Biographies & Memoirs

My Life in the Kennedy White House, Part 2
A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome
by Letitia Baldridge
When my father ran for Congress, I was the only one in the family who wanted to accompany him on his campaign swings to western Nebraska in the old maroon Pontiac, hoping to pick up some votes.

My Life in the Kennedy White House
A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome
by Letitia Baldridge
Most people look upon Miami Beach as a place where you go to get old and play golf, or as a place to go when you're young, to partake of 'what's hot' at the South Beach nightspots.

Dante the Florentine, Part 2
Dante
by R.W.B. Lewis, Ph.D.
Dante was one year old in 1266, and he grew up in a city that was at last fully realizing itself. It had been moving fitfully toward that goal for a good many years, in a series of developments that led both to prosperity and to a gathering self-image.

Dante the Florentine
Dante
by R.W.B. Lewis, Ph.D.
As you walk across the Ponte Vecchio in Florence today, you come upon a plaque bearing a passage from Dante's Divine Comedy. The lines are spoken by Dante's ancestor Cacciaguida, whom the poet encounters in one of the higher spheres of heaven

Part 2
Simone Weil
by Francine du Plessix Gray
A few months after the war's end, as her family was settling back into their apartment on Boulevard Saint-Michel, Mme Weil noticed that Simone was nowhere to be seen.

The Factory of Genius
Simone Weil
by Francine du Plessix Gray
Growing up in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century were two contented children from whose household all toys and dolls had been categorically banned. It had been their mother's intent to nurture their intellectual skills.

Part 2
Picasso, My Grandfather
by Marina Picasso
Inside the titan's den-Ali Baba's treasure cave-clutter reigns supreme. There are piles of paintings on paint-spattered easels, sculptures lying everywhere, crates overflowing with African masks, cardboard packing boxes, old newspapers

There's no running away from Picasso
Picasso, My Grandfather
by Marina Picasso
It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm in Geneva, driving down the quai Gustave-Ador in a steady flow of traffic, taking my children, Gaël and Flore, to school. On my right is Lake Geneva and its famous geyser, the Jet d'Eau.

Part 5
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes
The Darwins and Wedgwoods all looked to Charles's father, Robert, a wealthy and successful physician in Shrewsbury, for medical judgements and prescriptions. Dr. Darwin gave Charles robust advice about his own ailments, and provided 'receipts' for Willy

Part 4
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes
After the experience of her first pregnancy, Emma wanted to be prepared for the next delivery. There were four signs to watch for: missing a period, which was referred to in polite conversation as ceasing to be unwell, morning sickness

Part 3
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes
Charles might also have heard, or thought he heard, or sensed, cries from the operating theatre in the hospital across the road. The surgeon, Robert Liston, had been a well-known figure at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh when Charles studied medicine

Part 2
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes
But he could joke about the difficulties she would have. After spending a morning with his friend, the geologist Charles Lyell, he wrote to her: 'I was quite ashamed of myself today; for we talked for half an hour unsophisticated geology

Marriage, First child
Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes
A child's writing case. The pale yellow ribbon curled inside is stitched with small glass beads. The goose-feather quills have dried ink on their tips, and the sealing wax has been melted over a candle flame.

A Perfect Frenchman, Part 4
The Man Who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi Universal
by Martine Orange
However, Messier knew he would never reach the top of the merchant bank. One man stood in his way: Edouard Stern. 'Would I have been able to tempt him away without Edouard?'

A Perfect Frenchman
The Man Who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi Universal
by Martine Orange
On the sweltering summer night of July 3, 2001, the limousines of the cream of the French banking, business, and political worlds drew up outside the Centre Pompidou, the modern art complex in the heart of Paris.

The extraordinary rise and fall of Jean-Marie Messier
The Man Who Tried to Buy the World: Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi Universal
by Martine Orange
The first raids came at dawn in the weeks leading up to Christmas. On Thursday, December 12, 2002, fifteen police officers from the fraud squad swooped down on the headquarters of Vivendi Universal to seize computer files, documents, and e-mails.

What Would Consumers Do?
Microsoft Rebooted
by Robert Slater
Judge Kollar-Kotelly's judgment of November 2002 had ended the legal cloud hanging over Microsoft, but her seal of approval on the settlement had by no means returned the company's once-lofty image to what it once had been.

We Will Not Gloat
Microsoft Rebooted
by Robert Slater
Suddenly, it was only fifteen minutes before the announcement was due, 12:45 p.m. The Microsoft legal and public relations team began gathering in the company board room in Building 34.

Recasting His Image
Microsoft Rebooted
by Robert Slater
In the early part of his career, Bill Gates had been in the media's eyes, the supernova of the technology world. He had been the boy genius of technology, creator of the company admiringly dubbed the smartest in the world.

A Surreal Halloween
Microsoft Rebooted
by Robert Slater
I have been thinking about writing a book on Bill Gates and Microsoft for a very long time. As part of the research I conducted for Portraits in Silicon (MIT Press, 1987), a book about computer pioneers and developers.