Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/30/2011
ISBN-13: 9780547152578
ISBN-10: 0547152574

Biographer Patricia Bosworth first met Jane Fonda when they were both students at the Actors Studio in the 1960s. She bases her biography of Fonda on her memories of their early friendship, on recent conversations with Fonda, on meticulous research, and on interviews with Fonda's friends and colleagues. Bosworth skillfully weaves all the material into a complete portrait of the woman who is more than the sum of many parts: Henry Fonda's daughter, actress and movie star, sex symbol, political activist, workout guru, and wife -- and ex-wife -- of billionaire Ted Turner. Kirkus Reviews calls it "reading to savor." For more, in Fonda's own words, read her memoir My Life So Far.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/13/2011
ISBN-13: 9780374281014
ISBN-10: 0374281017

Searching his memory as far back as he can, actor Hal Holbrook produces mesmerizing stories about himself, some poignant and some amusing, creating a self-portrait of the man who, through his skillful impersonations, "became" Mark Twain. Holbrook describes the working of memory: "The mind flows back. We enter memory, and events and people pour out like little swaying creatures, saying, 'Here I am, here I am.'" He relates his life in a compelling yet objective tone, from growing up in the Midwest as an abandoned child reared by his grandparents, to 1958 and the beginning of his acting career. This is an "honest account of a life spent searching for meaning and purpose" (Publishers Weekly).

First Chapter  

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/27/2011
ISBN-13: 9780061734977
ISBN-10: 0061734977

Actor John Lithgow grew up in a theatrical family, moving from place to place as his actor father found new jobs, so it's no surprise that he made the stage his career. This memoir is as much a tribute to Lithgow's father as a chronicle of the younger Lithgow's early career. Prompted by the sharing of some favorite stories with his terminally ill father, Lithgow recounts his own life story in this book. Demonstrating the importance and power of the craft of storytelling, he relates the development of his career in this "captivating journey" (Booklist) through his experiences.

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/30/2011
ISBN-13: 9780802119926
ISBN-10: 0802119921

In this memoir the author of Matterhorn, an award-winning novel about the Vietnam war, presents his personal experiences in Vietnam as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Focusing on the terrible psychic toll that warfare, especially the act of killing other humans, exacts on soldiers, Karl Marlantes both plumbs the devastating circumstances that lead to PTSD and offers hope for those who must face them. He vividly describes his own emotional struggles to recover from the war, proposing a therapeutic model for recovery through ritual which a story about Navajo soldiers returning home inspired. For a very different and equally personal account of service in Vietnam, read Tracy Kidder's My Detachment.

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Publisher: Broadway Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 07/19/2011
ISBN-13: 9780307591760
ISBN-10: 030759176X

Everett Ruess was an artist who wandered through the wilderness creating beautiful, critically acclaimed woodcuts and watercolors. In 1934, at age 20, he disappeared in the Utah desert, and his remains have never been found. The young artist's life was unusual even before he disappeared -- he first began his back-country forays by horse and burro when he was 16, often bartering his artworks for food. In this biography, introduced by Jon Krakauer, author David Roberts explores Ruess' life, his artistic achievement, and the mystery of his disappearance. Ruess has been compared to Chris McCandless, who died on a solo trek in Alaska in 1992; for more on McCandless, read Krakauer's Into the Wild.

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Publisher: Vintage Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/12/2008
ISBN-13: 9781400076222
ISBN-10: 1400076226

Visitors to Washington, D.C. admire its grand avenues and sweeping vistas from the Capitol and along the Mall, but many are unaware of the architect who planned the capital city. Pierre Charles L'Enfant worked alongside the first President of the United States, George Washington, to create a new capital to rival the great cities of Europe. Biographer Scott Berg presents the story of L'Enfant's life, from his childhood in France through his service in the American Revolutionary Army to the culmination of his career in the design of Washington -- and the reasons why he was fired from the job. Berg's compelling account of this complex man is a "fascinating read," according to Booklist.

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Publisher: Harper Perennial
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/01/2009
ISBN-13: 9780060825423
ISBN-10: 0060825421

A terrible painter but a master con artist, Dutchman Han van Meegeren sold his own works to a Rotterdam museum and to Nazi collectors as "lost" paintings by 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Forging not only the paintings but bills of sale and other documents to substantiate their provenance, he got away with his scheme from 1937 to 1946, living well in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands off the proceeds -- but eventually van Meegeren was convicted of forgery and fraud. The sorry tale reads like a thriller in author Edward Dolnick's thoroughly researched account. For additional juicy details on this crook, read Jonathan Lopez's The Man who Made Vermeers.

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Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/01/2007
ISBN-13: 9780066213934
ISBN-10: 0066213932

Charles Schulz's beloved comic strip Peanuts features Charlie Brown, the little boy who always loses his kite in a tree and who never leads his baseball team to victory. Showing how specific Peanuts episodes reflect incidents in the cartoonist's life, biographer David Michaelis draws a sympathetic but probing portrait of Schultz, an unassuming genius whose comics continue to appear in newspapers more than a decade after his death. For more in the artist's own words (and pictures), you'll enjoy Schulz's My Life with Charlie Brown.

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Publisher: Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/01/2005
ISBN-13: 9780060575601
ISBN-10: 0060575603

The painter Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, was both a great artist and a troubled, contentious man who died in exile at age 39. A creative genius "surrounded by a great deal of very bad, very popular, very lucrative and respected art," as author Francine Prose puts it, he began painting in Milan at the turn of the 17th century, but later traveled from city to city both in search of new commissions and to evade his enemies. Prose's engaging biography presents a complex figure who used revolutionary techniques to produce a new kind of painting that his contemporaries found shocking -- but which earned him a lasting reputation. You'll find additional detail on his life in John Spike's Caravaggio.

First Chapter  

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/2006
ISBN-13: 9780060545581
ISBN-10: 0060545585

The Impressionists Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Morisot, and Cassatt lived and worked in Paris during the second half of the 19th century and were successfully promoted by dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Biographer and art scholar Sue Roe shines her spotlight on each member of the group and on the movement as a whole, setting their lives and work in historical context. She also relates "fascinating and heartbreaking" (Booklist) details of their personal struggles with finances, relationships, and critical disregard -- redeemed in their triumphant New York exhibition in 1886 and in the admiration of the art world even today.

First Chapter  Table of Contents