by Andrew Wilson (2012)
While much has been written about the Titanic, her shocking demise, and those who perished, very little has been devoted to the hundreds of survivors. In Shadow of the Titanic, Andrew Wilson offers a look at how their lives were affected by living through this catastrophic event. Those who lived to tell the tale reveal how they coped in the aftermath. Using archival research and interviews with family members, Wilson tells their stories. He shows how some survivors used their experience to propel themselves on to fame and how others were wracked with guilt and refused to acknowledge they had been there. Some reputations were destroyed, and some survivors were so psychologically damaged that they took their own lives years later. From the famous survivors like Bruce Ismay and Madeline Astor -- who became a bride, a widow, and a mother all within a year -- to lesser known survivors Dorothy Gibson and the Navartil brothers -- who were traveling under assumed names because they were being abducted by their father -- Shadow of the Titanic offers a host of stories that add a new dimension to our understanding of this legendary disaster.
Cara Mentzel
"Voice Lessons is the story of one younger sister growing up in the shadow of a larger-than-life older sister--looking up to her, wondering how they were alike and how they were different and, ultimately, learning how to live her own life and speak in her own voice on her own terms."--Amazon.com.
Ben Fong-Torres
The Rice Room is a brilliant and moving memoir of growing up in Oakland's Chinatown, by one of America's preeminent journalists. Ben Fong-Torres was the third child of first-generation Chinese parents. His father came to America via the Philippines, adding "Torres" to his name to convince immigration officials that he was Filipino, since there were strict limits on the number of Chinese immigrants that were allowed. His mother came into the country under similarly deceptive circumstances. Together they set up a life that did not include outsiders, and they assumed that their children would share their views. But for Ben and his siblings, including older brother and Number One Son Barry, this was never an option. As youngsters, they loved exploring the sights and sounds of their immediate neighborhood, and spent much of their time working and studying in the rice room of their family restaurant, isolated from outsiders. But going to an American school made them aware of an entirely different world, and soon Ben and Barry were shocking their parents by reciting American song lyrics, reading American comic books, and even listening to forbidden rock and roll lp's. At age twelve, Ben went with his father to Amarillo, Texas, to open a restaurant. There he was thrown into a strange new community, many of whose members had never laid eyes upon an Asian person before. Ben combatted his loneliness by hard work, learning to lip-synch to Elvis, and tentatively making a few friends, ignoring the comments of those such as his gym teacher, who called him "Chop-Chop." By the time he returned to Oakland, he was much more aware of how the rest of the country might view his family, and he was more determined than ever to have a piece of the American pie. Working in the detested rice room made Ben and his siblings realize how much was expected of them as Chinese sons and daughters. Yet Ben continued to be obedient, at least on the surface - in the meantime holding down newspaper writing jobs at increasingly radical papers, including the daily Golden Gator at Berkeley, where he covered the nascent protest movement. Ironically, even as he tried to communicate in halting Cantonese with his parents, who never mastered English, he was becoming an important part of the American mainstream. Upon graduation from college he joined the staff of a fledgling magazine called Rolling Stone, and joined the group of people who chronicled and came to define the 1960s counterculture, partying with Jann Wenner and Hunter Thompson, and interviewing Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, The Jefferson Airplane, and scores of other seminal musicians of the era. Then tragedy struck - and Ben had to learn that family came first, no matter how backward at times they seemed. The Rice Room is riveting personal history of the most moving and engaging kind - a story of growing up in this country that readers of all backgrounds will want to experience.
Mark Harvey
"As a central figure in the American wilderness preservation movement in the mid-twentieth century, Howard Zahniser (1906-1964) was the person most responsible for the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964. While the rugged outdoorsmen of the early environmental movement, such as John Muir and Bob Marshall, gave the cause a charismatic face, Zahniser strove to bring conservations' concerns into the public eye and the preservationists' plans to fruition. In many fights to save besieged wild lands, he pulled together fractious coalitions, built grassroots support networks, wooed skittish and truculent politicians, and generated streams of eloquent prose celebrating wilderness." "Zahniser worked for the Bureau of Biological Survey (a precursor to the Fish and Wildlife Service) and the Department of the Interior, wrote for Nature magazine, and eventually managed the Wilderness Society and edited its magazine, Living Wilderness. The culmination of his wilderness writing and political lobbying was the Wilderness Act of 1964. All of its drafts included his eloquent definition of wilderness, which still serves as a central tenet for the Wilderness Society: "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." The bill was finally signed into law shortly after his death." "Pervading his tireless work was a deeply held belief in the healing powers of nature for a humanity ground down by the mechanized hustle-bustle of modern, urban life. Zahniser grew up in a family of Methodist ministers, and although he moved away from any specific denomination, a spiritual outlook informed his thinking about wilderness. His love of nature was not so much a result of scientific curiosity as a sense of wonder at its beauty and majesty, and a wish to exist in harmony with all other living things. In this deeply researched and affectionate portrait, Mark Harvey brings to life this great leader of environmental activism."--BOOK JACKET.
Timbaland
"Timbaland offers fans an unprecedented look into his life and work. He reveals the magic behind the music, sharing the various creative impulses that arise while he's producing, and the layering of sounds that have created dozens of number one hits."--Amazon.com.