Books with title The Autobiography of a Thief

We who live in this breathless era are wont to look upon the circus as a temporary amusement makeshift. It is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Yet behind its spangled, tinseled array and restless movement are real traditions. Why has the circus endured in an age that craves new diversion? Simply because it is basic; because it fills a fundamental need; because it is a staple like wheat. Laughter is one of the few eternal things; therefore the circus which produces it takes on something of the same quality. More than this, the circus is as much an expression of art as the drama. Like art, it is universal. The clown being a world citizen interprets a world humor in which there is neither border line, race, nor creed. Most of the great humorists have been sad men, and thus the clown, clothed in his right mind, is grave and reflective. Though he wear cap and bells, he has not wanted for recognition among the great. Garrick, Kemble, and Booth have been glad to claim him as fellow-artists. But it is in the heart of the child that he has found his most grateful friend, and in a larger sense all the world is a child when it goes to the circus.

When the article on which this little book is based appeared in the Saturday Evening Post we were amazed at the response it evoked. It simply proved that all the world loves a clown. In most of the comment and communication, however, there was a question as to the authenticity of the subject. I beg to say that Jules is a real personage and still the nimble producer of many laughs.It was while writing a series of articles on an entirely different phase of the circus that I first met Jules. I heard of him the moment I stepped into the circus world. So thoroughly had he impressed his personality; so deeply had he become at[Pg x]tached to its life, and so profoundly had he gained the respect of its people, that not to have heard of him argued that I was deaf and blind to everything about me. I found him the friend, philosopher, and guide of the nomadic city of tents that rose with the dawn and slipped away into the night. Despite its transiency, there was much permanency of character in its varied inhabitants. No one contributed more to its moral structure than Jules, the clown.We who live in this breathless era are wont to look upon the circus as a temporary amusement makeshift. It is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Yet behind its spangled, tinseled array and restless movement are real traditions. Why has the circus endured in an age that craves new diversion? Simply because it is basic; because it fills a fundamental need; because it is a staple like wheat. Laughter is one of the few eternal things; therefore the circus which produces it takes on something of the same quality. More than this, the circus is as much an expression of art as the drama. Like art, it is universal. The clown being a world citizen interprets a world humor in which there is neither border line, race, nor creed. Most of the great humorists have been sad men, and thus the clown, clothed in his right mind, is grave and reflective. Though he wear cap and bells, he has not wanted for recognition among the great. Garrick, Kemble, and Booth have been glad to claim him as fellow-artists. But it is in the heart of the child that he has found his most grateful friend, and in a larger sense all the world is a child when it goes to the circus.In my work I have had to be, on many occasions, the biographer of the great and the chronicler of much timely achievement. In all this swift march of people and events I have yet to meet a man whose devotion to the ideals of his art is more sincere than that which has animated Jules Turnour through the long years of his clowning. I have been with him in the tumult of tented travel and watched him in the roofed arena before the multitudes. Always I have found him proud to be a clown. To know him has indeed been a liberal education in character and loyalty.

If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malxolm X. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now an established classic of modern America, a book that expresses like none other the crucial truth about our times."Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book."TEH NEW YORKTIMES

Mary G. Harris Jones (baptized 1837; died 1930), known as Mother Jones, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent organized labor representative and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World.Jones worked as a teacher and dressmaker, but after her husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union. From 1897, at about 60 years of age, she was known as Mother Jones. In 1902, she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.…During the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, Mary Jones arrived in June 1912, speaking and organizing despite a shooting war between United Mine Workers members and the private army of the mine owners. Martial law in the area was declared and rescinded twice before Jones was arrested on 13 February 1913 and brought before a military court. Accused of conspiring to commit murder among other charges, she refused to recognize the legitimacy of her court-martial. She was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. During house arrest at Mrs. Carney's Boarding House, she acquired a dangerous case of pneumonia.After 85 days of confinement, her release coincided with Indiana Senator John W. Kern's initiation of a Senate investigation into the conditions in the local coal mines. Mary Lee Settle describes Jones at this time in her 1978 novel The Scapegoat. Several months later, she helped organize coal miners in Colorado. Once again she was arrested, served some time in prison, and was escorted from the state in the months prior to the Ludlow Massacre. After the massacre, she was invited to meet face-to-face with the owner of the Ludlow mine, John D. Rockefeller Jr. The meeting prompted Rockefeller to visit the Colorado mines and introduce long-sought reforms. (wikipedia.org)

For Alex James, music had always been a door to a more exciting life—a way to travel, meet new people, and, hopefully, pick up girls. But as bass player of Blur—one of the most successful British bands of all time—his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. Success catapulted him from a slug-infested squat in Camberwell to a world of private jets and world-class restaurants. As "the second drunkest member of the world’s drunkest band" Alex James's life was always chaotic, but he retained a boundless enthusiasm and curiosity at odds with his hedonistic lifestyle. From nights in the Groucho with Damien Hirst, to dancing to Sister Sledge with Björk, to being bitten on the nose by the lead singer of Iron Maiden, he offers a fascinating and hilarious insight into the world of celebrity. At its heart, however, this is the picaresque tale of one man’s search to find meaning and happiness in an increasingly surreal world. Pleasingly unrepentant but nonetheless a reformed man, Alex James is the perfect chronicler of his generation—witty, frank and brimming with joie de vivre. A Bit of a Blur is as charming, funny, and deliciously disreputable as its author.

[MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.] [*Edited by Charles Neider][Read by Michael Anthony] Mark Twain's daughter, Susy, wrote: ''Papa . . . doesn't like to go to church at all, why I never understood, until just now, he told us the other day that he couldn't bear to hear any one talk but himself, but that he could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no dought [sic] it was founded on truth.'' -- from the book. Here is one of the great autobiographies of the English language: exuberant, wonderfully contemporary in spirit, written by a man twice as large as life, who -- he said so himself -- had no trouble remembering everything that had ever happened to him, and a lot of things besides. Nothing ever happened to Mark Twain in a small way. His adventures were invariably fraught with drama. Success and failure for him were equally spectacular. And so he roared down the years, feuding with publishers, being a sucker for inventors, always learning wisdom at the point of ruin and always relishing the absurd spectacle of humankind, whom he regarded with a blend of vitriol and affection.

Pickles entertains you through his life with stories about his kittenhood, adoption, his new home, his siblings, his trips to Florida and Maine, his vacations to Maine, his trips to the vet, his Christmas, a “lecture” on “what humans should know” and more .Pickles admits it is true that he doesn't know all those words written in the book, but that he was able to tell his mom these stories through animal communication, which both he and his mom explain throughout the book. It The autobiography is real, humorous and a special book for cat lovers. You will recognize your own cat, learn more about other cats i, and laugh at his descriptions.You will also learn about animal communication. Even if you are not a cat lover, you will enjoy the book with or without experience with pets.

Best known as an actor and one of the BBC’s Eggheads, few people would guess from his cultured exterior at the horrific early years of abuse CJ de Mooi endured.As a teenager, CJ fled from his childhood home to escape prolonged hatred and violence, and consequently slept rough for three years. He sank to - and almost didn’t survive - far worse depths than this before a bizarre stroke of luck came from a very surprising place.CJ’s jaw-dropping life story relates his journey in graphic detail and astounding honesty. He’s not afraid to shine the spotlight on his darkest hours, some of which are truly shocking. However, through it all he held onto his dream of a life on the stage and his desperate belief that he deserved better.Now a successful actor, CJ has shared his anger, torment and ultimate joy in this book, a most unexpected autobiography.

Get on the road with this predecessor to gonzo journalism as the Welshman Davies heads off for a life of adventure wandering the expanses of 19th century America, hopping trains and generally vagranting his way around. Following an accident which must have been horrific (but which he lightly skips over in the text) Davies returned to the UK, finding plenty of trouble but eventually succeeding with what must have been one of the world's first viral marketing campaigns.Included are many hints and tips on being a late-1800s super tramp, which are fascinating for both detail of a life far removed from our own and their cleverness. One such cute recommendation is the suggestion to sell showlaces for a living and the many advantages it brings a vagrant. After all these adventures the author eventually settled down with a wife, becoming a successful poet and author, so this is certainly a tale with a happy ending.W. H. Davies has had a solid effect on modern culture, with the title of this book inspiring the name of the band Supertramp and his famous couplet known to nearly all: "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?" For fans of Wales, American rail, Davies' poetry or just fascinated by the hobo lifestyle this book is a must read. For the rest it is a great story well told.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

The highly anticipated memoir from Gucci Mane, “one of hip-hop’s most prolific and admired artists” (The New York Times).For the first time Gucci Mane tells his story in his own words. It is the captivating life of an artist who forged an unlikely path to stardom and personal rebirth. Gucci Mane began writing his memoir in a maximum-security federal prison. Released in 2016, he emerged radically transformed. He was sober, smiling, focused, and positive--a far cry from the Gucci Mane of years past. Born in rural Bessemer, Alabama, Radric Delantic Davis became Gucci Mane in East Atlanta, where the rap scene is as vibrant as the dope game. His name was made as a drug dealer first, rapper second. His influential mixtapes and street anthems pioneered the sound of trap music. He inspired and mentored a new generation of artists and producers: Migos, Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Zaytoven, Mike Will Made-It, Metro Boomin. Yet every success was followed by setback. Too often, his erratic behavior threatened to end it all. Incarceration, violence, rap beefs, drug addiction. But Gucci Mane has changed, and he’s decided to tell his story. In his extraordinary autobiography, the legend takes us to his roots in Alabama, the streets of East Atlanta, the trap house, and the studio where he found his voice as a peerless rapper. He reflects on his inimitable career and in the process confronts his dark past--years behind bars, the murder charge, drug addiction, career highs and lows--the making of a trap god. It is one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of music. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane is a blunt and candid account--an instant classic.