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Kirk Douglas

    December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020

    Kirk Douglas was an American film and stage actor, producer, and author, known for embodying powerful and unforgettable characters. His prolific career saw him become one of the greatest legends of American cinema, celebrated for his dynamic performances across a wide array of roles. Douglas's impact on the art of filmmaking is evident in his capacity to portray complex human beings with intensity and conviction. His legacy continues to resonate with audiences, offering a compelling glimpse into Hollywood's golden age.

    Kirk Douglas
    Climbing the Mountain
    Navigating the Messy Middle
    The Ragman's Son
    Dance With The Devil
    I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist
    A Song in the Air
    • 2023

      Roughly 68 million North American women currently grapple with the challenges of midlife, faced with a culture that tells them their "best-before date" has long passed. In Navigating the Messy Middle, Ann Douglas pushes back against this toxic narrative, providing a fierce and unapologetic book for and about midlife women. In this deeply validating and encouraging book, Douglas interviews well over one hundred women of different backgrounds and identities, sharing their diverse conversations about the complex and intertwined issues that women must grapple with at midlife: from family responsibilities to career pivots, health concerns to building community. Readers will find a book that offers practical, evidence-based strategies for thriving at midlife, coupled with compelling first-person stories. Offering purpose and meaning in a life stage that can otherwise feel out of control, Douglas pushes back against the message that women at midlife are no longer relevant and needed, highlighting the far-reaching economic, political and social impacts of these messages and providing a refreshing counter-narrative that maps out a path forward for women at midlife. Both a midlife love letter and a lament, Navigating the Messy Middle both celebrates the beauty and rages at the many injustices of this life stage and provides readers with the tools to chart their own course.

      Navigating the Messy Middle
    • 2017

      Kirk and Anne

      • 222 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      As screen icon Kirk Douglas approaches his 100th birthday, he and his wife of 62 years, Anne Buydens, share secrets to longevity in life and love told through candid commentary and priceless correspondence between each other and famous friends from celebrities to world leaders, spanning almost a century.

      Kirk and Anne
    • 2017

      Highland Sisters

      • 336 pages
      • 12 hours of reading
      3.1(13)Add rating

      1910. When eighteen-year-old Lorne Malcolm runs off on her wedding day with the landowner's son, Daniel MacNeil, the jilted groom, turns to Lorne's older sister, Rosa, for comfort. Rosa's feelings for Daniel grow and the pair soon marry. But are tragedy and heartbreak just around the corner?

      Highland Sisters
    • 2013

      Dance With The Devil

      • 368 pages
      • 13 hours of reading

      But it's been awfully good to Danny Dennison. But Danny Dennison has been living a lie. His true identity is buried half way around the world in the ruins of a Nazi concentration camp. Danny believes his secret to be safe - until he meets Luba, a young, sensuous call girl, whose mesmerising sexuality begins to shatter his well-guarded facade.

      Dance With The Devil
    • 2012

      Kirk Douglas reveals the drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film Spartacus. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood's moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write Spartacus. Trumbo was one of the men who had gone to prison rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The source novel was written by Howard Fast while he too was in jail for defying HUAC. With the future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into a tumultuous production. As both producer and star, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant personalities, Now, at 95, Douglas looks back at his audacious decisions. He made the most expensive film of its era--but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to Trumbo effectively ended the Hollywood blacklist.--From publisher description.

      I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist
    • 2011

      Kilt maker Kirsty Muir finds life hard in 1960's Edinburgh where money is tight and excitement hard to find. When a former love reappears, she finds herself torn between following her first love or settling for the dependability of her second love.

      The Kilt Maker
    • 2010

      A Song in the Air

      • 416 pages
      • 15 hours of reading

      Shona MacInnes, a crofter's daughter, meets much prejudice when she qualifies to train as a vet--not least from handsome Ross MacMaster, also a vet. Their fiery relationship turns to love, but soon differences are revealed, and they part. Can they ever be reconciled?

      A Song in the Air
    • 2003

      My Stroke of Luck

      • 208 pages
      • 8 hours of reading
      3.8(295)Add rating

      Relaxing at home one sunny afternoon in 1995, Kirk Douglas suddenly felt a strange sensation in his right cheek. When he tried to describe what was happening, all that came out was gibberish. The cinema icon and movie legend was having a stroke. In this heartfelt and inspiring account, Kirk Douglas describes in powerful detail the helplessness and fear he felt following the attack, the depression that took him to the brink of suicide, and the love and support that pulled him through. Poignant and humorous, this is the deeply moving tale of a remarkable man whose gentle dignity and courage can be an inspiration to us all.

      My Stroke of Luck
    • 2000

      Climbing the Mountain

      • 272 pages
      • 10 hours of reading
      3.8(72)Add rating

      With the simple power and astonishing candor that made his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, a number one international bestseller, Kirk Douglas now shares his quest for spirituality and Jewish identity -- and his heroic fight to overcome crippling injuries and a devastating stroke. On February 13, 1991, at the age of seventy-four, Kirk Douglas, star of such major motion-picture classics as Champion, Spartacus, and Paths of Glory, was in a helicopter crash, in which two people died and he himself sustained severe back injuries. As he lay in the hospital recovering, he kept wondering: Why had two younger men died while he, who had already lived his life fully, survived? The question drove this son of a Russian-Jewish ragman to a search for his roots and on a long journey of self-discovery -- a quest not only for the meaning of life and his own relationship with God, but for his own identity as a Jew. Through the study of the Bible, Kirk Douglas found a new spirituality and purpose. His newfound faith deeply enriched his relationship with his own children and taught him -- a man who had always been famously demanding and impatient -- to listen to others and, above all, to hear his own inner voice. Told with warmth, wit, much humor, and deep passion, Climbing the Mountain is inspirational in the very best sense of the word.

      Climbing the Mountain
    • 1998

      This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. Sentimental values that permeated popular literature continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption.This new paperback edition, with a new Preface, will reach yet more readers with its persuasive and provocative theory. Richard Bernstein of The New York Times said: "Her remarkable scholarship is going to set the standard for a long time to come."

      The Feminization of American Culture