Archive for the 'Biographies and Memoirs' Category

Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama

Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama

In third grade, Barack Obama wrote an essay titled, “I Want to Become President”—and he is, to this day, determined to show the world that, yes, he can.

Born in the U.S.A., the son of an African father and an American mother, a boy who spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii, Barack Obama is truly a citizen of the world. His campaign for the presidency is powered by a fierce optimism, an exuberant sense of purpose and determination, and, above all, a belief that change can happen.

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Hailed by readers and critics across the country, this engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight from her own experiences: her childhood near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; a devastating accident at age eighteen that left her crippled and unable to bear children; her tempestuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and intermittent love affairs with men as diverse as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky; her association with the Communist Party; her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture; and her dramatic love of spectacle.

Eudora Welty: A Biography

Eudora Welty: A Biography

Eudora Welty’s works are treasures of American litera ture. When her first short-story collection was published in 1941, it heralded the arrival of a genuinely original writer who over the decades wrote hugely popular novels, novellas, essays, and a memoir. By the time she died in 2001, Welty had been given numerous literary awards and was all but shrouded in admiration.
In this definitive account, Suzanne Marrs restores Welty’s story to human proportions, tracing Welty’s life from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature. Making generous use of Welty’s correspondence, particularly with contemporaries and admirers including Katherine Anne Porter and E. M. Forster, Marrs has crafted a fitting and fascinating tribute to one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.

Customer Review: A Different Presentation–
There are terrific reviews already on this site, and I can add little to what has already been said. I’ve been a Welty fan since discovering her work 40 years ago, and have a reply from her from many, many years ago when I wrote her a rather gushing fan letter in grade school.

Orlando: A Biography

Orlando: A Biography

In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young nobleman at the beginning of the story-and a modern woman three centuries later. “A poetic masterpiece of the first rank” (Rebecca West). The source of a critically acclaimed 1993 feature film directed by Sally Potter. Index; illustrations.

Customer Review: Milord! Milady!
This `roman cl s’ is very original. The hero continues to live in different historical periods and undergoes a sex change.
However, it is written in an emotional, sentimental, superlative style: `society in the reign of Queen Anne was of unparalleled brilliance. The graces were supreme.’
Except for the first period, there are no conflicts, only rather superficial descriptions of the mood and spirits of the times. For V. Woolf, `to give a truthful account of society … only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it - the poets and novelists - can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the causes where the truth does not exist.’
`Orlando’ is a perfect flight from reality: `But let other pens treat of sex and sexuality; we quit such odious subjects as soon as we can.’ `Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party … should be left to the historian.’