Biography

I'm that girl : living the power of my dreams

Chiles, Jordan, author.

This memoir from the two-time Olympian gymnast chronicles her journey to the awards podium while overcoming racism, childhood trauma and devastating setbacks, highlighting the importance of family support and the resilience of the human spirit.....

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Uptown girl : a memoir

Brinkley, Christie, author.

Now, for the first time, Christie shares what life has been like, both in front of and behind the cameras, considering the girl she was alongside the woman she has become. Her stories are as heartening as they are eye-opening, as she recounts her most formative chapters, including the betrayal by her biological father as a child, her lifelong passion for art, her whirlwind career, her four tumultuous marriages -- including her heartbreaking divorce from Billy Joel -- and the harrowing experiences that almost cut her life short. Through it all, Christie's unwavering belief in the magic and mystery of life has been her guiding light, even during her darkest times. It is with this grace and gratitude that she tenderly chronicles the unexpected, unexplainable ways her life has unfolded, embracing every adventure and twist of fate along the way: traveling the world as a supermodel at the height of the model wars, living life on the road with her rock-star husband and their baby, starring in blockbuster movies and hit sitcoms, riding horses with cowboys, training with world-champion boxers, and even stepping into the spotlight on Broadway.....

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The determined spy : the turbulent life and times of CIA pioneer Frank Wisner

Waller, Douglas, 1949- author.

Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world. Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala. But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power. Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.....

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Class clown : the memoirs of a professional wiseass: how I went 77 years without growing up

Barry, Dave, author.

Class Clown is Dave Barry's hilarious memoir tracing his journey from mischievous minister's son to Pulitzer Prize winning humorist. With wit and warmth, Barry recounts his rock-filled childhood, quirky journalism career, and offbeat adventures in writing, music, and satire offering a joyful reminder to never take life too seriously.....

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Yoko : a biography

Sheff, David, author.

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world's most famous unknown artist. "Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does." She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity, and, often, a villain-an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist, and caterwauling fraud. The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko's part has been missing-hidden in the Beatles' formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono's life will change that. In this book, Yoko Ono takes centerstage. Yoko's life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her harrowing experience as a child during the war, her arrival in avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo, and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism, and activism. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless, and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history. This book was nearly a half century in the making. In 1980, David Sheff met Yoko and John when Sheff conducted an in-depth interview with them just months before John's murder. In the aftermath of the killing, he and Yoko became close as she rebuilt her life, survived threats and betrayals, and went on to create groundbreaking art and music while campaigning for peace and other causes. Drawing from his experiences and interviews with her, her family, closest friends, collaborators, and many others, Sheff shows us Yoko's nine decades-one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived. Yoko is a harrowing, moving, propulsive, and vastly entertaining biography of a woman whose story has never been accurately told. The book not only rehabilitates Yoko Ono's reputation but elevates it to iconic status.....

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Queen of all mayhem : the blood-soaked life & mysterious death of Belle Starr, the most dangerous woman in the West

Huckelbridge, Dane, author.

Belle Starr, born Myra Maybelle Shirley, was a notorious outlaw of the American West who led a gang of horse thieves and had romantic ties to famous criminals like Cole Younger and Jim Reed. Despite her privileged upbringing, she embraced a life of crime marked by violence, personal tragedy, and prison time. Starr's life ended violently in 1889 when she was murdered near her home in Indian Territory. Her story, full of contradictions and resilience, presents a complex and unconventional female figure in contrast to contemporary women’s rights icons.....

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Matriarch : a memoir

Knowles-Lawson, Tina, 1954- author.

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life's journey-through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts-is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It's one brilliant woman's intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America--and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.....

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Buckley : the life and revolution that changed America

Tanenhaus, Sam, author.

At age 25 in 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, William F. Buckley, Jr. instantly seized the public stage-and commanded it for the next half century, leading a new generation of activists and ideologues to the heights of political power while he himself attained unique fame and public influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases-founding editor of National Review, best-selling novelist and memoirist, jet-setting clubman and socialite, downhill skier and sailboat racer, wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York, flamboyant antagonist of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, mentor and idol to hundreds who today populate the worlds of politics and media. Tanenhaus also reveals the private and at times secret life of Bill Buckley: his backstage collaborations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Watergate felon Howard Hunt; thorny relationships with Presidents Nixon and Reagan; flirtations with financial ruin and legal censure-and, late in life, Buckley's lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over AIDS, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq. Majestic in its sweep, lushly detailed, rich in ideas and argument, packed with news and revelations, Buckley is the definitive account of an American giant and the revolution he led.....

View in Catalog

Matriarch : a memoir

Knowles-Lawson, Tina, 1954- author.

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life's journey-through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts-is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It's one brilliant woman's intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America--and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.....

View in Catalog

The determined spy : the turbulent life and times of CIA pioneer Frank Wisner

Waller, Douglas, 1949- author.

Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world. Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala. But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power. Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.....

View in Catalog

Dianaworld : an obsession

White, Edward, 1981- author.

A fascinating new perspective on the life and afterlife of Diana, Princess of Wales, the planet's all-purpose cultural icon. Over the last forty years, the mythology of Princess Diana has turned the woman who was born Diana Spencer into a symbol for almost anything. From a harbinger of Brexit populism, an all-American consumer capitalist, and the savior of the British aristocracy, to a catalyst for #MeToo and in the words of one superfan 'the biggest punk that's come out of England,' Diana connects with a wider array of people than any member of the royal family ever has. We feel so familiar with Diana that it seems crushingly formal to use anything but her first name. In Dianaworld, Edward White guides us through this strange precinct of a global cultural obsession. It's a place of mass delusions, outsized fantasies and quixotic dreams; of druids, psychics, Hollywood stars, obsessive stalkers, radical feminists, and Middle Eastern generals. In a signature, innovative 'exploded biography,' White offers both a portrait of the princess, and group portraits of those who knew her intimately; those who worked with and for her; and the many ordinary people whose connection to Diana reveals her unique and enduring legacy. White draws on a kaleidoscopic array of sources and perspectives never before used in books about Diana or the royal family from interviews with sex workers and professional lookalikes, to the Mass Observation social research project and the Great Diary Project in Britain, and the peculiar work of outsider artists. Diana would have approved of her posthumous title, 'the People's Princess ': the image of a royal with a pauper's soul was exactly how she marketed herself. In Dianaworld, White explores Diana Spencer, the person and the cultural figure by re-creating the world Diana lived in and illuminating her lasting impact on the world she left behind.....

View in Catalog

Queen of all mayhem : the blood-soaked life & mysterious death of Belle Starr, the most dangerous woman in the West

Huckelbridge, Dane, author.

Belle Starr, born Myra Maybelle Shirley, was a notorious outlaw of the American West who led a gang of horse thieves and had romantic ties to famous criminals like Cole Younger and Jim Reed. Despite her privileged upbringing, she embraced a life of crime marked by violence, personal tragedy, and prison time. Starr's life ended violently in 1889 when she was murdered near her home in Indian Territory. Her story, full of contradictions and resilience, presents a complex and unconventional female figure in contrast to contemporary women’s rights icons.....

View in Catalog

Class clown : the memoirs of a professional wiseass: how I went 77 years without growing up

Barry, Dave, author.

Class Clown is Dave Barry's hilarious memoir tracing his journey from mischievous minister's son to Pulitzer Prize winning humorist. With wit and warmth, Barry recounts his rock-filled childhood, quirky journalism career, and offbeat adventures in writing, music, and satire offering a joyful reminder to never take life too seriously.....

View in Catalog

Yoko : a biography

Sheff, David, author.

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world's most famous unknown artist. "Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does." She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity, and, often, a villain-an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist, and caterwauling fraud. The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko's part has been missing-hidden in the Beatles' formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono's life will change that. In this book, Yoko Ono takes centerstage. Yoko's life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her harrowing experience as a child during the war, her arrival in avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo, and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism, and activism. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless, and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history. This book was nearly a half century in the making. In 1980, David Sheff met Yoko and John when Sheff conducted an in-depth interview with them just months before John's murder. In the aftermath of the killing, he and Yoko became close as she rebuilt her life, survived threats and betrayals, and went on to create groundbreaking art and music while campaigning for peace and other causes. Drawing from his experiences and interviews with her, her family, closest friends, collaborators, and many others, Sheff shows us Yoko's nine decades-one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived. Yoko is a harrowing, moving, propulsive, and vastly entertaining biography of a woman whose story has never been accurately told. The book not only rehabilitates Yoko Ono's reputation but elevates it to iconic status.....

View in Catalog

Buckley : the life and revolution that changed America

Tanenhaus, Sam, author.

At age 25 in 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, William F. Buckley, Jr. instantly seized the public stage-and commanded it for the next half century, leading a new generation of activists and ideologues to the heights of political power while he himself attained unique fame and public influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases-founding editor of National Review, best-selling novelist and memoirist, jet-setting clubman and socialite, downhill skier and sailboat racer, wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York, flamboyant antagonist of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, mentor and idol to hundreds who today populate the worlds of politics and media. Tanenhaus also reveals the private and at times secret life of Bill Buckley: his backstage collaborations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Watergate felon Howard Hunt; thorny relationships with Presidents Nixon and Reagan; flirtations with financial ruin and legal censure-and, late in life, Buckley's lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over AIDS, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq. Majestic in its sweep, lushly detailed, rich in ideas and argument, packed with news and revelations, Buckley is the definitive account of an American giant and the revolution he led.....

View in Catalog

Dianaworld : an obsession

White, Edward, 1981- author.

A fascinating new perspective on the life and afterlife of Diana, Princess of Wales, the planet's all-purpose cultural icon. Over the last forty years, the mythology of Princess Diana has turned the woman who was born Diana Spencer into a symbol for almost anything. From a harbinger of Brexit populism, an all-American consumer capitalist, and the savior of the British aristocracy, to a catalyst for #MeToo and in the words of one superfan 'the biggest punk that's come out of England,' Diana connects with a wider array of people than any member of the royal family ever has. We feel so familiar with Diana that it seems crushingly formal to use anything but her first name. In Dianaworld, Edward White guides us through this strange precinct of a global cultural obsession. It's a place of mass delusions, outsized fantasies and quixotic dreams; of druids, psychics, Hollywood stars, obsessive stalkers, radical feminists, and Middle Eastern generals. In a signature, innovative 'exploded biography,' White offers both a portrait of the princess, and group portraits of those who knew her intimately; those who worked with and for her; and the many ordinary people whose connection to Diana reveals her unique and enduring legacy. White draws on a kaleidoscopic array of sources and perspectives never before used in books about Diana or the royal family from interviews with sex workers and professional lookalikes, to the Mass Observation social research project and the Great Diary Project in Britain, and the peculiar work of outsider artists. Diana would have approved of her posthumous title, 'the People's Princess ': the image of a royal with a pauper's soul was exactly how she marketed herself. In Dianaworld, White explores Diana Spencer, the person and the cultural figure by re-creating the world Diana lived in and illuminating her lasting impact on the world she left behind.....

View in Catalog

Uptown girl : a memoir

Brinkley, Christie, author.

Now, for the first time, Christie shares what life has been like, both in front of and behind the cameras, considering the girl she was alongside the woman she has become. Her stories are as heartening as they are eye-opening, as she recounts her most formative chapters, including the betrayal by her biological father as a child, her lifelong passion for art, her whirlwind career, her four tumultuous marriages -- including her heartbreaking divorce from Billy Joel -- and the harrowing experiences that almost cut her life short. Through it all, Christie's unwavering belief in the magic and mystery of life has been her guiding light, even during her darkest times. It is with this grace and gratitude that she tenderly chronicles the unexpected, unexplainable ways her life has unfolded, embracing every adventure and twist of fate along the way: traveling the world as a supermodel at the height of the model wars, living life on the road with her rock-star husband and their baby, starring in blockbuster movies and hit sitcoms, riding horses with cowboys, training with world-champion boxers, and even stepping into the spotlight on Broadway.....

View in Catalog

I'm that girl : living the power of my dreams

Chiles, Jordan, author.

This memoir from the two-time Olympian gymnast chronicles her journey to the awards podium while overcoming racism, childhood trauma and devastating setbacks, highlighting the importance of family support and the resilience of the human spirit.....

View in Catalog