anecdotes

After more than a decade of working in Hollywood, actress Jayne Amelia Larson found herself out of luck, out of work, and out of prospects. Without telling her friends or family, she took a job as a limousine driver, thinking that the work might be a good way to dig out of debt while meeting A-list celebrities and important movie moguls. When she got hired to drive for the Saudi royal family vacationing in Beverly Hills, Larson thought she?d been handed the golden ticket.To be a good chauffeur means to be a ?fly on the wall,? to never speak unless spoken to, to never ask questions, to allow people to forget that you are there. The nature of the employment?Larson was on call 24 hours a day and 7 days a week?and the fact that she was the only female driver gave her an up close and personal view of one of the most closely guarded monarchies in the world, a culture of great intrigue and contradiction, and of unimaginable wealth.While experiencing a life-changing ?behind the veil? glimpse into Saudi culture, Larson ultimately discovers that we?re all very much the same everywhere?the forces that corrupt us, make us desperate, and make us human are surprisingly universal.

A collective biography from married journalists Al Roker and Deborah Roberts, who share thoughts on childhood obstacles, including obesity and growing up in the segregated South to the challenges and blessings of marriage and career.

A biography of Churchill in honor of 50 years since his death, including previously unpublished photographs of artifacts in the Churchill Archive Centre; family pictures and private correspondence; telegrams, drafts of speeches, press cuttings and official papers; ephemera, like an early report card that describes him as "very bad--in constant trouble to everybody"; pictorial timelines; public correspondence and historical items given to him; and fascinating and exhaustingly researched captions and quotes.

Presents a story of Tony, the son of photographer Lee Miller and painter-writer Sir Roland Penrose, who shares his childhood memories of his special friend, a world-famous artist by the name of Joan Mir?.

Abraham Lincoln has long been admired for his leadership, honesty, and eloquence. But despite his somber reputation, the sixteenth president was quite funny. With an uncanny ability to mimic others and an irresistible midwestern twang, Lincoln, in fact, could be downright hilarious.

Amanda Gefter discusses her path to becoming a physics writer, beginning with the time she snuck into a conference that included some of the world's greatest scientific thinkers and her father.

A collection of humorous anecdotes from Iranian American Firoozeh Dumas. Comments on themes of family, community, and tradition as she tries to reconcile her Iranian customs and Western ideals.

"In 1969, Illeana Douglas' parents saw the film Easy Rider. Like many folks of that generation, the groundbreaking film transformed them. Taking Dennis Hopper's words, "That's what it's all about man", to heart, they abandoned what Illeana had hoped would be her comfortable upper middle class life for a childhood filled with hippies, goats, free spirits, and free love. Illeana writes, "Since it was all out of my control, I began to think of my life as a movie, with a Dennis Hopper like father at the center of it. Years later I would work with Dennis Hopper on the film Search and Destroy"--.

"In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, the author of Paradise Under Glass gives us a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today's extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab"--.