Showing results by publisher "University Press Audiobooks" in Biographies & Memoirs

Over 20 years ago, in a small Israeli town, a desperate mother told a remarkable lie. She told her friends and family that her newborn child had died. That lie became the catalyst for the unfolding truth of the adoption of that same baby - Michael - who is, in fact, very much alive and now 22 years-old. He also has Down syndrome. When Kathryn Hulings adopted Michael as an infant, she could not have known that he would save her life when she became gravely ill and was left forever physically compromised.

Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen's personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in western Michigan's Oceana County, in the township of Elbridge - a couple hundred acres in the middle of rural America. Written as a series of heartfelt interlocking narratives, this collection of essays portrays the realities of farm life: haying, picking asparagus and cherries, the machinery of tractors and pickers.

The Beatles: Image and the Media charts the transformation of the Beatles from teen idols to leaders of the youth movement and powerful cultural agents. Drawing upon American mainstream print media, broadcasts, albums, films, and videos, the study covers the band's career in the United States. Michael R. Frontani explores how the Beatles' media image evolved and how this transformation related to cultural and historical events.

In Losing It, William Ian Miller brings his inimitable wit and learning to the subject of growing old: too old to matter, of either rightly losing your confidence or wrongly maintaining it, culpably refusing to face the fact that you are losing it. The "it" in Miller's "losing it" refers mainly to mental faculties - memory, processing speed, sensory acuity, the capacity to focus. But it includes other evidence as wel l- sags and flaccidities, aches and pains, failing joints and organs. What are we to make of these tell-tale signs?

Deep River uncovers layers of history - both personal and regional - that have accumulated on a river-bottom farm in west-central Missouri. It traces generations of Native Americans, frontiersmen, settlers, and farmers over the past two centuries. While the family story remains central, slavery and the Civil War in the 19th century, and Native American history in the centuries before that become major themes as well. The resulting portrait is both personal memoir and informal history, brought up from layers of time, the compound of which forms an emblematic American story.

In The Rising Clamor: The American Press, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Cold War, David P. Hadley explores the relationships that developed between the CIA and the press, its evolution over time, and its practical impact from the creation of the CIA to the first major congressional investigations of its activities in 1975-1976 by the Church and Pike Committees.

In Muhammad Ali, Michael Ezra considers the boxer who calls himself “The Greatest” from a new perspective. Ezra’s incisive study examines the relationships between Ali’s cultural appeal and its commercial manifestations. Citing examples of the boxer’s relationship to the Vietnam War and the Nation of Islam - which serve as barometers of his “public moral authority” - Muhammad Ali analyzes the difficulties of creating and maintaining these cultural images, as well as the impact these themes have on Ali’s meaning to the public.

As a married man and Stanford graduate student nearing thirty, Christopher Donner would likely have qualified for an exemption from the draft. Like most of his generation, however, he responded promptly to the call to arms after Pearl Harbor. His wartime experiences in the Pacific Theater were seared into his consciousness, and in early 1946 he set out to preserve those memories while they were still fresh.

As NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the tumultuous five years that ended the Cold War, Galvin played a key role in shaping a new era. Fighting the Cold War illuminates his leadership and service as one of America's premier soldier-statesmen, revealing him to be not only a brilliant strategist and consummate diplomat but also a gifted historian and writer who taught and mentored generations of students.

Queen of the Con tells the true story of Cassie Chadwick, a successful swindler and “one of the top 10 imposters of all time”, according to TIME magazine. Born Betsy Bigley in 1857 in Canada, she first operated as Madame Devere, a European clairvoyant, and in 1890, was arrested for defrauding a Toledo bank of $20,000. In the mid-1890s, while working as a madam in Cleveland, Cassie met and married a widowed physician with a coveted Euclid Avenue address.

In literature and film, the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence? This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the US and UK from the early 1940s to the present.

This audiobook tells the story of the brave officers and men of the nuclear attack submarine USS Queenfish who made the first survey of an extremely important and remote region of the Artic Ocean. The unpredictability of deep-draft sea ice, shallow water, and possible Soviet discovery all played a dramatic part in this fascinating 1970 voyage.

When Robert Hine's daughter, Elene, first showed signs of unhappiness as a little girl, no one dreamed she would grow up to have a serious personality disorder. As an early baby boomer, Elene reached adolescence and young womanhood in the midst of the counterculture years. Her father, a respected professor of American history at the University of California, shares the story of his family's struggle to keep Elene on track and functional, to see her through her troubles with delusions and medication, and eventually to help her raise her own children.

This remarkably immediate memoir tells of the U.S Army's essential role in the Pacific campaigns alongside the Navy and Marine Corps. America's sons, born in the first quarter of the 20th century, were forged in the twin crucibles of the Great Depression and World War II. The values and attitudes of these mostly idealistic young males ultimately sustained them in horrific trials against incredibly courageous, and often suicidally-committed, Japanese soldiers blindly loyal to their superior officers and the Emperor.

At first glance, the 1932 Easter morning murder of Salvatore "Sam" Antonio had all the trademarks of a gang-related murder. But when William H. Flubacher of the New York State Police began questioning the victim’s wife, Anna Antonio, the vague details she offered, coupled with her utter lack of shock or grief upon hearing of her husband’s brutal murder, convinced Flubacher that something was amiss. Soon, as James M. Greiner tells us in this absorbing audiobook, Anna was accused of hiring two drug dealers, Vincent Saetta and Sam Feraci, to kill her husband.

In this never-before-published memoir from the files of The Walt Disney Archives, Disney Legend Jimmy Johnson (1917-1976) takes you from his beginnings as a studio gofer during the days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the opening of Walt Disney World Resort. Johnson relates dozens of personal anecdotes with famous celebrities, beloved artists, and, of course, Walt and Roy Disney.

Formed at Camp Breckenridge, the 95th Evac arrived in Casablanca in April 1943, with 7,000 troops, 30 doctors, and 40 nurses. Hospital at War is the story of the 95th Evac Hospital as told by Zachary Friedenberg, a young surgeon at the time, fresh out of his internship. He tells the story of how the men and women of the 95th survived the war. He describes how they solved problems and learned to treat the war-wounded in the extreme heat of North Africa and during the frigid winters of the Rhineland.

An American institution, Sun Records has a history with many chapters: its Memphis origins with visionary Sam Phillips, the breakthrough recordings of Elvis Presley, and the studio's immense influence on the sound of popular music. But behind the company's chart toppers and legendary musicians there exists another story, told by Barbara Barnes Sims. In the male-dominated workforce of the 1950s, 24-year-old Sims found herself thriving in the demanding roles of publicist and sales promotion coordinator at Sun Records.

John B. McLendon was the last living protégé of basketball’s inventor Dr. James Naismith and one of the “top ten basketball coaches of the century” in Billy Packer’s opinion. McLendon’s amazing records in college and pro basketball earned him a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame (the first Black coach to be inducted), and his coaching philosophy has had a huge influence on basketball coaches.

As a writer in Wired magazine puts it, Neil Young is a "folk-country-grunge dinosaur [who has been] reborn (again) as an Internet-friendly, biodiesel-driven, multimedia machine." In Neil Young and the Poetics of Energy, William Echard stages an encounter between Young's challenging and ever-changing work and current theories of musical meaning - an encounter from which both emerge transformed.