Author: Tom Shroder Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0698194268 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
The Washington Post Book Club's October Pick One of Washington Independent Review of Book's Favorite Books of 2016 “A grandson of writer MacKinlay Kantor unravels the tangles of his grandfather's life and finds many of those same threads (the good, the bad, the ugly) in his own…A compelling account, suffused with both sympathy and sharpness, of a writer who's mostly forgotten and of a grandson who's grateful.”—Kirkus Reviews An award-winning veteran of The Washington Post and The Miami Herald, Tom Shroder has made a career of investigative journalism and human-interest stories, from those of children who claim to have memories of past lives, in his book Old Souls, to that of a former Marine suffering from debilitating PTSD and his doctor pioneering a successful psychedelic drug treatment in Acid Test. Shroder’s most fascinating subject, however, comes from within his own family: his grandfather MacKinlay Kantor was the world-famous author of Andersonville, the seminal novel about the Civil War. As a child, Shroder was in awe of his grandfather’s larger-than-life character. Kantor’s friends included Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandburg, Gregory Peck, and James Cagney. He was an early mentor to the novelist John D. MacDonald and is credited with discovering the singer Burl Ives. Kantor wrote the novel Glory for Me, which became the multi-Oscar-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives. He ghostwrote General Curtis LeMay’s memoirs, penning the infamous words “We’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age,” referring to North Vietnam. Kantor also suffered from alcoholism, an outsize ego, and an abusive and publicly embarrassing personality where his family was concerned; he blew through several small fortunes in his lifetime, and died nearly destitute. In The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived, Shroder revisits the past—Kantor’s upbringing, his early life, his career trajectory— and writes not just the life story of one man but a meditation on fame, family secrets and legacies, and what is remembered after we are gone.
Author: Ariel Gore Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0307393801 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
This may come as a shock, but brilliant writing and clever wordplay do not a published author make. True, you’ll actually have to write if you want to be a writer, but ultimately literary success is about much more than putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Before you snap your pencil in half with frustration, please consider the advice writer, teacher, and self-made lit star Ariel Gore offers in this useful guide to realizing your literary dreams. If you find yourself writing when you should be sleeping and scribbling notes on odd pieces of paper at every stoplight, you might as well enjoy the fruits of your labor. How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is an irreverent yet practical guide that combines solid writing advice with guerrilla marketing and promotion techniques guaranteed to launch you into print—and into the limelight. You’ll learn how to: • Reimagine yourself as a buzz-worthy artist and entrepreneur• Get your work and your name out in the world where other people can read it• Be an anthology slut and a brazen self-promoter• Apply real-world advice and experience from lit stars like Dave Barry, Susie Bright, and Dave Eggers to your own careerCheaper than an M.F.A. but just as informative, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead is your catapult to lit stardom. Just don’t forget to thank Ariel Gore for her inspiring, hands-on plan in the acknowledgments page of your first novel!
Author: MacKinlay Kantor Publisher: Speaking Volumes ISBN: 1628156066 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
MACKINLAY KANTOR Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville GLORY FOR ME A Novel in Verse By MacKinlay Kantor BASIS FOR THE MOVIE THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES It is seldom in time of war that an author, no matter how emotionally aware of what it all means, can write a book which expresses the feeling that motivates fighting men. Why did it happen this way, why is it ending this way— what are we now that it is done with, now that we are home? Indeed, are we home, or are we in a boarding-house of confusion and wretchedly defeated purposes and understandings? MacKinlay Kantor is one of America's best-known novelists. It might be said that if any author could write that book Kantor would be the one for the job, but it takes more than mere professional writing skill to achieve such a major accomplishment. It takes awareness born of action and danger and keenly felt knowledge. Such knowledge MacKinlay Kantor has found, and in his novel of war and its men, Glory for Me, he has wholly expressed it. Well above the draft age, and physically unacceptable to the armed forces, Kantor intensely felt the need to join his younger fellows in some way; in some way he had to be a part of the danger, the horror, the glory of this war. He found his opportunity as a war correspondent. As such, based in England, he flew in combat with the U. S. Air Forces and the R.A.F. over enemy territory into flak and fire. As such he learned to know the fighting men whose constant companion, friend and fellow-in-war he was for many months. For the equivalent of a leave Kantor came back to the United States, and what filled his mind and his heart and his thoughts had to find expression in a book, which is Glory for Me. Glory for Me is a simple novel—about three service men, honorably discharged for medical causes, who return home to the same town where in peacetime they had not known one another. Now they know one another, and through them we know them and their town and our country and war and peace and man. Glory for Me is a national epic, told in language of the common man, in language of the poet: told as only an American could tell it.
Author: Glenn Frankel Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1608191052 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
Traces the making of the influential 1950s film inspired by the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, sharing details of Parker's 1836 abduction by the Comanche and her return to white culture twenty-four years later.
Author: Bronnie Ware Publisher: Hay House, Inc ISBN: 1401956009 Category : Self-Help Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.
Author: Robertson Davies Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0525505504 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author: Martin Luther King Publisher: HarperOne ISBN: 9780063425811 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins. With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience. This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.
Author: Francine Prose Publisher: Union Books ISBN: 1908526149 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’ Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë ’ s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’ s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.
Author: Thomas Wolfe Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 9780807125038 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
In 1920 Thomas Wolfe left the South with the strong desire to become a dramatist. To pursue his chosen craft, he enrolled in the Harvard 47 Workshop, at that time the most renowned in the nation. At first he wrote plays about Appalachian society and the Civil War. But it was not until Wolfe turned to the modern South—inspired by a disturbing return to his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina—that his genius awoke. There he found the material he would work into the best of his three full-length plays written at Harvard, the material that in the next decade would be recast into the novels that would make him famous. This is the first book publication of Welcome to Our City, Thomas Wolfe’s play in ten scenes of a modern South ruled by liars and real estate agents, overrun with boosterism, and dedicated to greed. This sprawling, fiery work has lain dormant among Wolfe’s papers for over fifty years, abandoned by its author after an unsuccessful attempt to revise and shorten it for a New York Theatre Guild production. For this edition, Richard S. Kennedy has reassembled a full performance text of the workshop version presented at Harvard in 1923—a production that involved forty-five cast members, including over thirty speaking parts, required seven stage changes, and lasted over three and a half hours in performance. The action of Welcome to Our City centers on a scheme of the town fathers and real estate promoters of Altamont, a small southern city, to snatch up all the property in a centrally located black district, evict the tenants, tear down their houses and shops, and build a new white residential section in its place. When the blacks, under the angry leadership of a strong-willed doctor, resist eviction, a race riot breaks out—shattering both the precarious social balance of the city and the “progressive” dreams of Altamont’s boosters. Building on this plot, Wolfe guides his audience through the back rooms, stately homes, ans shanty towns of Altamont, contrasting tradition-bound southern characters with a new breed of life drawn from the vast menagerie of 1920s Main Street America: fact-spouting yes-men, hypocritical religious leaders, anti-intellectual professors, provincial country club matrons, and politicians inauthentic from their heads to their feet. Welcome to Our City is not merely an exhibit in the artistic development of a future novelist. Wolfe used the dramatic form inventively and with considerable inspiration to expose the culture of greed that he saw spreading around him and to caricature the men who, he feared, would usher in an age of mediocrity across America. Emotionally gripping and mockingly satiric, Welcome to Our City captures the festering social climate of the 1920s in a vision of life that is uncomfortably relevant to our own times.
Author: Tom Shroder
Author: Ariel Gore
Author: MacKinlay Kantor
Author: Glenn Frankel
Author: Bronnie Ware
Author: Robertson Davies
Author: Martin Luther King
Author: Mark Twain
Author: Francine Prose
Author: Thomas Wolfe