Biography / Autobiography

In this fresh, absorbing book, Julia Briggs puts the writing back at the center of Woolf's life, reads that life through her work, and mines the novels themselves to create a compelling new form of biography. Analyzing Woolf's own commentary on the creative process through her letters, diaries, and essays, Julia Briggs has produced a book that is a convincing, moving portrait of an artist, as well as a profound meditation on the nature of creativity.

Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life-a brilliant new insight into a literary genius.

"Somewhere between Garrison Keillor's idyllic-sweet Lake Wobegon and the narrow-mindedness of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street lies the reality of small-town life. This is where Michael Perry lives."
--St. Paul Pioneer Press

"Perry can take comfort in the power of his writing, his ability to pull readers from all corners onto his Wisconsin spread, and make them feel right at home."
--Seattle Times

Tuesdays with Morrie meets Bill Bryson in Visiting Tom, another witty, poignant, and stylish paean to living in New Auburn, Wisconsin, from Michael Perry. The author of Population: 485, Coop, and Truck: A Love Story, Perry takes us along on his uplifting visits with his octogenarian neighbor one valley over--and celebrates the wisdom, heart, and sass of a vanishing generation that embodies the indomitable spirit of small-town America.

But, as Pamela Bannos reveals in this meticulous and passionate biography, this story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier's true achievements, as well as her intentions. Most important, Bannos argues, Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife, Bannos contrasts Maier's life with the mythology that strangers--mostly the men who have profited from her work--have created around her absence. Bannos shows that Maier was extremely conscientious about how her work was developed, printed, and cropped, even though she also made a clear choice never to display it. She places Maier's fierce passion for privacy alongside the recent spread of her work around the world, and she explains Maier's careful adjustments of photographic technique, while explaining how the photographs have been misconstrued or misidentified. As well, Bannos uncovers new information about Maier's immediate family, including her difficult brother, Karl--relatives that once had been thought not to exist.

This authoritative and engrossing biography shows that the real story of Vivian Maier, a true visionary artist, is even more compelling than the myth.

Author Ann Marks unravels the mysteries surrounding the life of Vivian Maier, the nanny who lived secretly as a world-class photographer. Revelations include a traumatic New York childhood with a family at such odds, its ten members were buried in nine different cemeteries. An emotionally damaged Maier overcame early constraints through fortitude, intellect, and immense creative resources, to live an independent, fulfilling life on her own terms.

The only person in the world granted access to 140,000 photographs, home movies and tape recordings, Marks writes the definitive biography, placing the photographer's work in the context of her life experiences and persona. Based on clues found in pictures, genealogical records and interviews with those who knew the photographer during each stage of her life, the biography is rigorously researched and complete. Unlike typical academic prose, Marks' treatment is clear, engaging, and relatable, with a narrative that unfolds like a bestseller. Vivian Maier Developed relates the arc of the photographer's life to her body of work, illustrated with over 500 images, both favorites and unseen, offering an inspiring tale of a socially conscious, uniquely complex and highly talented woman.

The host of The Bob Edwards Show and Bob Edwards Weekend on Sirius XM Radio, Bob Edwards became the first radio personality with a large national audience to take his chances in the new field of satellite radio. The programs' mix of long-form interviews and news documentaries has won many prestigious awards.

For thirty years, Louisville native Edwards was the voice of National Public Radio's daily newsmagazine programs, co-hosting All Things Considered before launching Morning Edition in 1979. These programs built NPR's national audience while also bringing Edwards to national prominence. In 2004, however, NPR announced that it would be finding a replacement for Edwards, inciting protests from tens of thousands of his fans and controversy among his listeners and fellow broadcasters. Today, Edwards continues to inform the American public with a voice known for its sincerity, intelligence, and wit.

In A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio, Edwards recounts his career as one of the most important figures in modern broadcasting. He describes his road to success on the radio waves, from his early days knocking on station doors during college and working for American Forces Korea Network to his work at NPR and induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2004. Edwards tells the story of his exit from NPR and the launch of his new radio ventures on the XM Satellite Radio network. Throughout the book, his sharp observations about the people he interviewed and covered and the colleagues with whom he worked offer a window on forty years of American news and on the evolution of public journalism.

A Voice in the Box is an insider's account of the world of American media and a fascinating, personal narrative from one of the most iconic personalities in radio history.

**WINNER, Sperber Prize 2018, for the best biography of a journalist**

The first and definitive biography of an audacious adventurer--the most famous journalist of his time--who more than anyone invented contemporary journalism.

Tom Brokaw says: Lowell Thomas so deserves this lively account of his legendary life. He was a man for all seasons.

"Mitchell Stephens's The Voice of America is a first-rate and much-needed biography of the great Lowell Thomas. Nobody can properly understand broadcast journalism without reading Stephens's riveting account of this larger-than-life globetrotting radio legend." --Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite

Few Americans today recognize his name, but Lowell Thomas was as well known in his time as any American journalist ever has been. Raised in a Colorado gold-rush town, Thomas covered crimes and scandals for local then Chicago newspapers. He began lecturing on Alaska, after spending eight days in Alaska. Then he assigned himself to report on World War I and returned with an exclusive: the story of "Lawrence of Arabia."

In 1930, Lowell Thomas began delivering America's initial radio newscast. His was the trusted voice that kept Americans abreast of world events in turbulent decades - his face familiar, too, as the narrator of the most popular newsreels. His contemporaries were also dazzled by his life. In a prime-time special after Thomas died in 1981, Walter Cronkite said that Thomas had "crammed a couple of centuries worth of living" into his eighty-nine years. Thomas delighted in entering "forbidden" countries--Tibet, for example, where he met the teenaged Dalai Lama. The Explorers Club has named its building, its awards, and its annual dinner after him.

Journalists in the last decades of the twentieth century--including Cronkite and Tom Brokaw--acknowledged a profound debt to Thomas. Though they may not know it, journalists today too are following a path he blazed. In The Voice of America, Mitchell Stephens offers a hugely entertaining, sometimes critical portrait of this larger than life figure.

Revelatory, deeply personal, and utterly relevant, Voluntary Madness is a controversial work that unveils the state of mental healthcare in the United States from the inside out. At the conclusion of her celebrated first book--Self-Made Man, in which she soent eighteen months disguised as a man-Norah Vincent found herself emotionally drained and severely depressed.

Determined but uncertain about maintaining her own equilibrium, she boldly committed herself to three different facilities-a big-city hospital, a private clinic in the Midwest, and finally an upscale retreat in the South. Voluntary Madness is the chronicle of Vincent's journey through the world of the mentally ill as she struggles to find her own health and happiness.