Category: Biographies & Memoirs

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Requirements: .MOBI Reader, 1Mb
Overview: Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa’s drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance.

Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, Humour

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The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan
Requirements: ePub or Mobi viewer, 5.8 MB
Overview: The diaries our 40th president kept while in office—edited and abridged by historian Brinkley (The Great Deluge)—are largely a straightforward political chronicle. Reagan describes meetings with heads of state and antiabortion leaders, reflects on legislative strategy and worries about leaks to the press. He often used his diary to vigorously defend his polices: for example, after a 1984 visit with South African archbishop Desmond Tutu (whom Reagan calls "naïve"), the president explained why his approach to apartheid—"quiet diplomacy"—was preferable to sanctions. Reagan sometimes seems uncomfortable with dissent, as when he is irked by a high school student who presents a petition advocating a nuclear freeze. And he often sees the media as a "lynch mob," trying to drum up scandal where there is none. Reagan’s geniality shines through in his more quotidian comments: he muses regularly about how much he appreciates Nancy, and his complaints about hating Monday mornings make him seem quite like everyone else. Brinkley doesn’t weigh down the text with extensive annotation; this makes for smooth reading, but those who don’t remember the major political events of the 1980s will want to refer to the glossary of names. Reagan’s diaries are revealing, and Brinkley has done historians and the broad public a great service by editing them for publication.
Genre: Autobiography

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Winds Of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot by Peter Petter-Bowyer
Requirements: ePub or Mobi viewer, 14.9 MB
Overview: Winds of Destruction is a unique account of one man’s service in the Rhodesian Air Force, spanning a period of twenty-three years from 1957 to 1980—through the politically turbulent years of Federation; the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (U.D.I.) by Ian Smith’s government in 1965 and thirteen years of relentless, uncompromising bush warfare against the never-ending tide of Robert Mugabe’s and Joshua Nkomo’s ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas. In a gruelling conflict that permitted no quarter, the Rhodesian Air Force (Rh.A.F.) fast became one of the Rhodesian Defence Force’s most lethal and effective counter-insurgency organs. In pre-emptive bombing strikes against enemy camps in Mozambique, Zambia and as far afield as Tanzania; in its integral role as a troop-carrier and airborne strike force in ‘fireforce’ operations; in working closely with such specialist units as the Selous Scouts, the S.A.S., the R.L.I. and the R.A.R. the Rhodesian Air Force was never far from the action and in no small way responsible for the astonishing military successes against a vastly numerically superior army. This all in spite of the international sanctions against Rhodesia, which ordinarily would have brought a nation’s armed forces to its knees. However, forced by circumstances, the Rh.A.F. was obliged to maximise usage of its aging fleet of fighter-bombers, transports and helicopters and to resort to innovative techniques in terms of tactics and weapons systems, many of which were later adopted by the South African Air Force in its own counter-insurgency operations in Angola and Namibia in the ’80s. Peter Petter-Bowyer was born in 1936 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. As a boy during World War II he’d watch the Royal Air Force training aircraft whirling in the colonial skies above—so was born his craving to fly. In 1957 he joined the Royal Rhodesian Air Force as an officer cadet. He became a senior operational pilot during the bush war and was instrumental in designing and producing a range of unique aeronautical weapons systems. He retired prematurely as a group captain in 1980 with the advent of Mugabe’s rule and now lives in England.
Genre: Autobiography

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Robert Redford: The Biography by Michael Feeney Callan
Requirements: ePUB reader, 8.7MB
Overview: The long-anticipated biography of Robert Redford.

Among the most widely admired Hollywood stars of his generation, Redford has appeared onstage and on-screen, in front of and behind the camera, earning Academy, Golden Globe, and a multitude of other awards and nominations for acting, directing, and producing, and for his contributions to the arts. His Sundance Film Festival transformed the world of filmmaking; his films defined a generation. America has come to know him as the Sundance Kid, Bob Woodward, Johnny Hooker, Jay Gatsby, and Roy Hobbs. But only now, with this revelatory biography, do we see the surprising and complex man beneath the Hollywood façade.

From Redford’s personal papers—journals, script notes, correspondence—and hundreds of hours of taped interviews, Michael Feeney Callan brings the legendary star into focus. Here is his scattered family background and restless childhood, his rocky start in acting, the death of his son, his star-making relationship with director Sydney Pollack, the creation of Sundance, his political activism, his artistic successes and failures, his friendships and romances. This is a candid, surprising portrait of a man whose iconic roles on-screen (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Natural) and directorial brilliance (Ordinary People, Quiz Show) have both defined and obscured one of the most celebrated, and, until now, least understood, public figures of our time.
Genre: Biographies/Memoirs

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Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell
Requirements: ePUB reader, 570KB
Overview: Glenn Gould, one of the world’s most renowned classical musicians of the twentieth century, was also known as an eccentric genius—solitary, headstrong, a hypochondriac virtuoso. Abandoning stage performances in 1964, Gould concentrated instead on mastering the various media: recordings, radio, television, and print. His sudden death at age fifty stunned the world, but his music and legacy continue to inspire. Philosopher and critic Mark Kingwell regards Gould as a philosopher of music whose ideas about music governed his life. But those ideas were contradictory, mischievous, and deliberately provocative. Instead of a single narrative line to explain the musician, Kingwell adopts a kaleidoscopic approach. Just as Gould played twenty-one "takes" to record the opening aria in the famed 1955 Goldberg Variations, Kingwell offers twenty-one "takes" on Gould’s life. Each version offers a different interpretation of the man, but in each, Kingwell is sensitive to the complex harmonies and dissonances that sounded throughout the life of the great Gould.
Genre: Biographies/Memoirs

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