Biography and Memoir
A Girl's Got To Breathe
The actress Teresa Wright (1918–2005) lived a rich, complex, magnificent life against the backdrop of Golden Age Hollywood, Broadway, and television. There was no indication, from her astonishingly difficult—indeed, h ...
Eck Robertson at the Crossroads of American Fiddling
The Texas Panhandle’s frontier days were fresh in memory when fiddler Eck Robertson (1887-1975) arrived. Cowboys still worked on ranches in the 1910s but barbed-wire fences abounded too. Robertson pursued a ...
Dashing to the End
Born Alfred Reginald John Truscott-Jones, Welsh American actor Ray Milland (1907–1986) appeared in more than 135 theatrical releases between 1929 and 1985 and on radio, television, and the stage, while a ...
Hollywood Madonna
Loretta Young (1913–2000) was an Academy Award–winning actress known for devout Catholicism and her performances in The Farmer's Daughter, The Bishop's Wife, and Come to the Stable, and for her long-running ...
The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It
The P-38 Lightning was one of the fastest operational fighters of World War II, famous for its successes in North Africa and the Pacific. In The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It, Wolfgang W. E. ...
The Musicals of Cole Porter
Cole Porter (1891–1964) remains one of America’s most popular composer-songwriters, known for the many urbane, witty, romantic songs he wrote for stage musicals and Hollywood films. Porter was unique amo ...
Chester Brown
Best known for his alternative comics, Chester Brown (b. 1960) is one of the most acclaimed and influential cartoonists of the last half century. This first biography provides a critical account of Brown’s ...
Faulkner On and Off the Page
Though numerous biographies have been published on William Faulkner, readers are often presented conflicting interpretations of his life and work. Faulkner’s view of himself and his own family was mercurial, a ...
Sax Expat
Don Byas (1913–1972) may be lesser known than the counterparts he played with—Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others—but he was an enigma. He never stayed with a band for long, and e ...
George Valentine Dureau
New Orleans artist George Valentine Dureau (1930–2014) has always been an enigma. His status as an important artist gained momentum beginning with his first exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, t ...