Art Biography

​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.

Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was widely considered one of the finest voices of his generation. His twenty-one books of fiction and fourteen books of poetry influenced a generation of writers. Harrison helped to shape the course of contemporary American literature, revitalizing in particular the novella form, of which he was a recognized master.

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...

Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence as well as the Italian Renaissance, which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Interwoven into the narrative are the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Donatello as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola.

From the king of “Gonzo” journalism and bestselling author who brought you Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes another astonishing volume of letters by Hunter S. Thompson.

An unprecedented behind-the-scenes view into the life of Anthony Bourdain from the people who knew him best. When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and...

As his parents’ shouting tears through the walls to the room where he is supposed to be sleeping, young Neil Waldman buries his face in his pillow and tries to swallow his tears. The trauma of his parents’ fighting rips at him, but it will also open the path to Neil’s career as an artist. Seeking refuge from a turbulent home life, Neil and his three siblings turn to the world of creativity. Their mother’s book from an art museum in Russia is all the children need to set fire to their imaginations. And from there, drawing and painting become much more than pleasurable diversions....

One spring day in 1683, a notary's clerk in Delft entered the home of the late Magdalena Pieters van Ruijven and stumbled upon one of the wonders of the seventeenth-century world: twenty paintings by Johannes Vermeer. Rather than dispel the mysteries of Vermeer's life, this discovery merely gave rise to more questions: How had this one Dutchwoman come to possess the majority of the master's work? And why have these images defied explanation for so long?

Bestselling author of Capote’s Women Laurence Leamer shares an engrossing account of the enigmatic director Alfred Hitchcock that finally puts the dazzling actresses he cast in his legendary movies at the center of the story. Alfred Hitchcock was fixated—not just on the dark, twisty stories...

Six-time Emmy Award-winning funnyman Tim Conway, best known for his characters on The Carol Burnett Show, offers a straight-shooting and hilarious memoir about his life on stage and off as an actor and comedian. In television history, few entertainers have captured as many hearts and made as many people laugh as Tim Conway. There's nothing in the world that Tim Conway would rather do than entertain - and in his first-ever memoir, What's So Funny?, that's exactly what he does.

***An Instant New York Times Bestseller*** From the woman who is credited for launching what we know as the celebrity focused, “brand” driven, social media obsessed popular culture of today, comes an honest and surprising memoir that reckons with that truth, and shows that there is so much...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just Kids A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, THE NEW YORKER “God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life...

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, servicing them 251 times over a ten-hour period to set a new world record: The World’s Biggest Gangbang.

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 legendary Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA master Rickson Gracie comes a riveting, insightful memoir that weaves together the story of Gracie’s stunning career with the larger history of the Gracie family dynasty and the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, showing how the...

The #1 New York Times Bestseller Includes six new songs by Jessica Simpson, available exclusively in the Open Book audiobook. Performed by the author featuring her music throughout. Jessica reveals for the first time her inner monologue and most intimate struggles. Guided by the journals she's...

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.

Featuring an exclusive, never-before-heard piece of music, the last written together by the legendary Van Halen brothers! In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and...

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.

Sara Daniel, a star European correspondent and one of the few women reporters covering Iraq, dares to venture where few have gone, in this gripping and fascinating memoir. In June of 2002, war looms and Saddam Hussein still has a brutal grip on a nation in disarray. Sara Daniel travels the length and breadth of Iraq, following the fast-evolving events and interviewing people from all walks of life and all religious and political affiliations: from the Kurds in the north to the rising new politicians in Baghdad and beyond....