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Readers familiar with Sallie Bingham's 1989 memoir, Passion and Prejudice, will remember her provocative chronicle of the Bingham family saga, cited by Gloria Steinem as "a major step toward feminist change and democracy." In Little Brother, she reflects on just one of her siblings: the youngest son Jonathan and his all-too brief life. The book begins with a count she calls her "dreadful list" of nine close relatives who died by accident, suicide, overdose, exposure to the elements, and electrocution, all before the age of 50. Jonathan was only twenty-two years old when he climbed a pole, hoping to rig up some lighting for a barn party and, by some fluke, grabbed a live wire. But even before his fatal fall to the ground, the boy suffered from insecurity, isolation, and difficulty relating to his large family. Bingham draws from archived material, chief among them the young man's journal and letters. She writes his short history with obvious affection and tenderness, along with more than a dash of survival guilt. Little Brother is a moving and honest new work.

“Shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles the notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist. Duke established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. When her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to discover her true identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham dissects the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy. “Illuminating . . . Bingham is a generous biographer in this exacting, measured work.” —Publishers Weekly “The most significant, dramatic, and compelling biography of Doris Duke. . . . that will delight and inspire all readers concerned about a more humane future.” —Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt (vols. I, II, III)

In a most unusual portrait of early America, a young mother's years in captivity with the Shawnee prove to be the best years of her life. It's 1779 and a young white woman named Margaret Erskine is venturing west from Virginia, on horseback, with her baby daughter and the rest of her family. She has no experience of Indians, and has absorbed most of the prejudices of her time, but she is open-minded, hardy, and mentally strong, a trait common to most of her female descendants--Sallie Bingham's ancestors. Bingham had heard Margaret's story since she was a child but didn't see the fifteen pages Margaret had dictated to her nephew a generation after her captivity until they turned up in her mother's blue box after her death. Devoid of most details, this restrained account inspired Bingham to research and imagine and fill the gaps in her story and to consider the tough questions it raises. How did Margaret, our narrator, bear witnessing the murder of her infant? How did she survive her near death at the hands of the Shawnee after the murder of the chief? Whose father was her baby John's, born nine months after her taking? And why did her former friends in Union West Virginia turn against her when, ransomed after four years, she reluctantly returned? This is the seldom told story of the making of this country in the years of the Revolution, what it cost in lives and suffering, and how one woman among many not only survived extreme hardship, but flourished.

Mending collects stories from four books and includes six new ones, representing the best of Bingham's 50-year career.

Four generations of outrageous, of-the-moment characters thrive amidst hardship in their own way , turning the myth of the Old West on its head. Cowboy Tales comprises eighteen short stories that reverse commonly held assumptions about the American West. Four generations of a mixed family, Native, Hispanic, and white, live with the problems we've all heard about: alcohol and drug addiction, dependency on a fraying welfare system, poverty, and violence. Unlikely learning and unlikely sources of wisdom abound in these stories. "During those long winter nights when Dad took off for Sheridan--no liquor allowed on the rez but Sheridan is only about twenty miles west," Fat Annie tells the boy known as Sure Enough some truths about women that will guide him for the rest of his life. Running away on horseback from the imposition of ashes at his Jesuit boarding school, eleven-year-old Jimmy James finds "this little lady priest" in the town park. She makes the cross with ashes on his horse's head, then tells Jimmy James that no matter what he has done or will do, the Lord forgives him. Jimmy James "felt the cross burn into him worse than any brand." A bizarre accident in "How Daddy Lost His Ear" results in an equally bizarre wedding. And one of the many "white ladies" who appear briefly and disappear fast finally gets Cowboy to tell the truth. These men, women, and children don't just endure. They thrive in their own peculiar style, turning seemingly tragic outcomes into sources of outrageous humor, and nourishing indelible family ties. This is the West as it was and is, a complex web of traditions and surprising, even shocking, ways of turning hardship into triumph.

A publication from the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University, this zine is a companion to a program in which local zinesters told their stories about how they first got involved in zines. Featuring submissions by Sarah Dyer, Sarah Koetmel, and Ayun Halliday, the zine takes a nostalgic look at riot grrrl and the advent of women's zines. Visual elements include Hello Kitty art, clip art, and pictures of photocopiers, interspersed with copies of early 90s zines.

A member of the moneyed Bingham family recounts her family's rise to power over several decades and their subsequent downfall amidst family infighting and rumors of a family murder

A wise and sexy new collection from one of the most important feminist writers of her generation.

Bingham's short, lyrical poems seek, always, to connect with the events of ordinary life and provide inspiration for all travelers on the path.