Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing

  Darina Al Joundi, Mohamed Kacimi

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  The Homeland actress’s “recollections of her unconventional youth in war-torn Beirut are heartbreaking yet humorous . . . in this unique” memoir (Publishers Weekly).   Raised in 1970s Lebanon on Charles Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. She spent her adolescence defying death in Beirut nightclubs as bombs fell across the city. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment directed at her daily by the same men who would spend the night with her.   As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father’s last wish is for his favorite song, “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral instead of the traditional suras of the Koran. When she does just that, the final act of defiance elicits a catastrophic response from her surviving family members.   In this dramatic true story, Darina Al-Joundi is defiantly passionate about living her life as a liberated woman, even if it means leaving everyone and everything behind in this “beautifully taut and relentlessly unemotional” memoir (Kirkus).

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  Mississippi Sissy

  Kevin Sessums

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  Mississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South.As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins. In his memoir, Kevin Sessums brings to life the pungent American south of the 1960s and the world of the strange little boy who grew there."Kevin Sessums is some sort of cockeyed national treasure.” —Michael Cunningham

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  And a Dog Called Fig - Solitude...

  Helen Humphreys

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  An artist's solitude is a sacred space, one to be guarded from the chaos of the world, where the sparks of inspiration can be kindled into fires of creation. But within this quiet also lie loneliness, self-doubt, the danger of collapsing too far inward. An artist needs a familiar, a companion with emotional intelligence, innate curiosity, an enthusiasm for the world beyond, but also the capacity to rest contentedly for many hours. What an artist needs, Helen Humphreys would say, is a dog.And a Dog Called Fig is a memoir of the writing life told through the dogs Humphreys has lived with and loved over a lifetime, including Fig, her new Vizsla puppy. Interspersed are stories of other writers and their own irreplaceable companions: Virginia Woolf and Grizzle, Gertrude Stein and Basket, Thomas Hardy and Wessex—who walked the dining table at dinner parties, taking whatever he liked—and many more.A love song to the dogs who come into our lives and all that they bring—sorrow, mayhem, reflection, joy—this is a book about steadfast friendship and loss, creativity and craft, and the restorative powers of nature. Every work of art is different; so too is every dog, with distinctive needs and lessons. And if we let them guide us, they will show us many worlds we would otherwise miss.

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  Churchill: A History - Digitally...

  Brenda Ralph Lewis

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  This recording has been digitally produced, by DeepZen Limited, using a synthesized version of an audiobook narrator’s voice under license. DeepZen uses Emotive Speech Technology to create digital narrations that offer a similar listening experience to human narration. 
  Few statesmen have received so many honours as he did over the course of his career. Although several have received the Nobel Peace Prize, none save Churchill have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His was a career that had few parallels in British history for richness, range, length and achievement. The biography provides an interesting and informative account of Churchill's life - from his childhood, military service in India and the Sudan and his role as war correspondent during the Boer war to his rise in the world of politics, his leadership of Britain in World War II and his role in the post-war struggle of the Cold War years. Coverage of Churchill's personal life is woven into the narrative, including his marriage to Clementine Hozier, their children and Churchill's struggle with his 'Black Dog' depressions. The book gives an honest and accurate presentation of Churchill, including his mistakes and misjudgements as well as his successes. Like so many personalities of high achievement, the rules of ordinary, everyday life – politeness, diplomacy, toleration – did not always apply to Winston Churchill. Where he was eccentric or fanciful, pugnacious, obstinate, demanding and self-centred, this was the character and dynamism of a great man. Using many hundreds of extracts from his speeches and writings throughout his life, the book brings Churchill the man into focus.

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  In the Time of Madness -...

  Richard Lloyd Parry

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  From the acclaimed author of People Who Eat Darkness comes this “deeply felt” account of Indonesia at the crossroads of freedom and terror (Time, Asia).   In the last years of the twentieth century, foreign correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry found himself in the vast island nation of Indonesia, one of the most alluring, mysterious, and violent countries in the world. For thirty-two years, it had been paralyzed by the grip of the dictator and mystic General Suharto, but now the age of Suharto was coming to an end. Would freedom prevail, or was the “time of madness” predicted centuries before now at hand?   On the island of Borneo, tribesmen embarked on a rampage of headhunting and cannibalism. Vast jungles burned uncontrollably; money lost its value; there were plane crashes and volcanic eruptions. Then, after Suharto’s tumultuous fall, came the vote on East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. And it was here, trapped in the besieged compound of the United Nations, that Richard reached his own breaking point.   A book of hair-raising immediacy and psychological unravelling, In the Time of Madness is an accomplishment in the great tradition of Conrad, Orwell, and Ryszard Kapuściński.

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  The Evolution of a State or...

  Noah Smithwick

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  This colorful memoir brings the Texas frontier to life, from smuggling adventures to fighting in the Texas Revolution and serving as a Texas Ranger.Having left Kentucky at nineteen, Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827 to seek his fortune in a “lazy man’s paradise.” He left in 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. Looking back at that time, blind and nearing ninety, Smithwick recounted the story to his daughter—and so came to be this invaluable memoir of “old Texas days.”A blacksmith and a tobacco smuggler, Smithwick made weapons for—and fought in—the Battle of Concepción. With Hensley's company, he chased the Mexican army south of the Rio Grande after the Battle of San Jacinto. Twice he served with the Texas Rangers. In quieter times, he was a postmaster and justice of the peace in little Webber's Prairie. Eyewitness to so much Texas history, Smithwick recounts his life and adventures in a simple, straightforward style, with a wry sense of humor. His keen memory for detail—what people wore and ate; how they worked and played— vividly evokes life on the frontier.

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