Oprah: A Biography (Random House Large Print) (Paperback)

Oprah: A Biography (Random House Large Print) (Paperback)
By Kitty Kelley

Buy new: $19.80
30 used and new from $4.89
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Beth from ISSB
Customer tags: biographies, oprah winfrey, oprah truthes, kitty kelly, oprah

Review & Description

Based on three years of research and reporting as well as 850 interviews with sources, many of whom have never before spoken for publication, Oprah is the first comprehensive biography of one of the most influential, powerful, and admired public figures of our time, by the most widely read biographer of our era. Anyone who is a fan of Oprah Winfrey or who has followed her extraordinary life and career will be fascinated and newly informed by the closely observed, detailed, and well-rounded portrait of her provided by Kitty Kelley’s exhaustively researched book. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation of who Oprah really is beyond her public persona and a fuller understanding of her important place in American cultural history. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Away At A Camp In Maine (Paperback)

Away At A Camp In Maine (Paperback)
By Kimberley Collins Kalicky

Buy new: $10.00
10 used and new from $8.49
Customer Rating:

First tagged by
Customer tags: lake(2), maine(2), camp(2), biographies, cottage

Product Images

Review & Description

Going away to camp is an escape, a refreshing of your soul, a means to disconnect from all you are day-to-day....and yet connect much more deeply with your family and your authentic self. It is returning to the same place in nature, year after year, that creates lasting memories. Kim Kalicky's Aunt and Uncle owned a camp and she spent her childhood there, her memories rich with its part in her life. After fifteen years away from it, she returned as an adult, and for ten years her own young family spent time there each summer. She captures the essence of what getting away, not to France or a villa in Italy, but right in our own states for a very little cost, can do for our spirits. What she describes happening for her children as they aged will encourage other parents to make a tradition of getting away themselves with their own families. This book makes you feel you, too, are skimming the lake in a kayak at dawn, no one on the lake but you; that you, too, are sitting in the Adirondack chairs at dusk, holding hands with your husband or wife, the friend you may have begun to lose touch with in the chaos that makes up your "real" life. Her descriptions of nature, wholesome food, and outdoor exercising make you feel you, too, are away at a camp. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Hardcover)

Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Hardcover)
By Anthony Summers

250 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: fbi(4), corruption(3), hoover(3), american history(3), intelligence(2), biographies(2), gay(2), cointelpro(2), presidents(2), anticommunism, anthony summers, biography

Review & Description

Presidents yearned to fire him, but were daunted by his storehouse of damaging secrets. Public officials and private citizens lived in fear of his illegal surveillance and harassment tactics. Now, in this ground-breaking, at times shocking biography, J. Edgar Hoover, the man who ruled over the FBI for nearly fifty years, emerges definitively as one of the greatest menaces of our times.

Official and Confidential, by the award-winning investigative journalist and author Anthony Summers, is the first book to expose the public and the private J. Edgar Hoover. Other biographers have hinted at the dark secrets in the Director's life, but Summers courageously discloses the truth. After conducting more than eight hundred interviews and obtaining access to previously concealed documents, Summers has created a chilling portrait of a legendary figure who blatantly abused the public trust.

* J. Edgar Hoover, Summers establishes, was a closet homosexual and transvestite. Mafia bosses obtained information about Hoover's sex life and used it for decades to keep the FBI at bay. Without this, the Mafia as we know it might never have gained its hold in America.

* J. Edgar Hoover shamelessly accepted gifts and free lodging from millionaire oilmen, and appropriated FBI facilities for his personal use.

* J. Edgar Hoover influenced the course of World War II by ignoring an early warning about Pearl Harbor.

* J. Edgar Hoover used his knowledge of John F. Kennedy's womanizing to ensure that Lyndon Johnson became Vice President. He relied on dirty tricks to stay in office under Kennedy and subverted the Warren Commission's probe into the investigation of his death.

* J. Edgar Hoover himself was the target of a Watergate-era burglary attempt - and perhaps even a murder plot.

With these and other astonishing disclosures, Summers defines a man and his times. He explores Hoover's troubled youth as the son of a mentally ill father and a highly demanding mother, and the development of the obsessive behavior that dominated his later years. Summers takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, as a zealous young lawyer rebuilds an ineffectual corps of agents into a massive force capable of police-state tactics. With riveting detail, Summers documents Hoover's behind-the-scenes role in war and peace through fifty years and eight presidential administrations.

Richly anecdotal, meticulously researched Official and Confidential depicts some of the most controversial and colorful events of our century. Here is a disturbing lesson in how one man was able to abuse his position of power and change the course of American history. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation) (Hardcover)

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation) (Hardcover)
By Kurt W. Beyer

Buy new: $18.45
51 used and new from $13.48
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Luis F. Moreno
Customer tags: grace hopper(7), cobol(5), history of computing(5), computer science(5), american history(4), ibm(3), computer history(3), computer programming, biographies, businesswoman, business leadership, computer

Review & Description

Winning entry, General Trade Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2010 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston.

A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. Throughout Hopper's later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer goes beyond the screenplay-ready myth to reveal a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry.

Hopper made herself "one of the boys" in Howard Aiken's wartime Computation Laboratory at Harvard, then moved on to the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corporation. Both rebellious and collaborative, she was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at a time when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper's greatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers.

Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series Read more

Find out More for the best price

Mag Crew Memoirs (Kindle Edition)

Mag Crew Memoirs (Kindle Edition)
By George Bush

Buy new: $5.77
197 used and new from $5.76

First tagged by Steven M. Giles "booklover"
Customer tags: magazine, biographies, kindle book, gift idea, book, kindle, graphic novel

Review & Description

A behind the scenes tell all book about the corrupt magazine industry. What the magazine publishers do not want you to know. True stories of a young salesman that found a job that was worse than his abusive childhood. Trapped and living in a prison of his own accord since the age of seventeen. This young man aged on the road in the ruthless magazine business thinking it would be the job of his dreams only to find himself waking up in a nightmare twenty years later. Living and traveling the us, state to state and city by city. Connected to mob ties, mob type bosses and fueled by drugs and alcohol. Everyday life on the crew consisted of violence, sex, murder and scandal it was a marvel that the young man made it out alive. The sad thing about it is however several magazine publishers support human trafficking on these corrupted gang like Magazine Crews. Read more

Find out More for the best price

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (Audio Cassette)

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (Audio Cassette)
By Michael Lewis

29 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Anshu Gaind
Customer tags: biographies, entrepreneurship

Review & Description

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.

Despite the variety of his achievements, Clark thinks of himself mainly as the creator of Hyperion, which happens to be a sailboat - not just an ordinary yacht, but the world's largest single-mast vessel, a machine more complex than a 747. Clark claims he will be able to sail it via computer from his desk in San Francisco, and the new code may contain the seeds of his next billion-dollar coup.

On the wings of Lewis' celebrated storytelling, the listener takes the ride of a lifetime through this strange landscape of geeks and billionaires. We get the inside story of the battle between Netscape and Microsoft; we sit in the room as Clark tries to persuade the investment bankers that Healtheon IS the new Microsoft; we get queasy as Clark pits his boat against the rage of the North Atlantic in winter. And in every brilliant anecdote and character sketch, Lewis is drawing us a map of markets and free enterprise in the twenty-first century.Michael Lewis was supposed to be writing about how Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, was going to turn health care on its ear by launching Healtheon, which would bring the vast majority of the industry's transactions online. So why was he spending so much time on a computerized yacht, each feature installed because, as one technician put it, "someone saw it on Star Trek and wanted one just like it?"

Much of The New New Thing, to be fair, is devoted to the Healtheon story. It's just that Jim Clark doesn't do startups the way most people do. "He had ceased to be a businessman," as Lewis puts it, "and become a conceptual artist." After coming up with the basic idea for Healtheon, securing the initial seed money, and hiring the people to make it happen, Clark concentrated on the building of Hyperion, a sailboat with a 197-foot mast, whose functions are controlled by 25 SGI workstations (a boat that, if he wanted to, Clark could log onto and steer--from anywhere in the world). Keeping up with Clark proves a monumental challenge--"you didn't interact with him," Lewis notes, "so much as hitch a ride on the back of his life"--but one that the author rises to meet with the same frenetic energy and humor of his previous books, Liar's Poker and Trail Fever.

Like those two books, The New New Thing shows how the pursuit of power at its highest levels can lead to the very edges of the surreal, as when Clark tries to fill out an investment profile for a Swiss bank, where he intends to deposit less than .05 percent of his financial assets. When asked to assess his attitude toward financial risk, Clark searches in vain for the category of "people who sought to turn ten million dollars into one billion in a few months" and finally tells the banker, "I think this is for a different ... person." There have been a lot of profiles of Silicon Valley companies and the way they've revamped the economy in the 1990s--The New New Thing is one of the first books fully to depict the sort of man that has made such companies possible. --Ron Hogan Read more

Find out More for the best price

Decision Points (Hardcover)

Decision Points (Hardcover)
By George W. Bush

Buy new: $18.89
95 used and new from $13.45
Customer Rating:

First tagged by D. Stein
Customer tags: war criminal(473), worst president ever(419), failure(388), how to ruin your country(381), true crime(380), criminal(313), idiot(268), lies(222), george bush(210), unfit for office(163), president(134), destroy foreign relations(127)

Review & Description

In this candid and gripping account, President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life.

George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached his desk impacted people around the world and defined the times in which we live.

Decision Points brings readers inside the Texas governor's mansion on the night of the 2000 election, aboard Air Force One during the harrowing hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, into the Situation Room moments before the start of the war in Iraq, and behind the scenes at the White House for many other historic presidential decisions.

For the first time, we learn President Bush's perspective and insights on:

• His decision to quit drinking and the journey that led him to his Christian faith
• The selection of the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, Supreme Court justices, and other key officials
• His relationships with his wife, daughters, and parents, including heartfelt letters between the president and his father on the eve of the Iraq War
• His administration's counterterrorism programs, including the CIA's enhanced interrogations and the Terrorist Surveillance Program
• Why the worst moment of the presidency was hearing accusations that race played a role in the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and a critical assessment of what he would have done differently during the crisis
• His deep concern that Iraq could turn into a defeat costlier than Vietnam, and how he decided to defy public opinion by ordering the troop surge
• His legislative achievements, including tax cuts and reforming education and Medicare, as well as his setbacks, including Social Security and immigration reform
• The relationships he forged with other world leaders, including an honest assessment of those he did and didn’t trust
• Why the failure to bring Osama bin Laden to justice ranks as his biggest disappointment and why his success in denying the terrorists their fondest wish—attacking America again—is among his proudest achievements

A groundbreaking new brand of presidential memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history—and on the man at the center of events.

Since leaving office, President George W. Bush has led the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The center includes an active policy institute working to advance initiatives in the fields of education reform, global health, economic growth, and human freedom, with a special emphasis on promoting social entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for women around the world. It will also house an official government archive and a state-of-the-art museum that will open in 2013. Read more

Find out More for the best price

iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business (Kindle Edition)

iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business (Kindle Edition)
By Jeffrey S. Young

Buy new: $9.66
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Julien
Customer tags: biographies, waiting for price to go down, apple, steve jobs

Review & Description

iCon takes a look at the most astounding figure in a business era noted for its mavericks, oddballs, and iconoclasts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Jeffrey Young and William Simon provide new perspectives on the legendary creation of Apple, detail Jobs’s meteoric rise, and the devastating plunge that left him not only out of Apple, but out of the computer-making business entirely. This unflinching and completely unauthorized portrait reveals both sides of Jobs’s role in the remarkable rise of the Pixar animation studio, also re-creates the acrimony between Jobs and Disney’s Michael Eisner, and examines Jobs’s dramatic his rise from the ashes with his recapture of Apple. The authors examine the takeover and Jobs’s reinvention of the company with the popular iMac and his transformation of the industry with the revolutionary iPod. iCon is must reading for anyone who wants to understand how the modern digital age has been formed, shaped, and refined by the most influential figure of the age–a master of three industries: movies, music, and computers. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Justin Bieber: The Unauthorized Biography (Hardcover)

Justin Bieber: The Unauthorized Biography (Hardcover)
By Chas Newkey-Burden

Buy new: $12.21
19 used and new from $11.99
Customer Rating:

First tagged by K. Corn "reviewer"
Customer tags: justin bieber, biographies, unauthorized biographies, unauthorized bio of bieber, rock biographies, popular, bieber

Review & Description

An up-close and personal look at the teen singing sensation who is rocking the music world  Fresh-faced, charismatic, and impossibly cute, Justin Bieber is a multi-talented young idol who has taken the music world by storm. The first full-scale biography of the singer tells his sensational story, providing fans with insights into his day-to-day world and the chance to see what really makes him tick. At just 16 years old, he has already achieved global recognition and number one hits worldwide with his debut single and album. Born in 1994, Justin grew up in the small city of Stratford in Canada, where his love of singing was apparent from an early age and he was an avid member of the local church choir. When his mom started posting videos on YouTube of her 13-year-old son singing cover versions, hits on the site started building almost immediately and it wasn't long before he had fans—of all ages, all over the world. In 2008, when music-industry professional Scooter Braun became his manager, this young star was firmly on the path to stardom. His debut single One Time was released in 2009 and went into the top 30 in 10 countries around the world, and his album My World 2.0 caused instant excitement. Bieber's gorgeous looks, incredible voice and sweet personality are driving "Biebettes" everywhere wild, and his inspirational story is a must-have for his legions of fans the world over. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Arrogance of Power, The : The Secret World of Richard Nixon (Hardcover)

Arrogance of Power, The : The Secret World of Richard Nixon (Hardcover)
By Anthony Summers

26 used and new from $2.11
Customer Rating:

First tagged by J. Merritt
Customer tags: watergate(2), biographies, anthony summers, richard nixon

Review & Description

Anthony Summers' biography of Richard Nixon reveals a troubled figure whose criminal behavior did not begin with Watergate. Drawing on more than a thousand interviews and five years of research, Summers reveals a man driven by an addiction to intrigue and power, whose subversion of democracy during Watergate was the culmination of years of cynical political manipulation. New evidence suggests the former president had problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, was at times mentally unstable, and was abusive to his wife Pat. Summers discloses previously unrevealed facts about Nixon's role in the plots to topple Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende, his sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in l968, and his acceptance of funds from dubious sources. The Arrogance of Power shows how the actions of one tormented man influenced fifty years of American history, in ways still reverberating today.Anthony Summers is the past master of scandal, the man who brought you Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe and that unforgettable (alleged) eyewitness account of J. Edgar Hoover in a flouncy black dress. Greater experts than I must rule on Summers's exhaustively researched portrait of Richard Nixon, The Arrogance of Power, but it sure is one racy read. Summers depicts a Nixon stoned out of his mind on Seconal, single-malt Scotch, Dilantin, speed, and clinical paranoia, pummeling his wife, Pat (who was rumored to have once been rescued by the Secret Service from drunkenly drowning in a bathtub). Summers's Nixon apparently took Mickey Cohen Mob money to fund his anti-Semitic, salacious smear campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas to get his Senate start; framed Alger Hiss with a fake typewriter; traded gold for POWs with Vietcong; and issued orders to bomb Damascus and Jordan and nuke Vietnam and Korea (orders that were ignored until Nixon sobered up in the morning). His favorite limo was the SS100X that JFK died in. Nixon's shrink reportedly also treated Rita Hayworth, spoke like Dr. Strangelove, and used "Pavlovian technique" to "brainwash Nixon into becoming a better person." No luck.

Summers's Nixon favored the Greek generals who tortured pro-democracy types, and took a bribe from Göring's pal Nicolae Malaxa, who, thanks to Nixon, traded his Romanian mansion (in which thousands of Jews were tortured and killed) for a posh Manhattan apartment. Summers's most fascinating stuff concerns the Howard Hughes/Castro/Watergate connection. Did Nixon order CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro? Did Robert Maheu (said to have inspired Mission: Impossible) arrange "sex services" and "assassination planning" for the CIA, and spy on Jean Peters and Ava Gardner for Howard Hughes? Did Hughes give big money to Nixon under the guise of saving the fast-food "Nixonburger" franchise of Richard's brother Donald Nixon (whom Richard had the FBI spy on)? Did the Castro plot get JFK killed, as Haldeman suspected? Was the Watergate break-in (one of perhaps 100 Nixon break-ins) intended to seize information about Nixon's Hughes loans and Castro plots?

Summers tries to assess his massive data while he's presenting it, and he doesn't credit every wild tale equally. Still, without him, I would never have heard about Castro's alleged ex-girlfriend, "the Mata Hari of the Caribbean," hired by future Watergate burglars to re-seduce Castro and slip two poison pills in his coffee. But she hid the pills in her cold-cream jar, and when she took them out in their Havana Hilton bathroom, they'd melted. Besides, her close encounter with the leader left her "torn by feelings of love." The Arrogance of Power won't give you this feeling. --Tim Appelo Read more

Find out More for the best price

Street Signs: A New Direction in Urban Ministry (Paperback)

Street Signs: A New Direction in Urban Ministry (Paperback)
By Raymond J. Bakke

15 used and new from $8.25
Customer Rating:

First tagged by G. Edwards
Customer tags: street(3), christianity and culture(3), christianity(3), urban ministry(3), urban(3), missions(2), christian leadership training, church evangelism, church outreach, bake, christian evangelism, biographies

Review & Description

It’s a world in motion. The explosion of growth to urban centers and all the complexities it brings is not to be seen as a problem for churches, but as a gift— an opportunity to work with God within the city to see His purposes worked out. Street Signs is a guide for church missions leaders and community ministry leaders seeking to bring spiritual and practical transformation to the city. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Seekers of the Soul: Seven Psychics and Intuitives Talk about Their Work, and The Lives That Led Them To It (Paperback)

Seekers of the Soul: Seven Psychics and Intuitives Talk about Their Work, and The Lives That Led Them To It (Paperback)
By Sherry Ward

Buy new: $14.78
26 used and new from $2.99
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: esp(2), biographies(2), intuition(2), spiritual, psychic, alternative health, medical intuitives, psychics, shamanism

Review & Description

When doctors discovered a mass in Sherry Ward's kidney, they could not say whether it was malignant. Apprehensive about radical surgery and concerned by their uncertainty, she turned elsewhere. Armed with information from five psychics, she went against the medical odds. When the psychics proved correct, Ward's interest in psychic work intensified.

Seekers of the Soul is the result of Ward's inquisitive journey into the world of psychics, visionaries, and intuitives who gain information using more than the traditional senses. Here Ward presents detailed profiles of seven individuals with exceptional abilities to sense and translate what to others is "not there."

After interviewing numerous psychics, Ward chose the most principled, unique and skillful among them for Seekers of the Soul. Each person profiled uses his or her gifts to provide seekers with spiritual insight, emotional wisdom, or perhaps a connection to a loved-one who has crossed over. Although each psychic or intuitive divines his or her information differently, their clients benefit from the guidance, finding information relevant to their lives.

For all who are intrigued by the extra-sensory realm and want to know how to take your soul to its highest potential, you'll find Ward's research and engaging profiles replete with insight and meaning. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Charles Drew (Black Americans of Achievement) (Library Binding)

Charles Drew (Black Americans of Achievement) (Library Binding)
By Robyn Mahone-Lonesome

21 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating:

First tagged by brainiacbooks
Customer tags: biographies, science, history of medicine, charles drew, medicine

Review & Description

A biography of the surgeon who conducted research on the properties and preservation of blood plasma and was a leader in establishing blood banks. Read more

Find out More for the best price

The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, 1895-1952 (Hardcover)

The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, 1895-1952 (Hardcover)
By Sarah Bradford

20 used and new from $10.00
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: royal history(6), world war ii(6), british royalty(4), england(4), european history(4), sarah bradford(4), biography(4), royalty(3), biographies(3), george vi(2), memoir(2), george v(2)

Find out More for the best price

Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (Hardcover)

Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (Hardcover)
By James Wallace

126 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Douglas Gosciak "micro unlimited"
Customer tags: biographies, gates, entrepreneurship, service, high-tech, company profiles

Review & Description

Traces the career of the chairman of Microsoft from 1992 to 1997, focusing on his all-out effort to catch up to and overtake the Netscape company in order to dominate the Internet. 75,000 first printing. $125,000 ad/promo. Tour."While Microsoft was occupied with the largest, most expensive consumer marketing effort in history, the launch of Windows 95, Netscape was equally busy capturing the Web browser market. By mid-1995 it looked as if Bill Gates and company had missed the paradigm shift created by the Internet, and many pundits doubted Microsoft could recover. Meanwhile, the Justice Department was aggressively investigating claims of unfair practices levied by Microsoft's competitors. Suddenly the company found itself in the unfamiliar role of lumbering corporate giant--and underdog. James Wallace's Overdrive, his sequel to Hard Drive, is the story of Microsoft's response to this challenge. A veteran investigative reporter, the author paints a vivid portrait of Gates's determination and competitive ferocity, with a host of revealing anecdotes and details as backdrop. The battle for control of cyberspace is far from over, but Microsoft is clearly not to be trifled with. The tale of how the company repositioned itself in the race makes for fascinating reading. Read more

Find out More for the best price

A most extraordinary pair: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (Hardcover)

A most extraordinary pair: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (Hardcover)
By Jean Detre

37 used and new from $0.77

First tagged by Linda3057
Customer tags: london politics, 18th century literature, literary figures, a vindication of the rights of woman, shelley, biographies, new york society, frankenstein, london society

Review & Description

This is the history of a courtship and a marriage, a fascinating account of a pair of lovers in London in the year 1796. Mary Woostonecraft and William Godwin were celebrated writers who moved in the center of English political and literary life. Godwin was lionized as a political theorist and popular novelist. Woolstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woeman had electrified the Europoe of the late 18th century as much as her personal independence and unconvential love life had shocked London society. The book is a double portrait of these two people in the year during which they became friends, lovers, husband and wife, a year in which Mary died giving birth to their daughter, Mary - who was later to mary Shelley and to write Frankenstein. Read more

Find out More for the best price

iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Paperback)

iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Paperback)
By Gina Smith

25 used and new from $5.19
Customer Rating:

First tagged by animoid
Customer tags: biographies, lies, apple

Review & Description

“‘The Woz’ built the first [personal computer]—by hand, by himself.”—USA Today Before slim laptops that fit into briefcases, computers looked like strange vending machines, with cryptic switches and pages of encoded output. But in 1977 Steve Wozniak revolutionized the computer industry with his invention of the first personal computer. As the sole inventor of the Apple I and II computers, Wozniak has enjoyed wealth, fame, and the most coveted awards an engineer can receive, and he tells his story here for the first time.

Read more

Find out More for the best price

Cleopatra Rochfort Daunt 1860 - 1944 (Hardcover)

Cleopatra Rochfort Daunt 1860 - 1944 (Hardcover)
By Betty Stewart

2 used and new from $49.99

First tagged by Thomas Slone
Customer tags: russia, biographies, india, st petersburg

Find out More for the best price

Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison (Kindle Edition)

Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison (Kindle Edition)
By Karen Southwick

Buy new: $15.13
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Josh D Brunaugh
Customer tags: biographies, too expensive for kindle

Review & Description

Karen Southwick’s unauthorized account provides the full story of Larry Ellison’s brilliant, controversial career. Ellison’s drive and fierce ambition created Oracle out of the dust and built it into one of America’s great technology companies, but his unpredictable management style keeps it constantly on the edge of both success and disaster. The hostile bid for PeopleSoft is just the most recent example. With one clever strategic move, Larry Ellison threw much of the business software field into play.

The saying “It’s not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail” has been so often used by or associated with Ellison that most people think it originated with him. It’s actually attributed to Genghis Khan, but it’s a dead-on way to describe not only the way Ellison thinks about competitors but the way he runs Oracle. His weapons are not marauding hordes, but Oracle’s possession of database technology that is crucial for keeping mission-critical information flows working at thousands of organizations, corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies.

Inside Oracle, Ellison has time and again systematically purged key operating, sales, and marketing people who got too powerful for his comfort. Most notable was Ray Lane, Oracle’s president for nine years, who was widely credited with bringing order out of the chaos that was Oracle in the early nineties and growing it into a ten billion dollar company. Ellison got rid of the one key person who was building confidence with Wall Street, business partners, and customers that Oracle was no longer flying by the seat of its pants and had its act together. Ellison’s mania for absolute control and his inability to coexist with the very lieutenants who bring much-needed stability to the company have brought Oracle to the brink of collapse before, and may well do it again.

Ellison is a throwback to an earlier, much more freewheeling version of capitalism, the kind practiced by the nineteenth-century robber barons who ran their companies as private fiefdoms. Larry Ellison is one of the most intriguing and dominant leaders of a major twenty-first-century corporation, and Everyone Else Must Fail raises the question of whether Oracle’s products and the reliance placed in them by so many are too important to be subject to the whims of one man. While giving credit to Ellison’s brilliance and devotion, the book sounds a warning about an ingenious man’s tendency to be his own company’s worst enemy.


From the Hardcover edition. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Utopia Parkway: The Life And Work Of Joseph Cornell (Paperback)

Utopia Parkway: The Life And Work Of Joseph Cornell (Paperback)
By Deborah Solomon

Buy new: $15.30
35 used and new from $3.85
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: biographies(3), mixed media(3), art(2), assemblage(2), joseph cornell(2), box art, pop art, surrealism, abstract expressionism, american art, artists

Review & Description

Back in Print

No artist ever led a stranger life than Joseph Cornell, the self-taught American genius prized for his disquieting shadow boxes, who stands at the intersection of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn’t have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs, and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol, and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America’s most powerful and unusual modern artists. American Library Association Book of the Year

New York Times Notable Book of the Year

New York Public Library Book to Remember By Deborah Solomon.

Paperback, 6.25 x 9.25 in. / 444 pgs / 60 b&w.Joseph Cornell (1903-72) lived in Queens with a domineering mother and severely handicapped brother while creating unique, haunting art: boxes filled with lovingly assembled objects and printed images. But this sympathetic biography demonstrates that he was more than an eccentric recluse, chronicling his friendships with other artists and his immersion in the avant-garde movements of his time. Art critic Deborah Solomon spikes her astute judgments with humor--noting her subject's fondness for epistolary relationships that spared him the unease of physical contact, she comments, "Cornell would have been great on the Internet." Read more

Find out More for the best price

The Rock Says... (Hardcover)

The Rock Says... (Hardcover)
By Wwf

408 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: biographies(3), wwe(2), bret hart, owen hart, the rock, pro wrestling, football, stone cold steve austin, miami, pro wrestling books, autobiographies, beauteous

Review & Description

The Rock says. . . "Know your damn role--and shut your mouth!" But that simple catch-phrase, embraced by the millions ñand the millions--of The Rock's fans, can't begin to capture the spirit and larger-than-life personality of the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment."

In this action-packed, revealing and outrageously funny memoir, World Wrestling Federation Superstar The Rock recounts his life in and out of the ring with unapologetic honesty and inimitable style. From his boyhood days traveling around the world with his father (professional wrestler Rocky Johnson) to his years as a football player at the University of Miami to his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Federation, The Rock Says. . .chronicles in vivid detail the life story of one of sports-entertainment's most innovative and best-loved personalities.

The Rock recalls his injury-plagued career at Miami and a subsequent foray to the Great White North, where he discovered that in Canada being a professional football player is not exactly a glamorous life. After a few months of sleeping on putrid, stained mattresses that he dug out of the garbage and subsisting on nothing but plain spaghetti, "D.J." ditched his cleats forever and set his sights on the path of his father and grandfather--wrestling.

Performing first in the minors as plain old Dwayne Johnson, then as "Flex Kavana" and later as "Rocky Maivia," he quickly became one of the World Wrestling Federation's hopefuls. But no matter how he tried to get over with the fans, the stadiums greeted him with chants of "Rocky sucks! Rocky sucks!" He then adopted the brash persona of The Rock--a snorting, spitting, snotting, swearing son-of-a-bitch with the soul of a smart-ass comic and the body of an Adonis--and he found his true calling as the "People's Champion."

The Rock will take fans on a guided tour of big-time professional wrestling, a highly competitive business in which a handful of gifted and lucky performers dominate, and all others dream of a moment in the spotlight. He provides a breathtaking, minute-by-minute account of Wrestle Mania, the Super Bowl of pro wrestling, including an intimate backstage look at rehearsals with his opponent, Stone Cold Steve Austin. And he discusses in heartfelt detail the loss of his friend and co-worker, Owen Hart.

Filled with genuinely touching stories of love and strife, hilarious anecdotes, inside accounts of an industry whose machinations have long been shrouded in secrecy and dozens of previously unpublished photographs from The Rock's personal collection, The Rock Says. . .is--as The Rock himself might put it--"the coolest thing since the other side of the pillow if you smell what The Rock is cookin'."Hot on the bleeding heels of Mankind's Have a Nice Day! comes another memoir by a bad-guy character World Wrestling Federation fans love to hate, edited by the same prose coach, the clever Jeremie Ruby-Strauss (and coauthored by Joe Layden). Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock--who calls himself "the People's Champion," affects an arched eyebrow to convey entertaining menace, and coins catch phrases like a standup comic--gives you plenty of colorful, jumbled action photos and the growling accounts of staged mayhem that made Mankind's book a bestseller. But his story is more interesting than that of Mankind, his occasional ring rival. The noisy action chapters alternate with passages of more reflective conventional autobiography: the Rock is a third-generation pro wrestler, and his book amounts to a history of the sport. His grandpa, High Chief Peter Maivia, was a Samoan important enough to be buried in Diamond Head's crater, and his dad, Rocky Johnson, was George Foreman's sparring partner and the first African American World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental champ. The Rock is candid about the battles his family faced outside the ring: the marriage-testing road lifestyle, his dad's most important win (over the bottle), and the author's own dangerous temper. There's something touching about the Rock's unpromising debut in his uncle Tonga's old trunks, in his reverence for his elders--and something scary about his reaction when he thinks people lack such respect.

What, you say? You'd rather hear about the Rock's "schmozz" (free-for-all) with Mankind, or Faarooq and the interracial Nation of Domination, or that Budweiser-popping piece of trailer trash Stone Cold Steve Austin, or the Undertaker, whose skin is "the color of bad meat"? You want to hear how he started out sleeping on a pungent mattress retrieved from a garbage dump and wound up wearing Versace shirts and chatting up Gennifer Flowers on TV at WrestleMania XIV? You crave the secrets of the Frankenstein, the Gorilla Position, Jake the Snake, and Mankind's Mandible Claw (a dirty sock he shoves down opponents' throats)? That's all here, too. Just hop in the ring--the Rock will show you around. --Tim Appelo Read more

Find out More for the best price

The Elusive Father Brown (Paperback)

The Elusive Father Brown (Paperback)
By Julia Smith

Buy new: $21.27
15 used and new from $20.00
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Nancy Carpentier Brown
Customer tags: mystery, g k chesterton, biographies, chesterton, father brown, christian biographies-memoirs, distributism

Review & Description

Born in a small Irish town straddling the border of Tipperary and Waterford, the young John Joseph O'Connor was educated on the Continent by the Benedictines at Douai before being ordained a Catholic priest in March 1895. While his whole life was to be spent as a parish priest, he became known for possessing one of the finest intellects in early-twentieth-century Europe. Friend and confidant of statesmen, writers, and artists, his own literary output was prolific. His ability to distinguish between the genuine and false, in people as well as works of art, led to him assembling an art collection whose sale funded almost half the cost of building his first church. He built up a further valuable collection of art and antiques, but did not have to resort to its sale to build his second, and quite controversial, church. Controversy was something Mgr O'Connor never shied away from. He was loved and revered by his parishioners, most of whom were totally unaware of his close friendship with so many eminent figures beyond the confines of his parish. One of these, G. K. Chesterton, is now being proposed for beatification, and it was he who turned his friend into his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown, who knew more about the underworld than the criminals themselves. And it was Mgr O'Connor who was to guide Chesterton along the path to Catholicism and receive him into the Church. Mgr O'Connor commissioned the Stations of the Cross and other sculptures for his Bradford parish from Eric Gill, but he had a much deeper involvement with the Ditchling group of Arts and Crafts workshops. He not only translated the French philosophy of Jacques Maritain for them but also collaborated with Gill on the publication of Song of Songs and Song of the Soul with their highly controversial and sexually explicit engravings. This, his only, biography aims to introduce the shadowy figure who slipped in and out of so many different worlds to a larger public who never suspected he had so many fingers in so many pies. Read more

Find out More for the best price

A Dream of Islands: Voyages of Self Discovery in the South Seas (Mass Market Paperback)

A Dream of Islands: Voyages of Self Discovery in the South Seas (Mass Market Paperback)
By Gavan Daws

Buy new: $4.95
22 used and new from $0.46

First tagged by Fernando Norona "thebook"
Customer tags: biographies, travel

Review & Description

The stories of five famous westerners who found their fate in the islands: John Williams, Herman Melville, Walter Murray Gibson, Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Gauguin. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Nirmala's Edible Diary: A Hungry Traveler's Cookbook with Recipes from 14 Countries (Hardcover)

Nirmala's Edible Diary: A Hungry Traveler's Cookbook with Recipes from 14 Countries (Hardcover)
By Nirmala Narine

Buy new: $4.42
45 used and new from $0.42
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: cooking(20), south america(18), cookbook(15), latin food(14), latin american(10), gourmet cooking(8), travel(5), biographies(4), book(2), 2009(2), diary cookbook, diary

Review & Description

Join "The Indiana Jones of Spices," Nirmala Narine, as she eats her way from Rio to Buenos Aires, capturing the tastes and smells of South America in recipes and photos. Millions of tourists visit this part of the globe every year, drawn by ancient ruins, vibrant cities, breathtaking natural beauty, and diverse foods and cultures. Nirmala's Edible Diary is a passport to the street markets and home kitchens of South America, with over 70 recipes for tantalizing stews, crunchy empanadas, and fruity desserts, and 100 vivid photographs of the foods, people, and landscapes that make this continent a stunning travel destination. Read more

Find out More for the best price

The Elvis Encyclopedia (Hardcover)

The Elvis Encyclopedia (Hardcover)
By David Stanley

34 used and new from $4.09
Customer Rating:

First tagged by Roy F. Johnson
Customer tags: elvis presley(2), encyclopedias, biographies, music, encyclopedia of elvis

Review & Description

Sixteen years after his sudden death, Elvis Presley is more popular than ever. This first complete and authenticated compendium contains everything there is to know about the King's personal life, presented in riveting detail by David Stanley--Elvis's stepbrother--who lived with Elvis for 17 years at Graceland. 200 photos. Four-color throughout.Almost as good as a round-trip ticket to Graceland! Contains a day-by-day chronology of the King's life; more than 100 first-person anecdotes from his step-brother and oldest friend; more than 300 personal photographs, letters, and private documents; information on every Elvis movie and recording; bios of the King's 50 closest friends; and an experts-only Elvis quiz. The author, David Stanley, is actually Elvis' brother in a "I'm my own grandpa" kind of way: his mother married Elvis' dad. Read more

Find out More for the best price

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (Paperback)

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (Paperback)
By Donald Spoto

Buy new: $16.47
41 used and new from $9.37
Customer Rating:

Customer tags: marilyn monroe(11), biography - movie stars(4), donald spoto(4), biographies(3), actress(3), autobiography(2), cynthia basinet(2), hollywood biography(2), very well researches - my fave so far, school

Review & Description

Relying on over 150 interviews as well as Marilyn's letters and diaries, this work by best-selling biographer Spoto casts new light on every aspect of the actress's tempestuous life. Read more

Find out More for the best price