In this brilliant book of recollection, one of America's finest writers re-creates people, places, and events spanning some fifty years, bringing to life an entire era through one man's sensibility. Scenes of love and desire, friendship, ambition, life in foreign cities and New York, are unforgettably rendered here in the unique style for which James Salter is widely admired. Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women. After resigning from the Air Force, Salter begins a second life, becoming a writer in the New York of the 1960s. Soon films beckon. There are vivid portraits of actors, directors, and producers--Polanski, Robert Redford, and others. Here also, more important, are writers who were influential, some by their character, like Irwin Shaw, others because of their taste and knowledge. Ultimately Burning the Days is an illumination of what it is to be a man, and what it means to become a writer. Only once in a long while--Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory or Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa--does a memoir of such extraordinary clarity and power appear. Unconventional in form, Burning the Days is a stunning achievement by the writer The Washington Post Book World said "inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever" --a rare and unforgettable book. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James Salter's All That Is.

Born in 1905 in the center of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viktor Frankl was a witness to the great political, philosophical, and scientific upheavals of the twentieth century. In these stirring recollections, Frankl describes how as a young doctor of neurology in prewar Vienna his disagreements with Freud and Adler led to the development of "the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," known as logotherapy; recounts his harrowing trials in four concentration camps during the War; and reflects on the celebrity brought by the publication of Man's Search for Meaning in 1945.

In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

Considered by many to be the most beautiful woman of her generation, Sharon Tate remains a fascinating pop icon and a poster child for the 1960s. What struck most about Sharon was her gentle nature and the sheer perfection of her face, but she was far more than just a beauty. The few films she made during her brief career, including Valley of the Dolls, Eye of the Devil, and The Fearless Vampire Killers, have secured her position as a Hollywood legend. Over forty years since her last film, Sharon's spirit and charisma lives strong in the memories of those who knew her best, and her style continues to inspire the worlds of fashion, beauty, art, and film. Sharon Tate: Recollection is a one-of-a-kind celebration of Sharon's life and career, her influence as a fashion icon throughout the world, and in effect presents a sociological portrait of the 1960s -- its youth culture, the sexual revolution, the rise of independent cinema, and Hollywood's changing studio system. In this impressive photo book, Sharon Tate's story emerges through quotes and short essays -- recollections -- by her sister, Debra Tate, as well as by those who knew and have been influenced by her. What emerges from these pages is a stunning tribute to an unforgettable life. Highlights include: A foreword note by Sharon's husband Roman Polanski. An introduction and remembrances by Sharon's sister Debra Tate. Previously unseen childhood photos from the Tate family album. Original quotes and recollection essays written specially for this book by Jane Fonda, Kelly Osbourne, Bert Stern, Michelle Phillips, Patty Duke, Lee Grant, Elke Sommer, Joan Collins, Viva, Tony Scotti and Trina Turk. Retrospective quotes by Truman Capote, Diana Vreeland, Richard Avedon, Dominick Dunne, Warren Beatty, Mia Farrow, Orson Welles, Barbara Parkins, George Harrison, David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas. Rare and classic photographs by David Bailey, Milton Greene, Philippe Halsman, Shahrokh Hatami, Terry O'Neill, Peter Basch, John Engstead, Peter Brün, Neal Barr and Jean Jacques Bugat. Never-before-seen or published images of Sharon in the classic film Valley of the Dolls, digitally reproduced from their original negatives and transparencies specially for this book by the 20th Century Fox archive.

An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy. Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women's rights. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer--books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.

‘The true chronicler of my life, a tall, soft-looking man with watery eyes, came up to me at the gathering and said, as if he had been waiting a long time to tell me, that he knew everything. I had never seen him before.’ This is the brilliant memoir of a man who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before emerging as one of America’s finest authors in the New York of the 1960s. Burning the Days showcases Salter’s uniquely beautiful style with some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who later influenced him. It is an unforgettable book about passion, ambition and what it means to live and to write.