Showing titles in Women

In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written.

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

Hedy Lamarr's exotic beauty was heralded across Europe in the early 1930s. Yet she became infamous for her nude scenes in the scandalous movie Ecstasy. Trapped in a marriage to one of Austria's munitions barons, a friend of Mussolini's who hid his Jewish heritage to become an "honorary Aryan" at the onset of World War II, Lamarr fled Europe for Hollywood, where she was transformed into one of film's most glamorous celebrities, appearing opposite such actors as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and James Stewart.

When Rosamond Halsey Carr first arrived in Africa, she didn't realize that she would spend the rest of her life there. As a young fashion illustrator living in New York City in the 1940s, she seemed the least likely candidate for such a life of adventure. But marriage to a hunter-explorer took her to what was then the Belgian Congo, and divorce left her determined to stay on in neighboring Rwanda as the manager of a flower plantation.

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) was renowned for her medically-important work on penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. Fully engaged with the political and social currents of her time, she participated in some of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century: women's education; the globalisation of science; the rise and fall of communism; and international peace movements. A wife, mother and grandmother, she cared deeply about the well-being of individuals in all cultures.

When Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY, neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, whose courage and sacrifice were unsurpassed in the Pacific War against Japan. Long accustomed to keeping her secrets close in service of the Allies, she waited 50 years to reveal the story of those dramatic and harrowing days to her own children.

Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.

Far from bitter or self-pitying, Rock Monster is an honest account of one woman's life-changing experience in a relationship with rock legend Joe Walsh. At once envious, glamorous, debauched, and disturbing, it's her long and winding journey from life in the fast lane to sobriety and redemption.

In this indelible memoir of the life of her remarkable 95-year-old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia - a nation that underwent a tumultuous transformation from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy, over the course of one century. Filled with a vivid cast of characters - emperors and empresses, priests and scholars, monks and nuns, archbishops and slaves, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents - The Wife's Tale introduces a woman both imperious and vulnerable.

A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish.

If there had been no cover-up of Robert Kennedy's complicity in the murder of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and he had been prosecuted based on compelling evidence at the time, the assassination of JFK by Bobby's enemies would not have happened - changing the course of history and preventing the murder of media icon Dorothy Kilgallen.

Why are we so obsessed with being our so-called best selves? Because our modern culture force feeds women lies designed to heighten their insecurities: "You can do it all - crush it at work, at home, in the bedroom, at PTA, and at Pilates - and because you can, you should. We can show you how!" Karen Karbo has had enough. She’s taking a stand against the cultural and societal pressures, marketing, and media influences that push us to spend endless time, energy, and money trying to "fix" ourselves.

For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. This is her most personal memoir yet.

In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: the international campaign to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the daring French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples—including the Temple of Dendur, now at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—would currently be at the bottom of a vast reservoir.

Ruth Painter Randall’s brilliant biography of Mary and Abraham Lincoln sheds new light upon their marriage and dispels the myths that have surrounded it. This audiobook rehabilitates the reputation of Mary Lincoln and deserves to be listen to by all those who wish to find the truth about the remarkable relationship between Mary and her husband and the impact that she made on him throughout his years in office.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition, with boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, and an attempt to find a deeper sense of plac - and a slower pace - in a small New England town. This is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers - holding on, letting go.

Today, women are ascendant in stand-up comedy, even preeminent. They make headlines, fill arenas, spawn blockbuster movies. But before Amy Schumer slayed, Tiffany Haddish killed, and Ali Wong drew roars, the very idea of a female comedian seemed, to most of America, like a punch line. And it took a special sort of woman—indeed, a parade of them—to break and remake the mold. In on the Joke is the story of a group of unforgettable women who knocked down the doors of stand-up comedy so other women could get a shot

On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready" - and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home" (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson's life through 10 decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet.

Escucha ahora uno de los libros fundamentales de Rosa Montero, Premio Nacional de las Letras 2017. Una obra pionera en la reivindicación del papel de la mujer en la historia a través de las biografías de sus protagonistas.

Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart. All of these describe Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned through more seismic social change than any monarch since 1066. Robert Hardman has already examined the Queen as a modern monarch and her role as a stateswoman abroad. Now, he wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy.