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Books > Biography > Literary
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
A wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade
during its last Golden Age When Gary Goodman wandered into a
run-down, used-book shop that was going out of business in East St.
Paul in 1982, he had no idea the visit would change his life. He
walked in as a psychiatric counselor and walked out as the store's
new owner. In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes
desperate, sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book
dealer in Minnesota-the early struggles, the travels to estate
sales and book fairs, the remarkable finds, and the bibliophiles,
forgers, book thieves, and book hoarders he met along the way. Here
we meet the infamous St. Paul Book Bandit, Stephen Blumberg, who
stole 24,000 rare books worth more than fifty million dollars; John
Jenkins, the Texas rare book dealer who (probably) was murdered
while standing in the middle of the Colorado River; and the
eccentric Melvin McCosh, who filled his dilapidated Lake Minnetonka
mansion with half a million books. In 1990, with a couple of
partners, Goodman opened St. Croix Antiquarian Books in Stillwater,
one of the Twin Cities region's most venerable bookshops until it
closed in 2017. This store became so successful and inspired so
many other booksellers to move to town that Richard Booth, founder
of the "book town" movement in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, declared
Stillwater the First Book Town in North America. The internet
changed the book business forever, and Goodman details how, after
2000, the internet made stores like his obsolete. In the 1990s, the
Twin Cities had nearly fifty secondhand bookshops; today, there are
fewer than ten. As both a memoir and a history of booksellers and
book scouts, criminals and collectors, The Last Bookseller offers
an ultimately poignant account of the used and rare book business
during its final Golden Age.
'Tense and intimate... an education.' Geoff Dyer 'Written with
sensitivity and humanity... a remarkable insight into prison life.'
Amanda Brown 'Authentic, fascinating and deeply moving.' Terry
Waite 'Enriching, sobering and at times heartrending... a wonder'
Lenny Henry __________ Can someone in prison be more free than
someone outside? Would we ever be good if we never felt shame? What
makes a person worthy of forgiveness? Andy West teaches philosophy
in prisons. Every day he has conversations with people inside about
their lives, discusses their ideas and feelings, and listens as
they explore new ways to think about their situation. When Andy
goes behind bars, he also confronts his inherited trauma: his
father, uncle and brother all spent time in prison. While Andy has
built a different life for himself, he still fears that their fate
will also be his. As he discusses pressing questions of truth,
identity and hope with his students, he searches for his own form
of freedom too. Moving, sympathetic, wise and frequently funny, The
Life Inside is an elegantly written and unforgettable book. Through
a blend of memoir, storytelling and gentle philosophical
questioning, it offers a new insight into our stretched justice
system, our failing prisons and the complex lives being lived
inside. __________ 'Strives with humour and compassion to
understand the phenomenon of prison' Sydney Review of Books 'A
fascinating and enlightening journey... A legitimate page-turner'
3AM
A.A. Milne is one of the most successful English writers ever. His
heart-warming creations-Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin, Eeyore,
Tigger and Piglet-have become some of the best-loved children's
characters of all time, and readers the world over are familiar
with the stories from the Hundred Acre Wood. Yet the man himself
has remained an enigma. Although in many ways his behaviour was
that of a typical golf-playing, pipe-smoking Englishman, Milne
refused to be typecast, and his publishers despaired when he turned
from writing popular columns for Punch to writing detective
stories. They complained again when the detective writer presented
them with a set of children's verse, but when When We Were Very
Young became one of the best-selling books of all time, Milne's
credibility as one of the world's favorite authors was sealed. In
this biography of Milne, Ann Thwaite reveals the man himself, in
all his complexity. As W. A. Darlington put it in 1921, commenting
on Milne's highly popular plays, 'Mr Milne is obviously at heart
(like all humorists) a serious person, with things to say.' He had
strong political feelings, and was a pacifist even before his
experiences on the Somme in 1916. There was always something darker
and more tangled under 'the bright glitter of surfaces'. At his
father's school, Milne was taught by the young H. G. Wells, who
remained a lifelong friend; later, J. M. Barrie called him 'my Mr
Milne' and was 'uncommon proud of him'; later still, P. G.
Wodehouse became one of his greatest admirers, and a friend - but
was then deeply hurt by Milne's strong reaction to the notorious
wartime broadcasts. Milne's personal relationships, including those
with his wife and son, were not always easy. In A. A. Milne: His
Life, Ann Thwaite has produced a vivid, sympathetic and
entertaining portrait of both the man and his work, set in the
context of his time, which stands as the definitive life of a
writer whose work has earned some loathing (for its supposed
'whimsy') but much more devotion among readers of all ages, not
only in English-speaking countries but all over the world.
For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death,
no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however,
dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what
is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in
the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar
James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to
question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters
have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James,
Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete
with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes,
conspiracy theories--and a stunning failure to grasp the power of
the imagination.
As "Contested Will" makes clear, much more than proper attribution
of Shakespeare's plays is at stake in this authorship controversy.
Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis
Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays are
fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the
relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of
Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do "Hamlet, Macbeth, "
and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them?
Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship
controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means,
why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence
that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to
him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight
anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination.
Monk's House in Sussex is the former home of Leonard and Virginia
Woolf. It was bought by them in 1919 as a country retreat,
somewhere they came to read, write and work in the garden. From the
overgrown land behind the house they created a brilliant patchwork
of garden rooms, linked by brick paths, secluded behind flint walls
and yew hedges. The story of this magical garden is the subject of
this book and the author has selected quotations from the writings
of the Woolfs which reveal how important a role the garden played
in their lives, as a source of both pleasure and inspiration.
Virginia wrote most of her major novels at Monk's House, at first
in a converted tool shed, and later in her purpose-built wooden
writing lodge tucked into a corner of the orchard. Caroline Zoob
lived with her husband, Jonathan, at Monk's House for over a decade
as tenants of the National Trust, and has an intimate knowledge of
the garden they tended and planted. The photographer, Caroline
Arber, was a frequent visitor to the house during their tenancy and
her spectacular photographs, published here for the first time,
often reveal the garden as it is never seen by the public: at dawn,
in the depths of winter, at dusk. The photographs and text,
enriched with rare archive images and embroidered garden plans,
take the reader on a journey through the various garden 'rooms',
(including the Italian Garden, the Fishpond Garden, the Millstone
Terrace and the Walled Garden). Each garden room is presented in
the context of the lives of the Woolfs, with fascinating glimpses
into their daily routines at Rodmell. This beautiful book is an
absorbing account of the creation of a garden which will appeal
equally to gardeners and those with an interest in Virginia and
Leonard Woolf.
One of the twentieth century's most extraordinary Americans, Pearl
Buck was the first person to make China accessible to the West.
She recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in "The Good
Earth," an overnight worldwide bestseller in 1932, later a
blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become the first American woman
to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long before anyone else, she
foresaw China's future as a superpower, and she recognized the
crucial importance for both countries of China's building a
relationship with the United States. As a teenager she had
witnessed the first stirrings of Chinese revolution, and as a young
woman she narrowly escaped being killed in the deadly struggle
between Chinese Nationalists and the newly formed Communist Party.
Pearl grew up in an imperial China unchanged for thousands of
years. She was the child of American missionaries, but she spoke
Chinese before she learned English, and her friends were the
children of Chinese farmers. She took it for granted that she was
Chinese herself until she was eight years old, when the terrorist
uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee for
their lives. It was the first of many desperate flights. Flood,
famine, drought, bandits, and war formed the background of Pearl's
life in China. "Asia was the real, the actual world," she said,
"and my own country became the dreamworld."
Pearl wrote about the realities of the only world she knew in "The
Good Earth. "It was one of the last things she did before being
finally forced out of China to settle for the first time in the
United States. She was unknown and penniless with a failed marriage
behind her, a disabled child to support, no prospects, and no way
of telling that "The Good Earth "would sell tens of millions of
copies. It transfixed a whole generation of readers just as Jung
Chang's "Wild Swans "would do more than half a century later. No
Westerner had ever written anything like this before, and no
Chinese had either.
Buck was the forerunner of a wave of Chinese Americans from Maxine
Hong Kingston to Amy Tan. Until their books began coming out in the
last few decades, her novels were unique in that they spoke for
ordinary Asian people-- "translating my parents to me," said Hong
Kingston, "and giving me our ancestry and our habitation." As a
phenomenally successful writer and civil-rights campaigner, Buck
did more than anyone else in her lifetime to change Western
perceptions of China. In a world with its eyes trained on China
today, she has much to tell us about what lies behind its
astonishing reawakening.
'Utterly fascinating' Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times Benjamin Franklin
took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec painted in
brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed
at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but
Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts - he believed
alcohol was essential to his creative process. From Marx to
Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
presents the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of
the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to
have lived. Whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstand or
boxing, these people made time and got to work. Featuring
photographs of writers and artists at work, and filled with
fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining
stories of the personalities behind it, Daily Rituals is
irresistibly addictive, and utterly inspiring.
The first Texas-based writer to gain national attention, J. Frank
Dobie proved that authentic writing springs easily from the native
soil of Texas and the Southwest. In best-selling books such as
Tales of Old-Time Texas, Coronado's Children, and The Longhorns,
Dobie captured the Southwest's folk history, which was quickly
disappearing as the United States became ever more urbanized and
industrial. Renowned as "Mr. Texas," Dobie paradoxically has almost
disappeared from view-a casualty of changing tastes in literature
and shifts in social and political attitudes since the 1960s. In
this lively biography, Steven L. Davis takes a fresh look at a J.
Frank Dobie whose "liberated mind" set him on an intellectual
journey that culminated in Dobie becoming a political liberal who
fought for labor, free speech, and civil rights well before these
causes became acceptable to most Anglo Texans. Tracing the full arc
of Dobie's life (1888-1964), Davis shows how Dobie's insistence on
"free-range thinking" led him to such radical actions as calling
for the complete integration of the University of Texas during the
1940s, as well as taking on governors, senators, and the FBI (which
secretly investigated him) as Texas's leading dissenter during the
McCarthy era.
With an introduction by Harriet McDougal, Origins of The Wheel of Time by Michael Livingston explores the inspirations behind the acclaimed series The Wheel of Time, including a biography of Robert Jordan for the first time.
Explore never-before-seen insights into The Wheel of Time, including a brand-new, redrawn world map by Ellisa Mitchell using change requests discovered in Robert Jordan's unpublished notes and an alternate scene from an early draft of The Eye of the World.
This companion to the internationally bestselling series will delve into the creation of Robert Jordan's masterpiece, drawing from interviews and an unprecedented examination of his unpublished notes. Michael Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was (including a chapter that is the very first published biography of the author), how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature.
The second part of the book is a glossary to the 'real world' in The Wheel of Time. King Arthur is in The Wheel of Time. Merlin, too. But so is Alexander the Great and the Apollo Space Program, the Norse gods and Napoleon's greatest defeat - and so much more.
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