Book

Book
Author: John Agard
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2015
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 076367236X

Books contain countless tales--but what if Book told its own story? From clay tablets to e-readers, here is a quirky, kid-friendly look at the book. Books are one of humankind's greatest forms of expression, and now Book, in a witty, idiosyncratic voice, tells us the inside story. A wonderfully eccentric character with strong opinions and a poetic turn of phrase, Book tells of a journey from papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts to printed paper and beyond--pondering, along the way, many bookish things, including the evolution of the alphabet, the library (known to Egyptians as "the healing place of the soul"), and even book burning. With bold, black-and-white illustrations by Neil Packer, Book is a captivating work of nonfiction by one of England's leading poets.

Red Autobiographies

Red Autobiographies
Author: Igal Halfin
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN:

In Red Autobiographies, Igal Halfin reads admission records to Soviet Communist party cells in the 1920s for what they reveal about the politics of self-representation in Bolshevik political culture. He identifies ways of speaking about oneself as a central arena of the Soviet revolution's drive for discovering, changing, and perfecting the self. The study is based on archival sources -- many of which are no longer as freely accessible as they were during the heydays of the Soviet "archival bonanza" -- in provincial party archives in Leningrad, Smolensk, and Tomsk. But the principle merit of this study is Halfin's masterful handling and interpretation of the sources. As such, the study serves as a popular "short course" on Halfin's seminal contributions to the historiographies of Russia, Communism, and modern subjectivity. Igal Halfin is a professor of modern history in Tel Aviv University.

One Hundred Autobiographies

One Hundred Autobiographies
Author: David Lehman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501746472

In One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery. This "fake memoir," as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. Dostoyevsky shows up, as does Graham Greene. Keith Richards and Patti Hansen put in an appearance, Edith Piaf sings, Clint Eastwood saves the neighborhood, and the Rat Pack comes along for the ride. These and other avatars of popular culture help Lehman to make sense of his own mortality and life story. One Hundred Autobiographies reveals a stunning portrait of a mind against the ropes, facing its own extinction, surviving and enduring.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Modern Library
Total Pages: 1186
Release: 2012-04-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030743205X

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou’s classic memoirs have had an enduring impact on American literature and culture. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. This Modern Library edition contains I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven. When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to widespread acclaim in 1969, Maya Angelou garnered the attention of an international audience with the triumphs and tragedies of her childhood in the American South. This soul-baring memoir launched a six-book epic spanning the sweep of the author’s incredible life. Now, for the first time, all six celebrated and bestselling autobiographies are available in this handsome one-volume edition. Dedicated fans and newcomers alike can follow the continually absorbing chronicle of Angelou’s life: her formative childhood in Stamps, Arkansas; the birth of her son, Guy, at the end of World War II; her adventures traveling abroad with the famed cast of Porgy and Bess; her experience living in a black expatriate “colony” in Ghana; her intense involvement with the civil rights movement, including her association with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; and, finally, the beginning of her writing career. The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou traces the best and worst of the American experience in an achingly personal way. Angelou has chronicled her remarkable journey and inspired people of every generation and nationality to embrace life with commitment and passion.

Book: My Autobiography

Book: My Autobiography
Author: John Agard
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0763678872

Books contain countless tales—but what if Book told its own story? From clay tablets to e-readers, here is a quirky, kid-friendly look at the book. Books are one of humankind’s greatest forms of expression, and now Book, in a witty, idiosyncratic voice, tells us the inside story. A wonderfully eccentric character with strong opinions and a poetic turn of phrase, Book tells of a journey from papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts to printed paper and beyond—pondering, along the way, many bookish things, including the evolution of the alphabet, the library (known to Egyptians as "the healing place of the soul"), and even book burning. With bold, black-and-white illustrations by Neil Packer, Book is a captivating work of nonfiction by one of England's leading poets.

Religious Autobiographies

Religious Autobiographies
Author: Gary Comstock
Publisher: Cengage Learning
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Autobiography
ISBN: 9780534526412

This unique anthology, now with contributing editor C. Wayne Mayhall, includes spiritual autobiographies of both men and women from a variety of religious traditions within a multicultural context. It presents religion as a "lived experience" and helps students think empathetically about religious experiences in a wide variety of cultural and religious settings.

History, Historians, and Autobiography

History, Historians, and Autobiography
Author: Jeremy D. Popkin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2005-05-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0226675432

Though history and autobiography both claim to tell true stories about the past, historians have traditionally rejected first-person accounts as subjective and therefore unreliable. What then, asks Jeremy D. Popkin in History, Historians, and Autobiography, are we to make of the ever-increasing number of professional historians who are publishing stories of their own lives? And how is this recent development changing the nature of history-writing, the historical profession, and the genre of autobiography? Drawing on the theoretical work of contemporary critics of autobiography and the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Popkin reads the autobiographical classics of Edward Gibbon and Henry Adams and the memoirs of contemporary historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Peter Gay, Jill Ker Conway, and many others, he reveals the contributions historians' life stories make to our understanding of the human experience. Historians' autobiographies, he shows, reveal how scholars arrive at their vocations, the difficulties of writing about modern professional life, and the ways in which personal stories can add to our understanding of historical events such as war, political movements, and the traumas of the Holocaust. An engrossing overview of the way historians view themselves and their profession, this work will be of interest to readers concerned with the ways in which we understand the past, as well as anyone interested in the art of life-writing.

Autobiographies

Autobiographies
Author: Kathleen Raine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2009-06-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781597313322

Kathleen Raine was one of the most eminent literary figures of the twentieth century-as poet, scholar, and editor. During her long and distinguished career she knew many of the leading writers and artists among her contemporaries. However, Autobiographies is an illuminating attempt to chart the inner course of her life. It opens with a magical evocation of childhood in a remote Northumbrian hamlet during the First World War. The close-knit community she knew, while growing up far from the modern world, was to remain an enduring image for her of Paradise, lost and ever after sought for. While studying science at Cambridge, as a contemporary of William Empson, Humphrey Jennings, Jacob Bronowski, and Malcolm Lowry, she moved uneasily in the prevailing atmosphere of positivist science and socialist excitement, before finding the path of her spiritual quest lay in a very different direction. In the final part of her story she describes her friendship with Elias Canetti, and her important and intense relationship with Gavin Maxwell. Kathleen Raine's reputation has never stood higher than at present, and this collected edition of her autobiographies, as well as being the perfect introduction to her workas a whole, takes its place as an illustrious successor to the autobiographies of W. B. Yeats and Edwin Muir.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Author: Clayborne Carson
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2001-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0759520372

With knowledge, spirit, good humor, and passion, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. brings to life a remarkable man whose thoughts and actions speak to our most burning contemporary issues and still inspire the desires, hopes, and dreams of us all. Written in his own words, this history-making autobiography is Martin Luther King: the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who chafed under and eventually rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who continually questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family's needs with those of a growing, nationwide movement; and the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere. Relevant and insightful, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. offers King's seldom disclosed views on some of the world's greatest and most controversial figures: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Richard Nixon. It also paints a rich and moving portrait of a people, a time, and a nation in the face of powerful change. Finally, it shows how everyday Americans from all walks of life confronted themselves, each other, and the burden of the past-and how their fears and courage helped shape our future.