New Releases by Wilborn Hampton

"Newly updated edition, 2001-2011"--Cover.

No playwright in the history of the American theater has captured the soul of the nation more incisively than Horton Foote. From his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Young Man From Atlanta, to his film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, which received an Oscar, millions of people have been touched by Foote''s work. He has long been regarded by other playwrights and screenwriters, actors, and cognoscenti of the theater and cinema as America''s master storyteller; critics compared him to William Faulkner and Anton Chekhov. Yet Horton Foote''s compelling character and rich life remain largely unknown to the general public. His is the story of an artist who refused to compromise his talents for the sake of fame or money, or just to keep working -- who insisted on writing what he regarded as truth, even when for many years almost no one would listen. In the first comprehensive biography of this remarkable writer, Wilborn Hampton introduces Foote to countless Americans who have admired his work. Hampton, a theater critic for The New York Times, offers a colorful, compulsively readable account of a life and career that spanned seven decades. As a child in the small town of Wharton, Texas, Foote''s favorite pastime was to listen to the stories his elders told -- about themselves, their families, their neighbors -- around the dinner table or sitting on the front porch. As he once explained: "One thing I was given in life is a deep desire to listen. I''ve spent my life listening. These stories have haunted me all my life." The stories also served as an inspiration for Foote''s life work as he chronicled America''s wistful odyssey through the twentieth century, mostly from the perspective of a small town in Texas. Beginning in the Golden Age of Television with dramas such as The Trip to Bountiful, through Broadway and Off-Broadway successes, to the mark he made in films such as Tender Mercies, and right up through a staging of his complete nine-play opus The Orphans'' Home Cycle, he documented the struggle of ordinary people to maintain their dignity in the face of hardship and change that the erosion of time inevitably brings. It is a theme Horton Foote lived. Yet the paradox that shines through his work is that while the externals of life alter over the years -- wealth may be gained or squandered, love may be won or lost, friends and relations die -- people themselves do not. Like Eugene O''Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams, Horton Foote''s portraits of American life are iconic and true. His stories have helped shape the way Americans see themselves -- indeed, they have become part of the nation''s psyche, and they will speak to many generations to come.

A documentary containing the author''s experiences covering these two pivotal wars offering readers a portrait of major world events.

Babe Ruth is still regarded as perhaps the greatest baseball player ever to step on a diamond. Born into a poor family in Baltimore, George Herman Ruth Jr. was sent to a Catholic reform school at age seven, where he learned how to play baseball. Initially a talented southpaw, the Babe went on to shatter every home-run record on the books?and when fewer games were played in a season and a heavier ball was used. In this engaging and fast-paced biography, award-winning author Wilborn Hampton shares with readers The Babe was also a man of big heart, temper, and appetite.

?Elvis left no one indifferent to rock and roll??so begins award-winning author Wilborn Hampton?s thoughtful account of the beloved and controversial Elvis Presley. When Elvis shook his hips and sang his soulful songs, teenagers screamed and parents fretted. Fans, record executives, movie producers, and even the army wanted a piece of this enigmatic performer and shy boy from Tupelo, Mississippi. What Elvis gave them changed music forever. This latest addition to Viking?s ongoing biography series, Up Close, includes gorgeous black-and-white photographs and introduces readers to the complicated life of the king of rock and roll.

When the World Trade center was attacked on September 11, 2001, life in the United States changed forever. The stories of the New Yorkers who lived through the events are heartbreaking and frightening, but they show how tragedy can change everyday people

Describes the September 11 attacks in the United States and presents several personal stories of tragedy told by New Yorkers who lived through the collapse of the World Trade Center.

"Meltdown" tells the hour-by-hour story of covering the nuclear accident as a U.P.I. reporter.

The facts of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 are recounted through the eyes of a young reporter who covered the story.