For some, Richard Wagner is infamous as the favorite composer of Hitler, who seems to have admired Wagner as an early exponent of his own racist ideology and worldview. Impressed by this assumption victims of Hitler have also associated Wagner and hi...

Whether sharing his anxieties about his writing, consoling bereaved friends, complaining about the meanness of a patron or defending himself against malicious gossip, John Donne reveals himself in his letters with a directness that can be found nowhe...

During the 1998-1999 college basketball season, the Gallaudet University women's team won the Capital Athletic Conference regular season championship and advanced to the "Sweet Sixteen" round of the NCAA Division III tournament. As much as the team's...

"Mama knew I was 'not right'" Kitty Fischer says of her early childhood in Louisiana. Even though her mother never said it, Kitty knew she meant "deaf and dumb". Her communication difficulties were compounded by the bias her family endured for being...

"The Creation of the World" is the autobiography of one of Portugal's most celebrated modern writers, Miguel Torga. Six days comprise "The Creation", published in English in its entirety for the first time. We begin with Torga's childhood in the wi...

Keith Douglas (1920-1944) loved his country. He also had an insatiable hunger for experience. When World War II began he enlisted: to fight, and to read history from within its turbulence. As with the poets of the First World War, his art was tried,...

In "Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man", Dennis Buck unveils the ins and outs of exploiting his "disability" to earn easy money by practicing a unique form of panhandling. Dennis peddled for 11 years despite holding a degree in computer scien...

French actress Emmanuelle Laborit begins her autobiography with a simple explanation of the difference sign language made in her life: With the help of sign language I understood that yesterday was behind me and tomorrow was in front of me. She learn...

When, in 1968, 19-year-old Tressa Bowers took her baby daughter to an expert on deaf children, he pronounced that Alandra was "stone deaf", she most likely would never be able to talk, and she probably would not get much of an education because of he...

Upon the death of his father Morris at age 82, Lennard Davis found among his effects a trove of letters, kept in careful chronological order, that dated from 1936. The letters ended in 1938, when Eva Weintrobe came to America to marry Morris, and the...