Biography

Hardcover. Lexington KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An Armenian national raised in Russia, Rouben Mamoulian (1897--1987) studied in the influential Stanislavski studio, renowned as the source of the "method" acting technique. Shortly after immigrating to New York in 1926, he created a sensation with an all-black production of Porgy (1927). He then went on to direct the debut Broadway productions of three of the most popular shows in the history of American musical theater: Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), and Carousel (1945). Mamoulian began working in film just as the sound revolution was dramatically changing the technical capabilities of the medium, and he quickly established himself as an innovator. Not only did many of his unusual camera techniques become standard, but he also invented a device that eliminated the background noises created by cameras and dollies. Seen as a rebel earlier in his career, Mamoulian gradually gained respect in Hollywood, and the Directors Guild of America awarded him the prestigious D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1983. In this meticulously researched biography, David Luhrssen paints the influential director as a socially conscious artist who sought to successfully combine art and commercial entertainment. Luhrssen not only reveals the fascinating personal story of an important yet neglected figure, but he also offers a tantalizing glimpse into the extraordinarily vibrant American film and theater industries during the twenties, thirties, and forties.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 597 pages, b&w illustrations. Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a human being capable of immense evil, yet beguiling charm. McCarthy was a tireless worker and a genuine war hero. His ambitions knew few limits. Neither did his socializing, his drinking, nor his gambling. When he finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda and angered many with his sharp elbows and lack of integrity. Finally, after three years, he hit upon anti-communism. By recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department, he became the most influential and controversial man in America. His chaotic, meteoric rise is a gripping and terrifying object lesson for us all. Yet his equally sudden fall from fame offers reason for hope that, given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.

NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with faded spine. 314 pages. Fowler's last book, completed just before his death in 1960, Chapters on the famous celebrities of the period as well as profiles of panhandlers, defrocked doctors, kidnaperc and fellow reporters. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America's race problems. Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring andinquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racismand gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberene to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. She would give a command performance for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium one day, and hide from the Viet Cong among the ancient graves of the Annam kings another.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, BC Ed., 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 305 pages, 16 pages of b&w illustrations. A legend in her own time, Clara Barton, comes to life in these pages. One can almost sense the death and destruction of the battlefields (American Civil War) and disasters to which Barton was the first to bring aid and comfort to the suffering. Barton's life is great testimony as to the powerful influence that one person can have on the outcome of history, and was achieved in an age when women were secondary figures. A diminutive five-foot tall, she rose as a giant among her historical peers (e.g., Susan B. Anthony and Dorothea Dix, et al.) and forever shaped the topography of American society, healthcare, and emergency relief, by founding the American Red Cross [1881] at age 59. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran and Company, Ltd. Ed., 1937, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. SIGNED BY COWARD. Cream colored cloth with NC embossed on cover, black spine label with gilt lettering that has a narrow chip down the center. Spine darkened. No. 64 of 301 signed copies. Top edge gilt. Binding tight. Red slip case has light wear. The witty English playwright, composer, director and actor Noel Coward's autobiography. With b&w photos scattered throughout, including author frontispiece photo.

Hardcover. Charleston SC, Privately Published, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt. 211 pages, b&w frontispiece group portrait. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR/COMPILER on the title page. The chronicle of a group of families associated for many generations with the Low Country of South Carolina. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, David McKay, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled dust jacket. 167 pages illustrated by Ruth Sheetz. The Morse's became innkeepers on Martha's Vineyards, leaving city life in New York. This is the story of Beach Plum Inn. Light tanning to front fly leaf where newspaper clipping was laid in, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, The Open Field, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Born in Cold War Czechoslovakia, Paulina Porizkova rose to prominence as a model, appearing on her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 1984. As the face of Estee Lauder in 1989, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world. When she was cast in the music video for the song "Drive" by The Cars, it was love at first sight for her and frontman Ric Ocasek. He was forty at the time, and Porizkova was nineteen. The decades to come would bring marriage, motherhood, a budding writing career; and later sadness, loneliness, isolation, and eventually divorce. Following her ex-husband's death--and the revelation of a deep betrayal--Porizkova stunned fans with her fierce vulnerability and disarming honesty as she let the whole world share in her experience of being a woman who must start over. Remainder dot to bottom edge otherwise like new,

Hardcover. Hoboken NJ, Wiley, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 508 pages.Take a dazzling journey through the Gilded Age, the period from roughly the 1870s to 1914, when bluebloods from older, established families met the nouveau riche headlong-railway barons, steel magnates, and Wall Street speculators-and forged an uneasy and glittering new society in New York City. The best of the best were Caroline Astor's 400 families, and she shaped and ruled this high society with steel. A Season of Splendor is a panoramic sweep across this sumptuous landscape, presenting the families, the wealth, the balls, the clothing, and the mansions in vivid detail-as well as the shocking end of the era with the sinking of the Titanic. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a price-clipped dust jacket that's lightly soiled and spine faded, 277 pages. Eaton (b. 1764) was a flamboyant hero who was America's "Lawrence of Arabia" and defeated the Barbary Pirates at Derna. Front fly leaf with bookseller's old price in red pencil, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Southport CT, Sasco Associates, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 131 pages, b&w illustrations. With extensive disography, bibliography, and indexes of song titles and names. A biography of radio's first superstar, a singer and announcer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton and Company, 1st, 1870, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, gilt design on front cover. 589 pages, engraved portrait of Webster with tissue guard. VOLUME ONE ONLY. A comprehensive & complete history of Mr. Webster by his literary executor, George Ticknor Curtis. Faint pencil notation to blank prelim page otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Arthur Baker, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with partial fading, 449 pages, b&w illustrations. The definitive biography of the larger-than-life figure of the French Revolution who was found guilty of loyalist inclinations and executed at the guillotine. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 482 pages. William Wells Brown was a Black author and reformer of the nineteenth century, a Kentucky-born slave who became a self-educated writer and advocate of abolition, temperance, and international peace. The author argues for Brown's place alongside that of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Wendell Phillips. There's an extensive bibliography and an index. Name on front fly leaf, dj spine faded.

Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1st Revised, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering, 402 pages, b&w frontis. portrait. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 384 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with black and white photographs throughout. Light wear ton dust jacket. The life of Erwin Blumenfeld, one of the century's best-known photographers, was by no means conventional. By turns acerbic, self-mocking, playful, even absurd, his autobiography is a compelling, virtuoso account of an extraordinary man. All his subjects--his Jewish family, the Germans, the Vichy French, his models, New York publishers--are dealt equal measures of wit, mockery, and merciless irony. He spares himself least of all. Born in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Blumenfeld was drafted to serve in the First World War, first as an ambulance driver (although he couldn't drive) and then as a bookkeeper in a field brothel, and he was awarded the Iron Cross for giving his sergeant French lessons. Between the wars he was part of an avant-garde circle that included such artists as Else Lasker-Schler, George Grosz, and members of the Dada movement. During the Second World War, Blumenfeld was interned in a series of French camps but eventually arrived in New York, where he found work with Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, producing many of their most memorable covers and becoming fashion's highest-paid photographer. From the creator of some of the most striking and influential photographs ever taken, Blumenfeld's autobiography--published here in English for the first time--is a biting and iconoclastic take on the century, and the insightful, gripping story of an exceptional life. Remainder line to bottom edge.

Softcover. privately printed, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 375 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY COLE on the title page. Two days are never the same in the life of Billy Cole, a music instrument repairman. Over the course of nearly 50 years in the music business, Billy has become a personal friend and respected repairman to some of the top musicians in the industry. Through his fine craftsmanship and attention to detail, his small music shop is a welcoming haven for musicians to stop by, to gather and be amongst others that share a common interest in music. He has become a friendly face for a musician on the road, year after year. Come with the band, as you're transported to sound stages, studios and shows that tell the story of just another day with the music technician.

Softcover. Woodstock VT, Countryman Press, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages, b&w illustrations. Kate Austen was a young Australian nurse looking for adventure in the 1920s. She accepted an assignment working in a mission hospital in Labrador, Canada, and fell in love with the local people and harsh wilderness she found there. She also met and married her husband (the author) during her time in Labrador. Throughout the book, Kate relates in a no-nonsense voice the births, deaths, epidemics, injuries, burns and unusual medical cases she treated. She also tells affectionately of the people she served - trappers, wives, children, native Indians, fishermen, sailors, and various visitors. Some of the stories made me chuckle, and some of them made me hold my breath in suspense. She worked day and night to serve the community living around the hospital, which also served as general store and community center. The weather was dreadful most of the year, and they lived without running water, electricity, telephone, or indoor toilets. Kate reveled in the experience, often traveling hundreds of miles by dog-sled to treat sick people in out-lying homesteads. She loved the snow, ice, wind, and the dangerous ocean, and rarely complained about the primitive conditions or workload. Previous owner's inscription otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. John L Caulon, 1st, 1880, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 87 pages, brown cloth covers with gilt lettering on front. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf otherwise clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 376 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. George Sand was the most famous and most scandalous woman in nineteenth-century France. As a writer, she was enormously prolific. She wrote more than ninety novels, thirty-five plays, and thousands of pages of autobiography. She inspired writers as diverse as Flaubert and Proust but is often remembered for her love affairs with such figures as Musset and Chopin. Her affair with Chopin is the most notorious: their nine-year relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that the composer had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 272 pages, b&w photos. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 720 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 49 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. Includes b&w photos. Clean, tight copy. Spine lightly sunned.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 374 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket with short tape repaired tears along edges, fading to spine. Clean, unmarked pages.

Softcover. New York, Pocket Books, First Edition, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 413 pages. Softcover with black, white & red graphic illustrations throughout. Full color illustrations to covers. Clean, bright copy, unmarked.

Hardcover. Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, new, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 234 pages, b&w illustrations. Light green top edge. Edge wear, light rubbing to dust jacket, spine faded. Else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Los Alamitos, CA, Art Bagnall Publishing, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 379 pages, with photographs throughout and illustrated cover. Minor corner and edge wear, previous owner's embossed stamp on title page, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. Richter was a professional auto racer in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s who then founded Bell Auto Parts and devoted his life to creating specialty safety products for auto and motorcycle sports, including the Bell helmet, which quickly became an essential and popular part of driving gear.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 454 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown , 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1st published in the UK 1971.

Hardcover. New York, HarperCollins, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 652 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Dust jacket unclipped. In excellent shape, binding tight, looks barely read. Clean and unmarked inside and out.

Hardcover. New York, WW Norton & Company, Inc, 1st Edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 678 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout. A few specs of foxing to front flyleaf and back page, otherwise pages clean. Dust jacket has some agewear with a touch of chipping and foxing, one small tear on back dj. Decorated endpapers. Red cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine, some spots to covers.

Hardcover. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1st Edition, 1895, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 150 pages. Hardcover. B/w frontispiece with tissue guard. Fore and bottom edges rough cut, gilt top edge. Green decorated cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover board. Binding very good. Spine straight. Pages have some tanning, but unmarked and clean. Tight first edition. A heartfelt reflection on life, family, and community beneath the towering elms of Newton, Massachusetts. Claflin's evocative prose paints a vivid picture of a bygone era, capturing moments of joy, sorrow, and timeless memories in the shade of ancient trees that stood as silent witnesses to generations of American history.

Hardcover. New York, Bloomsbury, 1st US , 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 359 pages, hardcover. 16 pages of color illustrations. Extensive b&w illustrations and photographs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. London, National Portrait Gallery, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Softcover. Color and B/W photographs throughout. Clean, unmarked copy in excellent condition.

Hardcover. US, Atlas & Co, 6th, 2008, 240 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.

Softcover. New York, Billboard Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 656 pages. Softcover with no dust jacket. Remainder mark on top edge, otherwise, clean, unmarked copy. Light edgewear to wrappers. Black and white pictures throughout. Mann, a novelist and author of books on film history, presents this biography of director John Schlesinger (1926-2003), based on interviews with the director and his family following his stroke in 2001, in addition to other primary source documents, articles, and reviews. He describes Schlesinger's childhood; his early days as a documentary director at the BBC; his films during the era of New Hollywood; and Midnight Cowboy, which won an Academy Award. His other films, such as Billy Liar, Darling, Cold Comfort Farm, and The Day of the Locust, are discussed, as well as his accurate depictions of homosexuality, and his personal and professional relationships.

Softcover. New York, ILR Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 170 pages. Softcover with light edgewear to wrappers. Color pictures throughout. "Career waitresses do more than just serve food. They are part psychiatrist, part grandmother, part friend, and they serve every walk of American life: from the retired and the widowed, to the wounded and the lonely, and from the working class to the wealthy. The classic diner waitress is an icon of American culture.... This book takes a moment to honor and recognize waitresses' contribution to our communities. Doing this project has helped me to redefine my perspective on life, work, and happiness. It has made me reevaluate the myth of the American dream that says you need to have an 'important' job to be happy."

Hardcover. Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, 221 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Yellowing to top edge of dust jacket. Rubbing to rear. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with minor wear to dust jacket edges. Jack Delano's "Photographic Memories" include the struggles of migrant workers and the homefront contributions of ethnic and minority groups living in the shadow of the Depression. Employed as a photographer by the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Delano later settled in Puerto Rico, where he has been a constant participant in the island's cultural life. This memoir includes rare photos from his FSA years, along with cartoons, personal snapshots and film stills.

Hardcover. New York, Harper Entertainment, 1st, 2007, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 280 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY STOTTLEMYRE on title page. Dust jacket and front cover board beneath on front has scratches (small tears) and groves to bottom. Remainder mark on bottom page block.

Hardcover. New York, Harper, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 672 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 188 pages, b&w photos. An account by a Kenya African of his experiences in detention camps in the 1950s. Foreword by Margery Perham. In a lightly worn dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 342 pages, b&w photos. Alexander Walker draws on the memories and anecdotes of her family, friends and fellow players as well as on his own conversations with Vivien Leigh just before her death to create a fascinating picture of a complex and unique woman. Clean copy in a very good dust jacket.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, His Children, 1st, 1853, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 645 pages. Hardcover in calf. Red title label on spine with gilt lettering. Heavy foxing to pages, abrasions to leather. Tight copy. Moderate soil.

Hardcover. London, Sampson Low Son & Co, 1st, 1860, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 492 pages. Hardcover with 3/4 leather spine and marbled surfaces on all sides. First English edition published same year as first American edition. A clean, tight copy. moderate chipping to cover edges. and some rips to dry leather. Gilt title paste-down gone from spine.

Hardcover. Philadephia, PA, J.B. Lippincott Comapny, 6th pr., 1913, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 page. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. Gutter cracked on title page with fabric showing through. Spine lettering faded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY MEDINA on title page. A happy, middle-class childhood lived in the shadows of sweeping social change and oncoming revolution -- such was the experience of novelist Pablo Medina. In this memoir, Medina revisits his curious double world, recalling the pre-revolutionary Cuba of his first twelve years, 1948-1960. His recollections move easily from his childhood adventures to warm remembrances of family and friends to his growing awareness of the social conflicts that would ultimately send his family into exile in the United States. Medina also draws on the memories of his elders to extend his memoir back to the Cuban War of Independence and forward through the twentieth century to the fall of the Batista regime, the victory of the Revolution in 1959, and the family's growing disillusionment with the Castro regime. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Fort Lee NJ, Barricade Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY ALLEN on the title page. An autobiography covering Allen's fifty years in radio and T.V. Allen was the creator and first host of the Tonight Show. B&w illust., 308 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Seven Dials , 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 427 pages, color illustrations. From Gavin Thurston, the award-winning Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II cameraman with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough comes extraordinary and adventurous true stories of what it takes to track down and film our planet's most captivating creatures. Gavin has been a wildlife photographer for over thirty years. Against a backdrop of modern world history, he's lurked in the shadows of some of the world's remotest places in order to capture footage of the animal kingdom's finest: prides of lions, silverback gorillas, capuchin monkeys, brown bears, grey whales, penguins, mosquitoes - you name it-he's filmed it. No dj issued.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as "one of the truly great political biographies of the modem age. A masterpiece." This volume follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career. It tells the story of his volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency. It gives us for the first time the story of the assassination from the viewpoint of Lyndon Johnson himself. And with the depth of insight, the profound grasp of both the life and times of his subject that Robert Caro has consistently brought to this mesmerizing biography, it reveals what it was like to suddenly become president in a time of great crisis.