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BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS

Editor, Jordana Moskowitz

  • What We're Reading
    "Rembrandt's Eyes" by Simon Schama, "Mozart" by Robert Gutman, and "James Joyce" by Edna O'Brien
  • Why Colette?
    An essay on the art of choosing a subject for a biography by Judith Thurman, author of "Secrets of the Flesh"
  • Now and Then
    An interview with Dominick Dunne regarding his new memoir, "The Way We Lived Then"


WHAT WE'RE READING

"Rembrandt's Eyes"
by Simon Schama
In Simon Schama's skillful hands, Rembrandt's conflicted relationship with fellow painter Peter Paul Rubens, his ambitions, and his great loves emerge--along with the stories of his paintings--from the shadows of history. "Rembrandt's Eyes" is a powerful blend of traditional biography and art history that expands our understanding of the famously mysterious artist. Read more

Our Price: $35.00 | You Save: $15.00 (30%)   


"Mozart"
by Robert Gutman
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the puerile prodigy--if contemporary depictions like those in the movie "Amadeus" are to be believed--is treated to an adult assessment of his great musical talents and very human character flaws in Robert Gutman's definitive biography. Read more

Our Price: $28.00 | You Save: $12.00 (30%)   


"James Joyce"
by Edna O'Brien
With nearly 20 books under her belt, including the acclaimed "Down by the River" and the Country Girls trilogy, Edna O'Brien is one of Ireland's living literary treasures. "James Joyce"--a short biography in the vaunted Penguin Lives series--is her homage to the man who taught her "the only thing a writer needs to know." Read more

Our Price: $13.97 | You Save: $5.98 (30%)   

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WHY COLETTE?

It's not easy deciding on a subject for a book that could eat up a decade of a writer's life. In an exclusive essay for Amazon.com, Judith Thurman explains how language barriers, fear of math, a bizarre test of loyalty, and a breast-feeding infant all played a role in her choice of Colette, the subject of "Secrets of the Flesh," the award-winning biographer's latest work. Read more

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NOW AND THEN

Dominick Dunne was once the toast of Hollywood--entertaining movie stars and socialites, invited by moguls to clambakes and black-tie dances. That is, until the bottom fell out--on his marriage, his fortune, and his spirit. And having lost nearly everything, at the age of 50 he reincarnated himself as a successful novelist and journalist. His latest book, "The Way We Lived Then," is a scrapbook-like memoir of his earlier life. Dunne chatted with Amazon.com editor Jordana Moskowitz about the differences between now and then. Read more

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HOLIDAY SPOTLIGHT
Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen's race to the frigid top of the world, Linda Greenlaw's battle with an angry sea, the mystery of Amelia Earhart's final journey--the power of these tales of adventure gone bad is rivaled only by the skill with which they're told. We've compiled a list of the most intriguing and compelling of these stories, so batten down the hatches--you're in for a good ride. These great adventures are just some of the books collected thematically in a set of booklists built for biography and memoir readers.

"The Last Place on Earth"
by Roland Huntford
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Our Price: $11.96 | You Save: $2.99 (20%)   


"The Hungry Ocean"
by Linda Greenlaw
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Our Price: $16.07 | You Save: $6.88 (30%)   


"Amelia Earhart"
by Elgen M. Long and Marie K. Long
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Our Price: $17.50 | You Save: $7.50 (30%)   

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HOT TITLES

Biography Bestsellers:

"When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi"
by David Maraniss
As coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967, Vince Lombardi turned perennial losers into a juggernaut, winning back-to-back NFL titles in 1961 and 1962, and Superbowls I and II in 1966 and 1967. Stern, severe, sentimental, and paternal, he stood revered, reviled, respected, and mocked--a touchstone for the '60s all in one person. Which adds up to the myth we've been left with. But who was the man? That's the question Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss tackles here. Read more

Our Price: $13.00 | You Save: $13.00 (50%)   


"Hitler's Pope"
by John Cornwell
This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876- 1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." Read more

Our Price: $17.97 | You Save: $11.98 (40%)   


"Dutch"
by Edmund Morris
Why did Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris controversially choose to write his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan in the form of a historical novel? There's a clue in a quote the book attributes to Jane Wyman, Reagan's first wife. As Ronnie speechified about the Red Menace at a 1940s Hollywood party, Wyman allegedly whispered to a friend, "I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself." Read more

Our Price: $24.50 | You Save: $10.50 (30%)   


Memoir Bestsellers:

"'Tis"
by Frank McCourt
The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, "Angela's Ashes," picks up the story in October 1949, upon his arrival in America. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. Read more

Our Price: $13.00 | You Save: $13.00 (50%)   


"My First 79 Years"
by Isaac Stern with Chaim Potok
The conductor George Szell once told Isaac Stern that if he spent less time doing other things and more time practicing he could be "the greatest violinist in the world." Since those "other things" included saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker's ball, generously sponsoring young artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, and touring the world as an ambassador of American classical performance, music lovers can only be grateful that Stern settled for being one of the world's great violinists. Read more

Our Price: $19.25 | You Save: $8.25 (30%)   


"My Kitchen Wars"
by Betty Fussell
She may be a cookbook author, but Betty Fussell's extra-tart autobiography is no ordinary gastronomic memoir. For starters, her attitude toward cooking ("the one activity, besides tennis, in which housewives were encouraged to excel") is decidedly ambivalent. Smart, funny, even appetizing at times, her book takes one woman's story as a case study of the role food plays in our lives and in our culture. Read more

Our Price: $16.10 | You Save: $6.90 (30%)   

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NEW BIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIRS PAPERBACKS

"The Life of Thomas More"
by Peter Ackroyd
"The Life of Thomas More" is Peter Ackroyd's biography--from baptism to beheading--of the lawyer who became a saint. More, a noted humanist whose friendship with Erasmus and authorship of "Utopia" earned him great fame in Europe, succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor of London at the time of the English Reformation. Read more

Our Price: $14.00 | You Save: $3.50 (20%)   


"I Will Bear Witness"
by Victor Klemperer
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), honored as a frontline veteran of World War I, was a distinguished professor at the University of Dresden. A scant few months later he was merely a Jew, protected from deportation to a death camp only by his marriage to an Aryan. Read more

Our Price: $11.96 | You Save: $2.99 (20%)   


"Slow Motion"
by Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro was rescued by tragedy. At the age of 23 she is a wreck. A Sarah Lawrence college dropout, she is living as the mistress--one of many, she would later find out--of her best friend's stepfather, Lenny, a high-profile New York City lawyer. Read more

Our Price: $10.40 | You Save: $2.60 (20%)   

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