Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Biographies & Memoirs

In this biography of Chester B. Himes (1909-1984), Lawrence P. Jackson depicts the improbable life of the controversial writer whose novels confront sexuality, racism, and social injustice. In absorbing detail, Jackson explores Chester Himes's middle-class origins, eight years in prison, painful odyssey as a Black World War II-era artist, and escape to Europe, where Himes became internationally famous for his Harlem detective series.

An unprecedented new collection of true stories from the brave men and women who served in the Marine Corps. Behind one of the most established military branches in America are the riveting, untold tales of the courageous warriors who fought on the front lines.

A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the best-selling author of Claire of the Sea Light. Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work.

For the first time, here is a biography of Joe McCarthy that cuts through the clichés and misconceptions surrounding this central figure of the "red scare" of the '50s and reexamines his life and legacy in the light of newly declassified archival sources from the FBI, the National Security Agency, the US Congress, the Pentagon, and the former Soviet Union. After more than four decades, here is the untold story of America's most hated political figure, shorn of the rhetoric and stereotypes of the past.

When Mel Miskimen's mother dies, her tough, retired-cop father withdraws into his sadness, and his broken grief is more than Mel can handle on her own. Enter Seamus: a rowdy, hapless Labrador devoted to chaos. In a spark of inspiration, Mel ropes her father into training the wayward hound for a local contest. As the seasons change, Mel finds herself connecting with her last surviving parent more than she'd ever dreamed.

Hockey forms the backdrop of our lives. For many Canadians, the big moments - births, deaths, marriages, moves - are all mixed up with the wins and losses of our teams. The voices of Hockey Night in Canada sportscasters are our soundtrack, and visions of skates scraping across the ice lull us to sleep. George Bowering, Canada's former poet laureate, is no different.

How do you learn to be a Black man in America? For young Black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of Black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years.

What was it like to meet our 16th president? Was he really as kind and honest as we perceive him to be today? This astonishing new book is an inspiring and eye-opening collection of stories, anecdotes, and quotes from people who sought out Lincoln for his wisdom, his help, or just his irresistible wit. He offered a patient ear to almost anyone who came to see him, and his compassion and understanding bettered the lives of hundreds who crossed his threshold.

Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as a hopelessly enigmatic figure despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom even as he held people in bondage, Jefferson is variably described by current-day observers as a hypocrite, an atheist, and a simple-minded proponent of limited government.

For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For 45 years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Set deep in the rugged Appalachian Mountains, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, mountain music, and her daddy's dimestore. It was in that dimestore - listening to customers and inventing life histories for the store's dolls - that she began to learn the craft of storytelling.

In honest, confessional prose, Born on the Bayou - a roller-coaster rags-to-riches story - transports us to a pocket of the South where Lourd learns how to be a man from the two people he looks up to the most: his larger-than-life father, "Puffer", a prominent figure in the oil business; and his successful older brother, Bryan.

Brothers Barry and Tommy Moser were born of the same parents in Chattanooga, Tennessee, slept in the same bedroom, went to the same school, and were both poisoned by their family's deep racism and anti-Semitism. But as they grew older, their perspectives and their paths grew further and further apart. Barry left Chattanooga for New England and a life in the arts; Tommy stayed put and became a mortgage banker.

Actress and voiceover artist Samantha Matthews offers - in the form of an extended monologue, prompted and arranged by New York Times best-selling author (and Matthews' cousin once removed) David Shields - a vivid investigation of her startling sexual history.

Louise Troh - fiancée of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man ever to die of Ebola in America - breaks her silence about her experience. This deeply moving memoir chronicles the decade-long love story that starts in Liberia and ends in an isolation ward in Dallas, Texas. With the assistance of New York Times best-selling author Christine Wicker, Louise Troh shares with the world a memoir of heartbreaking resonance.

American writers have long sought to compose "the great American novel", or "America's epic", Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby have been advanced as plausible contenders for the title, but no work can mount a more substantial claim than Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or The Whale.

Sanora Babb experienced pioneer life in a one-room dugout, eye-level with the land that supported, tormented and beguiled her; where her family fought for their lives against drought, crop-failure, starvation, and almost unfathomless loneliness. Learning to read from newspapers that lined the dugout' s dirt walls, she grew up to be a journalist, then a writer of unforgettable books about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, most notably Whose Names Are Unknown.

Crapalachia is a portrait of these formative years, coming-of-age in rural West Virginia. Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.

Teresa Rhyne vowed to get things right this time around: new boyfriend, new house, new dog, maybe even new job. But shortly after she adopted Seamus, a totally incorrigible beagle, vets told Teresa that he had a malignant tumor and less than a year to live. The diagnosis devastated her, but she decided to fight it, learning everything she could about the best treatment for Seamus. Teresa couldn't possibly have known then that she was preparing herself for life's next hurdle - a cancer diagnosis of her own.

"Welcome to Rockwell Land," writes Deborah Solomon in the introduction to this spirited and authoritative biography of the painter who provided 20th-century America with a defining image of itself. As the star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, Norman Rockwell mingled fact and fiction in paintings that reflected the we-the-people, communitarian ideals of American democracy. But who was this man who served as our unofficial "artist in chief" and bolstered our country's national identity?

Long considered a culinary renegade and a pioneering chef, Van Aken is an American original who chopped and charred, sweated and seared his way to cooking stardom with no formal training, but with extra helpings of energy, creativity, and faith. After landing on the deceptively breezy shores of Key West, Van Aken faced hurricanes, economic downturns, and mercurial moneymen during the decades when a restaurant could open and close faster than you can type haute cuisine.