From Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow Wil Haygood comes a mesmerizing inquiry into the life of Eugene Allen, the butler who ignited a nation's imagination and inspired a major motion picture: The Butler: A Witness to History, the highly anticipated film that stars six Oscar winners, including Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey (honorary and nominee), Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Redgrave, and Robin Williams; as well as Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Alan Rickman, and Liev Schreiber. With a foreword by the Academy Award nominated director Lee Daniels, The Butler not only explores Allen's life and service to eight American Presidents, from Truman to Reagan, but also includes an essay, in the vein of James Baldwin’s jewel The Devil Finds Work, that explores the history of black images on celluloid and in Hollywood, and fifty-seven pictures of Eugene Allen, his family, the presidents he served, and the remarkable cast of the movie.

In 1833, Edward G. W. and Frances Parke Butler moved to their newly constructed plantation house, Dunboyne, on the banks of the Mississippi River near the village of Bayou Goula. Their experiences at Dunboyne over the next forty years demonstrated the transformations that many land-owning southerners faced in the nineteenth century, from the evolution of agricultural practices and commerce, to the destruction wrought by the Civil War and the transition from slave to free labor, and finally to the social, political, and economic upheavals of Reconstruction. In this comprehensive biography of the Butlers, David D. Plater explores the remarkable lives of a Louisiana family during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. Born in Tennessee to a celebrated veteran of the American Revolution, Edward Butler pursued a military career under the mentorship of his guardian, Andrew Jackson, and, during a posting in Washington, D.C., met and married a grand-niece of George Washington, Frances Parke Lewis. In 1831, he resigned his commission and relocated Frances and their young son to Iberville Parish, where the couple began a sugar cane plantation. As their land holdings grew, they amassed more enslaved laborers and improved their social prominence in Louisiana’s antebellum society. A staunch opponent of abolition, Butler voted in favor of Louisiana’s withdrawal from the Union at the state’s Secession Convention. But his actions proved costly when the war cut off agricultural markets and all but destroyed the state’s plantation economy, leaving the Butlers in financial ruin. In 1870, with their plantation and finances in disarray, the Butlers sold Dunboyne and resettled in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where they resided in a rental cottage with the financial support of Edward J. Gay, a wealthy Iberville planter and their daughter-in-law’s father. After Frances died in 1875, Edward Butler moved in with his son’s family in St. Louis, where he remained until his death in 1888. Based on voluminous primary source material, The Butlers of Iberville Parish, Louisiana offers an intimate picture of a wealthy nineteenth-century family and the turmoil they faced as a system based on the enslavement of others unraveled.

Despite his challenges as a deaf-mute, Burnell Butler was one of those who dreamed of a better life in Texas. Lured by all the twenty-eighth state offered, Butler, his wife, twelve children, and seven slaves gambled big in 1852, migrating from Mississippi in covered wagons to the unknown prairies of Texas. It was there that the Butlers would begin a new chapter, fueled by their rugged, hard-working spirit. Charles Olmsted, a former award-winning sports writer, relies on extensive research and anecdotes to chronologically capture the fascinating history of the Butler family. Beginning with a cattle drive during the Civil War, Olmsted details how Burnells son, William G. Butler joined in helping build the foundation for the multi-billion dollar beef industry, rode the Chisholm Trail with his family from the 1860s to the 1880s as part of the transformation to cattle cars on railroads, and often settled disputes with gunfights. Included are excerpts from letters, newspapers, and books as well as details from land purchases, proclamations, and real-life accounts. The Good, the Bad, the Butlers shares the true story of a pioneer family as they built a new life in Karnes County, Texas, and attempted to survive all the challenges of living in a dangerous and dusty land.

This book is a very good learning tool for children. Your childs imagination will soar as they follow Zach, Andrew and Emily on an adventure to help a baby elephant find his way back to the circus. A true labor of love, this creative story was written by Bruce Butler, the proud Grandfather to his Grandkids that inspired this book. The vibrant, whimsical illustrations were created by the Butlers Aunt Kary. Parents, teachers, everyone who has read the book loves it and Im sure you will too!

When Rachel Harris's mother runs off to Spain with the super of their New York City apartment building, Rachel's life takes a bizarre turn. Her eccentric father becomes obsessed with George Vasquez, the man who stole his wife: He wears George's clothes, he shaves with his razor, and, to top it off, he moves George's family into their apartment. The poignant and often funny journey Rachel and her father take to Madrid to hunt down her mother further cements her desire to shake her more than unusual family situation and find a new identity. And who has a more perfect life than Olivio and Edwin Butler? So gorgeous and popular, they don't really have friends, just hangers-on. And though Rachel doesn't remember ever having spoken a word to them, her resolve becomes clear. She must find a way into the Butlers' home and into their family. In this marvelously compassionate first novel, Penny Jackson deftly depicts a young girl's search for family - and her discovery that family is a state of mind.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Two different worlds and two very different lives collide in Paris in this captivating novel by Danielle Steel. Joachim von Hartmann was born and raised in Buenos Aires by his loving German mother, inseparable from his identical twin, Javier. When Joachim moves to Paris with his mother in his late teens, his twin stays behind and enters a dark world. Meanwhile, Joachim begins training to be a butler, fascinated by the precision and intense demands, and goes on to work in some of the grandest homes in England. His brother never reappears. Olivia White has given ten years of her life to her magazine, which failed, taking all her dreams with it. A bequest from her mother allows her a year in Paris to reinvent herself. She needs help setting up a home in a charming Parisian apartment. It is then that her path and Joachim’s cross. Joachim takes a job working for Olivia as a lark and enjoys the whimsy of a different life for a few weeks, which turn to months as the unlikely employer and employee learn they enjoy working side by side. At the same time, Joachim discovers the family history he never knew: a criminal grandfather who died in prison, the wealthy father who abandoned him, and the dangerous criminal his twin has become. While Olivia struggles to put her life back together, Joachim’s comes apart. Stripped of their old roles, they strive to discover the truth about each other and themselves, first as employer and employee, then as friends. Their paths no longer sure, they are a man and woman who reach a place where the past doesn’t matter and only what they are living now is true.

Butlers & Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals is designed to assist those seeking a new and rewarding career as a butler or the American equivalent, the household manager, as well as those seeking to employ them, whether in stately home, hotel, corporate setting or elsewhere. In the increasingly competitive and mechanistic world in which we live, service is often the only differentiator between one provider and another. Having a competent butler is one way to develop that much-needed edge.Butlers & Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals is also useful for any man or woman who would like to use some of the butler's know-how to enhance his or her own life style. The many checklists in Butlers & Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals cover every kind of situation a butler deals with and are designed, in conjunction with the chapter they supplement, to walk a person successfully through those situations and so increase his or her confidence. No amount of copying actions mechanically will make a butler, however. It is necessary to understand the point of view of the butler to then handle any given situation as a butler would. That is why chapters are provided to explain the butler rationale.

The Butler's Child is the personal story of a Warner Brothers family grandson who spent more than fifty years as a fighting, no holds barred civil rights lawyer. Lewis M. Steel explores why he, a privileged white man, devoted his life to seeking racial progress in often uncomprehending or hostile courts. In fact, after writing a feature for The New York Times Magazine entitled "Nine Men in Black Who Think White," Lewis was fired from the NAACP and the entire legal staff resigned in support of him. Lewis speaks about his family butler, an African American man named William Rutherford, who helped raise Lewis, and their deep but ultimately troubled relationship, as well as how Robert L. Carter, the NAACP's extraordinary general counsel, became Lewis' mentor, father figure and lifelong close friend. Lewis exposes the conflicts which arose from living and working in two very different worlds - that of the Warner Brothers family and that of a civil rights lawyer. He also explores his more than fifty year marriage that joined two very different Jewish and Irish American families. Lewis' work with the NAACP and in private practice created legal precedents still relevant today. The Butler's Child is also an insider's look into some of the most important civil rights cases from the turbulent 1960's to the present day by a man still working to advance the civil rights which should be available to all.