Art Biography

The life and film genius of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream director Wes Craven. Wes Craven is one of the most successful and iconic horror movie directors in Hollywood. His masterful examination of the nightmarish nexus of dreams and reality helped spark a career that has spanned close to forty years. Then, with their mix of horror, sex, and humor, Craven's Scream movies helped revitalize the slasher film genre.

Filled with fresh new research, this updated edition of the definitive biography of Coco Chanel deepens our understanding of the history and legacy of the incredible woman who shaped modern fashion and created an empire of haute couture. Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor, conjuring up...

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life - to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly Black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write, she realized the truth - and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships.

Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women's artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners.

Elvis Presley was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. But his career was not all glitter and glory. The hip-shaking stardom of the 1950s sank into an embarrassing string of bad movies in the 1960s. Could Elvis kick-start his career and reconnect with his audience? Join him on his ’68 Comeback Special and witness the King rise again.

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...

All my life, I have been looking for a man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning and full obedience to its principles. Walter Russel Clark found this man.

Read by the author. Follow Andrew Klavan to a deeper, richer understanding of the words of Jesus. Andrew Klavan believed what he read in the Gospels, but he often struggled to understand what Jesus really meant. So he began a journey of wrestling with the beautiful and often strange words of...

You can witness Klaus Kinski have a mood swing within a minute, within a sentence, as his mind conveys him from an infuriating image to a soothing one to a humorous one. If you watch his face while he speaks, you will see it become a mask of ire, his glance menacing as he spits out words of contempt and outrage. Then suddenly, there'll be a smile of such gentleness that something will constrict in your chest.

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along. She has wonderful and tickling words of advice for those fast approaching 50.

Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life.

On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for 40 years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.

“In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only exceeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history.” –President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Honor ceremony ""Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women, the first ever authorized biography of the most famous movie star of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Taylor. No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major...

The extraordinary inside story of LEGO, based on unprecedented access to the company’s archives and rare interviews with the founding family that still owns the company ""This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand."" —Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former President/CEO of the...

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.

Love might not be what we think it is. We all seek the happiness that comes from loving and being loved, yet we often find ourselves dissatisfied in our relationships and unable to grasp the cause. Thich Nhat Hanh here shows the way to overcome our recurrent obstacles to love--by learning to be...

""Magnificent."" —People Magazine The instant New York Times bestseller: Laugh-out-loud, deeply insightful, and emotion-filled essays from multitalented actress, comedian, podcaster, and writer Casey Wilson. Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn’t afraid to share. In this dazzling...

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...

This is a book about ten women over the past three hundred years who have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers. Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson's daughter Elizabeth Carter—who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England—to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed.