Art Biography

Fred Stoller has played the annoying schnook in just about every sitcom you’ve seen on TV - Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, Hannah Montana, My Name Is Earl - and was even a staff writer for Seinfeld, but he’s never found a solid gig. When it comes to Hollywood, it’s a case of always the bridesmaid and never the bride, except in his case he’s always the snarky waiter, the mopey cousin, or Man Number Two.

Charlie Chaplin made an amazing 71 films by the time he was only 33 years old. He was not only known as the world’s first international movie star, but as a comedian, film director, and a man ripe with scandal, accused of plagiarism, communism, pacifism, liberalism, and anti-Americanism. He seduced young women, marrying four different times, each time to a woman younger than the next. In this animated biography of Chaplin, Joyce Milton reveals to us a life riddled with gossip and a struggle to rise from an impoverished London childhood to the life of a successful American film star.

Life with Picasso, written with Carlton Lake, is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career.

Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy’s world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, where Marion lived with her aunt and uncle, running wild on the beach with her friends and enjoying weekend visits with her devoted father. But things changed the year she entered her teens. First, a package from Nancy arrived in the maila gift of sexy lingerie.

Marilyn Monroe, born to deprivation and a series of foster homes, became an acting legend of the 20th century. She married famous men, Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, and her many lovers included President John F. Kennedy. Her death, at 36, is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Anthony Summers interviewed 600 people for this book, which reveals unknown truths, some funny, some very sad, about this brilliant but troubled woman. First to gain access to the files of Monroe's last psychiatrist, he throws light on Monroe's troubled psyche.

The American pianist Jonathan Biss is known to audiences throughout the world for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations. What is less known until now is that Jonathan Biss writes about music in a most compelling and engaging way. For anyone who has ever enjoyed a Beethoven concert or a Beethoven recording or one of the many films about Beethoven, this audiobook is an inspiring listening experience. For those of you who have heard Beethoven in concert or listened to a Beethoven recording, Jonathan Biss takes you behind the scenes of those performances.

​Diane von Furstenberg, entrepreneur and philanthropist, presents her words to live by. In an easy-to-navigate A-Z dictionary format, designed to be browsed or listened to as a whole, Own It offers listeners Diane’s well-earned wisdom for enjoying both personal and professional growth at any age.

Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend: running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; creating the seminal road book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; twisting political reporting to new heights for Rolling Stone; and making sense of it all in the landmark Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

Douglas Adams, the legendary author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is one of the most beloved authors of all time. Twenty-five years after his death, his books continue to be read by new generations and his creations along with his ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything being “42,” have seeped deep into public consciousness.

A breathtakingly candid memoir by Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, the chart-topping, multi-platinum recording artist behind hits like “Leave (Get Out),” “Too Little, Too Late”, and the Grammy Award-winning "Say So" Signed to a major recording deal at just 12 years old, JoJo catapulted to the top...

A revelatory look into the life and work of Ernest Hemingway, considered in his time to be the greatest living American novelist and short story writer, winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Mary Dearborn's new biography gives the richest and most nuanced portrait to date of this complex, enigmatically unique American artist.

Did you know Shel Silverstein drew cartoons in a military newspaper while serving in the army? Discover how an aspiring writer and cartoonist went on to become a best-selling children's author.

Before Carl Linnaeus began classifying organisms, before John James Audubon drew birds from the wild, before Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, there lived a 13-year-old girl named Maria Merian who loved to draw bugs. With no formal training or university education, Maria Merian took on the role of artist, adventurer, and scientist in 17th-century Europe - a time when women were rarely allowed responsibilities outside the home, and unusual interests led to accusations of witchcraft.

The shocking, never-before-told story of the bizarre world inside the legendary Playboy Mansion—and, finally, the secret truth about the man who holds the key—from one of the few people who truly knows: Hef’s former #1 girlfriend and star of The Girls Next Door A spontaneous decision at...

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau's scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, "I have to do a scene with this guy." That impulse changed both of their lives. The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero's laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" ( Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon.

At a time when Vancouver Island was still an extremely remote and sparsely populated backwater, a young widow packed her five children into a 25-foot boat dubbed The Caprice and set off on an adventure. Summer after summer the brave young mother, who became known as "Capi," would set sail and explore the rugged coastline for months with her young crew. Although the hazards the family faced were numerous-tides, fog, storms, rapids, cougars, and even grizzlies-Capi brought them through it all.

This is an exuberant group portrait of four extraordinary writers, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber, whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors captured the spirit of the 1920s.

In clear and entertaining prose, Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introduces listeners to more than 100 great works, and profiles in depth many significant composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Dvoxak, and Mahler. He describes all the musical instruments in the orchestra, defines major musical terms, and makes music theory comprehensible for the uninitiated. There are also conversations with important musicians who offer fascinating insights about their art.

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.