Download or read book Poe written by Peter Ackroyd and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2009-01-20 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today. In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe’s childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd’s thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe’s most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.
Download or read book Frankie a Life Cut Short written by Ronald Evans and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Frankie - A Life Cut Short" is a historic, nonfiction story of the Life and Unsolved Murder Mystery of Frances S. Bullock, an attractive 40-year-old widow, who was brutally stabbed to death at her home July 26, 1963. The homicide happened in the small mountain town of Franklin, North Carolina and remains unsolved over fifty-five years later. The story reveals much about the victim's family's history including her childhood and adult life that might have led to her untimely death. In addition to the murder it also reveals some domestic violence and abuse that frequently occurred in the lives of some of the persons-of-interest in the case. The book describes in detail recent attempts at solving it as a cold case investigation and re-examination of the evidence of the clothing worn by the victim when murdered.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Life Cut Short written by Ricardas Gavelis and published by Vagabond Voices. This book was released on 2018-08-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Levas Ciparis, the anti-hero of this masterly critique of life in the late Soviet Union, is a man alone and he desperately wants to belong. He is obstructed in this quest by his own innocence and decency, which occasionally cause him to act with absurd inflexibility. In fact, the irresolvable tension between moral probity and necessary compromise is one of the many themes of this novel: "Yes, I truly did believe, being an honest, sufficiently pure and persistent person, that if I took up the work of the Komsomol, I would most certainly be capable of changing and enriching that community." In part, the first-person narration describes the process of being disabused of that delusion. Ciparis is dead and writes letters to his estranged friend Tomas Kelertas, with whom he has something of a love-hate relationship, which became more obsessive after their estrangement. The randomness of life does not always work against Ciparis, as he recounts his experiences from sickly child in a basement flat to his final moments in Leningrad when all options fall away. The system can work in his favour - primarily through a marriage that gains him a father-in-law who is a powerful, intelligent and utterly corrupt politician at the very top of the Soviet regime in Lithuania - but ultimately there is no place for him in that society or perhaps anywhere. Memoirs of a Life Cut Short is full of ideas, doubts and insightful observations on human behaviour borne along on a helter-skelter plot. Book jacket.
Download or read book Mozambique s Samora Machel written by Allen F. Isaacman and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The precipitous rise and controversial fall of a formidable African leader. Samora Machel (1933–1986), the son of small-town farmers, led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonists and became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. Machel’s military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed people of Southern Africa. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain. Allen and Barbara Isaacman lived through many of these changes in Mozambique and bring personal recollections together with archival research and interviews with others who knew Machel or participated in events of the revolutionary or post-revolutionary years.
Download or read book A Beard Cut Short written by Todd Neff and published by Earthview Media. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Rubadeau’s long, white beard; homeless-guy wardrobe; and penchant for dirty jokes belied his lofty status as one of the most popular professors ever at the University of Michigan. He taught writing in Ann Arbor for more than 30 years. The cover of his course pack read: “Grammar: the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.” "In A Beard Cut Short: The life and lessons of a legendary professor clipped by a slip of #MeToo," a former student tells the crazy, touching, inspiring, and often funny life story of an eccentric, influential professor. John caught dogs in Wisconsin, sold insurance in Indiana, raised pigs in Tennessee, counseled soldiers in Germany, and had his apartment bugged by the Romanian secret police. He lost a young wife and two baby boys. He was born poor and stayed that way most of his life. But, on his own terms, he met with extraordinary success. "A Beard Cut Short" also shares John’s key lessons on writing, teaching, and life – lessons that have inspired generations of students to watch out for comma splices and follow their dreams. The story is capped by an investigation of an unjust firing that’s a case study in how the misappropriation of #MeToo, a vital social movement, can hurt both the unfairly accused and the movement itself. John Rubadeau's (in)famous Grammar Review is included as a special bonus. Reviews: Rubadeau was an outspoken man of a previous era who taught so long the culture changed around him. As a result, the book is a captivating document on how the language of teaching (and language itself) has changed over the decades, and the ways in which a certain type of larger-than-life educator, once common, has mostly ceased to exist. — Kirkus Former Camera science writer and Colorado Book Award winner (“From Jars to the Stars”) Todd Neff examines the life of his mentor, former University of Michigan Professor John Rubadeau, before plunging in to investigate the unjust #MeToo claims that led to his firing in “A Beard Cut Short: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Professor Clipped by a Slip of #MeToo.” Rubadeau was an old-school writing teacher who fearlessly created room for students to discuss and debate human differences in the classroom, refusing to coddle or protect them, an effort doomed to fail. “I am here to teach you about the intricacies and nuances of the English language not to coddle you or to support your conviction that you are the next Shakespeare,” Rubadeau informed his students. “If you will be devastated because you receive less than an A in this course, drop this class the first day.” Using his investigative skills to obtain confidential documents, Neff concludes that his mentor’s firing “came about through a poisonous brew of stubbornness, incompetence, misplaced zealotry, hypersensitivity, blinkered perspective, bad faith, personal friction, professional jealousy, and shoddy investigative work — all of which led to over-reaction and injustice.” — The Boulder Daily Camera
Download or read book A Life Cut Short written by Magdalena Vanderkooy and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “. . . a compelling tale of a very large family coming from the Netherlands to Canada. It is also a heartbreaking tale of a young woman's struggle with her health and the impact her illness has on her family. It's hard to put down and Vanderkooy is to be congratulated on such a powerful book.” –Ken Setterington, A Guide to Canadian Children’s Books (with Deirdre Baker) and Branded by the Pink Triangle ". . . it’s the inward journey of adolescent Trudy—imprisoned in her sick bed while the world moves on without her—that will grip you the hardest. The interior dialogue is raw, tender and beautiful." —Doug O'Neill, writer, nature guide book author When Truus immigrates to Canada from the Netherlands as the oldest girl among ten siblings, she is just fifteen years old. From the start, she bears outsize responsibility for helping her devout Calvinist family navigate early struggles, even as the family continues to grow. Three years later she is beginning to find her place in the new land when she contracts an incurable illness. What follows is a five-year battle with illness and hospitalizations, along with emotional turmoil as she grapples with the social, psychological and spiritual implications of her condition. This semi-biographical novel is based on the real-life experiences of the author’s oldest sister.
Download or read book Long Stories Cut Short written by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Luis Aldama and graphic artists from Mapache Studios give shape to ugly truths in the most honest way, creating new perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about life in the borderlands of the Américas. Each bilingual prose-art fictional snapshot offers an unsentimentally complex glimpse into what it means to exist at the margins of society today.
Download or read book Four Friends written by William D. Cohan and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful portrait of the lives of four boarding school graduates who died too young, John F. Kennedy, Jr. among them, by their fellow Andover classmate, New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan. In his masterful pieces for Vanity Fair and in his bestselling books, William D. Cohan has proven to be one of the most meticulous and intrepid journalists covering the world of Wall Street and high finance. In his utterly original new book, Four Friends, he brings all of his brilliant reportorial skills to a subject much closer to home: four friends of his who died young. All four attended Andover, the most elite of American boarding schools, before spinning out into very different orbits. Indelibly, using copious interviews from wives, girlfriends, colleagues, and friends, Cohan brings these men to life on the page. Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, uses his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence. Will Daniel, Harry Truman’s grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, does everything possible to escape the burdens of a family legacy he’s ultimately trapped by. Harry Bull builds the life of a careful, successful Chicago lawyer and heir to his family’s fortune...before taking an inexplicable and devastating risk on a beautiful summer day. And the life and death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.—a story we think we know—is told here with surprising new details that cast it in an entirely different light. Four Friends is an immersive, wide-ranging, tragic, and ultimately inspiring account of promising lives cut short, written with compassion, honesty, and insight. It not only captures the fragility of life but also its poignant, magisterial, and pivotal moments.
Download or read book Cut Short written by Ciaran Thapar and published by . This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Lays down a transformative path to peace' David Lammy MP 'A devastating and beautifully-drawn tribute to the young boys that the media turns into statistics of knife crime' Candice Carty-Williams 'I came away from this book enraged, enlightened and with a sense of urgency to do something' Annie Mac _________________________ Demetri wants to study criminology at university to understand why people around him carry knives. Jhemar is determined to advocate for his community following the murder of a loved one. Carl's exclusion leaves him vulnerable to the sinister school-to-prison pipeline, but he is resolute to defy expectations. Tony, the tireless manager of a community centre, is fighting not only for the lives of local young people, but to keep the centre's doors open. Drawing on the latest research and interviews with experts, this refreshingly nuanced and beautifully written book interweaves the stories of a cast of characters at the sharp end of the UK's serious youth violence epidemic, with chapters on subjects such as social media, gentrification and criminal justice. Showing how we are all connected to this tragedy, Cut Short is a gripping, urgent, sympathetic and often painful portrait of a society fracturing along lines of race, class and postcode. It is a blueprint for positive change, and a book we desperately need. _________________________ 'Compelling' The Sunday Times; 'Assured' Observer; 'Brilliantly written' Nikesh Shukla 'Makes you stop and think' Nick Robinson, BBC R4's Today programme 'This book strongly gives a voice to the voiceless . . . essential reading' Kenny Allstar 'Angry, impassioned, informed, accurate - the story behind the cutting short of public health and young lives' Danny Dorling 'Ciaran's work is informed by lived experience at the frontline of social change. It takes a sensitive and respectful look at the truths less often told' George the Poet
Download or read book How to Murder Your Life written by Cat Marnell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a “vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic” (The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs. At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell “treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no. Combining “all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity” (Harper’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.
Download or read book Cuz written by Danielle Allen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Unbearably moving' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released aged 26, only to be murdered three years later. In this deeply personal yet clear-eyed memoir, Danielle Allen reconstructs her cousin's life to try and understand how this tragedy came to pass. We get to know Michael himself through the eyes of a devoted relative, moving from his first steps to his first love through to the day of his arrest, his coming of age in prison, and his attempts to make up for lost time after his release. We learn what it's like to grow up in a city carved up by invisible gang borders; and we learn how a generation has been lost. With honesty and insight, Cuz circles around its subject, exposing it from all angles to reveal the shocking reality of a broken system. The result is a devastatingly powerful yet reasoned tribute to a life lost too soon. 'The book pleads with us to find the moral imagination to break the American pattern of racial abuse. Allen's ambitious, breathtaking book challenges the moral composition of the world it inhabits by telling all who listen: I loved my cousin and he loved me, and I know he'd be alive if you loved him, too' Kiese Laymon
Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
Download or read book The Opposite of Loneliness written by Marina Keegan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and publishing phenomenon: Marina Keegan’s posthumous collection of award-winning essays and stories “sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth” (O, The Oprah Magazine). Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at The New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Marina left behind a rich, deeply expansive trove of writing that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story “Cold Pastoral” was published on NewYorker.com. Her essay “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” was excerpted in the Financial Times, and her book was the focus of a Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times. Millions of her contemporaries have responded to her work on social media. As Marina wrote: “We can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over…We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.” The Opposite of Loneliness is an unforgettable collection of Marina’s essays and stories that articulates the universal struggle all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to impact the world. “How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out? Answer: Read this book. A clear-eyed observer of human nature, Keegan could take a clever idea...and make it something beautiful” (People).
Download or read book We Keep the Dead Close written by Becky Cooper and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE NATIONAL BESTSELLER Named One of The Best Books of 2020 by NPR's Fresh Air * Publishers Weekly * Marie Claire * Redbook * Vogue * Kirkus Reviews * Book Riot * Bustle A Recommended Book by The New York Times * The Washington Post * Publisher's Weekly * Kirkus Reviews* Booklist * The Boston Globe * Goodreads * Buzzfeed * Town & Country * Refinery29 * BookRiot * CrimeReads * Glamour * Popsugar * PureWow * Shondaland Dive into a "tour de force of investigative reporting" (Ron Chernow): a "searching, atmospheric and ultimately entrancing" (Patrick Radden Keefe) true crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard and an "exhilarating and seductive" (Ariel Levy) narrative of obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men. You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget. 1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.
Download or read book Whitney Houston Recording Artist Actress written by Christine Heppermann and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This informative title highlights the life of Whitney Houston. Readers will learn about Houston's childhood in Newark, New Jersey including her strong family life and her beginnings as a singer at New Hope Baptist Church. Houston's musical work is discussed from her days as a backup singer for Chaka Kahn, Jermaine Jackson and the Neville Brothers and her collaboration with cousin Dionne Warwick and aunt Aretha Franklin through her superstardom as a solo act with the hits Saving All My Love For You, How Will I know, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and her soundtrack to The Bodyguard featuring Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You. Houston's courtship with Bobby Brown is included, as is their marriage and the birth of their daughter Bobbi Kristina and their eventual and divorce. Houston's descent into drug addiction is included, leading to her death at age 48 while in the mist of a reemerging career. This book includes details of Houston's life and covers the controversies surrounding her life and death. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Download or read book Elvis Presley Rock Roll s King written by Stephanie Watson and published by ABDO Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This informative title covers the life Elvis Presley. Readers learn of his childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi and his family's relocation to Memphis, Tennessee. Presley's musical work is discussed, from his beginning singing Ole Shep at a state fair to his collaboration with Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis to his recording of That's All Right, and his introduction to Colonel Tom Parker to his signing with RCA and his first hits Heartbreak Hotel, Don't Be Cruel, and Hound Dog through his television appearances Ed Sullivan and live performances such as 68 Comeback Special and Aloha From Hawaii. Opposition to his controversial dance moves by parents, ministers and lawmakers is included, including his censorship on the Steve Allen Show and public banning of his music. Elvis's movie career is included with hits such as Love Me Tender, Viva Las Vegas, Jailhouse Rock, and Blue Hawaii as is his military service in the US Army. Presley's courtship with Priscilla Beaulieu is included, as is their marriage and the birth of their daughter Lisa Marie, their home Graceland, and their eventual divorce. Elvis's descent into drug use is included, leading to his death by heart failure at age 42. This book includes details of Elvis's life and covers the controversies surrounding his life and death. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Download or read book Bring Me Back written by Micalea Smeltzer and published by Micalea a Smeltzer LLC. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Note From The Author I could have put the typical blurb here. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Live happily ever after. The end. But this isn't that story.
