Covers the author's photographic work with Life magazine

Robert Faehmel finds his structured life threatened by an old schoolmate and former Nazi

Gordon Parks was born with, he says, "a stubborn need to be somebody." Though Parks is remembered most notably as a photographer and filmmaker, on his enthralling climb to fame between 1944 and 1978 he was successful in many pursuits, including journalism, poetry, and music. It was not always an easy journey, but by thirty-six he had overcome many obstacles to become a photographer and writer for Life magazine. To Smile in Autumn is a candid revelation of a man in the prime of his life and career. This autobiography, with a new foreword by Alexs Pate, is a testament to a person much attuned to the greater world and driven to leave his mark on it.

Acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, composer, and author Gordon Parks reflects on his life achievements and the social and political events he has witnessed.

Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.

In 2015, a race of alien Others conquered Earth. They enslaved humanity not by force, but through an aggressive mind control that turned people into contented, unquestioning robots. Except sixteen-year-old Althea isn’t content at all, and she doesn’t need the mysterious note inside her locket to tell her she’s Something Else. It also warns her to trust no one, so she hides the pieces that make her different, even though it means being alone. The autumn she meets Lucas, everything changes. Althea and Lucas are immune to the alien mind control, and together they search for the reason why. What they uncover is a stunning truth the Others never anticipated, one with the potential to free the brainwashed human race. It’s not who they are that makes them special, but what. And what they are is a threat. One the Others are determined to eliminate for good.

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...