Art Biography

Hollywood was built on beautiful and complicated matinee idols: James Dean and Marlon Brando are classic examples, but in the 1990s, the actor who embodied that archetype was River Phoenix. As the brightly colored 1980s wound down, a new crew of leading men began to appear on movie screens...

Sammy Hagar—legendary lead singer of Van Halen, founder of the Cabo Wabo Tequila brand, and one of rock music’s most notoriously successful performers—tells his unforgettable story in this one-of-a-kind autobiography of a life at the top of the charts. From his decade-long journey...

America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents two hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made in this two-book collection containing THE GREAT MOVIES and THE GREAT MOVIES II. Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a...

Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.

George Marsden describes how Lewis gradually went from being an atheist to a committed Anglican - famously converting to Christianity in 1931 after conversing into the night with his friends, J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugh Dyson - and how Lewis delivered his wartime talks to a traumatized British nation in the midst of an all-out war for survival.

David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

The world J.R.R. Tolkien created is one of the most beloved in all of literature, and continues to capture hearts and imaginations around the world. From Oxford to ComiCon, the Middle Earth is analyzed and interpreted through a multitude of perspectives. But one essential facet of Tolkien and his Middle Earth has been overlooked: science.

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us an in-depth biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts. It is the most American of...

Zen monk Santoka Taneda (1882 - 1940) is one of Japan's most beloved modern poets, famous for his "free-verse" haiku, the dominant style today. This book tells the fascinating story of his life, liberally sprinkled with more than 300 of his poems and extracts from his essays and journals - compiled by his best friend and biographer Sumita Oyama and elegantly translated by William Scott Wilson.

Every writer's origin story is different. In How I Became a Writer, Gloria Steinem charts her unlikely journey from restless teen in Toledo, Ohio, to professional magazine writer in Manhattan - with sage advice and "random directives" for getting started.

Dark, deviant, and deliriously funny, Jude Angelini writes in the colloquial vein of Charles Bukowski, using his unique, natural voice to tell stories from his life. He writes about his sexual encounters - both strange and intimate - alongside stories from his childhood and his tell-all experiences with "science drugs". Throughout it all, Jude is critical of himself and his actions, proving himself to be vulnerable, lonely, and extremely relatable. A stellar follow-up to Hyena.

In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.

One morning in February 1952, a journalist called Ian Fleming sat down at his desk and set about creating a fictional secret agent. James Bond was born and would go on to become one of the most successful, enduring and lucrative creations in literature. But Bond's world of glamour and romance, gadgets and cocktails, espionage and villainy wasn't entirely drawn from imagination: Fleming's background and his experiences as an intelligence officer during the Second World War were all formative parts in the creation of the world's most famous spy.

*Read by Alan Cumming himself* NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of stage and screen shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career. A beloved star of...

A transformative 300-mile walk along Japan’s ancient pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages inspires a heartrending remembrance of a long-lost friend, documented in poignant, imaginative prose and remarkable photography. “An epic, exquisitely detailed journey, on foot, through a...

A famous autobiographical account of life as a young soldier in the first World War trenches. Robert Graves, who went on to write I, Claudius, has given to posterity here one of the all-time great insights into the experience of war.

The manager who shepherded Van Halen from obscurity to rock stardom goes behind the scenes to tell the complete, unadulterated story of David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, and the legendary band that changed rock music. Van Halen’s rise in the 1980s was one of the most thrilling the music world...

A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers. Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of...

Le premier tome des Souvenirs d’enfance de Marcel Pagnol est un classique indémodable.
Par la grâce de son écriture, l’auteur nous transporte dans les collines provençales et nous fait partager son émerveillement d’enfant.

One girl’s funny and honest account of losing her mum to a cult. Susan Wokoma performs in this teen-spirited and gangsta-rap-fuelled survival guide to growing up with an actual twat as a mum.