An American classic rediscovered by each generation, The Story of My Life is Helen Keller’s account of her triumph over deafness and blindness. Popularized by the stage play and movie The Miracle Worker, Keller’s story has become a symbol of hope for people all over the world.

This book–published when Keller was only twenty-two–portrays the wild child who is locked in the dark and silent prison of her own body. With an extraordinary immediacy, Keller reveals her frustrations and rage, and takes the reader on the unforgettable journey of her education and breakthroughs into the world of communication. From the moment Keller recognizes the word “water” when her teacher finger-spells the letters, we share her triumph as “that living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!” An unparalleled chronicle of courage, The Story of My Life remains startlingly fresh and vital more than a century after its first publication, a timeless testament to an indomitable will.


From the Paperback edition.

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“The greatest woman of our age.”
—Winston Churchill

“Helen Keller is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare, and the rest of the immortals. . . . She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is today.”
—Mark Twain


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Helen Keller, born in 1880, was the first deaf-blind graduate of Radcliffe College. Later, she became a high-profile socialist, and throughout her life she was a strong advocate for the blind and deaf communities, visiting over thirty-five countries and publishing fourteen books about her experiences, which have been translated into more than fifty languages. She died in 1968.

James Berger is associate professor of English at Hofstra University. The author of After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse, Berger has been awarded a Charles Phelps Taft Postdoctoral Fellowship by the University of Cincinnati and a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is now working on his next book, Those Who Can’t Speak. He lives in Connecticut.


From the Hardcover edition.

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