Biography/Autobiography/Memoir

Posts from the ‘Biography/Autobiography/Memoir’ category

Rosenberger contracted polio in 1955, in her early 20’s, in the days leading up to a competition. For 10 years, living life, much less playing the piano, was a struggle, all the while other pianists of her generation competed and began their professional careers. To…

Review: Carol Rosenberger’s To Play Again

April 15, 2021

Sebba expertly reviews and relives Ethel Rosenberg’s life and death in her newest biography, Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy for Rosenberg’s death was a tragedy. While there are questions as to her guilt, whatever the level, it did not merit the death penalty or even…

Ethel Rosenberg – Review of Two Books

April 8, 2021

Similar to the other books in The Life Inspired series, Saint Francis of Assisi is a short readable introductory biographical sketch of the saint from birth to death. The book also merges into each chapter applicability of St. Francis’ values of penance, service,…

Review of Wyatt North’s Saint Francis of Assisi: A Life Inspired

September 8, 2019

Richard Breitman’s account of U.S. Foreign Service Senior Consul Raymond Geist’s heroic efforts at warning FDR and other high U.S. officials of the evil of Hitler’s grandiose plans to conquer and dominate the world and Geist’s efforts from the mid to late 1930’s through the…

Review of Richard Breitman’s The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany from Within

September 7, 2019

Comment

Taylor’s account of the train wreck of the Fitzgerald marriage of two clearly incompatible people was hard to read, not because of Taylor’s writing but due to the extensive disastrous consequences visited on others. Scott and Zelda consumed and destroyed so many lives. Notwithstanding other…

Review of Kendall Taylor’s The Great Gatsby: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal that Shaped an American Classic

August 22, 2019

WWII, the Nazi’s, the Resistance, and Vichy France come alive in Aaron Rockett’s Fake Papers: Survival Lessons from Grandma’s Escape. When I first started reading Fake Papers, I thought that it was a series of short accounts. It is not. Rockett alternates between eras, the…

Review of Fake Papers by Aaron Rockett

July 6, 2019

Wyatt North’s Joan of Arc: A Life Inspired is a short enjoyable read. It is not fiction. It is a biographical note of 93 pages that covers the short life of Jeanne d’Arc who was canonized (i.e., declared a saint) in 1920 five hundred years…

Review of Wyatt North’s Joan Of Arc: A Life Inspired

April 22, 2019

Like the other biographies of saints, popes, and other key Catholic leaders written by Wyatt North, this is a short read about the life of Saint Padro Pio. Included at the end of the book are several prayers of Pio. Born in Italy, Saint Padro…

The Stigmata Saint: Review of The Life and Prayers of Padre Pio by Wyatt North

December 30, 2016

Yesterday, I finished Hamlet’s Dresser: A Memoir, written by Bob Smith who was a dresser/aide for Shakespearean actors including Katherine Hepburn among others. At some point, he starting reading Shakespeare to senior citizens, getting them to appreciate the beauty and complexity of Shakespeare. I picked…

A Shakespearean Memoir: Review of Hamlet’s Dresser by Bob Smith

December 29, 2016

Thomas Merton: A Life Inspired is like the rest of the biographies written by Wyatt North is a short book chock full of facts about the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. He was a prolific author with publication credits in the hundreds. His most famous work…

A Very Public Monk: Review of Thomas Merton – A Life Inspired

December 29, 2016