Diary Biography

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When American saxophonist and social activist Fred Ho was diagnosed with stage 3b colo-rectal cancer in 2006 he underwent immediate surgery to remove the tumor and began preparing for chemotherapy. Within days his friends mobilized to arrange grocery deliveries, transport, companionship, and housekeeping duties - they called themselves “Warriors for Fred”. Fred chose to write his astonishing cancer memoir as a diary, acknowledging that all the greatest warriors wrote daily diaries.

On June 12, 1994, the lives of Nicole Brown Simspon and Ronald Goldman were violently ended. From the spectacle of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Nicole's friend Faye Resnick attempted to capture the life of Simpson and the two women's relationship to each other. Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted offers a tragic view of a woman trapped in a violent cycle of fear and abuse.

Not Just an Accountant is an incisive, no-holds-barred account of India's 11th comptroller and auditor general and a symbol of the anti-corruption movement, Vinod Rai. Through a narrative rich in anecdote and inside information, Rai sheds light on the major scams that shook the country.

Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a 13-year-old girl to become involved with a 50-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older.

Holidays on Ice collects six of David Sedaris' most profound Christmas stories into one slender volume perfect for use as a last minute coaster or ice scraper. This drinking man's companion can be enjoyed by the warmth of a raging fire, the glow of a brilliantly decorated tree, or even in the back seat of a van or police car.

Twenty years after leaving London, Nina Stibbe is back in town with her dog, Peggy. Together they take up lodging in the house of writer Deborah (Debby) Moggach in Camden for 'a year-long sabbatical'. It’s a break from married life back in Cornwall, or even perhaps a fresh start altogether. Nina is not quite sure yet. Debby does not have many demands – only to water the garden, watch for toads, and defrost the odd pie – so Nina is free to explore the city she once called home.

This edition of Che Guevara's diary of the last year of his life describes Che's efforts to launch a guerrilla insurrection against the military government of Bolivia. It was found in his backpack when he was captured by the Bolivian Army in October 1967.

El traidor es uno de los trabajos periodísticos más ambiciosos en la trayectoria de Anabel Hernández. Su historia se remonta a enero de 2011, cuando la contactó uno de los abogados de Vicente Zambada Niebla, mejor conocido como Vicentillo, quien enfrentaba un juicio en una corte de Chicago. La intención era compartir con la periodista documentos y hechos que ampliaban y esclarecían varios de los episodios que acababa de dar a conocer en Los señores del narco.

1936 was a great year for the movie industry - the financial setbacks of the Great Depression were subsiding, so theater attendance was up. Americans everywhere were watching the stars, and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's personal story wasn't a happy one. Born poor and widowed at 24, Mary Astor had spent years looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” Jane Austen at her witty, observant, intelligent, and sympathetic best, in this collection of her letters written to family and friends. Compiled by her niece Fanny Knight’s son Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne), and edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, this collection includes a preface written by the editor and notes from Lord Brabourne. It was originally published in 1892.

For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I spans a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in 18th-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine.

Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most memorable books in the face of the holocaust that Nazi Germany and its collaborators unleashed on European Jews between 1941 and 1945 across German-occupied Europe. Anne Frank was a German-born Jew hiding in Amsterdam with her family in 1942 when Nazis occupied Holland. She started keeping a diary in hiding - a diary she’d received for her 13th birthday from her parents.

On the day The Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely-Hearts Club, is released in June 1967, Raphael falls off his motorbike and momentarily dies. In a vision, he sees Shiva, the father of Yoga, and is altered in a way he cannot understand. Raf is propelled on a quest to travel into the heart of Yoga, and following his mysterious antique-dealer father’s death, is initiated into the lineage of Merlin, as a weaver of the electromagnetic web of Aquarius, and like his father, a finder of sacred objects.

This letter is the closest that Kafka came to setting down his autobiography. He was driven to write it by his father's opposition to his engagement with Julie Wohryzek. The marriage did not take place; the letter was not delivered.

A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.