Celebrity Culture

Allan Abbott ran the leading hearse, mortuary, and funeral services company in Hollywood and saw up close how celebrities really live and die. The Forrest Gump of the funeral industry, Abbott was everywhere celebrities died, from helping to prepare Marilyn Monroe's body for burial to standing next to Christopher Walken at Natalie Wood's funeral. This book tells the rags-to-shroud story of how a young man with a hearse became the funeral driver to the stars.

Cuando El chavo del ocho se estrenó en los años 70, el programa ofrecía un retrato poco común de la vida de la clase trabajadora que resonó en la gente de toda América Latina. En el pico de su popularidad, 350 millones de personas lo sintonizaban cada semana. Y durante casi 50 años, el legado de “el chavo” se mantuvo vivo a través de una creciente base de fans multigeneracional y sus retransmisiones diarias. Hasta 2020, cuando El Chavo dejó de emitirse repentinamente.

The beloved star of Sister, Sister and former co-host of The Real sheds her “good girl” image and inspires women to do the same in this powerful memoir. A lighthearted and supremely entertaining memoir, You Should Sit Down for This is like spending the afternoon sharing tea, fresh baked...

DJ Fat Tony has been described as 'the closest thing that club culture has to a national treasure' and the 'unlikely cult hero of quarantine'. Few people have crammed so many lives into one: when your first line of cocaine is aged 16 with Freddie Mercury, where do you go from there? I Don't Take Requests is Fat Tony's breathtakingly candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes.

A fascinating exploration and celebration of the life and work of the coolest man in Hollywood, Samuel L. Jackson—from his star-making turns in the films of Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino to his ubiquitous roles in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, not to mention the cult favorite Snakes...

Experience the only memoir of one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the twentieth century with this eye-opening book featuring a foreword by Gabrielle Drake. In 1968, Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only...

When his satirical musings in a college newspaper got him discharged from the Air Force, it became clear to Walt Williams that his destiny in life was to be a writer - he just never thought he'd end up writing video games, let alone working on some of the most successful franchises in the industry - Bioshock, Civilization, Borderlands, and Mafia, among others. Williams pulls back the curtain on an astonishingly profitable industry that has put its stamp on pop culture and yet is little known to those outside its walls.

Leaving school and starting his career at Decca Records in 1958 at the age of sixteen, Tony King would soon find himself becoming close friends with Elton John, rekindling John Lennon and Yoko Ono's relationship, mediating a quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and spending time with Freddie Mercury in his final days - a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as a stalwart in London and New York's gay scenes.

Abridged CDs * 4 CDs, 5 hours “Denis Leary snarls as naturally as most actors smile,†says one critic of the writer and comic. In Why We Suck, Leary snarls to brilliant effect. With his patented highspeed ranting and killer comic instinct, Denis Leary has become a beloved antihero...

From one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor, and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s. There were many reasons...

Will we ever get tired of watching Cher navigate Beverly Hills High School and discover true love in the movie Clueless? As if! Written by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, Clueless is an enduring comedy classic that remains one of the most streamed movies on Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes even 20 years after its release. In the first book of its kind, Jen Chaney has compiled an oral history of the making of this iconic film using recollections and insights collected from key cast and crew members.

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal’s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author’s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters - including the Kennedy family, Marlon Brando, Anais Nin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Today, "Hallelujah" is one of the most-performed rock songs in history. It has become a staple of movies and television shows as diverse as Shrek and The West Wing, of tribute videos and telethons. It has been covered by hundreds of artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Justin Timberlake, and k.d. lang, and it is played every year at countless events - both sacred and secular - around the world. Yet when music legend Leonard Cohen first wrote and recorded "Hallelujah", it was for an album rejected by his longtime record label.

In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.

The kaleidoscopic story of how an underground American subculture reshaped the global fashion industry. The world now calls it “streetwear.” This is the story of how this fiercely guarded counterculture launched a lifestyle and fashion movement that has endured for nearly fifty years. It was...

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s...

Millions of people go to enormous lengths to achieve fame. Fame is woven into our lives in ways that may have been unimaginable in years past. Mining decades of experience, writer, director, producer, and actress Justine Bateman writes a visceral, intimate look at the experience of Fame. Combining the internal reality-shift of the famous, theories on the public’s behavior at each stage of a famous person’s career, and the experiences of other famous performers, Bateman takes the listener inside and outside the emotions of Fame.

This program is read by the author. A lightning-strike dispatch of hilarious, intimate, luminous essays from the brain (and voice!) of Emmy Award-nominated actress and writer Betty Gilpin. Oh. Hi. *takes six long gulps of water during which you’re like, may I help you?* My name is Betty. I...

REMARKABLE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ICON There's little debate that Robert De Niro is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, screen actors of his generation, perhaps of all time. His work, particularly in the first 20 years of his career, is unparalleled. Mean Streets, the Godfather Part II, Taxi...

Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it’s never been told before. Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary west coast scene from 1977-1982 by enlisting the voices of...