Download or read book What a Life a Different Kind of Biography written by Nelson Herbert LaFountain and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herein are printed stories and poems I have written over the years in my own way of telling my story. Rather than an autobiography I thought this may be a better way of presenting one’s life rather than in one mundane book. I began with a book and then I found I like to present my life this way. These are truthful works and not fiction. Some had memory “holes” that needed filling, who said what, or who I gave credit to but nothing that would take away from the story. It’s just the way I tell my life. After all, my life has been a series of short stories and poems not one continuous biography or even one long story. I tried to keep them truthful at all times. My poetry is not the deep thinking style but happenings in poetry form. I hope you enjoy it. The Chapter numbers are assigned to the places I lived when the stories happened, not necessarily in the order that they happened. You will find the stories and poems are not numbered. I began writing short stories and poems before I started my book. Then after a few stories, I figured it would be a good way to write a book. So this is it, for good or ill and I am not an author with an extensive vocabulary by any stretch of the imagination, I hope you’ll forgive that. They, so I’m told, are quite interesting and easy reading. Take them like vitamins, one or two a day. I hope you will laugh and cry and enjoy! The stories, poems, musings and thoughts in this book, are the product of but not limited to, a lifetime of memories, love, life, pain and laughter. It is a labor of love in an effort to sing the praises of those that deserve it the most, and not for the writer. For it was the people that this work was dedicated to that I have to thank for almost all the memories. If it weren’t for the people, there would be absolutely no need for writing this book.
Download or read book My Life as I See It written by Dionne Warwick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, music legend and humanitarian activist Dionne Warwick reflects on 50 years in showbusiness and the lessons she has learned from being an artist, a mother and a global icon. From her rise to superstardom to raising millions of dollars for AIDS research, she gives readers a glimpse into her dazzling, inspiring life. 'If you think you can do it, you can do it' was the advice she got from her grandfather as a young girl - words she has never forgotten. Like her music and humanitarian work, her story is guaranteed to give hope and inspiration to people across the world.
Download or read book Life Stories written by David Remnick and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the twenties and thirties, such as Henry Luce and Isadora Duncan, and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Richard Pryor, this collection of New Yorker Profiles presents readers with a portrait gallery of some of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. These Profiles are literary-journalistic investigations into character and accomplishment, motive and madness, beauty and ugliness, and are unrivalled in their range, their variety of style, and their embrace of humanity. Including these twenty-eight profiles: “Mr. Hunter’s Grave” by Joseph Mitchell “Secrets of the Magus” by Mark Singer “Isadora” by Janet Flanner “The Soloist” by Joan Acocella “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce” by Walcott Gibbs “Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody” by Ian Frazier “The Mountains of Pi” by Richard Preston “Covering the Cops” by Calvin Trillin “Travels in Georgia” by John McPhee “The Man Who Walks on Air” by Calvin Tomkins “A House on Gramercy Park” by Geoffrey Hellman “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” by Lillian Ross “The Education of a Prince” by Alva Johnston “White Like Me” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Wunderkind” by A. J. Liebling “Fifteen Years of The Salto Mortale” by Kenneth Tynan “The Duke in His Domain” by Truman Capote “A Pryor Love” by Hilton Als “Gone for Good” by Roger Angell “Lady with a Pencil” by Nancy Franklin “Dealing with Roseanne” by John Lahr “The Coolhunt” by Malcolm Gladwell “Man Goes to See a Doctor” by Adam Gopnik “Show Dog” by Susan Orlean “Forty-One False Starts” by Janet Malcolm “The Redemption” by Nicholas Lemann “Gore Without a Script” by Nicholas Lemann “Delta Nights” by Bill Buford
Download or read book A Different Kind of Victory written by James Leutze and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Admiral Thomas C. Hart is important not only because it is the story of a man whose central guiding force in life was the U.S. Navy, but also because it is a study of some fifty-five significant years of American history. This book, based in part on the twenty-one volume Hart diary, investigates the forces and circumstances that shaped Hart’s actions during a memorable and influential career that spanned three wars and was followed by brief service in the U.S. Senate. From his earliest days on the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was dedicated to academic reform, to his ‘second” career in elected office, Hart could always be found amid controversy. His appointment as commander of the Asiatic fleet, a billet he wanted and was led to believe he would get, was partly the result of uneasy relationship with FDR. Here, enlivened with Hart’s naval and diplomatic experiences in the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies, vantage points that provided him with an excellent perspective on the opening stages of the Pacific War. James Leutze provides us with Hart’s firsthand account of the Lanikai-Isabel incident, the hazardous foray ordered by Roosevelt in 1941. Although, ostensibly, the purpose of the maneuver was to garner information on the movements of the Japanese fleet, Hart clearly considered that Roosevelt’s intention was to provoke the Japanese. In descriptive detail, James Leutze relates Hart’s war experiences, both professional and private, and examines his controversial relationships with other, equally strong-minded naval leaders. Particularly burdensome at times were Hart’s difficulties with the brilliant, but egotistical and quixotic, Douglas MacArthur. Hart’s role as commander of the naval forces of the American, British, Dutch, and Australian military command is carefully analyzed by Leutze. The ABDA never became effective, and, because of Allied jealousies and internal political pressures, Hart was eventually removed from his command. Leutze shows us, with compassion, a man given heavy responsibility, and then virtually ignored by his own government. Blunt, outspoken, aloof, and occasionally referred to as “Terrible Tommy,” Admiral Thomas C. Hart was nevertheless respected and admired, an inspiration to his fellow officers. Here is the fascinating story of a man who had an enduring influence on U.S. naval and diplomatic history.
Download or read book Bavinck written by James Eglinton and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dutch Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck, a significant voice in the development of Protestant theology, remains relevant many years after his death. His four-volume Reformed Dogmatics is one of the most important theological works of the twentieth century. James Eglinton is widely considered to be at the forefront of contemporary interest in Bavinck's life and thought. After spending considerable time in the Netherlands researching Bavinck, Eglinton brings to light a wealth of new insights and previously unpublished documents to offer a definitive biography of this renowned Reformed thinker. The book follows the course of Bavinck's life in a period of dramatic social change, identifying him as an orthodox Calvinist challenged with finding his feet in late modern culture. Based on extensive archival research, this critical biography presents numerous significant and previously ignored or unknown aspects of Bavinck's person and life story. A black-and-white photo insert is included. This volume complements other Baker Academic offerings on Bavinck's theology and ethics, which together have sold 90,000 copies.
Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Download or read book Straighten Up and Fly Right written by Will Friedwald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most popular and memorable American musicians of the 20th century, Nat King Cole (1919-65) is remembered today as both a pianist and a singer, a feat rarely accomplished in the world of popular music. Now, in this complete life and times biography, author Will Friedwald offers a new take on this fascinating musician, framing him first as a bandleader and then as a star. In Cole's early phase, Friedwald explains, his primary task of keeping his trio going was just as much of a focus for him as his own playing and singing, always a collective or group performance. In the second act, Cole's collaborators were more likely to be arranger-conductors like Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins, rather than his sidemen on bass and guitar. In the first act, his sidemen were equals, in the second phase, his collaborators were tasked exclusively with putting the focus on him, making him sound good, while being largely invisible themselves. Friedwald brings his full musical knowledge to bear in putting the man in the work, demonstrating how this duality appears over and over again in Cole's life and career: jazz vs. pop, solo vs. trio, piano vs. voice, wife number one (Nadine) vs. wife number two (Maria), the good songs vs. the less-than-good songs, the rhythm numbers vs. the ballads, the funny songs and novelties vs. the "serious" songs of love and loss, Cole as an advocate for the Great American Songbook vs. Cole the intrepid explorer of other options: world music, rhythm & blues, country & western. Cole was different from his contemporaries in other ways; for roughly ten years after the war, the majority of hitmakers on the pop charts were veterans of the big band experience, from Sinatra on down.
Download or read book John Wayne The Life and Legend written by Scott Eyman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrated Hollywood icon comes fully to life in this complex portrait by noted film historian and master biographer Scott Eyman. Exploring Wayne's early life with a difficult mother and a feckless father, "Eyman gets at the details that the bean-counters and myth-spinners miss ... Wayne's intimates have told things here that they've never told anyone else" (Los Angeles Times). Eyman makes startling connections to Wayne's later days as an anti-Communist conservative, his stormy marriages to Latina women, and his notorious--and surprisingly long-lived--passionate affair with Marlene Dietrich.
Download or read book Life written by Keith Richards and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-11-12 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited autobiography of Keith Richards, guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life. Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever. With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.
Download or read book My Life So Far with Bonus Content written by Jane Fonda and published by Random House. This book was released on 2005-04-05 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover Jane Fonda, in her own words—and now experience the story of her life in the HBO documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts. “To hold this book in your hands is to be astonished by how much living can be packed into sixty-plus years.”—Los Angeles Times America knows Jane Fonda as actress and activist, feminist and wife, workout guru and role model. In this extraordinary memoir, Fonda shows that she is much more. From her youth among Hollywood’s elite to her film career and her activism today, Fonda reveals intimate details and personal truths she hopes “can provide a lens through which others can see their lives and how they can live them a little differently.” Surprising, candid, and wonderfully written, My Life So Far is filled with insights into the personal struggles of a woman living a remarkable life. “In the process of writing this book I discovered there were clear, broad, even universal themes that ran through my life, a coherent arc to my journey that, if I could be truthful in the telling, might provide a road map for other women as they face the challenges of relationships, self-image, and forgiveness. What I did not anticipate was how my journey would also resonate with men.”—From the Introduction This eBook includes the full text of the book plus the following additional content: • 50 new photos from Jane Fonda’s personal and family archives, many often never seen in public • A free chapter from Jane Fonda’s Prime Time Praise for My Life So Far “[A] sisterly, enveloping memoir . . . an intimate, haunting book that might as well be catnip from its ever controversial author.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Terrific . . . rich . . . unexpectedly quite moving.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Fiercely intelligent, detailed, probing, rigorously revealing.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Fonda possesses a raw and affecting candor. . . . Her honesty [is] a force.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “A fearless book . . . fascinating.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Truly compelling.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Riveting.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Download or read book Jack s Life A Biography of Jack Nicholson Updated and Expanded written by Patrick McGilligan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 799 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Jack’s Life feels true. . . . Fascinating.”—Entertainment Weekly Jack Nicholson has lived large on and off the screen. Patrick McGilligan, one of America’s outstanding film biographers, has plumbed research and interviews to expand his definitive biography since its publication twenty years ago. Jack’s Life captures the essence of this most private and public of stars with a vivid depiction of Nicholson’s tangled Dickensian upbringing, his hungry years as actor and writer, his nearaccidental breakthrough in Easy Rider, and his prolificacy and artistry ever since, with roles in Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Shining, A Few Good Men, As Good As It Gets, and The Departed, to name a beloved handful of his sixty-plus films. McGilligan captures the life and legacy of this unabashed and complex personality
Download or read book Swanson on Swanson written by Gloria Swanson and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Way written by Paul Anka and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A teen idol of the 1950s who virtually invented the singer/songwriter/heartthrob combination that still tops pop music today, Paul Anka rocketed to fame with a slew of hits-from "Diana" to "Put Your Head on my Shoulder"-that earned him a place touring with the major stars of his era, including Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. He wrote Holly's last hit, and just missed joining the rocker on his final, fatal plane flight. Anka also stepped in front of the camera in the teen beach-party movie era, scoring the movies and romancing their starlets, including Annette Funicello. When the British invasion made his fans swoon for a new style of music-and musician--Anka made sure he wasn't conquered. A rapier-canny businessman and image-builder who took his career into his own hands-just as he had from the very beginning, swiping his mother's car at fourteen to drive himself, underage, to his first gigs in Quebec-Anka toured the world until he could return home in triumph. A charter member of the Rat Pack, he wrote the theme music for The Tonight Show as well as his friend Frank Sinatra's anthem "My Way". By the 1970s, a multi-decade string of pop chart-toppers, including "Puppy Love" and "(You're) Having My Baby", cemented his status as an icon. My Way is bursting with rich, rollicking stories of the business and the people in Anka's life: Elizabeth Taylor, Dodi Fayed, Tom Jones, Michael Jackson, Adnan Khashoggi, Little Richard, Brooke Shields, Johnny Roselli, Sammy Davis, Jr., Brigitte Bardot, Barnum & Bailey Circus acrobats, and many more. Anka is forthcoming, funny and smart as a whip about the business he's been in for almost six decades. My Way moves from New York to Vegas, from the casino stage to backstages all over the world. It's the most entertaining autobiography of the year.
Download or read book Fortunate Life written by A.B. Facey and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2018-04-21 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Albert Facey’s story is the story of Australia.Born in 1894, and first sent to work at the age of eight, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a labourer and farmer and jackaroo, becoming lost and then rescued by Indigenous trackers, then gaining a hard-won literacy, surviving Gallipoli, raising a family through the Depression, losing a son in the Second World War, and meeting his beloved Evelyn with whom he shared nearly sixty years of marriage.Despite enduring unimaginable hardships, Facey always saw his life as a fortunate one.A true classic of Australian literature, Facey’s simply penned story offers a unique window onto the history of Australian life through the greater part of the twentieth century – the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.
Download or read book Starfish written by Lisa Fipps and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Printz Honor winner! Ellie is tired of being fat-shamed and does something about it in this poignant debut novel-in-verse. Cover may vary. Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules—like "no making waves," "avoid eating in public," and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles." And she's found her safe space—her swimming pool—where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her pushy mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet. Fortunately, Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new neighbor, Catalina, who loves Ellie for who she is. With this support buoying her, Ellie might finally be able to cast aside the Fat Girl Rules and starfish in real life--by unapologetically being her own fabulous self.
Download or read book Harrison Ford written by Robert Sellers and published by Robert Hale. This book was released on 1993 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harrison Ford's films have made him more money at the box office than those of any other actor. Six of his films, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, rank as some of the most popular films of all time. This book looks at the extraordinary life and career of this actor.
Download or read book Forever Changes written by John Einarson and published by Jawbone Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely hailed as a genius, Arthur Lee was a character every bit as colorful and unique as his music. In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially-mixed band Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes. Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always craved fame. Drug use and a reticence to tour were his Achilles heels, and he succumbed to a dissolute lifestyle just as superstardom was beckoning. Despite endorsements from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Leess subsequent career was erratic and haunted by the shadow of Forever Changes, reaching a nadir with his 1996 imprisonment for a firearms offence. Redemption followed, culminating in an astonishing post-millennial comeback that found him playing Forever Changes to adoring multi-generational fans around the world. This upswing was only interrupted by his untimely death, from leukemia, in 2006. Writing with the full consent and cooperation of Arthur's widow, Diane Lee, author John Einarson has meticulously researched a biography that includes lengthy extracts from the singer's vivid, comic, and poignant memoirs, published here for the first time.
