Download or read book Out of the Night written by Jan Valtin and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 1170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestseller in 1941, selected by the Book of the Month Club for a special edition and described by Book of the Month Club News as: “...full of sensational revelations and interspersed with episodes of daring, of desperate conflict, of torture, and of ruthless conspiracy...It is, first of all, an autobiography the like of which has seldom been.” The son of a seafaring father, Richard Julius Herman Krebs, a.k.a. Jan Valtin, came of age as a bicycle messenger during a maritime rebellion. His life as an intimate insider account of the dramatic events of 1920’s and 1930s, where he rose both within the ranks of the Communist Party and on the Gestapo hit list. Known for his honesty and incredible memory, Krebs dedicated his life to the Communist Party, rising to a position as head of maritime, organizing worldwide for the Comintern, only to flee the Party and Europe to evade his own comrade’s attempts to kill him. As a professional revolutionary, agitator, spy and would-be assassin, Krebs traveled the globe from Germany to China, India to Sierra Leon, Moscow to the United States where a botched assassination attempt landed him a stint in San Quentin. From his spellbinding account of artful deception to gain release from a Nazi prison and his work as a double-agent within the Gestapo, to his vivid depiction of a Communist Party fraught with intrigue and subterfuge, Krebs gives an unflinching portrayal of the internal machinations of both parties.

Download or read book Breaking Night written by Liz Murray and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.

Download or read book The Night of the Gun written by David Carr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Carr was an addict for more than twenty years -- first dope, then coke, then finally crack -- before the prospect of losing his newborn twins made him sober up in a bid to win custody from their crack-dealer mother. Once recovered, he found that his recollection of his 'lost' years differed -- sometimes radically -- from that of his family and friends. The night, for example, his best friend pulled a gun on him. 'No,' said the friend (to David's horror, as a lifelong pacifist), 'It was you that had the gun.' Using all his skills as an investigative reporter, he set out to research his own life, interviewing everyone from his parents and his ex-partners to the policemen who arrested him, the doctors who treated him and the lawyers who fought to prove he was fit to have custody of his kids. Unflinchingly honest and beautifully written, the result is both a shocking account of the depths of addiction and a fascinating examination of how -- and why -- our memories deceive us. As David says, we remember the stories we can live with, not the ones that happened.

Download or read book Night written by Elie Wiesel and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-01-16 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provides a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity.

Download or read book The Night the Lights Went Out written by Drew Magary and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, darkly funny comeback story of learning to live with a broken mind after a near-fatal traumatic brain injury—from the acclaimed author of The Hike “Drew Magary has produced a remarkable account of his journey, one that is filled with terror, tenderness, beauty, and grace.”—David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon Drew Magary, fan-favorite Defector and former Deadspin columnist, is known for his acerbic takes and his surprisingly nuanced chronicling of his own life. But in The Night the Lights Went Out, he finds himself far out of his depths. On the night of the 2018 Deadspin Awards, he suffered a mysterious fall that caused him to smash his head so hard on a cement floor that he cracked his skull in three places and suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. For two weeks, he remained in a coma. The world was gone to him, and him to it. In his long recovery from his injury, including understanding what his family and friends went through as he lay there dying, coming to terms with his now permanent disabilities, and trying to find some lesson in this cosmic accident, he leaned on the one sure thing that he knows and that didn't leave him—his writing. Drew takes a deep dive into what it meant to be a bystander to his own death and figuring out who this new Drew is: a Drew that doesn't walk as well, doesn't taste or smell or see or hear as well, and a Drew that is often failing as a husband and a father as he bounces between grumpiness, irritability, and existential fury. But what's a good comeback story without heartbreak? Eager to get back what he lost, Drew experiences an awakening of a whole other kind in this incredibly funny, medically illuminating, and heartfelt memoir.

Download or read book The Night Trilogy written by Elie Wiesel and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three works deal with a concentration camp survivor, a hostage holder in Palestine, and a recovering accident victim.

Download or read book West with the Night written by Beryl Markham and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1983 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiography detailing the author's life in Africa and career as a pilot.

Download or read book Night Studio written by Musa Mayer and published by Sieveking. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Guston (1913-1980) is one of the outstanding figures in twentieth century American art. Beginning as a muralist in the thirties, Guston embraced the lyrical vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism in his paintings and drawings after his move to the East Coast. Following an artistic crisis in the mid-sixties, his return to figuration focusing first on simple things of ordinary life, later evolving to the enigmatic and iconic cartoonlike forms for which he is now best known shook the art world. Night Studio is a deeply personal account of growing up in the shadow of a great artist, a daughter's quest to better understand her father, based on letters and notes by the artist, and interviews with those who knew him. First published to critical acclaim in 1988, this beautifully designed new edition is richly illustrated with a new selection of photographs and paintings, many in color. Also available: Philip Guston: Drawings for Poets ISBN 9783944874197 Philip Guston: Prints ISBN 9783944874180

Download or read book I Was Better Last Night written by Harvey Fierstein and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A poignant and hilarious memoir from the cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award–winning actor and playwright, revealing never-before-told stories of his personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, and of his fabled career Harvey Fierstein’s legendary career has transported him from community theater in Brooklyn, to the lights of Broadway, to the absurd excesses of Hollywood and back. He’s received accolades and awards for acting in and/or writing an incredible string of hit plays, films, and TV shows: Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, Cheers, La Cage Aux Folles, Torch Song Trilogy, Newsies, and Kinky Boots. While he has never shied away from the spotlight, Mr. Fierstein says that even those closest to him have never heard most of the tales—of personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, of his fabled career—revealed in these wildly entertaining pages. I Was Better Last Night bares the inner life of this eccentric nonconforming child from his roots in 1952 Brooklyn, to the experimental worlds of Andy Warhol and the Theatre of the Ridiculous, to the gay rights movements of the seventies and the tumultuous AIDS crisis of the eighties, through decades of addiction, despair, and ultimate triumph. Mr. Fierstein’s candid recollections provide a rich window into downtown New York City life, gay culture, and the evolution of theater (of which he has been a defining figure), as well as a moving account of his family’s journey of acceptance. I Was Better Last Night is filled with wisdom gained, mistakes made, and stories that come together to describe an astonishingly colorful and meaningful life. Lucky for us all, his unique and recognizable voice is as engaging, outrageously funny, and vulnerable on the page.

Download or read book Sleepless Nights written by Elizabeth Hardwick and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick’s finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.

Download or read book Blue Nights written by Joan Didion and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean Richly textured with memories from her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion is an intensely personal and moving account of her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness and growing old. As she reflects on her daughter’s life and on her role as a parent, Didion grapples with the candid questions that all parents face, and contemplates her age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profound.

Download or read book Night and Fog written by Arne Brun Lie and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sailing across the Atlantic with two friends, the author, a concentration camp survivor, finally comes to terms with his memories and nightmares

Download or read book The Shapeless Unease written by Samantha Harvey and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sleeplessness gets the Susan Sontag illness-as-metaphor treatment in this pensive, compact, lyrical inquiry into the author’s nighttime demons.” —Kirkus Reviews In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help. The Shapeless Unease is Harvey’s darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from “this generation’s Virginia Woolf” (Telegraph). “Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish.” —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author “Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about ‘shapeless unease’ is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life.” —Daily Mail “What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I’ve read about what it’s like to be alive now, in this country.” —Max Porter, award-winning author of Lanny

Download or read book Insomnia written by Marina Benjamin and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An insomniac’s ideal sleep aid—and that’s a compliment. With her collage of ruminations about sleeplessness, [Benjamin] promises no real cure . . . Her slim book is what the doctor ordered.”—The Atlantic Insomnia is on the rise. Villainous and unforgiving, it’s the enemy o f energy and focus, the thief of our repose. But can insomnia be an ally, too, a validator of the present moment, of edginess and creativity? Marina Benjamin takes on her personal experience of the condition—her struggles with it, her insomniac highs, and her dawning awareness that states of sleeplessness grant us valuable insights into the workings of our unconscious minds. Although insomnia is rarely entirely welcome, Benjamin treats it less as an affliction than as an encounter that she engages with and plumbs. She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, and how we perceive darkness. Along the way, Insomnia trips through illuminating material from literature, art, philosophy, psychology, pop culture, and more. Benjamin pays particular attention to the relationship between women and sleep—Penelope up all night, unraveling her day’s weaving for Odysseus; the Pre–Raphaelite artists’ depictions of deeply sleeping women; and the worries that keep contemporary females awake. Insomnia is an intense, lyrical, witty, and humane exploration of a state we too often consider only superficially. “This is the song of insomnia, and I shall sing it,” Marina Benjamin declares.

Download or read book Night Goblins written by Harrison Demchick and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Someone Please Come Adopt This A**hole!'So begins the 2016 Craigslist ad that introduced the internet to The Ditch Kitty, a maniacal orange kitten saved from a roadside ditch only to turn his rescuer's life into a living hell.The post went viral. And the internet fell in love with the tiny, orange monster. But it would have been impossible at the time for almost anyone to know the story behind the ad.They couldn't know about The Kid- the one so desperate to escape his abusive home that he attempted suicide at the age of 10, the one who grew up to be a soldier, because what else is such a directionless kid supposed to do? And they definitely couldn't know about the drinking. The despair. And how all of it- the PTSD, the alcoholism, and above all his reckless stupidity- would put him behind the wheel of a ticking time bomb and cost the life of a man he never met. When JT Gregory meets The Ditch Kitty, he's completely lost- out of prison and out of work, failing to write a book he'll never finish- and awaiting news on the birth of a child he's in no way qualified to have. A child that would be so much better off without a screw-up ex-con in her life. So who's the real asshole? And who, in the end, saves whom?Night Goblins: A Memoir is the striking true story of one man's trauma, his guilt and self-loathing- and the tiny, orange night goblin who saved him from it all.

Download or read book Late Late at Night written by Rick Springfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features four bonus videos! Watch Rick discuss the events that have shaped his life; step inside his recording studio to hear him discuss his music, his acting career, coming to America, and his love of dogs; and watch Rick's “What’s Victoria’s Secret?” music video and his unplugged version of “I Get Excited.” In a searingly candid memoir which he authored himself, Grammy Award-winning pop icon Rick Springfield pulls back the curtain on his image as a bright, shiny, happy performer to share the startling story of his rise and fall and rise in music, film, and television and his lifelong battle with depression. In the 1980s, singer-songwriter and actor Rick Springfield seemed to have it all: a megahit single in “Jessie’s Girl,” sold-out concert tours, follow-up hits that sold more than 17 million albums and became the pop soundtrack for an entire generation, and 12 million daily viewers who avidly tuned in to General Hospital to swoon over his portrayal of the handsome Dr. Noah Drake. Yet lurking behind his success as a pop star and soap opera heartthrob and his unstoppable drive was a moody, somber, and dark soul, one filled with depression and insecurity. In Late, Late at Night, the memoir his millions of fans have been waiting for, Rick takes readers inside the highs and lows of his extraordinary life. By turns winningly funny and heartbreakingly sad, every page resonates with Rick’s witty, wry, self-deprecating, brutally honest voice. On one level, he reveals the inside story of his ride to the top of the entertainment world. On a second, deeper level, he recounts with unsparing candor the forces that have driven his life, including his longtime battle with depression and thoughts of suicide, the shattering death of his father, and his decision to drop out at the absolute peak of fame. Having finally found a more stable equilibrium, Rick’s story is ultimately a positive one, deeply informed by his passion for creative expression through his music, a deep love of his wife of twenty-six years and their two sons, and his life-long quest for spiritual peace.

Download or read book Where Did You Sleep Last Night written by Danzy Senna and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the bestselling Caucasia, a sad, revealing memoir of the mixed-race marriage of her parents, and the very different American origins that brought them together and pulled them apart. When Danzy Senna's parents got married in 1968, they seemed poised to defy history. They were two brilliant young American writers from wildly divergent backgrounds—a white woman with a blue-blood Bostonian lineage and a black man, the son of a struggling single mother and an unknown father. They married in a year that seemed to separate the past from the present; together, these two would snub the histories that divided them and embrace a radical future. When their marriage disintegrated eight years later, it was, as one friend put it, "the ugliest divorce in Boston's history"—a violent, traumatic war that felt all the more heartrending given the hopeful symbolism of their union. Decades later, Senna looks back not only at her parents' divorce but beyond it, to the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome. On her mother's side of the family she finds—in carefully preserved documents—the chronicle of a white America both illustrious and shameful. On her father's she discovers, through fragments and shreds of evidence, a no less remarkable history. As she digs deeper into this unwritten half of the story, she reconstructs a long buried family mystery that illuminates her own childhood. In the process, she begins to understand her difficult father, the power and failure of her parents' union, and, finally, the forces of history. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is at once a potent statement of personal identity, a challenging look at the murky waters of American ancestry, and an exploration of narratives—the narratives we create and those we forget. Senna has given us an unforgettable testimony to the paradoxes—the pain and the pride—embedded in history, family, and race.