BIOGRAPHY

Allende, Isabel Paula (1995)

American Service Personnel Dear America: Letters from Vietnam (1985) More than twenty-five years after the official end of the Vietnam War, Dear America allows us to witness the war firsthand through the eyes of the men and women who served in Vietnam. In this collection of more than 200 letters, they share their first impressions of the rigors of life in the bush, their longing for home and family, their emotions over the conduct of the war, and their ache at the loss of a friend in battle.

Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)An unforgettable memoir of growing up black in the 1930s and 1940s in a tiny Arkansas town where Angelou's grandmother's store was the heart of the community and white people seemed as strange as aliens from another planet.

Baker, Russell  Growing Up (1982)

When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise.

These were depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell. He did everything from delivering papers to hustling subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post. As is often the case, early hardships made the man.

 

Cook, Blanche Wiesen Eleanor Roosevelt: Vol. 1: 1884-1933 (1992)Cook hit a nerve with her portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt--the brave, fierce, passionate, political heroine of our century. A national bestseller, her authoritative biography has been celebrated by feminists, historians, politicians, potential first ladies, and by reviewers everywhere.

Curie, Marie Madam Curie: a Biography (1937)                                   Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman scientist to win worldwide acclaim and was, indeed, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. Written by Curie's daughter, the reowned international activist Eve Curie, this biography chronicles Curie's legendary achievements in science, including her pioneering efforts in the study of radioactivity and her two Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry. It also spotlights her remarkable like, from her childhood in Poland, to her storybook Parisian marriage to fellow scientist Pierre Curie, to her tragic death from the very radium that brought her fame. Now updated with an eloquent, rousing introduction by best-selling author Natalie Angier, this biography celebrates an astonishing mind and a extraordinary woman's life.

Douglass, Frederick Narrartive of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)In 1845, just seven years after his escape from slavery, the young Frederick Douglass published this powerful account of his life in bondage and his triumph over oppression. The book, which marked the beginning of Douglass's career as an impassioned writer, journalist, and orator for the abolitionist cause, reveals the terrors he faced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North. It has become a classic of American autobiography.

Feynman, Richard Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character (1985)Here are the outrageous exploits of the world's most outspoken Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

Frank, Anne  The Diary of a Young Girl (1952)Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been read by tens of millions of people all over the world. It remains a beloved and deeply admired testament to the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Anne was first and foremost a teenage girl, not a remote and flawless symbol. She fretted about and tried to cope with her own sexuality. Like many young girls, she often found herself in disagreements with her mother. And like any teenager, she veered between the carefree nature of a child and the full-fledged sorrow of an adult. Anne emerges more human, more vulnerable and more vital than ever

Hockenberry, John Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence (1995)

Jiang, Ji-Li Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution (1997)In 1966 Ji-li Jiang turned twelve. An outstanding student and leader, she had everything: brains, the admiration of her peers, and a bright future in China's Communist Party. But that year China's leader, Mao Ze-dong, launched the Cultural Revolution, and everything changed. Over the next few years Ji-li and her family were humiliated and scorned by former friends, neighbors, and co-workers. They lived in constant terror of arrest. Finally, with the detention of her father, Ji-li faced the most difficult choice of her life.

Karr, Mary The Liar's Club (1995)

The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club. And to the girl whose father is the club's undisputed champion mythmaker, they exude a fatal glamour - one that lifts her from ordinary life. But there are other lies. Darker, more hidden. Her mother's unimaginable past threatens the family's very sanity. Mary Karr looks back through younger eyes to exorcise those demons: a mad, puritanical grandmother; a vast inheritance squandered in one year flat; endless emptied bottles; and the darknesses inflicted on an eight-year-old girl. This voice explodes with antic, wit, stripped of self-pity. Miraculously, it makes a journey into joy. Here is a "terrific family of liars redeemed by a slow unearthing of truth."

Keller, Helen The Story of My Life  (1902)The Story of My Life, a remarkable account of overcoming the debilitating challenges of being both deaf and blind, has become an international classic, making Helen Keller one of the most well-known, inspirational figures in history.

Khanga, Yelena Soul to Soul: A Black Russian American Family, 1865-1992 (1992)Yelena Khanga tells the compelling story of growing up black in Russia and journeying through cultures to learn about her forebears and meet relatives she had never known. From the days of slavery in the cotton fields of Mississippi to the Moscow of Stalin and Brezhnev, from Jewish New York and Harlem in the twenties to modern-day Los Angeles, Long Island, and Zanzibar, Soul to Soul is a four-generation family memoir.

Kincaid, Jamaica My Brother (1997)

McBride, James and Ruth McBride-Jordan The Color of Water: a Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (1996)Around the narrative of Ruth McBride Jordan, a.k.a. Rachel Deborah Shilsky, the daughter of an angry, failed Orthodox Jewish rabbi in the South, her son James writes of the inner confusions he felt as a black child of a white mother and of the love and faith with which his mother surrounded their large family. The result is a powerful portrait of growing up, a meditation on race and identity, and a poignant, beautifully crafted hymn from a son to his mother.

McCourt, Frank Angela's Ashes: A Memoir (1996)                                  "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

McCullough, David Truman (1992)Huge, ambitious, and perfectly realized, Truman is an American masterpiece about the most American of Americans, a man who confounded the nation and the world by achieving a greatness all his own after coming to the presidency in FDR's giant shadow.

Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra (1967)Massie offers a moving, tragic, and unforgettable account of the extraordinary Imperial dynasty of Tsar Nicholas II, his doomed empire, and a revolution that would inexorably change the world forever.

Mathabane, Mark Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa (1986)A unique, first-person account of growing up black under apartheid.

Mehta, Ved  Sound-Shadows of the New World (1985)

Moody, Ann Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968)Written without a trace of sentimentality or apology, this is an unforgettable personal story — the truth as a remarkable young woman named Anne Moody lived it. To read her book is to know what it is to have grown up black in Mississippi in the forties an fifties — and to have survived with pride and courage intact.

Mora, Pat House of Houses (1997)

A family memoir told in the voices of ancestors, House of Houses is about oppression and survival and sometimes triumph, as "any book about a Mexican American family must be." Mora's House of Houses is large, imagined, traditional, a refuge from the desert's heat, where the generations of her family, living and dead, mingle through the months of a single year. The house in inhabited by Mora's father, Raul, the fighter who hit no one; her mother, Estela, the extrovert who in grade school chose to be a rainbow tulip for May Day since no one color was enough; Estela's mother, Amelia, the Mexican Cinderella, a red-haired orphan taken in by wealthy relatives. Drawing on the magical realism that distinguishes the work of so many Latin American writers - from Garcia Marquez to Esquivel - Mora writes of the multicolored cloth that heals the women in her family and of her father's ability to turn himself into a bird. Great-grandmother Tomasa, in her nineties, leaves fruit behind her radio for the announcer she loves. And Mora's Aunt Chole, though legally blind, is the only one who sees The Virgin Mary when she appears in the garden.

Robertson, James I. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997)The passage of 130 years has only deepened the fascination and reverence for Confederate general Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson. He ranks today as among the half-dozen greatest soldiers that America has produced. Military academies in both hemispheres still teach his tactics. Revered by his men, respected by his foes, Jackson became seemingly invincible. When he learned of the general's fatal wound, Robert E. Lee sent his "affectionate regards," saying, "He has lost his left arm but I my right arm." Jackson's early death in 1863 was the greatest personal loss suffered by the Confederacy and one that permanently crippled the wartime South. This eagerly awaited biography is based on years of research into little-known manuscripts, unpublished letters, newspapers, and other primary sources. It offers for the first time a complete portrait - not only of Jackson the brilliant military strategist and beloved general but also of Jackson, the man of orphaned background, unyielding determination to conquer adversity, and deep religious convictions.

Rodriguez, Luis Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1993)There has never been a more clear and compelling account of a gang member's life than Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez's eloquent, impassioned, frighteningly vivid chronicle of his youth in Los Angeles in the late 60s and early 70s. Growing up in Watts and East L.A., Rodriguez joined his first gang at age 11 and was drawn into "la vida loca" - the crazy life. Gangs were "how we wove something out of the threads of nothing," he remembers. By age 18, he was a veteran of gang warfare, police killings, drug overdoses, and suicides that had claimed 25 of his friends and had driven him and so many others to despair. In part, Rodriguez survived the violence and desperation of his youth by writing down his experiences. They were only woven into this astonishing book years later, when his son, Ramiro, joined a gang in Chicago where they now live. Always Running is packed with episode after episode of high drama, but within this honest and powerful depiction of social devastation, there is a father's impassioned message of understanding and hope to his son, and to thousands like him.

Wolff, Tobias This Boy's Life: a Memoir (1989)

In this unforgettable memoir of boyhood in the 1950s, we meet the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move. Between themselves they develop an almost telepathic trust that sees them through their wanderings from Florida to a small town in Washington State. Fighting for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, Toby's growing up is at once poignant and comical. His various schemes—running away to Alaska, forging cheeks, and stealing cars—lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.

Wright, Richard Black Boy: a Record of Childhood and Youth (1945)

X, Malcolm The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

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