Biographies & Memoirs
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In Nixon's Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Ed Gray
Format: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (2009, Mar 3rd).
Pages: 352
"Challenges some assumptions and offers new theories about Watergate."—The New York TimesIn Nixon’s Web is the last untold story of Watergate, written by the FBI director who maintained his silence for more than thirty years. L. Patrick Gray III was the target of one of Watergate’s most shocking acts—Richard Nixon’s "smoking gun" attempt to have the CIA stop the FBI investigation of the break-in. And when the Senate focused its attention on Gray months later, the White House threw him to the wolves; John Ehrlichman famously advised that he be left to "twist slowly, slowly in the wind."This book is Gray’s firsthand account of his crucial year at the FBI, based on a never-before-published first-person account and previously secret documents. more
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A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Sue Halpern
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (2013, May 16th).
Pages: 320
A layabout mutt turned therapy dog leads her owner to a new understanding of the good life. At loose ends with her daughter leaving home and her husband on the road, Sue Halpern decided to give herself and Pransky, her under-occupied Labradoodle, a new leash—er, lease—on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy dog team. Smart, spirited, and instinctively compassionate, Pransky turned out to be not only a terrific therapist but an unerring moral compass. In the unlikely sounding arena of a public nursing home, she led her teammate into a series of encounters with the residents that revealed depths of warmth, humor, and insight Halpern hadn’t expected. And little by little, their adventures expanded and illuminated Halpern’s sense of what virtue is and does—how acts of kindness transform the giver as well as the given-to. more
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All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: John Taliaferro
Format: Deckle Edge]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2013, May 14th).
Pages:
If Henry James or Edith Wharton had written a novel describing the accomplished and glamorous life and times of John Hay, it would have been thought implausible—a novelist’s fancy. Nevertheless, John Taliaferro’s brilliant biography captures the extraordinary life of Hay, one of the most amazing figures in American history, and restores him to his rightful place. John Hay was both witness and author of many of the most significant chapters in American history— from the birth of the Republican Party, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War, to the prelude to the First World War. Much of what we know about Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt comes to us through the observations Hay made while private secretary to one and secretary of state to the other. more
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She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Emma Brockes
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (2013, May 16th).
Pages: 320
"Quite simply an extraordinary book... it’s basically the perfect memoir: a riveting, authentic tale elegantly told." --Sunday Telegraph (UK) A chilling work of psychological suspense and forensic memoir, She Left Me the Gun is a tale of true transformation: the story of a young woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed simply to vanish, and of a daughter who transcends her mother’s fears and reclaims an abandoned past. “One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes’s mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother’s past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. more
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The Real Girl Next Door
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Denise Richards
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Gallery (2011, Jul 12th).
Pages: 288
IT’S COMPLICATED. We’ve read the scandalous headlines, watched her sexy breakout performances in Starship Troopers and Wild Things, and seen her many public faces on her reality television show—the beautiful vixen, the devoted mother, the hard-working entertainer, and the fun-loving friend. But how well do we really know Denise Richards? Like so many small-town girls, she dreamed of making it big in Hollywood. But following a painful, high-profile divorce from Charlie Sheen, she found herself raising their two young daughters alone as her mother was dying of cancer. Denise writes openly and honestly about these experiences and more: she lets you in on her childhood dreams, her fated move to Hollywood with her close-knit family, her rise to fame, the pressures of living in the spotlight, and the controversy surrounding her relationships. more
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How the States Got Their Shapes Too: The People Behind the Borderlines
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Mark Stein
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (2011, Jun 7th).
Pages: 352
Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island? Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware? How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado? All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book.How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who. This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today. more
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Gandhi: The True Man Behind Modern India
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Jad Adams
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Pegasus (2011, Jul 15th).
Pages: 288
“Provocative. Adams strips away Gandhi's saintly aura and explores the duality . . . of India's most famous leader.”—Financial TimesJad Adams traces the course of Gandhi’s multi-faceted life, and the development of his religious, political, and social thinking over seven tumultuous decades: from his comfortable upbringing in a princely state in Gujarat; his early civil rights campaigns; his leadership through civil disobedience in the 1920s and 1930s that made him a world icon; and finally to his assassination by a Hindu extremist in 1948, only months after the birth of an independent India. An elegant and masterly account of one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century history, Adams presents for the first time the true story behind the man whose life may truly be said to have changed the world. more
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John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Danny Broderick
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (2011, Aug 1st).
Pages: 352
For the first time Gacy’s lawyer and confidant tells his chilling tale of how he defended an American serial killer."Sam, could you do me a favor?" Thus begins a story that has now become part of America’s true crime hall of fame. It is a gory, grotesque tale befitting a Stephen King novel. It is also a David and Goliath saga—the story of a young lawyer fresh from the Public Defender’s Office whose first client in private practice turns out to be the worst serial killer in our nation’s history. Sam Amirante had just opened his first law practice when he got a phone call from his friend John Wayne Gacy, a well-known and well-liked community figure. Gacy was upset about what he called “police harassment” and asked Amirante for help. more
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The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Jim Davidson
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books (2011, Jul 26th).
Pages: 288
“My eyes travel up the frozen walls. I figure it is eighty feet up to the sunlight. The walls above me climb up at about eighty degrees, then they go dead vertical, and then, higher up, they overhang. It is as if I am looking out from the belly of a beast, its jagged white teeth interlocking above me.” In June 1992, best friends Jim Davidson and Mike Price stood triumphantly atop Washington’s Mount Rainier, celebrating what they hoped would be the first of many milestones in their lives as passionate young mountaineers. Instead, their conquest gave way to catastrophe when a cave-in plunged them deep inside a glacial crevasse—the pitch-black, ice-walled hell that every climber’s nightmares are made of.An avid adventurer from an early age, Davidson was already a seasoned climber at the time of the Rainier ascent, fully aware of the risks and hopelessly in love with the challenge. more
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Ethan Allen: His Life and Times
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: 's Willard Sterne Randall
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (2011, Jun 13th).
Pages: 464
“Starred Review. The definitive biography of the frontier hero and founder of Vermont....Authoritative, vivid.... Colorful, well-written and nuanced.” (Kirkus Reviews )“Willard Sterne Randall has few equals as a writer. A careful and meticulous historian, and an esteemed biographer, Randall has marshaled his many talents to produce the definite biography of Ethan Allen, one of the most fascinating figures in the founding of the American nation.... a must read.” (John Ferling, author of Independence )“This is the powerful story about an essential and little-understood figure in American history. Willard Randall writes with grace and insight, and Ethan Allen is an engaging biography. more
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