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The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells
Par Rebecca Rego Barry. 2024
The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells is the first biography of one of the &“lost ladies&” of detective fiction who wrote…
more than eighty mysteries and hundreds of other works between the 1890s and the 1940s.Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) excelled at writing country house and locked-room mysteries for a decade before Agatha Christie entered the scene. In the 1920s, when she was churning out three or more books annually, she was dubbed &“about the biggest thing in mystery novels in the US.&”On top of that, Wells wielded her pen in just about every literary genre, producing several immensely popular children&’s books and young adult novels; beloved anthologies; and countless stories, prose, and poetry for magazines such as Thrilling Detective, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Harper&’s, and The New Yorker. All told, Wells wrote over 180 books. Some were adapted into silent films, and some became bestsellers. Yet a hundred years later, she has been all but erased from literary history. Why? How?This investigation takes us on a journey to Rahway, New Jersey, where Wells was born and is buried; to New York City&’s Upper West Side, where she spent her final twenty-five years; to the Library of Congress, where Carolyn&’s world-class collection of rare books now resides; and to many other public and private collections where exciting discoveries unfolded.Part biography and part sleuthing narrative, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells recovers the life and work of a brilliant writer who was considered one of the funniest, most talented women of her time.Diary of an Invasion: The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
Par Andrey Kurkov. 2022
'Uplifting and utterly defiant' Matt Nixson, Daily Express 'Immediate and important ... This is an insider's account of how an…
ordinary life became extraordinary' Helen Davies, The TimesThis journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. Andrey Kurkov has been a consistent satirical commentator on his adopted country of Ukraine. His most recent work, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens. The author has lived in Kyiv and in the remote countryside of Ukraine throughout the Russian invasion. He has also been able to fly to European capitals where he has been working to raise money for charities and to address crowded halls. Kurkov has been asked to write for every English newspaper, as also to be interviewed all over Europe. He has become an important voice for his people.Kurkov sees every video and every posted message, and he spends the sleepless nights of continuous bombardment of his city delivering the truth about this invasion to the world.The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939: 1934–1939 (The Diaries of Anaïs Nin #2)
Par Anaïs Nin. 1970
The second volume of &“one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters&” (Los Angeles Times). Beginning…
with the author&’s arrival in New York, this diary recounts Anaïs Nin&’s work as a psychoanalyst, and is filled with the stories of her analytical patients—as well as her musings over the challenges facing the artist in the modern world. The diary of this remarkably daring and candid woman provides a deeply intimate look inside her mind, as well as a fascinating chapter in her tumultuous life in the latter years of the 1930s.The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
Par Michiko Kakutani. 2024
An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change…
breaking over today&’s world, creating both opportunity and peril—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Truth. &“In this dazzling and brilliant book, Michiko Kakutani explains the cascading chaos of our era and points to ways that we can regain some stability.&”—Walter Isaacson, author of Elon MuskThe twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment defined by chaos and uncertainty, as one emergency cascades into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices—once regarded as radical, unorthodox, or marginal—are disrupting the status quo in politics, business, and culture. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation. Writing with a critic&’s understanding of cultural trends and a journalist&’s eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders—those who have sown chaos and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine&’s president Volodymyr Zelensky). At the same time, she situates today&’s multiplying crises in context with those that defined earlier hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the transition between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era at the end of the nineteenth century. Kakutani argues that today&’s crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe&’s profound vulnerabilities, but also stress tests pointing to the essential changes needed to survive this tumultuous era and build a more sustainable future.For over three-quarters of a century, the Governor General’s Literary Awards have been awarded annually in a variety of evolving…
categories. Fifteen Governors General have served as their patron. The impressive list continues to grow apace: between 1936 and 2018, the awards recognized 719 books in English and French and have been presented to 580 authors, illustrators, and translators. This beautifully illustrated bilingual compendium presents the biographies of all 580 award laureates, many accompanied by stunning archival portraits. This is the final instalment in Andrew Irvine’s remarkable and comprehensive research into what has become a touchstone of Canada’s literary culture. Together with Canada’s Best and The Governor General’s Literary Awards of Canada: A Bibliography, this work provides readers with a definitive overview of this literary prize. By itself, Canada’s Storytellers is an invaluable reading companion for anyone wanting to be introduced to many of our most influential authors, illustrators, and translators working in both French and English over the past decades. It belongs on the shelf of every enthusiast of Canadian literature. Bilingual edition.Distributed on behalf of the University of Florida College of Journalism and CommunicationsRae O. Weimer founded the University of Florida’s…
first school of journalism, and within one year of his arrival in Gainesville, the school received accreditation. No longer would Florida’s students have to leave the state to pursue dreams of becoming journalists. Just Call Me Rae chronicles the life of the man who pioneered journalism education in Florida and built one of the most innovative journalism and communications programs in the country. Rae grew up in a small Midwestern town where he learned to be resourceful and hardworking, traits that would make him—along with his reputation—the prime candidate to lead UF’s small journalism department. Due to economic hardship, he dropped out of college in his final year, but he knew he was destined to be a newspaperman. He learned everything he could about the profession, taking any job that came his way. Between 1925 and 1940, Rae worked for eleven newspapers in six states, including the Akron Beacon Journal and Cleveland Press in Ohio and the Buffalo Times in New York. The culmination of his newspaper career was his role at the revolutionary and historic PM newspaper in New York City. At PM, Rae rubbed elbows with some of the greatest journalists and writers of his generation, including Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Max Lerner, I. F. “Izzy” Stone, Dashiell Hammett, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Ferber. Rae’s reputation ran ahead of him to Florida, where the state’s newspapers were agitating for upgrading journalism education at UF. Rae might not have had the degrees that other candidates had, but he had the credentials—he was a seasoned newspaperman, a trained newspaper technician, and his years at PM had honed his teaching instinct. UF President J. Hillis Miller agreed to hire Rae, and so would begin the legend of the degreeless dean. Rae re-envisioned journalism at the University of Florida. With his leadership, what had been a three-person department that rarely exceeded twenty students grew into the School of Journalism. He expanded the school to include advertising and radio and television journalism in the curriculum, and by the 1960s UF's School of Journalism was the fastest growing journalism program in the country. In 1968, shortly after Rae retired, the School became the College of Journalism and Communications, and today it is still ranked among the nation’s top journalism programs, with students hired at news organizations across the country, including highly competitive newsrooms in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. With the communication skills they developed at the college, many pursue careers in public service, politics, law and public relations. This book is an eye-opening chronicle of Rae Weimer’s lasting legacy to journalism in the state of Florida.Distributed by University Press of Florida on behalf of the University of Florida College of Journalism and CommunicationsMy Home Team: A Sportswriter's Life and the Redemptive Power of Small-Town Girls Basketball
Par Dave Kindred. 2023
In this poignant memoir, a legendary sports journalist writes about the team that changed his life: the Morton High School…
Lady Potters basketball team. Dave Kindred has covered dozens of Super Bowls and written about stars like Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. But a high-school girls basketball team—the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois—stands apart from the rest. In this moving and intimate story, Kindred writes about his rise to professional success and the changes that brought him back to his hometown late in life. As he dealt with personal hardship, his urge to write sustained him. For years, he has recapped the games of the Lady Potters, including their many runs to state championships. He attended game after game, sitting in the stands and making notes, paid nothing but Milk Duds. And the team and their community were there for him as he lost a grandson to addiction and his wife to long-term illness. Tender and honest, Kindred&’s story reminds readers what sports are really about. He trades in the exhausting spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday for the joy of togetherness, the fire of competition, and the inexhaustible hope for victory tomorrow.The life and times of High Times&’ enigmatic founder Thomas King Forçade, an underground newspaper editor and marijuana kingpin who—between police…
raids, smuggling runs, and outrageous stunts—battled both the US government and fellow radicals.Cover illustration by legendary comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz. At the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forçade suddenly appeared, insinuating himself into the top echelons of countercultural politics and assuming control of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition of newspapers across the country. Weathering government surveillance and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain White House press credentials. But his audacious exploits—pieing Congressional panelists, stealing presidential portraits, and picking fights with other activists—led to accusations that he was an agent provocateur. As the era of protest faded and the dark shadows of Watergate spread, Forçade hoped that marijuana could be the path to cultural and economic revolution. Bankrolled by drug-dealing profits, High Times would be the Playboy of pot, dragging a once-taboo subject into the mainstream. The magazine was a travelogue of globe-trotting adventure, a wellspring of news about &“the business,&” and an overnight success. But High Times soon threatened to become nothing more than the &“hip capitalism&” Forçade had railed against for so long, and he felt his enemies closing in. Assembled from exclusive interviews, archived correspondences, and declassified documents, Agents of Chaos is a tale of attacks on journalism, disinformation campaigns, governmental secrecy, corporatism, and political factionalism. Its triumphs and tragedies mirror the cultural transformations of 1970s America, wrought by forces that continue to clash in the spaces between activism and power.If Not Us, Who?: William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement
Par David B. Frisk. 2011
If Not Us, Who? is both the story of an architect of the modern conservative movement and a colorful journey through…
a half century of high-level politics. Best known as the longtime publisher of National Review, William Rusher (1923–2011) was more than just a crucial figure in the history of the Right&’s leading magazine. He was a political intellectual, tactician, and strategist who helped shape the historic rise of conservatism. To write If Not Us, Who?, David B. Frisk pored over Rusher&’s voluminous papers at the Library of Congress and interviewed dozens of insiders, including National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., in addition to Rusher himself. The result is a gripping biography that shines new light on Rusher&’s significance as an observer and an activiast while bringing to life more than a generation&’s worth of political hopes, fears, and controversies. Frisk vividly captures the joys and struggles at National Review, including Rusher&’s complex relationship with the legendary Buckley. Here we see the powerful blend of wit, erudition, dedication, shrewdness, and earnestness that made Rusher an influential figure at NR and an indispensable link between conservatism&’s leading theorists and its political practitioners. &“If not us, who? If not now, when?&”—a maxim often attributed to Ronald Reagan—could have been Rusher&’s motto. In everything he did—publishing National Review, recruiting and advising political candidates, organizing cadres of young conservatives, taking on liberal advocates in a popular television debate program, writing a syndicated column—his objective was to build a movement. His tireless efforts proved essential to conservatism&’s ascendancy, from the pivotal Goldwater campaign through the Reagan era. Largely unexamined until now, Rusher&’s career opens a new window onto the history of the conservative movement. This comprehensive biography reintroduces readers to a remarkable man of thought and action.The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry
Par Mark Mitchell, Nathan Schlueter. 2011
A striking contribution to the conversation that is conservatismWendell Berry—poet, novelist, essayist, critic, farmer—has won the admiration of Americans from…
all walks of life and from across the political spectrum. His writings treat an extraordinary range of subjects, including politics, economics, ecology, farming, work, marriage, religion, and education. But as this enlightening new book shows, such diverse writings are united by a humane vision that finds its inspiration in the great moral and literary tradition of the West.In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter bring together a distinguished roster of writers to critically engage Berry&’s ideas. The volume features original contributions from Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, Allan Carlson, Richard Gamble, Jason Peters, Anne Husted Burleigh, Patrick J. Deneen, Caleb Stegall, Luke Schlueter, Matt Bonzo, Michael Stevens, D. G. Hart, Mark Shiffman, and William Edmund Fahey, as well as a classic piece by Wallace Stegner.Together, these authors situation Berry&’s ideas within the larger context of conservative thought. His vision stands for reality in all its facets and against all reductive &“isms&”—for intellect against intellectualism, individuality against individualism, community against communitarianism, liberty against libertarianism. Wendell Berry calls his readers to live lives of gratitude, responsibility, friendship, and love—notions that, as this important new book makes clear, should be at the heart of a thoughtful and coherent conservatism.Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus: A Mysterious Profile (Mysterious Profiles)
Par Faye Kellerman. 2009
The USA Today–bestselling author details how she became a crime novelist and how she created her acclaimed husband-and-wife detective team.In…
1986, Faye Kellerman introduced LAPD detective Peter Decker and widowed yeshiva teacher Rina Lazarus in her crime novel, The Ritual Bath. The debut won Kellerman the 1987 Macavity Award for Best First Novel and turned into a long-running bestselling series. But how exactly did it all come about?In this autobiographical piece, Kellerman discusses the origins of Decker and Lazarus and answers common questions from readers. Like, how much does she resemble her character, Rina? And how have Peter and Rina evolved? But Kellerman also talks about her own life as an author, mother, and wife. She shares what it’s like being married to a fellow novelist, and how exactly she carved out a place for herself in the world of crime writing.Praise for the Decker and Lazarus Novels“Exceptionally fine suspense.” —San Diego Union-Tribune“Faye Kellerman is a master of mystery.” —The Plain Dealer“Tautly exciting.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review“Reading a good thriller is very much like taking a great vacation: half the fun is getting there. Faye Kellerman is one heck of a tour guide.” —Detroit Free Press“Surprising twists and engaging subplots will keep readers turning the pages to the satisfying conclusion.” —Publishers WeeklyDear Leader: My Escape from North Korea
Par Jang Jin-Sung. 2014
A North Korean poet recounts life among the political elite and his daring escape to freedom in this “powerful, heart-rending”…
memoir (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).As North Korea’s State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.Never before has a member of the elite described the inner workings of this totalitarian state and its propaganda machine. An astonishing exposé told through the heart-stopping story of Jang Jin-sung’s escape to South Korea, Dear Leader is an “impossibly dramatic story . . . one of the best depictions yet of North Korea’s nightmare” (Publishers Weekly).More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
Par Elizabeth Wurtzel. 2002
Elizabeth Wurtzel published her memoir of depression, Prozac Nation, to astonishing literary acclaim. A cultural phenomenon by age twenty-six, she…
had fame, money, respect—everything she had always wanted except that one, true thing: happiness.For all of her professional success, Wurtzel felt like a failure. She had lost friends and lovers, every magazine job she'd held, and way too much weight. She couldn't write, and her second book was past due. But when her doctor prescribed Ritalin to help her focus-and boost the effects of her antidepressants—Wurtzel was spared. The Ritalin worked. And worked. The pills became her sugar...the sweetness in the days that have none. Soon she began grinding up the Ritalin and snorting it. Then came the cocaine, then more Ritalin, then more cocaine. Then I need more. I always need more. For all of my life I have needed more...More, Now, Again is the brutally honest, often painful account of Wurtzel's descent into drug addiction. It is also a survival story: How Wurtzel managed to break free of her relationship with Ritalin and learned to love life, and herself, is at the heart of this ultimately uplifting memoir that no reader will soon forget.Mallory: A Mysterious Profile (Mysterious Profiles #11)
Par Carol O'Connell. 2008
The New York Times–bestselling author discusses her crime-solving hacker heroine, &“surely one of the genre&’s oddest and most interesting creations&”…
(Chicago Tribune). When the NYPD detective and sociopath known simply as Mallory made her series debut, John Sandford called her &“one of the most interesting new characters to come along in years.&” A homeless wild child who was taken in by a New York City cop and grew up to follow in his footsteps, she possesses a skill set—including a talent for computer hacking—that allows her to track down her prey like no one else. In this insightful essay, author Carol O&’Connell shares fascinating insights about her origins, her psychology, and her strikingly different sense of right and wrong. &“Mallory is not your usual plucky and generally wholesome mystery solver. Jane Marple would probably cross the street to avoid making eye contact with her.&” —The Washington Post Book World &“Mallory is a marvelous creation.&” —Jonathan Kellerman, New York Times–bestselling author of the Alex Hunter novelsCarson McCullers: A Life
Par Mary V. Dearborn. 2024
The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America&’s greatest writers, based on newly available letters…
and journalsV. S. Pritchett called her &“a genius.&” Gore Vidal described her as a &“beloved novelist of singular brilliance . . . Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure . . .&” And Tennessee Williams said, &“The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson.&”She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she&’d been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. As a child, she said she&’d been &“born a man.&” At twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, a fellow southerner, ex-soldier, and aspiring writer (&“He was the best-looking man I had ever seen&”). They had a fraught, tumultuous marriage lasting twelve years and ending with his suicide in 1953. Reeves was devoted to her and to her writing, and he envied her talent; she yearned for attention, mostly from women who admired her but rebuffed her sexually. Her first novel—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—was published in 1940, when she was twenty-three, and overnight, Carson McCullers became the most widely talked about writer of the time.While McCullers&’s literary stature continues to endure, her private life has remained enigmatic and largely unexamined. Now, with unprecedented access to the cache of materials that has surfaced in the past decade, Mary Dearborn gives us the first full picture of this brilliant, complex artist who was decades ahead of her time, a writer who understood—and captured—the heart and longing of the outcast.A rollicking history of America's most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers. …
You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice&’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats. With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former Voice writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen&’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury
Par Ray Bradbury. 1976
Iconic author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury believed that, someday, a…
collection of his letters could illuminate the story of his life in new ways. That story emerges across time and memory from the pages of Remembrance. Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and an Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation&’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury&’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts&’ Big Read program. His enduring legacy as a storyteller, novelist, and space-age visionary radiated out into popular adaptations for stage, film, and television, and now the fascinating narratives and insights of his personal and professional correspondence are revealed for the first time. Remembrance offers the first sustained look at his life in letters from his late teens to his ninth decade. Bradbury&’s correspondence was far-reaching—he interacted with a rich cross section of 20th-century cultural figures, writers, film directors, editors, and others who simply wanted insights or encouragement from a writer who had enriched their lives through his stories and novels. Bradbury scholar and biographer, Jonathan R. Eller, organized this volume into categories of correspondents, showing Bradbury&’s progression through life as he knew it, and not necessarily as the public perceived him. Letters to and from mentors and other writers are followed by correspondence with such film directors as John Huston, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini. Letters with publishers and agents are followed by letters that capture moments of national and international recognition, the shadows of war and intolerance that motivated some of his best writing, and the friends and family members who shared the memories of his life. Among the writers whose letters illuminate Remembrance are Theodore Sturgeon, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Twilight Zone writers Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, Dan Chaon, Bernard Berenson, Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Anaîs Nin, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, and Jessamyn West. Remembrance illuminates the most elusive aspect of Ray Bradbury&’s wide-ranging writing passions—the correspondence he sent and received throughout his long life, each letter originally intended for an audience of one.My Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a Family
Par Steven V. Roberts. 2005
From Steven V. Roberts comes My Fathers' Houses, a memoir of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, an immigrant community…
in the shadow of the Statue if Liberty, and the story of how his father and his grandfather's dreams–and their own passion for writing and ideas–influenced Steven's future, and inspired him to seek his fortune in New York City, the media capital of the world. This is a story of a town and a time and a boy who grew up there, a boy who became a New York Times correspondent, TV and radio personality, and best–selling author. The town was Bayonne, New Jersey, a European village so close to New York that Steve could see the Statue of Liberty from his bedroom window. The time was the forties and fifties, when children of immigrants were striving to become American and find a place in a booming post–war world. The core of Steve's world was one block, where he lived in a house his grandfather, Harry Schanbam, had built with his own hands. But the story starts back in Russia, where the family business of writing and ideas began. Steve's other grandfather, Abraham Rogowsky, stole money to become a Zionist pioneer in Palestine before moving to America. The tale continues through the Depression, when Steve's parents lived one block apart in Bayonne, wrote letters to each other and married in secret. During the war years, Steve's father wrote children's books and based one of his best sellers on outings he took with his twin sons to the local train station. As his byline, he used his boys' middle names–Jeffrey Victor–so Steve got his first writing credit before he was two. The story concludes with the boy leaving Bayonne, going on to Harvard, meeting the Catholic girl who became his wife, and starting work at the New York Times–across the river, and worlds away, from where he began. Now a grandfather of five, Steve Roberts looks in the mirror and sees his own father and grandfather looking back at him–a family chain that started in 19th century Russia and thrives today in 21st century America.Talk, Talk: A Children's Book Author Speaks To Grown-ups
Par E. L. Konigsburg. 1995
In TalkTalk E. L. Konigsburg presents a selection of speeches she has given over a period of 25 years. In…
her introduction to the first speech, and to the book as a whole, she explains:"While each of my books has been written because I had a story I wanted to tell, these speeches were written because I had something I wanted to say. The audience for the former is children; for the latter, adults.... I recognize -- with a measure of amused detachment -- that some were written as a reaction to trends; others, to fads.I have given these talks in cafetoriums, auditoriums, and the public rooms of Holiday Inns. Even though I have not always been on a stage when addressing an audience, I have tried to set the stage. Between talk and talk, I have written passages connecting the speeches to the time in which they were written and to one another. And that is TalkTalk."Always a thought-provoking speaker, she has chosen nine speeches that capture the essence of her years as a writer for children. When brought together, they enrich one another and provide a chance to look back at what children's books have been, to observe where they are now and to offer an insightful look at what books may continue to mean to children in the years to come. Written by an outstanding author, these speeches, individually and together, represent a vision of the need for books and the role books have played and should continue to play in the lives of children.American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
Par Craig Ferguson. 2009
In his memoir American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson, host of The Late, Late Show, traces his journey from working-class Glasgow…
to the comedic limelight of Hollywood and American citizenship. Moving and achingly funny, American on Purpose moves from Ferguson’s early life as an alcoholic to his stint on The Drew Carey Show to his decision to become a U.S. citizen in its unique and honest look at his version of the American dream.