The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill’s feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from “Luna,” a thousandyear-old redwood in Humboldt County, California.Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long “tree-sit.” …
The badasses populating the pages of Badass are the most savagely awesome historical figures to ever strap on a pair of chain mail gauntlets and run screaming into battle. Author Ben Thompson—considered by many to be the Internet’s foremost expert on badassitude—has gathered together a rogues’ gallery of butt-stomping rogues, from Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan to Blackbeard, George S. …
From Nero’s nagging mother (whom he found especially annoying after taking her as his lover) to Catherine’s stable of studs (not of the equine variety), here is a wickedly delightful look at the most scandalous royal doings you never learned about in history class. Gleeful, naughty, sometimes perverted-like so many of the crowned heads themselves-A Treasury of Royal …
“Don’t be surprised, Pussycat,” said Helen Gurley Brown, still flirtatious at eighty-four, “We’re all survivors and proud of it. We want to talk about it.”And they do. Eighty of America’s most famous eighty year-olds reflect on their journeys to the big 8-0 and describe the passions that keep them young. They all have opinions about today’s world what …
Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine …
Frank Lloyd Wright exerted perhaps the greatest influence on twentieth century design. In a volume that continues to resonate more than seventy years after its initial publication, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography contains the master architect’s own account of his work, his philosophy, and his personal life, written with his signature wit and charm. Wright (1867-1959) went into …
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People
The bestselling author of The Orchid Thief is back with this delightfully entertaining collection of her best and brightest profiles. Acclaimed New Yorker writer Susan Orlean brings her wry sensibility, exuberant voice, and peculiar curiosities to a fascinating range of subjects—from the well known (Bill Blass) to the unknown (a typical ten-year-old boy) to the formerly known (the …
The history of Greece is taught chronologically, as students read short biographical sketches outlining the lives of important figures. The selections begin with the Greek creation and flood stories, then continue with legendary figures like Perseus, Hercules, and Jason. Then come the leaders of the Trojan War: Agamemnon, Achilles, & Odysseus. The lawgivers of the Greek …
Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker (Modern Library Paperbacks)
One of art’s purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the twenties and thirties, such as Henry …
From a rediscovered collection of autobiographical accounts written by hundreds of Kansas pioneer women in the early twentieth century, Joanna Stratton has created a collection hailed by Newsweek as “uncommonly interesting” and “a remarkable distillation of primary sources.”Never before has there been such a detailed record of women’s courage, such a living portrait of the women who civilized …