals, outrageous spending and rancorous feuds.But while London's flashiest restaurants echoed to Russian laughter and Bond Street shop-owners totted up their profits, darker events also played themselves out. The killing of ex-KGB man Alexander Litvinenko in London to the death – in a helicopter crash he all but predicted – of Stephen Curtis, the lawyer to many of Britain's richest Russians, chilled London's Russians and many of those who know them.This is the story of how Russia's wealth was harvested and brought to London – some of it spent by Roman Abramovich on his beloved Chelsea Football Club, some of it spent by Boris Berezovsky in his battles with Russia's all-powerful Vladimir Putin. Londongrad is a must-read for anyone interested in how vast wealth is created, the luxury it can buy, and the power and intrigue it produces.

The Ice Bucket Challenge

Biographies & Memoirs

While everyone knows of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the viral craze that swept the nation in summer 2014, too few know the truly inspirational story behind it. Pete Frates was a man at war with his own body. A man whose love for others was unshakable. A man who refused to fight alone, and in so doing mobilized a global army to combat one of the most devastating diseases on earth: ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. When disease crippled Frates, the former Boston College baseball star turned tragedy into inspiration. Pete’s story is a testament to the power of love, the steadfastness of family, the generosity of strangers, and the compassion of crowds. Half of the authors’ proceeds will go to the Frates family.

Plutarch’s Lives: Life of Crassus

Biographies & Memoirs

*Illustrated *Includes Table of Contents Plutarch's best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving Lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. Some of the Lives, such as those of Heracles, Philip II of Macedon and Scipio Africanus, no longer exist; many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae or have been tampered with by later writers. Extant Lives include those on Aristides, Pericles, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Cato the Younger, Mark Antony, and Marcus Junius Brutus. Plutarch also wrote a series of biographies, including the biographies of Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Agis and Cleomenes, Aratus and Artaxerxes, Philopoemen, Camillus, Marcellus, Flamininus, Aemilius Paulus, Galba and Otho. This edition of Plutarch’s biography on the famous Roman general and triumvir, Life of Crassus, is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with over a dozen illustrations.

Cleopatra

Biographies & Memoirs

A feminist reinterpretation of the myths surrounding Cleopatra casts new light on the Egyptian queen and her legacy “A thoughtful, sympathetic portrait of a legendary historical figure.”—Kirkus Reviews The siren passionately in love with Mark Antony, the seductress who allegedly rolled out of a carpet she had herself smuggled in to see Caesar, Cleopatra is a figure shrouded in myth. Beyond the legends immortalized by Plutarch, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and others, there are no journals or letters written by Cleopatra herself. All we have to tell her story are words written by others. What has it meant for our understanding of Cleopatra to have had her story told by writers who had a political agenda, authors who distrusted her motives, and historians who believed she was a liar? Francine Prose delves into ancient Greek and Roman literary sources, as well as modern representations of Cleopatra in art, theater, and film, to challenge past narratives driven by orientalism and misogyny and offer a new interpretation of Cleopatra’s history through the lens of our current era.

Souvenirs sur l’Affaire

Biographies & Memoirs

Léon Blum a écrit ces Souvenirs en 1935, trente ans après « l’Affaire » et quelques mois après la mort de Dreyfus. “C’est un texte admirable, écrit à la première personne sur le mode du récit... Comme témoignage de l’éveil d’une conscience, il n’est pas tant de textes aussi forts.” — Olivier Barrot, ina.fr “C’est avec un plaisir extrême que l’on parcourt ce livre de souvenirs. Quel esprit, quelle vie ! En des pages alertes, que n’alourdit aucune érudition, où les silhouettes sont croquées d’un crayon vif, c’est toute une époque de notre histoire qui est ressuscitée devant nos yeux, non point dans le temps, mais par l’intérieur, par ce que Bergson appelle la durée. Voilà qui nous en apprend beaucoup plus sur l’Affaire que de lourdes compilations documentaires. Dans ce livre si bref, Léon Blum s’avère un admirable chroniqueur. Et quelle leçon éternelle ! D’un côté, un clan qui cherche à s’aveugler, qui veut défendre à tout prix, même au prix de la plus cruelle injustice, l’ordre et la tradition, et derrière elles la prospérité, une haine tout économique du Juif, et de l’autre, venant après une explosion admirable de certains esprits vers la justice, un durcissement, une cristallisation de l’enthousiasme dans les pires formes de la politique. C’est encore aujourd’hui le spectacle qui se présente à nos yeux.” — Esprit (1937) “L’analyse sociologique des juifs de son temps ne laisse pas d’être intéressante.” — Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Times of Israel

Napoleón

Biographies & Memoirs

Esta obra es una excelente biografía de uno de los personajes más carismáticos y conocidos de la historia europea de finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX, Napoleón Bonaparte, escrita con un estilo novelesco, propio de la pluma de Ludwig.

De presidentiële jaren

Biographies & Memoirs

De presidentiële jaren vertelt het uitzonderlijke verhaal van Mandela's presidentschap en laat zien welke moeilijkheden hij moest overwinnen om zijn droom voor Zuid-Afrika te verwezenlijken. In 1994 werd Nelson Mandela de eerste president van het democratische Zuid-Afrika. Tijdens zijn regeerperiode veranderde het land dat lang door kolonialisme en apartheid verdeeld was geweest in een functionerende democratie. Het resultaat is een boek dat even uniek is als zijn hoofdpersoon: levendig en gedreven. Eerder verscheen Mandela's beroemde autobiografie De lange weg naar de vrijheid, waarin hij zijn leven beschreef van jongeman tot het moment waarop hij als staatsman Zuid-Afrika ging leiden. De presidentiële jaren vertelt wat daarna kwam. Mandela begon in zijn laatste periode als president al te werken aan dit boek, maar kreeg het niet af. Nu is die taak volbracht door Mandla Langa, die toegang kreeg tot het onvoltooide manuscript en de archieven. Mandela's weduwe Graça Machel schreef het voorwoord.

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