Parts 1 and 2 (the entire book). Unabridged. 20 audio cassettes. The life of Linus Pauling, distinguished scientist, committed activist, and dual Nobel Prize winner.

In this persuasive biography, Jim Lacey sheds light on General Pershing's legacy as the nation's first modern combat commander, setting the standard for today's four-star officers. When the U. S. entered into WWI in 1917, they did so with inadequate forces.  In just over a year, Pershing built and hurled a one million man army against forty battle-hardened German divisions, defending the hellish Meuse-Argonne and turning the tide of the war. With focus and clarity, Lacey traces the development of Pershing from Indian fighter, to guerrilla warrior against the Philippines insurgency to victorious commander in WWI.

When a group of thirteen middle-aged women friends decides to buy and share a $37,000 diamond necklace, they learn more than they ever thought possible about themselves, friendship, and the power of possibility.

Beginning as a mailroom employee at the William Morris Agency in 1955, Bernie Brillstein rose to become one of the most successful Hollywood players of all time. In this witty, frank memoir, he recounts friendships and feuds with famous clients, among them Jim Henson, Gilda Radner, Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, and Brad Pitt. Brillstein also reveals the inner workings of The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and other films. "My wink is binding," Bernie Brillstein writes in the middle part of his memoir of a career in showbiz. At this point the movie-star manager has already admitted that he wanted power and prestige as soon as he started in the William Morris agency mailroom. And that he chased after a Don Corleone-ish kind of respect afterward. But even when he became a clout-carrying manager and near-mogul he kept his people-first credo. You suspect he loves it too for the way it echoes the Borscht Belt, since that's the kind of verbal energy he draws on throughout this anecdote-crammed autobiography. He calls himself "show," but in four decades he had to be "business" too, tough enough to tell clients, as he says he did, when to start their career over from scratch. The book begins with a graphically honest memory of his visit to the proctologist with his family when he was 24-something he guffaws off, but it's probably not far from the sort of reality check he regularly gave clients like Jim Henson, Norm Crosby, Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, and Brad Pitt. [+]

Brian Moore finally hung up his microphone after commentating on the 1998 World Cup finals last year. In this enlightening audiobook he looks back on his distinguished career. He charts his amazing success story, from his beginnings in a council house in Kent to an affirmed place in the nation's affections. Brian Moore has commentated on all the major football games of recent decades - including the 1966 World Cup Final and the unforgettable England-Argentina match in the 1998 World Cup. This is a book of anecdotes, of scrapes and magical moments in the commentary box. After so long at the top, Brian has a wealth of amusing and interesting stories to tell about many of the top names in sports broadcasting. "The Final Score" is both warm and entertaining, and fascinating for anybody interested in sport and television on the inside.

One of the most remarkable Irish memoirs beautifully written by one of the most acclaimed figures in Irish theater. Peter Sheridan, who hails from the remarkable, accomplished, and very funny Sheridan family, recalls growing up in the turbulent 1960s. Theater director Peter Sheridan's bracing memoir is timelessly Irish in its lyrical, word-drunk portrait of a boisterous family touched by tragedy: his younger brother, Frankie, died, aged 10, from a brain tumor. The book is also very much a document of the 1960s. It opens on New Year's Eve as 10-year-old Peter and his Da struggle to install a roof antenna: "Half an hour into 1960 we all sat staring at the television. " The television goes on to play a major role in the Sheridans' perceptions of life beyond 44 Seville Place, Dublin, particularly when the Troubles explode across the border in Northern Ireland, their mother's birthplace. Rock & roll provides the soundtrack of Peter's youth, though theater becomes the lifeblood for him and older brother Shea (better known now as film director Jim Sheridan-My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father). Ending with the decade's last New Year's Eve, as he prepares to enter Trinity College, Sheridan closes a complex but seamless circle of metaphors and themes. His father finds the part necessary to fix their ancient TV, and when the family hears Da singing "Frankie and Johnny" in the bath for the first time since their Frankie's death, they know they have survived. -Wendy Smith.

A full-scale portrait of one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century provides an in-depth critical analysis of Fitzgerald's life, writings, and the relationship between them. National ad/promo.

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons). How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family. But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation. In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. [+]

Once Romanian leader Ceausescu's right-hand man, Pacepa defected to the U. S. in 1978. In a compelling expose, Pacepa reveals Ceausescu's active role in international terrorism and intelligence gathering and his friendships with Arafat and Qaddafi. 11 cassettes.

“I told God that if he would let us survive this night, I would make it mean something worthwhile. And then, somehow, I felt calmer than I have ever felt. Unreasonably so. Irrationally so. I looked over the scene of our wrecked life and I smiled–a crazy smile for sure–and I looked through the dark at the mad beauty of it. ”–Jean SilverwoodAn exhilarating true-life adventure of one family’s extraordinary sea voyage of self-discovery and survival, tragedy and triumphSuccessful businessman John Silverwood and his wife, Jean, both experienced sailors, decided the time was right to give their four children a taste of thrilling life on the high seas. And indeed their journey aboard the fifty-five-foot catamaran Emerald Jane would have many extraordinary and profound moments, whether it was the peaceful late-night watches John enjoyed under the stunning celestial sky or the elation shared by the whole family at the sight of blissful pods of dolphin and migrating tortoises. John and Jean had hoped to use the trip as a teaching opportunity, with the Emerald Jane as a floating classroom in which to instruct their children in important lessons–not only about the natural world but about the beauty of human life when stripped down to its essence, far from the trappings of civilization. Yet rather than flourishing amid the new freedoms and responsibilities thrust upon them, the children were sometimes confused, frightened, resentful. The two oldest, fourteen-year-old Ben and twelve-year-old Amelia, missed their friends and the comfortable life left behind in San Diego, while the two youngest, Jack, seven, and Camille, three, picked up on the stressful currents running above and below the surface–for throughout the journey, the Silverwood family found its bonds tested as never before. [+]

When a fire raged through a college dormitory, killing or injuring sixty-one students, Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos survived but were both burned terribly. This is the story of the struggle for survival of these extraordinary young men.

'For more than twenty years, Katharine Hepburn imparted many of the details of her life to me suggesting that I weave them into a book - one that would appear upon her death. Sad to say, the time has come to publish that book. But I find comfort in knowing she lived a very rich 96 years; and I have tried my best to honour her wish of making the book as true to her spirit as possible - as inspiring, as loving and as fun. ' Scott Berg KATE REMEMBERED is a loving tribute and a tender farewell that reveals an unusual relationship in a unique life, one fully lived - and largely according to Katharine Hepburn's own rules. More importantly, it sets down many of the stories of that life as she saw them, full of sentiments she felt should not be made public until after her death. Ultimately, this book is not only a story of the poignant final twenty years in which Scott Berg knew Katharine Hepburn, but also a tale of a great theatrical personality and the better part of the century that was the stage for her distinguished life. Published a mere 13 days after the death of Katharine Hepburn, Kate Remembered is best appreciated as a valentine of devoted friendship. It's a moving study of mutual trust and admiration between Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg and legendary Hollywood icon Hepburn, who'd established an instant rapport in 1983, beginning a 20-year conversation that blossomed into this enchanting "biographical memoir. " As a casual but authoritative survey of Hepburn's career, Berg's book offers little new information to anyone who's read previous Hepburn biographies or Me: Stories of My Life, Hepburn's bestselling 1991 memoir. [+]

Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood, mysterious, bizarre, and tragic lives in American history. In this brilliantly documented biography, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth. Hughes had always been different. Certainly his riches set him apart, but he was also tough. Orphaned and a millionaire at eighteen, Hughes repudiated his relatives, seized control of the Hughes Tool Company, the linchpin of his fortune, and went on to become a flamboyant movie producer, holder of many world aviation records, principal owner of Trans World Airlines, a critically important defense contractor, Hollywood's most pursued and elusive bachelor, and partner of the United States government. This is an epic biography of an epic figure who bestrode the world like a colossus yet could not master himself.

Hailed as both an extraordinary and a common man, Daniel Boone is an intriguing paradox. Faragher's biography is a study of both the hero himself and of a uniquely American hero-making process. 9 cassettes.

Queen of Egypt, scholar, murderer, lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. the perfect subject for distinguished historian Grant, who debunks the image of a wayward woman and replaces it with a brilliant linguist and strategist.