Memoir Industry

Christine Montross was a nervous first-year medical student, standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class, preparing herself for what was to come. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags is shocking, no matter how long you've prepared yourself, but a strange thing happened when Montross met her cadaver.

The Fastest Tortoise is about not just weathering the unknown but embracing it and thriving. Structuring his story around “Ken-isms” that define his personal and professional philosophies—such as “yellow lights don’t turn green,” “be uncomfortable,” and “feed the ducks while they’re quacking”—Ken demonstrates how to approach a volatile world.

Chocolate Covered Money is for anyone who eats chocolate, has shopped for chocolate as a gift, or has wondered what really goes on at the chocolate store "in a mall near you." Chocolate is a big business, and makes a lot of money. This book "pulls the curtain back" for a behind-the-scenes look at the people who own chocolate companies, how they make chocolate, and their celebrity friends.

An inspiring, hilarious memoir about learning to resist the pressures of conformity, love yourself for who you are, embrace your flaws, and unlock your true potential. Winner of the African American Literary Award for Memoir! Now cohost of Fox's The Real and SiriusXM's Café Mocha, Loni Love...

In the first full biography of actor Sidney Poitier, Aram Goudsouzian analyzes the life and career of a Hollywood legend, from his childhood in the Bahamas to his 2002 Oscar for lifetime achievement. Poitier is a gifted actor, a great American success story, an intriguing personality, and a political symbol; his life and career illuminate America's racial history.

As director of the world's largest abortion clinic and the nation's most prominent abortionist, Dr. Bernard Nathanson presided over 60,000 abortions. As co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, he helped make abortion legal. Then, in a conversion that made headkines and astonished both sides of the abortion debate, he renounced his profession to become a pro-life advocate. But Dr. Nathanson's journey was not over.

In the last half of the twentieth century, Don Thomas discovered a cure for every marrow-based disease—like leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle-cell anemia—forever changing treatment for some of the deadliest illnesses. His feats were extraordinary, earning him a Nobel Prize, and the cascade of treatments he inspired have reshaped and will continue to reshape the practice of clinical medicine. Yet no one has ever written Thomas’s courageous story.Dr. Frederick R. Appelbaum, a member of Thomas’s research team, does so for the first time.

J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) was a shrewd industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942, ultimately becoming a dominant player in the oil industry. In The Great Getty, Robert Lenzner presents an in-depth biography of the savviest entrepreneur of the 20th century and the world's richest private citizen at the time of his death—worth $6 billion, the equivalent of more than $27 billion in today' s money.

Bevy Smith was living what seemed like a glamorous dream as a fashion advertising executive, blazing a lucrative career for herself in the whitewashed magazine world. She jetsetted to Europe for fashion shows, dined and danced at every hot spot, and enjoyed a mighty roster of lovers. So it came as quite a shock to Bevy when one day, after arriving at her luxury hotel in Milan, she collapsed on the Frette bedsheets and sobbed. Years of rolling with the in-crowd had taken its toll. Her satisfaction with work and life had hit rock bottom.

In these essays, TV’s Frank Conniff focuses on twenty-five of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 films he found and riffed with his fellow MST3K writers and cast mates. It tells the story of how a comedian who was lucky enough to work on beloved Peabody Award winning TV show was transformed into a comedian who was lucky enough to work on a beloved Peabody Award winning TV show. It’s a story that will stay with you for the rest of your life, if you happen to die just as you finish listening to the book.

John Harvey Kellogg was one of America's most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother, Will, was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping saga of these two extraordinary men, whose lifelong competition and enmity toward one another changed America's notion of health and wellness and who helped change the course of American medicine, nutrition, wellness, and diet.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo shares the inspiring story of how he came to be who he is. After experiencing abuse as a child, Dr. Ladapo was incapable of connecting emotionally with other people. He was dissociated from virtually everything in his life and numbly powered through college, medical school, and residency to become a doctor and university professor. It wasn’t until he fell in love with his wife that he was forced to come face-to-face with the enormous emotional and spiritual disruption caused by his deeply buried trauma.

The most compelling figures in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs who were the first in the music business to read the generational writing on the wall in the mid-1960s. By recruiting outsider artists and allowing them to make the music they wanted, Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company into the voice of a generation. Along the way, they revolutionized the music industry and, within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the history of the American music industry.

El retrato demoledor de una dinastía cuya fortuna se construyó gracias a Valium y cuya reputación fue destruida por OxyContin.

Em Medicina dos horrores, a historiadora Lindsey Fitzharris narra como era o chocante mundo da cirurgia do século XIX, que estava às vésperas de uma profunda transformação. A autora evoca os primeiros anfiteatros de operações—lugares abafados onde os procedimentos eram feitos diante de plateias lotadas—e cirurgiões pioneiros, cujo ofício era saudado não pela precisão, mas pela velocidade e pela força bruta, uma vez que não havia anestesia. Não à toa, os mais célebres cirurgiões da época eram capazes de amputar uma perna em menos de trinta segundos.

Scouted by a modeling agent when she was just sixteen years old, Cameron Russell first approached her job with some reservations: She was a serious student with her sights set on college, not the runway. But modeling was a job that seemed to offer young women like herself unprecedented access to wealth, fame, and influence. Besides, as she was often reminded, “there are a million girls in line” who would eagerly replace her.

This is the enormously entertaining story of how a fraudulent surgeon made a fortune by inserting goats' testes into impotent American men. "Doctor" John Brinkley became a world renowned authority on sexual rejuvenation in the 1920s, with famous politicians and even royalty asking for his services.

From Jon King, legendary front man of iconic post-punk band Gang of Four, comes a memoir to remember. To Hell with Poverty! documents King’s story from a south London slum and working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in the legendary post-punk/funk band Gang of Four.

As a private banker working for the largest bank in the world, UBS, Bradley Birkenfeld was an expert in Switzerland's shell-game of offshore companies and secret numbered accounts. He wined and dined ultrawealthy clients whose millions of dollars were hidden away from business partners, spouses, and tax authorities. As his client list grew, Birkenfeld lived a life of money, fast cars, and beautiful women, but when he discovered that UBS was planning to betray him, he blew the whistle to the US government.

For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: How did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The Real Work, Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor (from the DMV), among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him.