Category: | Biographies & Memoirs |
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Weight | 0.198 kg |
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Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times
During the fifty years he has been variously a reporter, a political spokesperson, and a broadcaster, Bill Moyers has demonstrated a deep commitment to understanding the workings of our government and the role of the individual in society. His essays and commentaries, such as the recent “Shivers Down the Spine,” “A Time for Anger,” and “Journalism Under Fire,” are argued over and passed along as soon as they appear in print or on the Internet.
Identifying what he sees as a political system increasingly at the mercy of a corporate ruling class, Moyers urges a reengagement with the spirit of community that makes the work of democracy possible.
Not only a trenchant critique of what is wrong, Moyers on America is also a call to arms for the progressive promise of the people of America, in whom his faith is strong.
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George Washington: A biography in social dance
George Washington: A biography in social dance
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An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice
An American Family is an intensely personal story about the nature of true patriotism and what it’s like to risk everything you know for the promise of a 226-year-old piece of parchment. As Khizr Khan traces his remarkable journey–from humble beginnings on a poultry farm in Pakistan to obtaining a degree from Harvard Law School and raising a family in America–he shows what it means to leave the limitations of one’s country behind for the best values and promises of another. He also tells the story of the Khans’ middle child, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq, and the ways in which their undying pride in him and his sacrifice have helped them endure the deepest despair a parent can know.
The book is a stark depiction of what an American looks like, what being a nation of immigrants really means, and what it is to live-rather than simply to pay lip service to-our ideals.
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The Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of World War II
A World War II medic shares his story for the first time, detailing the intense combat and human drama he experienced as he patched up men on the frontlines during the final days of the war
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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Informs our understanding of American politics–then and now–and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic–John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation’s history, the greatest statesmen of their generation–and perhaps any–came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton’s deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison’s secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton’s financial plan; Franklin’s petition to end the “peculiar institution” of slavery–his last public act–and Madison’s efforts to quash it; Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams’s difficult term as Washington’s successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson’s renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.
In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised public figures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America’s only truly indispensable figure.
Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics–then and now–and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.
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You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know
An unusual and uncommonly moving family memoir, with a twist that give new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgiveness.
Heather Sellers is face-blind-that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people’s faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, and gait. But she sometimes kissed a stranger, thinking he was her boyfriend, or failed to recognize even her own father and mother. She feared she must be crazy.
Yet it was her mother who nailed windows shut and covered them with blankets, made her daughter walk on her knees to spare the carpeting, had her practice secret words to use in the likely event of abduction. Her father went on weeklong “fishing trips” (aka benders), took in drifters, wore panty hose and bras under his regular clothes. Heather clung to a barely coherent story of a “normal” childhood in order to survive the one she had.
That fairy tale unraveled two decades later when Heather took the man she would marry home to meet her parents and began to discover the truth about her family and about herself. As she came at last to trust her own perceptions, she learned the gift of perspective: that embracing the past as it is allows us to let it go. And she illuminated a deeper truth-that even in the most flawed circumstances, love may be seen and felt.
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Many Masks: The Life of Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) is often described as the greatest of American architects. His works—among them Taliesin North, Taliesin West, Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax buildings, the Guggenheim Museum—earned him a good measure of his fame, but his flamboyant personal life earned him the rest. Here Brendan Gill, a personal friend of Wright and his family, gives us not only the fullest, fairest, and most entertaining account of Wright to date, but also strips away the many masks the architect tirelessly constructed to fascinate his admirers and mislead his detractors. Enriched by hitherto unpublished letters and 300 photographs and drawings, this definitive biography makes Wright, in all his creativity, crankiness, and zest, fairly leap from its pages.
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Beaten Odds: Footprints of Uncertainty, Resilience, Adventure and Triumph
Stephen Mabea was born to newly converted Seventh Day Adventist (SDA parents as British missionaries made inroads into Western Kenya. With a life punctuated with challenges, Mabea’s Christian upbringing, dedication to service and excellence saw him triumph at every turn.
One of the first teachers from his locality in pre-independent Kenya, he focused on shaping and moulding the lives of young people. Hard work and creativity saw each of his schools record stellar performance. Many of his students went on to pursue successful careers across the country and elsewhere in the world.
As a Staffing and Education Officer in Kisii and Siaya, he was central to implementing education programmes, improving teaching outcomes, streamlining teacher recruitment, and reforming the school equipment programme. Away from education, Mabea worked with fellow pyrethrum and tea farmers to get better returns for their sweat and toil.
Discipline and dedication to service have been key guiding principles in his work as a teacher, an education administrator and community leader. He professes that success through hard work, resilience, honesty and determination is its own reward. Doing what is right, at the right time and in the right way is most gratifying, he adds.
In retirement, Mabea spends time at his Borabu home farming, and serving the community and the church. They look up to him as a teacher, an advisor, mentor and a role model.
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