Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

"Blood flows over my left hand and I lose my grip on his hair. His head snaps back against the floor. In an instant, his fists are pummeling me. I rock from his counterblows. He lands one on my injured jaw and the pain nearly blinds me. He connects with my nose, and blood and snot pour down my throat. I spit blood between my teeth and scream with him. The two of us sound like caged dogs locked in a death match. We... (more)

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

by Walter R. Borneman

In Polk , Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought Texas into the... (more)

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

A Leader Becomes a Leader: Inspirational Stories of Leadership for a New Generation

by J. Kevin Sheehan

A Leader Becomes a Leader opens with a window on history: Henry David Thoreau riding a borrowed horse and wagon into the woods around Concord, Massachusetts to Walden Pond in 1845. There, he writes a classic work that has a powerful effect on the lives and philosophies of seminal leaders in the next century as diverse as Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Thoreau believed that a... (more)

De Niro's Game

by Rawi Hage

Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

"Whittaker Chambers has written one of the really significant American autobiographies...penetrating and terrible insights into America in the early twentieth century." --Arthur Schlesingr, Jr.

Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II

Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II

by George Weigel

The Definitive Biography of Pope John Paul II Witness to Hope is the authoritative biography of one of the singular figures -- some might argue the singular figure -- of our time. With unprecedented cooperation from John Paul II and the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of the Pope as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious... (more)

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin's classic life of Lyndon Johnson, who presided over the Great Society, the Vietnam War, and other defining moments the tumultuous 1960s, is a monument in political biography. From the moment the author, then a young woman from Harvard, first encountered President Johnson at a White House dance in the spring of 1967, she became fascinated by the man—his character, his enormous energy and drive,... (more)

Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

by Tony Hendra

A key comic writer of the past three decades has created his most heartfelt and hard-hitting book. Father Joe is Tony Hendra’s inspiring true story of finding faith, friendship, and family through the decades-long influence of a surpassingly wise Benedictine monk named Father Joseph Warrillow. Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen-year-old Tony found himself entangled with a married... (more)

Night Trilogy: Book 1

Night

by Elie Wiesel

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night , a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers... (more)

A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope

A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope

by Stanislaw Dziwisz

This intimate, affectionate portrait of Pope John Paul II by his longtime secretary and confidant reveals fascinating new details about the opinions, hopes, fears, and dramatic life of this public man. “I had accompanied him for almost forty years: twelve in Kraków and then twenty-seven in Rome. I was always with him, always at his side. Now, in the moment of death, he’d gone on alone. . . .And now? Who is... (more)

Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977: Joseph Ratzinger , Pope Benedict XVI

Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977: Joseph Ratzinger , Pope Benedict XVI

by Benedict

Rich in humor and culture, passion and love for the cause of God and of man, Milestones is the autobiography of one of the most influential men in the Catholic Church at the turn of the millennium. In his famous Apology, Cardinal Newman accounted for his conversion to Catholicism. In this biography, which in certain respects recalls Newman's masterpiece, Ratzinger tells of his family life, the years of the Nazi... (more)

Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

From the author of "Rubyfruit Jungle" comes a "wonderfully thoughtful, funny memoir" ("Publishers Weekly") filled with Brown's trademark social commentary--only this time the subject matter is herself. 8-page photo insert.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller Benjamin Franklin, this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how the imagination that distinguished his science sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story, a testament to the connection between... (more)

Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism

Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism

by Douglas Brinkley

"Father McGivney's vision remains as relevant as ever in the changed circumstances of today's church and society."—Pope John Paul II Is now the time for an American parish priest to be declared a Catholic saint? In Father Michael McGivney (1852-1890), born and raised in a Connecticut factory town, the modern era's ideal of the priesthood hit its zenith. The son of Irish immigrants, he was a man to whom... (more)

John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father

John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father

by Peggy Noonan

From New York Times bestselling author Peggy Noonan comes "a beautifully written testimony about . . . the most historically recognized pope" ( Library Journal ) With such accla imed books as When Character Was King , Peggy Noonan has become one of our most eloquent and respected commentators. Now she offers a stirring portrait of a spiritual and intellectual giant who personally confronted all of... (more)

The Shadow of His Wings: The True Story of Fr. Gereon Goldmann, OFM

The Shadow of His Wings: The True Story of Fr. Gereon Goldmann, OFM

by Gereon Karl Goldmann

We had to do it. We had to reprint this book. Rarely has a book had such an impact on so many of us here at Ignatius Press. It is one of the most powerful and moving books we have come across. If you can only buy one book this season, this must be the one. Here is the astonishing true story of the harrowing experiences of a young German seminarian drafted into Hitler's dreaded SS at the onset of World War II.... (more)

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

by Alan Greenspan

The Age Of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan’s incomparable reckoning with the contemporary financial world, channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Following the arc of his remarkable life’s journey through his more than eighteen-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to the present, in... (more)

China Road

A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

by Rob Gifford

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down. In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed... (more)

He Leadeth Me

by Walter J. Ciszek

He Leadeth Me is the deeply moving personal story of one man's spiritual odyssey and the unflagging faith which enabled him to survive the horrendous ordeal that wrenched his body and spirit to near collapse. Captured by the Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a "Vatican spy," American Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent some 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of... (more)

A Few Seconds of Panic: A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL (Playaway Adult Nonfiction)

A Few Seconds of Panic: A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL (Playaway Adult Nonfiction)

by Stefan Fatsis

Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills, he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges—physical, psychological, and intellectual—that pro athletes must master In Word Freak , Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: biography and memoir

by David Bellavia