Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Art & Literature

An absorbing chronicle of a much overlooked chapter in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ life - her 19-year editorial career. History remembers Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as the consummate first lady, the nation’s tragic widow, the tycoon’s wife, and the quintessential embodiment of elegance. Her biographers, however, skip over an equally important stage in her life: her nearly 20-year-long career as a book editor. Jackie as Editor, written by one of the authors Jackie edited, is the first book to focus exclusively on this remarkable woman’s editorial career.

Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, "the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists", from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame, and his lifelong friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. In addition to his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone - often called the first true detective novel - and the sensational The Woman in White, Collins produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works.

Before there was Steve Jobs, there was Norman Bel Geddes. A ninth-grade dropout who found himself at the center of the worlds of industry, advertising, theater, and even gaming, Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclub to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that envisioned how America would look in the not-too-distant 1960s.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Union artillery lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson fell while bravely spurring his men to action. His father, Sam, a New York Times correspondent, was already on his way to Gettysburg when he learned of his son's wounding but had to wait until the guns went silent before seeking out his son, who had died at the town's poorhouse. Sitting next to his dead boy, Sam Wilkeson then wrote one of the greatest battlefield dispatches in American history.

James Orlebar Cloyster, in order to marry his true love, embarks on a scheme of such clever deception that he very nearly manages to ruin both his romance and his career. Told from multiple viewpoints - that of James, his fiancée, and friends - Not George Washington lampoons London society, literary pretension, the West End stage, playwrights, playgoers, bohemian life, and the newspapers of the day.

Ghost Songs charts McBride's teenage struggle to separate madness from imagination and sorrow from devastation in the wake of the shocking deaths of both her parents. Traveling from New York City to the desert of New Mexico to the shores of Ireland, McBride searches for herself, home, and a way to return to the family that remains. Harrowing and haunting, Ghost Songs is a meditation on love and loss and, in the end, a celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit.

Priscilla Buckley is probably known for her long and admired tenure as managing editor of the conservative political journal National Review, founded in the 1950s by her brother, William F. Buckley, Jr. But in String of Pearls we meet a different Priscilla, young Pitts Buckley, just out of Smith, eager for the next step up from the college paper to "real" journalism.

Facets of Ayn Rand is based on 48 hours of interviews with Mary Ann and Charles Sures, longtime personal friends of Ayn Rand. Their recollections make vividly real the Ayn Rand they knew so well.

When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Julia sought comfort in the rituals of the orphanage - learning to knit, roller-skating after dinner, listening to One Man's Family on the radio - and tried to adapt. But two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska.

From an acclaimed classicist comes a witty, unusual, and fascinating "biography" of Homer's fictional Bronze Age hero, Odysseus. In this entertaining book, Charles Beye fills out the story of this extraordinary figure while at the same time portraying Odysseus' evolution through the course of a strange and adventuresome life, at times so remote, at times so immediate in the contemporary perspective.

This dramatic story of two men's efforts to save a small Wisconsin daily from obliteration at the hands of the nation's largest newspaper chain brings together startling case histories of the dubious tactics practiced by Gannett and unsparing insights into the newspaper industry.

While still a young boy, Robb White built his first boat, hewn from the tin roof of an abandoned chicken coop in the backyard. Today, without any formal training, White constructs some of the most sought-after wooden boats around. In How to Build a Tin Canoe, this Southern raconteur and self-taught expert wooden-boat builder recounts tall tales of a life lived on the water, from his childhood exploring the Gulf of Mexico to growing up - or not really growing up - to share his accrued wisdom with others.

When Susan Richards adopted an abused horse rescued by the local SPCA, she didn't know that the memoir she would write about the experience would become a best seller - or that she would fall in love.

The host of the NBC Today Show’s popular segment shares his favorite stories of citizens making a difference around the country. For the six million people who watch the Emmy Award-winning "American Story with Bob Dotson" on NBC’s Today Show, Bob Dotson’s reports celebrate the inspirational stories of everyday Americans. Dotson has been crisscrossing the country for more than 40 years - logging more than four million miles - in search of people who have quietly but profoundly changed our lives and our counrty for the better.

Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were united not only as man and wife, but also as writers who shared and debated ideas, values, and literary craft.

Generoso Pope, Sr., an Italian immigrant, arrived in New York in 1906 with only pennies in his pocket. He got a job shoveling sand, but through his intelligence, he worked his way up to become the biggest provider of cement, just as it was becoming the key material for building. Gene Pope, Jr., was his father’s choice to inherit and run the business, but Gene’s mother and two brothers forced him out, and he found himself penniless and on his own. With a loan from his godfather, mobster Frank Costello, Gene bought the New York Enquirer. He renamed it the National Enquirer.

In this memoir, Frayn reveals the original exemplar of the extraordinary-ordinary life: his father, Tom Frayn. A clever lad, a roofing salesman with a winning smile and a racetrack vocabulary, Tom Frayn emerged undaunted from a childhood spent in two rooms with six other people, all of them deaf. And undaunted he stayed, even through the shockingly sudden tragedy that darkened his life.