Category: Memoir

By Donald Rumsfeld

This superior ebook variation of Known and Unknown bargains an remarkable interpreting adventure for a memoir through a massive public determine. For web-connected readers, it beneficial properties greater than 500 hyperlinks to never-before-available unique records from Donald Rumsfeld's large own archive. It contains country division cables, correspondence, and memoranda on themes corresponding to Vietnam, Watergate, the times following September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and masses more.

Few american citizens have spent extra time close to the guts of strength than Donald Rumsfeld. Now he has written an unflinching memoir of his half-century occupation, sharing formerly undisclosed info that may fascinate readers and strength historians to reconsider many controversies.

Starting from a middle-class adolescence in Illinois, Rumsfeld had a fast upward thrust that received him early acclaim. He indicates us what it was once like growing to be up throughout the nice melancholy and international warfare II, going to Princeton on scholarships, serving as a naval aviator, then getting his first political activity on Capitol Hill in the course of the Eisenhower management. He recollects how he gained a seat in the home of Representatives at age thirty and what he skilled as a Republican in Congress in the course of the Kennedy and Johnson years.

We additionally keep on with him again to the administrative department as he took on key cupboard positions within the Nixon and Ford administrations, together with his provider because the youngest ever secretary of safeguard, simply after the trauma of Vietnam. And we find out about the demanding situations he later confronted as a CEO within the inner most zone and through his targeted assignments for President Reagan, together with a face-to-face assembly with Saddam Hussein in 1983.

All of that will were sufficient fabric for a desirable booklet. yet as 2001 all started, Rumsfeld's maximum demanding situations lay sooner than him. At age sixty-eight he back to the Pentagon as President Bush's secretary of safety, with a mandate to remodel the army for a brand new century. simply 9 months later he may confront the worst acts of terrorism in American background, by means of unforeseen wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he will be at the firing line for plenty of controversies, from the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib legal to allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay.

Known and Unknown finds what occurred behind the curtain through the serious moments of the Bush years, because the President's internal circle debated how top to guard our kingdom. it truly is established not just on Rumsfeld's reminiscence but in addition on hundreds of thousands of formerly unreleased files from all through his profession. It additionally positive aspects his blunt, firsthand evaluations approximately the various world's best-known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Elvis Presley, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, and approximately every one American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

In a recognized press briefing, Rumsfeld as soon as remarked that "there also are unknown unknowns . . . issues we don't understand we don't know." His ebook makes us detect simply how a lot we didn't know.

Donald Rumsfeld is donating his proceeds from the revenues of Known and Unknown to the army charities supported via the Rumsfeld Foundation.

By Maggie Nelson

ISBN-10: 1555977073

ISBN-13: 9781555977078

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the most recent pondering love, language, and relatives, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a piece of "autotheory" providing clean, fierce, and well timed wondering wish, identification, and the restrictions and probabilities of love and language. At its middle is a romance: the tale of the author's courting with the artist Harry circumvent. This tale, along with Nelson's account of falling in love with keep away from, who's fluidly gendered, in addition to her trip to and during a being pregnant, bargains a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.
Writing within the spirit of public intellectuals akin to Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her own event to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have acknowledged approximately sexuality, gender, and the vexed associations of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical person freedom and the price of caretaking turns into the rallying cry of this considerate, unabashed, uncompromising e-book.

By Rukmini Srinivas

ISBN-10: 8129123908

ISBN-13: 9788129123909

As I dug into my reminiscence for these snacks or tiffin, I recalled the numerous anecdotes and narratives in regards to the humans and locations linked to those recipes, My replies grew into long tales and my women enjoyed them. ‘Amma, ship us extra recipes for tiffin,' they wrote, these tales have been rambling and multifaceted and they're all right here in my book.

‘Tiffin', derived from ‘tiffing', a ancient British time period for small foodstuff or snacks to accompany a drink, is a staple meal in such a lot Indian families. a well-liked tv chef at the neighborhood Arlington cable community, Rukmini Srinivas or ‘Rukka', on a regular basis whips up mouth-watering scrumptious tiffin for her audience with an ease and prowess befitting a pro epicure.

In this pleasant memoir-cum-cookbook, Rukka stocks the thoughts and recipes of delectable nutrition that she has cooked and eaten over many many years. Having travelled commonly- from Poona, Madras and Delhi to Berkeley, Stanford and Boston- she learned, at a truly younger age, the indispensability of actual home-cooked nutrients. She documents right here her emotional and deeply own bond with nutrition- from Chitappa's masala vadai and Appa's vegetable cutlet to bondas on Marina seashore, Narayana's bajji and Amma's Mysore pak. along, she stocks tales from her youth in British Poona, of constructing vegetable cutlets with a Victorian meat grinder, university days within the Madras of a newly autonomous India, cooking for writer R.K. Narayan and her travels around the globe together with her husband, the popular social anthropologist, M.N. Srinivas.
Like the normal steel tiffin field, which has came across its means into sleek nutrients, Rukka's pure-vegetarian recipes are an attractive amalgamation of old-school cooking recommendations, with leading edge twists. together with captivating anecdotes and over 100 easy-to-follow scrumptious recipes observed by way of evocative pictures, Tiffin is a richly pleasurable banquet for all those that think in meals, kin and friendship.

By A. J. Jacobs

ISBN-10: 0743250605

ISBN-13: 9780743250603

33,000 pages
44 million phrases
10 billion years of heritage
1 obsessed guy
Part memoir and half schooling (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and doubtless very unlikely quest to learn the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.
To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League schooling, A.J. Jacobs units for himself the daunting activity of interpreting all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His spouse, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his associates think he's wasting his brain, and his father, a super lawyer who had as soon as tried an analogous feat and give up someplace round Borneo, is encouraging yet, lets say, unconvinced.
With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unforeseen and comically disruptive results Operation Encyclopedia has on the whole lot of Jacobs's lifestyles -- from his newly minted marriage to his complex dating along with his father and the remainder of his charmingly eccentric long island relations to his day task as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's undertaking exams the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to discover the genuine that means of intelligence as he endeavors to hitch Mensa, win a place on Jeopardy!, and take up 33,000 pages of studying. On his trip he stumbles upon a few of the strangest, funniest, and so much profound proof approximately each subject lower than the solar, all whereas struggling with fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing worry that attends his first real-life accountability -- the approaching delivery of his first baby.
The Know-It-All is an inventive, mightily wonderful memoir of 1 man's mind, neuroses, and obsessions and a soul-searching, eventually touching fight among the all-consuming quest for real wisdom and the indisputable present of hard-won knowledge.

By Robert J. Wagner, Scott Eyman

The mythical actor and bestselling writer of items of My center deals a nostalgic examine Hollywood's golden age

For thousands of motion picture fanatics, no period within the historical past of Hollywood is extra cherished than the interval from the Thirties throughout the Fifties, the golden age of the studio method. not just did it produce a few of the maximum motion pictures of the yank cinema, however it was once then that Hollywood itself grew to become firmly demonstrated because the nation's final image of glamour and magnificence, its stars virtually godlike figures whose remarkable lives have been chronicled in numerous positive aspects in magzazines like Photoplay and smooth Screen.

While those beneficial properties have been a regular a part of the paintings of studio exposure departments, they instructed keen readers little approximately what existence was once rather like for those celebrities after they stepped out of the general public eye. not anyone is best certified to inform that tale than Robert Wagner, whose personal profession has spanned greater than 5 a long time and whose manhattan instances bestseller, items of My center, used to be probably the most winning Hollywood memoirs in recent times. you need to take into accout this is often Wagner's intimate ode to a bygone time, certainly one of marvelous houses, sumptuous resorts, opulent night-clubs and eating places, and unforgettable events that have been all a part of the Hollywood social scene at its peak.

From a cocktail party at Clifton Webb's at which Judy Garland sang Gershwin on the piano to golfing video games with Fred Astaire, from Jimmy Cagney's humble farmhouse in Coldwater Canyon to the outstanding seashore mansion equipped via William Randolph Hearst for Marion Davies, from recognized eating places just like the Brown Derby and Romanoff's to nightspots just like the Trocadero and the Mocambo, Wagner stocks his affectionate thoughts and anec¬dotes in regards to the locations and personalities that experience all turn into a part of Hollywood legend.

As poignant because it is revealing, you want to keep in mind this is often Wagner's account of Hollywood as he observed it, faraway from the lighting fixtures and cameras and gossip columns—and a young farewell to the folk of a legendary position lengthy seeing that remodeled, and to a golden age lengthy on account that handed.

By Andy Hillstrand, Johnathan Hillstrand, Malcolm MacPherson

ISBN-10: 0345503724

ISBN-13: 9780345503725

“Many courageous hearts are asleep within the deep, so watch out, beware,” is going the refrain of an outdated sailors’ sing-along that celebrates the attract and possibility of the seafaring existence. yet make no mistake–there really is way to watch out in case you are attracted to hazard their lives and search their fortunes upon the waves. and maybe none take extra percentages than the boys and ladies who courageous the tempestuous, bountiful waters of the Bering Sea. Season after season, they bond and conflict with its icy depths, decided to harvest yet another worthwhile harvest whereas eluding the ever present probability of unexpected, sure demise. And one of the quickly diminishing ranks of those die-hard salts, brothers Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand have cast a name as fierce masters in their treacherous, captivating alternate. If you’ve watched their exploits on TV’s Deadliest Catch, you’ve purely scratched the skin. To learn Time Bandit is to step into their skins, odor the ocean air, think the frigid wind, and recognize with your entire senses the exhilarating, and terrifying existence at the edge.

Natives of tiny, fishing hamlet, Homer, Alaska; sons of a hard-bitten, hugely profitable fisherman; and born with brine of their blood, the Hillstrand boys couldn’t think a existence with out a swaying deck underfoot and a harvest of potent Alaskan king crabs ready to be pulled from the sea ground. In pursuit in their day-by-day trap, the brothers courageous ice floes and heaving waves 60 ft excessive, the perils of 1000-lb metal traps thrown approximately via the punishing wind, and the consistent threat of the open, hungry water.

Even the brothers’ downtime on land–where the lethal realities of the unforgiving sea are by no means faraway from their minds–is lived as though borrowed: quick and tough, haunted via the information that the following season at sea might finish asleep within the deep.

Here is the Hillstrands’ personal heartfelt hymn to the brutally challenging, gloriously autonomous, and mysteriously soul-satisfying existence that has earned them their day-by-day bread and outlined their lifestyles. via turns raucous and reflective, exhilarating and anguished, enchanting, suspenseful, and clever, Time Bandit chronicles a larger-than-life love affair as previous as civilization itself–a love affair among striving, willful guy and inscrutable, enduring nature.

By Walter Benjamin

ISBN-10: 067402222X

ISBN-13: 9780674022225

Started in Poveromo, Italy, in 1932, and generally revised in 1938, Berlin formative years round 1900 remained unpublished in the course of Walter Benjamin’s lifetime, one in every of his “large-scale defeats.” Now translated into English for the 1st time in e-book shape, at the foundation of the lately came upon “final version” that comprises the author’s personal association of a collection of luminous vignettes, it may be extra commonly preferred as one of many masterpieces of twentieth-century prose writing.

Not an autobiography within the established experience, Benjamin’s recollection of his early life in an upper-middle-class Jewish domestic in Berlin’s West finish on the flip of the century turns into an celebration for unified “expeditions into the depths of memory.” during this diagram of his lifestyles, Benjamin focuses no longer on people or occasions yet on locations and issues, all visible from the viewpoint of a child—a collector, flâneur, and allegorist in one.

This e-book is additionally one among Benjamin’s nice urban texts, bringing to lifestyles the cocoon of his childhood—the parks, streets, schoolrooms, and interiors of an rising city. It reads the town as palimpsest and labyrinth, revealing unforeseen lyricism within the middle of the familiar.

As an further gem, a preface by way of Howard Eiland discusses the genesis and constitution of the paintings, which marks the end result of Benjamin’s try to do philosophy concretely.

By Katherine Losse

ISBN-10: 1451668252

ISBN-13: 9781451668254

Kate Losse used to be a grad tuition refugee whilst she joined fb as worker #51 in 2005. employed to reply to consumer questions equivalent to “What is a poke?” and “Why can’t I entry my ex-girlfriend’s profile?” her early days on the corporation have been characterised by means of a feeling of camaraderie, promise, and ambition: right here was once a gaggle of scrappy younger upstarts on a project to rock Silicon Valley and alter the area.

Over time, this feeling of project turned so extreme that operating for fb felt like greater than only a activity; it implied a wholehearted commitment to “the cause.” staff have been incentivized to reside inside one mile of the workplace, summers have been spent carousing on the corporation pool condo, and feminine staff have been instructed to put on T-shirts with founder Mark Zuckerberg’s profile photograph on his birthday. Losse began to ask yourself what this new medium intended for real-life relationships: could fb increase our social interactions? Or may all of us simply adapt our habit to the conduct and principles of those very good yet socially awkward net savants who've develop into today’s youngest energy gamers? more and more skeptical, Losse graduated from customer support to the internationalization team—tasked with rolling out fb to the remainder of the world— eventually touchdown a seat correct outdoor Zuckerberg’s place of work as his own ghostwriter, the voice of the boy king.

This booklet takes us for the 1st time into the center of this fast-growing info empire, inviting us to high-level conferences with Zuckerberg; lifting the veil on lengthy nights of relentless hacking and trolling; taking us behind the curtain of raucous corporation events; and introducing us to the personalities, values, and mystery goals of the floppy-haired boy wonders who're redefining the way in which we are living, love, and paintings. via revealing the following what’s fairly using either the company and the tradition of the social community, Losse solutions the most important query of all: what sort of international is fb attempting to construct, and is it the area we wish to dwell in? 

***

“Logging directly to fb that first day, on reflection, was once the second one, and so far the final, time that any expertise has captured my mind's eye. the 1st was once whilst Apple marketed the 1st desktop, the PowerBook, within the 1990s—with the phrases, ‘What’s in your PowerBook?’

“‘World domination,’ my teenaged self- replied instinctively. That’s what those units have been made for, i presumed: so small and but so strong, so in a position to linking fast to and among every thing else on the earth. From the machine, i may write and distribute info swifter than ever sooner than. It used to be intoxicating to visualize, and Facebook’s unexpected, devoted rendering in 2004 of the actual international into the digital felt a similar. What may well you do, now which you can see and fix to each person and every little thing, immediately?

“But what, additionally, can be reduced via such easy accessibility? within the realm of rules, it appeared effortless: Who wouldn’t are looking to distribute and talk about principles largely? even if, within the realm of the non-public, it appeared extra advanced. What was once the good thing about doing every little thing in public? Is details itself impartial, or do forms of details have diverse values, various degrees of expectation of privateness, varied implications for distribution and intake? should still all info be shared both fast and with no regard to my courting to it? And, eventually, and most vital, as we ask at any time when we start a brand new courting with whatever, may this be reliable for me?”

-- From the creation

 

By Mark Edmundson

ISBN-10: 0061713473

ISBN-13: 9780061713477

"I used to be at some extent of crossing in my existence then—a liminal second, because the anthropologists prefer to say. i used to be attempting to work out what the realm used to be approximately and what my position in it was once going to be. And by some means I acquired the concept that those characters, those kings, might aid me along."

After graduating from collage in 1974, Mark Edmundson leaves his small Vermont campus decided to satisfy his destiny—a quest he is aware contains rock and roll and America's excessive court docket of mischief and ambition, manhattan urban. below the wing of a carousing, Marx-quoting pal, Edmundson strikes right into a grungy uptown house and embarks on a profession lugging amps in a brand new Jersey area for rock's greatest acts: the thankful useless, red Floyd, and the Allman Brothers.

But as his first 12 months after university wears on, Edmundson reveals himself more and more at odds with lifestyles in his followed urban and drifts via a routine of late-night cab riding and radical politics that leaves him chilly and neglectful of the hopes he nursed again in class. Prodded and enlightened alongside the best way via a forged of rogue mentors—his "Kings (and Queens) of Rock and Roll"—Edmundson tests out of recent York, detouring throughout the Colorado mountains (in a hapless try and reconnect with nature), and tending front door of a Northampton disco (witnessing the loss of life throes of the sexual revolution), earlier than touchdown in Vermont to educate English at a revolutionary boarding tuition.

It's the following that Edmundson starts to know, with assistance from the charismatic headmaster and the dazed scholar physique, the inkling of a important lesson. It's the following, particularly strangely, that he reveals his "it": the appropriate vocation—his a bit of loopy, excellent lifestyle.

A coming-of-age memoir that asks enduring questions about the realm and our function in it, The high-quality knowledge and excellent Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll is a soulful, whip-smart, and resonant testomony of the postcollege years and the demanding situations of navigating one's personal desires.

By Laura Ling, Lisa Ling

ISBN-10: 0062000675

ISBN-13: 9780062000675

On March 17, 2009, Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee have been engaged on a documentary approximately North Korean defectors who have been fleeing the determined stipulations of their native land. whereas filming at the Chinese–North Korean border, they have been chased down by means of North Korean infantrymen who violently apprehended them. Laura and Euna have been charged with trespassing and "hostile acts," and imprisoned by means of Kim Jong Il's notoriously secretive Communist kingdom. stored completely aside, they continued months of interrogations and at last a tribulation earlier than North Korea's optimum court docket. They have been the 1st americans ever to be sentenced to 12 years of challenging exertions in a jail camp in North Korea.

while information of the arrest reached Laura's sister, journalist Lisa Ling, she instantly begun a crusade to get her sister published, one who led her from the kingdom division to the better echelons of the media global and finally to the White condominium.

Somewhere Inside unearths for the 1st time Laura's gripping account of what fairly occurred at the river, her therapy by the hands of North Korean guards, and the deprivations and rounds of harrowing interrogations she persisted. She speaks movingly in regards to the emotional toll inflicted on her via her incarceration, together with the measures she took to guard her assets and her fears that she may by no means see her kinfolk back.

Lisa writes approximately her unrelenting efforts to safe Laura and Euna's unlock. providing insights into the gigantic media crusade spearheaded at the women's behalf, Lisa additionally takes us deep into the drama regarding humans on the maximum degrees of presidency, together with Secretary of country Hillary Clinton, former vp Al Gore, Senator John Kerry, and Governor invoice Richardson—intense discussions that entailed strategically balancing the agendas and strong intentions of a number of the gamers. She additionally describes her position within the back-and-forth among North Korea's calls for and the dramatic rescue via former President invoice Clinton.

although they have been millions of miles aside whereas Laura used to be in captivity, the Ling sisters' dating grew to become a manner for the reclusive North Korean govt to ship messages to the us govt, which helped result in Laura and Euna's eventual free up.

advised within the sisters' alternating voices, Somewhere Inside is a well timed, inspiring, and page-turning story of survival set opposed to the canvas of foreign politics that is going past the headlines to bare the influence on lives engulfed through forces past their regulate. however it is additionally a window into the original bond those sisters have constantly shared, a bond that sustained them during the so much scary ordeal in their lives.