CATALOGUES - Biography - Autobiography

A former Chicago cop exposes shocking truths about the abuses of power within the city's police department in this memoir of violence, drugs, and men with badges. Lopez becomes a police officer because he wants to make a difference in gang-infested neighbourhoods; but, as this book reveals, he ends up a corrupt member of the most powerful gang of all -- the Chicago police force. Lopez shares the horrific indiscretions he witnessed during his seven years of service, from the sexually predatory officer, X, who routinely stops beautif... read more

In an extraordinary literary debut, Aldo Zargani reconstructs the lost world of his Jewish childhood during the perilous years 1938-45 when he and his family fled from Fascists and Nazis in northern Italy. His haunting memoir acquires a cinematic intensity as he crosscuts from the blood-red stone spires of Basel, where his father failed to find refuge for his family in 1939, to fiery scenes of the Allied bombing of Turin in 1942, to the freezing winter of 1943-44, which Zargani and his brother spent hidden in a Catholic boarding sc... read more

War exposes the divide between who we think we are and how we behave in extreme situations. Commander Snively has crafted a vivid, unsettling, and ultimately hopeful personal account of the effects of the Iraq war on soldiers and civilians alike who find themselves astride that dilemma.From her unique perspective as a Navy Quaker chaplain serving with the Marines working amid the boredom, tension, and seemingly meaningless carnage at a trauma hospital and morgue between Ramadi and Fallujah, Commander Snively negotiates a compassion... read more

From The Military Writers Society of America
(To be posted on MWSA website in 1-3 weeks)

A Quaker Chaplain writing about war? I couldn’t imagine it, but I agreed to review the book.

What a blessing. The book is beautiful: in design and in content.

With eight Marines, Commander Sheri Snively deployed to Iraq to serve in a trauma hospital and morgue between Ramadi and Fallujah. She records the journey in vivid detail.

Snively took photographs and kept a journal. She writes of impressions of war as she experienced it. “In..read more

An enchanting jaunt through the Golden Era of Broadway and the MGM musicals. Captures the energy and excitement of those special times, with eyewitness tales of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Ethel Merman, Jimmy Durante, Carmen Miranda, Lena Horne, Bea Lillie, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Josh Logan, Vicente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli, and dozens more. Hugh recounts the origins of some of America’s most beloved songs, such as “The Boy Next Door,” “The Trolley Song,” and perennial favorite “Ha... read more

An intimate profile of one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century, this first full-length biography of Karen Carpenter details every aspect of her life, from her modest Connecticut upbringing and her rise to stardom in southern California to the real story of her tragic, untimely death. This illuminating depiction of a 1970s icon covers her time as lead singer of the Carpenters - the top-selling American musical act of the decade - and provides insight into their string of 16 consecutive top-20 hits, including Clo... read more

After college, Anne Thomas Soffee journeyed to Los Angeles to start a career as a rock journalist and small-time heavy metal flack. This hilarious peek into the early years of the hair-band era reveals the hierarchy of fishnets, bustiers, and chicks with the Holy Grail - a backstage pass. A taste for other people's prescriptions and too much beer edges her freelance journalism work right off her schedule. She struggles with not being thin enough, pretty enough, or cool enough when, in the midst of the LA riots, Soffee is offered a ... read more

This book features an extraordinary quest for peace of mind. In this unforgettable memoir, a young man finds himself disillusioned by the conventional expectations of his parents, teachers, and culture. Desperate to articulate his deepest hopes and dreams, he discards his university education and abandons home, family, and possessions to journey through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in search of a meaningful life. Narrowly escaping death by sickness and drugs, he encounters the Tibetan refugees in exile and, entranced, finally ... read more

"Writings about spiritual journeys have the potential to read like deadly dull navel-gazing. This book is not like that. Schettini is a keen observer of what's around him and what's going on inside him. He has obviously spent decades mulling over the material and has a nice, self-aware style." -- Michael Hill, Associated Press "A lively read with a deep meaning ... told with ruthless honesty and understated humor in an engaging combination. I recommend it enthusiastically." -- Robert Thurman, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, author of Inner Revolution and Why the Dalai Lam..read more

This true adventure begins in the late 1800s in the rough-and-tumble towns of northern California and ends on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s. After running away from home, Douglas McHardie found himself in Arizona, where things took a horrible turn for the worse as he found himself wanted for murder, thus beginning his life on the run as an outlaw. From Arizona he escaped to the Canadian gold mines of the Yukon where he found gold. With his new-found riches he moved to San Francisco and opened a saloon, only to h... read more

Once a King, Always a King is the sequel to his memoir, My Bloody Life, and recounts the former gang member's struggle to create a normal life.

Fascinatingly disturbing, this memoir chronicles seven years in the life of a distinctly unordinary American family. In 1973, Dirk Jamison's father started having a midlife crisis that never ended, and after purposefully losing his construction job, he moved his family to a ski resort and started feeding them from dumpsters in an effort to reject money and all its trappings. They were never homeless, never desperately poor, but they lived on garbage. While Jamison struggled with adolescence, he faced a father who valued freedom mor... read more

This informative and entertaining book provides a rare insight into the life of a naval flying officer, and one who has flown virtually every type of Fleet Air Arm aircraft to have seen service since the war. Sea ballilo, Sea vampire, Wyvern, Sea venom, Sea hawk, Scimitar, Gannet, Buccaneer, Phantom - a veritable roll-call of the Fleet Air Arms postwar inventory, and Michael J. Doust has flown them all and a lot more besides. In this enthralling volume, he recalls his times as a Royal Navy pilot, instructor and squadron commander,... read more

Holocaust survivor Sara Avinun details the stories of human love and compassion that helped her to overcome the nightmares of her past in this devastatingly compassionate autobiography. Born in 1936 into a Jewish family in Poland, Avinun details her first memories from the age of four or five when she was left homeless and without her family, wandering the streets of the villages of Poland during World War II. Alone in the world, subjected to the cruelty of evil people, disease, hunger, and degradation, she found sparks of light in... read more

Rose emerged from humble beginnings to become a woman of style and substance with enormous strength of character. She was model and wife of Norman Lindsay (one of Australia's most controversial and best known artists), master printmaker, business woman and mother of two. Rose Lindsay should rightfully be regarded as one of the outstanding female personalities of twentieth century Australia.

In August 1939 Stanislaw Dabrowski was a 19 year old accounting student working part time in his family bakery business in Lwów, Poland.  Within a few weeks the Germans had occupied half of Poland and the Soviet Union invaded the rest, including Lwów. The family discovered the reality of life in comrade Stalin’s empire: destitution, arrest, imprisonment, beatings, show trials on false charges, deportation to slave labour camps and executions. After enduring months of slave labour in the gold mines of Kol... read more

This hilarious and uplifting memoir follows an Arab-American woman as she comes to grips with being single, ample, and 30. In the tradition of "Bridget Jones's Diary, " this true, but uniquely American story is peppered with colorful characters encountered by the author as she discovers the riotous world of American belly dancing.

Song Of Survival, Helen Colijn's account of her wartime experiences, is a window into a largely overlooked dimension of World War 2 -- the imprisonment of women and children in Southeast Asia by the Japanese and how these prisoners of war responded to their dire circumstances. Held in captivity for nearly four years, more then a third of the women in Helen's camp died of disease or starvation. Yet their courage, faith, resiliency, ingenuity, and camaraderie provide us with enduring lessons on living. Though they had no musical inst... read more

After leaving the business world to care for her two small children and her aging grandparents, Julie Hersh felt that she had evaporated into her surroundings, no longer sure of who she was. She became deeply depressed—badly enough to very nearly take her own life three times. Faltering under the burden of her growing depression, she contemplated the purpose of her very existence while trying to function as a wife, mother, and community member. Most people answer these questions without a tour of the psychiatric ward, but... read more

The first full insider's account of Viacom's meteoric rise to become the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world, this inspiring account of the life of Ralph Baruch can be read by those seeking to overcome their own personal and professional challenges or simply by those interested by a fullfilling human-interest story. As a teenager, Ralph faced the Pyrenees Mountains separating Nazi-controlled France from Spain as his family fled Hitler's Europe for freedom; in his adult life he faced CBS, government bureaucrats, Hollywoo... read more

Sanjay Burman has had an accomplished life - he produced two feature films and two TV shows by the age of 24, and sold his high school to Pepsi for $1.2 million. This book showcases personal anecdotes and honest lessons he has learned through his failures and successes that can inspire others to persevere. People who want to go further in life but lack the confidence can be motivated to take risks, despite class, education, or lack of money. The experiences and scenarios that are recounted teach people to stop wishing and start exp... read more

The survivor of a difficult childhood and youth, Rubin Carter rose to become a top contender for the middleweight boxing crown. But his career crashed to a halt on May 26, 1967, when he and another man were found guilty of the murder of three white people in a New Jersey bar. While in prison, Carter chronicled the events that led him from the ring to three consecutive life sentences and 10 years in solitary confinement. His story was a cry for help to the public, an attempt to set the record straight and force a new trial. Bob Dyla... read more