Author Memoirs

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life.

Beginning with Nin's arrival in New York, this volume is filled with the stories of her analytical patients. There is a shift in emphasis also, as Nin becomes aware of the inevitable choice facing the artist in the modern world.

"La vie est une hécatombe. 59 millions de morts par an. 1,9 par seconde. 158.857 par jour. Depuis que vous lisez ce paragraphe, une vingtaine de personnes sont décédées dans le monde - davantage si vous lisez lentement. L'humanité est décimée dans l'indifférence générale. Pourquoi tolérons-nous ce carnage quotidien sous prétexte que c'est un processus naturel ? Avant je pensais à la mort une fois par jour. Depuis que j'ai franchi le cap du demi-siècle, j'y pense toutes les minutes."

Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti's adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation.

Un fascinante paseo por La Habana con un guía de lujo, el propio Leonardo Padura. Los buenos novelistas siempre cuentan en sus historias con un personaje que acaba siendo tan importante como el protagonista: la ciudad donde trascurren los hechos. Por eso no hay mejor guía para conocer La Habana que Leonardo Padura, el autor que mejor le ha tomado el pulso, a lo largo de diferentes épocas, en cada una de sus novelas. Este libro ofrece un paseo por los barrios de La Habana en forma de historia autobiográfica del propio novelista, que va desde Mantilla hasta los diferentes barrios de la ciudad.

In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn - then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage - set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a 15-year relationship that drew Kirn deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer.

In 1954, Joyce Johnson’s Barnard professor told his class that most women could never have the kinds of experiences that would be worth writing about. Attitudes like that were not at all unusual at a time when “good” women didn’t leave home or have sex before they married; even those who broke the rules could merely expect to be minor characters in the dramas played by men. But secret rebels, like Joyce and her classmate Elise Cowen, refused to accept things as they were.

¿Cómo Juan Carlos I, un rey con una fuerza icónica única en Europa, con un país a sus pies, con ciertos políticos cómplices, con dinero y con las mujeres más guapas del mundo, pudo jugárselo todo? En su carrera hacia el abismo fue dejando atrás familia, amigos, prestigio, honorabilidad… ¿Fue por una mujer? ¿Por amor al dinero? ¿Por inconsciencia o por arrogancia?

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life is the first work to explore the origins of Beatrix Potter's love of gardening and plants and show how this passion came to be reflected in her work.

An award-winning historian and author, Paul Hendrickson here turns his attention to one of America’s most cherished literary icons, Ernest Hemingway. Drawing on previously unpublished material, Hendrickson focuses on Hemingway’s life in its twilight, just prior to his suicide, and the seemingly singular constant in the man’s life: his boat, Pilar. On this vessel, Hemingway would entertain and travel, but it would also be the scene of some of his greatest tragedies.

Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another - how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles—and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention.

The memoir covers La Plante's entire life, from her youth growing up in Merseyside to studying at RADA alongside Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. It explores "the exasperation [La Plante] felt at the limited roles available for female actors" - something that led to her writing "Widows" and "Prime Suspect" for television.

Das unglaubliche Leben des amerikanischen Psychiaters und Schriftstellers Irvin D. Yalom, Autor von "Und Nietzsche Weinte" und "Das Spinoza-Problem", erzählt von ihm selbst! "Und Nietzsche Weinte", "Das Spinoza-Problem", "Die Rote Couch", "Der Panama-Hut", "Der Schopenhauer-Kur". Bestimmt kennen Sie diese Bestseller. Aber was steht hinter diesen Werken? Wie ist Irvin Yalom auf die Ideen zu diesen Büchern gekommen? Und wie ist er überhaupt zu einem Schriftsteller geworden?

From the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author comes an intimate look at the driving forces in one man’s life. With Augusten's unique and singular observations and his own unabashed way of detailing both the horrific and the humorous, Lust and Wonder is a hilariously frank audiobook memoir that his legions of fans have been waiting for. His story began in Running with Scissors, endured through Dry, and continues with this memoir, the capstone to the life of Augusten Burroughs.

Ann Wroe, obituaries editor for The Economist, reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page. Through her experiences and through people she has known, studied, or merely glimpsed in windows, she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after in this breathtaking combination of poetry, memoir, and observation.

One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Viginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, then the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street.

C. S. Lewis had one of the great minds of the 20th century. Many know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker?

How did a boy from small-town New York become the world’s most successful writer? How does he do it? He has always wanted to write the kind of novel that would be read and reread so many times that the binding breaks and the book literally falls apart. As he says, “I’m still working on that one.”