Ebook473 pages8 hours
The Story of My Life
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this ebook
The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing her early life, especially her experiences with Anne Sullivan. The book is dedicated to inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The dedication reads, "To ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL Who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I dedicate this Story of My Life."
Read more from John Albert Macy
Modern Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Critical Game Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Story of My Life
Related ebooks
The Story of My Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hitchhike Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What If This Is Enough?: Essays. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA River in Darkness: by Masaji Ishikawa | Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Innocence: Rediscovering Joy and Wonder; A Guide to Renewal in Work Relations and Daily Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5AS A MAN THINKETH Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5ABC's on the Ranch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIvan the fool Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings101 Selected Sayings of Mahatma Gandhi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Fables Of Aesop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGuilt Trip: My Quest to Leave the Baggage Behind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo classic novels ENTJ will love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leo Gray and the Lunar Eclipse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Rules for Living a Good Life: A Game Plan for after Graduation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stephen Hawking Biography: The Life and Work of the World’s Famous Scientist in a Brief History of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family Happiness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gift of Anger: And Other Lessons from My Grandfather Mahatma Gandhi Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Positive Matters: Words, Quotations, and Stories to Heal and Inspire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Real Meaning of Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories, and Prayers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPensées Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Can't Make This Up: by Kevin Hart | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Personal Memoirs For You
I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mediocre Monk: A Stumbling Search for Answers in a Forest Monastery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stash: My Life in Hiding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Story of My Life
Rating: 3.923076923076923 out of 5 stars
4/5
13 ratings15 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not a great book, but one that can definitely convice a person that they have things pretty easy. Her struggle enables us to appreciate much of what we take for granted. This is definitely an inspirational book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing, Incredible, Wonderful, Brilliant... There aren't enough superlatives to describe Helen Keller. It boggles my mind how fully she was able to live life and the people she met. Ann Sullivan must have been the greatest, most loving teacher ever! It has always fascinated me that she could learn so much and be able to enjoy such a full life, both deaf and blind. It is difficult to believe that the descriptions and knowledge imparted by her in this book are from a deaf, blind person. Most sighted, hearing people don't live life to the fullest. Her example is inspiring and humbling. This edition has a reiteration of each chapter (not necessary) and pertinent questions.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I have mixed feelings about this (audio)book. For writing style, I'd give it 2 stars, OK, but for the content of Helen Keller's life--amazing! In fact, I doubt that the formal writing style did Keller's life and accomplishments full justice. So, I'm giving the book 3 stars as an average, but am much more impressed by Keller, herself!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: Helen is both blind and deaf, it seems all hope is lost-enter Anne Sullivan the miracle worker. With persistence and love little Helen learns not only how to survive but how to thrive.Summary: "Everything has it's wonders, even darkness and silence , and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Hat mich schon länger interessiert, ich hab allerdings nur den Autobio-Teil gelesen, (noch) nicht die Briefe. Etwas sehr klischeebeladen, aber doch beeindruckend, was diese sehr begabte und ambitionierte Frau (die mit knapp zwei Jahren Gehör und Augenlicht verloren hat) geschafft hat.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Earlier this year, Andrew was heading to pick up Jefferson in Chicago, and wanted a book to entertain him in the car on the way home. I handed him a children's biography of Helen Heller that I had loved as a child. Evidently Jefferson loved it, too. So for our Christmas road-trip I was sure to include a biography of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, also from my childhood, in my bag of tricks. These things, combined with coming across references to Helen Keller as a progressive icon in her adult life, made me grab this memoir for my stack of prospective New Year's Eve reads.
As it turns out, Keller wrote this autobiography at the age of 22, so it didn't get me any closer to understanding her activism in later life. But this slim book is still remarkable for the joy in life that leaks through the print, and then conversely her intensely introspective self-criticism for limitations that I feel NEARLY EVER OTHER HUMAN BEING HAD AT HER AGE.
I am happy to have read it and will be glad to share it with Jefferson, but I think I'll wait a few years, so the descriptions of her prep school and college studies will be more relatable. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is about the life of Helen Keller. The book starts when Helen is a child. Helen describes herself as stubborn and angry. She lived in a world of dark for a few years of her life. Helen talks about the years before and after Annie Sullivan, her teacher arrive. The story continues to show how Helen and Annie worked together to accomplish the many learning skills that Helen learned. This book is inspirational and a great book to show to children that may or may not have disabilities.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I became interested in reading Helen Keller's autobiography after seeing the original movie "The Miracle Worker", now one of my favourites. I was a bit sorry when all of that was dispensed with in the first four chapters, and discovered that Miss Keller's account hardly matches the movie version. I chalked up the difference to Hollywood invention - a bit disappointing. Helen relates her story up to her college years and is fairly lacklustre as far as biographies go. Mostly it's devoted to discoveries about the things she most grew to love. Highlights include famous people she met (Mark Twain being my favourite), and her surprising daring at trying things I wouldn't have expected - riding a bicycle and rowing a boat alone, for example.She was very descriptive throughout, almost poetic, which greatly impressed me. Then in Chapter Fourteen comes the poem she wrote and was accused of plagiarizing. She gives a convincing account of how this must have occurred subconsciously, and what a setback it was to suspect every thought she had as not being her own. It also cast my reading in a different light: how much of the descriptive detail I'd been admiring had she simply echoed? It earned my sympathy to read about this circumstance in which she could no longer trust her own imagination. Fortunately she found the confidence to pursue her dream of a college education, which is where her biography (written in her early twenties) draws to a close. While I admired her bravery, it wasn't a standout biography for me. Before I set it aside, I saw there were substantial appendices so I gave those a peek. The first was a collection of letters. While the content was fairly dull, it was remarkable how quickly she progressed in vocabulary and grammar. In the space of two years she went from discovering words to writing age-appropriate letters to her friends and family. After those, I discovered the real treasure: a retelling of her biography from the perspective of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Its preface explains that Helen Keller had little memory of her life prior to being educated, nor could she convey an outside perspective of what her education had entailed. Miss Sullivan's account is an almost scene-for-scene description of what occurs in the movie - surprise! Then it goes well beyond that, relating Miss Keller's remarkable development from her teacher's viewpoint. This was the biography I'd imagined reading in the first place. I was hooked.I'm tempted to recommend others go straight to Anne Sullivan's account. But in hindsight I can say it's worth your time to read both sides (internal and external) for the full picture of this remarkable woman's experience in being awakened to the wonders of life and language.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A wonderful book about a brilliant, loving young woman who just happened to be blind and deaf. When Helen was 19, she penned the following words in a letter: "The thought that my dear Heavenly Father is always near, giving me abundantly of all those things, which truly enrich life and make it sweet and beautiful, makes every deprivation seem of little moment compared with the countless blessings I enjoy."Anne Sullivan, her famous tutor, taught Helen at age 11 that "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart."
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I realised a couple years ago when I read Lies My Teacher Told Me that I really knew nothing about Helen Keller other than, well, basically what the summary above says. I didn't know that she was a disability rights advocat, or "a suffragist, a pacifist, an opponent of Woodrow Wilson, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter", to quote Wikipedia. So I thought I'd read up on her, and seeing she had written an autobiography, that seemed like the way to go. It's...really not. What I didn't realise, was that this was written when she was in college, so it doesn't talk about any of the awesome things she went on to do and is indeed just the same story I'd heard before. It's not a bad book, just not at all what I was looking for.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At first I thought I was going to be disappointed, which surprised me, because I love every Helen Keller quote I come across. But the beginning paragraphs are of the typical, what I call "Genesis" kind. My father was so-and-so, my mother was so-and-so, I'm related to blah, blah and blah etc. And the narrator's voice can be a bit grating. But the language very quickly changed and the narrator's voice became more comfortable with familiarity.Helen Keller has possibly the most joyous and vividly beautiful approach to language that I have yet encountered. She was clearly a natural at PR from an early age; her affectionate, naïve and idealistic enthusiasm for "good works" brought tears to my eyes. I felt very chastened by the end. Despite regular references to her deprivations (perhaps a fraction overstressed), she retains a lilting and joyous outlook throughout. It made me realise the value of choosing to abstain from noxious literature; she is so filled with beauty that it is beauty she chooses to express in everything, including the letters which accompany the main book. This book is cause for serious moral reflection in the best possible way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5this autobiography of Helen Keller is of interest, and some of the extra mateial in this book is of interest, but there are a lot of boring letters by Helen Keller which taxed my patience and added nothing of interest. The actual story of how she came to learn and actuaally graduated from Radcliffe is of interest and worth reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an interesting look at Ms. Keller's young life - learning to communicate in a world where her blindness and deafness isolate her from just about everyone at first. Some of the passages don't seem as if they could be written by someone who was blind and deaf. Her descriptions of nature - particularly the sounds - seem improbable. Perhaps this was a result of her education - the ability to describe things for others that she didn't actually have firsthand experience with but only experience from Ms. Sullivan's descriptions. I certainly admire Ms. Keller's persistence and her keen mind. How many seeing and hearing people today master four languages by the time they have entered college??
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Written when Helen Keller was 22, "The Story of My Life" is about her life as a child and young lady. She was not born blind and deaf, but as a toddler suffered an illness that almost killed her and robbed her of her sight and hearing. Helen was seemingly unteachable and growing wilder each day until Helen's parents hired Anne Sullivan who was to become her beloved "Teacher". Helen became a proficient student, learning not only to read and write and speak, but also learning several languages eventually graduating from Radcliffe College. This is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman. The book is divided into two parts: Keller's autobiography and her letters. Her autobiography is written a bit flowery, but is interesting as she describes her early years and how she tried to communicate with people and her increasing frustration when they couldn't understand her. She writes about how Anne Sullivan finally got her to understand the word for "water" and how she quickly learned other words after that breakthrough. She tackles what was a very painful time in her young life when she was accused of plagiarizing a story when she was only 11 years old. She ends her autobiography by describing the things she loves in life: reading (books that she loves and her favorite authors), history, languages, the outdoors, sailing and visiting friends. As interesting as Keller's autobiography is, her letters reveal even more about her life. Printed in chronological order, starting when Helen was just 7 years old, the letters show how quickly her grammar and writing skills developed. In the autobiographical section of the book, it is easy to forget that Keller was deaf and blind as she writes about talking to people and things that she's seen. Her letters explain better how people communicated with her and even the toll it took on Anne Sullivan, who had continuous problems with her eyes. Her letters explain how she wrote letters using a special board and a regular pencil and how she was able to read people's lips and feel things in a museum to get an appreciation of art. Very interesting reading. My only complaint about this wonderful book is the editing. The book was first published in 1903 and has been in print ever since, but I wonder when it was last edited. There are notations that a footnote will follow but there is no footnote. There are mentions of people who were well known in Helen's time, but today's readers might not know how they were and footnotes should have been used to explain who they were, starting with Laura Bridgman who apparently was the inspiration for much of the education the young Helen got. Also, Helen raised money for the education of a blind and deaf boy, but there was no mention of what happened to him later in life. Editing aside, this is a wonderful, inspirational book and I highly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This "restored" edition has been reedited by Roger Shattuck to reflect more accurately its original compostiion, presenting Helen Keller's story in three successive accounts: Helen's own version; the letters of "teacher" Anne s"ullivan, shubmerged in the original; and thevaluable documentation frunished by their young assistant, John Marcy.Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in 1880. Before her second birhtday, a mysterious illness left her deaf and blind. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, on year fafter the initial publication of The Story Of My Life, and wa the author of thriteen books. She died in 1968. Roger Shattuck, author of Forbidden Knowledge and The Banquet Years, won the National Book Award for a work abot Marcel Proust. University Professor Emeritus at Boston University, Shattuck lives in Vermont. Dorothy Herrmann is the author of Helen Keller: A Life and of three other biographies. She lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and New York City.Jacket Design by Eleen Cheung Jacket Photograph by Library of Congress Printed in USA
Book preview
The Story of My Life - John Albert Macy
.a book_preview_excerpt.html }]Fr_{m{}GVzYmx&Vq[(5P
z,=#n̓':_ybwm_~/Ω4/7
|bl0p1Men[5R)ͿƮ"7ah[)785]8]sS߄Q~p8e|ϥN&ahN4?7?ؐgy|Jd֡ftXJY>,C+ߝ{i87|8ˈnS;Ms缜sXܔeQ1eOS3hceli|Vs-aͻ0c]ۼ_.]àZZ_2|庢wi!tiֽ7xhKӇB_Ms3'Na.]*x, pL&0/S-OY$Ň6nEVGI_sNSKGQb
:teCI.l S-]j-n"tf.5b]u'lI)(?GK`Nƺ&o7xx
7lfyd?}1I{7=ˀnAY!>R~e
}m?HN"c8ԉw (q!nUIqγ
|EYfmCm
o"^
aN)mYG]c:n|B~ "2x"*7L<$]IݏAJeijb,uar2ăFDQ'ij7\?_wr ʤCn75zt<.^UM2yS72y<|,3ʞeV+AM2Zo-}UuH>פ6}a|eL<.2$ϗ9˔E}D/t4~ņek,p}ݺłZ-Y:?ʟ&c8_OרA2WkDTYޚLyܼ^4st9ݽ^.O vD)L@`:}$%+
rYV_~Z05ClJEM{6}6 ʷ0b/L^)=A<D"2wJԑ0ϑK#z߉+僐c
S=+GP1 9@7eŌv9g13pʝꦗ1z̡\%d|xBӊL
Mbd̳BC'wP.HGOeC/ШDefJ1jh0R8|Coŵk6Ob$3;<ȶ84 Ziǭ{%$J+ӀT L-|*am}VW;+'ՒBD~{'QE9+VWߋhg=B[`m DQ_@*:x;Knσeh2QXO 菗X-r[_ ."@X[dDKD"5(Z2-V851_Nm&p9l<-QwA&CW%<>͜]/'>&X;~W]6[o<H
t`hto8;zfQ:n4p
2O)AЊ7@(p,.%:+_9aU@FQ `Uw[wD}nJÒ%ꛑL @I*H~p8Auau wPO>a1&4m ȹJJ.4ANrrc0A&V\[&N