Biographies & Memoirs - Books

An Appetite for Wonder

Biographies & Memoirs

New York Times bestselling author and renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins delivers an intimate look into his own childhood and intellectual development, illuminating his path to becoming one of the foremost thinkers in modern science today “A memoir that is funny and modest, absorbing and playful. Dawkins has written a marvelous love letter to science . . . and for this, the book will touch scientists and science-loving persons . . . Enchanting.” —NPR Richard Dawkins’s first book, The Selfish Gene, was an immediate sensation and dramatically shifted the study of biology by offering a gene-centered view of evolution. Published in 1976, the book transformed the way we think about genes and evolution and has sold more than a million copies. In 2006, Dawkins transformed the world’s cultural and intellectual landscape again with The God Delusion, a scientific dismantling of religion. It was a New York Times bestseller and has sold more than two million copies worldwide. An Appetite for Wonder is Dawkins’s insightful memoir examining his own evolution as a man and as a thinker. From his beginnings in colonial Kenya to his intellectual awakening at Oxford, Dawkins shares his path to the creation of The Selfish Gene, and offers readers an in-depth look at the man and the mind that has changed the way we view science and evolution.

Diane de Poitiers

Biographies & Memoirs

Sur Diane enfant nous ne possédons qu’un renseignement précis : son père l’emmenait à la chasse quand elle avait six ans. Dès le premier âge, le futur modèle du Primatice suivit les traces de la déesse, sa patronne, et soumit son corps aux saines disciplines dont elle devait être si bien récompensée. Pendant son existence entière, Diane se lèvera avec le jour, prendra des bains d’eau froide, chevauchera fougueusement à travers bois. Les nobles animaux qui contribueront à immortaliser ses images, elle ne perdra jamais le goût de les forcer.

Los hundidos y los salvados

Biographies & Memoirs

Este libro, que cierra la trilogía de Primo Levi sobre los campos de exterminio, es una prueba viva de que sólo con la palabra, sólo si el horror se vertebra, se está en condiciones de crear y fortalecer la conciencia crítica que exigen los tiempos. Los hundidos y los salvados supone la última reflexión del autor sobre su experiencia, una summa moral en la que indaga en las cuestiones más esenciales: la libertad, la vergüenza, la responsabilidad, la complicidad, el compromiso, el olvido... Y también un alegato a favor de la piedad como categoría básica de la ética humana. Hay libros que, como éste, se escriben para poder seguir viviendo. Primo Levi, que procuró en sus textos analizar la experiencia del horror como un momento ejemplar que permita la comprensión del hombre y sus límites, no lo consiguió, y se suicidó en 1987, poco después de acabarlo.

Michelangelo

Biographies & Memoirs

The life of Michelangelo offers one of the most striking examples of the influence that a great man can have on his time. At the moment of his birth in the second half of the fifteenth century the serenity of Ghirlandajo and of Bramante illuminated Italian art. Florentine sculpture seemed about to languish away from an excess of grace in the delicate and meticulous art of Rossellino, Disiderio, Mino da Fiesole, Agostino di Duccio, Benedetto da Maiano and Andrea Sansovino. Michelangelo burst like a thunder-storm into the heavy, overcharged sky of Florence. This storm had undoubtedly been gathering for a long time in the extraordinary intellectual and emotional tension of Italy which was to cause the Savonarolist upheaval. Nothing like Michelangelo had ever appeared before. He passed like a whirlwind, and after he had passed the brilliant and sensual Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici and Botticelli, of Verocchio and Lionardo, was ended forever. All that harmonious living and dreaming, that spirit of analysis, that aristocratic and courtly poetry, the whole elegant and subtle art of the "Quattrocento," was swept away at one blow. Even after he had been gone for a long time, the world of art was still whirled along in the eddies of his wild spirit. Not the most remote corner was sheltered from the tempest; it drew in its wake all the arts together. Michelangelo captured painting, sculpture, architecture and poetry, all at once; he breathed into them the frenzy of his vigour and of his overwhelming idealism. No one understood him, yet all imitated him. Every one of his great works, the David, the cartoon for the war against Pisa, the vault of the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment, St. Peter's, dominated generations of artists and enslaved them. From every one of these creations radiated despotic power, a power that came above all from Michelangelo's personality and from that tremendous life which covered almost a century. No one work can be detached from that life and studied separately. They are all fragments of one monument, and the mistake that most historians make is to mutilate this genius by dividing it into different pieces. We must try to follow the entire course of the torrent from its beginning to its end if we are to have any comprehension of its formidable unity.

Fahrenheit-182

Biographies & Memoirs

Dies ist die Geschichte eines ganz normalen Jungen, der zum Rockstar wird. Sie beginnt im kalifornischen Nirgendwo, mit jugendlichem Aufbegehren zwischen Punkrock, Skateboard und MTV. In San Diego findet Mark Hoppus nach dem Collegeabbruch Anfang der 90er seinen musikalischen Seelenverwandten – und gründet mit ihm in dessen Garage eine Band, die sämtliche Punkrekorde brechen wird. Die Freunde läuten mit blink-182 eine neue Welle des Pop-Punk ein und prägen ab den späten 90er-Jahren eine ganze Generation von Fans weltweit mit ihren Hits. Doch das ist nur die glänzende Seite der Medaille. Denn je größer der Erfolg wird, desto mehr belasten Mark Angstzustände und Depressionen. Dazu kommen die Zerwürfnisse zwischen den befreundeten Bandkollegen, die zwischenzeitliche Auflösung von blink-182 und schließlich eine schwere Krebserkrankung. In »Fahrenheit-182« gewährt uns Mark Hoppus einen einzigartigen Blick hinter die Kulissen dieses wechselvollen Rockstarlebens. Sein aufrichtiges Memoire ist ein Fest für jeden Fan – und eine so inspirierende wie unterhaltsame Erzählung vom Träumen und niemals Aufgeben.

Plutarch’s Lives

Biographies & Memoirs

This comprehensive anthology of Roman biographer Plutarch boasts an excellent and highly readable translation. In this volume, we hear Plutarch's accounts of some of the most famous figures from Greek and Roman antiquity. Nominally arranged according to the perceived moral successes and failings of the individuals concerned, the Lives are a stunning insight into how the figures of antiquity were perceived relatively soon after passing into history themselves. Written in the 2nd century A.D., the Lives have been in print for more than a thousand years, and would become distributed en masse following the invention of the printing press during the Renaissance. As well as being compelling biography, certain accounts of rulers such as Perikles are themselves quite well regarded as secondary sources by contemporary historians. Plutarch would, in several cases, compare and contrast several of his biographical subjects. For instance early in the book we are treated to a comparison between Theseus and Romulus, which examines both their characteristics and actions. In the latter chapters we are given ample account of the Roman General Coriolanus, who would receive great recognition in the play by Shakespeare which bears his name.

Si Flaubert m'était conté

Biographies & Memoirs

Ce livre publié dans la collection « Les Grands Auteurs », raconte l’histoire personnelle et littéraire de Gustave Flaubert, à travers les récits de Guy de Maupassant, avec une contribution d’Albert Thibaudet. "Personne ne porta plus loin que Gustave Flaubert le respect de son art et le sentiment de la dignité littéraire. Une seule passion, l'amour des lettres, a empli sa vie à son dernier jour."

War Diary

Biographies & Memoirs

Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–73) is recognized as one of the most important novelists, poets, and playwrights of postwar German literature. As befitting such a versatile writer, her War Diary is not a day-by-day journal but a series of sketches, depicting the last months of World War II and the first year of the subsequent British occupation of Austria. These articulate and powerful entries—all the more remarkable taking into account Bachmann’s young age at the time—reveal the eighteen-year-old’s hatred of both war and Nazism as she avoids the fanatics’ determination to “defend Klagenfurt to the last man and the last woman.”The British occupation leads to her incredible meeting with a British officer, Jack Hamesh, a Jew who had originally fled Vienna for England in 1938. He is astonished to find in Austria a young girl who has read banned authors such as Mann, Schnitzler, and Hofmannsthal. Their relationship is captured here in the emotional and moving letters Hamesh writes to Bachmann when he travels to Israel in 1946. In his correspondence, he describes how in his new home of Israel, he still suffers from the rootlessness affecting so many of those who lost parents, family, friends, and homes in the war.War Diary provides unusual insight into the formation of Bachmann as a writer and will be cherished by the many fans of her work. But it is also a poignant glimpse into life in Austria in the immediate aftermath of the war, and the reflections of both Bachmann and Hamesh speak to a significant and larger story beyond their personal experiences.Praise for the German Edition“A minor sensation that will make literary history. Thanks to the excellent critical commentary, we gain a sense of a period in history and in Bachmann’s life that reached deep into her later work. . . . What makes these diary entries so special is . . . the detail of the resistance described, the exhilaration of unexpected peace, the joy of freedom.”—Die Zeit

On The Cobbles

Biographies & Memoirs

Everyone is familiar with the gypsy race but few outside their close-knit and ancient community really know what being a gypsy is about -how they live and how they think. This is the story of a gypsy man, Jimmy Stockin, born into a world where fighting is first nature. Whilst football maybe the chosen sport for most British males, bare-knuckle fighting is a passion among gypsies both as participants and spectators. Jimmy was born into fighting family. His father and grand-father before him 'trod the cobbles' and young Jimmy was being put up against other boys on gypsy camps from the age of five. He took on bare knuckle challenges from wherever they came. Before long Jimmy was widely recognised as the champion of the bare-knuckle fighters. On the Cobbles is a rare insight into a community under threat - a community that treasures tradition - and a man who had little choice in becoming a fighter but was nevertheless determined to be the best. Shocking and sad, humourous and brutal, this story opens the door to a different world. The world of a gypsy warrior.

Frappe le ciel, écoute le bruit

Biographies & Memoirs

«Méditer, ce n'est pas chercher à atteindre quelque chose, mais abandonner le désir de tout contrôler. Pour ouvrir notre esprit. Voilà ce que vingt-cinq années de méditation m'ont appris: laisser vivre en soi le questionnement infini. Comme dans ce koan de la tradition zen qui se laisse éternellement interroger, Frappe le ciel, écoute le bruit. Nous pouvons tous méditer. L'important est tout près, à portée de main. Il suffit de se poser et d'ouvrir les yeux pour le trouver.»

Open

Biographies & Memoirs

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Far more than a superb memoir about the highest levels of professional tennis, Open is the engrossing story of a remarkable life. • "Agassi’s memoir is just as entrancing as his tennis game.” —Time “Honest in a way that such books seldom are.” —The New York Times Andre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left the crib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demanding father, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of his eight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game’s highest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography, off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his great achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writes candidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest in philanthropy, and—described in haunting, point-by-point detail—the highs and lows of his celebrated career.

Always, Rachel

Biographies & Memoirs

These letters between the pioneering environmentalist and her beloved friend reveal “a vibrant, caring woman behind the scientist” (Los Angeles Times). “Rachel Carson, author of The Silent Spring, has been celebrated as the pioneer of the modern environmental movement. Although she wrote no autobiography, she did leave letters, and those she exchanged—sometimes daily—with Dorothy Freeman, some 750 of which are collected here, are perhaps more satisfying than an account of her own life. In 1953, Carson became Freeman's summer neighbor on Southport Island, ME. The two discovered a shared love for the natural world—their descriptions of the arrival of spring or the song of a hermit thrush are lyrical—but their friendship quickly blossomed, as each realized she had found in the other a kindred spirit. To read this collection is like eavesdropping on an extended conversation that mixes the mundane events of the two women's family lives with details of Carson’s research and writing and, later, her breast cancer. . . . Few who read these letters will forget these remarkable women and their even more remarkable bond.” —Publishers Weekly “Darting, fresh, sensuous, pleasingly elliptical at times, these letters also serve to tether the increasingly deified Carson firmly to earth—just where she’d want to be.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “It is not often that a collection of letters reveals character, emotional depth, personality, indeed intellect and talent, as well as a full biography might; these letters do all that.” —The New York Times Book Review “Provides insight into the creative process and a look into the daily lives of two intelligent, perceptive women whose family responsibilities were, at times, almost crushing.” —Library Journal “Dotted with vivid observations of the natural world and perceptive commentary on friendship, family, fame, and life itself, Always, Rachel will appeal to readers interested in biography and women’s studies as well as those drawn to nature writing and the history of the environmental movement.” —Booklist Online

Permanent Moments

Biographies & Memoirs

When clearing out his mothers fl at Stephen discovers a tin of old photographs under her bed. Each image evokes a memory of childhood and we get to meet the people who inhabit those memories wayward friends and sensible friends, strict teachers and hopeless teachers, ugly girls and gorgeous girls, Aunts who are not Aunts and Uncles who are not Uncles and a grandfather who revels in the art of mischief. In this funny and sometimes moving novella Stephen Mitchell wonders whether our memories can really be relied upon to provide an accurate reconstruction of our childhood years and especially those of an ordinary child growing up in the North of England in the 1960s.

A Long Saturday

Biographies & Memoirs

George Steiner is one of the preeminent intellectuals of our time. The Washington Post has declared that no one else “writing on literature can match him as polymath and polyglot, and few can equal the verve and eloquence of his writing,” while the New York Times says of his works that “the erudition is almost as extraordinary as the prose: dense, knowing, allusive.” Reading in many languages, celebrating the survival of high culture in the face of modern barbarisms, Steiner probes the ethics of language and literature with unparalleled grace and authority. A Long Saturday offers intimate insight into the questions that have absorbed him throughout his career. In a stimulating series of conversations, Steiner and journalist Laure Adler discuss a range of topics, including Steiner’s boyhood in Vienna and Paris, his education at the University of Chicago and Harvard, and his early years in academia. Books are a touchstone throughout, but Steiner and Adler’s conversations also range over music, chess, psychoanalysis, the place of Israel in Jewish life, and beyond. Blending thoughts on subjects of broad interest in the humanities—the issue of honoring Richard Wagner and Martin Heidegger in spite of their politics, or Virginia Woolf’s awareness of the novel as a multivocal form, for example—with personal reflections on life and family, Steiner demonstrates why he is considered one of today’s greatest minds. Revealing and exhilarating, A Long Saturday invites readers to pull up a chair and listen in on a conversation with a master.

Gina

Biographies & Memoirs

«Una storia di quotidiano, meraviglioso e normalissimo amore.»ttl-La StampaGina è madre e nonna, è stata moglie, figlia e sorella; adesso ha ottant’anni, la sua storia è quella di una vita tra sacrifici e lavoro, la famiglia, la casa. Un giorno telefona a uno dei suoi figli e gli dice di essere in un posto dove invece non è, in una casa che non riconosce, e che invece è proprio casa sua. Per Gina ha inizio un’altra storia che lei non sarà mai in grado di raccontare e di cui non rimarrà traccia tra le foto di famiglia. I capitoli di questa storia sono quelli noti ai parenti delle persone colpite da demenza senile, impietosamente registrati dai referti medici e indagati dalle pubblicazioni scientifiche: resoconti di una progressiva sparizione, come se la malattia prendesse il posto della persona, divorandola. E invece no, la persona non sparisce: nel racconto di Marco Aime, Gina – sua madre – è presente più che mai, non è l’ombra o la nostalgia di quella che era, e la sua nuova storia può e merita di essere raccontata. Aime lo fa per Gina, per sé, per noi, con uno sguardo che osserva senza giudicare, un’attitudine vicina alla contemplazione e quindi a una più alta dimensione di consapevolezza, con il rispetto, la pietas antica e nello stesso tempo modernissima dell’accettazione. Solo a poche pagine dall’epilogo, quando la tenerezza del corpo, di un abbraccio, fa scattare un’ultima volta la scintilla del contatto con sua madre, la voce del figlio affiora per dire che «è solo un attimo, però ti riempie il cuore». Un attimo e Gina è di nuovo lontana, «un fiocco leggero che il vento accompagna».«Un figlio raccoglie la memoria della madre mentre si sbriciola e si ritrova tra le mani l’indimenticabile pienezza della vita». Enzo Bianchi

Ulysses S. Grant: Life of the Fearless General & Commander-in-Chief (Complete Edition - Volumes 1&2)

Biographies & Memoirs

Ulysses S. Grant served as the Commanding General and the 18th President of the United States. He cooperated closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Grant implemented Reconstruction with the support of Congress. Main focus of Grant's writing in this autobiography is on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. Original edition of Grant's Memoirs was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death.

Lire, c'est amusant ! No 6

Biographies & Memoirs

Qu'est-ce qui fait qu'on aime beaucoup un livre ? Quoi faire pour ne pas abandonner une lecture ? Voyez la réponse et découvrez des lectures proposées aux jeunes et aux moins jeunes.

Some Wore Blue & Some Wore Gray

Biographies & Memoirs

With the 150th Anniversary of the Battle at Gettysburg and the Siege of Vicksburg, New York Times Best Selling Author, Heather Graham, is revisiting one of her favorite time periods - The American Civil War. This time, however, she has compiled biographies of some of her favorite real-life characters of the period. We hope you'll enjoy her gift to you in SOME WORE BLUE & SOME WORE GRAY. And feel free to comment in the review section if there are people you would be interested in reading about from the Civil War. Ms. Graham sees this as a living, growing document and is certain to add to it as time goes by. Enjoy!And then when you want to see where all this love of history took her, check out her three Bantam novels ONE WORE BLUE, ONE WORE GRAY, and AND ONE RODE WEST.

The Rediscovered Country

Biographies & Memoirs

In 1910-11 Mrs. White, R. J. Cuninghame, and myself, with a small safari of forty men, took the usual route via the Kedong valley, Mount Suswa, Agate’s Drift to Vandeweyer’s boma on the Narossara River. At this point we diverged from the usual route and pushed for some distance south into the Narossara Mountains. We found ourselves eventually confronted by a barrier range which we could not then cross, owing to lack of time, lack of men, and lack of provisions. Inquiries among the Masai elicited very vague descriptions of high mountain ranges succeeded by open country. When we had returned to civilization we discovered, to our surprise, that we could find out little or nothing of what lay beyond those mountains. They ran in a general northwesterly direction approximately along the Anglo-German border, so that their hinterland would naturally fall within the German protectorate. But whether the large triangle was plains, hill, or dale; whether it was watered or and; whether it was inhabited or desert; whether it was a good or bad game country, we were unable to find out. No Englishman or American had been in there, and as far as we could find out only the German military reconnoissances of many years previous possessed even the slightest knowledge of what the country might be like. This intrigued our curiosity. We resolved to go in. In the meantime both Cuninghame and myself tried every possible source of knowledge, but in vain. As far as we could find out no sportsman or traveller had ever traversed this territory save the two or three officials mentioned. The net results of the latter’s efforts—for the outside world—were in two maps, which we procured. They were of great assistance, and were in the main quite accurate for the line of route actually trodden by their makers. Outside of that they were to be trusted only in general. To all intents and purposes we were the first to explore the possibilities of this virgin country. If not its discoverers, we were at least its rediscoverers. I think this was the very last virgin game field—of any great size—remaining to be discovered and opened up to sportsmen. There are now no more odd corners to be looked into.

America's First Flag Officer

Biographies & Memoirs

John Barry, an Irish immigrant to Philadelphia in 1760, commenced a naval career that included being victorious in thirty naval engagements verses the British. Captain Barry was credited with the first capture of a British warship. He was wounded in a ferocious sea battle, quelled three mutinies and captured over twenty ships during his career. He fought the last naval battle of the Revolutionary War.Commodore John Barry was the First Flag Officer of the United States Navy and Father of the American Navy.The historical fiction of John Barry's life is fun, informative, emotional, and adventurous.

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