New Release Books in Biographies & Memoirs

"A ... memoir from the cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award winner, [whose] stellar career has taken him from Broadway to Hollywood and back. He''s received accolades and awards for acting--Hairspray, Fiddler, Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day--and writing: La Cage Aux Folle, Torch Song Trilogy (for which he also won a Tony for acting) and Kinky Boots. But while he is widely known as one of today''s most peerless performers, Harvey has never shared his own story until now"--

The follow-up to "Diana''s Boys" explores the last twenty years in the lives of Princes William and Harry and the evolution of their relationship as adults, with one brother the designated heir, and the other doomed to life as the spare. Print run 100,000.

In this provocative, impassioned memoir, Jerad W. Alexander reveals what it was like to be raised on war, vividly recreating the masculine fantasies of American heroism and patriotism that animated his childhood--and at the same time brilliantly dismantling those myths. To many outsiders, joining the military can be a path out of a difficult life, a chance to acquire vocational training, a college scholarship, a patriotic career. But to those, like Alexander, whose parents, stepfather, and grandparents served, and who grew up on American military bases around the world, enlisting was a way of life. The only way. Young Jerad''s obsession with all things military--from guns to war games to the trappings of uniforms, medals, and the movies and books of Vietnam--was bottomless, and as soon as he was able, he joined the US Marines. Only then, on the ground in Iraq, part of the same war his parents had fought before him--a war we are still embroiled in today, years later--did he begin to question all that he had taken on faith. With courage and raw power, Alexander brings to the fore vital questions: Is America in fact exceptional? Are the "bad guys" actually easy to identify? And most important, are our causes always just? This powerful debut joins the canon of essential war literature--books like Anthony Swofford''s Jarhead or Tim O''Brien''s The Things They Carried--helping readers understand the violent and self-replicating mythology of American patriotism, from the eloquent perspective of an enlisted man--not some elite warrior, but a simple volunteer.

"One of the truly great biographies of our time."--Sean Wilentz, New York Times bestselling author of Bob Dylan in America and The Rise of American Democracy "A landmark study of Washington power politics in the twentieth century in the Robert Caro tradition."--Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot The epic, definitive biography of Ted Kennedy--an immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality. Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal Gabler''s magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. It is at once a human drama, a history of American politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism. Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father''s fortune and his brothers'' coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw--a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed. The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedys, a lightweight. He lived an agonizing childhood, being shuffled from school to school at his mother''s whim, suffering numerous humiliations--including self-inflicted ones--and being pressed to rise to his brothers'' level. He entered the Senate with his colleagues'' lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his "ninth-child''s talent" of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator. And with the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission. In Catching the Wind, Kennedy, using his late brothers'' moral authority, becomes a moving force in the great "liberal hour," which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Then, with the election of Richard Nixon, he becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a "shadow president," challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalized, while Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration. Catching the Wind also shows how Kennedy''s moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism. In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America.

"Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a prominent Catholic, writer, social activist, and co-founder of a movement dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. Her life has been revealed through her own writings as well as the work of historians, theologians, and academics. What has been missing until now is a more personal account from the point of view of someone who knew her well. Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty is a frank and reflective, heartfelt and humorous portrayal as written by her granddaughter, Kate Hennessy" -- Publisher''s website

Some Black Loyalists who arrived in New Brunswick, abandoned freedom and became indentured, for guarantees of stability and security in a new, unknown land.

The life of Franklin Roosevelt''s most trusted and powerful advisor, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief "Fascinating... greatly enriches our understanding of Washington wartime power."--Madeleine Albright Aside from FDR, no American did more to shape World War II than Admiral William D. Leahy--not Douglas MacArthur, not Dwight Eisenhower, and not even the legendary George Marshall. No man, including Harry Hopkins, was closer to Roosevelt, nor had earned his blind faith, like Leahy. Through the course of the war, constantly at the president''s side and advising him on daily decisions, Leahy became the second most powerful man in the world. In a time of titanic personalities, Leahy regularly downplayed his influence, preferring the substance of power to the style. A stern-faced, salty sailor, his U.S. Navy career had begun as a cadet aboard a sailing ship. Four decades later, Admiral Leahy was a trusted friend and advisor to the president and his ambassador to Vichy France until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Needing one person who could help him grapple with the enormous strategic consequences of the war both at home and abroad, Roosevelt made Leahy the first presidential chief of staff--though Leahy''s role embodied far more power than the position of today. Leahy''s profound power was recognized by figures like Stalin and Churchill, yet historians have largely overlooked his role. In this important biography, historian Phillips Payson O''Brien illuminates the admiral''s influence on the most crucial and transformative decisions of WWII and the early Cold War. From the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and France, to the allocation of resources to fight Japan, O''Brien contends that America''s war largely unfolded according to Leahy''s vision. Among the author''s surprising revelations is that while FDR''s health failed, Leahy became almost a de facto president, making decisions while FDR was too ill to work, and that much of his influence carried over to Truman''s White House.

This Companion provides a chronological survey of Latin American poetry, analysis of modern trends and six succinct essays on the major figures.

A portrait of the divergent lives of Thomas Jefferson''s three daughters reveals how his white daughters struggled with the realities of lives they were ill-prepared to manage, while the daughter he fathered with a slave did not achieve freedom until adulthood.

Dr. Seuss is a classic American icon; his work has defined our childhoods, and even more than twenty-five years after his death his books continue to find new readers. Theodor Geisel, however, led a life that goes much deeper than the prolific and beloved children''s book author. He had a successful career as a political cartoonist, and his political leanings can be felt throughout his books. Jones introduces us to this complicated man, who introduced generations to the wonders of reading while teaching young people about empathy and how to treat others well. -- adapted from jacket

"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau''s character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, "Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided." Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls renews Henry David Thoreau for us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. Drawing on Thoreau''s copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive, full of quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him. "The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one," says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.--Dust jacket.

"More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, ... [this is a] chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan''s epic life--giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor, and ultimately, of course, his ... presidency, filled with storm and stress but climaxing with his peace talks with the Soviet Union"--