Assata: An Autobiography ...
920959
a gift...required reading in college....Daughter  liked it

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556520743/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_31
2974319
Gentilissimo Beniamino, Ho finito leggere il tuo libro l'altro ieri. Trovo la tua opera una testimonianza coraggiosa. Lo sto consigliando a tanti di leggerlo. Auguri per tutto nella tua vita. [Dear Benjamen, I have just finished reading your book. I find your book to be a work of courage and testimony to your vulnerability and the strength you derived from it. I am recommending the book to so many people. I wish you all the best during your life. ]
4616423
There is no doubt that Kamal Al-Solaylee's new book "Intolerable - A Memoir of Extremes" has all the elements of a fascinating biographical and socio-historical epic: a young boy growing up in an Arabic family in Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon that gets caught up in the economic, religious, and political upheavals of the region over the past fifty years; his fascination with the allure of western pop and artistic culture that is denigrated by family members and his society; a dawning sense of his gay sexual identify and his desperate struggle to liberate himself from the strictures of his upbringing so as to carve for himself a life in a different part of the world where he can pursue freely his intellectual and emotional aspirations.

"Intolerable" hopefully will be adapted for the screen some day. It would make a great film.

But I found myself drawn not so much to the dramatic narrative as to--I'm not sure what to call it--the backstory or the subtext or the metastory. I was profoundly moved by Al-Solaylee's on-going internal monologue as he struggles to understand what is happening to him and his world, grapples mightily with the limited options available to him to escape from what he finds so intolerable, and then, most poignantly, deals with the consequences of his decisions as they relate to his self-induced separation from his family and cultural roots.

This on-going personal reflection by Al-Solaylee about the psychological and ethical dimensions of his life choices is often heart wrenching for us as readers to witness. While he is thrilled with the life that he eventually creates for himself in his new adopted home of Toronto, his enthusiasm is overlaid by two dampeners: firstly, a persistent melancholy because of the suffering that his displacement has caused to his family, particularly his mother and his sisters, that is compounded by a deterioration in his family's quality of life as a result of the political upheavals in the region; and secondly, an existential insecurity linked to his self-identity as Arabic and his feelings about Arabic culture which fluctuate dramatically over the course of the story.

To bear one's soul in public like Al-Solaylee has done requires a great deal of guts. It can also be cathartic.

I speak from experience. After my long-term partner died suddenly from cancer, I wrote a memoir "August Farewell" in which I detailed the sixteen days between Bill's diagnosis and his death and integrated into the chronology vignettes from our thirty-three years together as a gay couple. Writing, for those of us who feel drawn to it, can help us make sense of the vicissitudes of life. But of even more consequence, at least for me, are the intimate conversations and depth of relationships with readers who respond to our soul-bearing.

My fondest wish for Kamal Al-Solaylee is that he will find in having written and published "Intolerable" some measure of this gratification at both the personal and relational levels.

* * *
For information on Kamal Al-Solaylee's "Intolerable - A Memoir of Extremes" see [...]

For information on my memoir "August Farewell" see my website [...]
3856995
This book is not conventional biography. It is a long term interview with Folkman - it transcribes and comments on
Folkman s memories. I found it fascinating but felt the lack of notes in which the AA would  relarte historical realities with memories.

I wish somebody would wriite a true biography of Folkman's tao complement this excellent book by Cooke
Michel Rabinovitch, M.D.
1975584
That a Monograph of the works of such a talented and considered Architect as Bart Voorsanger  would appeal to Architects  will come as no surprise .However this book will  appeal to anyone with even  the remotest interest in Architecture or the struggles an artist honing his craft over a lifetime of professional and personal challenges .The admission of failures and weaknesses in both spheres of  Barts life will be welcome reading to many a struggling Architect/Artist .
The pathos contained in the chapter on Ground Zero is heart wrenching  where the tragedy of the professional role Bart is tasked with is reflected  in an unfolding tragedy in his personal  life .
(For this section alone the book is worth the purchase price .)
Beautifully written, the book gently unfolds and peels away the layers of a complex architect  ,revealing in parallel an equally interesting personal life .The author manages to gently convey the consideration and care given to the execution of the projects  by Bart Voorsanger
 Hugely commited to his craft Bart admits to not caring about his life and only caring about  Architecture. On the contrary ,the self reflection revealed in this book indicate  a man who clearly cares about both .
Paula M Murphy Architect .Ireland
1899381
Excelente livro sobre o assunto que aborda o aspecto mais geral do cuidado  ao criticamente enfermo, de forma clara e objetiva, desfazendo mitos e  fornecendo "insights" do autor.  Extremamente acess&iacute;vel a  estudantes de qualquer n&iacute;vel e de leitura agrad&aacute;vel sem comprometer o  conte&uacute;do. Leitura obrigat&oacute;ria.
2868102
A very good autobiography of the renowned author. Goes into details. Clear writing style makes it easy to read.
89180
Freud's autobiography focuses more on the history of psychoanalysis than on himself. He does not divulge many day to day things. Some of the more interesting parts of the book regard his identification as a Jew, and how it liberated him from orthodoxy, made him an outsider from the start, as well as his identification more with the study of the mind as opposed to biological psychiatry itself, from the start. Also interesting is his tendency to put himself in the background--noting that the development of psychoanalysis is due to its inherent value rather than any personal attractions he might have had as a person.  Freud takes obvious pride in his description of psychoanalysis from the early days to its worldwide success at the time of the writing. He also mentions in passing some of his interactions with such luminaries as William James suffering angina, Jung, Breur who continuously criticized psychoanalysis yet seemed to regard himself as an adherent, and Stanley Hall, then president of Clark who brought Freud to America. He also describes the development of his ideas, mentioning in passing such essays as "Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices" and "Wit and the relationship to the unconscious." This is a bite size book, essential for anyone interested psychoanalysis, nicely and elegantly translated from the German, and an interesting parting note from one of the most significant inventors of modern culture.
4014937
Great cover art, a tour de force to match the quality of the narrative  within.  The "split" personality pictured on the cover is Billy,  nee Dorothy, Tipton, a small-time musician who lived and worked as a man  for over 50 years.
I'm not a big fan of biographies, so it takes a lot  for me to pick one up.  I found Middlebrook's story of Billy so compelling  that it was hard for me to put this biography down until I finished  it.
Middlebrook has been criticized for using too much conjecture, but  she is always scrupulous about letting the reader know when she is doing  just that.  Her exhaustive research about the life of musicians -- and  lesbians -- in the first half of this century allow this conjecture, I  believe, because Billy left very little of herself behind when she died a  decade ago.  A few photos, a few letters, and a number of people who knew  her as either or both Billy and Dorothy survive; Middelbrook builds an  intriguing narrative from these remnants and scraps of Billy's life.  Nonbiog reader that I am, I am now looking forward to reading Middlebrook's  _Anna_Sexton_, too.
A postscript: I thought Middlebrook was very adroit  in using 3rd person pronouns -- he, she -- in such a way as to keep the  reader clear throughout the book on just which side of Billy's psyche and  persona was being described at any given moment in time.
4977545
REVIEW OF "OUT OF EGYPT" for Amazon.com  July 12, 2007

Andre Aciman describes his colorful and complicated life (and family)in
Alexandria in the 1960s. Childhoods like that are often the preparation
for a life of writing. The child absorbs all the peculiarities as part of
normal life without knowing they are peculiar until much later. Then they
need to make sense of it all.
  All this is heightened by the fact that the Acimans are Jewish, in a
Muslim country still resonating with the after effects of British rule. His
experiences in the theoretically best school in Alexandria, run by
British teachers, would be funny if they weren't so awful. For complete
cognitive dissonance,his parents force him to learn Arabic to survive.
Reading about those lessons alone is worth the price of this book. At
home they speak Ladino, the Sephardic Yiddish, among themselves.
  His beautful mother was born deaf. When provoked she can produce a
high-pitched scream. used to good effect at the butcher's. Once she has
made her point they are all quite happy. The butcher has  to give the package
to her Arab servant. She never touches an Arab's hand.
  The Acimans and Andre's maternal relatives live in a state of mutual
scorn, but when faced with the threats of Pan-Arab nationalism pull together very
efficiently. Eventually they all flee, the sedate Sephardic merchants
and the shady international adventurers too.
  Two other writers come to mind when reading this book. Laurence Durrell
evokes something of the same atmosphere in his Alexandria Quartet and Elias
Canetti grew up in a large Sephardic family in Bulgaria. That society has
completely disappeared. Without Canetti's memoirs one would not know it had ever
existed.
  This is an eloquent and elegiac account of that love and absurdity
known as a family.
1162844
(Late) Vinod Mehta lived as one of the last bastions of what a True Editor - as opposed to a Manager/ Publisher/ CEO - of a print publication ought to be. From a monthly like the racy Debonair (India's playboy ) to a Sunday Broadsheet Newpaper Observer to English Daily The Independent and then The Pioneer- in New Delhi - and finally to Outlook, the impactful newsweekly/ group of publications that he edited - from its birth to his death - Vinod's memoirs offer a candid glimpse into all the highs - and lows - of his life as a journalist and then Editor.

Vinod Mehta, the person, had a class - A Lakhnavi Andaz - and it shows, time and again, in his life and in his anecdotes of life, his description of interactions with politicians of all color and belief, his proprietors, his colleagues, his friends and his closest, Editor (his dog). Vinod Mehta paid the price for his moral rectitude and upright - time and again - but that is how he chose to live and lead. R. I. P .
1849608
Pentimento: A Book of Portraits is electrfying in its earnestness and candor, incisive in its tone, acerbic in its wit and picturesque in its mental imagery - a memoir (unlike An Unfinished Woman) that is a bit more honed and focused and less formless in how the recollections and diary entries jump from one to the next. Be that as it may, let it not mitigate the merit of An Unfinished Woman, for in its own right, it is a very worthy read and most deserving of its National Book Award. Each chapter in Pentimento is framed, each segment representing a person, place or experience that had a certain signifigance to Lillian Hellman's life and development not only as a playwrite but as a person. The book chapters are listed as thus: Bethe, Willy, Julia, Theatre, Arthur W.A. Cowan, Turtle, and Pentimento. The writing fluidity is fragmented, almost jarring, but the fierce, explicit prose enhances the flavor of the volatile, broken mishmash of truth and hyperbole, a choice style that is not a detriment to what Hellman has to say. With magnetic intimacy, the portraits all have something meaningful to declare; they range from the profound to the wittily bizarre. The latter is best represented in the portraits entitled "Arthur W.A. Cowan" and "Turtle." It is in these two portraits where Hellman's mordant humor especially shines.
From Arthur W.A. Cowan:
I said, "Oh, shut up, Arthur."
And he did, but that night as he paid the dinner check, he wrote out another check and handed it to me. It was for a thousand dollars.
I said, "What's this for?" "Anybody you want."
I handed it back.
He said, "Oh, for Christ sake take it and tell yourself it's for putting up with me."
"Then it's not enough money." (P.235)
And
From Turtle:

Toward afternoon I telephoned the New York Zoological Society of which I was a member. I had a hard time being transferred to somebody who knew about turtles. When I finished, the young voice said, "Yes, the Chelydra serpentina. A ferocious foe. Where did you meet it?"
"Meet it?"
"Encounter it?"
"At a literary cocktail party by a lake." (P.278)
Considering the period, the one-liners are quite sharp; the portrait that obviously stands out the most is "Julia," the 'supposed' friendship that developed between Hellman and a Freud disciple who happened to be an anti-facist supporter - a 'friendship' that later formed the basis for the Academy Award-winning film of the same title. Whether the story is fact or fiction, that is up for the reader to decide. Whether "Julia" represented a single woman or a group of dedicated individuals fighting to stop/lessen the evils of war whom Hellman truly admired and who thus wanted her name associated with, may also never be known. But what can be said of the Julia portrait is that it is a written down homage to a person or persons who tried to make a positive difference in that dark epoch of our global history.
3686941
This review is for the Kindle edition of the book. I have heard and read about Christopher Hitchens, but have never read his work. This is his autobiographical account of the end of his life after diagnosis and during treatment for esophageal cancer. Hitchens is an outspoken atheist and it is interesting to read as he remembers his life and faces its end with courage in his conviction that there is nothing further for him. He does a good job of enumerating the difficulties inherent in the treatment of this serious disease, and its effect not only on himself but also on his family and the people who know him. Unfortunately, his course after diagnosis was brief, and the end of the book is comprised of short notes and thoughts, followed by an afterward by his wife. Hitchens lived hard, and by his own admission earned his cancer, and he offers no apology for his behavior as he regrets the truncation of his life. It is an affecting if brief memoir, and I recommend it as a chronicle of illness and death seen unsparingly through the eyes of the affected person, regardless of the theological implications of Hitchens' atheism.
633117
James Kaplan covers Frank Sinatra from his birth in 1915 to his Academy Award in 1954. Much of the research is from other published biographies (of which there are many) but, this is not meant to be a documentary biography. These 700+ riveting pages are meant to develop the complex personality and character of Frank Sinatra.  The style of Kaplan's prose fits his subject. It wouldn't work for a bio of Lincoln or Pavarotti, but it suits Sinatra to a tee.

Besides an interpretive look at the familiar stories and issues, there is a lot here that was new to me, and probably new to others. Not that I've been following Frank that closely, but I did not know of his birth mark, his mother's occupation, his suicide attempts or that he had seen a psychiatrist. I presume, since his death, those who would never have spoken up in his life have put these things on record for history's sake.

Kaplan covers Frank's early family life, pressures, and rise to fame. He shows the scrappiness he learned or inherited from his mother. He describes how Hearst and other right wing media outlets slammed him for his politics (they portrayed him as a communist), alleged mob connections (and indirectly his Italian ethnicity) and non-enlistment for WW2. Just about everyone slammed him for his messy personal life.

While the Ava Gardner story has been covered many times, this is the most detailed treatment I know of and also the only one that I know of to lay out how toxic it was. These two large size personalities stoked by alcohol, promiscuity and the resulting jealousy, Ava's soaring career and Frank's declining prospects devolved into argument and physical abuse.

Even if there were no Ava, you can see how Frank was not cut out to be a family man. Kaplan shows how he did and didn't fulfill his responsibilities as a father and how Nancy (Sr.) survived and adjusted to the divorce. Kaplan has facts that counter what may be wishful thinking in daughter Nancy's reminiscences. The presentation is both straightforward and empathetic. Kaplan gives you insight into the pressures and intensity.

As I'm writing this I'm listening to old Sinatra tunes. Through the index I can go back and re-read about when and how they were recorded. Kaplan notes when the songs have relevance to Sinatra's life at the time. For some there are aesthetic observations or critiques. You'll get a new appreciation for one of Sinatra's later signature tunes "That's Life". The chapter "Icarus" shows a long, humiliating "shot down in May."

My only complaint is the photos. Kaplan describes photos in a way you want to see them. Not all of them are included in the book, such as Sinatra entering Cuba with "the" brief case or the telling pre-split photo of Frank and Nancy. The photos that are included are all good and add to the text, although the page placement isn't always exact. On p. 66 there is Sinatra's mug shot from his 1938 arrest. The author notes his air of confidence, I note an uncanny resemblance to the young Mick Jagger.

It is very fast reading, because you can't put it down. There is no hint of a volume 2 or 3, but this will certainly be anticipated by anyone who reads this book.
1381919
An excellent autobiography by a Mumasaaba/Mugisu elder from eastern Uganda. Canon Maswere's book is a personal recounting of his life as it was lived during the transformation of Bumasaaba's society from one founded on revered, centuries-old traditional beliefs, values and behaviors to a "modern" way of life. That is, to a transformed society in which lives are guided by traditional culture with the addition of certain, revolutionary Western beliefs, values and behaviors.

Muzee's life, as this narrative shows, is one of highest virtue arising from his passion for education, his love of his family, his compassion for his fellow humans, and his devotion to his Christian faith. A very worthwhile read for all, regardless of one's nationality, culture, religion, age or gender.

Translators and editors D.E. Wasake and G.W. Makyeme, Muzee's grandson and son, respectively, are to be commended for their diligent yet light approach, one that allowed their beloved patriarch's warmth, grace and humor to shine through. I highly recommend this book!
2256025
Anthony Everitt tells the amazing story of the young Gaius Octavius, who grows up to become the man we know as Emperor Augustus. Everitt gives the treatment of Augustus' life the same way he treated the orator Cicero's. Everitt has an easy to follow narrative that guides the reader from the chaotic early life to the stable rule as the first Emperor of Rome, or what Augustus called his new regime: the Principate.

Born during Cicero's consulship, the young boy grows up in the period of political instability that would result in civil war. His granduncle, Julius Caesar, would be one of the primary actors and winner of the first round. The young boy's life is changed forever when the Dictator is assassinated and he is named Caesar's heir. As Caesar's adopted son, he has Caesar's name as his (only) weapon. It turns out to be a really good weapon as he is able to raise an army and challenge the famous general Mark Antony for control of Rome. Everitt tells the story of them ultimately teaming up and combining their forces to defeat Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, at the battle of Philippi ending all hope of a restored Republic.

"When they disagreed, it was always Octavian who got his way. When he wanted something, he tended to pursue it with single-minded intensity, whereas Antony, seeing himself as the senior partner in government, had the careless self-confidence to give way." (p. 133)

The Second Triumvirate is unstable and it is not long until civil war resumes and the future Augustus and his number one man Agrippa defeat the forces of Antony and Queen Cleopatra at Actium. Antony and the Queen decide to commit suicide than fall into the hands of the merciless young Caesar.

From there on the story is about Augustus' long reign as emperor. Everitt explains the various settlements that were made that let Augustus build up so much power that eventually would create a new indispensable position in Rome. He would redesign the city, and that new design would allow him to gloat that he found Rome made of brick and left it made of marble.

On a slight side note there is one odd difference between Everitt's work on Augustus and his biography on Cicero. The difference is in capitalization. In the previous work, Everitt chose to capitalize titles--which I prefer--and now he does not. I have noticed a change in trend when in grammar when it comes to titles. As a reader of many books it is easy to see the change and I do not like it. I do not know who is leading the charge but I wish they would stop. I much prefer to see Emperor Tiberius of the Roman Empire than emperor Tiberius of the Roman empire--heck even my grammar check thinks this is wrong. The former looks elegant and clean, the later looks like a pile of written horse crap. I am going to be reading another book by Everitt and I hope he returns to his old habits as opposed to his new ones. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book it is a great and exciting read.
274623
Less of a biography than a dialogue between author Juan Arias and interviewee Paulo Coelho, I found that I enjoyed this book more than I had expected to. I have only ever read a couple of Coelho's books and was intrigued by them, although not overly convinced as to why they were bestsellers. Having read this book, however, I have become more appreciative of Coelho's writing and style, knowing and understanding a little more of the things in his life which led him to share his books with the world.
In this dialogue, Coelho talks openly and honestly about his Catholic-Jesuit upbringing, his experiences of a mental hospital, prison, torture, black magic, and drugs before his conversion back to a Catholic spiritual tradition. He also speaks freely on more abstract concepts: politics, nationality, his understanding of 'the feminine', and what it means for him to be a writer.
What I especially appreciated about this book was the style in which it is written. It is clearly a conversation between two deep thinkers, and it was nice to have Coelho's own words in print, rather than it all being paraphrased by the author. Although I have to say that Arias played his role as interviewer very well - he doesn't dominate the conversation, but nor does he let Coelho do all the talking.
The reason I give this 4 stars rather than 5 is that there were a number of times when I would have liked Coelho to elaborate on certain points. Sometimes this was because I found a thread interesting and I wished he had run with it for a little longer; other times it was simply for the sake of clarity.
(Finally, I should just note that I read an English translation of the book and not the original Spanish version. There is at least one available in Australia, not sure about other countries.)