The story of my life

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Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, figures pedantical," (Love's Labor's Lost) ... you'll find all these and more in this comprehensive, easy-to-use, and thoroughly enjoyable collection of timeless poetry, proverbs, and sayings from the most quotable author in literary history. Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson have carefully selected over 3,000 quotations and arranged them under more than 400 topics to put Shakespeare at your. Fingertips. Readers who turn to "Life" will find Prospero's haunting reflection, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Speech-writers seeking "words of Wisdom" are reminded of Polonius's comment that "Brevity is the soul of wit." Extensive cross-referencing makes the volume easy to use, and an index of key words helps locate those elusive, tip-of-the-tongue quotations quickly. Shakespeare lovers and researchers will find it especially helpful that over half the. Entries are annotated with fascinating historical background, notes on Shakespeare's sources, an explanation of the context of the quote, or a definition of an Elizabethan word or phrase. The volume also includes a brief biography of Shakespeare and a chronological listing of his plays and poems. And all line references for the quotations are keyed to the respected and popular Signet Classic editions edited by Sylvan Barnet. Filled with familiar treasures and unexpected. Delights, A Dictionary of Quotations From Shakespeare offers exquisitely stated, witty, and deeply profound commentary on life as we still experience it today, on our emotions and needs, and on both the grandeur and the foolishness of the human condition. It is a reference work that is as enlightening as it is useful - an essential book for readers, writers, students, speakers, and language lovers everywhere.

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Joe McGinniss

"In The Last Brother, Joe McGinniss brings to startling and disturbing life the childhood, the brief triumph, and the long downward slide of the last Kennedy brother ... and exposes, as never before, the chilling reality behind the glittering facade of America's First Dysfunctional Family, as well as the terrible cost of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's dark ambitions for his children - even the last and least of them." "His book focuses in particular on the extraordinary sixties, a decade that began in glory for the family with Jack's ascension to the presidency, and ended - after the murders of Jack and Bobby, the tragedy at Chappaquidick, and their father's death - with Teddy, the last brother, standing alone in the rubble of Camelot." "While The Last Brother is both shocking and newsworthy, Teddy Kennedy emerges as a curiously tragic figure, the victim of his own family, forever "the fat, awkward little boy" who was ignored by his siblings, his father and his mother, then propelled, unwilling and unprepared, into the public limelight." "Searing, yet strangely moving and even sympathetic, The Last Brother presents a detailed, tragic portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, trapped in the glorious but hollow Kennedy myth, longing - but unable - to escape."--Jacket.

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William Manchester

The nightmares began for William Manchester 23 years after WW II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of a battle-weary youth (himself), "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms." To find out, Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese, and in this book examines his experiences in the line with his fellow soldiers (his "brothers"). He gives us an honest and unabashedly emotional account of his part in the war in the Pacific. "The most moving memoir of combat on WW II that I have ever read. A testimony to the fortitude of man...a gripping, haunting, book." --William L. Shirer

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Claudia O'Keefe

Alice Walker tells a mother's tale of reunion between her daughters: one trapped by tragedy in the dirt-poor South, the other making it big in the city. In an engrossing short story, Marilyn French movingly depicts two young women growing apart in an alcoholic, dysfunctional family. Joy Fielding shapes a humorous but sharp-edged story of the consequences when half-sisters meet for the very first time on a TV talk show. Ann Beattie tells of a pair of friends, as close as sisters, locked in a smothering embrace. In a bittersweet tale, Fae Myenne Ng writes of growing up in a culture that considers a family with only girl children "failed." Recalling her grandmother and great-aunt, Olivia Goldsmith unfolds a dark memoir of sisterhood gone terrifyingly awry. Cristina Garcia relates a poignant account of sisters separated for thirty years, one trapped in Cuba, the other escaped to Miami, reunited at long last. And Rita Dove retells one of the classic fairy tales of sisters, Beauty and the Beast, from the disparate viewpoints of all the women involved.