Art Biography

Stanley Kubrick, the director of a string of timeless movies from Lolita and Dr. Strangelove to A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, and others, has always been depicted by the media as the Howard Hughes of filmmakers, a weird artist obsessed with his work and privacy to the point of madness. But who was he really?

Living to Tell the Tale spans Gabriel García Márquez’s life from his birth in 1927 through the start of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. A radiant, powerful, and beguiling memoir, Living to Tell the Tale gives us the formation of Gabriel García Márquez as a writer and as a man.

When Hugh Hefner quit his job at Esquire to start a magazine called Playboy, he didn't just want to make money, he wanted to make dreams come true. In this wise and penetrating biography, intellectual historian Steven Watts looks at what Hugh Hefner went on to become and how he took America with him. Hefner became one of the most hated and envied celebrities in America, standing just barely on the wrong side of decency - with as many as seven million subscribers to his magazine.

Not a technical guide on snowboarding but, rather, a very personal approach to how to think about mountains, snow, and adventure, The Art of Shralpinism reflects the remarkable journey of snowboarding superstar Jeremy Jones. Drawing on the hundreds of journals he has kept over the years, Jones offers intriguing snapshots of time and place that include his own on-the-slope stories and white-out moments, as well as those of other prominent adventurers such as Jimmy Chin, Zahan Billimoria, and Christina Lusti.

What do you do when your world ends? At 28 years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her - one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog - and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.

Read by the author. "Not only was I singled out and shamed, but I was lied to as well. I'm still trying to untangle the lies--some of them televised across the country--from the truth." You've heard some of the story: the manipulation and abuse hidden behind the traditional Christian values that...

This is a compelling look at the evolution of sports journalism and how today’s media coverage drastically differs from the days of newspapers and magazines. At the same time, it explores the effect that radio, TV, and later technology has had on sports coverage, and how men like Howard Cosell changed the way sports was reported on.

In weeks after the September 11 attacks, 18-year-old Mansoor Adayfi was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to US forces for bounty money. After months of interrogations, he was sent to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as one of its first prisoners. Like the nearly 800 other men imprisoned at Guantanamo, Adayfi didn’t know why he was imprisoned or for how long. He had never seen a skyscraper and couldn’t imagine what the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center looked like, much less how they were destroyed.

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Audiobook read by the author A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, Good Morning America, She Reads Famed American actress Demi Moore at last tells her own story in a surprisingly intimate and emotionally...

When first published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Live from New York was immediately proclaimed the best book ever produced on the landmark and legendary late-night show. In their own words, unfiltered and uncensored, a dazzling galaxy of trail-blazing talents recalled three turbulent decades of on-camera antics and off-camera escapades.

Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left behind a remarkable legacy when she died at the age of 98. Her vivid visual vocabulary, sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth, had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence on American art in this century.

In this autobiography, woven from personal pieces composed over the course of a celebrated writing life of more than 50 years, you'll meet William Buckley the boy, growing up in a family of 10 children; Buckley the daring young political enfant terrible, whose debut book, God and Man at Yale, was a shocking New York Times best seller; Buckley the editor of National Review, widely hailed as the founder of the modern conservative movement; and Buckley the husband and father.

“Short’s endearing memoir is, of course, funny, but it’s also a rare thing: the tale of a genuine human being who’s thrived on planet Hollywood.” — Washington Post In this engagingly witty, wise, and heartfelt memoir, Martin Short tells the tale of how a showbiz-obsessed kid from...

Outsider. Misfit. Criminal. Convict. . . . Movie star. Family man. Comedy legend. Joey Diaz has been called every name in the book (and then some). Now, for the first time, he shares the story of his unlikely rise to fame in his own words—with no punches pulled.

Over fifteen years of dirty secrets, shocking reveals, and all of the celebrity gossip that’s unfit to print . . . but we’re going to anyway. When Jay Z defended himself against unfair charges that he slapped a woman, when Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez got tagged by an escort agency madam, when Bill O’Reilly dissed Muslim women, and when Ruth Madoff discovered her scam artist husband, Bernie, had also been cheating on her, it all came out in the pages of Rush & Molloy.

"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.

Edward Van Halen was a rock guitar legend who left an indelible mark on the music world with his innovative playing style and iconic riffs. This book, written by rock journalist veteran Steve Rosen, offers a personal and heartfelt account of their 26-year journey together, from Edward's early days as a struggling musician to his meteoric rise to fame with Van Halen. Steve shares intimate details about their relationship, Edward's creative process, and what it was like hanging out with the greatest guitarist on the planet.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction, and her impact on crowds and on men was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well.

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school - in her 60s - to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful, demands of a life fully lived.

* Library Journal Best Books of 2025 * New York Public Library Best Books of 2025 * Hyperallergic Favorite Art Books of 2025 * Publishers Weekly Best Books of Summer 2025 * BookBub Best Non-Fiction Release of the Season * Newsday’s Top Must-Read Book for Summer * Christian Science Monitor Best...