Learn more about the lives of authors of widely banned books from these standout biographies!
THE LIGHTNING-BUG AND THE LIGHTNING: Debunking the Myths of Mark Twain, in His Own Words by Mark Dawidziak
9781250394255 | HC | 12/1/26
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” —Mark Twain
Mark Twain warned us of the many problems we find ourselves facing today. He cautioned us, often in ferociously humorous ways, about the things that would be used to divide us: politics, religion, prejudice, ignorance, bigotry, financial disparity, class warfare, envy, greed, and more. At a time that has seen him gradually dropped out of curriculum in public and private schools, THE LIGHTING-BUG AND THE LIGHTNING explores why we need to be listening to Mark Twain’s words, now more than ever.
In the style of his bestselling Edgar Allan Poe biography A MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES, Mark Dawidziak draws not only on his decades of research as an internationally recognized Twain scholar, but also his 45 years of playing Twain on stage, which has given him first-hand familiarity with the effect Mark Twain’s words have on an audience, and why Mark Twain does indeed matter.
Along the way, Dawidziak will also draw on the many discussions he has had over the decades with such winners of the Mark Twain Prize as Carl Reiner, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Bob Newhart, Neil Simon, and Carol Burnett, as well as Twain scholars, biographers, documentarians (Ken Burns, most prominent among them) and fans, including many actors who played him (Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, James Garner).
Provocative, poignant, at times heartbreaking, and often hilarious, THE LIGHTING-BUG AND THE LIGHTNING will shatter the myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes that have surrounded Twain once and for all.
MOCKINGBIRD: A Portrait of Harper Lee: Revised and Updated by Charles J. Shields
9781250097712 | TP | 5/2/17
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD—the twentieth century’s most widely read American novel—has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. In this in-depth biography, first published in 2006, Charles J. Shields brings to life the woman who gave us two of American literature’s most unforgettable characters, Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout.
Now, ten years after its initial publication—with revisions throughout the book and a new epilogue—Shields finishes the story of Harper Lee’s life, up to its end. There’s her former agent getting her to transfer the copyright for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to him, the death of Lee’s dear sister Alice, a fuller portrait of Lee’s editor, Tay Hohoff, and—most vitally—the release of Lee’s long-buried first novel and the ensuing public devouring of what has truly become the book of the year, if not the decade: Lee’s GO SET A WATCHMAN.
THE BROTHERS VONNEGUT: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic by Ginger Strand
9780374536534 | TP | 11/22/16
In the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut takes a job in the PR department at General Electric in Schenectady, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist in its research lab—or “House of Magic.” Kurt has ambitions as a novelist, and Bernard is working on a series of cutting-edge weather-control experiments meant to make deserts bloom and farmers flourish.
While Kurt writes zippy press releases, Bernard builds silver-iodide generators and attacks clouds with dry ice. His experiments attract the attention of the government; weather proved a decisive factor in World War II, and if the military can control the clouds, fog, and snow, they can fly more bombing missions. Maybe weather will even be the “New Super Weapon.” But when the army takes charge of his cloud-seeding project (dubbed Project Cirrus), Bernard begins to have misgivings about the harmful uses of his inventions, not to mention the evidence that they are causing alarming changes in the atmosphere.
In a fascinating cultural history, Ginger Strand chronicles the intersection of these brothers’ lives at a time when the possibilities of science seemed infinite. As the Cold War looms, Bernard’s struggle for integrity plays out in Kurt’s evolving writing style. THE BROTHERS VONNEGUT reveals how science’s ability to influence the natural world also influenced one of our most inventive novelists.
AMERICAN ISIS: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath by Carl Rollyson
9781250043443 | TP | 3/4/14
The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of legend. Educated at Smith College, she had a conflicted relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the Sturm und Drang of literary celebrity. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted—and ultimately embraced by readers everywhere. At age thirty she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept on the floor above in rooms she had sealed off from the poisonous gas. ARIEL, a collection of poems she wrote at white-hot speed during her final months, became a modern classic. Her novel, THE BELL JAR, has become a part of the literary canon, appearing on student reading lists worldwide.
On the fiftieth anniversary of her death, Carl Rollyson gives us a new biography of Plath that shows her as a powerful figure who embraced both high and low culture to become the Marilyn Monroe of modern literature, a writer who wanted nothing less than to become central to the mythology of modern consciousness. AMERICAN ISIS is the first biography of Sylvia Plath to use materials newly deposited in the Ted Hughes archive at the British Library—including forty-one letters between Plath and Hughes—to create a fresh and startling look at this American icon.
WE ALL WORE STARS: Memories of Anne Frank from Her Classmates by Theo Coster, translated by Marjolijn de Jager
9780230342125 | TP | 3/12/13
In 1941, Theo Coster was a student at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum, 1 in a class of 28 Jewish children that the Nazis had segregated from the rest of the Dutch population. Among Theo’s fellow students was a young Anne Frank, whose diary would later become one of the most important documents of the Holocaust.
In this remarkable group portrait, Coster and five of his fellow classmates gather their personal stories and memories of Anne. The accounts collected here do not just help us to rediscover Anne Frank. They also stand on their own as remarkable stories of ingenuity and survival during the Holocaust—from Albert Gomes de Mesquita, who hid in ten different towns across Europe—to Hannah Goslar, who experienced the horrors of Bergen-Belsen but also made a miraculous reconnection with Anne days before her death.
BUILT OF BOOKS: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright
9780805092462 | TP | 4/27/10
This intimate account of Oscar Wilde’s life and writings is richer, livelier, and more personal than any book available about the brilliant writer, revealing a man who built himself out of books. His library was his reality, the source of so much that was vital to his life. A reader first, his readerly encounters, out of all of life’s pursuits, are seen to be as significant as his most important relationships with friends, family, or lovers. Wilde’s library, which Thomas Wright spent twenty years reading, provides the intellectual (and emotional) climate at the core of this deeply engaging portrait.
One of the book’s happiest surprises is the story of the author’s adventure reading Wilde’s library. Reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s fictional hero who enters Cervantes’s mind by saturating himself in the culture of sixteenth-century Spain, Wright employs Wilde as his own Virgilian guide to world literature. We come to understand how reading can be an extremely sensual experience, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight.
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