Biography

Profiles the first black Washington, D.C. Board of Education member, who helped to found the NAACP and organized of pickets and boycotts that led to the 1953 Supreme Court decision to integrate D.C. area restaurants.

Some Confederate officers and soldiers refused to live in a conquered land. General Jo Shelby was one of those. He led his 300 men, the "Iron Brigade," on a twelve-hundred-mile march to Mexico where they supported the Emperor Maximilian in his fight against Juarez's rebels, hoping to eventually establish their own government there. Though doomed, his actions were historically notable--all the more so since in his later years, he returned to the United States, renounced slavery, became U.S. Marshall for western Missouri and became famous as a nineteenth-century progressive.

Contents: The knee-jerk "no" -- Archives: the time machine -- 9966: freedom has a beautiful structure -- Butter and margarine -- Friendship is born of respect -- Friends and travel -- Smart women -- Racetrack -- Dodger days -- Acting -- Fame -- Fame, the lifestyle -- Society of gossips, or, mind your own business -- Mom & Dad, mad at the cookies -- The beautiful English woman in Dad's Jennifer-blue Cadillac -- Dad and Barbara -- The Grants -- It's okay to be a pip -- Dad and me: slow like stew -- Marbles now or horses later? -- The phantom pot smoke -- Don't marry the guy you break the bed with -- Polishing an Academy Award -- The Leach potato wart cure -- My father was a hottie -- Deeper waters -- Life with death

Rigorously researched and elegantly written, Cary Grant: A Biography is a complete, nuanced portrait of the greatest star in cinema history. Exploring Grant’s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities, as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant’s professional and private life and the first biography to reveal the real man behind the movie star.

"...tells the dramatic story of the Pope’s battle with communism in light of new and recently disclosed information and brings to a close Weigel’s landmark portrait of a man who not only left an indelible mark on the Catholic Church, but also changed the course of world history.

"Weigel, with unprecedented access to many Soviet-era documents, chronicles John Paul’s struggle against the dark forces of communism. Moreover, Weigel recounts the tumultuous last years of John Paul’s life as he dealt with a crippling illness as well as the 'new world disorder' and revelations about corruption within the Catholic Church. Weigel’s thought-provoking biography of John Paul II concludes with a probing and passionate assessment of a man who lived his life as a witness to hope in service to the Christian ideals he embraced."

"Weigel explores new information about the Pope's role in some of the recent past's most stirring events, including the fall of communism; the Vatican/Israel negotiation of 1991-92; the collapse of the Philippine, Chilean, Nicaraguan, and Paraguayan dictatorships during the 1980s; and the epic papal visit to Cuba. Weigel also includes previously unpublished papal correspondence with Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Deng Xiaoping, and draws on hitherto unavailable autobiographical reminiscences by the Pope."

Also available on audio (abridged).

This award-winning book by a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal traces John Paul II's life from days in pre-war Poland when Karol Wojtyla, as he was known then, had to choose between the theater and priesthood, his support of the Polish Solidarity movement, his election to the church's highest office and his work afterwards.

Morton Kondracke never intended to wed Millicent Martinez, but the fiery daughter of a radical labor organizer eventually captured his heart. They married, raised two daughters, and loved and fought passionately for twenty years. Then, in 1987, Milly noticed a glitch in her handwriting, a small tremor that would lead to the shattering diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Saving Milly is Kondracke’s powerfully moving chronicle of his vital and volatile marriage, one that has endured and deepened in the face of tragedy; it also follows his own transformation from careerist to caregiver and activist, a man who will “fight all the way, without pause or rest," to save his beloved Milly.