Grant Hayter-Menzies

Broadway actress Billie Burke was one of the most sought after young stage beauties of her time, stealing the hearts of Enrico Caruso, Mark Twain, and, most importantly, famed Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, who became her husband. Following Ziegfeld’s death, the threats of financial ruin and encroaching age forced Burke to recreate herself as a Hollywood character actress. This biography benefits from the cooperation of the daughter and grandchildren of Burke and Ziegfeld, as well as from anecdotes provided by actors who performed with Burke on the stage and screen. In addition to studying the character and significance of Burke’s greatest screen role as Glinda the Good Witch of the North, this richly illustrated book also provides a complete history of Burke’s stage, screen, and radio work.

The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke

Mrs. Ziegfeld

"Based on Greenwood's unpublished memoirs; this biography presents a personal, detailed look at her colorful life. The main focus of the work is her career, which spanned more than 50 years and ranged from vaudeville to the stage and, finally, to films"--Provided by publisher.

The Life and Career of the Comic Star of Vaudeville, Radio and Film

Charlotte Greenwood

On the streets of Paris one day in July 1918, an American doughboy, Sgt. Jimmy Donovan, befriended a stray dog that he named Rags. No longer an unwanted street mutt, Rags became the mascot to the entire First Division of the American Expeditionary Force and a friend to the American troops who had crossed the Atlantic to fight. Rags was more than a scruffy face and a wagging tail, however. The little terrier mix was with the division at the crucial battle of Soissons, at the Saint-Mihiel offensive, and finally in the blood-and-mud bath of the Meuse-Argonne, during which he and his guardian were wounded. Despite being surrounded by distraction and danger, Rags learned to carry messages through gunfire, locate broken communications wire for the Signal Corps to repair, and alert soldiers to incoming shells, saving the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. Through it all, he brought inspiration to men with little to hope for, especially in the bitter last days of the war. From Stray Dog to World War I Hero covers Rags’s entire life story, from the bomb-filled years of war through his secret journey to the United States that began his second life, one just as filled with drama and heartache. In years of peace, Rags served as a reminder to human survivors of what held men together when pushed past their limits by the horrors of battle. Watch a book trailer.

The Paris Terrier Who Joined the First Division

From Stray Dog to World War I Hero

The unusual and moving tale of Muggins, a famed fundraising dog who became a mascot of the Canadian Red Cross during the First World War. Born in 1913 in the home of a millionaire philanthropist, Muggins was a purebred Spitz, a sharp-eared, sharp-nosed, fluffy-tailed sort of dog most often seen in the lap of a lady of leisure. But Muggins defied the odds, rising to unlikely fame during the First World War, when he became Victoria, BC's most diminutive fundraiser. He was taught to wander through downtown during the war with two change donation boxes tied to his back, and ultimately collected the equivalent of $400,000 for charities and causes including the Red Cross, the Blue Cross, food for poor children and prisoners of war, victims of Jewish pogroms, to name a few. During his short life, Muggins visited ferries and freight liners stopping in Victoria. He appeared in photos with the Prince of Wales and with famous Canadian general Sir Arthur Currie, among other celebrated admirers. He was also a favourite of the rank and file, helping cheer up wounded soldiers at Esquimalt Military Hospital. Muggins was made an honourary first lieutenant by the United States military for his service raising funds in Seattle. And he was so loved by departing soldiers he was more than once nearly taken along to the theatre of war. Based on valuable documents, memorabilia, newspaper and newsreel accounts of Muggins's brief but brilliant career, this book tackles the difficult question of human use of animals in war, at home and on the battlefield. It explores how crucial animals, specifically dogs, have been to wounded veterans recovering from physical and emotional damage--both in Muggins's lifetime and now.

Muggins: The Life and Afterlife of a Canadian Canine War Hero

Kansas-born Pauline Benton (1898-1974) was encouraged by her father, one of America's earliest feminist male educators, to reach for the stars. Instead, she reached for shadows. In 1920s Beijing, she discovered shadow theatre (piyingxi), a performance art where translucent painted puppets are manipulated by highly trained masters to cast coloured shadows against an illuminated screen. Finding that this thousand-year-old forerunner of motion pictures was declining in China, Benton believed she could save the tradition by taking it to America. Mastering the male-dominated art form in China, Benton enchanted audiences eager for the exotic in Depression-era America. Her touring company, Red Gate Shadow Theatre, was lauded by theatre and art critics and even performed at Franklin Roosevelt's White House. Grant Hayter-Menzies traces Benton's performance history and her efforts to preserve shadow theatre as a global cultural treasure by drawing on her unpublished writings, the recollections of her colleagues, the testimonies of shadow masters who survived China's Cultural Revolution, as well as young innovators who have carried on Benton's pioneering work.

The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton

Shadow Woman

The Passion of Dorothy Brooke, Animal Welfare Pioneer

The Lost War Horses of Cairo

Written with the cooperation of President Jimmy Carter and his family, this book provides an intimate glimpse inside the life of the woman who--as nurse, mother and social justice activist in segregated southwest Georgia--made a lifelong habit of breaking the rules defining a woman's place in and out of the home and the status of blacks in society. As the only white nurse in her rural community who cared for black families, as a 68-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer in 1960s India, as a fearless supporter of civil rights and as a First Mother unlike any other, Lillian Carter showed how individual courage, conviction and compassion can make a difference. Drawing on interviews with friends and colleagues, members of the Plains, Georgia, black community, Peace Corps Volunteers who trained with her, White House insiders and key players in the civil rights movement, as well as letters, documents and photographs never before made public, this book captures the essence of the woman the press dubbed "Rose Kennedy without the hair dye" and "First Mother of the world."

A Compassionate Life

Lillian Carter

Coryne Hall

Greg King

Penny Wilson

John Van der Kiste

Janet Ashton

Arturo E. Beéche

Marlene Eilers-Koenig

"Examines the biographies of nearly forty men whose birth gave them the right to one of the world's most prestigious positions. All sons of Russian tsars are covered in Volume I. The sons of collateral grand ducal branches are covered in Volume II. The biography of each of the Grand Dukes of Russia brings to life a deeply gripping human saga. These men were born into what then was one of the world's most powerful ruling dynasties. They were not all saints; they were not all demons - they were men whose birth showered them with untold privilege. Some used their birthright for the common good; some did not. Yet, they all remain amazingly intriguing, complex, complicated and conflicted human beings. At birth they were showered with untold privilege, including a lump sum of money placed in trust for them. By the time these funds were made available to a Grand Duke, the interest alone made them amazingly wealthy. Added to this benefit, they derived salaries from their military appointments, investments, real estate and inheritance. Thus, the Grand Dukes were able to maintain a lifestyle only surpassed by today's oligarchs and yesteryear's robber barons. They were consummate spenders in paintings, art, architecture, jewels, all while acting as sponsors of talented writers, thinkers, poets, ballerinas, among many others. One was a playwright of considerable talent. Another played a role in working toward the liberation of the serfs. One was a leading admiral with a fondness for "fast women and slow ships." Another Grand Duke lived a tortured existence as a closeted homosexual, yet became the father of nine children"--Publisher's description.

Sons and Grandsons of Russia's Grand Dukes

The Other Grand Dukes

Although Emily Carr is now considered a Canadian legend, the most enduring image is that of her pushing a beat-up old pram into downtown Victoria, loaded with dogs, cats, birds—and a monkey. Woo, a Javanese macaque whom Carr adopted in 1923, has become inextricably linked with Carr in the popular imagination. But more than that, in her short lifetime Woo became equally connected to Carr’s life and art. Born to a strictly religious family, Carr was never able to reconcile her wild and passionate nature with the stifling mores of the well-to-do Victorian society in which she was raised. Over the years, she increasingly turned to the company of animals to find the love and trust missing from her human relationships. Across the world in an Indonesian jungle lagoon, Woo (like Carr) was parted from her mother at a young age. The tiny ape with a “greeny-brown” pelt and penetrating golden eyes was then shipped across the world. When Carr spotted Woo in a pet store, she recognized a kindred spirit and took her home. Woo was many things to Carr—a surrogate daughter, a reflection of herself, a piece of the wild inside her downtown Victoria boarding house. Welcoming the mischievous Woo into her life, Carr also welcomed a freedom that allowed a full blooming of artistic expression and gave Canada and the world great art unlike any other before or since. However, despite Carr’s clear love for Woo, her chaotic life did not always allow Carr to properly care for her. Tragically, after Carr was hospitalized due to heart failure, she arranged for Woo to be sent to the Stanley Park Zoo. Bereft of Carr, Woo died alone in her cage only a year later. Hayter-Menzies approaches his subject from a contemporary perspective on bringing wild animals into captivity while remaining empathetic to the unique relationship between artist and monkey.

A Biography

Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr

"Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling, the first biography of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing cross-cultural personalities, traces not only the life of Princess Der Ling, in all its various transformations, but offers a fresh look at the woman she lionized and, ultimately, betrayed - the Empress Dowager Cixi, to whom, like Der Ling, many legends have been affixed over the past century. The book also depicts the changing worlds of Paris, Tokyo and the other international stages of Der Ling's development as woman and as mystery, and deals with the many teachers who made her who she was." --Book Jacket.

The Legend of Princess Der Ling

Imperial Masquerade

This is the story of two women from worlds that could not seem farther apart--imperial China and the American Midwest--who found common ground before and after one of the greatest clashes between East and West, the fifty-five day siege of the Beijing foreign legations known as the Boxer Uprising. Using diaries, letters and other sources,The Empress and Mrs. Congertraces the parallel lives of Empress Dowager Cixi and American ambassador's wife Sarah Pike Conger, which converged to alter their perspectives of each other and each other's worlds. Grant Hayter-Menziesis the author ofImperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Lingand the biographer of stage and screen stars Charlotte Greenwood and Billie Burke. "Sarah Conger's story is worth telling for many reasons. She occupied a point in time that makes her interesting, but the author demonstrates that she is interesting in her own right-a flawed and fascinating individual whose story we want to read not for what we learn about Chinese history, but for what we learn about a woman profoundly typical of her era and class leading a life of determination in the belief that the right combination of positive attitudes and common sense must win out over adversity." - Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia

The Uncommon Friendship of Two Women and Two Worlds

The Empress and Mrs. Conger

In 1930 wealthy Scottish socialite Dorothy Brooke followed her new husband to Cairo, where she discovered thousands of suffering former British war horses leading lives of toil and misery. Brought to the Middle East by British forces during the Great War, these ex-cavalry horses had been left behind at the war's end, abandoned as used equipment too costly to send home. Grant Hayter-Menzies chronicles not only the lives and eventual rescue of these noble creatures, who after years of deprivation and suffering found respite in the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital established by Dorothy, but also the story of the challenges of founding and maintaining an animal-rescue institution on this scale. The legacy of the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital and its founder endures today in the dozens of international Brooke animal-welfare facilities dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Passion of Dorothy Brooke

On the streets of Paris one day in July 1918, an American doughboy, Sgt. Jimmy Donovan, befriended a stray dog that he named Rags. No longer an unwanted street mutt, Rags became the mascot to the entire First Division of the American Expeditionary Force and a friend to the American troops who had crossed the Atlantic to fight. Rags was more than a scruffy face and a wagging tail, however. The little terrier mix was with the division at the crucial battle of Soissons, at the Saint-Mihiel offensive, and finally in the blood-and-mud bath of the Meuse-Argonne, during which he and his guardian were wounded. Despite being surrounded by distraction and danger, Rags learned to carry messages through gunfire, locate broken communications wire for the Signal Corps to repair, and alert soldiers to incoming shells, saving the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. Through it all, he brought inspiration to men with little to hope for, especially in the bitter last days of the war. From Stray Dog to World War I Hero covers Rags's entire life story, from the bomb-filled years of war through his secret journey to the United States that began his second life, one just as filled with drama and heartache. In years of peace, Rags served as a reminder to human survivors of what held men together when pushed past their limits by the horrors of battle. Watch a book trailer.

Grant Hayter-Menzies

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