Entertainment Memoir

John Cage has been described as the most important composer of our time. He combined classical European training with Eastern spirituality to produce an American amalgam of such vitality and originality that it continues to define what we mean by avant-garde. His influence has touched generations of artists, including Philip Glass, David Byrne, and his longtime collaborator Merce Cunningham. His work and ideas have influenced not only the world of music but also dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry.

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.

A carefully crafted and collectible volume celebrates the 50th anniversary of a legendary and groundbreaking Beatles album. Expert Brian Southall's unique edition recounts the story behind the music and the cultural climate of 1967 when Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band debuted. The "A side" of this coolly curated title is all about the Beatles, the music on the album, the recording process, and more. The "B side" looks at the state of the world in 1967, from the Summer of Love to antiwar protests to the launch of Rolling Stone magazine and more.

Award-winning actor, director, producer, and activist Kerry Washington shares the deeply moving journey of her life so far, and the bravely intimate story of discovering her truth. While on a drive in Los Angeles, on a seemingly average afternoon, Kerry Washington received a text message that...

Officer Clemmons: A Memoir details the incredible life story of François Clemmons, beginning with his early years in Alabama and Ohio, marked by family trauma and loss, through his studies as a music major at Oberlin College, where Clemmons began to investigate and embrace his homosexuality, to a chance encounter with Fred Rogers which changed the whole course of both men's lives, leading to a deep, spiritual friendship and mentorship spanning nearly forty years.

Roll the Calls is as ferociously powerful as the iconic figure at its center, Ari Emanuel—the inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold, and one of the most legendary powerbrokers of all time—a man who made rage and chaos into the instruments of his success. Expertly written with Pulitzer...

Exploding on the music scene in the early 1970s, the rock group KISS combined raw energy with theatrical showmanship—not to mention face painting! Founding member Gene Simmons—an outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon—recounts his own story as well as the history of the band. In KISS and Make-Up, Simmons shares a wild, shocking, and unbelievable tale about an immigrant boy from Israel who studied to be a rabbi but was saved by rock and roll and became one of the most notorious rock stars in the world.

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.

No one other than Warren Zanes, rocker and writer and friend, could author a book about Tom Petty that is as honest and evocative of Petty's music and the remarkable rock and roll history he and his band helped to write. Born in Gainesville, Florida, with more than a little hillbilly in his blood, Tom Petty was a Southern shit kicker, a kid without a whole lot of promise. Rock and roll made it otherwise.

Despite numerous obstacles, small-town girl Lenore Zann caught the acting bug early. She was “discovered” at 19 and chosen to play Marilyn Monroe in a rock opera based on the life of the tragic movie star. Her powerhouse performance kickstarted her career, leading to hundreds of acting credits in film, TV, theatre, radio, and animation, including her iconic portrayal of Rogue in the very popular animated series X-Men: The Animated Series. A Rogue's Tale reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly in show business.

In a sharp, witty memoir, iconic trailblazer and legendary journalist Connie Chung pulls no punches in detailing her storied career as the first Asian woman to break into an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated television news industry—"an absorbing look at a pioneering news figure" (TIME)...

Few people knew that Freddie Mercury kept a diary. When he died in 1991, he left behind seventeen handwritten notebooks chronicling his life and times, which he had begun to write in 1976 when Queen were at the height of their global fame. His final entry was made just weeks before his death. Only four of his nearest and dearest ever knew what became of those diaries. To one of them, Freddie secretly entrusted the collection just before he died. A mind-blowing listen, they constitute the closest thing to a Freddie Mercury autobiography that the world will ever know.

Je cours, paniqué. J’ai encore été piégé par ma mère. À moins d’un miracle, mon père va me tuer à soir. Le même style d’arnaque que d’habitude. J’ai beau courir, l’horizon s’éloigne et l’enfer approche à grandes claques, avec un verre de vin dans une main. Ma mère est en colère tout le temps. Contre le mauvais temps, contre les hommes en général, quoique "les hommes en général" ont l’air de ressembler beaucoup à son papa à elle et au mien... Elle est en colère contre beaucoup de choses, mais surtout contre moi.

The much-anticipated memoir of Dan Bilzerian is almost here! Dan takes listeners on a wild ride, from his anything-but-normal childhood, to the insanity that has followed him on his journey to becoming one of the most famous people in the world. Hear about his upbringing, military service, gambling, guns and other toys, and about girls. Lots of girls. And for the first time, Dan talks openly about how he was able to live unapologetically live his dreams using a simple method that he calls "The Setup".

Travis Barker's soul-baring memoir chronicles the highlights and lowlights of the renowned drummer's art and his life, including the harrowing plane crash that nearly killed him and his traumatic road to recovery. After breaking out as the acclaimed drummer of the multiplatinum punk band Blink-182, everything changed for Travis Barker. But the dark side of rock stardom took its toll: His marriage, chronicled for an MTV reality show, fell apart. Constant touring concealed a serious drug addiction. A reckoning did not truly come until he was forced to face mortality.

In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart.

While on a three-month-long tour, Jeremy met and built a friendship with the lead singer of another band. In a beautiful and inspiring story, their love unfolded taking them both by surprise. After 16 years of marriage, Jeremy and Adrienne have experienced devastating losses and incredible joy and have grown alongside each other. They continue to strengthen their friendship as they juggle life and frequent separations, due to tour schedules, with the demands and stressors of parenting their three kids.

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.

Since the age of 21, Paul McCartney has lived one of the ultimate rock 'n' roll lives, played out on the most public of stages. Now Paul's story is told by rock music's foremost biographer, with McCartney's consent and access to family members and close friends who have never spoken on the record before.

In Never Mind the Happy, musical dynamo Marc Shaiman looks back on five decades of Broadway triumphs, Hollywood hijinks, and unforgettable collaborations. Along the way, he charts the personal highs and heartbreaks that have shaped him—spending his teenage years in community theater, starting a decades-long collaboration with Bette Midler in the ’70s, surviving the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, his award-winning film music career in the Hollywood of the ’90s, right up to the peaks (and valleys) of creating Broadway musicals from 2000 on.