Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Biographies & Memoirs

Eric Dickerson is the greatest player in Los Angeles Rams history and the NFL’s single-season record holder for most rushing yards. In 2019, Dickerson was named to the National Football League’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. With an elegant upright running style that produced some of football’s most-watched highlights, it was said he was so smooth you couldn’t hear his pads clack as he glided past you. But during his Hall of Fame career, his greatness was often overshadowed by his contentious disputes with Rams management about his contract.

For nearly a decade, Palley has been on the frontline of fire. He has witnessed homeowners on the worst day of their lives. He’s seen puddles of aluminum where cars were once parked. He’s watched as 150-foot walls of flame cascaded down mountainsides and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. And he’s captured, time and again, the tireless commitment of firefighters as they work to save lives and homes, in terrain where fire always seems to have the upper hand.

The critically acclaimed poet and author of the collection Debris, Jonathan Wells gives us a thoughtful, candid, and powerful memoir about the universal exploration of adolescence and self-image, the frailty of masculinity, and all the places we seek comfort in a world trying to redefine us.

Recruited to the Secret Service as one of its first five female agents, Kathryn Clark Childers would surprise many people, including herself. Her duties included undercover work, protective details for Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, and attending state dinners where she met world leaders, including Prince Juan Carlos of Spain. In addition, she had to figure out how to disguise the .357 Magnum revolver that she carried at all times, whether wearing jogging clothes, a business suit, or an evening gown.

Boyhood in the 1960s and ‘70s was a time for exploration and mischief. Author Michael Tougias found more than his share of misadventures in the woods and on the water: some life-threatening, but others innocently hilarious. Over time - and after reading a multitude of adventure books - these experiences took shape in his quest to be a mountain man, owning a cabin in the forest and living off the land. Part of that dream would come true, but only after a family tragedy that shook his world and forced changes in his life.

Mort Crim has reported on major conflicts around the world for more than four decades and was a major inspiration for Will Ferrell’s performance in the movie Anchorman. Crim’s memoir takes listeners behind the camera to show what life was like when the local anchorman was as revered as the professional athlete and just as overpaid. It was a glamorous life, working alongside some of journalism’s legends: Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel.

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels achieved stunning global success in part because of the mystery surrounding their pseudonymous author. English-speaking audiences were tantalized by her enigmatic biography as well as what they took to be her authentic portrayal of working-class Naples. However, we now know that the person behind the writing is most likely Anita Raja, a prominent translator of German literature whose background is very different from Ferrante’s supposed life.

“I don’t want to be remembered for One Hundred Years of Solitude or for the Nobel Prize, but rather for my journalism,” Gabriel García Márquez said in the final years of his life. And while some of his journalistic writings have been made available over the years, this is the first volume to gather a representative selection from across the first four decades of his career - years during which he worked as a full-time, often muckraking, and controversial journalist, even as he penned the fiction that would bring him the Nobel Prize in 1982.

Wife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics.

This audiozine features authors and others reading some of the most popular essays and stories in the first 10 issues of the Taking the Lane zine series. Essays and vignettes range from personal to political, and a number of science fiction stories are included. One woman reads about riding her bike to the birth center while having contractions. A man reads about being led on an enchanting bicycle chase. On the fiction end, there are post-apocalyptic cautionary tales and a charming time travel story set in Portland.

Joseph Laroche was an anomaly among the passengers of the Titanic. He was exceptionally well-educated in a time when few Black men had access to an education - and when even fewer were able to travel on a luxurious ship in first or second class. When his family arrived in the United States without him after the Titanic's tragic crash, they were received well along with the other survivors and even sponsored by a wealthy New York heiress. Who was Joseph Laroche? Where was he going, and what was his story? This biography recounts the life of Joseph Laroche.

This is an art adventure story and a memoir all in one, written by a leading expert on the Renaissance whose metier is a high-stakes detective game involving massive amounts of money and frenetic activity in the service of the art market and scholarship alike. It's also an eloquent argument for the enduring value of visual creativity, told with passion, brilliance, and surprising candor.

I’m a 22-year-old black introvert who overthinks everything, can’t get a date, yet somehow managed to graduate from Harvard. Though our stories may not be the same, the universal themes explored in this poignant and personal literary collection - love, identity, hope, social justice, and coming of age - bond us together. Timestamp: Musings of an Introverted Black Boy is many things: It’s one black boy’s journey through college and into adulthood. It’s a compilation of intimate musings, short and long. It’s an anthology of reflections linked to distinct moments in time.

Excellent biographies have been written about Clara Barton, Sarah Josepha Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman, but their lives have never been looked at together as they intertwined with the Civil War narrative. Plumb compares and contrasts the qualities of the women to discover their common attributes for success and what was unique to each woman. Without leading troops in battle or wielding political power, these five women profoundly influenced the start of the war and its conduct throughout as North and South clashed.

Henry Lee III - whose nickname, "Light-Horse," came from his legendary exploits with mounted troops and skill in the saddle - was a dashing cavalry commander and hero of America's War for Independence. By now most Americans have forgotten about Light-Horse Harry Lee, the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, but this new biography reveals he may be one of the most fascinating figures in our nation's history. A daring military commander, Lee was also an early American statesman whose passionate argument in favor of national unity helped ratify the Constitution.

It’s tough being an author these days, and it’s getting harder. But, as Jason Boog shows in a rich mix of history and politics, this is not the first period when writers have struggled to scratch a living. Between accounts of contemporary layoffs and shrinking paychecks for authors and publishing professionals are stories from the 1930s when writers, hard hit by the Great Depression, fought to create unions and New Deal projects like the Federal Writers Project.

In The Haunt of Home, Zachary Michael Jack considers the many ways a region’s abiding spirit shapes the ethos of a land and its people, offering portraits of others who, like himself, are determined to live out the unique promise and predicament of the Gothic.

An Iraq War memoir and searing political commentary from Fox News regular and “America’s Favorite Black, Gay Republican” Rob Smith.

As a Ziegfeld Follies girl and film actress, Justine Johnstone (1895-1982) was celebrated as "the most beautiful woman in the world." Her career took an unexpected turn when she abruptly retired from acting at 31. For the remainder of her life, she dedicated herself to medical research and social activism. The first full-length biography of Johnstone chronicles her extraordinary success in two male-dominated fields - show business and medical science - and follows her remarkable journey into a fascinating and fulfilling life.

In 1971, Eddie Conway, lieutenant of security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus 30 years. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn’t know Eddie well, and the little he knew, he didn’t much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie’s charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie - and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over 43 years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him.