Susan Sontag

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Catherine Ross-Stroud

"Much has been written about the state of black adolescence - often from a sociological point of view situating black teens in an at-risk category. However, through her characters, young adult author Janet McDonald (1954-2007) presents the wide range of adolescent life. McDonald presents the multifarious views of society in relation to the self efficacious drive of urban teens to rise above their circumstances by any means necessary." "This book is a biocritical study of McDonald and her work as it relates to the contribution she has made to teen fiction. It explains McDonald's profoundly realistic fiction, which holds wide appeal for teens in search of answers to the coming of age mystery."--BOOK JACKET.

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Jackie Woolley

This book is dedicated to the millions of writers out there who have heard the call but never had the thrill of a twenty-city publicity tour, a review in Publisher's Weekly or an appearance on the Today show. This personal experience book is for beginners as well as advanced writers and goes beyond mere self-help in the craft of writing.

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Sonia Taitz

The Watchmaker's Daughter tells the story of a child of two refugees: a watchmaker who saved lives within Dachau prison, and his wife, a gifted concert pianist about to make her debut when the Nazis seized power. In this memoir, Sonia Taitz is born into a world in which the Holocaust is discussed constantly by her insular concentration camp-surviving parents. This legacy, combined with Sonia's passion and intelligence, leads the author to forge an adventurous life in which she seeks to heal both her parents and herself through travel, achievement, and a daring love affair. Ironically, it is her marriage to a non-Jew that brings her parents the peace and fulfillment they would never have imagined possible. Sonia manages to combine her own independence with a tender dutifulness, honoring her parents' legacy while forging a new family of her own.

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John E. Miller

Although generations of readers of the Little House books are familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder's early life up through her first years of marriage to Almanzo Wilder, few know about her adult years. Going beyond previous studies, Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder focuses upon Wilder's years in Missouri from 1894 to 1957. Utilizing her unpublished autobiography, letters, newspaper stories, and other documentary evidence, John E. Miller fills the gaps in Wilder's autobiographical novels and describes her sixty-three years of living in Mansfield, Missouri. As a result, the process of personal development that culminated in Wilder's writing of the novels that secured her reputation as one of America's most popular children's authors becomes evident. In addition to describing Wilder's apprenticeship as a farm newspaper columnist and occasional magazine writer before she began the production of her novels, Miller discusses Wilder's activities on her family's Rocky Ridge farm and as a vital citizen in Mansfield, Missouri. Playing out her many roles as wife, mother, chicken farmer, churchgoer, bridge player, seamstress, farm loan officer, and political candidate, Wilder led an active life for ninety years.