Memoir

Last week we learned that adult children of divorce will almost always revert to childish behaviors. Case in point, Briana, the daughter previously known as The Most Reasonable Person in Orange County, dissolved into a impertinent, recalcitrant, petulant brat upon meeting her mother's boyfriend. This week Briana grows up and fights like a big girl … but we'll get there soon enough. Elsewhere in the O.C., there are tiaras to be worn and bling to be bought as Alexis goes all out for her little princesses, and Slade decides to declare Gretchen his queen.

It was one of the true watershed moments in Baltimore sports history, so why should anyone be surprised that Frank Deford - one of the greatest sportswriters of the modern era and a Charm City native - would be there to witness it? Well, slightly after the fact. The date was July 4, 1944 and the place was Greenmount Avenue and 29th Street, where a 5-year-old Deford stood with his mother and looked at the smoking pile of debris that remained of Oriole Park. The old wooden stadium was destroyed the night before by a fire that some now credit with helping turn Baltimore into a major league city.

Carole King's new memoir, "A Natural Woman," was released today, and she's making the rounds wuith television and radio interviews. The book chronicles her rise from a New York childhood influenced by music, to her discovery of rhythm and blues on the radio shows of legendary DJ Alan Freed , to acclaim with the hit album "Tapestry," (a hallmark of my generation) and through her troubled marriages. (In two weeks, King is scheduled to release "The Legendary Demos," an album of her early recordings, including " Yours Until Tomorrow.

Carole King's new memoir, "A Natural Woman," was released today, and she's making the rounds wuith television and radio interviews. The book chronicles her rise from a New York childhood influenced by music, to her discovery of rhythm and blues on the radio shows of legendary DJ Alan Freed , to acclaim with the hit album "Tapestry," (a hallmark of my generation) and through her troubled marriages. (In two weeks, King is scheduled to release "The Legendary Demos," an album of her early recordings, including " Yours Until Tomorrow.

Irreverent comedian and bad-girl author Chelsea Handler has turned her popular memoir, "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," into a new sitcom that makes its debut tonight. The NBC series, "Are You There, Chelsea?" stars Laura Prepon as Handler, while Handler plays the older sister - who is reportedly based on her real sister Simone, according to People. A review in the Los Angeles Times said the show "takes the intemperate habits that were long the province of the crazy sidekick and gives them to the lead.

Gerald E. Griffin, editor of this page from 1964 to 1972 and before that chief of The Sun's Washington Bureau, has written ''A Memoir at 85'' that can stand as a model for all those now living who want their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to know what they were all about.I know next to nothing about my great-grandparents, only a little more about my grandparents and have but a sketchy idea about the early life of my parents. Would that they had written something like Jerry's 166-page memoir.

Few politicians in modern memory have been mourned as steadfastly as Robert Kennedy, whose death 30 years ago todayconstituted one of the greatest wastes of the 20th century. "Robert F. Kennedy: A Memoir" (8 p.m.-11 p.m. tomorrow, repeats midnight-3 a.m., Discovery) lets his associates,campaign workers and family members explain why. The result is extraordinarily moving, especially his eldest daughter, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who reads a letter her father wrote to her upon her uncle John's assassination.

Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Knopf. 496 pages. $26.95. He is timid, even shy, but the whole country knows. The local doctor tells his grandfather, "Children's lies are a sign of great talent." A colonel looks straight into his eyes and says, "You'll go far!" Scarcely into his 20s, having published only a few short stories, Gabito already is called "maestro." This astonishing first volume of the memoirs of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez closes with the author at age 28 leaving Colombia for Europe, a two-week assignment he stretches to three years.

When she was 12 years old, Christina Lewis Halpern was caught in the collision between great good fortune and terrible luck. And the suddenness and severity of the impact jolted her deeply, though it would take years for her to experience the full effects. And yet, after the pioneering African-American businessman Reginald F. Lewis died of a brain tumor on Jan. 19, 1993, just seven weeks after the disease was diagnosed, his youngest daughter took pains to conceal her shock. She didn't cry. Instead, she reacted by becoming responsible and very quiet.

"12 Going on 13: An Autobiographical Novel," by Jan Myrdal. Chicago: Lake View Press/Ravenwood Books. 200 pages. $19.95/cloth The son of not one, but two, Nobel laureates, Jan Myrdal finds the distinction more of a burden than a blessing. The third in a trilogy of autobiographical works about his rarefied but tumultuous childhood, and an absorbing read by any standard, "12 Going on 13" documents both Mr. Myrdal's fervid imagination and his awakening moral conscience.Set during World War II, the memoir offers a child's perception of a world spinning out of control.

Close to the southeastern fringe of 540 acres of rolling farmland, Martha Anne Clark lives in the Ellicott City farmhouse where she grew up, the same house where her father, state Sen. James Clark Jr., resided for nearly 50 years until his death in 2006. In another house on the property lives her 24-year-old daughter, Nora Crist, who has introduced pigs and chickens to the working farm on Clarksville Pike for the first time in its 214-year history. And just over a grassy knoll or two in the other direction is the petting farm Clark opened 10 years ago with her father's enthusiastic support.

When she was 12 years old, Christina Lewis Halpern was caught in the collision between great good fortune and terrible luck. And the suddenness and severity of the impact jolted her deeply, though it would take years for her to experience the full effects. And yet, after the pioneering African-American businessman Reginald F. Lewis died of a brain tumor on Jan. 19, 1993, just seven weeks after the disease was diagnosed, his youngest daughter took pains to conceal her shock. She didn't cry. Instead, she reacted by becoming responsible and very quiet.

Irreverent comedian and bad-girl author Chelsea Handler has turned her popular memoir, "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," into a new sitcom that makes its debut tonight. The NBC series, "Are You There, Chelsea?" stars Laura Prepon as Handler, while Handler plays the older sister - who is reportedly based on her real sister Simone, according to People. A review in the Los Angeles Times said the show "takes the intemperate habits that were long the province of the crazy sidekick and gives them to the lead.

So tonight we finally got more Chuck scenes, more Serena/Blair scenes ... and more angsty Dan scenes. Sigh. The drama centered around the release party for Dan's new book. Ignoring the fact that "Gossip Girl" can't go an episode without a party, I was actually pretty excited to finally see Dan in the spotlight. That is, until everything spiraled into a big mess of whining, complaining and general selfishness. If it wasn't for Chuck and his show-stealing moments, I don't think I could've made it through.

A revolving rooftop restaurant in downtown Baltimore introduced Leonora DiPietro to waitressing more than 45 years ago. The stations, where staff picked up drinks and entrees, rotated constantly, too, which was too much for the new employee. She had locked herself in a linen closet to cry in frustration when her manager found her and spent the rest of the evening schooling her in the trade that would become her career. Over the decades, she has served celebrities, politicians, sports figures and next-door neighbors, all of whom know her as Peachy, the nickname the parish priest gave a bubbly little girl with rosy cheeks.

Thomas Fulton, a longtime physics professor at the Johns Hopkins University who swapped notes with the great minds of science, died of heart failure on April 8 at his daughter's home in Ruxton. He was 83. Born Tamas Feuerzeug, in Budapest, Hungary, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1941 at the age of 14. His immediate family fled Nazis in Hungary and Germany, where many of his other family members died in the Holocaust, and traveled to fascist Spain, where he secured three boat tickets to Cuba by borrowing $100 from a British consular official.

"Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir," by Bill Bradley. Knopf. 442 pages. $25Bill Bradley's new memoir may be the first example of a new genre: the non-campaign book. He is retiring after three terms as U.S. senator from New Jersey and, despite earlier reports, seems unlikely to seek the presidency this year. So, unlike political leaders' books that are little more than expanded stump speeches, this is a summing-up of Mr. Bradley's 18 years as a well-respected figure in Washington, D.C., and a well-traveled campaigner for Democratic candidates.

Soon after she moved to Montana in 1964, Annick Smith became curious about the state's history. She would go to the library at the University of Montana in Missoula; there she would peruse such volumes as Granville Street's 1925 memoir "Forty Years on the Frontier," which told of rustlers and vigilantes and other colorful sorts so familiar in Wild West myth.She read other accounts, too -- ones written by women. These did not concentrate on gunfights and desperadoes but on the day-to-day lives of people trying to establish a life on the frontier.

Michael Oher wants to set moviegoers straight about his portrayal in "The Blind Side. " He was never slow, mentally or physically. He did know football from an early age. Most important, many people besides a wealthy, loving couple in the swank east side of Memphis, Tenn., helped him rise from homelessness to football stardom at Ole Miss and in Baltimore. The Ravens offensive tackle tells his story in "I Beat the Odds," written with Don Yaeger. He details his hard-knocks life before he entered Briarcrest Christian School and was mentored and then adopted by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy.