In One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery. This "fake memoir," as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. Dostoyevsky shows up, as does Graham Greene. Keith Richards and Patti Hansen put in an appearance, Edith Piaf sings, Clint Eastwood saves the neighborhood, and the Rat Pack comes along for the ride. These and other avatars of popular culture help Lehman to make sense of his own mortality and life story. One Hundred Autobiographies reveals a stunning portrait of a mind against the ropes, facing its own extinction, surviving and enduring.

In One Hundred Autobiographies, poet and scholar David Lehman applies the full measure of his intellectual powers to cope with a frightening diagnosis and painful treatment for cancer. No matter how debilitating the medical procedures, Lehman wrote every day during chemotherapy and in the aftermath of radical surgery. With characteristic riffs of wit and imagination, he transmutes the details of his inner life into a prose narrative rich in incident and mental travel. The reader journeys with him from the first dreadful symptoms to the sunny days of recovery. This "fake memoir," as he refers ironically to it, features one-hundred short vignettes that tell a life story. One Hundred Autobiographies is packed with insights and epiphanies that may prove as indispensable to aspiring writers as Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Set against the backdrop of Manhattan, Lehman summons John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Edward Said, and Lionel Trilling among his mentors. Dostoyevsky shows up, as does Graham Greene. Keith Richards and Patti Hansen put in an appearance, Edith Piaf sings, Clint Eastwood saves the neighborhood, and the Rat Pack comes along for the ride. These and other avatars of popular culture help Lehman to make sense of his own mortality and life story. One Hundred Autobiographies reveals a stunning portrait of a mind against the ropes, facing its own extinction, surviving and enduring.

Taking the reader on a journey from the dying embers of Edwardian England, through the trauma of two world wars, the hedonism of London in the 1980s and 'Cool Britannia' in the 1990s right up to the present day, One Hundred Summers is a portrait of a century as it was experienced by one extraordinary family. Along the way, Vanessa Branson recalls the rough and tumble of her chaotic but happy post-war childhood; growing up alongside her older brother Richard, who was entrepreneurial even as a teenager, she would have a front-row seat at the birth of Virgin, one of the most remarkable success stories in British business. She goes on to share her many adventures in a fascinating life, from opening an art gallery on London's Portobello Road and founding an arts festival in Morocco, to turning an ancient palace into a world-famous hotel and finding a real-life Neverland in the Scottish island of Eilean Shona, where J. M. Barrie once wrote a screenplay for Peter Pan. Touching, humane and at times heartbreakingly honest, Branson's family memoir is a vivid and charming tapestry of English eccentricity, fortune, fate and passion.

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) had a colorful life, to say the least. He was a social activist and one of his most famous works is 'The Jungle' which exposed the terrible conditions of the meat-packing industry in Chicago. He was the Democrat nominee for Governor of Califonia in 1934 but was unsuccessful.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou’s classic memoirs have had an enduring impact on American literature and culture. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. This Modern Library edition contains I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven. When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to widespread acclaim in 1969, Maya Angelou garnered the attention of an international audience with the triumphs and tragedies of her childhood in the American South. This soul-baring memoir launched a six-book epic spanning the sweep of the author’s incredible life. Now, for the first time, all six celebrated and bestselling autobiographies are available in this handsome one-volume edition. Dedicated fans and newcomers alike can follow the continually absorbing chronicle of Angelou’s life: her formative childhood in Stamps, Arkansas; the birth of her son, Guy, at the end of World War II; her adventures traveling abroad with the famed cast of Porgy and Bess; her experience living in a black expatriate “colony” in Ghana; her intense involvement with the civil rights movement, including her association with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; and, finally, the beginning of her writing career. The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou traces the best and worst of the American experience in an achingly personal way. Angelou has chronicled her remarkable journey and inspired people of every generation and nationality to embrace life with commitment and passion.

Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent an astonishing variety of geographical areas, occupations, and religious affiliations. This pioneering study explores the origins, historical development, and distinctive characteristics of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, drawing from texts written between the ninth and nineteenth centuries c.e. This volume consists of two parts: a general study rethinking the place of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, and the translated texts. Part one demonstrates that there are far more Arabic autobiographical texts than previously recognized by modern scholars and shows that these texts represent an established and—especially in the Middle Ages—well-known category of literary production. The thirteen translated texts in part two are drawn from the full one-thousand-year period covered by this survey and represent a variety of styles. Each text is preceded by a brief introduction guiding the reader to specific features in the text and providing general background information about the author. The volume also contains an annotated bibliography of 130 premodern Arabic autobiographical texts. In addition to presenting much little-known material, this volume revisits current understandings of autobiographical writing and helps create an important cross-cultural comparative framework for studying the genre.

Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography.