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In this dual biography, McMurtry explores the lives, the legends, and above all the truth about two larger-than-life American figures. With his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill Cody helped invent the image of the West that still exists today--cowboys and Indians, rodeo, rough rides, sheriffs and outlaws, trick shooting, Stetsons, and buck-skin. His most celebrated protégée, the short, slight Annie Oakley--born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio--spent sixteen...
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The author describes her odyssey to Ghana in the 1960s, meant as a return to her African roots. Over a few years she transformed herself by learning to speak Fanti, dressing in Ghanian style and delving in politics. But after encountering racial prejudice and losing her son in a car crash, she returned to America.
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Actress, comedienne, singer, and dancer Debbie Reynolds shares the highs and lows of her life as an actress during Hollywoods Golden Age, anecdotes about her lifelong friendship with Elizabeth Taylor and her experiences as the foremost collector of Hollywood memorabilia, and intimate details of her marriages and family life with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher.
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"Joan Rivers was known all over the world--from the Palace Theater to Buckingham Palace, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the footlights of Broadway, from the days of talkies to hosting talk shows. But there was only one person who knew Joan intimately, one person who the authorities would call when she got a little out of hand. Her daughter and best friend, Melissa. Joan and Melissa Rivers had one of the most celebrated mother-daughter relationships...
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An exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker, the woman who worked her way from the slums of St. Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by both author and artist, Josephine's powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself....
48) Ray
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Ray Charles went blind at the age of seven. Inspired by his mother who insisted he make his own way, he found his calling at the keyboard. 'Ray' follows as he overcomes drug addiction while becoming one of the country's most beloved performers.
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In 1939 London, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged governess who finds herself once again unfairly dismissed from her job. Now she must seize the day if she wants a job. She does this by intercepting an employment assignment outside of her comfort level as social secretary. Arriving at a penthouse apartment for the interview, Miss Pettigrew is catapulted into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia...
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Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration. Blood Brothers flashes back to 1876, when the Lakota wiped out Custer's 7th Cavalry unit at the Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull did not participate in the "last stand," but was nearby-and blamed for killing Custer. The book also flashes forward to 1890, when Sitting Bull was assassinated. Hours before, Cody rushed to Sitting Bull's cabin at Standing...
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As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, "queen of the B-pluses." But on the small screen she was a superstar-arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy's genius and places it in the context of her conflicted and sometimes bitter personal life.
Ball of Fire gives us Lucy in all her contradictions. Here is the beauty who became a master of knock-down...
55) Green book
Description
When Tony Lip, a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on The Green Book to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger, as well as unexpected humanity and humor, they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the...
56) Out on a limb
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Shirley MacLaine records the experience of getting in touch with herself during her early forties and her interest in spiritualism.
57) The wild ones
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In the 1870s, the frontier was a battleground, where the U.S. Army fought Plains warriors, outlaws terrorized the land, and lawmen took no prisoners. Into the West came a family of New York City stage performers: a widowed father, his son, and a daughter whose beauty and singing voice could make the most hardened frontiersmen weep.
The Fontaine family was not prepared for the life they found across the Mississippi. From Abilene to Dodge City, they...
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"In 1964, Nina Simone sat at a piano in New York's Carnegie Hall to play what she called a 'show tune.' Then she began to sing: 'Alabama's got me so upset/Tennessee made me lose my rest/And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam!' Simone, and her song, became icons of the civil rights movement. But her confrontational style was not the only path taken by black women entertainers. In [this work], Ruth Feldstein examines celebrated black women performers,...
59) Annie Oakley
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A biography of the frontier woman who was famous for her skills as a sharpshooter which she demonstrated in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and other shows of the time.
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"In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away."" "Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been a writer....