Art Biography

Pulitzer Prize-winning author McFeely captures the power and the contemplative nature of Douglass, while shedding light on the insecurities and humanity of the man himself. The power of this landmark biography lies in McFeely’s ability to bring to life not only the charismatic man, but the age as well—detailing the struggle for emancipation in the political arena as the nation moved toward civil war.

Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of “fellow travelers” whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf’s studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.

While working together at a Los Angeles boutique, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor became fast and furious friends over the impossibility of finding the perfect T-shirt. Following their vision of comfortable, fitted T-shirts, they set up shop in Gela’s one-bedroom Hollywood apartment with $200 and one rule: Whatever they did, they both had to be obsessed by it. Pam and Gela eventually sold their company to Liz Claiborne for $50 million, but not before they created a whole new genre of casual clothing that came to define California cool.

Derek Taylor's iconic memoir is a rare opportunity to be immersed in one of the most whirlwind music sensations in history: Beatlemania. As Time Goes By tells the remarkable story of Taylor's trajectory from humble provincial journalist to loved confidant right at the center of the Beatles' magic circle. In charming, conversational prose, Taylor shares anecdotes and reminiscences so vivid and immediate that you find yourself plunged into the beating heart of 1960s counterculture.

When Justin Bieber was four years old, he got his first drum set. It marked the beginning of an amazing journey that would take the Canadian musician and singer around the world and to the top of the music charts. Learn more about the life of this grounded young man, and how his music career has led to opportunities in other arenas, including acting.

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. Her life was 'modern' too: she went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?

Hundreds of thousands of humorous Chuck Norris facts have been published, traveled around the globe via internet, and gained an international audience of millions. "Chuck Norris facts" is a quirky, but extremely popular internet phenomenon that has entertained fans from all over the globe.

In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuscinski and V. S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries.

By the director of the hit documentary Behind the Burly Q, comes the first-ever oral history of American burlesque - as told by the performers who lived it, often speaking out here for the first time. By telling the intimate and surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men!) who lived it, Behind the Burly Q reveals the true story of burlesque, even as it experiences a new renaissance.

For fans of Tune In, an anthology of essays from 30 luminaries about their favorite Beatles songs. Blauner anthologizes essays from 30 authors, actors, and musicians reflecting on their favorite Beatles songs, creating a monument to the enduring impact of the most popular band of all time. The diversity of favorite tracks and the variety of reasons contributors love them speak to the range of the Beatles' song catalog and the power their music still has more than 50 years after they arrived in the United States.

Jean Renoir's career almost spans the history years of cinema - from the early silent movies, to the naturalism of the talkies, committed cinema, film noir, Hollywood studio productions, the Technicolor-period comedies and fast television techniques. His film The Grand Illusion remains one of the greatest movies about the effects of war.

Kendrick Lamar is one of the most influential rappers, songwriters and record producers of his generation. Widely known for his incredible lyrics and powerful music, he is regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time. In Promise That You Will Sing About Me, pop culture critic and music journalist Miles Marshall Lewis explores Kendrick Lamar’s life, his roots, his music, his lyrics, and how he has shaped the musical landscape.

Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author's grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed "perhaps the 20th century's most discriminating publisher" by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.

Mark Thompson, world-renowned radio personality heard every morning for 25 years on the nationally syndicated Mark and Brian Show originating from KLOS Radio, the rock of Southern California, delivers the story of a lifetime. More than his personal memoir, this book offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the morning drive, the celebrities, the studio politics, the passionate fans, the incredible live music, and the ingenious comedy bits that pumped life into two and a half decades of entertainment every weekday morning to generations of listeners all over the country.

Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.

Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.

From Moon Unit Zappa, the daughter of musical visionary Frank Zappa, comes a memoir of growing up in her unconventional household in 1970s Los Angeles, coming of age in the Hollywood Hills in the 1980s as the “Valley Girl,” gaining momentum as an accidental VJ on a new network called MTV, and finding herself after losing her father, then her mother, and the testing of her most important relationships.

Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown” - what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis - Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it - take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling.

From surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny pop of the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School class of 1959 - a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys - who came of age in Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed possible.

​For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious, heartbreaking memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life—a story she’s never shared, until now.