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Biography / Autobiography
"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.
"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.
-John Maloof, Director & Producer, Academy Award Nominated Film, Finding Vivian Maier 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.
In "The Voice is All," Joyce Johnson, author of her classic memoir, "Door Wide Open," about her relationship with Jack Kerouac, brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac s French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider s vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of "On the Road," followed by "Visions of Cody." By illuminating Kerouac s early choice to sacrifice everything to his work, "The Voice Is All" deals with him on his own terms and puts the tragic contradictions of his nature and his complex relationships into perspective."
**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 CronkiteFew 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.
There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plump's friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what Wendy was not prepared for was the revelation that her husband also had another child, living within a mile of their family home.
Monogamy is one of the most important of the many vows we make in our marriages. Yet it is a rare spouse who does not face some level of temptation in their married life. The discovery of her husband's affair followed betrayals of Wendy's own, earlier in the marriage. The revelations of those infidelities had tested their relationship, but for Wendy, it was commitment-the sticking with it-that mattered most, and when her sons were born, she knew family had to come first. But with another woman and another family in the picture, she lost all sense of certainty. In Vow, Wendy Plump boldly walks one relationship's fault lines, exploring infidelity from the perspective of both betrayer and betrayed. Moving fluidly from the intimate to the near-universal, she considers the patterns of adultery, the ebb and flow of passion, the undeniable allure of the illicit, the lovers and the lies. Frank, intelligent and important, Vow will forever alter your understanding of fidelity, and the meaning of the promises we make to those we love.