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Biographies and autobiographies

  • Author:
    Dickinson, Fred, Turner, Larry
    Summary:

    Fred Dickinson’s diary opens a window on youth and the world of Ontario lakeland cottages at the beginning of the 20th century."The stories we hand down, the diaries we preserve become the fabric of our social history. Young Fred Dickinson’s 1904 account of tenting and cottaging is a spirited first-hand sketch of a long-neglected part of our heritage. Larry Turner places the diary within social, historic and geographic contexts giving it wide appeal to history buffs of all ages …."- Julie Johnston, award-winning author

  • Author:
    Davies, Bryan, Traficante, Andrew
    Summary:

    A proud Newfoundland soldier’s memoir gives unprecedented details of life as a German POW during the First World War. I’m going to tell my story. With those words, eighty-three-year-old Arthur Manuel set his remarkable First World War memoir in motion. Like many Great War veterans, Manuel had never discussed his wartime life with anyone. Hidden in the Manuel family records until its 2011 discovery by his grandson David Manuel, Arthur’s story is now brought to new life. Determined to escape his impoverished rural Newfoundland existence, he enlisted with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in late 1914. His harrowing accounts of life under fire span the Allies’ ill-fated 1915 Gallipoli campaign, the Regiment’s 1916 near-destruction at Beaumont-Hamel, and his 1917 Passchendaele battlefield capture. Manuel’s account of his seventeen-month POW experience, including his nearly successful escape from a German forced labour camp, provides unique, compelling Great War insights. Powerful memories undimmed by age shine through Manuel’s lucid prose. His visceral hatred of war, and of the leaders on both sides who permitted such senseless carnage to continue, is ferocious yet tempered by Manuel’s powerful affection for common soldiers like himself, German and Allied alike. This poignant, angry, witty, and provocative account rings true like no other.

  • Author:
    Rabinowitz, Alan
    Summary:

    Alan loves animals, but the great cat house at the Bronx Zoo makes him sad. Why are they all alone in empty cages' Are they being punished' More than anything, he wants to be their champion--their voice--but he stutters uncontrollably. Except when he talks to animals... Then he is fluent. Follow the life of the man "Time Magazine" calls, "the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation" as he searches for his voice and fulfills a promise to speak for animals, and people, who cannot speak for themselves. This real-life story with tender illustrations by Catia Chen explores truths not defined by the spoken word. Contributor Bio: Rabinowitz, Alan Dr. Alan Rabinowitz has dedicated his life to two causes: protecting the world's thirty-six wild cat species and advocating for stutterers as a spokesperson for the Stuttering Foundation of America. His conservation work has been chronicled in the New York Times, Scientific American, Audubon, Outside, Jerusalem Report and National Geographic Explorer, among others. He tells audiences that he feels lucky to have been given the gift of stuttering and believes that without it, he would not be on the path of his passion--saving big cats. This is his first book with Houghton Mifflin. Visit www.panthera.org and www.stutteringhelp.org. Contributor Bio: Chien, Catia Catia Chien is an avid painter who works from her studio in Southern California. She is a collection of fun entomology facts and has been known to prefer soup over most other types of food. Besides filled with vivid imagination, her work is described as rich with whimsy, colors, and energy. She is currently producing work for the children's book market, film and animation, comic book anthologies, and galleries.

  • Author:
    Modiano, Patrick, Frenkel, Francoise
    Summary:

    "A beautiful and important book" (The Independent) in the tradition of rediscovered works like Suite Française and The Nazi Officer's Wife, this is the remarkable and prize-winning memoir of a fearless Jewish woman whose beloved bookshop was destroyed during Kristallnacht, sending her on a harrowing fight for survival across wartime Europe. In 1921, Françoise Frenkel-a Jewish woman from Poland-fulfills a lifelong dream. She opens Berlin's first French-language bookshop, La Maison du Livre, attracting artists, diplomats, celebrities, and poets. The shop soon becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. But as time passes and politics darken, Frenkel's bookshop is frequently visited by police officers who confiscate her beloved books. Frenkel's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht-The Night of Broken Glass-as Jewish shops and businesses, including La Maison du Livre, are destroyed. She flees to Paris where she witnesses countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses, and worse. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Frenkel survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her. Originally published in 1945, and rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic, A Bookshop in Berlin is the remarkable tale of one woman whose passion for life and literature helps her survive history's darkest hours as well as a stunning testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

  • Author:
    Hubbell, Sue.
    Summary:

    A New York Times Notable Book: "A melodious mix of memoir, nature journal, and beekeeping manual" (Kirkus Reviews). Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees' lives, author Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and harvesting their honey, a process that is as personally demanding as it is rewarding. Exploring the progression of both the author and the hive through the seasons, this is "a book about bees to be sure, but it is also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude; the seasonal rhythms inherent in rural living; the achievement of independence; the accommodating of oneself to nature" (ThePhiladelphia Inquirer). Beautifully written and full of exquisitely rendered details, it is a tribute to Hubbell's wild hilltop in the Ozarks and of the joys of living a complex life in a simple place.

  • Author:
    Frost, Sydney, Roberts, Edward
    Summary:

    This memoir is unique. It is by far the most complete account of World War I by any member of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Sydney Frost, a young Nova Scotian, was working in St. John’s at The Bank of Nova Scotia when the First World War began in August 1914. He joined the newly revived Newfoundland Regiment on 21 August 1914, the first night that volunteers were accepted. Assigned Regimental Number 58, he became one of the First Five Hundred, often known as the Blue Puttees. He served with the Regiment throughout the entire War, rising from the rank of Private to that of Captain.

    Frost was one of the few original members of the Regiment who survived to fight throughout the entire War. He was awarded the Military Cross for his heroism during the action at Keiberg Ridge, in Belgium, on 29 September 1918. Frost returned to The Bank of Nova Scotia at the end of the War and rose steadily through its ranks, retiring as President in 1958 at the age of sixty-five. He remained a Director until January 1969, when he became an Honorary Director. He died in 1985, at the age of ninety-two.

    Sydney Frost wrote this memoir late in life. It is frank, detailed, and authoritative, and enriched greatly by the extraordinary archive of Regimental history he assembled over his lifetime. His service in the Regiment was a central feature of his long life. He kept every scrap of paper that came his way, together with a detailed record of his daily activities between 21 August 1914 and 2 June 1919. His scrapbooks—which he later donated to the Regimental Museum in St. John’s—contain thousands of items, including newspaper cuttings and published articles of every description about the Regiment and the men with whom he served.

  • Author:
    Nasar, Sylvia
    Summary:

    A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and a host of other mathematical luminaries. At twenty-one, the handsome, ambitious, eccentric graduate student invented what would become the most influential theory of rational human behavior in modern social science. Nash's contribution to game theory would ultimately revolutionize the field of economics.

    As a young professor at MIT, still in his twenties, Nash dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. As unconventional in his private life as in his mathematics, Nash fathered a child with a woman he did not marry. At the height of the McCarthy era, he was expelled as a security risk from the supersecret RAND Corporation -- the Cold War think tank where he was a consultant.

    At thirty, Nash was poised to take his dreamed-of place in the pantheon of history's greatest mathematicians. His associates included the most renowned mathematicians and economists of the era: Norbert Wiener, John Milnor, Alexandre Grothendieck, Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, and Paul Samuelson. He married an exotic and beautiful MIT physics student, Alicia Larde. They had a son. Then Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown.

    Nasar details Nash's harrowing descent into insanity -- his bizarre delusions that he was the Prince of Peace; his resignation from MIT, flight to Europe, and attempt to renounce his American citizenship; his repeated hospitalizations, from the storied McLean, where he came to know the poet Robert Lowell, to the crowded wards of a state hospital; his "enforced interludes of rationality" during which he was able to return briefly to mathematical research. Nash and his wife were divorced in 1963, but Alicia Nash continued to care for him and for their mathematically gifted son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. Saved from homelessness by his loyal ex-wife and protected by a handful of mathematical friends, Nash lived quietly in Princeton for many years, a dreamy, ghostlike figure who scrawled numerological messages on blackboards, all but forgotten by the outside world.

  • Author:
    Gretzky, Wayne
    Summary:

    One of the greatest sports figures of all time salutes his heroes and takes us inside the game as few others can. From minor-hockey phenomenon to Hall of Fame sensation, Wayne Gretzky rewrote the record books, his accomplishments becoming the stuff of legend. Dubbed "The Great One," he is considered by many to be the greatest hockey player who ever lived. No one has seen more of the game than he has-but he has never discussed in depth just what it was he saw. For the first time, Gretzky discusses candidly what the game looks like to him and introduces us to the people who inspired and motivated him: mentors, teammates, rivals, the famous and the lesser known. Weaving together lives and moments from an extraordinary career, he reflects on the players who inflamed his imagination when he was a kid, the way he himself figured in the dreams of so many who came after; takes us onto the ice and into the dressing rooms to meet the friends who stood by him and the rivals who spurred him to greater heights; shows us some of the famous moments in hockey history through the eyes of someone who regularly made that history. Warm, direct, and revelatory, it is a book that gives us number 99, the man and the player, like never before. From the Hardcover edition.

  • Author:
    Grenier, Robert
    Summary:

    The "first" Afghan War was directed by Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Islamabad. Forging separate alliances with warlords, Taliban dissidents, and Pakistani intelligence, Grenier defeated the Taliban and put Hamid Karzai in power in eighty-eight days. But his success would not last.

  • Author:
    Hanff, Helene
    Summary:

    This charming classic love story, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world.

  • Author:
    Murphy, Brian
    Summary:

    The untold story of Leon Crane, the only surviving crew member of a World War II B-24 crash on a remote mountain near the Arctic Circle, who managed to stay alive 81 days in sub-zero temperature by making peace with nature, and end his ordeal by walking along a river to safety.

  • Author:
    Poole, Ed, Poole, Kathi
    Summary:

    Remember the good ol’ days?” We often hear Baby Boomers ask that question, but do we take the time to really remember?  Do we share those stories with our children and grandchildren so they know who we are, how we lived our lives, and why we chose the paths we did? 60 Going on Fifty: The Baby Boomers Memory Book is the story of sixteen “guys” who graduated from Columbus High School (Indiana) in May, 1960. With their 50th high school reunion on the horizon, the “Columbus Crew” reconnected. The guys tell stories about growing up in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, and how those times impacted who they are today. They share their thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, and journeys. While the stories are unique to the Columbus Crew, their stories are certain to rekindle your memories of growing up in this glorious era, or show non-Boomers what life was like for your parents and grandparents. The Columbus Crew takes you back to the days of flat tops, LPs, the Hula Hoop, transistor radios, Lassie, 20 cents per gallon gas, the Big Band Era to Rock and Roll. The guys share stories of first cars, girlfriends, sports, jobs, getting into trouble and finding their way out, and much more. Hop into your ’57 Chevy ragtop and take a ride down memory lane.

  • Author:
    Ripert, Eric
    Summary:

    Hailed by Anthony Bourdain as "heartbreaking, horrifying, poignant, and inspiring," 32 Yolks is the brave and affecting coming-of-age story about the making of a French chef, from the culinary icon behind the renowned New York City restaurant Le Bernardin. In an industry where celebrity chefs are known as much for their salty talk and quick tempers as their food, Eric Ripert stands out. The winner of four James Beard Awards, co-owner and chef of a world-renowned restaurant, and recipient of countless Michelin stars, Ripert embodies elegance and culinary perfection. But before the accolades, before he even knew how to make a proper hollandaise sauce, Eric Ripert was a lonely young boy in the south of France whose life was falling apart. Ripert's parents divorced when he was six, separating him from the father he idolized and replacing him with a cold, bullying stepfather who insisted that Ripert be sent away to boarding school. A few years later, Ripert's father died on a hiking trip. Through these tough times, the one thing that gave Ripert comfort was food. Told that boys had no place in the kitchen, Ripert would instead watch from the doorway as his mother rolled couscous by hand or his grandmother pressed out the buttery dough for the treat he loved above all others, tarte aux pommes. When an eccentric local chef took him under his wing, an eleven-year-old Ripert realized that food was more than just an escape: It was his calling. That passion would carry him through the drudgery of culinary school and into the high-pressure world of Paris's most elite restaurants, where Ripert discovered that learning to cook was the easy part'surviving the line was the battle. Taking us from Eric Ripert's childhood in the south of France and the mountains of Andorra into the demanding kitchens of such legendary Parisian chefs as JoEl Robuchon and Dominique Bouchet, until, at the age of twenty-four, Ripert made his way to the United States, 32 Yolks is the tender and richly told story of how one of our greatest living chefs found himself'and his home'in the kitchen. Advance praise for Eric Ripert's 32 Yolks "I've known Eric for years, and I had no idea that this was how it all started. If you want to get a clear picture of where one gets the drive and dedication to be a truly great chef, there is no better or more harrowing an account."'Anthony Bourdain "This book demonstrates just how amazing Eric's life has been both inside and outside of the kitchen. It makes total sense now to see him become one of the greatest chefs in the world today. This is a portrait of a chef as a young man. It's endlessly entertaining and teaches young cooks how it used to be."'David Chang "Eric Ripert is known around the world for his talent and passion for food. I have been friends with him for half his life, but his memoir let me discover more about his past. His journey from Andorra to Manhattan is full of adventure, hard work, and ambition, and it is an inspiration to us all."'Daniel Boulud "Eric Ripert's 32 Yolks is as almost as irresistible as his cooking'a suspenseful, scary, and deeply moving memoir. Even with the knowledge of his eventual triumph as one of the world's greatest chefs, you can't help wondering as you turn the pages whether he will manage to survive his childhood or his grueling apprenticeship in two of France's top kitchens. But ultimately his deep, visceral appreciation of food and the joy of cooking make this a lyrical and inspiring story."'Jay McInerney From the Hardcover edition.

  • Author:
    Steigerwald, Bill
    Summary:

    In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust life was for the ten million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South.

  • Author:
    Greenburg, Zack O'Malley
    Summary:

    Tells the story of hip-hop's three most dynamic stars and their rise to fame: Diddy, Dr. Dre, and Jay-Z and examines the entrepreneurial genius of the first musician tycoons that largely helped to create a global multibillion-dollar industry.

  • Author:
    Keflezighi, Meb.
    Summary:

    Four-time Olympic marathoner Meb Keflezighi shares his lessons on life, family, faith, and running through a reflection on each of the 26 marathons he's run in his storied career. When four-time Olympian Meb Keflezighi ran his final marathon in New York City on November 5, 2017, it marked the end of an extraordinary distance-running career. Meb will be remembered as the only person in history to win both the Boston and New York City marathons as well as an Olympic marathon silver medal. Meb's last marathon was also his 26th, and each of those 26 marathons has come with its own unique challenges, rewards, and outcomes for him. Through focused narrative, Meb describes key moments and triumphs that made each marathon a unique learning experience and shows runners--whether recreational or professional--how to apply the lessons he's learned to their own running and lives. Chronologically organized by marathon, 26 Marathons offers wisdom Meb has gleaned about life, family, identity, and faith in addition to tips about running, training, and nutrition. Equal parts inspiration and practical advice, this book will provide readers an inside look at the life and success of one of the greatest runners living today.

  • Author:
    Mombourquette, Angela
    Summary:

    The final chaotic season of Codco had just wrapped when Mary Walsh sat down at a Toronto bistro with George Anthony, then creative head of CBC TV's arts programming. She'd been thinking about a news-based comedy show--did he think that would fly? He did. That was the early '90s. Twenty-five seasons later, hundreds of thousands of Canadians continue to tune in weekly to This Hour Has 22 Minutes for its unashamedly Canadian, biting satirical take on politics and power. 25 Years of 22 Minutes takes readers backstage to hear first-hand accounts of the show's key moments--in the words of the writers, producers and cast members who were there. Readers will have a front-row seat to the birth of the show--including a crisis that had producers scrambling in the very first episode--and offer an insider's take on the highs, the lows, and the daily grind behind the scenes at 22 Minutes .

  • Author:
    Range, Peter Ross
    Summary:

    Adolf Hitler spent 1924 in a prison near Munich. He passed the year working feverishly on his book Mein Kampf. Until now, no one has devoted an entire book to the single, dark year of Hitler's incarceration following his attempted coup. Peter Ross Range richly depicts this year that bore to the world a monster.

  • Author:
    Bach, Sebastian
    Summary:

    Sebastian Bach, who has sold over twenty million records both as the lead singer of Skid Row and as a solo artist and has also appeared on Broadway and television, here tells the story of a man who achieved his wildest dreams only to lose his family and home, of a man who has made his life on the road and always will.

  • Author:
    McCullough, David
    Summary:

    America's beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation's birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war against her rebellious colonial subjects and that placed America's survival in the hands of George Washington. In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence—when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.

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