Life Biography

Acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto explores the roots of Hitchcock’s obsessions - with food, murder, and idealized love, among others - and traces the origins of his incomparable, bizarre genius, from his childhood and education to the golden years of his career. Based on interviews with his writers, actors, and longtime associates, and on exhaustive research, The Dark Side of Genius is the definitive biography of Alfred Hitchcock.

In May of 1963, Seattle mountaineer Jim Whittaker stepped into world history by becoming the first American to summit Mount Everest. More than 50 years later, he is still regarded as a seminal figure in North American mountaineering, as well as an astute businessman who helped create the outdoor recreation industry. A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond is Jim's courageous, no-punches-pulled autobiography and a look at a peripatetic, sometimes difficult life.

Chronicling his embodiment of the American Dream, Total Recall covers Schwarzenegger's high-stakes journey to the United States, from creating the international bodybuilding industry out of the sands of Venice Beach, to breathing life into cinema's most iconic characters, and becoming one of the leading political figures of our time. Proud of his accomplishments and honest about his regrets, Schwarzenegger spares nothing in sharing his amazing story.

She is one of the most recognizable women of our time. America knows Jane Fonda as an actress and an activist, a feminist and a wife, a workout guru and a role model. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, Fonda reveals that she is so much more. From her youth among Hollywood's elite and her early film career to the challenges and triumphs of her life today, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths.

In only 90 seconds, a fire in The Station nightclub in Rhode Island left 100 people dead or dying and injured hundreds more. It would take years to find out why - and who was really at fault. Best-selling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Scott James investigates all the central figures, including the band’s manager and lead singer, the fire inspector, the maker of the acoustical foam, as well as the brothers.

Renowned psychiatrist and educator Armand Nicholi here presents a fascinating comparison of the beliefs of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. In the 20th century, no spokesman was more prominent for nonbelief than Sigmund Freud, and no one argued for belief more successfully than C. S. Lewis. From pain and suffering to love and sex, from God to morality, Lewis and Freud carefully argued opposing positions and even considered the chief objections to their positions.

For a dozen years as one of the world’s most admired CEOs, Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. The first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company - and one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time - she transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence, and a deep sense of purpose. Now, in a rich memoir brimming with grace, grit, and good humor, My Life in Full offers a firsthand view of Nooyi’s legendary career and the sacrifices it so often demanded.

A Recorded Books Audio Original production of songs and stories performed by Dolly herself, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics goes beyond the glitz, glamour, and rhinestones to the warmth, heart, and soul of a treasured pop-culture icon.

Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891, became the leader of the Italian Communist Party in his early 30s, was arrested by Mussolini’s police in 1927, and remained imprisoned until shortly before his death 10 years later. The posthumous publication of his Prison Notebooks established him as a major thinker whose influence continues to increase. Fiori’s biography enlarges upon the facts of Gramsci’s life through personal accounts, and through Gramsci’s own writings to relatives and friends.

This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan '80s - when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rock's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right.

If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you. Not only a groundbreaking work of American history by critically acclaimed author Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous is also a dramatic story of innovation and survival. Here is your chance to live in the very heart of the American wilderness with legendary trappers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith.

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

In The Surrender Experiment, Michael A. Singer tells the extraordinary story of what happened when, after a deep spiritual awakening, he decided to relinquish his personal fears and desires and simply let life unfold before him. Singer shares how this pivotal decision to embrace the flow of life led him to extraordinary success, sustained him through times of crisis, and allowed him to cultivate profound inner peace—whether as a young man pursuing a life of solitude in the woods, the founder of a thriving spiritual community in Florida, or the CEO of a billion-dollar medical software company.

Bert Kreischer doesn't know how to say "no." If he did, he wouldn't have gotten himself mixed up with a group of Russian mobsters on a class trip to Moscow, earning him his nickname: "The Machine." He wouldn't have wrestled with a bear or swum with sharks on national television. He wouldn't have (possibly) smoked PCP with a star of Saturday Night Live. And he wouldn't have been named the Number One Partier in the Nation by Rolling Stone, inspired the movie National Lampoon's Van Wilder, or performed standup to sellout crowds across the country.

Former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives in the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt.

Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Scotty Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the town's stars and starlets. He began sleeping with some himself, and connecting others with his coterie of young, attractive, and sexually free-spirited friends.

From age 11, in 1974, until she left the show, in 1981, Melissa Anderson literally grew up before the viewers of Little House on the Prairie. Melissa, as Mary, is remembered by many as the blind sister - and she was the only actor in the series to be nominated for an Emmy. In The Way I See It, she takes listeners onto the set and inside the world of the iconic series created by Michael Landon, who, Melissa discovered, was not perfect, as much as he tried to be. In this memoir she also shares her memories of working with guest stars like Todd Bridges, Mariette Hartley, Sean Penn, Patricia Neal, and Johnny Cash.

A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductress of both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of the greatest works of 20th-century literature, Colette was our first true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzling reputation.

The author graduates from an elite university and enters the submarine service in the mid-1980s when rhetoric between the US and USSR threatens to turn the Cold War hot. He encounters an unforgiving world where submarines hunt each other unseen and unheralded in the ocean depths and in which minor mistakes can result in catastrophe. On four classified missions to the Mediterranean Sea, the North Atlantic, the Barents Sea, and the North Pole, he gradually and painfully learns the trade of a nuclear submarine officer in a world few people know of and even fewer have experienced. These ...

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, cofounder of the notorious Crips gang, is a death-row inmate. But in his two decades of incarceration, Williams has also become a respected author and activist whose dedication to ending gang warfare in the lives of inner-city children has earned him a 2001 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. In this award-winning book, which has drawn praise from educators, government leaders, and families alike. Williams describes the brutal reality of being an inmate.