Showing results for "Literary History" in Biographies & Memoirs

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.

AN EDGAR AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL WORK A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Consistently engrossing ... Kushins does an excellent job of guiding us through Leonard’s stories, manuscripts and adaptations." - Wall Street Journal Drawing on unprecedented archival and family...

The digital version of this audiobook contains an introduction read by Carl Bernstein. The Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of All the President’s Men—the chronicle of the investigative report about the Watergate break-in and resultant political scandal which led to President Richard...

Steinbeck and Capa’s account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing. Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union...

These letters between the pioneering environmentalist and her beloved friend reveal "a vibrant, caring woman behind the scientist" (Los Angeles Times). This very special collection of letters from Rachel Carson to her Maine summer neighbor Dorothy Freeman offers an intimate, spellbinding look at Carson's private life and thoughts.

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism...

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A revelatory biography of the world-famous playwright and actor Sam Shepard, whose work was matched by his equally dramatic life, including collaborations with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan as well as tumultuous relationships with Patti Smith, Joni...

Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination―the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. Emily Van Duyne―a superfan and scholar―radically reimagines the last years of Plath’s life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy.

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bustle, Esquire, Nylon, and The Millions “Intimate, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone struggling with the persistent, maddening inequities of contemporary sex.” –Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad From Teen Vogue sex and...

Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent.

"The iconic stage director, writer, actor, and founder of The Manhattan Project, a 1960s-70s avant-garde theater company, delivers smart, clever observations with an actor's perfect timing. From harsh beginnings—never sentimentalized—to a series of adventures—sometimes funny, sometimes...

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism...

A gripping narrative history of Spain’s most brilliant and troubled literary family—a tale about the making of art, myth, and legacy—set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War and beyond. In this absorbing and atmospheric historical narrative, journalist Aaron Shulman takes us...

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Tourists have sought out the landmarks, streets, and alleys of Charles Dickens's London ever since the death of the world-renowned author. Late Victorians and Edwardians were obsessed with tracking down the locations—dubbed "Dickensland"—that famously featured in his novels. But his fans were faced with a city that was undergoing rapid redevelopment, where literary shrines were far from sacred. Over the following century, sites connected with Dickens were demolished, relocated, and reimagined.

""The five marriages that Carmela Ciuraru explores in Lives of the Wives provide such delightfully gossipy pleasure that we have to remind ourselves that these were real people whose often stormy relationships must surely have been less fun to experience than they are for us to read about...

So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery, but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we...

C'era una volta un'Argentina ricca e felice, quella che fu "Lamerica" per tanti italiani emigrati. Come oggi vadano le cose in quel paese, dopo gli anni di Peron, la dittatura militare e la presidenza di Menem, è davanti agli occhi di tutti. Laura Pariani è andata in Argentina non solo come scrittrice, ma come testimone capace di dar conto del mutamento, o meglio, della catastrofe annunciata. Incontrando argentini ed ex immigrati ricostruisce la storia di un paese che oggi pare senza memoria.

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cevennes.

Here are the remarkable life stories of nine famous people who have left their mark upon the world: Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, George Washington, Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and Mahatma Gandhi.