Biography & Autobiography | General

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 6
1895-1897
By George Gissing
· Edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young, and Pierre Coustillas

Gissing’s career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 7
1897–1899
By George Gissing
· Edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young, and Pierre Coustillas

Gissing’s career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization.

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 1
1863–1880
By George Gissing
· Edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young, and Pierre Coustillas

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 2
1881–1885
By George Gissing
· Edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young, and Pierre Coustillas

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.

The Collected Letters of George Gissing Volume 3
1886–1888
By George Gissing
· Edited by Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young, and Pierre Coustillas

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible.

Alexander Robey Shepherd
The Man Who Built the Nation’s Capital
By John P. Richardson
· Foreword by Tony Williams

With Alexander Robey Shepherd, John P. Richardson gives us the first full-length biography of his subject, who as Washington, D.C.’s, public works czar (1871–74) built the infrastructure of the nation’s capital in a few frenetic years after the Civil War. The story of Shepherd is also the story of his hometown after that cataclysm, which left the city with churned-up streets, stripped of its trees, and exhausted.An

The Sage in the Cathedral of Books
The Distinguished Chinese American Library Professional Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee
By Yang Yang
· Translation by Ying Zhang

The biography of Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, who was awarded the highly prestigious Melvil Dewey Medal by the American Library Association in 2015, will be welcomed by readers interested in knowing not only more about Lee’s personal achievements and contributions in librarianship but also about the rapid changes in the library profession in general. The biography, written by Ms. Yang Yang of China Central Television in Beijing, was first published in Chinese in China in 2011.

The Boy Is Gone
Conversations with a Mau Mau General
By Laura Lee P. Huttenbach

A story with the power to change how people view the last years of colonialism in East Africa, The Boy Is Gone portrays the struggle for Kenyan independence in the words of a freedom fighter whose life spanned the twentieth century’s most dramatic transformations. Born into an impoverished farm family in the Meru Highlands, Japhlet Thambu grew up wearing goatskins and lived to stand before his community dressed for business in a pressed suit, crisp tie, and freshly polished shoes.

A Young General and the Fall of Richmond
The Life and Career of Godfrey Weitzel
By G. William Quatman

Despite his military achievements and his association with many of the great names of American history, Godfrey Weitzel (1835–1884) is perhaps the least known of all the Union generals. After graduating from West Point, Weitzel, a German immigrant from Cincinnati, was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans.

The Collected Letters of Henry Northrup Castle
By Henry Northrup Castle
· Edited by George Herbert Mead and Helen Castle Mead
· Introduction by Alfred L. Castle
· Foreword by Marvin Krislov

Castle’s correspondence with family members and with George Herbert Mead— one of America’s most influential philosophers and his best friend at Oberlin College—reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought.

Closing Arguments
Clarence Darrow on Religion, Law, and Society
By Clarence Darrow
· Edited by S. T. Joshi

Clarence Darrow, son of a village undertaker and coffinmaker, rose to become one of America’s greatest attorneys—and surely its most famous. The Ohio native gained renown for his central role in momentous trials, including his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb and his defense of Darwinian principles in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.”

Disarming Manhood
Roots of Ethical Resistance
By David A. J. Richards

Masculine codes of honor and dominance often are expressed in acts of violence, including war and terrorism. In Disarming Manhood: Roots of Ethical Resistance, David A. J. Richards examines the lives of five famous men—great leaders and crusaders—who actively resisted violence and presented more humane alternatives to further their causes.Richards argues that William Lloyd Garrison, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Gabriela Mistral
The Audacious Traveler
Edited by Marjorie Agosín

Gabriela Mistral is the only Latin American woman writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Even so, her extraordinary achievements in poetry, narrative, and political essays remain largely untold. Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler explores boldly and thoughtfully the complex legacy of Mistral and the way in which her work continues to define Latin America.Edited

The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin
By Anita J. Ellis

A tribute to a woman artist who rose to one of the highest positions in her field.

Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space
By Peter I. Rose

Peter Rose has spent a lifetime exploring patterns of culture, examining issues of race and ethnicity, working with refugees, teaching sociology, and roaming the world. In Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space, he reflects on his adventures and the formative experiences that led him to a fascination with lives that seem quite unlike our own.Guest

Edmund Wilson, the Man in Letters
By Edmund Wilson
· Edited by David Castronovo and Janet Groth

Among the major writers of the Hemingway and Fitzgerald generation, Edmund Wilson defied categorization. He wrote essays, stories and novels, cultural criticism, and contemporary chronicles, as well as journals and thousands of letters about the literary life and his own private world. Here for the first time in print is Wilson’s personal correspondence to his parents, lovers and wives, children, literary comrades, and friends from the different corners of his life.

Maverick Heart
The Further Adventures of Zane Grey
By Stephen J. May

In 1927, at the peak of his career, Zane Grey bought a three-masted schooner, which he sailed to the Galapagos Islands, later journeying to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji.As colorful as his characters were, so too was their creator. A consummate explorer, Zane Grey toured the world, was an acclaimed expert on salt- and freshwater fishing, and incorporated the sights and sounds he witnessed into his writings.As

Stolen Life
The Journey of a Cree Woman
By Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson

The award-winning Stolen Life is a remarkable collaborative work between a distinguished novelist and a Cree woman who broke a lifetime of silence to share her story. Imprisoned for murder at the age of twenty-seven, Yvonne Johnson sought out Rudy Wiebe, the chronicler of her ancestor Big Bear, as a means of coming to terms with her self, her past, and the crime that defines her future.

Set the Ploughshare Deep
A Prairie Memoir
By Timothy Murphy

Fifteen years in the making, Set the Ploughshare Deep is a memoir in prose, verse, and woodcuts. It depicts the consequences of Warren’s advice for a writer who turned his back on cities and the academic world, who bought and sold, farmed and failed like his forebears, all the while distilling what he saw, heard, or felt into his tall tales and short verses. Timothy Murphy has harvested pheasants and ducks as well as wheat and apples.

Staking Her Claim
The Life of Belinda Mulrooney, Klondike and Alaska Entrepreneur
By Melanie J. Mayer and Robert N. DeArmond

If Horatio Alger had imagined a female heroine in the same mold as one of the young male heroes in his rags-to-riches stories, she would have looked like Belinda Mulrooney. Smart, ambitious, competitive, and courageous, Belinda Mulrooney was destined through her legendary pioneering in the wilds of the Yukon basin to found towns and many businesses. She built two fortunes, supported her family, was an ally to other working women, and triumphed in what was considered a man’s world.In