The story of how a young Southern girl who was raised on a pig farm became one of the most influential and inspiring people in the world. We all know Oprah Winfrey as a talk-show host, actress, producer, media mogul, and philanthropist, but the "Queen of Talk" wasn't always so fortunate. She suffered through a rough childhood and went on to use her personal struggles as motivation. Oprah's kindness, resilience, and determination are just some of the many reasons why her viewers--and people all around the world--love her. The richest African American person of the twentieth century, Oprah is often described as the most influential woman in the world.
Presents a biography of television celebrity Oprah Winfrey, discussing her early life, her success as host of the "Oprah Winfrey Show," and her personal and public struggles.
The inspirational wisdom Oprah Winfrey shares in her monthly O., The Oprah Magazine column updated, curated, and collected for the first time in a beautiful keepsake book. As a creative force, student of the human heart and soul, and champion of living the life you want, Oprah Winfrey stands alone. Over the years, she has made history with a legendary talk show - the highest-rated program of its kind, launched her own television network, become the nation's only African-American billionaire, and been awarded both an honorary degree by Harvard University and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. From all her experiences, she has gleaned life lessons—which, for fourteen years, she's shared in O, The Oprah Magazine's widely popular "What I Know For Sure" column, a monthly source of inspiration and revelation. Now, for the first time, these thoughtful gems have been revised, updated, and collected in What I Know For Sure, a beautiful cloth bound book with a ribbon marker, packed with insight and revelation from Oprah Winfrey. Organized by theme—joy, resilience, connection, gratitude, possibility, awe, clarity, and power—these essays offer a rare, powerful and intimate glimpse into the heart and mind of one of the world's most extraordinary women—while providing readers a guide to becoming their best selves. Candid, moving, exhilarating, uplifting, and frequently humorous, the words Oprah shares in What I Know For Sure shimmer with the sort of truth that readers will turn to again and again.
University Press returns with another short and captivating biography of one of history's most compelling figures, Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Winfrey has been ranked the most influential woman in the world. As a world-renowned talk show host, television producer, movie actress, best-selling author, celebrity interviewer, and generous philanthropist, she has used her empathy, authenticity, and wit to completely revolutionize American media. Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1954 to an unmarried teenage mother, Oprah Gail Winfrey was raised in extreme poverty, wore dresses made of potato sacks, suffered abuse, became pregnant, lost her son to a premature birth, became an honors student, was voted "Most Popular Girl" in her high school, won a full college scholarship, became the youngest - and first black female - television news anchor in Nashville, took the lowest-rated show in Chicago and turned it into the number-one daytime talk show in America, and became America's first black multi-billionaire. This short book tells the intensely human story of a woman who is changing the world in a way that no one else can.
Oprah Winfrey is an unprecedented and important cultural phenomenon. This book aims to understand the reasons for her spectacular success and visibility. Based on nearly one hundred show transcripts; a year and a half of watching the show regularly; and analysis of magazine articles, several biographies, O Magazine, Oprah Book Club novels, self-help manuals promoted on the show, and hundreds of messages on the Oprah Winfrey Web site, it takes the Oprah industry seriously in order to ask fundamental questions about how culture works today.
Oprah Winfrey is not only a well-known media personality but a woman who has based her career on helping others. This book examines Winfreys background and the foundational moments that made her into the media mogul she is today. Students learn about her influential work for women and girls in South Africa, as well as her inspiring journey from poverty to financial and professional success.
ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand. “Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.”—Oprah Winfrey This book is going to change the way you see your life. Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question. Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversation throughout the book, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future—opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.
The public's appetite for all things Oprah Winfrey has waned little since her Chicago TV debut in 1983. Known as a self-help guru and the "Queen of All Media," Oprah (it's almost impossible not to refer to her by her globally recognized first name) has been shining light on social issues and encouraging fans to "live your best life" for more than 30 years, revolutionizing her corner of the entertainment industry in the process. Winfrey's unprecedented influence and celebrity often overshadow her indisputable entrepreneurial prowess and business acumen. Even though Oprah has stated that she wouldn't consider herself a businesswoman, her ever-expanding media empire and record-breaking multibillion-dollar fortune say otherwise. Own It: Oprah Winfrey In Her Own Words provides a unique look into the wisdom and thought processes of one of the most adored, respected, and powerful women in the world. This book collects her most insightful quotations, centered around her media career, life lessons, entrepreneurship, and remarkable personal story. Fortune has called O: The Oprah Magazine, now in its 16th year of publication, "the most successful startup ever in the industry." In its infancy, the magazine became a highly profitable addition to the Hearst portfolio, amassing ever-increasing ad sales and a paid circulation larger than industry giants such as Vogue and Martha Stewart Living. Over the last several years, her media holdings and interests have also included an award-winning movie production studio, a satellite radio channel, the cable-TV company Oxygen Media, and the burgeoning OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Few entrepreneurs have been savvy enough to leverage their resources with the foresight Oprah has demonstrated in her decades-long career. Oprah's key asset, developed over the course of decades, is herself: a brand she controls by shrewdly choosing partnerships and endorsement deals and not kowtowing to convention. At the outset of her career, Oprah decided to start a company rather than take the conventional talent-for-hire path. She, along with a few close executives, took her initial TV success and grew it into a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate, with one woman at the helm. Her influence in the marketplace is unprecedented. Just look at the long-term impact her recommendations and endorsements have had in the fields of consumer products and book publishing, among others. Oprah's next venture is unknown, but its success, like her other triumphs, depends on Oprah—and the self-reliance, values, and vision on which she has built her empire.
From the impoverished inner-city streets of Milwaukee to her own nationally syndicated talk show in Chicago, Oprah has persevered to become one of the most recognized personalities in the world. Readers will learn how her courage, kindness, and perseverance have led her to found Oprah's Angel Network, a charity whose mission is to help the underprivileged of the world.
For the past twenty-five years, no one has been better at revealing secrets than Oprah Winfrey. On what is arguably the most influential show in television history, she has gotten her guests—often the biggest celebrities in the world—to bare their love lives, explore their painful pasts, admit their transgressions, reveal their pleasures, and explore their demons. In turn, Oprah has repeatedly allowed her audience to share in her own life story, opening up about the sexual abuse in her past and discussing her romantic relationships, her weight problems, her spiritual beliefs, her charitable donations, and her strongly held views on the state of the world. After a quarter of a century of the Oprah-ization of America, can there be any more secrets left to reveal? Yes. Because Oprah has met her match. Kitty Kelley has, over the same period of time, fearlessly and relentlessly investigated and written about the world’s most revered icons: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, England’s Royal Family, and the Bush dynasty. In her #1 bestselling biographies, she has exposed truths and exploded myths to uncover the real human beings that exist behind their manufac¬tured facades. Turning her reportorial sights on Oprah, Kelley has now given us an unvarnished look at the stories Oprah’s told and the life she’s led. Kelley has talked to Oprah’s closest family members and business associates. She has obtained court records, birth certificates, financial and tax records, and even copies of Oprah’s legendary (and punishing) confidentiality agreements. She has probed every aspect of Oprah Winfrey’s life, and it is as if she’s written the most extraordinary segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show ever filmed—one in which Oprah herself is finally and fully revealed. There is a case to be made, and it is certainly made in this book, that Oprah Winfrey is an important, and even great, figure of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But there is also a case to be made that even greatness needs to be examined and put under a microscope. Fact must be separated from myth, truth from hype. Kitty Kelley has made that separation, showing both sides of Oprah as they have never been shown before. In doing so she has written a psychologically perceptive and meticulously researched book that will surprise and thrill everyone who reads it.
