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With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away. To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home--the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even...

When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named.Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten's childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn't exist for him. This father was...

"'Tis is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports." "When Frank returns to America in 1953,...

Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For...

The award-winning actress shares her funny and heartwarming stories of a life filled with laughter. Woven throughout the book are her interviews with many beloved American comedians about how they, too, found the funny in their lives.

Carter describes--in glorious, if sometimes gory, detail--growing up on a farm where everything was done by either hand or mule: plowing fields, "mopping" cotton to kill pests, cutting sugar cane, shaking peanuts, or processing pork. He also describes the joys of walking barefoot ("this habit alone helped to create a sense of intimacy with the earth"), taking naps with his father on the porch after lunch, and hunting with slingshots and boomerangs...

Pistol is an unforgettable biography. By telling one family's history, Kriegel has traced the history of basketball and a large slice of the American narrative.

"Since the age of twenty-one, Paul McCartney has lived one of the ultimate rock-n-roll lives played out on the most public of stages. Now, Paul's story is told by rock music's foremost biographer, with McCartney's consent and access to family members and close friends who have never spoken on the record before. Paul McCartney reveals the complex character behind the façade and sheds new light on his childhood--blighted by his mother's death but...

Tony Dungy's words and example have intrigued millions of people, particularly following his victory in Super Bowl XLI, the first for an African American coach. How is it possible for a coach-especially a football coach-to win the respect of his players and lead them to the Super Bowl without the screaming histrionics, the profanities, and the demand that the sport come before anything else? How is it possible for anyone to be successful without compromising...

Few entertainers have made as many people laugh as Tim Conway. From his pranks in small Ohio classrooms to performances on TV and in movies, Tim has been cracking people up for over seventy years. What's So Funny? captures Tim's journey from life as an only child raised by loving but outrageous parents, to his tour of duty in the army, to his ascent as a national star, sharing the glory days of his famous partnerships with entertainment greats.