Random House New Releases - Biography & Autobiography - Literary

Kurt Vonnegut by Dan Wakefield

2014-01-14T00:30:00-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut Letters
Written by Kurt Vonnegut
Edited by Dan Wakefield

Trade Paperback, 464 pages | Dial Press Trade Paperback | Literary Criticism & Collections - Letters; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Literary Collections | $20.00 | 978-0-385-34376-3 (0-385-34376-0)

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The Huffington Post • Kansas City Star • Time Out New York

This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide.

Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud.

Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon.

• On a job he had as a young man: “Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.”
• To a relative who calls him a “great literary figure”: “I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.”
• To his daughter Nanny: “Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.”
• To Norman Mailer: “I am cuter than you are.”

Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.

From the Hardcover edition.

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

Little Failure A Memoir
Written by Gary Shteyngart

Hardcover, 400 pages | Random House | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Humor - Topic - Adult | $27.00 | 978-0-679-64375-3 (0-679-64375-3)

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

Little Failure A Memoir
Written by Gary Shteyngart

eBook, 400 pages | Random House | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Humor - Topic - Adult | $ | 978-0-8129-9533-6 (0-8129-9533-3)

A Treatise on Shelling Beans by Bill Johnston

2013-12-03T00:30:00-05:00

A Treatise on Shelling Beans
Written by Wieslaw Mysliwski
Translated by Bill Johnston

Trade Paperback, 450 pages | Archipelago | Fiction - Political; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $22.00 | 978-1-935744-90-0 (1-935744-90-9)

• An unforgettable voice. The tone of the narrator is highly amusing, human, and perceptive.
• Package. All Archipelago Books are printed on high quality, acid-free paper, feature signature sewn binding, and each is uniquely designed with eye-catching art.

More praise for Stone Upon Stone:

"A seamless epic . . . Fresh and surprising . . . Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said that the poem that praises beauty must swallow all of death, and Stone Upon Stone does just that: illuminating the balance of beauty and brutality that defines our existence. . . . When Szymek says, 'The whole world is one big language,' we believe it. We cup our ears to listen. . . . That Stone Upon Stone reads like the grand novel it is, not a novel in translation, is a testament to Johnston's work and Mysliwski's singular vision." --Orion

"Exhilarating . . . In long, streaming paragraphs, Szymek recounts a life that is full of sorrow and happiness. He talks about everything a life can contain: lovers, drinking, war, death, accidents, experience . . . A dizzying array of memories and stories." --The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish." --Kirkus Reviews, starred

"A marvelous, garrulous book ... The grandest example of a genre ... Szymek's rustic voice narrates with a naivete and an eloquence that are equally endearing, reaching into every corner of the Polish countryside like a great shining sun." --The National

A Day at the Beach by Geoffrey A. Wolff

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

A Day at the Beach Recollections
Written by Geoffrey A. Wolff

Trade Paperback, 320 pages | Vintage | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $15.00 | 978-0-8041-7009-3 (0-8041-7009-6)

Black Fire by Robert Graysmith

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

Black Fire The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--and of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco
Written by Robert Graysmith

Trade Paperback, 288 pages | Broadway | History - United States - 19th Century; History - United States - State & Local - West (Ak, Ca, Co, Hi, Id, Mt, Nv, Ut, Wy); Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $15.00 | 978-0-307-72057-3 (0-307-72057-8)

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (a friend of Mark Twain during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.

When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a volunteer firefighter, customs inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved ninety lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope. Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the then eighteen-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a “Torch Boy,” one of the youths who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen’s hand-drawn engines at night carrying torches to light the way, always aware that a single spark could reduce the all-wood city of San Francisco to ashes in an instant. At that time a mysterious serial arsonist known by some as “The Lightkeeper” was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground six times in eighteen months – the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by any American metropolis.

Black Fire is the most thorough and accurate account of Sawyer’s relationship with Mark Twain and of the six devastating incendiary fires that baptized one of the modern world’s favorite cities. Set amid a scorched landscape of burning roads, melting iron warehouses, exploding buildings, and deadly gangs who extorted and ruled by fear, it includes the never-before-told stories of Sawyer’s heroism during the sinking of the steamship Independence and the crucial role Sawyer and the Torch Boys played in solving the mystery of the Lightkeeper.

Drawing on archival sources such as actual San Francisco newspaper interviews with Sawyer and the handwritten police depositions of the arrest of the Lightkeeper, bestselling author Robert Graysmith vividly portrays the gritty, corrupt, and violent world of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, overrun with gunfighters, hooligans, hordes of gold prospectors, crooked politicians, and vigilantes. By chronicling how Sawyer took it upon himself to investigate, expose, and stop the arsonist, Black Fire details – for the first time – Sawyer’s remarkable life and illustrates why Twain would later feel compelled to name his iconic character after his San Francisco buddy when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

Hardcover, 352 pages | Nan A. Talese | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $28.95 | 978-0-385-53090-3 (0-385-53090-0)

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

eBook, 352 pages | Nan A. Talese | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $14.99 | 978-0-385-53085-9 (0-385-53085-4)

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

Trade Paperback, 563 pages | Random House Large Print | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $29.00 | 978-0-8041-2117-0 (0-8041-2117-6)

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

Unabridged Compact Disc | Random House Audio | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $50.00 | 978-0-307-98982-6 (0-307-98982-8)

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $25.00 | 978-0-307-98983-3 (0-307-98983-6)

Vidal vs. Mailer by Carole Mallory

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

Vidal vs. Mailer
Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal
Edited by Carole Mallory

Trade Paperback, 176 pages | Melville House | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Literary Collections - American | $15.95 | 978-1-61219-266-6 (1-61219-266-1)

"I've had to smell your works from time to time." —NORMAN MAILER

"I knew Norman's syndrome. If I was on the cover of Time and he wasn't, my God he would be insulting me in the press. He couldn't stop." —GORE VIDAL

The most outrageous literary feud of the century, captured through rare interviews, transcripts, and correspondence

Commencing at about the point where they'd become the two most famous writers in the world, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal engaged in a vicious and oh-so-public feud that went on for decades. Their 1971 confrontation on the Dick Cavett show is probably the most famous literary encounter ever captured by television. The on-air badinage between the two was shockingly
nasty, but some reports say it was even worse backstage, where Mailer reportedly "headbutted" Vidal in Cavett's greenroom.

The feud, from a time when writers really mattered in American public life, is the stuff of literary legend, and Vidal vs. Mailer collects the exchanges, transcripts and interviews that document the historic rivalry.

As we learn, it was a feud from the very start. Mailer recounts in a joint Esquire interview—published here in full here for the first time—that during their first meeting Vidal promised a rivalry to the death and swore that he'd surely out-live Mailer.

Mailer preferred more combative and physical exchanges. At the climax of the feud in the late 1970s, Mailer encountered Vidal at a party thrown by Lally Weymouth and promptly flattened him with a punch. At which point Vidal, still on the floor, uttered what is perhaps the most immortally apt literary criticism ever: "Once again, words have failed Norman Mailer."

Vidal vs. Mailer by Carole Mallory

2013-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

Vidal vs. Mailer
Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal
Edited by Carole Mallory

eBook | Melville House | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Literary Collections - American | $15.95 | 978-1-61219-267-3 (1-61219-267-X)

Mind of an Outlaw by Jonathan Lethem

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

Mind of an Outlaw Selected Essays
Written by Norman Mailer
Edited by Phillip Sipiora
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Hardcover, 640 pages | Random House | Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Books & Reading; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $40.00 | 978-0-8129-9347-9 (0-8129-9347-0)

Mind of an Outlaw by Jonathan Lethem

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

Mind of an Outlaw Selected Essays
Written by Norman Mailer
Edited by Phillip Sipiora
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

eBook, 640 pages | Random House | Literary Criticism & Collections - Essays; Literary Criticism & Collections - Books & Reading; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $19.99 | 978-0-679-64565-8 (0-679-64565-9)

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Written by Artemis Cooper

Hardcover, 480 pages | New York Review Books | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Adventurers & Explorers; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $30.00 | 978-1-59017-674-0 (1-59017-674-X)

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s enviably colorful life took off when in 1934, at the age of eighteen, he decided to walk across Europe. In just over a year he had trekked through nine countries and taught himself three languages, and his enthusiasm and curiosity for every kind of experience made him equally happy in caves or country houses, among shepherds or countesses.

At the outbreak of war he left his lover, Princess Balasha Cantacuzene, in Romania and returned to England to enlist. Commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, he became one of the handful of Allied officers supporting the Cretan resistance to the German occupation. In 1944 he commanded the Anglo-Cretan team that abducted General Heinrich Kreipe and spirited him away to Egypt.

A journey to the Caribbean, stays in monasteries, and explorations all over Greece provided the subjects for his first books. It was not until he and his wife had moved to southern Greece that he returned to his earliest walk. In these books, which took many years to write, he created a vision of a prewar Europe, which in its beauty and abundance has never been equaled.

Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, and has had complete access to his archive. Her beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts—no one wore their learning so playfully nor inspired such passionate friendship.

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Written by Artemis Cooper

eBook, 480 pages | New York Review Books | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; Biography & Autobiography - Adventurers & Explorers; Biography & Autobiography - Military | $30.00 | 978-1-59017-699-3 (1-59017-699-5)

The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

The Rise of Abraham Cahan
Written by Seth Lipsky

eBook, 240 pages | Schocken | Biography & Autobiography - Editors, Journalists, Publishers; History - Jewish; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $12.99 | 978-0-8052-4310-9 (0-8052-4310-0)

The first general-interest biography of the legendary editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, the iconic Yiddish-language newspaper of the laboring masses that inspired, educated, and entertained millions of readers, helped redefine journalism during its golden age, and transformed American culture.

Abraham Cahan took the helm of a failing Yiddish Socialist daily in New York City in 1902 and over the next fifty years turned it into a national newspaper that changed American politics and earned him the adulation of millions of Jewish immigrants and the friendship of the greatest newspapermen of his day, from Lincoln Steffens to H. L. Mencken. Cahan--whose tenure at the Forward spanned the Russian Revolution, the First World War, the rise of political Zionism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the creation of the State of Israel--did more than cover the news. He led revolutionary reforms--spreading social democracy, organizing labor unions, battling communism, and assimilating immigrant Jews into American society, most notably via his groundbreaking advice column, "A Bintel Brief." Cahan was also a celebrated novelist whose works are read and studied to this day as brilliant examples of fiction that turned the immigrant narrative into an art form. Acclaimed journalist Seth Lipsky, creator of the English-language successor to Cahan's Forward, gives us the fascinating story of a man of profound contradictions: an avowed socialist who wrote fiction with transcendent sympathy for a wealthy manufacturer; an internationalist who turned against the anti-Zionism of the left; an assimilationist whose final battle was against religious apostasy. Lipsky's Cahan is a prism through which to understand the paradoxes and transformations of American Judaism itself. A towering newspaperman in the manner of Horace Greeley and Joseph Pulitzer, Abraham Cahan revolutionized our idea of what newspapers could accomplish.

This biography is part of the critically-acclaimed JEWISH ENCOUNTERS series, a collaboration between Schocken Books and Nextbook Press.

(With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky

2013-10-15T00:30:00-05:00

The Rise of Abraham Cahan
Written by Seth Lipsky

Hardcover, 240 pages | Schocken | Biography & Autobiography - Editors, Journalists, Publishers; History - Jewish; Biography & Autobiography - Literary | $26.00 | 978-0-8052-4210-2 (0-8052-4210-4)

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem by Jeremy Dauber

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye
Written by Jeremy Dauber

Hardcover, 480 pages | Schocken | Biography & Autobiography - Literary; History - Jewish; Drama - Russian & Former Soviet Union | $28.95 | 978-0-8052-4278-2 (0-8052-4278-3)

The first comprehensive biography of one of the most beloved authors of all time: the creator of Tevye the Dairyman, the stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof.

Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature and a folk hero in his own right. The creator of a pantheon of memorable characters who have been immortalized in books and plays, he provided readers with a fascinating window onto the world of Eastern European Jews as they began to confront the forces of cultural, political, and religious modernity that tore through the Russian empire in the final decades of the nineteenth century. But just as compelling as the fictional lives of his characters was Sholem Aleichem's own life story. Born Sholem Rabinovitch in Ukraine in 1859, he endured an impoverished childhood, married into fabulous wealth, and then lost it all through bad luck and worse business sense. Turning to his pen to support himself, he switched from writing in Russian and Hebrew to Yiddish in order to create a living body of literature for the Jewish masses. He enjoyed spectacular success as both a writer and a performer of his work in Jewish communities throughout Europe and the United States, and his death from chronic tuberculosis in New York in 1916 was front-page news around the world. His funeral was attended by more than 150,000 people, and a New York Times editorial mourned the loss of "the Jewish Mark Twain." But his greatest fame lay ahead of him, as the English-speaking world began to discover his work in translation and his beloved characters were introduced to an audience that would extend beyond his wildest dreams. In this magnificent biography, we encounter a Sholem Aleichem for the ages.

This biography is part of the critically-acclaimed JEWISH ENCOUNTERS series, a collaboration between Schocken Books and Nextbook Press.

(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

Random House New Releases - Biography & Autobiography - Literary

Kurt Vonnegut by Dan Wakefield

Kurt Vonnegut LettersWritten by Kurt Vonnegut Edited by Dan Wakefield

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

Little Failure A MemoirWritten by Gary Shteyngart

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

Little Failure A MemoirWritten by Gary Shteyngart

A Treatise on Shelling Beans by Bill Johnston

A Treatise on Shelling Beans Written by Wieslaw Mysliwski Translated by Bill Johnston

A Day at the Beach by Geoffrey A. Wolff

A Day at the Beach RecollectionsWritten by Geoffrey A. Wolff

Black Fire by Robert Graysmith

Black Fire The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--and of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San FranciscoWritten by Robert Graysmith

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His SonWritten by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His SonWritten by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His SonWritten by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His SonWritten by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His SonWritten by Pat Conroy

Vidal vs. Mailer by Carole Mallory

Vidal vs. Mailer Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal Edited by Carole Mallory

Vidal vs. Mailer by Carole Mallory

Vidal vs. Mailer Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal Edited by Carole Mallory

Mind of an Outlaw by Jonathan Lethem

Mind of an Outlaw Selected EssaysWritten by Norman Mailer Edited by Phillip Sipiora Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Mind of an Outlaw by Jonathan Lethem

Mind of an Outlaw Selected EssaysWritten by Norman Mailer Edited by Phillip Sipiora Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Written by Artemis Cooper

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Written by Artemis Cooper

The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky

The Rise of Abraham Cahan Written by Seth Lipsky

The Rise of Abraham Cahan by Seth Lipsky

The Rise of Abraham Cahan Written by Seth Lipsky

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem by Jeremy Dauber

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created TevyeWritten by Jeremy Dauber

Kurt Vonnegut Letters
Written by Kurt Vonnegut
Edited by Dan Wakefield

Little Failure A Memoir
Written by Gary Shteyngart

Little Failure A Memoir
Written by Gary Shteyngart

A Treatise on Shelling Beans
Written by Wieslaw Mysliwski
Translated by Bill Johnston

A Day at the Beach Recollections
Written by Geoffrey A. Wolff

Black Fire The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--and of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco
Written by Robert Graysmith

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

The Death of Santini The Story of a Father and His Son
Written by Pat Conroy

Vidal vs. Mailer
Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal
Edited by Carole Mallory

Vidal vs. Mailer
Written by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal
Edited by Carole Mallory

Mind of an Outlaw Selected Essays
Written by Norman Mailer
Edited by Phillip Sipiora
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Mind of an Outlaw Selected Essays
Written by Norman Mailer
Edited by Phillip Sipiora
Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Written by Artemis Cooper

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Written by Artemis Cooper

The Rise of Abraham Cahan
Written by Seth Lipsky

The Rise of Abraham Cahan
Written by Seth Lipsky

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye
Written by Jeremy Dauber