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A young woman leaves a party with a wealthy US senator. The next morning her body is discovered in his car at the bottom of a pond. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator - a 37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy - who left her trapped underwater while he returned to his hotel, slept, and made phone calls to associates. Leo Damore's 1988 national best seller, originally entitled Senatorial Privilege, almost didn't make it into print after its original publisher, Random House, judged it too explosive....
From the dawn of the studio system to the decade it all came crashing down, Hedda Hopper was one of the Queens of Hollywood. Although she made her name as a star of the silent screen, she found her calling as a gossip columnist, where she had the ear of the most powerful force in show business: the public. With a readership of 20,000,000 people, Hopper turned nobodies into stars, and brought stars to their knees. And in this sensational memoir, she tells all.
The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the US election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency.
The dramatic, pulse-pounding story of Harry Truman's first four months in office, when this unlikely president had to take on Germany, Japan, Stalin, and the atomic bomb, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
Richard Nixon opens with young navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returning from the Pacific and setting his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes quickly gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. It is a stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial portrait of a man who embodied postwar American cynicism.
It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just 32 days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favourite film, celebrating moral fortitude.
A young woman leaves a party with a wealthy US senator. The next morning her body is discovered in his car at the bottom of a pond. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator - a 37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy - who left her trapped underwater while he returned to his hotel, slept, and made phone calls to associates. Leo Damore's 1988 national best seller, originally entitled Senatorial Privilege, almost didn't make it into print after its original publisher, Random House, judged it too explosive....
From the dawn of the studio system to the decade it all came crashing down, Hedda Hopper was one of the Queens of Hollywood. Although she made her name as a star of the silent screen, she found her calling as a gossip columnist, where she had the ear of the most powerful force in show business: the public. With a readership of 20,000,000 people, Hopper turned nobodies into stars, and brought stars to their knees. And in this sensational memoir, she tells all.
The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the US election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency.
The dramatic, pulse-pounding story of Harry Truman's first four months in office, when this unlikely president had to take on Germany, Japan, Stalin, and the atomic bomb, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
Richard Nixon opens with young navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returning from the Pacific and setting his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes quickly gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. It is a stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial portrait of a man who embodied postwar American cynicism.
It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just 32 days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favourite film, celebrating moral fortitude.
In a career spanning more than 30 years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer's titanic legacy.
Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition, and her massive insecurities.
From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.
This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.
From the New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth the Queen comes the first major biography of Prince Charles in more than 20 years - perfect for fans of The Crown. Sally Bedell Smith returns once again to the British royal family to give us a new look at Prince Charles, the oldest heir to the throne in more than 300 years.
The 1968 US presidential election was the young Lawrence O'Donnell's political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America's shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different and how we got to where we are now.
In 1964 Kathy McKeon was just 19 years old and newly arrived from Ireland when she was hired as the personal assistant to former first lady Jackie Kennedy. The next 13 years of her life were spent in Jackie's service, during which Kathy not only played a crucial role in raising young Caroline and John Jr. but also had a front-row seat to some of the 20th century's most significant events.
Lennon. Dylan. Jagger. Belushi. Leibovitz. The story of Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone's founder, editor, and publisher, is an insider's trip through the backstages of storied concert venues, rock-star hotel rooms, and the political ups and downs of the latter half of the 20th century, right up through the digital age: connecting the counterculture of Haight Ashbury to the "straight world".
In Washington Township, Michigan, on Valentine's Day, 2007, Stephen Grant filed a missing persons report on his beloved wife, Tara. The stay-at-home father of two was beside himself with despair. Why would Tara abandon him and their family? Was she involved with another man? Stephen's frantic, emotional search for Tara made national headlines, and the case was featured on Dateline among other television shows and news outlets. But key elements in Stephen's story still weren't adding up....
In August 1968 NASA made a bold decision: In just 16 weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken.
Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Matthews pulls back the curtain on the public and private worlds of Robert Francis Kennedy. He shines a light on all the important moments of his life, from his early years and his start in politics to his crucial role as attorney general in his brother's administration and his tragic run for president. This definitive book brings Bobby Kennedy to life like never before and is destined to become a political classic.
Jeffrey Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and is the senior legal analyst for CNN. In 2000 he received an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case. He is the author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, which spent more than four months on the New York Times best seller list. Before joining The New Yorker, Toobin served as an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn, New York. He lives in Manhattan.
The moving untold family story behind Abraham Zapruder's film footage of the Kennedy assassination and its lasting impact on our world.
Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he began filming President Kennedy's motorcade on November 22, 1963, that his home movie would change not only his family's life but American culture and history as well. Now his granddaughter tells the whole story of the Zapruder film for the first time. With the help of personal family records, previously sealed archival sources, and interviews, she traces the film's complex journey through history, considering its impact on her family and the public realms of the media, courts, federal government, and the arts community. Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder tells how 26 seconds of film changed a family and raised some of the most important social, cultural, and moral questions of our time.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
I've never had any interest in JFK. I had heard of the Zapruder film, But didn't know it was a "home movie". Yet, When I started this book. I couldn't stop.
Fascinating from start to finish. I highly recommend listening to this audiobook which was read by the author, making it even more compelling .
Would you try another book from Alexandra Zapruder and/or Alexandra Zapruder?
Probably not.
If you’ve listened to books by Alexandra Zapruder before, how does this one compare?
First one
What about Alexandra Zapruder’s performance did you like?
She was a good, clear reader.
Any additional comments?
This would be a good book for law students on the topic of copyright issues. After the first hour's insights into Abraham Zapruder and the aftermath of what he went through during and after 11/22/63, the book just bogged down into legal and copyright issues. That was quite disappointing.
So well done. Tasteful, thoughtful, sensitively done. Thorough historically, factually, and really appreciated the legal insight and analysis scientifically, as well as the perspective from the personal impact on the Zapruder family.
Would you listen to Twenty-Six Seconds again? Why?
Yes I would, because there is so much information both technical about the regular 8mm filming, as her Grandfather's camera was designed to work, and then there is the family history side which involves how her father, Henry, handled requests for copies of the film while keeping up his own tax law office in Dallas. There is the story of how the government handled the two copies of the film and how LIFE magazine's editor Richard Stolley obtained rights to print frames of the film by treatment Mr. Zapruder with the greatest respect. There is the story of how the National Archives obtained the original Zapruder camera and used it for analysis for the Warren Commission. Then finally there is the story of how the film was given back to the family for $16 million in the late 1990's and how they decided to hand the copyright back into the hands of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
There is so much information, well researched and documented by Alexandra, that this book should serve researchers well into the 22nd century and beyond.
What other book might you compare Twenty-Six Seconds to and why?
I can't think of any so well researched, except for Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History" which he researched for twenty years before publishing ten years before his death in 2007.
What does Alexandra Zapruder bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Her raw emotion of her voice, her engagement of relating her memories of her Grandfather and family members.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, but it ran very long. It took about three days with life's responsibilities to be carried out.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful